I rushed toward them, crushing Lelas in my arms as I reached her.“Are you okay? Please tell me you’re all right. Please be okay!”I was pretty sure I was crying.
Her voice was shaky and quiet, but it was there.“I’m fine. At least I think I am.”I felt her pull against me.“I love you too, Brett, but let me go, please. The whole world is spinning.”
After another moment of holding her too tight, I let go. I turned and found Therin, his eyes wide as he stared at me.“Are you okay, Dad?”
Even in his dazed state, he smiled at the use of such a familiar term.“Yes, Brett, I am fine. I am fine, son. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought you were going to get to Lelas too late. I thought she was going to die, and then both of you were spinning through the water.”
At the mention of Lelas dying, Therin’s gaze traveled behind me. Following his stare, I saw Wrell hovering over the shark’s body, the sand settling around them.
Lelas took off toward him. Therin and I followed.
By the time we reached him, Wrell had speared the hammerhead through the side, and blood seeped from the wound. It had been a mercy killing as much as anything. Both its tail and dorsal fin were broken and twisted at unnatural angles, and one of its fins had been nearly ripped off as the shark crashed into the ocean floor.
“It is not like a shark to attack us for no reason.”Lelas looked down in pity on the dead animal. I couldn’t fathom how she could conjure an ounce of concern for the shark. It was taking all my strength not to plunge my hands into it and burn it until only ashes were left in the water.
Therin nodded his agreement but looked around as if searching for something.“That is true, but the real question is what caused such a current out of nowhere.”
Instantly, I saw a vision of me from behind. I was swimming after Therin, racing toward Lelas and the shark. From my outstretched hands, the water rippled to life and gushed forward, blurring the others from view until they began to spin out of control and out of the path of the current. Just as abruptly, the vision left.
Wrell, Lelas, and Therin were all staring at me. It seemed Wrell had shared his view of the events with all three of us. Lelas gaped at me openmouthed. Wrell looked at me in awe, as if in the presence of a deity.
“Did you know you could do that?”
I focused on Therin.“I’m not even sure what happened.”
He looked from me to the body of the shark and then back again.“You controlled water and saved Lelas. You made the water do what you wanted.”
“I did?”
No one responded. It was obvious I had done it, even if I didn’t know how. Kinda like when I set the vampire on fire.“Maybe it’s some recessive mer trait I didn’t know I’d inherited.”
Therin’s eyes narrowed.“No. As I’ve told you, mers have no power over the ocean. We have no magic of our own.”
“Well, it has to come from my mer blood somehow. There’s no way it could come from my demon side. Finn’s family told me that fire demons and water don’t mix.”
The four of us hovered, dazed, staring at the shark and at each other.
Therin caught my eye again.“It seems they do now”
We left the shark where it was and continued on our way, all of us lost in our own thoughts. By the time we started up once more, the sun was bright in the sky and the water around us was crystal clear.
Lelas and I followed Wrell and Therin, who, while still fast, had adopted a more manageable pace.
After a while, Lelas stretched out her arm and took my hand in hers.“Thank you for saving my life, Brett.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt my throat close up, the ache of nearly losing her bringing me close to tears again.“I can’t lose you.”
She smiled.“You will not.”
After a little more time, she turned to me again.“You really have never done anything like that? You’ve never had power over water before?”
Unbidden, the boy on the beach came to mind. His boiled and blistered skin. The gallons of water he vomited onto the sand after kissing me. His terror-filled screams. It seemed like lifetimes ago.
I shook my head.
Two
