Page 25 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)

Twenty-Five

Alexia

S ome part of her knew she was overreacting. Fortis had wanted to explain, and she should let him. After all, maybe that was a normal encounter for his kind. Maybe males were supposed to leave after all of... that.

But for the first time in her life, she had felt connected with another living being. So much so that it had been hard to see him leave. She’d seen men do that to Harlow. She’d been there every time the Original had gotten teary eyed over yet another man leaving after sex, telling herself that it wasn’t because she wasn’t as pretty as the other Originals or that they found more pleasure in one of the reborns than her.

It seemed to be a universal fear with women, even if Alexia hadn’t had sex yet. If she had learned anything from watching Harlow, it was that men left after they got what they wanted. A part of her mind screamed that Fortis had left because he hadn’t actually wanted her.

No one could want her. It was foolish to even entertain that someone might. Alexia was a scarred woman. Her body wore the marks of years of mistreatment and she was too big, too much, too everything. She was barely even a woman, as many of the Originals had liked to remind her.

Fortis didn’t want her. He was just frustrated, lonely, and anything vaguely female would do.

She was an idiot to get wrapped up in all this. No man should ever be able to affect her, not while she was struggling so hard to even understand emotions. Let alone know what it was like to lean on someone else. He was... frustrating. Annoying. Beyond enraging.

But also she liked him. As she sank deeper and deeper into the water, she knew that was the truth. She liked him a lot, and that was the hardest part of all this. Fortis had wriggled his way underneath her skin, and she wanted more of that. More of him. She wanted to talk to him about his life, to feel his skin against hers, and all the other ridiculous things that made her want to vomit.

The beacon on her wrist lit up, letting her know she was at the correct depth. Now she just had to find the right direction to go. Turning slowly, she kept her gaze on her watch as it blinked on and off, faster and faster until the signal was a steady light to follow. There it was. She was all turned around, but if she kept swimming in this direction, then she would eventually hit the ship.

Now was the hard part. Sinking into the depths of the ocean was relatively easy. She’d learned a long time ago how to dive. All that training was before she’d gotten her emotions back, though. Now that she was finally no longer moving, her thoughts caught up to her.

“Easy,” she muttered to herself. “The odds of bumping into anything in the ocean are so small.”

She knew the statistics. The ocean was more of a blank space than it was anything else. All she had to do was swim. Even without her flippers, her feet were covered. Her wetsuit didn’t have a single hole in it, and its integrity was stable. All she had to do was kick her feet and not stop moving. Perhaps for a very, very long time. But she was proving a point here.

She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone.

Digging deep into her own stubborn pride, Alexia started swimming. Using her arms, she followed her training to maintain a steady movement without depleting too much of her energy. She had learned how to do this from a very young age. She knew how to swim for days on end. She’d trained for this.

Yes, she had also been wasting away on a ship. Weeks on end of not moving made her breathing harder. But she could keep going.

Looking down at the oxygen meter on her other wrist, she realized she was only at half oxygen. That would make things... difficult. She had to control her breathing better, considering she had no idea how long it would take to find the ship.

Maybe this hadn’t been smart. Her mind rolled over all the things that could go wrong. She’d had her own personal undine who could swim her all the way to the ship if she wanted. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut. Now, she might drown and he would never know. A shark could find her, of all things, or an orca.

There were plenty of creatures in the sea that would love to find a snack that couldn’t fight back against them. Not, at least, like an undine could.

Gritting her teeth, she kept going. Fear did not affect her. She was stronger than that. She was strong enough to continue swimming forward, and she would reach her ship. Even if anxiety made her heart skip beats and her breath saw in her chest. She had just looked at her oxygen. There was fifty percent left. She didn’t need to check it again. She was fine. She just had to keep going.

Something glided along her leg. It was a long, slow touch. Hard for her to tell what it was or where it came from. It didn’t feel like Fortis, or anything that she’d felt before.

Frowning, she paused to get her bearings. She was still going in the right direction, and maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. Still, her hand was shaking as she lifted it up to her head and clicked on the light attached to her face mask.

She half expected to see a massive beast looming in the darkness before her. But there was nothing. Just the beam of her light and some stray white particles.

“Nothing,” she whispered, her voice shaking around the word. “It’s all in your head, Alexia. Keep swimming.”

But she kept the light on this time. She needed more light to reassure herself that she was, in fact, still alone. Even if she couldn’t see all that far ahead of her.

It was only a few more kicks of her legs before she swore there was a current touching her back. Like a creature had swum very close to her spine.

“All in your head,” she repeated, but she swam harder. The light on her wrist was a beacon to follow, steady and true.

Until she felt the touch again. This time it tangled around her waist, like an arm had wrapped around her. She reacted, her arms reaching for whatever it was and punching at the creature. It released her, but she swore there was a sticky feeling as it left.

Frantically she looked around, turning her head and light in every direction, but there wasn’t anything here. She was alone. She was...

Tentacles and a snapping beak rushed at her. There were more arms than she could count, all of them flaring wide as the squid wrapped itself around her head. All she could see was the strange underbelly, so close now that she could actually see it was bright red. Her light fractured through the thin skin and illuminated the jaws that gnashed near her face.

She grabbed onto it, trying desperately to get it off her head. She’d seen squid before, but never this size. It was nearly five feet in length, she guessed, and the body was so thick it was hard to wrap her arms around.

Eyes. Squid had eyes. She just had to find the damn eyes and then she could push on them as hard as she could. Her hands skated over smooth, slick skin before she felt the bulbous nodes. Pushing hard, she screamed as it shoved off her head and sent her spinning away from it.

Breathing hard, she splayed her arms wide to stop herself. She had to be ready for when that thing came back. And it would come back. Squid liked to hunt, didn’t they? She couldn’t remember from her training as panic set in. It was so dark. Whipping her head around, she tried to anticipate where it would come from, but she couldn’t fucking see.

Tentacles latched around her outstretched arm. She jerked at the limb, only for another to grab her other arm. The first one’s beak connected with her wetsuit, biting through the neoprene and sinking into her flesh.

She shrieked, bubbles erupting from around the seal edges of the mask. Her light spun wildly as she arched her neck in pain, and then she saw them.

So, so many of them.

She was surrounded by a hundred squid. All of their ghostly bodies flashing in the sea. There was no light at these depths, which meant all she could do was stare at the haunting images of them tangling above her.

Another latched onto her right thigh, biting deep. She screamed again, writhing to get out of their grip, but they were so incredibly strong. One biting her arm, the other her leg, they were all latched onto her with impossible strength.

Wisps of her blood darkened the water. It looked black in this light, flashing red as it got close enough to her light. Strangely, she could hear them. Bumping into each other as they all rushed forward, fighting against themselves before moving as one as they shifted and moved like a pack. They were hunting together, she realized.

Humboldt squid. She’d heard of them before. Her mind fractured, trying to get away from the pain that was seemingly unending. They bit into her again and again, the bites digging beyond her skin and severing through tendons and muscle.

She should have stayed with him, she thought. Alexia had let her anger get the better of her again, and now she was going to pay the ultimate price. She’d never thought she would die being feasted upon by squid, but she supposed it might be fitting after everything she had done with Tau. Maybe this was just the ocean finally getting back at her for everything.

A flash of thick, rubbery bodies. They moved as one, revealing a glimpse of yellow in the distance. She was already weak, and it seemed like the tentacles wrapped around her arm were going to break it now. She wasn’t even sure which arm.

Cold water had rushed into her suit. Her heart beat was slowing down considerably until she could hear it like drums in her ears.

That flash of yellow came again, so bright it blasted through the ghostly squids, revealing their red colorings in bright orange as the light moved closer. Many of the squid gave up. They all turned as one, their long tentacles flaring as they hovered near enough to watch what was happening.

With a single tail flick, Fortis rose through them, approaching her with an expression of pure rage on his face. Of course, he was angry at her. He was always angry at her. No matter what she did, it was never the right thing to do.

Breathing out, she watched more bubbles erupt around her face. Had the squid that had attached her face broken her breathing apparatus? It couldn’t have done anything too bad. There was still air.

The squid wrapped around her suddenly fled. Perhaps they realized there was a much larger predator in the water barreling toward them. Fortis hit her hard enough to steal the breath from her lungs and pain flared white hot. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t focus beyond the misery that rioted now that he had her.

Adrenaline depleted, all she could do was remain limp in his arms as the salt water burned through her suit and all the wounds decorating her skin.

He said nothing, just propelled them at a speed that was shocking. She’d thought she’d seen him swim quickly before, but he had never moved like this.

Her heart thudded strangely in her chest. All wrong. It was slowing down, she thought, or maybe it had never sped up in the first place. She had a feeling it wasn’t right since the first moment those squids had attacked her.

Looking down at her arm, she struggled to lift it so she could see her oxygen levels. That was the most important thing. She was underwater. She had to breathe.

But the squids must have bitten through something important, or perhaps they fucked with something on the back of her breathing unit when that first one attacked her.

“Three percent,” she wheezed as more bubbles erupted around her face.

At least Fortis had the wherewithal to look down at her words. “What?”

“Three percent oxygen,” she said. Already it felt like the air she was trying to breathe wasn’t coming right. The chemical mixture was off. She was getting a little light-headed, and that was not a good thing.

He stared down at her until his expression smoothed out. The confusion that wrinkled his brows was gone, and instead, was replaced with worry that she didn’t like.

Fortis paused, stopping so suddenly that her hair floated in front of her face. He smoothed it back with a massive, webbed hand.

“Virago, this is something I wish I did not have to do. I do not have time to explain what it is. We need to move fast because you are bleeding out. Those bites were not kind to you.”

She wasn’t sure what he was saying. She was just watching the way his lips moved when he talked. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She tried to shrug, but her arm hurt so much that she couldn’t. Had they broken the bone? Now that she’d gotten some time away from the squid, it felt like they might have.

The pain swelled over her head again, threatening to drown her. She couldn’t focus on anything, not even the slight prick on the side of her neck that was so little compared to all the other pains in her body.

But she struggled a bit when a clawed hand grabbed the oxygen mask on her face and took it off. “Fortis!” she croaked, reaching for it even as he dropped it down into the abyss.

Was he finally going to kill her? Had he given up on her?

“Shh,” he murmured, his hand stroking through her hair. “Let me breathe for you, virago.”

And then he was swimming again. Darting through the water as everything turned into a blur. Or it would have, if she could see in the darkness. The particles in front of her were like stars moving so fast she could only see the slightest smudge of them as they darted past.

She held her breath for as long as she could, before there was a sudden sensation of air pushing into her body and then... somehow, she was breathing. She wasn’t sure how she wasn’t drowning.

Even as the pain dragged her into unconsciousness, she marveled that somehow, she wasn’t dead yet. Maybe she would be soon, though.