In the Veins of the Drowning(55)

I turned in his arms and gazed up with a smile. We were heat and racing hearts. My senses tangled into an impenetrable mass—every one of them filled with him. I let my head fall back against his shoulder. “I did it.”

His hand left my wrist, moved to my hip, and he looked down at me with wonderment. It struck me that my fears, my unease, felt as far from me as they ever had.

He lowered his nose to touch the end of mine. “You did.”

Slowly, I rose up onto my toes. I could just feel the heat of his lips near my own when a curdling scream shredded the night’s quiet.

We jolted, jerked free of each other’s hold. The wailing sob ceased, only to start again a breath later. Theodore gave me a final look, eyes wide with alarm, before he rushed toward the horses and untied them. Quickly, he helped me into my saddle, took to his own mount, and then raced off toward the line of sea grass and trees that barricaded us from the beach.

“Keep close,” he commanded, before he disappeared through the thicket of tall stalks. He was moving toward the keen, toward the danger, and I couldn’t get my horse to keep up.

“Imogen,” Theodore called, just as my stomach twisted with sickness. Finally, my horse moved into a canter and through the grass. But it wasn’t fast enough. Nausea wrenched my gut.

We were on a long, flat stretch of beach. In the distance, a cluster of little grass-roofed huts sat in a wide circle. Torches dotted the spaces between them, flickering in the wind.

Theodore sped down the wet sand, his horse at a gallop. He was closing in on a huddle of villagers that stood just out of reach of the waves. Their attention clung to something at their center, though I was too far away to make out what.

I drew nearer and shivered as their faces came clear. Every one of them wore the same look of horror. Amid them, a woman—a Siren—lay on her stomach, face toward the water, hand outstretched, screaming. Her low-backed dress was clinging wet, her brown hair plastered to her face. Dark blood gushed from the exposed, muscly root of her right wing. It hung on by only a few threads of sinew. The flesh was shredded, as if it had been gouged with a saw-toothed blade.

Theodore was already off his horse, rushing to the Siren’s side, by the time I pulled on my mare’s reins. I fell to the sand as I dismounted, my knees too weak to hold me up.

“Imogen.” Theodore came back toward me, awash with concern.

“I’m fine. Go.”

He seemed unsure about leaving me before he finally raced to the Siren and knelt. “A nekgya?” he asked as he set his hands into the gore at her back. Inexorable purpose bent his face.

I made it to Theodore’s side just as he took the dagger from his hip. “I have to remove the wing.”

The Siren’s outstretched hand shook. I knelt in front of her, grabbed it and held tight. “He’ll take care of you.”

Theodore was covered to his elbows in slick, red viscera. He held the dagger in a firm grip and set it to the base of her wing. I looked away, into the Siren’s terror-wide eyes. She shook her head and said through quivering lips, “My daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Her hand was damp and shaking. “Where?”

When her wet eyes strayed to the water behind me I understood. “She’s in the water.”

My gaze shot to Theodore just as he dug the blade’s edge deep into her back. Dark, sweat-soaked locks of hair stuck to his forehead. He moved efficiently, even as the Siren’s screams sliced across the beach.

Focus. Try.

I squeezed the Siren’s hand before I let it go. “I’ll get her.”

The sea’s surface was calm as I rose to face it. In the distance, the moonlight illuminated a sandbar that cut the lagoon off from the rest of the sea.

Find the hum in your stomach, I thought to myself as I walked toward the water’s edge. I’d been able to command that little vine; I could command the sea as well.

After all, it was mine.

The water was to my ankles, seeping into my boots, when it shot straight to that chord in my middle. It hummed until it broke into a pulse, and then I was filled with that awful, sludgy power once more. It built up toward my throat, filling me, and then suddenly it was as if I could see the whole of the lagoon in my mind’s eye. I focused further and could feel the roll of the small waves on its surface. I could sense three bodies hanging in its depths.

Only one had a heartbeat.

Teeth clamped, I moved deeper into the water, homing my attention on the faint vibrations of that single beating heart rippling through it, and then, as Theodore had instructed, I commanded the power rolling through me to bring me the girl.

“Imogen.” Theodore’s voice boomed over the Siren’s whimpers. I whipped my head toward him. He looked murderous, hands covered in blood and sweat and sand, face carved with violent fear. His hands rested firmly on the Siren’s back as he worked to stop the bleeding. “Get out of the fucking water, or so help me, I will—”

“No.” My voice was quiet, but clear. “I can help.”

He shook his head, face bending with desperation. “Gods damn it,” he said through his teeth. “Quickly.”

The surface of the water began to ripple and roll. It had obeyed. It sped the girl toward me, but as I waited, the pulse in my chest began to burn like ripped skin. Like something was pulling against it. Fighting me. I gasped at the pain.