Tempest Revealed (33 page)

She was sinking fast and I was keeping up with her, blasting away at the chains with more and more power. Electricity, energy pulses, even telekinesis. But nothing was working.

Look out!
Mahina screamed suddenly, and I whirled around to see two new silver chains circling us. Turisas, the octopus monster, knew I was here and was fishing for me this time, as determined to get me as I was to stay away from him.

But it was hard to concentrate on Mahina while I was trying to stay away from the chains. As I tried, we went deeper and
deeper, until the fence around Kona’s territory began coming into view. And terrifying as that was, what was even worse was the fact that we were coming in right inside the fence. Which meant, if this was set up like Coral Straits, we were about to run into an electric net, one that would fry us in only a few seconds.

The thought had barely crossed my mind when the ship lit up like Times Square. Things started exploding off of it, and within a couple minutes I watched as the ship began breaking apart. Cargo containers hit the ocean, then the net. Sizzled. Broke open. Sizzled some more. Dumped their contents.

Within seconds, the ocean floor was littered with everything from cars to bananas.

Mahina looked at me, horrified, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. If the fence could do that to hunks of metal, what exactly could it do to us?

Do something!
she screamed.

I stared from the chains to the net. If I couldn’t break the chains, maybe I could rip the net apart. It was certainly under a lot of stress right now, seeing as it was supporting a massive cargo ship and all of its contents.

Focusing on the net, I imagined in my head what it would look like unraveled. Little pieces of the squares slowly unwinding. Splitting down the middle. Making a hole right beneath Mahina and me.

Oh my God! It’s working. Whatever you’re doing, it’s—

I held a hand up to cut her off. I needed to think, to concentrate, and I couldn’t do that with her screaming inside my head. I kept picturing the strings unraveling, creating a bigger and
bigger hole. Not cargo ship big, of course, but big enough for Mahina and me to pass through without worrying about our hair being fried.

Only, as we got closer, I realized I had made a huge mistake. As long as the net was closed, the circuit was complete. But now that I had opened it, broken some of the connections, electricity was exploding into the water, sending shocks out that made what I could do look like child’s play. In trying to help, I had doomed us to almost certain death.

I looked around wildly, tried to find something that might work to blunt the impact of the electricity. But we were in the middle of the ocean. There was nothing—nothing except the cargo ship, that is. And its contents.

An idea, just outlandish enough to work, came to me. Without bothering to explain to Mahina, I dove for the ocean floor.

Tempest!
she screamed after me, but I didn’t have time to explain. I latched on to one of the SUVs that had busted out of the ship’s container and blasted it hard enough that its tires flew off, which was exactly what I was going for. Then I hit the tires with a strong enough energy pulse to rip them away from the wheel base. They started deflating, but I didn’t care. I just needed the rubber.

I grabbed all four of them, half floating, half carrying them over to Mahina, who was way too close to getting electrocuted for anybody’s peace of mind. Ripping off my backpack, then hers, I let them both sink to the ocean floor. Then I looped two tires over her head and did the same to mine, scrunching inside of them the best I could. I let loose with a huge telekinetic push,
one that knocked everything away from us—net, electricity, even the water itself.

We freefell through the net.

The water was back before we hit the ground, but it was still a rough landing. Mahina, still chained, landed on top of me in a tangle of limbs and tires. I scrambled out from beneath her, shedding the tires as I went. Once free, I whirled around, looking for Turisas or the Leviathan or Tiamat herself.

No one was there, which should have reassured me but ended up only freaking me out more. I knew I was being watched and I couldn’t stand feeling like I was a bug in a glass jar. Or worse, one that was about to be smooshed and didn’t even see it coming.

I helped Mahina to her feet, lifted the tires off of her, then squatted to get a better look at the shiny chains around her ankles. I wasn’t sure what that shininess meant. Were we dealing with something completely different than Tarisus here, or had he been forced to upgrade when I ruined his fishing line?

What do we do now?
whispered Mahina.
I’m trussed up like a swordfish on a big game weekend and even you can’t do this alone
.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was too busy looking at the wreckage of a small pleasure cruiser only a few hundred feet away. I couldn’t be sure until I actually saw its name, but it looked an awful lot like the boat Kona and Mark had been on. If it was here and wrecked and they were nowhere around …

My blood froze in my veins, and for long seconds I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. And then I was rushing to it, forgetting Tiamat, forgetting safety, forgetting everything but my terror that they were in there. That they were dead.

I’ll be right back
, I told Mahina.

Just find them, Tempest
. I could feel her horror, nearly as overwhelming as my own.

I darted inside the wreckage, searching for any sign of Mark or Kona. My heart stopped as I ran across a body, a guy with blond hair dressed in blue board shorts.
Omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod
. I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t look. I was terrified it was Mark.

It was my turn to scream, a high-pitched, keening sound that probably carried for miles down here, since I couldn’t think well enough to shield it.

I approached the body slowly. I had to know, had to see if it was Mark, but at the same time I was terrified of what I would find.
Omigod. Please, please, please. Please
.

The body was semifloating, stopped from going higher by the top of the yacht. Though it nearly killed me to do it, I swam under, doing my best to get a look at the face. And that’s when I saw it. A huge, gray tribal tattoo that spanned most of the man’s chest, right above a huge gash that went straight to his heart. Not Mark. One of Kona’s guards instead. Andres, I believed his name was.

Nearly sick with relief, which made me feel like a terrible human being, I started to explore the rest of the wreckage. If there was one body here, it was likely there was more, and I needed to be sure that I hadn’t missed them. That I wasn’t leaving Mark and Kona in a watery grave.

As I swam through the narrow confines of the ship, I found four more bodies. Four more of Kona’s selkies dead at the hands of one of Tiamat’s minions. The place all but vibrated with dark
power, the wounds they carried not made by a simple boat crash. There was no trace of him, however, or Mark, and I didn’t know if that should scare me or make me feel better.

Before I could decide, Mahina screamed again—louder and shriller than she had before. I darted out of the boat and raced toward her, just in time to see her being dragged along the ground by the chains. She was clawing at the ocean floor, trying to dig in, to hold on, but whoever was at the other end of the fishing lines wasn’t about to give her a chance. Every time she found purchase, she was just yanked harder.

I raced after her, aware the whole time that I was swimming straight into a trap—probably one that was designed specifically for me. But I couldn’t just let them take Mahina. Not without a fight.

I raced to her, grabbed on to her wrists, tried to anchor her where she was. But I only got dragged along with her.

The grenades, Tempest! Use the grenades
.

I can’t! We shucked the backpacks to get through the net—I’m not even sure where they are now
.

But I had to do something. I knew that. None of my powers were working on the chain. Not the electricity, not the energy pulse, not even the telekinesis, which made me wonder if it had somehow been charmed to withstand my powers.

For a brief moment I contemplated trying to tie Mahina to something, but figured out pretty quickly that all it would accomplish was to cut my best friend in half. Which meant I was out of options—except one. I would have to take this up with Tarisus, or whoever it was that had gone fishing for Mahina.

So though it went against every instinct of self-preservation that I had, I swam along behind Mahina, braced and waiting for the moment we came face-to-face with whoever was doing this.

It took longer than expected. Or maybe that was just because every second felt like it took an hour to pass.

And then we were there. In front of Kona’s underwater castle. While he usually lived on a small, aboveground island—selkies often preferred their human form, unlike mermaids—he did have a home under the water as well. It was used mostly for entertaining foreign diplomats from other clans, but Kona resided there sometimes.

Now, however, it looked like it had become Sea Monster Central. A ring of half-shark, half-human guards—Tiamat’s favorite henchmen—ringed the palace, looking feral with their bared teeth and bone spears. Behind them was Tiamat’s next line of defense, the bunyip, who looked as ugly and terrifying as ever. And free-roaming around the palace, acting as insentient guard dogs, was a trio of whirlpools sucking anything that got too close to them straight into an abyss. I watched in horror as one of the shark-men disappeared in the swirling water.

Needless to say, there was no way we could have snuck up on the palace even if we’d wanted to. So, while Mahina’s predicament put us at a disadvantage, it wasn’t much worse than it would have been anyway. Except, of course, that she was shackled. Helpless. Stuck.

Okay, it was just as bad as I had thought it was, but I did my best not to dwell on it. Just like I tried not to think about Mark or Kona trapped somewhere in the castle. If I did, I would
lose focus, something I absolutely could not afford to do right now, not when the sea bitch finally had me right where she wanted me.

The huge, heavy doors of the underwater castle flew open and, to my surprise, I found myself face-to-face with Tiamat herself. I’d expected to have to get through a few of her faithful lap dogs before I had to take her down.

She looked different from when I’d last seen her. Oh, she was still beautiful, which meant that she’d been up to her regular tricks—killing mermaids and drinking their blood. Mermaid blood, combined with her most ancient spells, gave Tiamat a youthful appearance, even though she was thousands of years old. In fact, only her tail—which was black and split into two razor-sharp, curling sections—even distinguished her from a mermaid at all.

At least until she turned her head and I realized that half of her face was hideously burned—the flesh looking like it was literally melting off her skull. I had done that to her. Last summer when I had turned supernova, I had nearly burned her to a crisp. This must be the outcome of that last confrontation.

If so, it was no wonder that Tiamat was gunning for me even more than usual. The only thing greater than the evil that hung around her like a veil was her vanity. If I had permanently scarred her, I was half-amazed that I had been allowed to live this long.

Tempesssst. Ssssso nice of you to join ussss
. She drew the
s
sounds out like the evil snake I knew her to be.
I have a couple of young men down here who are very anxiousssss to ssssee you
.

Relief flooded me. Mark and Kona were still alive. Or at
least that’s what she wanted me to believe. To keep my sanity, and my resolve, I was willing to go along with it.
What do you want, Tiamat?

She weaved her way slowly through the lines of soldiers, the motion semi-hypnotic despite my determination not to be enthralled by her magic.
What do I want?
she asked, tapping one scarlet-tipped finger against her mouth.
What do I want?
She threw her head back and laughed.
The same thing I’ve always wanted. Everything, darling
.

She moved even closer.
But what I want most is to watch you suffer as I have these last long months. To watch as everything you care about is destroyed right in front of you
. She snapped her fingers and Mahina was suddenly jerked off her feet. I tried to grab her, but it was too late. Whoever had control of the chains had strung her up, so that she was hanging upside down from one of the massive poles that lined the outside of the castle. Bunyip and small sharks and a few other creatures I didn’t recognize circled her, snapping at her hair and fingers and toes.

She didn’t scream this time, but I could sense her terror. I couldn’t do anything about it, though. Not now. I knew if I took my eyes off Tiamat for more than a second, she would make her move. And we would all be dead.

Another snap of her fingers and Sabyn appeared, looking a little worse for wear than when I had seen him last. He stared at me, and I could see he was cataloging the bruises left from his last session with me, bruises that Zarek had not healed completely because he’d been too busy healing my internal injuries and my hand to bother with them during that first healing session.

I looked at Sabyn for a moment, shifting my eyes from him to Tiamat and back again. He looked a little odd, a little shaken and remorseful, but I knew better than to buy that act. Sabyn didn’t care about anyone but himself, and he sure as hell didn’t care about me or Kona or Mark. Hell, he didn’t even care about Tiamat, or he would never have tried to betray her in Coral Straits the way he had. The fact that he was here now—more than a little bruised himself—shouted that she’d found out about what he’d tried to pull there. What I couldn’t figure out was after all that, why he’d allowed himself to be drawn back into service to her. He already had Coral Straits. What else did he want?