Page 12 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)
Twelve
Fortis
F ortis darted away from her ship. He knew there wasn’t a weapon she could send after him, and if there was, it wasn’t working. But he still wanted space to look at what he had stolen. This box of needles held some of the answers he had been searching for. He was certain of that.
The sea guided him. He barely even focused on swimming as a current caught him and thrust him away from the ship. Instead, he looked at the box in his hands. It wasn’t even locked. He could open and close it easily, although he kept it closed enough that the needles didn’t fly out. He wanted to know what this medicine was, and just how much of it she was dosing herself with.
If there was anyone who knew how to endure substances, it was a depthstrider. He had grown up in the sulphur fields, deep in the sea. He had spent years inhaling those fumes that would give him the ability to see into the future. It was partially why the achromo medications didn’t work on him.
Although, his son had succumbed to them. The achromos in Alpha didn’t realize they had caught such a young one of his pod. They’d given Aulax far too much for one his age, and that had been enough to keep his boy still and quiet.
It still enraged him. Fortis had gone back to Alpha with the others and he had torn through every achromo who couldn’t make it to the ships. The others knew their job was to save the people of Alpha. They didn’t want to fill the ocean with red blood just to prove a point. But Fortis had wanted to.
They’d taken his son. They’d experimented on him, intended to kill him just to pull apart his pieces and find out what was inside. He needed some of them to die for that. The scientists had been far too easy to find, and he made good on his threat.
The ocean deposited him on a rocky outcropping a little way from her ship. He could still see the meager lights, but they were nothing but a twinkle some distance away. Nothing could find him here. Not her weapons, and certainly not her rescue party that wasn’t coming for her.
He wrapped his tail over the lip of the rock, holding himself in place as he turned the box and opened it. Needles floated out, some of them empty, some half empty, but others were full. He let all but one float away into the sea. They would be buried in the depths with all the other refuse in the ocean.
The one he caught was so tiny in his hands, barely useful at all. He couldn’t imagine that this amount would do much to her. Still, he depressed the end and let whatever was within the small plastic container float into the sea. With a deep breath, he inhaled some of it into his gills and instantly knew this was a potent dose of whatever drug it was.
Within an instant, he could feel it working. It flowed through his body and made him almost numb. The medication seeped emotion from his being until he could only think without emotion and without an ounce of the heart that had guided him his entire life. His connection to the sea was severed immediately. No wonder the soldiers from Tau were so good at what they did, other than the fools who had brought him into the city itself.
Usually, they were tactful. They took their time seeking their opponents, and they fought with precision. Like she did, in a sense. But he could sense her anger that sometimes got the better of her, and also a need to be the best at what she was doing.
This drug was stronger than it should need to be, he realized. If he was feeling even an ounce of it at his size, at five times her weight, if not significantly more than that, then this should have knocked her out completely. But it hadn’t.
She’d been taking it a long time, he remembered. Since she was little more than a child. These people had been creating children, drugging them into oblivion, and then training them to be soldiers who did what they were told without asking why.
Horror made all of his fins flare wide. He hated that he was pitying this woman, but... Then he remembered the next part of his wife’s prophecy.
“From the silver beast, you will find your salvation.”
He wasn’t certain if he’d done that so far. But there were more of Alexia’s memories to tear into, more of her lived experiences to decipher. But first, he had to win her trust. Which meant he had to at least pretend to like her.
Sighing, he dropped the last needle into the abyss. Fortis didn’t want to pretend to like her. He already respected her, and that was far too much emotion for one of her kind. He should just kill her and be done with it.
But some part of him didn’t want her to die. Not unless she was fighting him to the bitter end.
The sea coiled around him, and he could feel the pressure of a vision sent by the goddess. It was the same one his wife had seen. The same one that he’d learned to live with. A cold metal table beneath his back. Dark eyes and dark hair leaning over him, and the numbing sensation of death curling around his body.
Was it her? Was she the one who was going to kill him?
Visions were rarely so clear, but as the sea gave him the same vision he’d seen throughout many years of his life, he realized... it was her. She was the one who was going to kill him, and he had finally reached the end of his story.
Breathing out, he allowed that knowledge to seep underneath his scales. Soon, he would die. She would be the one to wield whatever ended him, and with that came some sense of peace. He’d fought a long time to get here. And now? Now he knew the end was soon.
Flicking his tail, he darted through the water back to her ship. She would not kill him today, he didn’t think. There was still time for him to gather all the information he needed. Still, he hoped one of his people would find them soon so he could share what he’d learned thus far. Just in case.
The ship’s lights were dimmer than they were before. He’d placed her batteries not far from the wreckage, but somewhere she would never see they were hiding. At least he knew she wouldn’t get to them without his interference. Her power levels didn’t allow her to do much other than stay where he had put her.
But as he got closer this time, he could see the opening into her ship was still... open. She should have closed that when he left. But she didn’t. What game was she playing here? Did she want him to come back inside after he’d stolen all the medicine that she clung so desperately to?
Frowning, he circled the bottom of her ship. Small metal poles attached to the ship gave him just enough room to get underneath it, but this all felt like a trap.
She was too good of a warrior to leave an opening without a plan.
Narrowing his gaze, he listened for any movement within the ship. Nothing. Not even the faintest scrape of a foot on the metal. Had she been foolish enough to leave? He wouldn’t put it past her. She was determined to save herself, but she hadn’t done it in the many days that she’d been down here so far. Why now?
Or she was waiting within, expecting him to come look for her. And she would bludgeon him to death in the small space.
Picking up a rock, he tossed it up into the ship and waited to see if anything would move. Some part of him hoped he had hit her, and yet, no sound. Nothing to give away that she was inside or not.
“She wouldn’t be so stupid,” he muttered, but he also wasn’t certain that was right. She might be that stupid.
She was reckless about her own safety. That much he knew. He’d already seen her throw herself into the water after him.
Carefully, he poked his head through the hole and into the ship. He surveyed the room, but there wasn’t a lot to see. The crates were all neatly stacked from where she had knocked them over. The chair was still turned the way he had left it after grabbing her medication. But it was darker, like she’d turned more of the lights off to preserve even more energy.
No woman, though.
“Alexia?” he called out, coming farther out of the water. Bracing his elbows on the floor, he peered around the crates as though she might be hiding there. No woman. Maybe she had left.
Then he made the mistake of going just a bit more into the room. With his hips braced on the floor, Fortis realized that he hadn’t looked behind him. He didn’t have a reason to because the door had been closed to preserve heat, and had remained closed for the past week.
Or so he thought.
The weight of her struck his back so hard he struck his chin on the floor. Then a sting erupted in his right hip fin. When he tried to turn, he realized it wasn’t as easy as it should be. Looking down, he realized she’d fired a rivet through his fin and through the metal floor. That would puncture a leak in her ship. Didn’t she realize that?
He was forcibly flipped, the nail tearing at his fin enough that he bared his teeth at her in anger. “That hurts,” he snarled.
“Good.” She placed the tip of the rivet gun against his other hip fin and fired again. “It was supposed to.”
She straddled him now, and it was far too easy for him to grab onto her hips to hold her in place. This wasn’t what a depthstrider would feel like in the slightest. He was used to cool scales meeting his palms and the slick glide of his fingers making it hard to grasp a female.
But this woman was warm. Even in the frigid room and how cold she’d been for days, she was warmer than him. Her hips were so soft to grab, the muscles in them flexing with power as she held him still with just her thighs. Her pants were a strange texture, and easy for him to grab onto for leverage. His claws sank a little deeper, likely digging into the soft skin beneath her clothing.
It made her stay in place, though. And that was where he wanted her. He wanted to stare up into that angry gaze as she thought she had him pinned. Fortis wanted to revel in her anger, as this was a creature who had never felt it so powerfully before.
She lifted the rivet gun and pressed it to his forehead. “You said you would bring me food. You didn’t.”
“You haven’t given me a chance to hunt for you yet, virago.”
“I don’t want you to hunt for me. I want the food here, now. When you make a deal, it’s usually with something you already have.” She pressed the metal tip harder into his forehead. “I’m so fucking over being disappointed in you, undine.”
“Fortis,” he reminded her.
“I don’t give a shit what your name is right now. I’ve decided I’m not going to die down here. You’re going to bring me back to Tau, so I can get more of my medicine, and then everything will be put to rights.”
Fortis grinned at her. This wasn’t where he died. He already knew that. The metal beneath his back wasn’t the right temperature, and there weren’t any swinging white lights that made it hard to see her face. So he was certain she wouldn’t kill him.
He pressed harder against the tip of the rivet gun. “If you want to kill me, then kill me.”
She let out a shriek of rage that echoed in the room, but still pressed harder into his skin. Hard enough that he felt a little bead of dark blood drip down his forehead. “I can’t kill you without killing myself!”
His hands squeezed her thighs harder, his large fingers somehow touching the softness of the same ass he’d been staring at only a little while ago. That... did something to him. Something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
She stared down at him with her features shaking in rage. But then she dropped the rivet gun onto the floor. It clanked next to his head, just missing the fins behind his jaw.
Rage shook through her. She lifted shaking hands and wrapped them around his throat, slowly. She gave him every opportunity in the world to fight back against her, but he didn’t. He just let those long fingers glide through the gills there, just as she had done while he was on the table in Tau.
“I hate you,” she said. “I hate what you have done to my life. What you have forced me to become.”
“Good. Hold on to that hate. It’ll keep you alive down here.”
But then they both... froze. Staring at each other with heat blooming between them. It wasn’t a heat he recognized. It seared through his scales, lifting them slightly like the bumps that rose on her arms.
Their eyes met. And he realized he didn’t want to use the power inside of him to see into her future or past. Not right now. He was far too interested in the striations of darkness that split through her irises. They weren’t entirely black, not like his eyes. Instead, she had fissures of deep, earthy brown and stunning gold that filtered throughout her vision.
He could stare at her eyes all day. What a strange thing to even think, but he did. There were secrets there he wanted to discover without the use of his power.
He wanted to hear her tell him all her secrets. And what a dangerous game that was to play.
Taking everything he could from her was the only choice he had. Yet, all he wanted to do was linger here with her legs spread over his scales and his hands on her ass. He envisioned rolling his tail up against her just to see what would happen. Perhaps she would gasp. Maybe she would put that rivet gun to his head again. Both reactions were just as good.
But then he realized what he was thinking, and the heat in those thoughts was wrong. So wrong. This woman hated him, and he hated her. Their kinds fought until their last breaths.
And she was going to kill him.
What was he doing? Fortis palmed her thighs and tossed her off of him. She launched into the air, flying through the door that had previously been closed, and landed on her back. He could hear the “oof” of breath that escaped her lungs. Perhaps he’d been too rough.
He didn’t have the time or patience to check on her. He ripped his fins free from the rivets, leaving the metal in the floor so they didn’t cause a leak, and then hissed out an angry breath.
“I will return with your feast, virago.” Sliding into the water, he waited until the last second to add, “But if you try that again, I will toss you out for the sharks.”