A Vial of Life

“Shayla,” I called, stalling the short witch as she was about to vanish to the beach with a group of vampires. “Please stay with River’s mother and tend to her injury.”

Shayla nodded and, leaving the group of vampires, approached Nadia, who was still perched awkwardly on the back of the she-wolf.

“You stay with your mom, River,” Sofia said, eyeing the girl. “And here…” She reached around her shoulders and removed her shawl before handing it to River. “You’re freezing, put this on.”

“Thank you.” River looked at her gratefully.

I turned to Ibrahim, who was still standing beside me, waiting for my order. Except for Xavier, the rest of the room had emptied by now, witches having transported everyone to the beach. Now it was time for us to leave.

Vanishing from the Great Dome and arriving at the beach, I was shocked at the sheer number of merfolk arriving at the beach. There must have been over a hundred. And surprisingly, they didn’t stop at the border of the ocean. On reaching it, they dug their hands into the sand and began crawling out of the water, their long, heavy tails trailing behind them like snakes. I was amazed by the speed at which they were able to travel, almost as though they were amphibians. I didn’t know how long they could survive out of water, and strangely—although many of them had started wheezing—they maintained their pace. It appeared that they were heading for the woods that lined the beach.

No. We can’t have an infestation of these monsters. I’d seen how devilish these creatures were—my wife had firsthand experience during our quest to vanquish the black witches.

“Oh, God. Look!” Sofia clutched my arm and pointed further along the shore. I turned just in time to catch sight of a cluster of tails disappearing into the woods. All our witches were tied up with tackling the mermaids squirming along the sand in droves.

“They must not enter the island!” I bellowed. I lunged forward with Xavier and Sofia after the merfolk, who seemed to think that they’d escaped anyone’s notice, even as I continued to rack my brain as to how these merfolk could have gotten here. First of all, why were they even in this area? How had they discovered The Shade, and how on earth had they managed to get inside the boundary?

I could only guess that somehow, the two merfolk already inhabiting our water had sent some kind of subaqueous signal and they’d come swarming in. And perhaps the pair Ibrahim had failed to catch were also the ones responsible for leading them in through the boundary.

Although the merfolk were fast, we were of course much faster, and they made a lot of noise as they scrambled through the undergrowth. We quickly caught up with them, grabbing hold of the ends of their tails—still slimy even after crawling across land.

They rolled onto their backs to face us, flashing their fangs and screeching. They lashed out, trying to maim us. My grip tightened around the tail of the merman I was tackling. Seeing that this guy wasn’t going to play ball, I distanced myself from Sofia and Xavier and began hurling the merman round and round, picking up speed until he lifted off the ground. Then I knocked his head against a tree trunk.

That did the job. There was a dull thud as his head made contact with the wood. He fell limp instantly. I could see that he wasn’t badly injured—there was no blood spilling from his head. I’d only wanted to knock him out.

Xavier followed my lead, tackling his merman in a similar way, while Sofia fought with a mermaid. Both of them knocked the creatures’ heads against trees, rendering them unconscious.

We lined up the merfolk together in a row before scanning the surrounding area to see if any had managed to escape our notice. Satisfied that these were the only ones who had managed to take this particular detour around our guard of witches and vampires, we picked up the stunned merfolk and carried them over our shoulders back to the beach.

Rows of captured merfolk covered the beach. Some were unconscious, some bound, while some appeared so still and injured I was certain they’d been killed.

“Did any others manage to enter the island?” My voice boomed across the beach.

“Don’t think so!” came several shouts, between the screeches of the last of the merpeople putting up a fight.

Soon, all the merfolk were piled up together in the center of the beach. I cast my eyes out toward the ocean, unable to spot any more in the waves, although that certainly did not mean that there weren’t more. It was more than likely that the merfolk we had lined up on the sand were only those who’d crawled out of the ocean before we arrived. Others could have just retreated into the depths.

“What do you suggest we do now?” Ibrahim called, brushing sweat away from his brow with the back of his hand.

I chewed on my lower lip, my eyes traveling over the long line of merfolk. From the looks of it, most had been stunned, but apparently in some cases where they had been caught by impatient vampires, they had been maimed and killed.

What now? I asked myself Ibrahim’s question. What are we going to do with all these fish? The logical step would be to transport them outside the boundary, far away from our island, and drop them into the depths of the ocean. Then the problem of those merfolk who might still be lurking in our waters would remain. Ibrahim had already stated how difficult it was to catch them—and he’d only been talking about two merfolk. Here, we could be talking about a huge swarm of them. We didn’t know. And it wasn’t like we could send the dragons after them either, being protected by all this water…