Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (11 page)

We continued in silence, checking the water for threats and the cliff face for crevices. As Annith predicted, more waves soaked us as we edged along, until we were drenched and shivering.

Two persistent bald eagles followed, making silent circles.

I stopped as a gap wide enough to fit my foot opened in the stone face. It continued above my head.

“Don’t you dare,” said Tanuu, when I hooked my fingers and a toe inside it.

I squinted upwards. “I’m just checking. I don’t think I’m that good a climber, anyway.”

I traced the fissure with my eyes. It stayed the same width, and might have even tapered part way up the face.

“Keep moving,” said Blacktail, a crushing grip on her dagger as she scanned the waves.

Cold, wet, and getting moody, I conceded.

We kept shuffling across the narrow strip of rock, waves reaching for our legs in a rhythm. Nobody spoke. My nerves pulled taut as I wondered if the tide would rise before we found dry land again.

After another long while, the cliff lost elevation. We all sped up.

We rounded the next corner to find ourselves facing a mound of solid, black rock.

Tanuu raised the fire iron in celebration. “Skaaw!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. We raced towards it and scrambled up without hesitation, eager to put distance between us and the water.

From the top of the lava swell, I scanned the beach. Skaaw was smaller than I’d expected—maybe the size of a school gym. The hardened lava descended sporadically from tree line to water, chiselled by a million years of tides and earthquakes. Every surface had ripples and holes, preserving the exact moment when the lava had frozen mid-flow.

“Nice place for a mermaid to chill out,” said Blacktail.

She was right. Rock pools were everywhere. The shelves of lava might as well have been benches and picnic tables.

“Stick together,” I said. “I don’t like this any better than the cliff.”

We advanced slowly over the uneven footing. Every wave sounded like a mermaid rising from the water.

I kept track of the blind spots. Rock pool to the left. A drop-off to the right. A thick column ahead.

I motioned for Annith and Tanuu to cover Blacktail and me while we cleared the column. We rounded it at a wide angle like we were trained, finding only empty lava rock at the end of our crossbows. Without a word, we continued.

Two pools lay ahead, linked together by an hourglass pinch point. I leaned over, crossbow ready. Urchins, crabs, and seaweed speckled the bottom. No caves, no mermaids. We stepped across the pinch point and kept going.

If we did encounter a mermaid, our only option would be to fight. Trying to run over the ripples and holes would guarantee someone falling.

We peered down a crevice. Green algae wallpapered the sides. A stream at the bottom pulsed with each wave. We hopped over.

Then the lava rock plummeted, ending in a pool too deep to see the bottom. A wave exploded against the back, sending a wide spray.

As it retreated, the pool drained to reveal a large hole.

I stepped towards it, using the ripples in the rock as a ladder.

Tanuu grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?”

The next wave came, the pool filled, another spray erupted.

I pointed with my crossbow. “Watch.”

The swell retreated, and the cave opened up.

“Oh my gosh, don’t tell me you’re going to jump in there,” said Annith.

Another wave exploded against the rock. The spray rose high over our heads, like the spout of a whale. The tide was coming in.

I hesitated, shivering. It had been several hours since we left, and every part of me was sore. A morning spent scrubbing the house wasn’t helping.

“Let’s take a break,” said Annith.

“Not until I’ve checked this area,” I said.

“Meela, this beach is too alive with sea gunk,” said Blacktail. “The water must come all the way up at high tide.”

“So?”

“So Adaro could easily get to anything on this beach. Including that hole.”

I frowned. She was right. If the Host was here, Adaro had no reason to make me get it for him.

I followed Annith’s eyes past the pool, where the lava rock dropped off to a pebbled beach. The gap was as wide as a street and backed onto a heavenly patch of sand.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re all tired. Continuing like this could be dangerous.”

I glanced at the lava behind us, disheartened. What were we missing?

Annith led us as far from the water as we could manage. We slumped down, leaning against a pile of driftwood. Sand clung to our wet clothes.

“My arms are dying,” said Annith, massaging her biceps.

Blacktail held out her dagger. “Trade me.”

“You’re the best,” said Annith, wincing as she lifted an arm to take it.

Tanuu rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a tin of jerky. “Don’t ask what kind it is.”

I grabbed a piece of the dark red meat, mouth watering.

Mystery meat was nothing new. Without the ability to fish, wild game had been over-hunted. Most families supplemented their diets with any meat they could find: birds, rodents, the occasional bear, even raccoons.

“Mm, cats,” said Blacktail.

“Kittens, actually,” said Tanuu. “Fluffy white ones.”

“You guys are awful,” said Annith through a mouthful.

As I scarfed down a fifth piece, I took in the patch of beach. The tide crept up the pebbles. The driftwood at our backs created a border between sand and earth. Beyond it, the earth sloped upwards like the trough of an ancient mudslide.

Ravendust bushes sprang from the patchy grass in clusters. Beside us, two of the tar-black bushes even grew on the beach, having been pushed away from the crowded earth.

That, I thought, was the mark of a relentless plant: so deeply rooted that it would grow through rock and sand.

The black lava rose to our left and right. Beyond Skaaw Beach, the cliff continued.

“Let’s go a little longer,” I said. “We can cut back through the forest at the next break in the cliff.”

“What if there isn’t another break for ages?” said Annith. “We could be in the middle of nowhere when the tide comes in.”

She had a point. With the tide advancing, we risked drowning—or worse.

What, then? Did we give up and go home? The idea irritated me. We’d spent the whole day searching and hadn’t found any indication that the goddess Eriana had been more than a made-up story.

Seeing my expression, Annith climbed onto the lava rock and squinted at the beach ahead. “I mean, we could keep …”

She didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

Blacktail stood. “The waves are too violent. Look at all the white. Anyway, we’re searching too close to the water. It has to be somewhere Adaro can’t reach.”

Annith turned to the bank behind us. “Maybe we should check a bit higher.”

Before I could answer, she began to climb the slope. Blacktail followed slowly, poking the fire iron into the sand at regular intervals as though checking for a trapdoor.

I smiled in spite of my exasperation. At least they were willing to keep searching. The Massacre must have given us all the same relentless stamina.

“Sure,” I said. “Tanuu, go ahead of me.”

He didn’t answer.

“Tanuu?”

I turned.

Tanuu was at the shoreline, on his knees.

He was face-to-face with a young woman.

She was naked, strawberry hair combed away from her face, dripping down her back. The waves concealed her lower body. Soft freckles swept across her cheeks and the bridge of her small nose, adding youthful innocence to the otherwise mature and elegant face. Her white skin was too smooth, parted lips too full, vibrant eyes too large, too captivating.

The mermaid’s hand came to rest on the back of Tanuu’s neck.

I shrieked. “Tanuu! Stop!”

He didn’t hear me, or at least didn’t acknowledge that he had.

I snatched up my crossbow in the same moment as the mermaid’s skin rippled into the texture and colour of rotting seaweed. Her ears sprouted longer, bulbous. Webs grew between the fingers behind Tanuu’s head.

I raised the crossbow—but Tanuu blocked the line between the mermaid and me. I couldn’t shoot.

The demon’s eyes burst crimson, as though filling with blood. She bared a row of long, pointed teeth.

Tanuu seized up. His cry of terror echoed off the surrounding cliffs.

I ran forwards.

Blacktail was already there. She raised the fire iron over her head and brought it down hard. The demon reached up to defend herself, catching the fire iron in a webbed fist. It sizzled on contact. She howled in pain.

I reached for Tanuu—but an irregular wave lapped beside me. I spun.

A second demon lunged from the water, snarling. I fired. The bolt shot through her forehead.

I grabbed Tanuu by the arm, hauling him away. Annith appeared beside me to help, having leapt down from the bank.

Blacktail yanked the fire iron out of the demon’s grip. The hook sliced her webbed hand with a spray of blood.

Tanuu stumbled, gaping at the demon that had been a beautiful woman a moment ago. I kept a firm grip, dragging his dead weight further from the water.

The demon lunged for Blacktail’s legs. Before she could bring her to her knees, the iron came down hard on the top of her head. She fell sideways, and Blacktail struck again, putting the weight of her body into the swing.

After five years of military training, her aim was true and her strength impressive. I winced as the hook met the demon’s face. Blood spilled onto the rocks. The demon spun at the impact, keeling into the water.

She lay motionless. A wave carried her tail onto the shore, where it fluttered in the breeze.

Annith and I let go of Tanuu part way up the beach. He fell into the pebbles.

A moment passed where we all stared at the two mermaids, panting. In death, their skin faded to a human tone.

“You’re not the only one with a good swing,” said Blacktail, straightening up.

Tanuu gawked at her, the distant look in his eyes clearing. “That … that girl was a sea demon!”

I pulled him to his feet by his armpits. “Caught on, have you?”

As we retreated, Tanuu seemed to have lost the ability to hold his jaw closed. He kept stumbling as he looked over his shoulder to his attacker’s corpse, and then to Blacktail, and then back to the mermaid.

Blacktail wiped the fire iron clean in the grass.

Nobody said anything for a long time. My heart pounded. I thought I might be sick. For those few seconds, the Massacre had come surging back. My adrenaline kicked in so fiercely that my arms and legs trembled.

Annith and Blacktail’s eyes were wide and glazed, their lips ashen. Annith’s frizzy hair was plastered to her dirt-smudged face, reminding me of the way she’d looked on the Massacre.

I drew a long, slow breath, trying to calm my heart.

Tanuu had nearly been killed carrying out my plan. What had I been thinking, letting him come to the beach? I should have forced him to stay back, or snuck away—anything to stop him from putting himself in so much danger.

On top of that, I’d killed another mermaid. I’d pulled the trigger without thinking, as easily as I had on the early days of the Massacre.

As much as I hoped to think I’d changed, I was still the killer my people had trained me to be.

“Look,” said Tanuu, struggling to breathe. “This is a terrible idea.”

“I tried to tell you that,” said Blacktail.

“Not just for me. For all of us. Those sea demons … I mean, they’re …”

He glanced at the water, looking like he might be sick. The dead mermaids lay half-submerged on the shoreline, rocking in the waves. Behind his horrified expression, he was obviously working out what we’d faced on the Massacre for an entire month.

I bent double, rubbing sweat and salt from my face. “What else are we supposed to do?” I said, muffled by my hands.

“Something that doesn’t involve getting eaten by a monster while we hunt for a cave that may or may not exist.”

“You’re sure we can trust … that demon king?” said Annith, a bit too hesitantly.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “They’re not monsters. They’re predators. Just like humans.”

“Whatever they are, they’ve got a taste for human blood,” said Tanuu.

“It’s not like that. They’re attacking us because—”

“Because Adaro told them to, I know. But you’re doing what he asked. You’re looking for the Host. Shouldn’t he cool it with the attacks now?”

I huffed. “He wants us to know he’s still in control.”

They turned their gazes in unison, as though looking across to Adaro’s kingdom. I couldn’t tell if they were unconvinced, or uneasy about Adaro.

Blacktail made an abrupt movement. I reached for my crossbow as she grabbed the fire iron with one hand and flung the other across Tanuu’s chest.

A head poked out of the waves. She’d already transformed into a demon. She floated towards the shore, keeping her deep red eyes on us. I kept my grip on my crossbow but didn’t raise it.

The demon wrapped her long, webbed fingers around the first mermaid’s hair and pulled her into the water. The sound of the body dragging across the rocks rose over the wind and waves. Then she did the same with the other body.

A swell engulfed them, and they vanished.

I didn’t loosen my grip on the crossbow.

A wave smashed against the lava rock on our left. The spray hit me a moment later, clinging to my already cold face.

“Let’s climb out of here,” I said.

Annith pointed the dagger at Tanuu. “Gentlemen first.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but Blacktail gave him a shove with the fire iron. “Go.”

We clambered up the earthy slope, using Ravendust weeds as grips. The bank flattened into a field of waist-high grass, pricklebushes, and scattered boulders. Coal-black leaves poked out of the otherwise vibrant greenery, so the field appeared freckled.

We scanned our surroundings. I vaguely knew the way home. But was home where we needed to go?

I licked my dry lips, tasting salt after being on the beach for so many hours. Even this short distance from the water, the air felt thinner, less sticky. My entire body ached, now that I let myself relax. The others must have been exhausted, too. I should have let us stop sooner.