Sea Fever (28 page)

selkie prophecy or not, he was precious to her. She was not giving up.

“I’ll take my temperature. I’ll call if I run a fever. In the morning, if

I’m still having . . .” She swallowed against the constriction of her

bruised throat. “Problems, I’ll come back.”

So reasonable, her voice. Nothing in her words betrayed the small

animal panic stirring inside her like a mouse spooked by the shadow of an

owl.

For a moment, she thought the doctor was going to argue with her,

and the panic grew claws that raked her gut.

Donna sighed. Shrugged. “I can’t keep you here. Let me just make a

few notes, and then I’ll drop you at home.” She pursed her lips. “Unless

there’s someone you want to call to pick you up?”

Half the island had turned out to help in the search for Nick. And her

mother was waiting at home by the phone.

Regina gave a quick shake of her head, feeling oddly let down and

relieved. “A ride home would be great. Thanks.”

While Donna scrawled on her chart, Regina eased off the end of the

exam room table, reaching for her pants.

“I’ll be just a minute,” Donna said and disappeared through the door.

Regina released her breath. Her hands were shaking, she noticed in

surprise. Well, it had been a long day. Stressful. And it wasn’t over yet.

The doctor’s words came back to her. “There’s no evidence that

stress can cause an abortion.”

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Regina straightened slowly, one hand at her back.

“All set.” Donna bustled back into the room carrying a big quilted

bag and a paper medicine cup. “These are for you.”

Regina looked down at the white pills, six-sided like little stop signs.

Her stomach rolled. “What are they?”

“Antibiotics.” The doctor’s smile did not waver. “In case of

infection.”

No, Regina thought instinctively. And then, Why not?

She half extended her hand to take the cup.

The spiral tattoo on her wrist glowed with a faint blue light.

Donna hissed and recoiled.

Regina’s heart lurched to her throat. Her pulse hammered. Carefully

she turned her hand to hide the glowing mark. If she could just pretend . .

. If she could get away . . .

She crumpled the paper cup between her thumb and forefinger.

“Thanks,” she said again. Her voice rasped. “I’ll take them as soon as I

get home.”

If she got home. She sidled along the edge of the table.

Oh, God, get me out of here.

Donna stepped between her and the door, her eyes glinting weirdly.

“You really should take them now.”

“I . . .” Shit. “I just want to go home.”

“Take them.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

“No.”

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Their gazes locked. Regina’s stomach pitched. She was warded, she

reminded herself. Protected. The thing looking out of Donna’s eyes

couldn’t force her to take them. Couldn’t stop her from leaving.

Donna— or whatever alien being possessed Donna— recovered

itself enough to smile slowly. “Your choice. But I think you’ll stay and

take your medicine. Or you’ll never see your son again.”

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Eighteen

THE FOG ROSE FROM THE WATER, SWALLOWING the sea

and Dylan’s sails, drowning the hummocks of land. Dylan gave himself

up to the dripping twilight, letting it film his skin and bead on his

eyelashes, wrapping himself and his boat in mists and shadows to follow

the pull of his personal star.

He was very near to Nick. He could feel it. As if they played a game

from his childhood: cool, warm, warmer . . .

His senses heightened— an animal’s on the hunt. An island loomed

out of the sea like a kraken, smooth and dripping, covered with knobs and

weeds, dotted with eyes. His heartbeat quickened. His muscles tightened.

Warmer . . . HOT.

Nick was here. Alone? Alive?

The rounded shape resolved into a long, curved wall. The eyes

became a row of windows, square and blank. A fort. The coast was dotted

with them, abandoned bunkers of brick and stone built to protect harbors

and towns from the Spanish, the English, the Nazis.

Dylan snarled silently as the scent of ash blew to him on the wind.

Or maybe not abandoned after all.

* * *

Regina’s mouth dried. The edges of her vision grayed until all she

could see were those bright, knowing eyes and that horrible, taunting

smile.

“Nick,” she whispered.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, not—

“Nick,” the thing with Donna’s face confirmed with a nod. “Sucks

for you, doesn’t it? You have to decide which child you want to save. The

baby blob or . . . your little boy.”

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Regina’s chest hurt. Her mind spun. She couldn’t breathe. Where

was Dylan? Where was Caleb? Oh, God, where was Nick?

“Don’t hurt him.” Was that her voice, that begging, breathless

whisper? “Don’t kill him. Please.”

“Kill him?” The doctor cocked her head as if considering the

possibility. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll do that.”

“I don’t think”?

A trickle of rage dripped through the icy ball of fear in Regina’s gut.

But the fear was greater.

“You don’t want him,” she said, her voice shaking. “He’s not . . .”

“He has no value to them,” Dylan had said.

“He doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Regina finished.

“No, he doesn’t, does he?” Donna agreed pleasantly. “What a shame,

for the child to have to suffer for the sins of the mother.”

Suffer. Oh, Nick . . .

Regina’s hands clenched helplessly, convulsively.

The thing smiled slyly, watching her, enjoying her reaction. “But

you’re wrong to think we don’t want him. Some of us have been forced to

take human form for some time, living in camps, sleeping in the rough. A

little distraction, a fresh . . . sensation, would be welcome. And Nick is

such a pretty boy. So . . . clean.”

Anger rose like bile in Regina’s throat, sick and bitter.

“Take the pills, Regina.” The thing’s voice hardened. “And maybe

we’ll let him go.”

Maybe?

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Blind, white rage geysered inside Regina. She wanted to kill the

devil woman in front of her with her bare hands. Wanted to gouge and

bite, scratch and kick, with outraged maternal instinct.

But her rage, her instincts, wouldn’t save Nick. This devil had no

intention of letting him go. They would use him to control her and then

abuse him because they could.

Unless she stopped them. Unless, for once in her life, she was

careful and smart.

She met Donna’s bright, malicious eyes and saw Evil peering out at

her. She clenched her hands. Raised her chin. “How do I know you’ll do

what you say?”

The thing’s mouth stretched in a grotesque imitation of a smile.

“You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Trust me,” Dylan said.

Yes. The choice had never been so clear or so hard. She couldn’t do

this alone.

She must, she did, trust Dylan to deliver Nick, to save her child any

way he could.

Just as she would fight for their baby with everything she had. Fight

to buy him time.

She loosened her clutch on the crumpled cup to reveal the pills

inside. Cleared her throat. “You gave me something else before.”

“Methotrexate.” The demon watched her closely. “Did you take

them all?”

“I . . .” Regina’s mind blanked. Should she lie? Keep her talking.

Keep an eye on the door.

The demon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. These will finish the job.

Take your medicine now, like a good girl.”

Regina stiffened her spine. “Not unless you tell me what they are.”

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The demon made a dismissive sound. “Why bother? It’s not like

you’re a doctor.”

“Neither are you,” Regina shot back.

Donna Tomah seemed to grow before her eyes. “I know more than

you ever will, you ignorant little slut.” Her voice was guttural and deep.

“I am ageless. I am immortal. One of the First Creation who saw the stars

when your kind were wriggling in the muck.”

“Then why are you so afraid?”

“I am not afraid!” the demon shouted.

Regina shrugged to disguise the fact that she couldn’t breathe. Her

heart thundered in her ears. “Whatever.”

“You’re just human. And not even a particularly successful human.

A miserable little cook who got knocked up so you wouldn’t have to take

responsibility for your own failures.”

Regina winced as the demon’s words slid through her ribs to touch a

tender spot. Ouch.

“You should be grateful I’m delivering you from repeating your

mistakes.”

“Grateful,” Regina repeated. Anger elbowed for space in her chest.

The devil’s eyes danced with delight. “Well, it’s not as if you had a

future with Aqua Man, is it? You know how those selkies are. Four or

five quick ones, and they’re back to sea with the boys.”

Regina could barely speak around the burning lump in her throat. “I

didn’t know.”

“And now you do. Take the pills,” the demon urged almost gently.

“Save your son. Save yourself.”

Regina could barely think anymore. Loss of blood, lack of sleep, and

worry over Nick had drained her. Her head was full of white noise like

the TV when the cable went out.

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“I need . . .” Time. “Water,” she choked out.

“Of course.” Donna filled a cup at the tap, held it out solicitously.

“This will make everything easier,” she said. “You’ll see.”

* * *

The fortress waited above him in the dark like a sleeping dragon.

Baleful. Breathing.

Dylan twisted water from his shorts before he put them on.

Anticipating ambush, he had slipped ashore in seal form, his black dive

knife in his teeth. He retrieved the blade— salvaged years before from the

wreck of a Navy boat— and hung it from the waistband of his shorts.

Firearms were not reliable weapons against the children of fire.

Besides, Dylan couldn’t swim with a gun in his mouth.

He bundled his sealskin under a rock at the water’s edge, trusting

night and the fog to hide it. He straightened from the surf, wrapping a

glamour around him like a cloak to shield himself from demon eyes. A

breeze whistled over the rocks, a sharp and sneaky little wind that tugged

at his disguise and raised the hair on the back of his neck.

He froze, expecting something to spring at him out of the dark. A

guard. A jailer. A demon.

But there was only the breeze, carrying the cold notes of mold and

wet ash, drowned fires and small, dead things.

Releasing his breath, Dylan climbed the rocks.

And walked into a wall of fire.

Pain. Heat.

It seared the tissues of his mouth and throat, sucked the moisture

from his eyeballs and the oxygen from his lungs.

But he was selkie. The power of the sea coursed through his blood,

and a human purpose deep and wide as the ocean drove him. He would

not fail Regina. He would not fail. His own power rose to the flood. The

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making of the warden’s mark on the restaurant wall had changed him, as

if his gift had burst its banks and found new channels, new rivers within

him.

The fire was not real fire, he realized dimly. It was a flash of power,

a wall of illusion, intended to repel. Squaring his shoulders, he walked

through the flames without burning, and they died in his wake.

He drew a shaky breath. Only the faintest demon taint stained the air.

Maybe they were . . . gone? In hiding. Or maybe their magic fire had

fried his sinuses.

He studied the fortress squatting less than fifty yards above the

waterline, its roof topped with grass like a hill. It stank of death and

disuse.

And something else.

His heart pounded.

Nick.

He felt the boy trapped within those rough dark walls like a grain of

sand in an oyster. So close.

Dylan pulled his knife. Crouching, he crept over the rocks, trying not

to crash through bushes like a bear, awkward as a seal out of water. He

should have worn shoes. When he reached the fortress, he stopped and

sniffed the air again. Nothing.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

It must be a trap.

He drew a deep breath and eased along the wall, searching for an

entrance.

He found one tucked under the shadow of the hill and a white swirl

of graffiti, the sign of human vandals, not of demons. He waited, listened,

and slipped inside.

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The windows piercing the thick walls had been designed for cannon,

not for light. The feeble moon lay in faint, square puddles on the broken

floor. The damp walls gleamed.

Dylan did not need the moonlight. His eyes were made for darkness.