Immortal Sea (23 page)

HIS SON SPRAWLED, BEACHED, BLINKING, NAKED on the sand. No longer shark, but human.

The fear and temper that had driven Morgan to herd the boy ashore threatened to explode in all too human ways now they were on land. He clenched his fists, willing them to subside.

The boy was back and safe for now.

He strode out of the surf. “Get up.”

Zachary spat. “Get away from me.”

Not an auspicious beginning to the discussion they must have.

Perhaps he had been rough on the boy, but the threat, and his own pumping terror, had taken him by surprise.

“Are you all right?” Morgan asked.

Zachary curled to a sitting position, covering himself. “Leave me alone.”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. The boy appeared unharmed. Bruised, embarrassed, angry, but unharmed. But there had been a definite taint of demon in the water where he found him. The children of the sea were immortal, but they could still be killed. Possessed. Zachary, half-human and inexperienced, was particularly vulnerable even before he was targeted by the demon lord.

“You have no idea of the dangers out there.”

“I was fine until you came along.”

“Which only proves how little you know.”

Zachary tossed back his wet hair. His gaze speared Morgan’s, his eyes accusing and curiously adult. “Whose fault is that?”

Morgan was silent. In truth, he could have spoken to the boy before this. He had an obligation to his prince and his people. Zachary belonged on Sanctuary, where his power could be assessed and trained. Morgan should have made an opportunity and forced the issue. He had not, because of Elizabeth.

Because he wanted to bed her.

A flare of remembered fire licked his belly.

His plan had been simple and ruthless: claim Zachary, fuck Elizabeth, and go. Now that he had achieved both goals, he had no excuse to dally on World’s End.

The fire sank down to chill and ash.

“
One night doesn’t change anything,
” Elizabeth had said.

But she was wrong.

They both were wrong.

“Put your clothes on,” Morgan said. “Your mother will be worried about you.”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“She knows when to expect you home.”

Sullenly, the boy rolled to his feet and reached for his clothes. He hitched up his pants, fumbled with the buckle. Without looking at Morgan, he asked, “Are you going to tell her?”

He heard and understood the desperate anxiety in the boy’s voice. The days when the children of the sea were acknowledged, feared, and revered were gone. There was no guarantee Elizabeth would believe their son.

Or accept him.

“That is your responsibility,” he said as gently as he could.

“I can’t.” Panic made his voice higher, like a child’s. “She wouldn’t believe me.”

Morgan stifled a flash of compassion. “Then you must show her.”

“Forget it. She already thinks I’m a freak.”

“You are not a freak. You are finfolk.”

Zachary sneered. “What is that, like, a mermaid?” “Merfolk.”

“Whatever. It’s not me. I turn into a shark.”

Morgan reached for patience, remembering what it had been like for him so many centuries ago. The boy had a lot to learn, in more ways than one. “Not only a shark. You could take another form.”

“No, I can’t. It’s always a shark.”

Morgan sighed. Was this what Griff had gone through with the new changelings on Sanctuary? It had been almost a century since the young roamed Caer Subai, free and feral as dogs. But Morgan was fast developing new respect for the gruff castle warden who had taken them in charge.

“The finfolk are shape-shifters,” he explained patiently. “With enough skill, enough practice, we can control the Change and determine what we become. But your fears control you. You turn into a shark because you fear the shark.”

The boy’s chin jerked up. “I guess then you’re afraid of them, too.”

Morgan bared his teeth in a smile. “No.”

Zachary’s gaze dropped. He scooped his shirt from the sand. “Anyway, I’m not telling her.”

“She is your mother. She cares for you. She has the right to know.”

The realization made him deeply uneasy.

“Then you tell her.”

Morgan opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Zachary said with bitter satisfaction. “You never told her either.”

“The children of the sea keep apart from humankind,” Morgan said stiffly.

But their neutrality had not preserved them in Hell’s war to regain primacy on earth.

Conn argued their people’s survival depended on a closer alliance with mortal kind. The old divisions were blurring, no more so than on World’s End with its muddle of human emotions and selkie bloodlines. Margred and Caleb, Dylan and Regina, Conn and the
targair inghean
. . .

“Not that far apart,” Zachary sneered. “Or you wouldn’t have me.”

The look, the tone were a younger version of Morgan’s own.

Another tie, another link, Morgan thought.
My son
. The recognition left him shaken and oddly moved.

“The point is, we did have you,” he said coolly, reaching for his customary distance. “And now we must all deal with the consequences.”

Zachary jammed his feet into boots. “We were dealing just fine before you showed up. We don’t need you.” He stomped for emphasis. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

Morgan heard the bravado behind the boy’s boast.
Little boy
, he thought,
you have no idea what you need.

“Zack!” Elizabeth opened the front door wider, as much caution as pleasure in her voice. She had changed her pants, Morgan observed, and caught her rich hair back in some sort of clip. Her cheeks were faintly pink. “How was your first day of work?”

“Fine.” He thrust the grocery bags at her. “For the cat.”

“Oh, that was so nice of you.” Her determined cheerful-ness was almost painful to hear. “Thank you! How much was it? Do you need—”

“No.”

Her gaze darted from him to Morgan. Responding, he guessed, to the tension in the atmosphere. “Something to eat?”

“No. Thanks.” Zack brushed by her on his way up the stairs. “I don’t really feel like talking right now.”

Insolent whelp.

But the boy was right about one thing. Elizabeth was not likely to accept the truth about her son without proof. Which meant any words tonight would be wasted.

He met her gaze, dark with confusion and the lingering shadows of desire, and was abruptly reminded he had been inside her only an hour ago. He wanted to be inside her again.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I ran into Zachary.” Quite literally. “After work.”

And hauled the boy’s ass home before he could take it into his head to flee.

Zachary shot him a cold look over his shoulder. It would have been more effective if Morgan hadn’t recognized the sneer from his own mirror. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.

Morgan let him go. Nothing could be settled tonight anyway.

“Good night,” Elizabeth called after him. She turned back to Morgan, her teeth denting her lower lip. “Do you want to come in?”

“Yes.”

Her flush deepened. “To talk.”

Ah.

“Not right now.”

“Then . . .” Her fingers tightened on the door.

“I do need to talk with you,” he said. “About Zachary.”

Apprehension darkened her eyes. “What happened?”

He could not tell her. But after tonight, he had a new understanding, a fresh sympathy for her fears. He hastened to reassure her. “About his future.”

“
Tell
me.”

Apparently he was not as reassuring as he thought. A lack of practice, perhaps. “I believe I have tested your . . . flexibility enough for one evening.”

Her eyes met his, a wry smile in their depths. “When you foisted that cat on me.”

Deliberately, he held her gaze. “When I foisted myself on you.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. But she was not distracted, his Elizabeth. “You were going to tell me about Zack.”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

She searched his face. “He’s really all right?”

“He is fine.” Gau’s threat beat in his brain.
“I will take them from you. The woman and the child both.”
His jaw set. “I swear it.”

Elizabeth exhaled, her shoulders relaxing. “The clinic closes at two. Say, sometime after that?”

He would have another day with her, he thought. The relief he felt was new and troubling. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he agreed. “We will go to the beach.”

Her brows drew together. “The beach? But . . .”

“To talk about Zack,” he added.

“All right,” she said slowly. “If that’s what you want.”

It was not what he wanted at all. But he owed her the truth.

He could not rob her of their son without offering her even an explanation in return.

The next afternoon, Zack loaded groceries into the back of an SUV while its owner watched him closely. Like he was going to steal her beer or break her eggs or something.

“Thank you for shopping at Wiley’s,” he said before he closed the hatch.

Which was stupid, they were on a fricking island, where else was she going to shop? But Wiley said to say it, and Wiley was paying him, so he did.

He pushed her empty cart out of the way while the SUV backed up. The overcast parking lot was still half-full of cars from the two o’clock ferry. He jammed carts together, feeling the impact in his shoulders. He was stiff and sore from the night before, from hauling boxes and from the other thing.

The shark thing.

His throat closed. The parking lot blurred like the world underwater. Blinking fiercely, he grabbed at another cart. What was he going to do? He couldn’t escape what he was anymore. Couldn’t hide. Not with Morgan here, watching him. Knowing.

Sweat broke out on his face. What if Mom found out? Or Em. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it, guilty and excited and miserable. He’d always known he was different from the rest of his family, but at least when his dad . . . when Ben was alive, he’d felt like he belonged.

Where did he belong now?

He should never have left them alone last night, his mother and Morgan. The words ran together in his head,
hismotherandmorgan
, making him uneasy in a different way.

Had he told her yet? Maybe not. Probably not. She hadn’t said anything this morning. Just drank her coffee and packed Emily’s lunch and asked him the usual mom sort of questions. But it was getting harder and harder for both of them to pretend that everything was normal. That
he
was normal.

Morgan’s deep voice rolled in his head.
“You are not a freak. You are finfolk.”

Whatever.

At least while he was at work he could forget for a little while. He rolled the carts toward the store entrance, letting their rattle jar his arms and fill his head.

He wasn’t going to think about it. Any of it.

He dumped the carts at the front of the store. While he was outside loading groceries, Wiley had taken his place bagging for the older cashier, Dot. Which meant . . .

Gritting his teeth, Zack walked to the station at the end of Stephanie’s checkout line.

She tossed her red-black hair without looking at him. “Where were you?”

“I had to take some woman’s groceries out to her car. Paper or plastic?” he asked the customer.

“Oh, plastic.”

Stephanie’s hands never missed a beat, pushing, weighing, ringing up the items sliding past her register. Her nails today were painted dark purple. “I meant last night.”

His mind slid away from the memory of the orb and the cold, terrifying rush through the water.

“I was here.” He piled cold cuts into a plastic bag, topped off with napkins. “Working.”