Tempest Revealed (18 page)

Which was fine. I could do it—I knew I could. I’d blasted through thicker things during the whole shipwreck disaster a few months ago. I just needed to get a little closer, a little closer, a little closer … Perfect. I gathered the energy, felt it flow down my arms toward my fingertips and—

Slammed into what felt like a brick wall. Except after I hit it, I kept moving for a few more seconds and it moved with me before slinging me back in the opposite direction. Right toward Sabyn, octo-monster, and an army of gleeful bunyip.

I tried to spin as I flew backward so that at least I’d be facing them when they attacked me, but I was so dizzy from the hit that I couldn’t quite figure out which way I should turn. And by the time I finally recovered from the fuzziness, it was too late. They were all around me.

But so was something else. Something silky and springy and yet invisible. I knew it was there, could feel it brushing against my whole body. But I couldn’t see anything. It was strange and yet terrifying all at the same time.

Finally, I reached out with my hand as far as it would go—which wasn’t far—and tried to blast through the material. But just like when I slammed into it a few moments before, it didn’t work. All that happened was the electricity rebounded, and I had to curl into a ball to keep from being hit by my own shot.

Around me the bunyip cheered while Sabyn looked on, a satisfied smirk on his cruelly handsome face, and it took every
ounce of self-control I had not to let loose with a torrent of electricity. The only thing that stopped me was the very real fear that I would end up electrocuting myself. Because whatever I was trapped in was obviously enchanted, which—down here—meant it was made by Tiamat. And after the last battle we had, I was certain she would be only too happy to help me fry myself.

So instead of using my powers to try and blast my way out, I decided to use my head. Maybe, if I could figure out what was going on, I could think my way through this before Sabyn gave up his posturing and decided to skewer me where I hung. Reaching out my hand again, this time I concentrated on feeling the material with my fingers. It was an open weave, the material fashioned into squares with centers that I could stick my fingers through and then watch as they came out on the other side. I poked and prodded at it a little bit, tried to figure out if there were any openings bigger than the one-inch-by-one-inch squares, but I didn’t find any. And that’s when it hit me.

Like so many other fish in the ocean, I’d been caught. In a net.

Before I could panic, Sabyn stepped up to me, a small dart gun in his hand. He pressed it against my tail, and though I tried to get away, there was nowhere for me to go. Then he pulled the trigger and I felt a sharp pain. I looked down and saw a little splash of my blood swirling in the water.

It was the last thing I saw before the world went dark.

Chapter 15

When I woke up, it was dark. I was sitting on the ground, my back resting against a wall, and a few things hit me at once. One, that I wasn’t floating despite being underwater. Two, that there was something heavy around my waist and my wrists anchoring me to the wall. Third, I was back in my human form, legs instead of a tail. And finally, that I was crazy sick—head throbbing, stomach churning, body aching in about a million different places.

Wondering if I’d somehow contracted the flu on top of everything else, I swallowed five or six times, tried to get the nausea under control. I’d puked once underwater, right after I had become a mermaid, and it had been a terribly unpleasant experience and one I definitely didn’t want to repeat … especially considering I was chained to a wall.

When swallowing back the nausea didn’t work, I tried the old deep-breathing trick, but water didn’t work quite the way oxygen did and I ended up choking, which only made my need to hurl a million times worse. Cold, miserable, and feeling
exceptionally sorry for myself, I rested my head back against the wall and tried not to cry. It wasn’t easy. After all, I had completely screwed up this time around. The only positive side was that Sabyn hadn’t killed me yet, but I figured that was because he was waiting for Tiamat, who probably wanted to do the honors herself. And since I was pretty sure I hadn’t developed any new powers—like ripping chains out of walls with my bare hands—I was a sitting duck waiting for her.

After I got over the panic, which I admit took a few minutes, I opened my eyes, tried to figure out where I was. I couldn’t see how knowing was going to matter one way or the other, but knowledge is power, right? And since anything was a step up from being chained in a bikini by a madman, I would take what I could get.

It was still dark, the only light coming from my natural phosphorescence. It was weaker than usual though, probably because I was, so the purple glow it cast didn’t go very far. But it was better than nothing, so I turned my head and strained to see.

I followed my arm where it was stretched out along the wall, found an iron clamp dug into the stones. It was wrapped around my left wrist. I turned my head the other way, saw that my right wrist had been given the same treatment and that chains extended from both cuffs and wrapped around my waist before they were threaded through a large metal loop embedded into the wall next to my left side. One thing was for sure. I was well and truly bound.

Next I gave myself leave to explore whatever other parts of the room I could see. There didn’t seem to be much, just the
rough stone floor beneath my butt and the wall next to me, which had another set of restraints embedded into it, if I was seeing correctly. And they looked ancient, at least as old as the ones holding me down.

Which made me think that I was in Hailana’s dungeon, a small rabbit warren of rooms that had been carved into the ocean floor centuries before I was even born. I’d been down here only once before, when I had been exploring the castle and had taken a wrong turn. I had freaked out when I saw what looked like medieval torture chambers, complete with equipment, and had all but flown to Hailana to demand what went on down there. She’d reassured me, told me that they were just a part of the castle’s history and that no one had been held down here for well over a century.

Trust Sabyn to decide to change all that.

Now that I knew where I was, panic was creeping in, replacing the sickness and the self-pity with an animalistic drive to stay alive. It was taking every ounce of self-control I had not to strain and thrash against the chains. The only thing keeping me from doing so was the knowledge that it wouldn’t work—and that I’d only end up in worse shape than I was already in. Something I couldn’t afford, because Sabyn obviously wasn’t going to get me medical attention. And if I wanted any chance at all to fight him off, I needed to be in good shape.

Slowly, inch by inch, I forced myself to relax the tension that had invaded every part of my body. Then I focused on my crazily beating heart, trying to bring it under control with a series of deep breaths through my gills. I could finally feel myself calming down, feel the adrenaline of the fight-or-flight
syndrome that had hit me the moment I woke up start to slowly drain away. Then I leaned my head back against the wall and tried to think my way out of this hellhole.

I don’t know how long I sat there, running through a variety of scenarios in my head. I came up with a few good ones, but they all started at the same point—with my hands being freed. Until that happened, I might as well just admit that I was screwed. That way, maybe I could get past the horror of being helpless and move on to the next part of the dilemma. Figuring out how I was going to get my wrists unchained.

In the end, I wasn’t the one who did it. Sabyn was. I’d been awake what I thought was a few hours—I couldn’t be sure as there was no clock down here—when he came through the door. The robes were gone and in their place was a pair of electric blue board shorts with a matching rash guard. He appeared almost normal, as long as you didn’t look into his eyes. There was only so much a guy could do to hide the psycho, after all.

Hey, Tempest. How you doing?
he asked as he swam toward me.

Are you insane?
I demanded, straining against the cuffs for the first time in my effort to get to him.

He tilted his head, pretended to think about the question.
Actually, I think I’m doing well in the sanity department right now. I beat you, didn’t I?

Because you’re a raging lunatic who sold himself to the sea witch. And for what? Power? You don’t actually think she’s going to be okay with you having any significant amount of power, do you?

Look around, Tempest. In case you haven’t noticed, I already have a significant amount of power. And I can assure you, no one is going to take that from me
.

I snorted.
You’re a fool
.

He was across the room in a flash, his hand at my throat.
You’re chained to a wall and insulting the only person who can set you free. And you think
I’m
foolish?

I didn’t answer, and because I couldn’t stand to look at his smug face for one more second, I turned my head toward the nearby wall. I might not have many choices left, but I still had that.

Until he decided to take that away too.
Look at me, Tempest
.

Again I didn’t answer, didn’t turn my head back toward him. It wasn’t like there was so much more he could do to me.

Did you hear me?

I still didn’t respond. His hand tightened on my throat, but I wasn’t afraid. I might be in human form right now, but I wasn’t breathing through my windpipe. He could choke me all he wanted, but it wouldn’t cut off my air supply.

Of course, I was forgetting that Sabyn the Insane knew every dirty trick in the book—and a bunch that hadn’t been invented yet. Before I had a clue what he was going to do, his hands slammed into my head, directly behind my ears. And then they started to press against my gills, cutting off my supply of water and, in turn, air. He wasn’t gentle about it either, his fingers gouging into the small slits of my gills until it took all my will not to scream. He got what he wanted, though. In my panic to get away from him, I turned my head back. Our eyes collided.

Thank you, Tempest. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
He smiled, a deranged twisting of his lips that would have terrified me if I weren’t already dying. Though I was staring at him, he hadn’t
seen fit to lift his fingers from my gills. As my mouth opened and closed, my panic making me revert to human habits, he just watched me. The world started to go gray, and I struggled in earnest, my head flopping back and forth as I forgot my resolve not to give him the satisfaction. And still he didn’t let up, still he watched me as his fingers savaged my gills.

I tried to buck him off, to kick him, but the sad fact was, in this situation he did have all the power. The world grew dimmer, even blacker, and I understood that this was it. I was going to die down here like my mother had and, like her, there was nothing I could do about it.

The last thought I had before I went out was of Mark. I prayed that he wasn’t destined to live my father’s life, looking out to sea and waiting, wondering, if I would ever come back.

When I woke up, I was floating. Sabyn had unchained me but was keeping a close eye on me from his spot across the room. It took a second for me to register that I was still alive, and when I did, I allowed myself a moment of pure relief before whirling toward Sabyn yet again. I sent out the most powerful blast of electricity I could muster. It should have been enough to knock him on his ass, if not fry him completely, but nothing happened. In fact, he just stood there, smirking at me as I blasted him again and again and again.

It took only a couple times for me to figure out that it wasn’t that Sabyn was repelling the electricity; it was that I wasn’t actually firing any. Just like I wasn’t shooting any energy pulses either. My powers had completely dried up.

Are you done?
he asked.
Because there are things I’d like to talk about, and frankly, you don’t look like you can do that and listen at the same time
.

I sent another blast his way. Then another. And another. Still nothing.
What did you do to me?

If you’d calm down a little bit, maybe we could talk about it
.

I did scream then, reaching deep inside myself for the reserves of power I rarely had to draw on. I fired absolutely everything I had at him and prayed.

All he did was yawn. Then he walked toward the door, his total disregard for my powers obvious in the way he turned his back on me—something he never would have done before.

Okay. All right
. The words came out hoarse and breathless, a testament to just how hard I’d been fighting him.
What do you want to talk about?

I knew you’d come around
.

I coughed, then felt my gills ooze a little. When I put my hands up to them it was to find out that I was bleeding. Sabyn had really done a number on me.