Part 14 (2/2)

No. She had been delirious. Mermen might be one kind of impossible, but her developing the ability to breathe water like a fish was a whole other kind of crazy. Jenny was human-the most human person in her occasionally not-so-human family.

Perrin plunged into the water beside her-a clean pale spike of man cutting the sea like a knife. Jenny forgot about breathing, forgot to swim, staring at the white s.h.i.+mmer of his skin, and the lines of his muscles as he sank through the shadows, impossibly graceful.

He met her gaze through his mask of swirling hair, eyes glowing as though lit with blue fire, fire and hunger, and power. Skin rippled from his torso down his legs, creating its own dappled light as flecks of scales rose from his flesh, swallowing his legs and pouring through his feet. His toes lengthened, disappeared; and what unfurled was a dorsal fin that glimmered like moonlit silver. All of him glittered. Stars were buried in his skin.

You're beautiful, she wanted to tell him, suffering a peculiar madness, the trauma of a new obsession. My G.o.d, you're beautiful.

Perrin swam toward her. Jenny felt absurdly mortal beside him, and a scene from a movie flashed through her mind: Lois Lane meeting Superman for the first time, awkward and haunted with nerves. Her heart swelled, blood burning-every inch of her tingling with such sensitivity, she wondered how she had survived so many years without feeling so alive.

He didn't smile when he looked at her. She glimpsed the scars on his chest and shoulders, even more p.r.o.nounced in the watery light; and when his hair drifted upward, she saw other old wounds against the back of his neck, as though someone had tried to skin him with a chain saw.

Jenny felt so strange looking at those particular scars. Terrible pressure gathered at the base of her skull, and when the parasite twitched, the root of its body brushed bone. Visions of paralysis and brain damage filled her head: feeding tubes, wheelchairs, drool.

She fought down a silent scream. No hospitals, no way to pull the parasite out. Perrin might know what to do, a.s.suming he had seen such creatures before-but this was certainly not the time to ask.

He dragged her arms around his neck, turning until she lay against his back. Jenny pressed her cheek to his ear, a.n.a.lyzing and savoring every sensation, every tickle of his hair on her face. She could not believe this was real. Not even when his tail moved against her legs, a long, pulsing stroke of muscle that knifed them through the water like a bullet.

It didn't feel as though they went far before Perrin pulled them to the surface, but when he spun them around to look at The Calypso Star, it was quite some distance away. The gulls had dispersed, and there were men on deck, small as ants. Jenny stared, numb, feeling as though she was watching her home burn down.

Perrin squeezed her hand. ”Listen.”

All Jenny could hear was her heart, and the whisper of the waves against their bodies. She removed the mouthpiece and held her breath, listening.

And heard a helicopter.

Perrin s.h.i.+elded his eyes. ”In the east. Coming fast.”

Jenny didn't want to look, but forced herself to. The helicopter flew low to the horizon, a ma.s.sive Sea Knight, capable of landing in the ocean. She refused to consider that one of her own family had sent it to rescue her. Possible, but nothing she wanted to risk her life on. Better to a.s.sume it was from the Consortium, with its links to almost every major criminal organization in the world-and, by extension, all the minor organizations, as well.

Ismail was supposed to check in. When he didn't, the Consortium sent hounds to go sniffing.

”They'll torture Les,” she couldn't help but say. ”Not the men on the boat, but those who are coming.”

”Like they would have tortured you?”

”Yes.”

Perrin stared at the boat, then the helicopter, and covered her hand with his. His touch was gentle, but when he finally looked at her over his shoulder, his eyes were dead, so empty they seemed made of gla.s.s. ”They won't hurt you, Jenny. Not again.”

”What do you mean, not again?”

”The dark house on the beach.”

She stared, stricken. ”But that was . . . that was a dream.”

”Yes,” he said, holding her gaze. ”It was.”

Jenny felt numb, and very small. Thrown back, thrown down, run over by feelings she couldn't even name. Perrin squeezed her hand and pushed the mouthpiece into her hand.

”Breathe,” he whispered.

Chapter Eight.

Breathe, Perrin told himself.

Easier said than done.

The woman-Jenny-was warm against his back, and so very alive. Her arms were clasped around his neck, held in place by his hand. Strange, familiar weight. She had held him like this, long ago, in their dreams. On the beach, watching a dream sunset. Laughing in his ear as she leaned against his back.

Reality. Fantasy. He did not know where one began and the other ended. He wasn't even certain it mattered anymore. Just this moment. Now. Teetering on the cusp, at the end of the world.

Perrin swam fast, keeping them close to the surface-straining to listen for dolphins. Dolphins could not be trusted. Talkers, all of them.

And they would remember what had happened with Rik. Dolphins had long memories, pa.s.sed on in blood, song. If one of them saw him, word would spread to his kind. He wasn't ready for that.

But I wouldn't kill one of them, he thought.

And he would never have murdered his cousin for her kra'a.

Poor Pelena. Sweet as starlight, best of the candidates-and utterly unprepared to be a Guardian. She had always hated being alone. Solitude frightened her. Made her feel empty, lost-as she'd told Perrin, while visiting him in the darkness of the deep. Where he spent all his time alone. Except for his very secret dreams.

You have no heart, she would tease him. No heart, if you're satisfied with only the company of a monster.

And then she would tease him even more for refusing the females who were sent to him, for companions.h.i.+p and breeding.

My only comfort, he could still hear her say, is the certain knowledge that I will never bear the burden of the kra'a. Because, dear cousin, by the time you die, I will be little more than a wrinkled wisp in the waves, and there will be a whole army of youngsters bursting their tails at the chance to bond with your odd little friend.

And he'd said, I would hardly call my kra'a odd.

That must be you, then. Punctuated with a silver laugh, and a sharp tap on his head with her fist.

Sweet, sweet Pelena. For her to have died, alone, onsh.o.r.e. . .

I should have killed A'lesander, thought Perrin.

He almost had. Some lines he still couldn't cross. And it was hard to forget A'lesander, the child: who had been his friend.

Those pirates, and whoever had been in the helicopter, would have found him already. If Jenny was right, then he faced torture, experimentation, eventual death.

I should have killed him, he thought again.

Jenny's arms tightened, her legs b.u.mping against his tail. Perrin squeezed her clenched hands, holding them closer to his chest. Warmth spread through him, and a terrible pain in his heart. Pain, and determination.

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