Page 56 of Hooked By a Hero
“You believe I care what names you call me?” Dick laughed at him. He pulled Elias’s arm hard, disorienting him for a moment. “I’ll take a man who knows how to heal a wound and suck a cock, too,” he said. “We might need you in the days to come at that.”
It took Elias a moment to realize what Dick meant as he fought against the iron grip the man had on his arm. He wasnot as frail or hungry as he’d made out earlier. In fact, he still had a great deal of strength in him. He pulled and pushed Elias down the beach in a similar way that the others were abducting the women. Elias fought back as best he could, but when Dick lost patience with his efforts as they splashed into the surf, he wheeled around and struck Elias’s jaw so hard that Elias went limp with the impact.
The next few minutes were a swimmy nightmare. In the very back of Elias’s head, the physician in him reasoned that a well-placed blow to the jaw was known to have enough impact to knock a man unconscious, and Dick must have known that. Another part of him was vaguely aware of seeing the heavy chest hauled into one of the boats, the boat Dick was carrying him toward, and the ladies and most of the mutineers were being forced into the other. The ladies were putting up a fight, which filled Elias with a vague sense of pride.
He did not fully emerge from the haze of pain Dick had thrust him into until he was pushed over the edge of the boat with the chest and crashed onto the boards inside it. The impact of his fall did enough to improve his awareness so that he could scramble to right himself. He was still slow, and his head and body screamed with pain.
“Get gone!” Dick shouted to his friend as he climbed into the boat, swinging around until he sat on the bench beside the other man, taking the oar on that side. “Get out of here quickly! They’re coming.”
“What about the others?” the mutineer asked, rowing, but glancing toward the other boat as he did.
Elias swung his head around, though it made his stomach heave to do so, and sought out the second boat. The mutineers were still fighting to push or pull the ladies into it, and just as Elias had told him, Lady Adelaide and the others were kicking, screaming, and biting to stop them.
That was not what put a smile on Elias’s battered face, though. Though night had fallen, the moon was nearly full and the signal fire still blazed, which meant he was able to see Caspian in all his pale glory charging out of the jungle and down to the water’s edge. Nearly half a dozen of the settlers raced out behind him, all of them heading straight for the mutineers who were attempting to abduct the women.
Caspian, however, seemed to only see Elias’s boat. Even as Dick and his mate rowed hard, taking the boat out toward the breakers, then beyond them to the open sea, Caspian chased after them.
“Move! Move!” Dick shouted. “He won’t be able to do a damn thing once we’re out far enough.”
Elias burst into a smile and slumped against the boat’s stern. Dick could not have been more wrong if he’d tried. As mad as it would have sounded to some, Elias prayed for the boat to go faster and for Dick to row as far from the shore as he could. The deeper the water around them when Caspian reached them, the more danger Dick would be in.
“What is that madman doing?” Dick’s companion asked, sitting up as he rowed and watching as Caspian dove into the waves. “Does he think he can swim out here and fight us?”
“You’ve lost,” Elias said, laughing despite his pain. “If you give up now, he may spare your lives.”
Dick sneered at him and pulled harder on his oar. “I’ll be damned if anyone will take this treasure from me,” he said. “I planned how to steal it, I endured prison and months at sea in my efforts to take it, and nothing or no one is going to stop me from finding my way to Hindustan to live like a king with it.”
No sooner had Dick finished those words when there was a bump on the bottom of the boat. Elias burst into a smile, knowing it was Caspian and that he was likely playing with Dick before attacking.
“What was that?” the other man gasped, losing his grip on his oar for a moment.
“Nothing,” Dick snarled. “Keep rowing.”
The other man nervously did as he was ordered, but only for a moment. After a few seconds of suspicious calm, Caspian leapt up from the water and heaved himself over the side of the boat.
Both Dick and his friend shouted. Their shouts grew when, instead of attempting to climb inside the boat, Caspian pushed down on the side hard enough to tip the boat to such an angle that water rushed into the bottom. When it rocked back to the other side, the mutineer jumped out and scrambled to swim back toward the island, though he did not appear to be a strong swimmer. Caspian pushed hard on the boat’s side again, rocking it steeply back in the other direction.
“You won’t take it!” Dick shouted, lunging for the treasure chest.
His efforts were futile. Caspian put enough weight on the side of the boat, which was already flooded with water and weighted down by the chest, that the whole thing sank and capsized, spilling Dick and Elias into the ocean.
The feeling of victory Elias had enjoyed moments before turned into panic as he plunged beneath the dark water. Swimming during the day was one thing, but sinking deeper and deeper as the boat overturned above him so that he saw nothing but darkness was another. He flailed, attempting to swim, but he was so disoriented that he had no idea which way was up. The ocean’s currents combined with thrashing and churning around him had Elias’s already aching head swimming.
Where was Caspian? He had to be in the water somewhere. Was he fighting Dick? Had he seen him sink into the water?
Those thoughts gripped Elias’s brain for a moment as what little air he had left in his lungs began to run out. He needed toget to the surface. He had to breathe. Without air, he would die, he would be separated from Caspian forever.
He reached out, but his lungs burned and his head felt as though it were being pressed into oblivion. There was no way out, no way to save himself. Everything around him was black, and he was fading.
Just as the world seemed to be slipping away from him, Elias felt strong arms around him. Caspian’s face appeared in front of his for a moment before their lips pressed together. Elias opened readily to him, his last thought being that if he was going to die, he would be happy to die with Caspian’s mouth on his.
Except he did not die. Life raced back through him, as if someone had suddenly turned up the flame on a lantern. More than that, his body pulsed with energy. Every ache and twinge of pain he’d felt was instantly gone, replaced by tingles. The tingles grew, and after a brief, tight feeling that gave way to ripping, he knew the bottom half of his body had transformed.
Caspian ended their kiss and pulled back enough to grin at Elias. Elias’s mouth continued to hang open in shock. Not only did the water around him feel as natural as air, he could see everything around him with the same clarity that he’d been able to see above the water in the moonlight. Caspian seemed to glow like the stars, and when he nodded, indicating Elias should look down, Elias glanced down to Caspian’s luminescent tail…and his own.
Another sharp shock nearly knocked the wind from Elias’s lungs…or would have if his lungs were important at all. He had a mermaid’s tail. It was difficult to tell clearly in the dark, but he thought his was perhaps silver and red, like a trout. It felt as natural as the legs he should have had below his waist. Everything felt natural and right.
“How—” He opened his mouth to ask how he was breathing, but his words seemed trapped in his throat.
