Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (30 page)

So I let my jacket slip slowly down my shoulders, past my elbows, dropping from my hands onto the pier. I took a step forward, my eyes locked on the water, ready to accept its call and go wherever it would lead.

A sound behind me caused me to jump. I spun around, heart pounding wildly, to find that I was no longer alone.

Elizabeth, Jackie, and a few other guys and girls from school stood in a line across the pier, a few feet behind me. Elizabeth slurped from the drink in her hand as she glared at me in the moonlight.

“Going for a swim, shark bait?” A slow grin spread across her face. “All alone now. No one to protect the little fish girl from us.”

I took a step back toward the water, but two of the guys rushed forward, grabbing my arms and pinning them behind me. They pulled me back toward the sturdier part of the structure. Elizabeth and her posse closed in, smug grins spread across their faces.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“We want your filth off our island,” Elizabeth told me. “We want you to stop taking our waters, stop killing our people, and stop walking around here as if you’re not mutant freaks. We want all of you gone.”

I struggled against the guys holding me, but their fingers dug deep into my flesh, keeping me in place. Kyle and Will, I thought their names were. They both played on Swans Landing School’s basketball team, two of only a few guys that barely qualified the team to actually play. They towered over me, their grips tight.

“Not so quick outside of the water, huh?” Jackie asked smugly.

“Do you know how much my family has struggled in the last few years?” Elizabeth asked, pacing slowly in front of me. “My daddy works hard for a living, but each year, the catch is smaller and smaller. Each year we’ve had to watch you freaks bring in your haul like there’s nothing to it, while our pots and nets are almost empty.”

“You’re stealing our crabs and fish,” Kyle said, his fingers squeezing my arm tighter.

“We’re not stealing anything,” I told them. “We struggle as much as you do.”

“You freaks drove my father out of business,” Jackie growled at me, her brow furrowed into a deep scowl. “Now he’s talking about leaving Swans Landing because he can’t make a living here anymore. Because of people like you.”

Elizabeth took another long slurp from her straw. In the moonlight, I could see her wide eyes flash with anger and fear. “And I’m not going to let that happen to my family without a fight,” she said.

“Lizzie,” a voice behind them growled.

The group parted to reveal Mr. Connors making his way down the pier, his footsteps thundering on the rotted wood. But I couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief at this interruption. The look in his eyes as they flashed in the moonlight made it clear that he wasn’t about to help.

“We caught her, Daddy,” Elizabeth said, sounding as if she were presenting her father with the gift he’d always wanted. “What should we do with her?”

Mr. Connors was silent as he moved toward me. He nodded toward the two boys on each side of me and they released my arms. But any plan for escape was squashed when Mr. Connors dug his fingers into my arms so tight that he cut off the circulation, making my hands tingle.

“Your daddy,” Mr. Connors began, “has encroached into my waters more and more each year. He’s always claimed the best spots as his own and I’m sure he’s tampered with my pots on more than one occasion. Oh, I have no evidence of course, your kind is always sneaky and sly. How y’all got away with murder is proof of that.”

I swallowed, determined not to let him know that I was afraid. “We didn’t murder anyone. It was an accident.”

He shook me violently as he laughed, making my head roll back and forth. “That’s what y’all want the fools of this island to believe. Do I look like a fool to you?”

“Yes, actually,” I couldn’t resist saying, even though I knew it wasn’t smart to anger him even more.

Mr. Connors’s eyes flashed and he shook me again.

“You sabotaged my dad’s pots, didn’t you?” I asked, trying desperately to think of a way to get out of this as my head spun from the violent shaking he’d given me. Under our feet, the pier creaked and groaned as the waves pushed against the weakened pilings.

Mr. Connors laughed. “My daddy always taught me ‘an eye for an eye.’ By my reckoning, Lake Westray got a little taste of his own medicine.”

“He hasn’t done anything to your pots,” I said.

Mr. Connors’s grip tightened on my arms and he lowered his round face until we were eye to eye. “And how would you know that unless
you’re
the one messing with them?”

My gaze darted around the dark night, trying to find something that could help me escape. “I never had to sabotage your pots. You don’t catch anything because you suck as a fisherman.”

Maybe Mr. Richter was right. I was too impulsive and didn’t think before I acted. My words only made Mr. Connors angrier and the back of his hand met my cheek with a loud crack. I gasped as the pain spread across my skin like little spiders.

“Daddy!” Elizabeth’s voice was a squeak behind us.

“Stay out of this, Lizzie,” he growled. “I’ve put up with more than enough from these freaks over the years.” He shook me until my head rolled back and forth. “Your mama should have listened to me and gotten rid of you when you were born. I told her she’d regret the day she married your daddy. And look at her now, as dead as Josh’s daddy. Everything you people touch is destroyed in the end.”

My eyes burned with tears at the mention of my mom. I willed myself not to cry, gritting my teeth together as I looked up into his face, my cheek still stinging.

“I am not afraid of you,” I spat at him, despite the tremors that ran through my legs. “I gave your daughter a fat lip and I can give you one too.”

“Hmm,” Elizabeth said over her father’s shoulder. “We’ll see about that. Looks to me like you’re far outnumbered here.”

“Not so outnumbered,” said a small voice behind the group.

All heads whipped around as a small, thin figure appeared on the pier behind us. It took me a moment to place the gangly limbs and oversized glasses.

“Claire?” I asked. Tiny little Claire took another step toward us. It was clear that she was afraid and her steps weren’t as confident as they should have been, but she continued forward, holding her chin high.

“What are you doing here?” Elizabeth demanded, wrinkling her nose at the girl.

“Let Mara go.” Claire’s pale blonde hair looked ghostly white in the silvery moonlight. “She’s a good person. She’s a lot nicer than any of you have ever been. If being a good person makes you a mutant freak, then I’d rather be a freak too than to be like any of you.”

Sweet, stupid Claire. She was going to get herself killed if she didn’t get out of here.

But her arrival caused enough of a distraction for me to use it to my advantage. I swung my knee up, ramming it into Mr. Connors’s gut and sending him stumbling backward, bent over to catch his breath.

“Run, Claire!” I shouted.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her still standing there, staring at us. There was no way for me to run with her, not with Elizabeth and the others standing between me and the gate. “Run,” I shouted again and finally she did, back toward the still locked gate. She leaped over it like an Olympic track star, her pale hair flying like a silky cape behind her, long before Jackie and one of the other girls could catch up.

As for me, there was only one way off the pier. I turned back and ran toward the broken edge of the structure, the roar of the ocean growing louder in my ears.

Just before I braced myself to jump, a loud crack split the night behind me and then screams filled the air. I skidded to a stop, unable to resist the urge to look back.

A rotted part of the pier had given way and Mr. Connors hung by one hand over the crashing waves below.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Daddy!” Elizabeth screamed. The group rushed forward, but the pier cracked dangerously, threatening to dump all of them into the frigid water. A human might not survive the shock of the cold for very long—nor the roaring waves that would toss him against the wooden pilings below.

Kyle and Will, the guys who had just moments ago been holding me captive, inched closer to where Mr. Connors held on. But the groaning of the pier grew louder as they moved toward the weak, rotted area and they had no choice but to back off helplessly.

My eyes darted toward the water and then back to Mr. Connors, swinging wildly as he tried to pull himself up.

“He has to let go!” I ordered.

Elizabeth looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“I can pull him to shore! But first he has to let go.”

Elizabeth shook her head and I advanced on her. Her eyes were wild with fear and desperation. She knew they could never pull her father to safety, he was too heavy and the pier too weak to support all of them crowded around the hole.

I grabbed her shoulders. “Tell him to let go. Trust me.”

Her tear-filled eyes glared at me. “Why should I?”

I resisted the urge to shake her as violently as her dad had shaken me. “Because right now, I’m the only option you have.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth, but there was no need. Mr. Connors lost his grip on the broken wood and he plummeted, screaming, into the crashing waves. I raced toward the end of the pier, unbuttoning my pants and then pausing only long enough to peel them off, not caring that everyone else was staring at me. I raced toward the broken end where there was no longer a railing and then jumped, arcing into the night air.

For a moment, I felt as if I were flying, suspended over the churning water below. Then I plummeted back to earth, crashing into the ocean.

The shock of the cold quickly turned into a searing pain as my body restructured itself. I opened my mouth, filling my lungs with salt water as bones popped and moved, and scales tore through my flesh.

I needed Josh or Dylan there to help me. I needed the song to take away this excruciating pain that kept me curled into a tight ball in the water, unable to move or help.

A thought hit me: Could I sing the song to help myself?

The lessons with Miss Gale filled my mind. She had taught me the song of the water and I focused on the melody that surrounded me, trying to hum along with it through my clenched teeth. I felt the pain ebbing away and I stretched my legs as they continued to change. My thoughts became clearer, no longer absorbed only with thoughts of the pain I endured.

I had to find Mr. Connors before the water killed him. I would not add another death to the ones the finfolk were being blamed for.

I dove down, shooting through the water toward the pilings. It was dark and murky and almost impossible to see anything within the shadows. I surfaced, but the water roared too loud here and I couldn’t hear my own voice when I called to him.

Despite my being finfolk, I still wasn’t a strong swimmer and didn’t have enough practice in the water. The waves tossed me toward the pilings, ramming my shoulder into the wood. I slipped under the surface, blowing out a stream of bubbles as I gasped at the pain.

When I resurfaced, I turned a full circle, searching the darkness for any signs of life nearby. A wave tossed me under again for a moment and I fought my way back up, shaking water out of my eyes. I was afraid that I was too late and Mr. Connors had already been bashed against the pilings all around me.

“Mr. Connors!” I shouted. But my voice didn’t carry far, drowned out by the sound of the waves.

Swimming without moving my injured shoulder was awkward and the ocean tossed me even more. I managed to grab one of the pilings as I slid by, my fingers digging into the splintering wet wood. My breath puffed out in the cold air as I clung to the piling and scanned the area around me.

Only a few feet away, a round head broke the surface, sputtering water. Relief washed through me and I struggled through the waves toward him.

Another head surfaced next to the first one. When I drew closer, I froze for a moment, staring at the person struggling to pull Mr. Connors back toward the shore.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped over the sound of the waves around us.

“Looking for you,” Josh said simply. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and cling to him as we had done before in the water at Pirate’s Cove. But Mr. Connors’s choking cough reminded me that this wasn’t the time for that.

Instinct kicked in and I swam to Mr. Connors’s other side, hooking my injured arm through his and helping to reel him through the crashing waves and away from the pilings.

Mr. Connors didn’t help much to get himself back on dry land. He let the two of us pull him out of the water and for a moment I thought maybe he’d passed out or that he had drowned anyway. But once we’d laid him on the sand, Josh softly kicked his side with his toe.

“You can stop the corpse act now,” Josh muttered. “You’re back on the shore.”

Mr. Connors’s eyes popped open and he sat up, glaring at us. “I suppose you expect a thank you?”

Josh slipped back into the pants he’d left on the beach. “It wouldn’t mean much, coming from you, so don’t waste your breath.”