That knowledge made the decision for me. Though I was aching to use the element of surprise to take on whoever had done this, I couldn’t leave my dad all alone in the middle of the ocean. Not when he was still weak from nearly drowning.
I started swimming as fast as I could, straight up toward the surface. Now that I was free of the manacles, I tried to shift to mermaid so that my tail could propel me faster. But the injuries to my ankles were too severe—my body wouldn’t let me shift. So I focused all my attention, all my power, on swimming as fast as I could, thankful that I didn’t have to stop every thirty feet to adjust to the change in pressure. I might be in a human body, but I was still mermaid and I was built for this kind of rapid surfacing.
I hit the air less than two minutes after I’d started swimming full out. I looked around frantically, even as the combination of air and salt water made my eyes burn. It didn’t take me long to figure out that my dad was nowhere in sight and that the shore was much farther away than I had anticipated.
I remembered the explosion blowing me sideways when I’d let all that energy loose, but I hadn’t realized just how far it had pushed me. Ignoring the pain in my ankles and my hands, I struck out toward shore. But I couldn’t go as fast as I would have liked, not when I was screaming for my father every few yards that I covered.
Please let him be okay. Please don’t let anything have happened to him. Let him have gone back to shore. Let him be safe.
The words ran through my head like a mantra as I pleaded with the universe, with God, with the ocean itself, to spare my father’s life. I’d already caused my mother’s death. If it turned out I’d done the same to my dad, I would be finished. Done. Broken.
As I swam, I scanned the shore, desperate for a glimpse of my father. For some little glimmer of hope that told me he was okay. But there was nothing, the beach completely deserted beneath the glow of the lamps that lined the border where street met sand.
The storm was growing closer—I could all but taste it in the air around me. Though the thunder and lightning hadn’t started, the wind had definitely picked up. It was making the waves stronger, choppier, and I had to fight harder than ever to make progress against the simmering sea.
I kept going, kept swimming, kept calling out for my dad. I was fighting the waves and the wind and what felt like Mother Nature herself, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did but finding my father. Making sure he was safe. That he felt the same way about me, I was certain, and it terrified me. Kept me going when any other time I might have just dived deep, where the surface conditions wouldn’t have such a strong effect on the water.
I was hysterical as I approached the shore, tears pouring down my face while sobs racked my body. I had done this. With my screwed-up life and the enemies that just wouldn’t let me go, I had led us to this. I had led him to this.
I brushed the tears out of my eyes, tried to see through my swollen lids. I scanned the beach, once, twice, and after I was certain he wasn’t there, I turned back toward the roiling, unforgiving ocean and prepared to dive deep. I wasn’t leaving until I’d found my father. I couldn’t, no matter how many miles of ocean I had to search.
But as I turned, bright purple lights to the left of me caught my eye. I turned toward them, saw that they were in lines, in the shape of a board. My surfboard! It was there, and something, someone, was draped over it.
I took off toward the board, hoping, praying, that I was also heading straight for my father. As I got closer, I started to scream his name again, praying that he would answer. For the longest time, nothing happened, and then I heard his voice, heard him calling my name. He sounded weak, exhausted, but he was alive. That was all that mattered.I started swimming faster, ignoring the pain and the fear, pushing forward to get to my dad. He was paddling the surfboard toward me as well, and, frightened that he was using up too much of his strength after everything he’d been through, I used a telekinetic hold to freeze him in place. It was a new aspect of my powers that had recently developed—one I hadn’t shown anyone, even though I’d been practicing it for weeks.
He freaked out when he realized he couldn’t swim forward, and I called out, “You’re fine, Dad. I’ve got you.” I wanted to shout for him to turn off the lights, but I was afraid without them I wouldn’t find him in the desperately churning ocean. But as soon as I got there, I promised myself I’d shut the purple LEDs down for good. Bad enough that I was practically chumming the waters with my raw flesh; the last thing we needed was to give a road map to whatever creature had set up this midnight swim to hell in the first place.
Finally, the distance between my father and me closed. I could see his face, see my own panic and fear reflected there—but for my own safety. More proof that I’d been right, that there had been no way my dad would go back to shore until he’d assured himself that I was safe.
“Tempest, thank God! What happened to you?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up before I could answer him. “Cut your board lights!” I snapped at the same time I extinguished the small balloon of light I’d created. He obeyed instantly, plunging the water around us into an eerie blackness, one I was intimately familiar with after a year as a mermaid. Still, out here, tonight, with everything that had happened—it was freaking me out.
Terrifying me was probably a better description, but as I positioned myself in front of my father, I decided not to go there. I just had to remember that this was no different than any other showdown I’d had with Tiamat’s minions. I wouldn’t let it be. I’d emerged victorious from all of them and I was going to do the same tonight. There was no way Tiamat was taking both of my parents from me. She’d have to kill me first.
“What’s going on?” my dad hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” I scanned the ocean in front of me, then turned—bit by bit—so that I could check out the rest of the nearby water as well. I felt itchy, unable to settle down as restless energy bounced around inside my body. Part of me wanted to send some of it out into the water, just to see what would happen, but my trainer in Coral Straits had spent too many hours pestering me about hanging back, about not striking first, for me to do something so stupid.
His advice ran through my head as I circled my father, moving him—slow inch by slow inch—closer to shore. I might have been paranoid, might have been spending precious minutes preparing for an attack that wasn’t going to come when I could have used those minutes to haul my father to safety. To shore. But I didn’t think so. Every instinct told me that if I dropped my guard, if I started swimming full-out toward shore, that we’d be done in.
“Tell me what to look for,” my dad said in a whisper that sounded exceptionally pissed off. But not at me.
I glanced behind me, saw that he’d slipped off the board and had put his back against mine so that we could cover more area. His board, dark now, was still clutched in his hand, but out in front of him like a shield. Or a weapon.
My blood ran cold at the thought. “Dad, if something happens, let me—”
I never got the chance to finish the sentence. Instead, a giant octopus tentacle wrapped around my waist and lifted me twenty feet into the air before slamming me back down toward the water at a speed guaranteed to knock me unconscious.