I hardened the water between us to the consistency of gelatin. She tried to swim forwards, hit the wall and bounced, and I recognized the look of bafflement that sped across her fishy face. I was supposed to be easy prey, wasn’t I?
Not hardly.
Oddly enough, that seemed funny, although it wasn’t. I knew I should be afraid, but I was weirdly amused. In fact, I was choking back a manic attack of giggles, and losing my focus. The hardened water turned softer and she lunged for me again. I was able to hold her off, but the urge to laugh kept getting more and more insistent. I was breathing in and out way too fast to get the necessary benefit. Hyperventilating, I thought. My chest hurt. Nothing looked right.
David’s warm hand closed around my wrist, and I realized that I’d forgotten to re-oxygenate my mixture; black dots were swimming in front of my eyes, and I was starting to lose it. I relaxed and let David’s strength pull me towards the surface. My concentration had to be focused inwards, on adjusting my body to the changing pressure and closing up the wound on my leg. The last thing I wanted to do was attract sharks right now.
I saw the merman and his mate chasing us, rising out of the depths like pale fish, flickering in the twilight and struggling to adjust to the decompression as we neared the surface. They were deep-water creatures, and the female dropped off first, heading back to the safe, crushing darkness.
The merman’s bony claws brushed my foot, but failed to grab hold, and I saw him give a pained hiss of frustration before flipping his muscular tail and diving, heading straight for the bottom.
We broke the surface with so much speed we literally rose into the air about four feet, and then we splashed back down. David’s arms went around me, warm and real, and I dragged in breath after breath of moist, sweet air.
“I told you to get to the surface!” he said. “Do you have to fight with everything you see?”
I didn’t bother to argue that I was, in fact, trying to flee at the time. “I’m OK,” I said, which was the answer he was looking for even if he wasn’t asking. “I’m OK, David.”
He let out a breath, and I felt his arms tighten around me.’ ‘This time you are,” he said. “No more games, Jo. Back to shore.”
I didn’t have to swim, only float; David towed me, making for shore with steady, tireless strokes. I caught sight of the bubble I’d formed around our rescued girl. She was almost to shore now, swept in on the waves. I popped the bubble as the final wave crested, and she toppled into the surf and ended up on the sand, caught up in Calvin Harper’s arms.
A happy ending, after all.
“What are they?” I asked David. “Those . . . creatures?”
He said a word I couldn’t understand, much less pronounce. It sounded like dolphin clicks. “They’re powerful,” he said. “Even for the D j inn, they’re dangerous. To humans, even to Wardens—”
“Deadly. Got that part.” I coughed out a stray mouthful of salty ocean and pushed streaming hair off my face. The surf was pounding now as we neared the shore. I could feel the ocean bottom rising to meet us, and the warmer waters felt welcoming. Almost safe. “What set them off?”
“Nothing. They hunt for prey. Sometimes it’s humans,” he said. “But once they realized I was in the water, and you were a Warden, they wanted us.”
“To eat?”
“You, maybe. Me, to keep,” he said. “They have Djinn trapped below, not many, but over the millennia there have been a few, here and there. We can’t save them.”
I imagined a zoo, far in the dark, crushing emptiness of the deep ocean - Djinn, held captive, unable to break free. I imagined that happening to David, and felt ill. “What do they want them for?”
David shook his head. “We don’t know.”
That was . . . unsettling.
David slowed our progress as our feet touched the sandy bottom. A wave crested and lifted, then lowered us gently down.
I turned into his embrace.
His lips tasted of salt, hot metal, urgency. His skin was warmer than it should have been, as warm as bronze left in the sun, and it felt so good against my chilled flesh. I shivered against him and held on as tides swept us towards land.
“Well,” I whispered, as our lips parted for a breath, “you wanted me in the water. I’m here.”
“So you are.” His hands travelled over me, pouring heat into me with every brush of his fingers on my skin.
“We should check on the girl,” I said - not really feeling the urgency th
ough, because his touch was waking all kinds of other thoughts instead.
I saw it mirrored in his smile. “She’s being well cared for,” he said. And he was right, absolutely right. A small crowd of people had formed around Cal and his girl, and I saw the distant flashing of emergency lights heading in from the street.
I could even see that Muscles was out of any danger; his friends were digging him out of his hole. After that, and the arrival of police and paramedics, they’d be withdrawing from the field of battle as fast as their stumpy legs could carry them.