Seawitch (29 page)

I looked a question at Solis, who shrugged his eyebrows and pulled a face as if to say “You know how it is.” Except that I wasn’t sure now that I did. Still, I nodded and thanked him and braced myself to go back to the inhospitable Grey.

Father Otter stopped me as I knelt back down beside the delirious Gary Fielding. “They will come as soon as they know our cousin is free or dead. Be prepared.”

My heart was shivering and running rough, but I turned a cold look on him as if I weren’t frightened to my very bones. “That will be your job, because my friend and I need some answers from your cousin before I go any further. And if I don’t like them, you should fear me as much as the merfolk.” Then I shook him off and turned back to Fielding.

Pure bluff and bullshit, of course, since there was no way I alone—or even with Solis’s help—could hold off an army of shape-shifting otters as well as a cohort of pissed-off mermaids. But I still wanted to know what had actually happened on board
Seawitch
and if I was about to free a guilty man from punishment, or a falsely accused one.

One of the problems of the Grey is time; it proceeds strangely, sometimes too fast and sometimes too slow. It breaks and falters and remains like ice floes adrift in the cold, cold sea. This operation would have to go fast, but no matter how quickly I went, I had no way of knowing how much time would elapse in the normal world or how fast any adversary would arrive in the Grey. I hoped Solis would be safe; then I pushed my fear aside and got back to work.

Instead of sinking down into the Grey as I usually do, I tried pulling it over me like a blanket, keeping myself physically present in the normal world while surrounding myself in the world of magic. The Grey resisted initially, then flowed over me in a rush, almost knocking me down into its flood. I held myself to the rocky ground and felt the parallel worlds shimmy and slither together. The sensation of motion sickness swamped me for a moment but I fought it down to a level I could sustain for a little while without throwing up. I crept forward a few inches so I was pressing against the struggling shadows of Fielding’s dual forms.

I reached for them and the world lurched. I slammed my hands down on the mist-flooded rock floor and heard the knife ring on the stone. The instability at my feet fled, leaving me anchored for the moment, but I was sure the ghost world would trickle back all too soon. I dug my toes under Fielding’s physical body and he gave a banshee wail, arching up a little before he settled back down, pinning my sneaker-clad feet to the corporeal reality of stone.

I muttered to him, “Just hang in there a little longer, Fielding.” Then I pushed my hands into the writhing mass of his shadows.

I pushed and tugged on the forms that burned my hands with alternating heat and cold. Representing the dual parts of his nature, they had polarized their representations in the Grey as well: the water form damp, icy, and fluid; the earth form spiky, hot, and resistant. While the water shadow moved aside easily under my push, it also flowed back fast and my first impulse to shove that aside and then sever the invasive magical strands exposed between the two masses was foiled by the material’s ability to ooze around my hand.

But the shadow wasn’t as fast-moving as water and it didn’t pass through my hand but around it. I pulled the combined mass closer, ignoring Fielding’s howl of agony by gritting my teeth until I heard them grind. Then I pushed my left hand into the thin cleft between the shadows, wedging it just wide enough to shove my shoulder into. I worked my way deeper into the combined forms, using my dense human body to hold the liquid shadow back long enough to expose a tangled net of energy. I blew out my breath to gain a precious inch and reached into the new-made gap to sweep the blade of the hooked knife through the nearest binding filaments of invasive magic.

The strands of red and olive sparked and burned away as I severed them and Fielding sighed and yelped at my feet, twisting with every virtual inch of separation gained. I worked deeper, toward the last dense area near the center of the entwined shadow forms. A roaring filled my ears and I forced myself to suck in a painful lungful of air and expand my chest as I leaned into the core of Shelly’s curse.

Through the din in my head I heard Fielding whimpering and a cacophony of shouts, barks, and yelps underscored by a pounding that shook the cave and thundered on my eardrums. The oscillating pressure of the sound made me shudder with nausea. I didn’t raise my eyes from the task at hand, even when I felt something cold and liquid spatter onto my legs and right shoulder. I shoved as hard as I could, paying Fielding’s scream no heed as I reached through the moment’s gap between his two forms and drew the knife down and back, the curved blade sweeping through the taut bundle of gleaming magic like a scythe through grass. The entangled, writhing forms rushed apart and Fielding roared, bucking and shoving me away as I clutched frantically and snapped off the last clinging filaments of the curse as I fell.

I landed hard on my back and felt my abused rib pop. I didn’t have the breath to cry out and barely kept hold of consciousness as the normal and ghost realms fell apart, leaving me beached on the wet rocks of the cave as the otters and the dobhar-chú leapt at the invading flood of waterborne merfolk.

At their back, held up by a wave that crested but didn’t break, I glimpsed two humanoid forms with long, streaming hair: one pale green; the other vivid red. And then the two forces crashed together and the battle front was obscured by an explosion of salt water.

TWENTY-FIVE

B
attered, wet, cold, and laced by pain with every movement, I rolled to my uninjured side and squirmed sideways until I could touch the wall Fielding had been leaning against. Bracing my hands on the wall and floor, I pushed and pulled myself up to my knees. I paused to look around. Nearby lay a colossal mustelid even larger than Father Otter. Solis stood in front of it, glaring down while the otters and the rest of the dobhar-chú clan pushed their enemies back out of the cave by sheer weight of numbers. They’d worked the watery tide of merfolk and sea-witch illusions into a bottleneck in the cave complex and were moving them backward and out by short rushes.

Solis noticed me and, as he looked away, the huge otter got to its feet and tried to run past him to the back exit. Solis dove past me and tackled it. They rolled together on the wet floor, the otter snapping and growling as it writhed and changed shape. The otter form collapsed suddenly into a slender, dark-skinned man with long, curling black hair hanging to his back and his naked skin slick with blood and brine. Fielding eeled out of Solis’s grip and started for the back door again.

I threw the knife.

I’m not a great knife thrower and the curved form didn’t fly well, anyhow. It flipped into a flat arc, the base of the grip smacking into the back of Fielding’s right knee. He stumbled but he would have kept going if Solis hadn’t launched himself from the ground like a sprinter coming out of the blocks and snatched Fielding around the waist and neck, half shoving, half dragging the dobhar-chú down to his knees. Solis released his grip on Fielding’s waist and switched to his nearest wrist, twisting it up between the other’s shoulder blades.

I heard Solis warn him, “Change now and your arm will leave the socket. You will not enjoy it.”

Panting, Fielding hung his head. “All right. I give up. Just don’t . . . don’t tear off my arm.”

Solis stood up, pulling Fielding up with him. “I won’t. Unless you force me.” Then he marched Fielding back to me.

Fielding kept his head down and I doubted it was strictly over his nudity. I was beginning to think I’d now seen enough naked men to fill my quota for the rest of my life. I started to sigh and caught myself cringing as my rib twinged. I kept my gaze up as the two men stopped in front of me.

The noise of the battle moved farther away but it was still there in the background as I started to speak.

“So . . . I take it you’re not as innocent as you protested,” I started.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Solis glared at him and must have twisted Fielding’s arm a little, making the former sea captain wince.

“Hey!”

“What did you do?” Solis demanded. “What did you really do to bring down this sea witch’s wrath?”

“Nothing!” Fielding shouted back.

Solis’s mouth was a hard, straight line and I could see tension gathering in the muscles of his shoulders and arms. I shook my head at him and staggered over to pick up the knife from the slick stone floor.

I walked back, turning the knife in my hand as I came. “This is a long way from anywhere. And there’s a lot of water around, though I understand it only takes a few inches to drown.”

“Are you threatening me?” Fielding demanded, incredulous.

“I’m reminding you of the situation,” I said. “My friend’s not in a good mood where you’re concerned. See, he has a couple of daughters himself.”

“I don’t see how that’s important.”

I shook my head at him in disappointment. “Oh, Gary, is this the way you repay favors? You came to me to solve a problem. And I have. But now we have a new one and there’s still a question my friend needs answered and so do I. Not to mention, what should we tell the insurance company? Should we take you back to Seattle and let Solis lock you up as a rapist and a murderer?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone!”

Solis shook him. “You are alive and all the rest are dead. You say this came about because Castor Starrett attempted to sexually assault Shelly Knight and you didn’t stop him. Or did you do it?”

“No!” Fielding shouted, looking indignant.

Solis bumped him again. “Did you rape Shelly Knight?”

“No,” Fielding repeated but his tone was less adamant.

Solis continued to bully him, no longer twisting his arm but badgering Fielding with unremitting questions. “You worked together before. Why this time did she accuse you?”

“She was angry! She knew what I was!”

“She knew that before. Why now was she angry enough to curse you and call on her mother’s help when she’d hidden you all from her?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes, you do.”

“I made a mistake.”

“What mistake did you make? Do not repeat that ridiculous story about going down below with Castor Starrett. What did you really do? Did you rape her?”

“No!”

“Did you find her with Starrett? Is that what happened? Castor Starrett had your woman before you could? You got angry, you hurt him, and then you had to get rid of witnesses—”

“No!”
The single word came out in a long, agonized howl. “No! I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t hurt anyone. I just—” He cut himself off and curled on himself as if Solis had punched him in the gut. Then he sank to his knees on the slick rock floor of the cavern. “Les started freaking out. I still don’t know what she said to him exactly, but Shelly must have told him his wife was dead while Cas and I were out after that damned halibut. She could do that sometimes—she knew things. She didn’t like to say them, but Les probably badgered her into it. That’s the sort of guy he was.”

“Who broke the circle?” I asked.

“What?” Fielding barked, staring at me.

“Who broke the spell circle in Shelly’s cabin? That was the real problem, wasn’t it? Was it Leslie Carson or Starrett or was it you?”

Fielding stared at me. “What are you saying . . . ?”

“You lied to us about what happened on
Seawitch
’s last night. There was no spear mark and no blood on the deck or in Starrett’s cabin, although there was plenty in Shelly’s cabin. So Shelly Knight didn’t shoot Starrett with the speargun as you said. There’re a hell of a lot of marks on you, though. They’re scars that shine even through your fur. In fact, they show more, which means it’s your otter form that’s got them. But you said you’d never known you were a dobhar-chú until that night—and I believe that—so you’d never changed form before and you’ve never changed properly since, so all those scars happened that night. How’d you get them, Fielding?”

He gaped at me, his mouth working like a fish’s, but no sound came out. I just stared back as if I were only curious.

Solis poked him in the shoulder and peered at his face. “There is a scar here on his face. Like fingernails make, like a woman makes when she’s angry or afraid and she claws at your eyes,” he said, making a sharp gesture toward Fielding’s face with his own crooked and raking hand.

Fielding flinched.

“Come on, Fielding. We don’t have a lot of time. Maybe I can guess what happened and you can just tell me if I’m right.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I
think
you said that before. So what is it?”

“I was out with Cas after the halibut and . . . he found out. He found out about Shelly—about us—and he . . . he wanted to fuck the mermaid,” he added in a mumble.

Solis fell silent and the sound of conflict still raged, but distantly and diminishing. Fielding’s whimpering sobs of shame trickled into the noise like tears into a pool.

I leaned forward and returned the knife to Solis, pretty sure he wasn’t going to use it on Fielding at this point but thinking I might. “So,” I started, “you and Shelly were together.”

Fielding nodded, still looking at the ground.

“Reeve disapproved, didn’t he?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And that’s why he didn’t get to come along on this trip. You or Shelly made sure he was too sick to sail. Didn’t you?”

Fielding nodded. “I put laxative in his beer at Charlie’s the night before we went out. He was talking about seeing the water hound on the boat and he was half-drunk and already half-spooked, so it was pretty easy.”

“You’re a real sweetheart, aren’t you, Fielding? How much did you know about Shelly then?”

“I knew she was special. She told me I was . . . something special, too. She couldn’t quite convince me it was true, but I was starting to believe it. She said no one could know about us—and especially not about how we were different.”

“But Reeve knew, or suspected, didn’t he?”

“Suspected. But Shelly wasn’t like that! She was . . . she was sweet.”

“So she didn’t come to the marina looking for victims for her mother. She came looking for something else.”

“She wanted to see the human world. She said she didn’t know any living humans. And when she found me she thought it was funny that I wasn’t really human at all. I didn’t understand. But I liked it. I liked her. I liked . . . being with someone forever, not just for the night.”

“I can understand Reeve figuring it out—he was a salty old guy and pretty observant—but how did Starrett find out about Shelly?” I asked. Solis seemed to have decided this was my part of the interrogation—I was good cop to his bad cop, I supposed.

“He saw her at Port Townsend. I guess she was upset after what had happened with Les so she went swimming to relax.”

“What did she tell Leslie Carson about his wife?”

“She knew Odile was dead—she just knew. He said she was teasing him since he complained constantly about how Odile threatened suicide all the time to keep him in line. Odile was messed up and unhappy and everyone but Les understood that. He thought Odile was just screwing with his head, because she’d told him she would do it this time and he’d come with us, anyway. So I guess when Shelly told him she was really dead this time and how and when . . . he was freaked, and more freaked when the cops called with the same details. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yes. And his accusations upset Shelly because he didn’t take it seriously?

“Yeah. Well, knowing about it upset her, too. So she went swimming because that’s what she did when she was stressed out. It’s not very safe to swim in the Sound in the dark without dive lights—it’s easy to get lost and then you tire out and drown. But Shelly was half-fish and it was only in the dark that it was safe for her to swim near people. But Cas wanted his damned stupid halibut and he stayed up all night to get it. We didn’t have tank gear so he was using a mask and snorkel in the shallows where the halibut come up to spawn and he’d swum out pretty far from the dinghy. Shelly didn’t realize he was nearby—she thought we were going the other way. He saw her under the water. When I got the fish out of the fridge in the morning for him to clean, he told me he had seen her. He told me what he meant to do—he thought it was . . . funny, like it was a joke and I wouldn’t mind, ’cause we were buddies or something. He was that kind of jerk—he figured every woman was his to take. I was panicking—he was my boss’s boss and I’d made Reeve sick to get the cruise so the old man wasn’t there to back me up and he wasn’t going to take my side on anything when we got home, either. Hell, he was probably going to fire me once he figured it out. I didn’t know what to do. I already had the engines fired up and was ready to take the boat out. Cas didn’t seem in any hurry—it was like he was savoring the idea—and I didn’t know how to stop him, except to act like it didn’t bother me and try to get below ahead of him.

“It was my fault we were at sea when the call came in about Les’s wife and I wouldn’t go in to port because I was scared shitless about what was going to happen to me and what Cas would do to Shelly. I wanted to stay at sea so she could jump overboard and swim away, but . . . she didn’t. She wouldn’t. I got us out of Townsend and in the clear in the strait. I turned on the autopilot and I went down below, but she argued with me about leaving and we were still arguing when Cas came down. He laughed at us. And she . . . she told me I was an idiot. She told me to go away and take care of the boat and it wasn’t anything girls like her hadn’t been doing for centuries with guys like Cas. I didn’t understand what she meant—I still don’t. But I got angry and I shoved her and her foot slipped on the rug on the cabin sole. And then she was furious—it was like she’d flipped a switch and went from sweet girl to unholy bitch in a millisecond. I didn’t know what the rug was covering up until she started screaming at us. She threw it away and pointed at this crazy charm she’d drawn and now it was all messed up and she was shouting at us, telling us we were doomed, that we’d done it to ourselves and she . . . she was just crazy. She shoved Cas backward and he hit his head on the hatchway. She started pawing at the blood on his head and saying it wasn’t right, it wasn’t working, and I was trying to drag him away from her because . . . I thought she was nuts. I didn’t know she was trying to save us! I didn’t understand. She grabbed my arm and she cut me—”

“She cut you, not Starrett?” I asked for clarification.

“Yeah. It’s my blood in the cabin, but I figured no one has a DNA sample from either of us, so who’d know?”

“We didn’t need a DNA sample. The lab said it was only partially human blood; the rest was otter.”

“Crap!”

“Doesn’t matter. What happened next?”

“Shelly was trying to redraw her spell or whatever and I was just getting in the way. I was freaking out. I was trying to pull Cas out of the cabin and he wasn’t responding—he was barely conscious and he was bleeding and mumbling. . . . Shelly was angry at me and she was saying crazy things and crawling around on the floor. . . . And when I tried to grab her and make her help me with Cas, she screamed at me and started hitting me, hitting and hitting and calling me names. She clawed at my face and pushed me away and she cursed me and ran up on deck and threw something in the water. She was screaming the whole time. Then the rest of them came to carry her away. That’s when they started killing people.”

“You didn’t write any of this in the log.”

“I wasn’t sure I’d make it, but if I did, I didn’t want that kind of thing on the record. And if I didn’t . . . who was going to believe me if they ever found the log, anyway? I was going to steal the stupid thing when I brought the boat back but Father Otter convinced me to leave it—to bring you to us.”