Each Step Like Knives (4 page)

"Put him down." She gestured and gave a low,
trilling noise from deep in her throat.

The squid released Jeenai and retreated. He rubbed
his arms where their suckers had abraded his skin.

"My pets have left their kisses on you, I see." She
gestured for him to swim closer. "You want something from me." She
added a leer and a tail flip that changed the subtext of the phrase
to something sexual.

"I want to become a--" He almost said split-tail.
"Human."

The hag lifted her chin and pondered him. "You can't
be human. You want to walk on land and breathe air. You want to
have sexplay with a human woman. But you can't ever be human,
yourself."

"If I have all those things, if I can do those
things, that will be enough."

"Will it?" The hag laughed. Her hands made
fluttering shadows on the wall. "I'm not so sure, mal."

Anger rose in his chest. "It's not for you to
decide."

Again, she laughed and tossed her hair. Her skin was
smooth and unlined and her breasts high with puckered nipples. Her
gaze bore into his as she fingered the reddening circles. He caught
the scent of her arousal.

"If that's what you want, then you shall have it."
The hag smiled. "But nothing I grant comes for free."

"I know that."

"And even if I could give this to you without
charge, I can't change the truth of what's going to happen." The
hag swam closer to him and entwined herself around him. Her tail
stroked his as her hands found his belly and stroked upward. "I can
take away your tail and give you legs. But I can't give you what
you want from her, which is that human emotion they call...love. I
can't make her love you."

He stayed upright beneath her wandering hands. His
penis slid from its slit, though he felt little desire to engage in
sexplay with the hag. She reached for it, clasped it, then
squeezed.

"Do you want to know my price, mal?"

"Of course I do."

The hag laughed until her hair swirled around her
body. "I think you can guess."

Her red nipples told him that answer. "You want the
fuck from me?"

She looked around. "From who else? You're the only
mal here."

Jeena looked at her smooth skin, the tail as black
as ink next to her pale upper torso. Her hair, too, was white
streaked with black. She had very unusual coloring, and she would
have been immensely appealing to him...before he'd lost his heart
to the human woman.

"If all you require is the fuck, I will pay that
price, madame."

The hag narrowed her eyes at him. "Not only the
fuck, my fine mal. I also desire a child of you. I want your
seed."

This was a more complicated issue. "Then I would
have responsibility to you and to the child."

"You'll be living above the surface." The hag's
hands pointed upward then made the sign for split-tail. "I will
raise our child here. Do you think I'm incapable of doing it alone?
I live my life alone, mal, shunned by polite society for the skills
all wish to use, but none wish to acknowledge. I would have a child
to keep me company. Perhaps I, too, seek love."

It seemed a small price to pay for so great a
reward. "All right."

"One other thing." The hag moved closer until her
eyes bore into his. "I would have some of your blood."

"For what?"

"For my work. You are different from the others,
mal. I would have some of that essence."

Again, he nodded his assent. "You may take some, if
you wish."

The hag grinned. "Let's get started."

He'd never finished the fuck so swiftly or with so
little finesse. The hag seemed unconcerned about her own pleasure
or his. He gave her his seed, and she closed herself afterward with
a satisfied smile. Then she motioned for him to join her in another
room.

He followed her toward a bowl of carved shell. She
held his arm over the bowl and sliced it deeply until the blood
flowed, thick like sludge, into the container. Not one drop of it
was lost to the water, and Jeenai shook his head in wonder at her
power. She ran her finger along the wound, and it closed up.

She gestured for him to wait while she uncapped many
bottles and dispensed many vile substances into the bowl. She mixed
it with a sharpened bone, then offered it to him. He took it, but
didn't drink.

"You understand you won't be able to talk to her.
Our bodies aren't made for their sort of communication, and she
won't understand our language."

"I'll make her understand." The shell bowl had grown
warm in his hands.

The hag rolled her eyes. "Your gill slits will
close. You'll have to breathe air, the way they do, through your
nose or your mouth. Fresh water will do you no harm, but enter the
sea, or let even a drop of the sea water touch you, and you'll turn
back into what you were when you came into this place. Do you
understand?"

He lifted his hands from his waist to his chest. It
was hard to speak with the bowl in his grip, but she understood his
answer. "Yes."

"You'll have legs." She spat toward the sand floor.
"Nasty, ugly things. You'll have them, and they'll work, but every
step will be as though you walked on knives. Do you understand
that, mal?"

"I do."

"You are willing to live in near-constant agony for
this split-tail?"

"I am." He shifted the bowl.

"Because you...love her?" The hag sounded curious,
as though she could not understand such a thing.

Jeenai didn't understand it himself. "From what I
know of love, yes. I want to be with her. To touch her. To hear her
speak my name."

"She won't do that, you fool." The hag gestured at
the bowl. "Just remember, you'll look human, and you can learn to
act human, but human you will never be! Her mouth can't form your
name any more than you'll be able to speak hers aloud. You can have
the fuck with her, I've no doubt, for your cock will remain
unchanged, just no longer protected as it is for us.

"One more thing, foolish mal. If you decide you do
not love her after all, all you need do is return to the sea. But
if she does not love you as you do her, if she chooses another over
you, all of this will vanish. You will become nothing more than
foam on the waves. You won't even be able to live out the rest of
your natural life here below. You will die."

He nodded. "I understand."

The hag released him. "Go on. Drink your brew. And
one more thing, stupid mal."

"Yes?"

She gave him a leer so wicked it made his eyes burn.
"Don't forget to take a deep breath. You're going to need it."

The brew burned his gut as it went down. Agony
doubled him over. His tail thrashed, sending him upward, and he
gulped the breath the hag told him to take. In moments, another
searing pain ripped through him, this time centered in his tail. He
pushed with it, trying to reach the surface before he changed
completely.

He didn't make it. His lungs were bursting, but his
gill slits were no longer working. His legs pushed with little
effect against the water. He looked down into the depths, but his
eyes no longer could see in the dark. They burned and stung.

The hag swam up below him. She gestured and twirled.
The water swirled around her hands then rose up toward him. It
captured him, cradled him, and lifted him upward in its spout until
it pushed him above the surface.

He still couldn't breathe. He could barely move. He
was caught in the maelstrom that rode the waves toward the shore.
Pain engulfed him. He couldn't think.

Then, just when he thought even turning to foam
would be better than the agony tearing him apart, he saw her. The
woman he had fallen in love with. She reached for him, her face a
mask of wonder and terror, and somewhere inside himself, Jeenai
found the strength to reach back.

There was
a dark speck inside the silver. Something with arms and legs,
moving, and horror filled her as Helena realized what it was.

A man.

The wind whipped her hair against her cheeks as she
ran toward the water. Helena gaped at the silver funnel, now so
close she could see the naked form inside. It was a man. A naked
man, trapped inside the water. Surely he had to be dead. Didn't
he?

Helena shielded her eyes, trying to see if there was
any form of life inside the churning tunnel of water. The man's
body moved limply. His head hung down, hiding his face.

Helena looked for help, but the beach was still
deserted. Everyone else had been smart and headed home before this
storm broke. Another flash of lightning, followed almost
immediately by the crack of thunder, made her jump. Now the rain
came. It slashed at her face and arms. It tasted of salt and made
her cough.

Incredibly, the funnel was continuing closer to the
shore. Helena waded out to where the water hit her thigh-high, but
then she stopped, remembering her near-drowning the night before.
She was afraid to enter the wildly whipping waters, but she
couldn't just leave the man there to drown.

The funnel came just to the edge of where the waves
were breaking. It swirled and tossed the man inside as though to
break him. It was so close to her Helena thought she might just be
able to reach out and touch it. Touch him.

And then, he opened his eyes and reached for
her.

The funnel spat the man out like a baby rejecting
its first taste of solid food. His hand caught hers as he flew over
her head. Their fingers entwined, and her arm was nearly ripped
from its socket as the force of his flight pulled Helena
backward.

They hit the sand at close to the same time, and the
waves covered them before retreating. Helena came up spluttering
and splashing, her hair hanging in her face and her skin rubbed raw
from the salt and sand. She staggered to her feet, went down again
to her knees, then forced herself upright again.

In the back of her mind she noted the funnel had
disappeared, though the storm still raged. She cried out at the
sight of the man in the surf in front of her.

He lay face down, up to his ears in swirling water.
Helena turned him over then dragged him up onto the sand as far as
she could. His skin was cold, his lips blue. His eyes had closed.
He didn't seem to be breathing.

She pulled him higher, out of the reach of the
waves. Seaweed had tangled in his shoulder-length dark hair. She
put her hands to his chest, but felt no rise and fall. He really
wasn't breathing.

Helena had never given mouth-to-mouth before, or
CPR, but she bent over the man anyway. His lips were cold on hers
as she pressed down. She blew into them, uncertain of how hard to
blow and afraid of hurting him. Was it possible to blow up another
person's lungs? She blew again. The air hissed out of his nose,
along with a dribble of water. She tried again. Her hand lay flat
on his bare chest, and she felt no beating heart beneath her
fingers. Was he...dead?

His mouth parted beneath hers. His hand came up to
clasp the back of her head. She breathed out, and he breathed in.
In the next moment, his tongue met hers. He was kissing her.

She backed off so quickly she fell back into the
sand. "You're not dead!"

He sat up. His now-open eyes were dark. Fully dark,
with hints of blue and green and purple and even red in the depths.
Helena blinked...sure she must be imagining things. She looked
again. Yes, there was a hint of white around his irises, something
to prove him human, anyway, but the color was still the oddest
she'd ever seen.

She got to her feet. "That was some trick."

He tilted his head and only stared at her. She waved
her hands. "Pretending to be dead so I had to give you mouth to
mouth. Nice one, Romeo. But next time--" She glanced down at his
nude body. "--keep your bathing suit on."

She turned to go and his hand caught at the hem of
her pants.

"Hey! Let go!"

He sat up, then stood unsteadily. She caught him
before he could fall. His face had now paled remarkably beneath its
bluish cast. His full lips thinned and he gasped, as though in
pain. His fingers bit into her shoulders and his weight nearly took
her down again.

Helena straightened her back and somehow kept them
both upright. "Where are you hurt?"

He didn't answer her. He gave a low, tortured groan
as his feet moved. He went to his knees.

"Hey," Helena said, more gently this time. "You'll
be all right. Let me get you inside, and I'll call a doctor."

Somehow she made it with him to the living room of
her ramshackle house. She sat him on the threadbare couch, wrapped
him in an afghan her grandmother had crocheted, and went to the
kitchen to make some hot tea. Grateful for the gas stove that
worked even during a power outage, Helena lifted the phone from its
receiver without much hope. The wind still blew hard enough to
shake the windows and the rain still slashed the earth to mud. The
phone was out, as she'd expected.