Energy. Crackling static. It pulses like a ring around the reef house. Stronger and stronger.
“Get down!”
I say it too late.
The reef house erupts. Sends us flying backward. My ears ring. A warm trickle snakes from my forehead to my chin. The observation deck is now a hole. The animals in the tanks gasp for breath on the floor. Rachel and her troupe reappear as smoke around us.
“Don’t look so happy to see me,” she says.
I get up from the ground. “Is everyone okay?”
Layla wipes my face with shaking hands. “You’re bleeding.”
“You too.” There’s a cut on her cheek. The skin mends instantly.
“It’s a good thing I’m already dead.” Frederik pulls a long piece of glass from his collarbone.
Marty groans, “Do you know how hard it is to get blood off corduroy?”
“It’s black.” Layla rolls her eyes. She winces when she arcs to crack her back. “You can’t even see it.”
Thalia picks up Sarabell and sits her between two rows of bushes. Everyone raises their weapons toward the crumbled reef house. At first we only see shadows breaking through the settling dust.
Jesse emerges from what’s left of the building, trailed by more than a dozen of his faithful landlocked. His clothes are shredded. Under the rain, a thin layer of crushed sheetrock and brick clumps on his skin. He peels back his raw, red mouth around buck-sharp teeth. Rachel shoots, but Jesse holds his hand up and the arrow turns into sand.
I step forward. Jesse picked the wrong day. He smiles with his fat, raw lips.
“All this time on land,” I tell him. “And you never thought to get braces?”
We charge each other at the same time. Arrows whiz by. The wet slick of swords piercing flesh fills my ears.
I can’t see anyone but Jesse. I punch him across the face, but his head snaps right back. His nails bite into me as we tumble across the debris. His scaly knuckles tear at the thin skin of my temple. I jab a fist once, twice in his gut and a knee to his groin. Jesse chokes, and in the moment it takes for him to cradle himself, I take my dagger, hot in my hands, and drive it straight through his chest.
I take pleasure in watching his black eyes roll into his skull. Lips twitch. Body convulses. I hate myself for it. I wonder if he’ll break apart the way the merrows do. I wonder if he’ll turn to coral the way Kai’s father did. I’m hoping for the coral. That way I can crush it with my bare hands.
Instead, Jesse’s eyes come back into focus. He shows me his palms; the red dots spreading like a stain around his wrist.
Where he touches the blade in his chest, his hands give off smoke. He screams against the burn, elated as he pushes Triton’s dagger away and out of his chest. He throws it at my feet. The gash in his chest singes but heals just as quickly.
“She’s here,” he says.
I pick up my dagger and charge at him again. If the pointy end won’t make a difference, then there’s always the other end. I crack his skull. He stumbles backward, laughing.
“You can’t hurt me! Can’t you see? Her most loyal subjects have been rewarded. She is here, land prince. And she is waiting for you.” A growl rumbles from deep inside him, like a giant after waking from a hundred-year nap.
My friends have formed a semi-circle behind me, swords, fangs, and—where did Marty find a baseball bat? I point at the dead bodies around him.
“You brought your friends to die,” I say. A voice inside my head whispers, He wanted them to die.
“They understood their purpose,” he says. Jesse’s face is distorted. “As you will understand yours.”
Then there’s another crack of lightning, this time so close that I can feel the jolt in my bones. It cuts through the air and goes straight for Jesse, grabbing him like arms ten feet above the ground. The ribbons of electricity don’t come from above. They come from the parting crowd, where Kurt stands in a half shift, wielding the Trident of the Skies.
With one final gust, the three prongs crackle, taking hold of Jesse once more. The lightning rockets him miles into the air, until he’s nothing more than a shadow in the night sky.
What is this?” Thalia asks her brother.
There’s a definite and distinct look of awe in every set of eyes that turns to Kurt. I know there is nothing like