A Vial of Life

“Let go of her!” I hissed at the mermaid. I wasn’t sure whether she could even understand me.

It only seemed to anger the creature. She bared a set of razor-sharp black teeth. Teeth that made my skin crawl. One jab of those into my mother’s throat could easily end her life.

I had no weapons on me, and, being a half-vampire, no claws or natural defenses with which to defend myself. All I had was my speed. Moving forward as fast as I could, I balled my right hand into a fist and threw a punch square into the mermaid’s face.

Part of me expected to miss, but I hit my mark. She loosened her grip on my mother. My mother struggled to keep herself above water as she clutched her throat. She choked on a mouthful of seawater as a wave rolled over her head. I grabbed her by the midriff and began pulling her toward the beach with all the speed I could muster.

Then came a shriek from behind us. The mermaid’s shock had subsided and she was gaining speed on us.

I looked desperately toward the shore, where Jamil was moving toward the Port with my sisters, all three of them shouting for help.

We weren’t going to reach land in time. The mermaid was simply too fast. Who is this mermaid? She didn’t look like the one Ben and I had brought in on the submarine—and besides, that one had been badly injured by Shadow. I would have been surprised if she’d even survived a day after the dog’s attack. Who, then, was she? As far as I was aware, the two merfolk Ben and I had carried through the boundary were the only ones who’d visited these waters. And wasn’t Ibrahim supposed to have gotten rid of the two of them ages ago?

The mermaid caught up with us and once again grabbed hold of my mother. The creature tugged so hard at my mother’s ankle, I feared that trying to hold on might dislocate one of her limbs, and to make matters worse, my mother had a weakness in her lower spine. I could see from her eyes how much pain she was in.

The mermaid sensed my hesitation, and with a huge tug, she managed to pull my mother right out of my grasp. The mermaid’s fierce tail writhed as she jolted away. If I hadn’t leaped forward and grabbed hold of the tip of it, she would have dragged my mother into deep waters without me.

Although I had no claws, I dug my fingers into her scales as hard as I could, even as the mermaid writhed violently and tried to shake me off. It was like wrestling with a slippery anaconda. I knew I didn’t stand a chance for long. My mother’s head had been pushed underwater again, if I didn’t manage to get to her in time—

Splashes thundered behind me. I cast my eyes over my shoulder just in time to see a giant dog bounding toward us in the waves. I thought for a moment that Shadow had come to the rescue, until I realized that this creature was the wrong color. It wasn’t a dog. It was an enormous, shaggy brown wolf.

As my hands slipped from the mermaid’s tail, the wolf reached the creature and, opening its heavy jaws, clamped them around the mermaid’s midriff. She let out a shriek as blood spilled from her insides and stained the water surrounding us. While the werewolf chomped on the mermaid, I leapt toward my mother. I caught her arm and held her tight, hauling her to the surface. She choked and spluttered, coughing out seawater and drawing in rasping breaths. I wrapped an arm around her waist and kicked my legs hard, propelling us both toward the shore.

“Hurry!” the wolf growled behind us.

I turned back to see that the wolf had let go of the mermaid—who now floated motionless in the water—and was dashing toward us. I was confused as to the wolf’s command to hurry, since it seemed that the mermaid was already dead. Then I looked beyond the corpse to see in the distance the ocean swelling. Teal-green tinged the water, a sea of scales shimmering in the moonlight beneath the ocean’s surface. Then over two dozen heads poked out of the waves—each sharing the same fearsome features as the mermaid I’d just tackled.

I let out a gasp and kicked harder. The wolf caught up with us. He—or was it a she?—allowed my mother to climb onto his back and carried her the rest of the way to the beach while I hurried after them.

Reaching land, my mother flopped off the werewolf and lay panting on her back on the sand, wheezing and rubbing her throat. I gazed back out toward the ocean to see the crowd of merfolk racing toward the shore.

I glanced at the werewolf, who also looked confused—as confused as a wolf could look.

Where have these merfolk come from? And how on earth did they all gain entrance to The Shade?

Chapter 9: Derek

Since we returned to The Shade, many people had inquired about our journey, so I called a meeting in the Great Dome. Sofia and I arrived in the council hall before the appointed time so that we would have a few minutes of peace before the bombardment of questions started.

As we entered the room and headed toward the raised platform designed for the king and queen to sit upon, I stopped short. The stately chairs Vivienne had designed for Sofia and me were missing. Our raised seats had been built more like thrones than regular chairs. They were large and heavy, and had been sealed into the floor. I moved closer to see that the chairs had been unceremoniously ripped from the stone.

I exchanged glances with Sofia. Her expression was marred with a frown.

“Who would do this?” she whispered.

Throughout all our time of ruling over the island, nothing like this had happened before. Heck, I didn’t think that a single chair in this room, even the movable ones surrounding the meeting table, had been taken out. Furniture in this room was to be kept as it was—specifically for the purposes of our council.