The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) (19 page)

My army of solitary beings and court mermaids sleeps. Or at least they try. After an hour of twisting and turning on a floor that still smells of greasy pizza and fish, I give up. Everything I see is black. There’s no Kurt. No Nieve. I wonder if they’ve finally figured out our connection too.

Wind whistles through the top of the broken window. Rotating shifts patrol the shoreline, but I know there won’t be any trouble. Not for a few hours at least.

Off in a corner, Marty and Brendan are having a snoring competition. I’m tempted to take a bit of leftover pizza crust and throw it in their wide-open mouths. Amada is in her Naga form in a hammock because she doesn’t know how to sleep in her human body. The merpeople downstairs are still unnerved by her, but no one is saying anything, not after she let the young merboys ride on her back and kept them from crying while their parents prepared for battle.

I decide to go downstairs where every inch of the warehouse has turned into a campsite. Some can sleep better than others. Children cry and mothers shush them. A guard with a trident tattoo leans his head back against the wall. His eyes are shut, but he twists the dagger in his hands over and over.

I start ticking off numbers to have a full count of my army of strays, but it’s pointless. Most of the Thorne Hill Alliance isn’t sleeping here. They have their own homes right here on Coney Island. They will fight beside me to protect it. I think of my parents, out in Long Island where I told them to go until this was all over.

It’s the merpeople I’m scared for. There’s so much riding on me, and I feel the weight of it. Each one of their lives, like a human pyramid stacked on my shoulders. I can’t let them fall.

The girls have gotten creative and turned the tables into bed. They give canvas and rope to the merpeople for pillows. Layla shows a mother how to make a sling for her baby. It cries out for water so she fills a wash bucket and it quiets down. No one is allowed to go into the water.

Not until I give my signal.

“You need sleep,” Frederik says beside me.

I jump. “Did I mention I hate it when you do that?”

He smirks. “Can’t help it.”

“Do you walk on air or something?”

“Or something.”

If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be sitting with a vampire, in the dark, getting ready for the biggest battle of my life, I would have laughed. I’m still laughing.

“How can they sleep?” I say, thinking of Marty and my cousin spread out in the office like we’re at summer camp.

Frederik shrugs. “Sometimes the body wins over the mind.”

My body and my mind are both warring against me.

“Are you going to ask me to rethink my plan?” I ask him.

He shakes his head and tucks a black strand behind his ear. He leans forward on the railing, fingers touching in that conspiratorial way of his. “No.”

It would be weird to confess that I want his approval. He’s ancient compared to me. All of them are. They’ve all had their share of wars, but here they are, backing me up.

“In fact,” Frederik says, “it’s smart.”

“But—?” It sounds like there’s a “but” at the end of that compliment.

“But—” He hovers over what he wants to say. My heart tightens like a fist. I feel like I’m getting dumped or something. “I wonder if you’ve given more thought to what you will do when it comes to Kurt.”

“I’ve been sort of busy,” I lie. Kurt is in the back of my head, at the front of my head. He’s there when I hold the Scepter of the Earth because the ancient weapon is incomplete, and Kurt and Nieve hold the other pieces. Kurt is there when I look at Thalia because he’s her brother. He’s there when I look at myself, because we, yeah, okay, Layla pointed out we have the same nose and the same stubborn frown when things don’t go our way. He’s there when he’s not there because I was counting on him and he’s missing.

“You should rest,” Frederik tells me.

“My blood is pumping like crazy,” I say, “not that I should confess that to a vamp. You should go get some sleep.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“You’re already dead.”

“The dust kind of dead.” He looks behind me and smirks. “Though I don’t suppose you’ve got sleep on your mind, either.”

And just as quickly as he appeared, he’s gone. I see what he was looking at before he vanished. Layla. She cut her sweatpants into shorts. The hoodie she’s wearing swallows her up, covering her so that all I can focus on are her sun-kissed legs. Her hair is curled from the humidity, framing her cheekbones in a way that makes my gut fall like it’s at the peak of a roller coaster.

“You’d be terrible at sneak attacks,” I say.

“Good thing I’m not trying to be sneaky.” She sits beside me and my body heats up instantly. “We almost maxed out all the guest rooms. Marty’s going to have a hell of a time laundering the sheets.”

“I’m going to try to sleep standing up.”

She takes my hand. “I think there’s still room upstairs.”

I let her tug on my fingers, and without even thinking, I follow her up the steps and into an empty guest room. It’s all black and red. There’s an arched window with a ledge cluttered with old books. I sit on the bed beside her.

Now that it’s just the two of us, I let my body deflate. She rubs my shoulder, and some of that pressure eases off.

“That’s amazing.”

“Jesus, Tristan. You’re like overcooked steak.”

“Thanks? I’m a little tense, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

She squeezes extra hard and I pull back. There’s this moment where I want to reach out and grab her. I want to hold her in my arms and tell her everything I feel about her. In the dim light of the room, we reach for each other at the same time. My knee is shaking and she puts a hand over it. She touches my chest, tracing her finger on my new tattoo.

“I’m kidnapped for a few hours, and you chop off your hair and get tatted up.” She edges closer to me, her warm breath right at my ear. “Any piercings while you were at it?”

I answer with a crooked smile and a wink. She doesn’t believe that I’d pierce anything. I have to get belted onto the table when the team does the yearly blood drive. But still, she lets her hand wander from my chest. I hold her eyes, daring her, as she keeps exploring down. My heart is stuck in my throat. When she gets to my stomach, I grab her hand.

It is the most painful thing I’ve ever done to myself. “Wait.”

“Wait?”

“I have to say something.”

She sits back and listens.

“Tomorrow,” I say, “when this all happens, I want you to promise me, and I mean seriously promise me, that you’re going to stay somewhere safe. I can’t tell you what to do, because you’re you, and you don’t listen, even when I’m trying to protect you.”

“Not helping.”

“I don’t care. If something happened to you, I’d—It wouldn’t be good for me.”

She leans forward, resting her head on my chest. “What about me? I could say the same to you and it’d be like talking to the wind.”

“It’s different, Layla. I chose this.”

She presses her hand on my face, leading me down so we’re less than an inch apart. “So did I.”

“It’s in my blood. It calls to me.”

She stands up. The light of the street and the fog fill the room with a strange glow, like we’re stuck in an old movie. She takes off her sweater. Her skin is hot to the touch. Her tank top is ripped and has a black stain I’d rather not think about. She bats those thick, black lashes and I forget why we’re here and not tangled back at home on a couch. Or on the beach.

“Don’t ask me to go home,” she whispers.

I smile, pulling on her hands. She sits on me, one knee on either side of me. I want to jump out of my skin, but it’s best if I don’t move. “There’s no telling you what to do.”

“Only took you sixteen years to figure it out.”

She traces the lines of my face, like outlining where my hair used to be.

“You don’t like it.” I keep my hands pressed firmly on her lower back. “Layla—”

But she doesn’t want me to talk. So she kisses me. It’s so soft that I open my eyes to make sure it really happened. It’s not enough. Not when either of us could be gone in a few hours. No, I don’t want to think like that. I just want to feel her lips on mine. Again. Again. Again. She moves her face to the side and kisses my jaw, my neck. I lean in against her. Her breath hitches when I pull her closer because she’s still too far away. I kiss her cheek and then stop because her face is wet.

“That bad, eh?” I try to joke, but I’m nervous. I lean back on the bed and keep my hands at my sides.

She shakes her head, wipes the tears from her eyes, then presses her wet fingers on my face. “I’m trying to not be mad at you.”

“What did I do now?” I bark out, laughing, and she puts a hand over my mouth. That pulls me out of our bedroom dream and back to reality. A vampire’s home. A storm. A battle.

“You waited too long.” She presses her hands on my chest.

“I know.” I brush her hair back with my hand and hold her face so she won’t look away when I talk. “When I was in the Vale of Tears, I thought about where you were. That somehow I’d come out of that world and I’d have missed it. That she would have won. That I’d never see you again—”

She takes my hands down and holds them. “I’m not going anywhere, Tristan. Not unless you do something stupid.”

“I’m trying to have a moment here.”

She smiles the kind of smile that makes me forget I’m fighting a war.

“We aren’t ‘moment’ kind of people.”

I kiss her wet, salty cheeks one at a time and she jerks back. “Don’t kiss my eyes. My dad says it’s bad luck.”

“Your dad also says I’m bad luck.”

“No, he says you’re bad news.”

“But you’re still here.” My insides are moving, like the first time I shifted into my tail. Like I’m not done becoming whoever I’m supposed to be. “We’re only just starting and I’m not ready for it to be done.”

“Listen to me.” Her hand cups the back of my neck. “I will
never
be done with you.”

And then she kisses me again. I hold her tight against me because I’m afraid if I let her go, she’ll be gone for good. I pull her tank top over her head, kissing the dip of her clavicle. Outside the dark is getting darker, but I don’t need light to find her mouth. I realize I’ve never been this close to Layla before. I’ve thought about it, alone in my bed when the possibility of her feeling the same way was not even an option. I’ve been with girls because I was bored. Because I wanted to feel this. Because I didn’t know how different it could be when I totally completely loved the other person.

She stops for a moment, guiding me with her hands.

I want to shout it out at the top of my lungs. I’m dizzy and giddy. We kiss while we smile and it’s clumsy, and we laugh and I know I love this girl. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life.

When I sleep, I see her—the nautilus maid. She’s weak. Her pale pink skin has a cold tinge to it. The white, shimmering stone of the Toliss chamber is her prison. Two bodies lay limp beside her, and even though I can’t look at their faces, I know they’re dead.

The nautilus maid snaps to attention, like she heard a noise, her eyes darting right at me.

She says my name.

•••

“Tristan!” Someone is shaking me.

I sit up fast and reach for my dagger. I pat the empty mattress, before I realize my harness is on the windowsill.

“Get up!” Thalia’s voice becomes familiar again.

I don’t remember the last time I slept so well. Despite the crick in my neck, that is. Then a knot tightens in my chest. When we fell asleep, Layla was in my arms. Now she’s gone.

“What’s happened?”

“There are people,” Thalia says. “On the beach.”

Layla walks back into the room. She’s changed into her lifeguard two-piece. Her hair is tied back into a long braided rope. A sword draped around her hips. Wait a minute, how long has she been awake?

I rub off the layer of crud that keeps my eyelids shut. “I thought the city was evacuated.”

I sling my harness back on and buckle it on my chest.

“I believe it’s a mermaid,” Thalia says. “She’s calling them out to sea. They’re sleepwalking, entranced by the call.”

I start to follow them out, but Layla stops me at the door. She smirks. “You may want to cover up first.”

She turns around and walks down the steps with Thalia, laughing.

When I look down, I’m naked.

“Really funny!” I yell after them.

I close my eyes and wait for the quick burn that comes with raising my scales. My skin is numb where my scales cover my skin, and I resist the urge to scratch everywhere. It’s like my entire body is thirsty for water.

When I’m decent, I run downstairs. My small army is pooling out onto the street. It takes me a moment to realize what’s wrong. It has nothing to do with the drizzle or the monster rain clouds that cover every inch of blue sky. It has everything to do with the dark circle trying to cover up the sun.

“It looks like a black and white cookie,” Marty says.

“Except you can’t eat it,” I counter, taking Layla’s hand in mine.

The vampires step out of the house slowly, reaching out with their pale hands. They don’t burn and that gives them the courage to walk out. Even though the day is dark and gray, they squint at the hiding sun.

Frederik is the last one to walk out. Rachel is beside him. He catches my eye, and for the first time since I’ve met him, I see a look of wonder on his face. It’s like even though he doesn’t want to admit it, this is the thing he’s been longing for.

It only lasts for a few minutes, his face tilting up to the sliver of sun that doesn’t burn him. He holds out his palms, like he’s receiving a blessing. But it’s short lived.

We all turn to the water where someone screams. It’s worse than I thought.

Beneath the crashing waves that lap their way up toward the boardwalk, dozens of men tumble out. They walk slowly and stagger, as if their hands are being pulled by invisible strings. One of them walks past me, and his face is both strange and familiar. Then it hits me how long I haven’t been home. How my best friends are almost strangers to me.

His eyes are dilated and staring, his mouth open. I grab him by his wiry arms. “Bertie!”

He pulls against me, mumbling and incoherent.

“
Bertie, wake up!
” I shout.

When did he get so strong? He shoves me off him and joins the horde of men making their way to the beach.

I recognize them all—the old Dominican man from the bodega and Jimmy from the Wreck.

“
Coach!
” Layla screams. She runs and jumps on his back. He flips her over, and she falls hard on the boardwalk.

“Don’t let them get in the water,” Frederik yells, “or they’ll drown!”

But the problem is that they’re possessed. Their own lives don’t matter because they’re not in there.

Then I swallow hard. “I’m sorry, bro.”

I pull back and punch Bertie right in the face. His head slacks and he crumples to the ground. I hold two fingers in front of his nostrils. His breathing is fine, so I leave him and run out on the beach where the Alliance is trying to hold back the humans.

Layla is screaming, holding back someone’s hand. Tears run down her face. I’ve never seen her so scared, not even when she had a knife at her throat. I run to her and help her hold her father back.

“Don’t hurt him, Tristan. Please don’t hurt him,” she cries. But I know that it’s the only way to stop him from drowning.

“Turn around,” I say, even though I know that she won’t. I look into Mr. Santos’s hazel eyes that have the same fierceness as his daughter’s. His hair is whiter than I remember, but the mustache is still black. He calls out for Layla, tells her he’s coming to find her. Before I can do anything, he takes a swing at me. It takes me by surprise, and he grazes my ear with the ring on his left hand. Then he keeps walking onto the beach, calling for his daughter.

“
Dad!
” Layla yells. “I’m here. I’m here.”

We jump on him. He flips over, hands flailing in the air, sand going into his mouth. His eyes are glazed over, bewitched.

All around me, the men of the city trek onto the sand because the Alliance can’t reach them in time, and they walk straight into the water where their screams get muffled beneath the waves.

And then the wind shifts. A second voice—strong but soothing. It’s the voice that takes me back to being a kid. The utterly impossible memory of being a baby and swimming with a fishtail.

Mr. Santos stops struggling. His arms fall to his sides and he doesn’t move.

“Dad!” Layla grabs him by his shirt and shakes him. When she makes a whimpering sound, it crushes me. “Wake up.”

I want to console her, but another familiar man is headed our way.

“Dad?” I say.

He walks toward me, eyes totally dazed. He falls to his knees and then on his face. I leave Layla and her dad and run to him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I yell, turning him over and brushing the sand off his face. His glasses are broken and I toss them to the side. How can I be surprised? I should’ve known that they’d never leave, not knowing that I was right here.

When I look up, my mother is standing on the boardwalk. Her red mane is a beacon. She holds out her arms and the wind picks up around her, listening to her voice as she calls the men back to dry land.

All of the men that fell to the ground get back up again, the bewitched glossiness returning to their eyes. Only this time, they listen to my mother’s voice, powerful and true, as if it’s telling them their wishes have already been fulfilled, that it’s okay to go home.

Layla starts to follow her dad, but the first voice, the one full of anger and longing, picks up again.

“She’s too powerful.” Thalia is at my side again. “I don’t think Lady Maia can hold them back much longer.”

My mother hasn’t been a mermaid for a long time, and I can see her struggling to sing, to bring the men back to safety. She’s like the sun trying to shine when the moon is pushing for darkness, like the sky right above us.

“Who?” But I don’t even have to ask. Out in the gray sea is a swirl of water. She holds her arms out and lifts her face to the eclipse.

Gwenivere sings.

Her voice is mingled into the wind that rushes in and out of the shore like a riptide, like the hands of the sea desperately grabbing the men. I felt those hands the first time the wave crashed over Coney Island and I got carried out to sea.

Too many of the men are waist deep in water. The waves swallow them, and when they’re washed out far enough, the waiting clawed hands of Nieve’s merrows snatch them up and take them back home.

I dive into the waves, flicking my tail as fast as I can until I reach Gwen. She doesn’t see me coming at first. Then she loses concentration and her song stops. She teeters on the spiral of water that serves as her tower. I knock her off it and she splashes down. I grab her around the waist and hold her arms down.

“Stop it!” I say. “I know you don’t want to do this. I know you’re tired of this.”

She splashes hard, but I hold on tighter. She screams and the beautiful song she was singing before is a terrible shriek.

“How can you know what I want?”

“Because I saw your face, Gwen. I saw your face when Archer wanted to hurt Layla. You saved her. I know you did.” I brush her white-blond hair out of her eyes. She stops struggling against me.

“You can help me stop her,” I say. “If you don’t, all of the lives she takes will be on your hands.”

She grits her teeth and screams once again. We float out in the water, and I wait for her to make the right choice.

“If I do, my brother and sisters—their lives will be on my hands as well.”

“Gwen, please,” I say, holding her by her shoulders.

She looks back to where yellow eyes lie waiting behind us. There are a few more splashes, and I know if I turn around, I’ll see more men drowning.

I keep thinking that if I try hard enough, I’ll get her to be the same girl who sailed alongside me, fought alongside me. I have to remind myself that girl never existed. That Gwen was playing me, and I fell right into her stormy gray eyes. I see her make up her mind, a shark ready to strike. She places her hands on my chest and snarls, “You smell like her.”

I can feel my heart stop and start as a shock of current hits my chest. From Gwen. I shake as she leaves me in the water. I gasp for air. Try to swim back to the shore, but my muscles are as strong as loose rubber bands.

I push against the weakness and start to swim after her, but someone catches my attention on the shore. Layla’s on the sand again, Thalia holding her back from getting into the surf. She’s chasing after a guy our age.

Oh fuck.

I put my energy into swimming with the waves toward the shore. The waves take me in, crashing over his head. Angelo, in his stained white underwear.

I loop my arms around his chest and drag him out. He takes a swing at me, but the next wave flips us both over. “Hey, man. It’s me. Wake up, wake up.”

I grab on to him and he makes it difficult by flailing around. When I get him on land, I smack him across the face. “Remember when we took the Triborough championship last year? How we competed over girls but never let it get in our way? How you beat up a kid from our rival high school for pissing in the pool while I was swimming?”

Something happens to him. Without Gwen, my mom’s song is stronger. His eyes are bright again, like he’s coming out of a long sleep. “Tristan?”

“Come on.” I pull him toward shore. “We have to get out of the water!”

He hangs on to me, trying to take stock of what’s happening around him. But all he can say is, “Bro, you have a fucking tail!”

I want to laugh, but I can taste blood in the water. When we’re near the shore, I let my fins dissolve and go back into a half-shift.

“You’re sleepwalking.”

Layla runs to him and grabs him in a tight hug. “Oh, thank God.”

“What’s happening?” Angelo yells.

“Shark attacks,” Layla and I say at the same time.

“Are you on duty? I thought the beach was evacuated. Where are my clothes?” He goes on with questions we don’t answer until we get to the boardwalk.

The Alliance and the landlocked are making sure the human men make their way up onto the boardwalk and head home.

“Tristan,” Angelo says. He grabs my wrist. His brown eyes are wide, and fat beads of water cling to his eyelashes. “I’m not stupid. You’re strapped on like fucking
Clash
of
the
Titans
minus that fly Pegasus. Don’t lie to me. I know what I saw. I could hear a voice calling out to me, and all I wanted to do was jump into the water. It was that girl—that Gwen girl. I know she’s not your cousin. Those things that got Ryan. Don’t lie to me. What the fuck’s going on?”

“More than I could tell you and not sound crazy,” I tell him.

Because I don’t deny him, he relaxes. I can see him fill in the blanks for himself. Then he reaches for the dagger on my chest all, “Cool, can I play with it?”

I smack his hand away. “No!”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll get my own.”

“Look, something bad is going down tonight. Whatever you do, don’t go in the water.”

He looks from me to Layla, to the mix of people on the boardwalk. “I want to help.”

“You can help me by making sure people don’t go into sea. Not tonight. Tell your brother—he’s a cop. Tell him that you heard about some crazy-ass party that’s going down in the middle of the hurricane. Whatever you do, you can’t mention me.”

“Hurricane party. Block off beach access. Don’t tell him about your sparkly tail. I’m on it.” He holds out his hand and I take it. Shake, pound, slap, slap—our Thorne Hill Knights handshake.

I turn to Layla. “Where are our dads?”

“Dazed and sleeping. Your mom and I put them in the backseat of her car.”

I grab her face and kiss her mouth, then her forehead. I remember that was the last thing I did the last time, when the wave was coming in and I ran right in. Now I’m doing it again.