Echoes of the Tide (Deep Waters #3)

Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

S he dropped the moment Maketes grabbed onto the man. Considering the last time he’d attacked people for touching her, she knew not to look. She didn’t even glance up at the noises that were being made or the way the man was screaming. She didn’t want to know what was happening.

Instead, she crawled toward the man who had been telling her every secret he’d kept.

His name was Martin. He grew up in Beta just like her. And then he’d become a rather well-known coder, someone who was particularly skilled enough to catch the attention of people with power. While he hadn’t known Doctor Faust himself, he had been the person sent to collect the key nearly a hundred years after the doctor had died.

Gamma had been flooded before that. The key wasn’t a threat. But now? Now the key was a threat, and he was the only one who knew how to protect it.

Ace slipped in the blood pooling on the floor. Her hands were coated in it now, all the way up to her wrists. But she couldn’t stop. Not when she knew there was a chance for her to get to him.

Poor Martin. She slid behind him the moment she could, leaning him against her chest more comfortably than where he was leaning against the wall. She’d known the moment that insane man had barged through the door that they were in trouble. Martin had stood in front of her, taking the slice that likely would have killed her.

Unfortunately, that act of heroism was now going to kill him.

His bloody hand found hers, clutching her in a grip that was stronger than she’d expected for a man currently dying. “The key,” he muttered, his voice almost impossible to understand. “You have to take it.”

“Martin, where is a med kit?”

“The key?—”

“I don’t care about the key right now. There has to be a med kit in here. You aren’t going to last much longer and I need you to tell me where it is.”

But she could already see the answer in his eyes. There was no med kit. He wasn’t going to point her in any direction because this tower had already used all of them. Some part of her recognized that was the likelihood, considering the people who lived here.

He shakily held up the key that he’d worn for years around his neck. “Take it.”

“Fucking hell, old man,” she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “Just tell me how to save you.”

He didn’t. Martin grabbed her hand and slid the keycard into it. He wrapped her fingers around it hard, firmly holding the key with her. “Take care of it,” he garbled, even as his eyes turned glassy.

A spray of blood soaked her feet and his pant legs. But she still tried not to look as she kept her gaze on the man who had given her everything she was looking for and also proved that the world was much larger than she’d thought.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Martin squeezed her hand one more time and then he was just... gone. Like the lights had gone out inside of him. One moment he was looking at her, and the next, he wasn’t there anymore. It was just a husk of a person lying across her legs, staring up at her with empty eyes.

“Fuck.” The stuttered word was more of an exhale than it was speaking.

She stared down at him and everything felt so wrong. He was a good man. He had been a good man. No one deserved to die like this, choking in a pool of his own blood because some madman had followed her. It was her fault. Somehow, yet another person had gotten caught up in her shitty luck.

He’d listened when she’d told him about her sister. He’d known there was a reason behind her being here, and it was far more than someone who just wanted control.

This was a man who had tried. He’d been put in Gamma for reasons that were so far beyond him, and he didn’t deserve to be here. This was a place for criminals like her. This was a place for people to go who deserved to be punished.

Not... not this.

A webbed hand broke through her stare. She recognized the yellow scales hidden beneath the blood, but everything was so cold. It felt like she’d peeled her skin off and now everything was a live electrical wire against her nerves.

This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. She was meant to get into a tower that was largely abandoned. She’d go into a man’s apartment, get the key, and leave. She’d head back to Jacob and all the people that she hated with every fiber of her being. The key would change hands. Her sister would be safe. It was such an easy plan, and now she was shaking, holding onto the hand of a dead man.

“Kefi,” Maketes said, his voice breaking through the thoughts that plagued her. “We have to go.”

“He didn’t deserve to die like this,” she mumbled through freezing lips. “He was trying to help.”

“No one deserves to die, but we all do. He died honorably, protecting someone else. Come with me, Ace.”

She didn’t know if she could let go of Martin’s hand. What happened to his soul? Had it already fled from his body, or should she stay a little while longer? Just to make sure he didn’t linger in this awful place where they ate anyone who annoyed them.

“Maura,” the sharp tones that wrapped around a name she hadn’t heard in ages made her head jerk up.

He looked at her with those black eyes, completely coated in blood. Red and black. Human and undine. It all coated him from head to toe, like some kind of avenging god who had come for her very soul. Along with the soul of the limp man who rested against her.

“It’s all gone so wrong,” she breathed, staring up at him like maybe he had the answer. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Come here. We have to go now.”

His hand was right there. All she had to do was reach out and take it. But when she reached for it, Martin’s hand slid from her own. The limp fall caught her attention. She couldn’t... He’d be alone...

She couldn’t breathe. Deep gasps filled her lungs and still, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. She couldn’t get her lungs to expand the way they had her entire life, and she thought maybe she was dying too. Maybe she already had. This place was cursed, clearly, and if she couldn’t breathe, then she was going to end up here with Martin forever. She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to make it out of here.

That webbed hand closed on her wrist and dragged her up into him. She slipped on the blood coating his chest, the metallic scent of it filling her lungs. She should have known that he was some kind of avenging angel himself. A creature who brought death wherever he went, but even in her state of panic, she knew that was her fault.

He killed for her. Everyone who had died at the tips of his claws had been her fault, too.

“Hold on to me,” he growled, wrapping her legs around his hips. “This isn’t going to be fun.”

None of this had been fun. What did he mean? What could be worse?

But then she realized, yes. It could get worse. Because Maketes wasn’t going to fight anything as they raced out of the toy tower. Instead, he was going to use his body like a battering ram.

Anyone who stood in their way was thrown to the side as he thrust himself between them and her. Forward they went, rushing through the halls as he used his tail to throw them into the air. They came down hard every time, so hard that her teeth rattled and her jaw clenched harder while she gripped him. There were plenty of weapons. So many shouts that her ears rang. But even worse, she knew he was taking even more injuries for her.

She could feel the blood dripping down him. Not just the blood of those he had killed, but more wounds that split open along his back and ribs as he ran from a fight. Every muscle in him tensed as they raced away from danger, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he had ever run from a fight before. Or if this was the first time he’d ever done so, and if it was because of her.

They struck the water hard. The same water she’d come in through, even though she knew it wasn’t a wide enough gap for him to escape out of. If they weren’t careful, he was going to tear himself apart even more than he already had. She watched over his shoulder as knives were thrown into the water after them. A few of the crazies even leapt into the water as well, but they weren’t fast enough swimmers to keep up with an undine.

“Ace,” she heard him say. “Breathe.”

She couldn’t breathe underwater. Her lungs had been screaming for air for such a long amount of time, she almost felt light-headed with all the gasping she’d been doing.

But then a bell rang in her mind. He wanted to breathe for her. He wanted her to plunge that strange tentacle into her neck so that he could take some of the weight.

Some of the pain.

When she didn’t move, he attached the tentacle for her. She almost didn’t feel the cold water that turned her fingers and toes numb. She couldn’t feel anything anymore. So she snuggled in tighter to him, letting Maketes gather her closer to the heat of his gills and keep her safe. Because he would. He always did.

Right now, all she could do was stare at the rapidly darkening water and the black blood that surrounded them as he ripped and tore himself apart just to get her to safety.

They burst free from the building as a groan of metal filled the ocean. She could see the plume of dust from where they’d come. The building started to crack, the foundation getting even worse as the gap they had come through caved in. Then the sound. The echoing cry of a building that had long been standing falling to ruin.

Ace felt nothing other than a small sense of victory at that. She hoped the entire bottom floor had just flooded. She hoped the sea would cleanse that place of all the evil that had spread within those walls.

Maketes’s hands came to her bottom, holding her even tighter to him. “Put your feet in my gills.”

That sounded like it would hurt him, and she was done hurting people. So Ace didn’t move.

He didn’t give her the choice. With a grunt, he used first one hand, then the other to guide her feet into the slots of his gills. She could feel how it made it slightly more difficult for him to breathe. And still, he did not stop. He swam them fast away from the city, but she could still see it.

The room they had been in before was splattered with blood. Martin had taken all the posters down so he could see the sea, and now his body rested in a room that came out of a nightmare. She feared the blood on the glass would dry and his spirit would never see the sea again.

She didn’t know how long they swam. All she knew was that she blinked and suddenly the city was gone from her vision. Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath in through the tube and felt a little better. Maybe she just needed to shake off the terror of what had happened. Maybe she had just needed a few minutes to come back to herself.

Then she realized there was another undine swimming next to them. This one was massive. So big she thought for a moment that Maketes had brought her to another whale shark. But no, this was an undine.

He looked to the side, meeting her gaze with black eyes that seemed to swirl with too many colors to count. Colors that made her want to stare into his gaze a little longer, drawing her into the net of his eyes that were equally pretty as they were terrifying.

He was purple, she realized. Purple with little yellow lights at the ends of his fins that made her want to reach out and touch them. Even though she knew that was dangerous. Even though she knew she shouldn’t touch an undine without knowing who or what they were.

“Your achromo is awake,” the undine said, and that deep, booming voice hurt.

Bubbles obscured her vision as she hissed out a pained breath and clapped both her hands over her ears. As if that would help. They were underwater, and that only seemed to amplify his voice even more than if they were out of the water.

Maketes cupped the back of her head, drawing her face in toward his neck. “Lower your voice, Fortis.”

“The achromo is in our world.”

“And you are too loud. Lower your voice.”

Ace pressed her lips against Maketes neck, mouthing the word “Thank you,” so that only he would know she had said anything.

His fingers carded through her tangled hair before he drew his hand away. “The blood has washed free, Fortis. If you and your people wish to hunt in that tower, it is a feeding ground.”

“I have already told them to destroy it. You did a good portion of that, ripping through the foundation. You have the strength of a much larger male.”

Maketes’s gills brushed against her thighs, as though they were standing up in pride for a moment before he flattened them again. “I’m taking her away. We need to figure out what to do with this key before we return to the ocean.”

“Figure it out soon. I do not think you have as much time as you believe.” Fortis turned, and she got to see the entirety of him as they swam past.

That was a massive creature. A male undine that was so beyond her reckoning. She had known they were big, but she hadn’t realized they were... monstrous.

Nerves churned in her belly as she watched him just floating there, watching them as they moved away from him. As though he saw straight into her soul and saw something far more than she did.

The farther they got, the more she realized she’d seen him before. This was the undine who had broken through the glass, an impossible feat he should not have been able to do.

Swallowing hard, she held onto Maketes a little tighter and tried to keep easing her mind. Anxiety had no place here in the deep, where there was no up and down. Maketes could let her go and then what? She would be floating in nothing, not knowing that she was only sinking farther and farther away from the sun.

So she held onto him harder. Clinging to the cool softness of his flesh, as she prayed that someday she would see the sun again.