Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) (4 page)

The water turned midnight black the deeper they swam into the alley. Shafts of light pierced gaps in the twisting coral overhead, but it was just pinpricks in the dark. Ahead, a circle of lighter blue signaled the end of the alley, but a shadow fell across it. A shriek echoed down the alley and turned the contents of Rachel’s stomach.

Haloed in light, the hippocampus reared its head. Then it charged.

Its iridescent body caught the flashes of meager light. Closer.
Then closer still. Rachel clutched her blade in her fist, but she couldn’t see a thing. A surge of water exploded around her, the current blasting off the hippocampus’ charge. There was a scream, then a terrible roar boiled through the water. Something glanced off her—she thought she felt Sid’s arm—then the coral above her trembled with the force of something being slammed into the rock of the alley. The water went absolutely still for one horrible moment, then she was flipping end over end, knocking off rough stone walls and coral that bit into her skin. Her arms caught up in a tangle of mane and ridged skin. She slashed out with her blade, but she had no idea if she sliced true.

The water was lighter now, a gray dawn, and she could just see the glassy black of the hippocampus’ eyes before it butted its head into her stomach. It reared back, and she knocked its snout away with a fist as it tried to snap its jaws around her middle. The pair burst from the end of the alley back into blue. Rachel’s back scraped up against a stone building, and the hippocampus darted close, snapping its teeth together.

But Sid wasn’t far behind. Blood leaked from the side of his head like smoke as he tore from the alley, but his hand was tight around his blade. He slashed out at the beast. Its tail punched out, landing a blow straight into Sid’s chest. His eyes went cloudy for a second, but he shook his head and charged again. The hippocampus reared and snapped—its teeth clamped down on Sid’s oxygen tank, a jet of air streaming from the tank.

The beast yanked Sid back toward the alley. Rachel’s eyes went wide, and she darted closer. Sid was stuck in his harness. He thrashed against the hippocampus, but he was yanked back again—back into the alley’s gloom. Rachel grabbed his straps and sliced. Her fingers fumbled with the straps, slipping and losing grip. A scream burned up her throat and the light failed in the alley.

Rachel sawed again and again. The last threads of the straps held tight. And then they burst. Rachel and Sid tumbled end over end back into the light. Sid’s body went slack without oxygen, his head lolled. Rachel grabbed him and shook him fiercely then shoved her own regulator into his mouth. “Breathe,” she commanded. Sid pushed the regulator hard against his lips and sucked air.

She let him breathe until her lungs seared, then pointed to herself and took a few blessed mouthfuls of clear, cold air before passing it back. She inched her fingers up the back of Sid’s head, feeling for whatever cut had him bleeding out so badly. He groaned when her fingers hit it, a deep gash along the left side of his head. Rachel clamped her eyes shut for a moment and dug deep for strength. She had to get them out of this, back to the surface. Rachel hooked her arm around Sid’s back and under his armpits and held tight, then she kicked.

It was like dragging a bag of stones. Dragging limp, partially unconscious stones while also holding her breath. She only took back her regulator when she felt ready to burst, when pops of black floated in her vision. Her legs screamed and her lungs burned, but still Rachel kept swimming, one kick at a time.

Blue all around. They were still so deep she couldn’t even see the surface, only the tall coral spires and the pockmarked cliff. The
water was a thousand million arms, pulling her down, trying to drown her. But then another arm touched her own. Rachel wrenched around, pulled Sid tight to her chest before relaxing just the tiniest bit.

Grey shoved a shoulder under Sid’s arm. “I know a shortcut,” the merman said.

Rachel frowned. How could there be a shortcut out of the water? Grey pointed to the cliff looming before them. “There are air pockets at low tide.”

Rachel didn’t need to hear anything past “air.” She nodded once, and they dragged Sid, whose eyes had gone unfocused, between them.

A trail of blood wafted from Sid’s head as they swam. Rachel tried not to think about it, only concentrate on kicking her legs, slicing her arms through water. They stopped right before the cliff, close enough to count each silky strand of algae waving in the currents. Rachel’s legs were jelly, her arms dead weight, but carefully she breathed in a few more lungfuls of air and passed the regulator back to Sid.

Behind them, the
mer city was blurry, a mirage barely visible through the scrum of sand and shells kicked up by the rampaging hippocampi. Was her mom trapped down there? Was Kendra okay? Grey followed her gaze. “Your mom is safe with Kai, but I haven’t found Kendra yet.” His voice wavered, and he closed his eyes for a second. “As soon as I get you out, I’ll head back for her.” His green eyes went hard and fierce. “I’ll find her, Rachel.”

Rachel turned away from the city to their escape. The hole in the rock was tiny, a crevasse more than anything. Grey wriggled through it, tugging Sid behind him. The tubes connecting Rachel’s tank to her regulator in Sid’s mouth went taut, and she had no choice but to follow.

It was a worm tunnel, a tube of brown rock that left no room for turning around. Or turning back. The light faded, and soon Rachel swam in absolute darkness, only Grey’s voice leading the way.

“Not much farther,” he called. But he sounded so very far away.

And then, her head was above water. It was black as night, but there was no mistaking the slap of air against her face. She heaved and gulped down deep breathes of air, sucking past the pain stabbing through her lungs. The air smelled of brine and rot, a musty, thick thing. But in that moment it was the sweetest scent Rachel had ever experienced.

“How much more?” Her voice croaked in the darkness.

“Back under water, but not long. This’ll bring you out at the side of the cove, through a sea cave that’s exposed in low tide. We need to hurry,” Grey said. “Sid’s not doing great.”

In response, Sid groaned. “No,” he murmured. “No, I’m …” He didn’t finish.

Rachel’s stomach twisted. She took one last breath of air and dipped back under the water.

The darkness faded, one inch at a time.
From gray to blue to turquoise. A giant hole yawned around them as the tunnel opened up to a cave. The sun shone through the water, so bright it burned against Rachel’s eyes. The air was cool, and she could hear seabirds. It nearly made her heart burst. But then she saw Sid, his face pale, nearly gray. The water lapped at the side of his head and pulled away a tendril of blood and his eyes fluttered closed.

Rachel gathered Sid into her arms, flipping onto her back so she could pull him up onto her chest.

Grey dipped low so his gills disappeared under the water. Water glistened on his lips. “I’m sorry it turned out like it did.”

Then he was gone.

Rachel kept one arm around Sid and reached out with the other, pulling them both through the water and away from the cave. The surface was thankfully slack, though they were still yards from shore. Far out in the middle of the cove, their white boat bobbed in the water. Rachel tried to shout, but it came out a strangled, hoarse whisper. She waved a hand over her head and slapped the water, but the khaki mass that was Bruno didn’t turn his head.

Saltwater burned her eyes, crusted and stung at the cuts and scrapes now exposed to the air. But Rachel kept swimming, kept craning her neck to find the shore. 

Her foot nudged against something solid, and then she was crawling to shore, dragging Sid behind her. Rachel collapsed into the beach, rolling onto her back with Sid laid out beside her. She curled her fingers into the sand and looked up into a clear blue sky, the edges of her vision fringed with deep green trees hugging the shore.

She laughed, relief flooding through her and making her entire body feel heavy, but the laugh turned to a choking cough. Rachel spit up saltwater and heaved herself onto her side. She hovered over Sid. He was still, only his
legs tugging back and forth in the lapping waves. Worry spiked through Rachel.

“Sid?”

He didn’t move. Rachel scrambled to her knees, fear making her blood go cold and her fingers numb. She grabbed hold of Sid’s shoulders and shook. “Sid!” She screamed his name, rough against her throat. Rachel bent close, one hand slipping to his chest to feel for a heartbeat. A whine built deep inside her and trembled past her lips. “No, no,” she intoned. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she swiped them away before leaning close over Sid’s face. Rachel tugged at Sid’s mouth with one finger to part his lips, reached a hand behind his neck to open his airway, and placed her mouth over his.

And Sid coughed seawater into her face.

He rolled onto his side, groaning and spitting. “That,” he whispered into the sand, “was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Rachel pulled her knees into her chest and hugged herself. She wanted to cry, and she hated herself for it.

“Rach,” Sid’s voice was raw. He reached out and curled his fingers around Rachel’s ankle, rubbed his thumb against her calf. “I’m pretty sure you just saved my life.”

Rachel didn’t say anything, but she slipped her arm down her leg and covered Sid’s hand with her own. He let go of her ankle, turned his palm up and twined his fingers with hers. Warmth coursed through Rachel, and her chest swelled like it had underwater. But this feeling was entirely different.

“Sid, I—”

Someone coughed off to her side.

Rachel whipped her hand from Sid’s and turned to see Kendra running toward them from the rocks at the southern end of the little beach, one strap of her bathing suit torn. “You’re safe,” Kendra breathed. She pulled Rachel into a powerful hug that nearly crushed her neck.

Sid coughed, a hacking thing that sounded very wet. “But not entirely healthy.”

Rachel pulled away. “My mom? Grey said she was with Kai, but I didn’t see her.”

“She’s fine,” Kendra said. “I saw the whole thing. Most of the herd followed you and Sid.”

Rachel collapsed back into the sand, suddenly very exhausted. “How’d you get away? Grey’s freaking out.”

Kendra picked at the torn strap of her swimsuit. “
Mallu and I hid in one of the outbuildings, then I tried to find you. We should flag Bruno down. Your mom is probably going nuts looking for you.”

Rachel shaded her eyes and squinted out to the boat, where she saw movement signaling someone coming aboard. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she leaned against Kendra.

“See,” Kendra said. “Everything’s fine, though my birthday surprise turned out to be full of suck.” Kendra waved toward the boat that was now speeding toward the shore. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Rachel laughed weakly. “I think I’m good.” As in, she was fairly certain she never wanted to go swimming ever again.
And horses—land or sea? Done.

CHAPTER 6

“And that,” Bruno said, hacking at thick vines obscuring the path, “is why I stay out of the water.”

Rachel swung her head to meet Sid’s gaze and rolled her eyes. Sid swiped his hand over his forehead and grinned back. It was three days later, and Bruno was still lecturing about the dangers of the deep. He sounded like some hoary old sea captain with a peg leg and a whale-sized chip on his shoulder.

Two days ago, Rachel probably would have agreed with him, but Kendra had talked her off the “anti-ocean” ledge with a lot of cajoling and a strawberry-rhubarb pie supposedly from Kai and Grey. It had worked. Or it had eighty-five percent worked.

“The herd got spooked. It can happen anywhere,” Rachel said. She was quite proud of herself for being so sensible about the whole thing. But seriously—that pie had been pretty amazing. “Kendra’s been down there dozens of times without anything bad happening.”

It was true. Even though Rachel still got a tremor of fear rolling down her spine whenever she thought of that hippocampus attacking, of dragging Sid to the shore … She shivered despite the midday heat and tried to focus on the reassurances Kendra had given her. 

A bead of sweat collected between her shoulder blades and dripped down her back. It was astonishingly easy to forgive the water—and the things in it—today. The air had the approximate consistency of butter, and each breath smelled of hot earth and sweat. Rachel pushed away strands of hair clinging to her forehead and huffed farther down the overgrown trail.

Vines and bushes grabbed at her pants, clung to her boots. She, Bruno, and Sid had been hiking in the forest outside Shipley for an hour now. They were miles from anywhere, following the memory of a path that snaked between gnarled oaks and hanging moss. The sun was high and unforgiving, baking them in their clothes.

Bruno stopped and unstrapped a military-style water bottle from his all-purpose belt. He took a swig and handed it around, readjusting the straps of a giant canvas pack weighing against his back. “It’s fine for the half-mer,” Bruno said. Rachel arched an eyebrow at that man for his failure to say Kendra’s name, but he just dragged a handkerchief down his face and ignored her. “She belongs with her kind. It’s different for us.”

Rachel’s lip curled. “Her kind?” She remembered Sid using that same phrase a long time ago when he met Kendra, like she didn’t quite have the right to call herself human. She didn’t like it any better now.

Bruno slid the bottle back into place. “If she was so sorry for the hippocampus attack, why did she run away?”

Rachel stared at Bruno, her lips pressed into a line. The man’s face was the color of cooked beets, and a giant
vee of sweat soaked the front of his tan T-shirt. Bruno met her glare and didn’t waver. “Kendra didn’t
run away
,” Rachel finally said. “She’s visiting her grandparents in Ohio. Did she need to approve that with you first, or …?”

Bruno threw up his hands and swore in French. Or at least Rachel gathered he swore in French from the way Sid’s eyebrows shot up. “It is acceptable that I worry about you two, yes? You are my responsibility.”

“We’re not your responsibility,” Sid growled. “We are perfectly capable of handling ourselves.”

“You are Descendants, and therefore my responsibility, whether you care to admit that or not, Sidney Martin.” Bruno’s shoulders puffed up around his neck and he jammed his fists onto his hips. “Now take out your weapons before this awful American heat kills us all.”

Bruno made Rachel and Sid do three laps around a muddy, weed-choked pond before the actual weapons training. Rachel imagined Bruno drinking all their water and eating ice cream while they schlepped around the pond and arrived back at their makeshift camp surly and drenched.

A tiny clearing had been hacked from the underbrush, and a highly illegal assortment of weapons leaned against the surrounding oaks. In the middle, a foam dummy hung from a tree limb, and a bulls-eye was nailed to another trunk.

“‘Oh, how did you end up in jail?’” Rachel muttered to herself, glaring at the collection of swords, clubs, and bows spread out before her. “That will be awesome on the grad school applications.”

Sid craned his neck to look up at her through a fall of sweat-slicked hair. His hands were braced on his knees, and his chest was heaving. “Are you talking to yourself?”

“Sid, he packed in a broadsword.” Rachel flung a hand in the direction of the giant steel sword catching the sunlight. It looked like it’d spent its former life half-buried in a stone. “We look like we’re either major nerds or about to go on a killing spree.”

Sid shrugged and ambled over to the broadsword. It took both hands for him to raise it off the ground. He started making sci-fi sounds as he sliced the sword through the air, which pulled a giggle from Rachel.

Bruno strolled over and plucked the sword from Sid. “If you two are done playing …” Then he reached into his back pocket and lobbed a dagger at Rachel.

* * *

They’d been at it for hours. The sun tracked across the sky, burning the blue to a hazy gray and making the leaves curl with heat. Rachel leaned her forehead against a tree trunk, dropped the bow she’d been practicing with to the ground, and groaned.

“I’m not going to be able to move for days,” she said to the tree. The tree didn’t seem to care.

Bruno was digging arrows out of the bulls-eye. “Your aim is improving,” he said. “You’re getting a better feel for the bow’s balance.”

Across the tiny clearing, Sid held a sword parallel to his chest, his right elbow hitched up near his shoulder and his arms quivering from holding the stance. His eyes flicked to Bruno then back to the point at which he’d been staring. Bruno deposited the arrows back at Rachel’s feet and walked over to Sid, gently moving his left elbow closer into his chest. “See how that steadies the hand? Better.”

For all her complaining, Rachel had to admit Bruno was kind of a fantastic teacher.

“Okay, one more round with the bow, then we’ll pack up. You both did a great job today.”

Despite herself, Rachel beamed. She had a hard time
not
wanting to impress a teacher, even if he was teaching her how to expertly slice the carotid artery of an incubus. Pre-Christian Mythology with Professor Rathbone, this was not. She raised her hand without thinking, then tried to act like she was stretching when Sid laughed at her.

“May I use the bathroom first?”

Bruno waved one of his meaty hands into the surrounding underbrush.

The ground crackled underfoot, a deep layer of last year’s dead leaves and fallen twigs marking Rachel’s every step. Outside Bruno’s makeshift clearing, the trees closed in and the Spanish moss hung thick as curtains. She found a bush in full bloom and squatted behind it.

She picked her way back to the clearing, skirting a tangle of bushes and vines. Nearly there, she stopped dead. Her name. She’d heard her name followed by a lot of French. It was Bruno speaking, but then Sid answered, also in French. And there was her name again. Rachel cocked her head to the side, but the words were a jumble in her ears. The only other word she recognized was
père
—which she was pretty sure meant dad. She huffed, blowing a stream of hot air up her face and fluttering in the sticky hair plastered to her forehead.

If she could just get closer, maybe she’d see them and get some clue what her name and the word dad were doing in the same conversation. What did Sid have to say about her that he couldn’t say in English? Nothing good, she knew that much. Rachel silently resolved to teach herself French and tried inching closer. A twig snapped under her heel. She froze, one foot off the ground. The clearing had gone silent.

Rachel reached out, feeling for a tree to support herself. Her foot twisted, her hip jutted out to one side to compensate, and she pinwheeled one arm. Rachel squealed and kicked out her other leg through the underbrush. It caught on something, and then she was falling. Her hands scrabbled for purchase, but came up empty. Rachel fell hard over something soft and sort of squishy hidden in the leaf litter, and her chin bit into the ground.

She groaned and tried to bring her hands up near her shoulders to push off the ground, but they caught on something.
Something that felt like a coat pocket.

Her stomach dropped. She scrambled backwards, dragging leaves and twigs with her. Rachel’s mouth dropped open, a moan crawling up her throat and creaking out of her mouth.

It was a werewolf. Or had about to become a werewolf. It still wore its human clothes, but its hands had already started the transformation to claws, and its jaw was partially lengthened, lips drawn back over a row of fangs. It must have been trying to transition into its wolf form when it’d died. And it’d died in the very recent past.

Rachel’s eyes ranged over the body. Another groan rumbled in her throat and shivered through her arms. Distantly, she heard Sid and Bruno crashing through the undergrowth toward her. She heard her name on their lips again. But the world had gone cloudy.

Rachel was back in that cave. Back to that moment when she’d sprinted around a corner to see Willem crouched over the dead troll. The way the poor Bernard’s legs were splayed, the way his head bent to one side and his massive arms reached out in vain. The way his heart had been ripped from his chest and dribbled over Willem’s chin.

Rachel lurched away from Sid when he tried to touch her and vomited. The werewolf was just like Bernard. Just like him, all the way down to the missing heart.