Ripple (25 page)

I step forward again, shivering from fear, not quite sure if I should leap forward and launch myself at Erik, or if there’s some more logical way out of this.

Erik turns his attention from Cole to me. Something foreign glitters in his eyes. “You were easier than the other sirens. The guilt of killing made you desperate to believe there was a way out. All I had to do was paint a pretty picture, and you were mine.”

I don’t blink, don’t move. Every muscle in my body seems to go slack at once, as if my entire body wants to give out. I stare at him, the lake water still lapping at my ankles. His devilish smirk grows until he looks possessed.

“At this point, you’re supposed to ask
why.
Why you. Why a siren.” He pauses. “It’s because humans are so easy to kill. A pretty face like mine, and they fall for anything. They practically walk into the river, and all I have to do is smile. You’ve killed one, you’ve killed a thousand. And in four hundred years, I’ve killed at least that many.”

He told me he was turning eighteen.

And that’s when it occurs to me: It was never his ancestors who scorned the disfigured women. It was him. All along, it was him. He didn’t inherit his curse. He was
personally
cursed. He’s a sociopath. A complete and utter sociopath.

“Do you remember Kate?”

I swallow. Do I play his game? Keep this conversation going? “The girl you told me about at homecoming? The one you fell in love with?”

He nods. “I stumbled upon her one night, a hundred and fifty years ago.”

The story he told me. About a nix finding a siren . . . It was Erik and Kate, not two strangers a century and a half ago.

“My favorite river fed into the ocean where she swam.” He pauses. “She was beautiful. I fell in love with her within the month.”

I wait for the punch line I am sure is coming.

“But she didn’t love me. I broke her curse, and still she didn’t love me.” He looks off into the distance. “So I drowned her.”

My horror grows, along with the smile on his face. “And then I went back to the status quo. Drowning women in the river. The only thing that ever gave me satisfaction.

“But I got bored after a while, and then I got an idea. I find another siren, bring her to the water
before
her curse is broken . . . well, she’ll put up a real struggle. Sirens can hold their breath so much longer, it makes the whole fight more challenging. And I do enjoy a challenge.”

I step forward, hope he forgets Cole is standing in front of him. “What the hell was the point of all this then? Why feed me all these lies? Why get to know me? I’ve been to this lake every night. You could have killed me by now.”

To this, his grin widens. “You ever watch a cat kill a mouse? They don’t just go for the lethal blow. Not when it’s so much more fun to play with a victim. Killing
is
a sort of seduction, you know.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Ah, and yet you nearly fell for me. Pity this all ends so soon. I would have
so
enjoyed hearing those three words before I drowned you.” He smirks. “You’re the eighth, you know. The number would be higher, except it takes so long to find your kind. You’re just not as common as one might think.”

He screws his mouth up to the side as if deep in thought, but it’s all part of his theatricalities. “The last one fell for me in thirty-nine days. I only gave myself three weeks with you, once I was sure you were a siren. Perhaps that was too greedy of me.”

It’s as if my toes have turned into roots and grown right into the bank of the lake. I can’t seem to move, not even an inch. I can’t believe I was so blindsided.

He frowns. “Which leads me to this,” he says, his hand sweeping across the lake. “Your time is up. And lucky for you, so is his. So you can have him after all,
as long as you both shall live.
” He says the last part as if it’s a marriage vow.

He reaches out and kicks Cole, sending him facedown into the mud. I jump forward to help, but Erik puts a hand up, and the look in his eyes is enough to stop me. Cole wriggles around, trying to get to his knees again, but his arms are bound so tightly he can’t get up. Erik seems to enjoy watching him squirm. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve been fun at times. But you’re a little on the boring side. Too studious, too serious. The last siren, well, she was a partier. Drowned her sorrows, if you know what I mean.”

Erik waves both hands around maniacally, as the panic rises in my stomach. He’s hanging by a thread now, and I don’t have any plan for getting out of this mess. I turn to look at Cole again, desperation growing. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t why I brought him here. If only I’d known . . . “Just let him go, Erik. This is between me and you.”

Erik leans down and hauls Cole to his feet. Erik has at least three or four inches, not to mention twenty or thirty pounds, on Cole. If they go at it, Cole’s a dead man. That ugly, devilish smirk rises on Erik’s lips, and he takes a step away from me.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. It
is
about Cole. This guy is so in love with you, he’ll probably love you in spite of all this, and then your curse is gone. So he’s gotta go, while you’re still a siren and still fun for me. I need you to be cursed, or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Erik takes another step. Toward the lake.

“Stop,” I say, my voice as steady as I can manage. “This is stupid! You can’t just—”

And then he half throws, half shoves Cole, who flies into the water, headfirst. The water isn’t very deep that close to shore, but with his hands behind his back . . .

I scramble across the bank and throw myself into the water. I’m stopped when, midway between the land and the lake, I collide with Erik. His arms lock around me. The momentum sends the two of us back into the water.

And then something’s not right. We’re moving backward, almost floating, but I don’t feel Erik taking steps as he drags me into the water. I blink and look down, at where my legs meet the surface, and my heart jumps straight into my throat.

I never asked . . . never wondered what he looked like in the water. I assumed he’d look like me, with shimmery blue skin. But . . . it’s not like that at all. His legs have disappeared, replaced with scaled limbs. More like something on a dragon, a deep red.

His favorite color is red.

Except, they’re not like legs, either. They’re . . . like tentacles, long, winding, slithering around underneath the surface like a den of snakes. I get my hands up and put them against his chest, and then shove hard, and thanks to the water his grip loosens. I slide out. The second I have enough gap, I drop down, under the water, out of his grasp, and throw myself into a swim.

Cole could be underwater right now. Struggling for air . . . his lungs filling with the lake....

My head breaks through the surface, and I take in a ragged breath as the water trails rivers down my face, in my eyes. I blink several times, and with relief, I see Cole.

Just as I think I’m going to make it to shore—to where Cole is coughing and sputtering, wriggling out of the lake because his hands are still tied behind his back, Erik gets a hold of my ankle. I slide backward, under the surface and into the deeper area of the lake. I take a gasp of air a second before I go under.

I will my heart to slow, try to get the panic to ebb so that my oxygen will last longer, but all I can do is blink against the water. Red tentacles flare out all around me. Erik drags me deeper. This must be what it’s like when he finds a girl and drags her into the river.

This must be exactly what it’s like. He’s going to drown me.

I twist, struggling against his hold. But it does nothing. I claw at the bottom of the lake, trying to find something strong enough to hold on to, trying to keep him from dragging me deeper. My fingernails claw at the muddy bottom but come up empty.

This lake isn’t that big. But it’s big enough to drown in. My fingers slide across something, but it goes by so quickly I can’t figure out what it is. With a sudden burst of energy, I drag Erik back—just a foot—far enough that I find it again before he drags me even deeper.

A stick. A little thinner and a little longer than a baseball bat, by the feel of it. It’s getting hard to see with all the silt and dirt we’re stirring up. I grip it in two hands and then twist around and throw everything I have into swinging it, right at his face, and those glowing blue eyes that only just register what’s about to happen.

The water slows it down, but I still manage to crack him hard enough that his grip loosens. I hurtle myself forward, swimming faster than I ever have. When I get shallow enough, I surface, raking in big lungfuls of air.

Cole has somehow gotten the belt off and is stepping into the lake, as if he’s going to help me. As if he wouldn’t drown before he even understood what was happening. “Go! Run!”

My feet find the bottom, and I rush from the lake. If we can get away from the water, our odds are better. But in the water, we don’t stand a chance.

Cole hesitates. Just a millisecond, he wavers, before whirling and running, crashing straight into a bush and falling back down. My bare feet slip on the mud, and then I yank him back to his feet and shove him toward the trail. He takes off running, the underbrush cracking as he races by.

That’s the last thing I see before Erik’s hand clamps over my eyes and mouth, and I feel myself falling backward, into the water. I can’t take another gasp of air before going under, because Erik is blocking my nose and mouth.

Erik holds me against his body in an iron grip, my arms trapped at my sides. I struggle against him, but his grip is too strong. He spins around a few times underwater, like a washing machine, until I don’t even know which way is up.

The breath I took before he covered my mouth is not enough. My lungs already burn. I’m going to drown.

Erik stops spinning, but doesn’t let go. He squeezes tighter, as if he’s going to crush the life right out of me. Black holes crop up in my vision. I can’t let him do this. I can’t die like this. I struggle harder, using the last of my strength. But it’s no use.

I’m really going to die, right here in the lake that’s helped me live all this time.

And then something in the mud-churned water takes focus. Eyes. Hazel ones. Cole’s face looms closer, as if he’s going to kiss me. And then his lips . . .

Am I imagining this? Dreaming of Cole in my last moment?

No, no, he’s not kissing me, he’s . . .
breathing
for me. I take in the air he’s giving me, and the black holes ebb, and my strength returns. I jerk abruptly, elbowing Erik, and the shock in my attack is enough to jar his focus. His grip slips.

I yank free and grab Cole’s arm, pushing him in front of me. With my help he makes it out of the lake before Erik can get a hold of him. We fall onto the shore, and just as I take a ragged, deep breath of air, I hear Erik coming for me.

For us.

I whirl around, desperate for relief, and I see something. The one thing that could end this. Just as Erik drags me backward again, I slap my hand down on Cole’s belt. It nearly slips through my fingers, but then Cole manages to snag the buckle and flip it in my direction, and my fingers curl around the buttery leather.

I take in another breath, the biggest I can manage, as he pulls me under. Before he can wrap his arms around me, I twist, somehow managing to get behind him. He tries to turn and face me, but I wrap my legs around his waist. He’s so bulky they almost don’t hook on the other side, but all I can do is pray he doesn’t thrash too hard until I can get the belt around Erik’s neck.

As soon as the leather touches his skin, he knows. And he jerks and twists and outmuscles me, but somehow I just squeeze tighter with my legs and get the belt fed through the buckle.

Erik realizes what I’m doing and turns his attention to my legs, gripping each ankle painfully in one of his big hands. I think he could crush my bones with his grip. I ignore the pierce of pain as he untangles my legs from his waist. It’s too late for him.

I tighten the belt around Erik’s neck. I use both hands to hold the end, until I’m sure it’s as tight as it can go. And then I switch into offensive mode, hoping I have enough strength to do what comes next.

Erik thrashes like a prized bronco, but I manage to get my legs around his waist again when his focus is on the belt. I squeeze as hard as possible, then close my eyes and wait.

Wait to see who will die.

It goes on forever, or so it seems, my limbs trembling with the effort. Erik seems as strong as ever, thrashing, spinning, scraping me against the bottom of the lake. Whenever my head surfaces, I take in great gasping breaths, then tighten down on the belt again.

Twice, he plunges as deeply as possible, his body slamming me into the muddy bottom. I nearly open my mouth and let out the air that he’s trying to force from my lungs.

But I just keep holding on.

And then something changes. His struggles grow weaker, about the time my own air seems to be running out. But still I don’t let go. I open my eyes when he goes still, watch the eerie way his platinum hair floats out in front of me. My bare toes find the lake bottom, and I walk backward, dragging him, until finally my head breaks through the surface. I take a ragged breath, filling my screaming, aching lungs.

Water splashes around me as Cole grabs me by the waist and pulls me backward, still dragging Erik’s heavy body.

I don’t let him go until I’m out of the water and the three of us all fall backward. For a long silent moment, all we can do is rake in one heavy breath after another. My wet back presses against Cole’s chest, his ragged breathing matching mine.

But finally, I shift out of his embrace, pull my legs out from underneath Erik’s now still body, and let go of the belt still gripped in my aching fingers.