It took both of us to drag her away, Therin pulling at her waist, me peeling her fingers from where they clenched over Nalu’s hand.
Her screams cut through my skull as sharply as the spears that fell around us. Another found its mark, and it pierced through Lelas’s forearm as she continued to reach for Nalu. Still she struggled against us.
Dad’s calm cut through the hell in my brain.“You’re part demon for a reason, Brett. Use it.”
As if it had been waiting for permission, fire poured forth, this time using the same conduit as the water. With one crushing hand, I held onto my best friend, and with the other, I let the fire eat up everything behind us.
Sensations of agony joined Lelas’s screams in my skull as my fire tore through the kelp forest, the meadow, and began to engulf the Volitans. Craning my head around to follow the path of my outstretched hand, my gaze only paused over Nalu’s body being devoured by the flame. It was Wrell that I watched be consumed by the very thing that had saved his life just a few short months ago. I watched until Therin pulled at my arm hard enough to bring my attention to Lelas, who was still trying to claw her way back to Nalu.
Twenty-Five
BRETT WRIGHT
During theblur of the next few hours, we only paused long enough to pull out the spear that was buried in Lelas’s right forearm and to take care of her wounds. Though it had to hurt, she didn’t even grunt as Therin held her arm steady and I yanked out the stone spike. Not even when I sealed the puncture wound on either side of her arm with the fire of one of my fingers.
A long cut sliced down her clavicle and over her heart, barely missing her breast. I assumed it was from the spear the first Volitan I’d hit with my water had been wielding. Though it bled profusely, it didn’t seem to be life threatening—more a surface wound than anything. Therin and I decided to let it be, that sealing it with my fire would do more damage than good and drastically scar her body.
She’d quit fighting us after we’d exited the kelp forest, but what was left was worse than her fury. Her face was slack, her eyes dilated and unfocused. She neither spoke nor moved. Therin and I held her under her arms and carried her with us while we swam. Within a couple of hours, her tail began to move as if on automatic pilot, but slow enough that we continued to assist. From the way she looked, I wasn’t convinced my friend would ever truly return to her body. She was buried somewhere deep inside, or maybe she’d left to travel to wherever it was Nalu’s soul had gone.
The only other wound I attended to was the puncture in Therin’s tail. The spear had sliced through the lower portion, right above his fins. Luckily, it was lateral enough that the damage it seemed to have done was cosmetic. The only lasting harm would be that no golden scales would cover the entrance or exit wounds I’d cauterized closed.
While Therin wasn’t lost to a world of shock, he didn’t speak either. At least not any more than to advise against using my fire on Lelas’s chest wound. He didn’t even protest when I toasted one of the sharks that got too close. They’d been drawn by our blood but left us alone after the death of their fellow, and probably smelling the blood from the kelp forest—if I hadn’t burned it all away—they chose that option for an easier feast.
I was functioning better than I thought I should. I felt like I ought to be curled into a ball on the sand, unable to move. Maybe I still would be, maybe it would all come crashing down at once. As we swam through the dark ocean, back the way we’d come, no true thoughts formed, only an incessant replay of the night’s events.
If I’d used my fire when the Volitan rushed at Wrell with his spear, maybe that would have changed things. But every time I played that option, instead of seeing Lelas hit by the warrior’s spear as he shot back into the kelp, she was engulfed in flames right along with him.
I should have stood in front of the other four. Between my fire and my water, they all would have been safe, or at least had a chance to get away. Though the queen would never have spoken to us then. But she hadn’t, had she?
That was the part my brain refused to accept, and as a result, the realization hit me anew every time. The queen had told us nothing. We’d learned nothing from the Volitan that would be of any use in locating the vampires that were capturing mers. We hadn’t even found out if the Volitans had been experiencing the same thing.
All of it was for nothing.
Nalu, dead. For no other reason than he was there. That he’d been mated to Lelas. If only I’d encouraged her to stay with him and the Scarus tribe, he’d still be alive, and Lelas would be fine now. She’d have her mate and not have to face all she was going to have to deal with when she returned to her body. If she ever did.
But, no. I’d been too selfish. I wanted her with me. Wanted her with the Chromis. Well, I got my wish. She was still with me.
Seeing the agony on Lelas’s face as she’d dragged herself across the ocean floor toward Nalu’s dead form, struggling against her force as she’d fought Therin and me as we pulled her away from him, feeling the absence of her spirit as we carried her over the miles—it all reminded me of how I’d felt when Sonia was killed.
As much as I loved Sonia, more than anyone else I’d ever known, somehow I knew this was worse. Whatever magic had happened between Lelas and Nalu that mated them together was beyond any other connection I’d seen in my life. I couldn’t see how Lelas would ever get through it, let alone be the same mermaid I’d grown to love so intensely. She wouldn’t be, would she? A person doesn’t come back from something like that unscathed. If Lelas returned, she wouldn’t be the same girl she’d been before.
All for nothing.
Wrell.
All for nothing.
Each time his visage shot through my mind, Syleen’s voice during the Great Hunt accompanied it.
“We are not in charge of our life. It is the choice of Moheetla who retains their immortality. Let him pass in honor.”
If only I’d let him die from the shark wound. What had I bought him by saving him? A few short weeks of life? A couple of months?
Even as I thought it, I knew it was what Wrell would have wanted. He would have chosen to go on this mission, try to save his adoptive tribe. He would do everything he could to save his race.
Along with Syleen’s words came the vision Wrell had shown me after I’d saved him. His beautiful form in front of me. His body bleeding. Mine healthy and whole. Some nameless threat shadowing over us. His pledge to give his life for me in payment for saving him. It wasn’t supposed to be prophetic, simply a promise.
But it had been prophetic. He had bled in front of me while I remained unharmed. Sacrificing his life for the immortal demon.
