Page 36 of Wicked Tides
Her brows twitched at that. What the hell was her hesitation? I truly wanted to know. And evidently, I had time to figure it out.
“You’re shaking, Dahlia,” I whispered. “Oh, I must have planted something dark inside you that day. Now that you’ve got me, youdon’t know what to do with me. Have I been a part of you too long? Now you don’t know how to live without me. What will you hate then? What will drive you, I wonder.”
“Kill him,” the other one said in words I could understand. Dahlia whipped her head around to look at her. “Swallow your pride and kill him fast or start whatever it is you’re going to do. I don’t like this place.”
Dahlia hesitated for another long breath, tension making the tendons in her neck strain.
Do it,I thought.End this fucking game.
A spray of liquid splashed across my face and Dahlia’s. Not ocean spray. Something dark. Our eyes were locked for a split second before she turned her attention away from me and to her companion. It wasn’t until her fingers loosened in my hair that I was able to look and notice her naked form slumping backward. Innards uncoiled from her stomach and slid to her feet before she hit the stone with a splash, completely limp. Dead.
Dahlia leaped away from me just as a spear shot past her. It landed in the rock not far from my head, thrown with so much force that it remained stuck.
My eyes caught the waves as they lunged upward against the rocky ledges. Appearing from them was a line of figures shrouded in the shadows of night. More sirens, I suspected… until they began to lurch forward. Their limbs were long and slim and their bodies slightly hunched with a significant finned ridge following the length of their spine. The sparse amount of hair they had hung like strands of slimy seaweed over broad yet bony shoulders.
Each figure held a spear or ruggedly shaped blade of some kind and walked with a gait that was eerily in unison with each other. Their faces were long and skinny with eyes that looked too big and empty.
Dahlia quickly absorbed the sight of her very dead companion nearby and then clutched her knife with renewed force, standing with her back to me as the four figures slowly encircled us both.
That crazed fisherman from the Treson docks came to mind and internally, I was laughing at the irony. Although, “weird fish” was an understatement. These creatures were monstrous, towering a hand or two taller than a big man like myself even when they were hunched the way they were.
They began emitting an odd clicking noise to each other that was barely audible over the crashing of the waves hitting the rocks. Once the moonlight hit the nearest one just right, I could see the rows of sharp teeth in its oversized mouth. Gills flared out on the sides of its thick neck making faint wheezing sounds like an old man struggling for air. The nearest one scanned Dahlia and then me with its unnatural eyes before an unnerving sound came from his throat. Something akin to laughter, but absent the vocal tones any human had.
Then it spoke.
The voice was low. Clipped. I couldn’t understand a word, but judging by the way Dahlia’s weight shifted as if she was further preparing to defend herself, I was betting she did.
And then everything went to the next circle of hell. Dahlia spun around to move away when two of those horrid creatures grabbed her by the arms, lifting her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. She began fighting and thrashing like a wild animal. She had skill in her movements, not that her skill helped at all. Two creatures hauled her to the other side of the island near a cluster of raised rocks, one holding her wrists and the other her ankles like she was a hog carcass fresh from a hunt. Her screams were feral and wild.
The nearest creature took a step toward me, letting me get a good look at its sickening form. It peered down at me with unblinking eyes and cocked its head to one side, planting the butt of its spear on the stone near a large, webbed foot. Its too-long arm twitched, its skinny fingers uncurling to show the claws at the tips.
“Human,” it said. “Tasty.” Two of the creatures behind it let out the same sort of clicking laughter. All the while, Dahlia’s struggles and screams coated the air, muffled only by a shallow wall of stone. “Will eat you after the mudfin.” It took a deep breath through those fish-like slits. “Bleeding already.”
And that was when Dahlia’s screams changed. They became strained. Battered. And slowly, they started to lessen and fade into the night.
Seemed getting myself killed quickly was no longer anoption…
~ 15 ~
Vidar
They say kindness is laughter and madness is a scream.
But evil… evil is but a whisper.
~Bishop Doyle II
I did not think I would die on a rock in the middle of the ocean, but there I was… about to die on a rock in the middle of the ocean. It was a pity Dahlia hadn’t killed me before the nightmare creatures appeared. I wasn’t sure what they were, but they seemed to strike fear in the sirens and that didn’t bode well for humans.
I glimpsed the one lying nearby, her innards strewn about like coils of wet rope. Her white face had lost all of its luster and glow. She’d been killed so quickly. Without bronze or a beheading, it baffled me.
Behind the cluster of rocks, there was no telling what they’d done to Dahlia. By her silence, I assumed they killed her which meant I was next once the monsters had eaten their fill.
So… a species that ate sirens. The irony had me smiling inside. It appeared they were not at the top of the food chain. I tested my bonds again, but they only seemed to get tighter. My wrists must have been swelling. Great. I rested my head back on my post to stare up at the thin clouds moving across the dark sky. Waiting to be eaten seemed to be a repeating pattern in my life. Looking down at my legs, I was glad I didn’t wake to see them severed. I’d been lucky once again. And if I wasn’t mistaken, Dahlia had some odd reservations. I would have loved to get to the bottom of them. But alas, I was about to die.
The faint slosh of water behind me made me pause those thoughts. While sloshing water wasn’t unusual when the ocean around us was undulating nonstop, this particular sound caught my attention. I heard something slide on the rocks and as one of those fowl creatures made a half-assed patrol of the island, I watched him, wondering if he’d noticed the disturbance as well. When he turned and started venturing back toward the cluster of rocks where his companions were, the movement continued, creeping up behind me. Then the hushed sound of metal on stone drew my eyes. I glimpsed at the ground beside me to see a bronze blade near my hip. It looked old as if it had been fished from the bottom of the sea.
“How well do you fight, hunter?” came a whisper, so soft I barely thought it was real.
