Page 71 of Echoes of the Tide

“It’s all gone so wrong,” she breathed, staring up at him like maybe he had the answer. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Come here. We have to go now.”

His hand was right there. All she had to do was reach out and take it. But when she reached for it, Martin’s hand slid from her own. The limp fall caught her attention. She couldn’t... He’d be alone...

She couldn’t breathe. Deep gasps filled her lungs and still, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. She couldn’t get her lungs to expand the way they had her entire life, and she thought maybe she was dying too. Maybe she already had. This place was cursed, clearly, and if she couldn’t breathe, then she was going to end up here with Martin forever. She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to make it out of here.

That webbed hand closed on her wrist and dragged her up into him. She slipped on the blood coating his chest, the metallic scent of it filling her lungs. She should have known that he was some kind of avenging angel himself. A creature who brought death wherever he went, but even in her state of panic, she knew that was her fault.

He killed for her. Everyone who had died at the tips of his claws had been her fault, too.

“Hold on to me,” he growled, wrapping her legs around his hips. “This isn’t going to be fun.”

None of this had been fun. What did he mean? What could be worse?

But then she realized, yes. It could get worse. Because Maketes wasn’t going to fight anything as they raced out of the toy tower. Instead, he was going to use his body like a battering ram.

Anyone who stood in their way was thrown to the side as he thrust himself between them and her. Forward they went, rushing through the halls as he used his tail to throw them into the air. They came down hard every time, so hard that her teeth rattled and her jaw clenched harder while she gripped him. There were plenty of weapons. So many shouts that her ears rang. But even worse, she knew he was taking even more injuries for her.

She could feel the blood dripping down him. Not just the blood of those he had killed, but more wounds that split open along his back and ribs as he ran from a fight. Every muscle in him tensed as they raced away from danger, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he had ever run from a fight before. Or if this was the first time he’d ever done so, and if it was because of her.

They struck the water hard. The same water she’d come in through, even though she knew it wasn’t a wide enough gap for him to escape out of. If they weren’t careful, he was going to tearhimself apart even more than he already had. She watched over his shoulder as knives were thrown into the water after them. A few of the crazies even leapt into the water as well, but they weren’t fast enough swimmers to keep up with an undine.

“Ace,” she heard him say. “Breathe.”

She couldn’t breathe underwater. Her lungs had been screaming for air for such a long amount of time, she almost felt light-headed with all the gasping she’d been doing.

But then a bell rang in her mind. He wanted to breathe for her. He wanted her to plunge that strange tentacle into her neck so that he could take some of the weight.

Some of the pain.

When she didn’t move, he attached the tentacle for her. She almost didn’t feel the cold water that turned her fingers and toes numb. She couldn’t feel anything anymore. So she snuggled in tighter to him, letting Maketes gather her closer to the heat of his gills and keep her safe. Because he would. He always did.

Right now, all she could do was stare at the rapidly darkening water and the black blood that surrounded them as he ripped and tore himself apart just to get her to safety.

They burst free from the building as a groan of metal filled the ocean. She could see the plume of dust from where they’d come. The building started to crack, the foundation getting even worse as the gap they had come through caved in. Then the sound. The echoing cry of a building that had long been standing falling to ruin.

Ace felt nothing other than a small sense of victory at that. She hoped the entire bottom floor had just flooded. She hoped the sea would cleanse that place of all the evil that had spread within those walls.

Maketes’s hands came to her bottom, holding her even tighter to him. “Put your feet in my gills.”

That sounded like it would hurt him, and she was done hurting people. So Ace didn’t move.

He didn’t give her the choice. With a grunt, he used first one hand, then the other to guide her feet into the slots of his gills. She could feel how it made it slightly more difficult for him to breathe. And still, he did not stop. He swam them fast away from the city, but she could still see it.

The room they had been in before was splattered with blood. Martin had taken all the posters down so he could see the sea, and now his body rested in a room that came out of a nightmare. She feared the blood on the glass would dry and his spirit would never see the sea again.

She didn’t know how long they swam. All she knew was that she blinked and suddenly the city was gone from her vision. Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath in through the tube and felt a little better. Maybe she just needed to shake off the terror of what had happened. Maybe she had just needed a few minutes to come back to herself.

Then she realized there was another undine swimming next to them. This one was massive. So big she thought for a moment that Maketes had brought her to another whale shark. But no, this was an undine.

He looked to the side, meeting her gaze with black eyes that seemed to swirl with too many colors to count. Colors that made her want to stare into his gaze a little longer, drawing her into the net of his eyes that were equally pretty as they were terrifying.

He was purple, she realized. Purple with little yellow lights at the ends of his fins that made her want to reach out and touch them. Even though she knew that was dangerous. Even though she knew she shouldn’t touch an undine without knowing who or what they were.

“Your achromo is awake,” the undine said, and that deep, booming voice hurt.

Bubbles obscured her vision as she hissed out a pained breath and clapped both her hands over her ears. As if that would help. They were underwater, and that only seemed to amplify his voice even more than if they were out of the water.

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