Promise Bound (30 page)

Lily’s hands clenched and unclenched, seeking some invisible body. Her thoughts roiled like thunder, pounding out all other sound. Her legs gave way. The water came up to meet her face.

“Dive, Lily!”

It wasn’t so much a dive as a collapse. Lily crumpled, falling inelegantly into the water. Her skin split and tore, finally exploding in a riot of pink sequins. But it didn’t matter to me how she entered. What mattered was how she was going to leave.

I raced along beside Lily, pushing her forward. We listened to the sounds of the lake, but there was nothing
human. No swimmers, and there was not enough wind for the slower-moving sailboats. Lily was already giving up. She was pathetic.

“Don’t give up so easily,”
I coached.
“They’ll come. There’s always someone.”

“No one’s in the water today,”
Lily said.

“Then lure one in.”

“How?”

“Lily, you’re a stunningly beautiful creature. Do what comes naturally, but you’ll need to move fast. There can be no hesitation, or they’ll sour. Strike. As soon as the impulse hits, you must strike and dive.”

Lily groaned, imagining the feeling that would fill the empty recesses of her heart. To feel what she’d once felt so easily and taken for granted …

“Listen,”
I said.
“Someone is talking.”

“They’re not in the water.”

“No, but they’re close to it. You need only ask. They will follow you.”

The current pulled Lily’s hair across her face, and she drew her arm over her eyes to clear her view. She smirked at me with red lips. Then suddenly—like some supreme gift—the body behind the voice entered the water.

Lily and I both gasped with exaltation as a white-hot explosion of unrestrained joy burst from the woman, more exquisite than anything in recent memory.

“Strike!”
I cried

Lily’s thoughts echoed back to me:
“Yes!”

“Do not hesitate!”
But then, from a different direction, a
familiar scent flooded my senses … though not firmly rooted in my memory … Pavati’s child? Pavati’s child was in the water? How could this happen? My luck was finally changing. If I could do away with Pavati’s child, there’d be no more need for this silly standoff between us. Things could go back to normal. We could finally be a family again.

Pavati raced up from behind us, yelling,
“No! He’s mine!”

Lily Hancock was all but forgotten.

A
boat motored overhead, then pulled away, cutting the engine and dropping anchor some fifty yards from the pier. I waited for the customary fishing line to drop, but nothing happened. Instead of the leaden plunk and the thin, spiraling fizz of the sinker, there was the faraway sound of Maris and Lily talking. I groaned. Same old, same old. As soon as my back was turned, Maris was always right there, setting her hooks, making her play.

I would have followed them, but a new scent shot through the water. It took me by surprise and sent flashes
of memory across my mind—like a slide show of flickering light.

Me, huddled in a cave, pressing my palms against my pregnant belly, drumming my fingers against my taut flesh. Ripe with expectations.

My baby, nestled against me in a dark cave, as my skin tightened with dehydration, and I whispered my dreams in his ear, telling him that it would all be fine. That we would be reunited soon.

Me, crying. Begging Maris for more time. Would he forget me? Would he remember my face? Would he know the look in my eyes that said I loved him?

Maris, telling me to shut up. That I wasn’t the first person to give up a child. A year was nothing. And
so what
if he forgot me? It would be easier if we weren’t tied down by a child.

My baby’s sweet smell in the water? What was he doing out here? My ears were full of sound, ringing. My mind fell numb. I squeezed my eyes tight and searched for Daniel Catron’s scent, but he was absent. I didn’t understand. A prickly flash of goose bumps ran the length of my arms.

Had Adrian fallen in? He was too young to transform. Had Daniel Catron lost his mind? Had he thrown our child overboard? Lily was right. This was my fault for having neglected him.

I tore off in the direction of Adrian’s scent, only barely aware that it was the same path the boat had taken, and then just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

What? Where? I jerked around, left, then right, searching
the water. Fear clutched at my mind and dragged me to a place I didn’t want to go.

Maris hurled herself in my direction. Her thoughts told me she was focused on Adrian, her senses not as keen to him as mine were. She tracked the memory of his scent, not realizing he was gone.

“Mine!”
I warned Maris. How dare she touch him?

Daniel’s voice yelled from the boat, “I see her!” The words were followed by a splash—too big for Adrian.

Maris followed the sound—and so did I. Myself, out of fear. She, with a mind for destruction.

When I located the source, it wasn’t Daniel or Adrian. It was Sophie Hancock in the water. Her golden hair trailed upward as her body sank a few inches below the surface, her arms extended as if waiting for something … or someone.

“Stay away!”
I warned Maris.

Then Daniel’s peppery scent flooded my senses. What was this insanity? His strong arm reached over the side of the boat and plunged deep. I watched with gratitude as he yanked Sophie out of the water.

Maris beat me to the boat, and she rose out of the waves, cracking her tail like a black bullwhip against the aluminum sides. An unfamiliar female voice screamed.

“Stop!”
I cried.
“Maris, leave them alone!”

Maris turned on me, whirling with a black swirl of her tail, blocking my line of vision. She pulled back like a cobra about to strike, her shoulders hunched, her thoughts snarled. She lashed out at me with one arm, fingers aimed at my eyes.

“Pavati!” Daniel cried from the boat before diving into the lake.

“Idiot!”
I cried out to his deaf ears.

Maris turned her attention from me to Daniel, who was floundering ridiculously toward us. Maris wondered what to do with him—her third potential target in less than a minute’s time. Still, she was not one to be too picky.

“I’m doing us both a favor,”
she said to me before ensnaring Daniel in her arms, making an inescapable cage. She pulled him toward the bottom, her voice screeching in his ears.

I cut off her path, swiping at her face with my fingernails, beating her back with every muscle in my body. She twisted and headed north, a silver train of bubbles sweeping behind her.

I chased, and when I caught up to her, pulled her hair, snapping her neck back. Her body buckled, and Daniel broke free. He kicked for the surface, and I heard a boat motor start up. Seconds later, he was climbing back into the boat. His feet kicked at the hull, making a dull thudding sound in the water.

Maris seethed at me, her brow shadowing her eyes. She glared and pulled her lips back over her teeth. Then she came at me, biting down on my shoulder and tearing at my flesh.

I tasted my own blood in the water. We were mere feet below the surface. She wrapped her arm around my neck, her elbow just under my chin, and her tail churned the water until, from the surface, it must have looked like a feeding frenzy.

Maris tightened her choke hold. My vision faded to a
blank canvas. I lost touch with sound. It was as easy as falling asleep, but still my tail twitched. There was a scream from the boat: “Who are they? Do you see Jack with them?”

Another splash and I felt Daniel back in the water. He was a slow learner. What could he hope to achieve? But I had to applaud his courage.

Daniel swam directly at us, fighting hard against Maris’s grasp on my body. He pulled at her arms, prying her hands from around my neck. There was a slashing motion, a flash of a copper-handled dagger, and I opened my eyes to see a line of red corkscrewing away from Maris’s body before dissipating into a pale pink smear in the otherwise clear water.

Maris howled in outrage. She lunged, barely missing Daniel. Merely wounded, she charged and rammed his chest so hard I heard his heart skip, then stop.

“Daniel!”
I cried. I didn’t think twice.

I placed both palms flat on his chest and closed my eyes. An electric jolt shot from my hands, shocking his heart. Daniel’s eyes flew wide, and his body contorted, writhing in pain as the seams of his swim trunks split and his body transformed—blue and gold, with flecks of black.

I
t was like an atomic bomb had been dropped on Bayfield. Joy exploded from the woman’s heart and flooded the water. My own heart leapt from my chest, leading my body, seemingly meters ahead of the rest of me, screaming with both pain and ecstasy, pulling me forward.

Maris’s voice cheered in my head:
“Strike!”

My own thoughts raced forward:
“Yes!”

“Do not hesitate!”

Someone yelled,
“Mine!”

No, mine!
I thought. After all this they were going to steal
my prey for themselves? Were they really that cruel to toy with me like that?

Then another familiar yet somehow unplaceable voice:
“NO!”

The woman was waist deep, deep enough for me to swim to her without getting caught on the sand. My mind was a vacuum; my body worked on instinct. I lunged for the light, my fingers grazing a sodden cotton dress, feeling the softness of her arms, the backward arch of her body as I yanked her off her feet.

Maris was right. It was all too easy. I clutched the bright light to my body, spiraling deeper, reveling in the joy that permeated my skin and filled my mind, hearing Pavati behind me, screaming,
“Stay away!”
as I tore the woman away from the dock and deeper, farther from shore.

Stay away? Stay away from what? Am I doing it wrong after all?
Doubt trickled in, but happiness still seeped from the woman into my mind—like sugar dissolving, a slush, then a syrup, then a nectar—so I must have been doing okay.

But then I felt another body close to me. I was being chased. Pavati wanted to strip me of my catch? What was she doing?

Maris said,
“I’m doing us both a favor.”

I was so confused. I didn’t understand the directions they were shouting at me. I dragged the faceless woman deeper into the lake and would have succeeded in finishing her, but I was rammed from the side with such tremendous force that my arms flung open.

The woman crawled for the surface, coming up under an
aluminum boat anchored fifty yards from the pier. The dull thumping sound of several panicked feet against the bottom of the boat vibrated through the water.

I lunged after the woman before she could be pulled out of the lake, but someone bit my arm and tore me away from her.

I swiped at my attacker’s head, but whoever it was ducked and twisted, and came at me from the other side, shoving a hand under my jaw, pushing my head back. I snapped my teeth as a warning and curled into a ball, twisting under my attacker’s arm and bolting after the woman, who had just cut the surface like a long, sharp knife.

I
t was a nightmare. How could I have been so stupid as to lure my own mother into the lake? Had I lost every single brain cell? But I must have had a few still working because it took me less than a second to realize what was going on. It was as I’d always feared: that without me, Maris would get her hooks in Lily, that nature would take its course, that in the end Lily would be no better than me.

But Lily
was
better.

I could still stop this! I would not let my mother die. And I would not let Lily lose her humanity. I yelled through the water at her,
“NO!”

I couldn’t hear Maris, but I could see Lily’s reaction to something she said. It gave her just a split second of hesitation, and in that bit of broken concentration, I made my move. I bit down on Lily’s arm and jerked my head to the side, pulling her with me. With a gasp of surprise, her arms flew open. I watched to see if my mother would sink. Or was she still alive? She scrambled to the surface, a flurry of bubbles behind her. Thank God.

Now Lily took advantage of
my
distraction and swiped at my head. Her fingers grazed my skull as I turned at the last second and came at her from the other direction, pushing the heel of my hand under her jaw, pushing her head back so she could not attack. She struggled, twisting her neck back and forth, snapping her teeth at me as if possessed by a demon. Her eyes were wild, unseeing. She curled into a ball like an acrobat, twisting under my arm and bolting after my mother. It was too late for my mom to provide any more positive emotion—the water had fallen dark—but did Lily realize that?

Two silent figures cut the water: one black as coal, the other a blue jewel.

Maris tore after my mother. The realization that I couldn’t fight all three of them dropped like a lead weight in my stomach.

“Mine!”
Lily called after the other two.

“Lily, no!”
I called to her.
“Look at me. Stop. Please stop. This isn’t you.”

One of my mother’s shoes had fallen off in the struggle, and her foot hung limp. She was cold. Too cold. Lily caught up to me and seemed to be taking instructions from her new family. She circled her fingers around my neck as if to
strangle me, with no apparent recognition. She was strong, but I was stronger. I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her body to mine, and raced her away from the scene.

Behind me I heard one shoe-clad foot and one bare one kicking against the outside of an aluminum boat. Someone had pulled my mother to safety! Now if they only had the good sense to get her back to shore.

Lily squeezed my skull between her palms, pushing my face away from hers.

“Lily, look at me. Open your eyes,”
I begged.

A scream erupted from her, the likes of which I’d never heard before. Wild and primal and desperate and despairing. I covered her mouth with mine, letting her scream fill every recess of my body, absorbing her pain into my mind, my bones, my muscles. The dark descent of her heart was excruciating to bear. I hardly recognized her as Lily. Her lips were cold and steely against mine; her nails dug into my shoulders. Though she tried, I wouldn’t let her wrench herself away from the kiss. If that was what this was. I would gladly absorb this misery from her because the thought of her killing my mother—anyone, really—was so much worse.