Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,97
attention. When it turned to follow him, Lana clamped her teeth on the gill and surged forward. This deep, the water was so cold and thick it was like doing laps in the Y pool filled with half-frozen jello.
One diaphanous tail fin hovered just out of her reach, and summoning the memory of every muscle she’d ever seen on Sting’s mostly exposed body, she lunged at the beast—at its unsuspecting backside, anyway.
The tether she clamped around the beast’s fin had seemed huge when Sting gave it to her. Now, compared to the beast itself, the line looked flimsy as dental floss unspooling next to a megalodon.
But the beast noticed. It bent itself almost double to snake back at her, and she had an even more horrified view of rows and rows and rows of spiraling teeth—
But Sting was there again. With a vicious pulse through the water, he thrust the beast aside. It broke off the attack, hesitated when the tether tugged at its tail…and then sped upward.
Sting grabbed her with one hand and the beast with the other, and together they zoomed toward the sun.
She could only tuck herself close to his chest as the water tore at them. He’d told her the boundary beast, like blue whales and squid on Earth, hunted all through the water column. It would seek to lose them by changing its depth, and they needed a fast ride since the beast had eaten their spaceship.
Of all the things she might’ve wanted out of life, taming a monster alien seahorse had not made the cut.
Just as well, since the boundary beast wasn’t actually tamed. It kept trying to spin and dive again, snaking its tentacles at them, but Sting harried it onward with his powerful pulses. When she glanced back, the tether arrowed down into the darkness. Even light and strong as the tensile cable was, that length should’ve been a terrible drag, but the beast never slowed.
With a twinge of sympathy, she wriggled one hand between Sting’s body and the beast to brush her fingertips against its skin. Smooth hide stretched over bony plates, surprisingly warm and not so unlike Sting himself. This world was so strange and beautiful, and she had the chance to save it.
Even if the boundary beast didn’t appreciate the effort.
Resolute, she turned her face to the first gleam of light from above.
It was a shock to burst into the sunlight.
As the beast breached, roaring its fury, Sting dove aside, holding her tight. They cut the water at a shallow angle and separated. He pulsed the beast again, holding its focus, while Lana pulled her utility knife and sliced the line free. She quickly inflated the emergency buoy Sting had produced from one of his battle skin pouches. For all those times a merman needed floaties…
The buoy expanded with a noise like a bullfrog, and she bit back a hysterical giggle, lost anyway as the boundary beast roared again and slammed the water with its fins before it dove. It disappeared with a final flick of a tentacle tip above the waves like a vigorous middle finger.
If it came back, it could swallow them all in one gulp, and she wouldn’t even blame it.
She might actually welcome it because the other choice…
With a gulp that was mostly seawater, she stared up at the sky.
Because it wasn’t daytime—it was war.
Horizon to horizon arced with plasma fire against the night. The Cretarni armada was making its final assault. She and Sting had taken too long.
The immensity—of the sky, the task, the dangers—made her head spin, and if she hadn’t been floating, she would’ve fallen.
Strong arms encircled her, blocking the slap of waves, like the caldera of a sunken, slumbering volcano protecting a quiet cove. She closed her eyes, calming like the waters, even though she knew the moment couldn’t last.
Not only was there no place left to run, she didn’t want to run again.
With another breath, she scanned the situation. At sea level as they were, it was hard to get a view of the Tritonan forces, but she knew somewhere out there, Coriolis and Maelstrom would be fighting with the rest of the Tritonyri. And Marisol and Ridley would be with their mates, because no way would they stay behind. The Tritonans had submarines, and at least one command deck—partly submerged and partly above the water—was returning fire from its own cannons. But the counterattacking bursts were the bluish hue of low energy expenditure. Running out of power?