Sure enough, after a long pause, Officer Miller said, “You know what to do, chief.”
Reeves rubbed a hand over his forehead. The siren was starting to make his head ache.
“Sir, Perseus isn’t ready yet.”
“She might not be pretty, but she’s ready for duty.”
The serpent continued to ransack the harbour. The sea demon’s plan evidently involved destroying every man-made structure along the shoreline. Bullets continued to ricochet off the creature’s armour.
“Sir, I think our priority should be to go straight for this merman. He’s got a black crown. I think he’s their king.”
“All the more reason! This is an act of war, Reeves. They’ve broken our treaty.”
“Hehas broken our treaty.”
“Look, California has gotten four distress calls in the last three days from ships being attacked by mermaids. This is no coincidence.”
Reeves hurried to his truck and slid into the driver’s seat, the sirens muffled only slightly as he slammed the door. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself not to argue.
Memories flashed through his mind as though thrown into the path of a lighthouse, blazing painfully for an instant and fading just as fast. Caramel skin and dark hair. Brilliant brown eyes and a warm smile that left him feeling inexplicably safe.
He had never told anyone about her. Nights when he could not sleep found him wondering if she had even been real.
But he had survived that day because of her.
Miller was breathing hard on the other end of the phone. “I’m contacting the Secretary of State. Operation Perseus is launching as soon as we get the go-ahead. As far as I’m concerned, this is an act of war.”
In the intersection, the police backed away, cast into the shadow of the advancing serpent. Reeves started the truck and threw it into reverse.
An act of war, yes. But on whose orders? Were all merpeople to blame, or this one demon?
If everything he’d ever been told about them was true, Reeves would have drowned during that storm. The icy sea had nearly swallowed him whole. He remembered the panic mounting as he realised, strong swimmer though he was, he could not fight the waves and get to the life buoy cast out by his yelling shipmates. When the veil of rain blocked his view of the ship, that should have been the end.
What that mermaid had done was not an act of war.
“Yes, sir,” he said hollowly.
He couldn’t prove she had been real. He couldn’t prove she’d pulled him to the buoy and placed it over his head. The team had not seen it.
But he didn’t think she’d been a hallucination. He should have drowned that day.
He knew, of course, that mermaids had a predatory drive and an allure that scientists tried to study on a chemical level. He’d heard about the experiments. He had always wondered if the mermaid’s sweetness was a product of that allure.
Either way, he owed her his life.
He shook his head, forbidding himself to go there.
Tomorrow, he would gear up with the rest of his SEAL Team several months ahead of schedule. He would push aside that memory and do what he had been training for. With his team at his back, he would retaliate against this act of terrorism for the sake of his country.
But he would not ignore his intuition. He had spent years learning to trust that feeling. And now, more strongly than ever, it was telling him to hunt down that merman on the rock out there, and kill him.
CHAPTER FOUR - Lysi
Deiopea’s Promise
The floor dropped away and blackness took its place. Countless fish rose from beyond the twilight layer as the sun disappeared. Some of them glowed, making the world below as speckled as the sky above. Other fish were invisible to the eye. Some had tentacles so long, they stretched beyond my senses.
Meela stuck close to me.
