The situation was bad. Graham caught up to me by the time I ran through the gates and got my first glimpse of the destruction. Several small fires burned in various parts of the property and bodies littered the front lawn. The servant quarters, as Jeremiah called them, were almost completely destroyed by the fire at this point. I didn’t know exactly how many humans slept in there, but I knew it was a lot and I worried not a single one escaped.
Graham walked past me and through the front door of the house. I took longer, being sure to step over the pieces of body parts and puddles of blood. There didn’t seem to be any ratchets left, but they’d certainly caused an immense amount of damage. Tears poured from my eyes without control as I walked around at least a dozen humans and several protectors who died fighting for us.
When I reached the front door, Graham nearly ran into me. “Here,” he said while shoving a robe into my hands. Already covered up, the look on his face told me I wasn’t going to like what he had to say next. “I need you to come with me.”
He turned and I followed him down the dark hallway leading to the indoor pool at the rear of the house. People were scattered all over the other rooms and the grand staircase. Many were crying, most were injured, and I noticed only a few were in good enough shape to move around and help the others. Those creatures had caused so much death in such a short amount of time. It made me wonder how we were ever going to beat Lucian if this was his doing. My emotions were shattered, my vision blurred with tears, and I felt scared.
I was fairly certain this attack had been planned. It happened at night when most would be asleep and there had been water sprites. Lucian’s go-to assassins of the water world. I’d tried to control them, and I’d failed. I’d failed everyone here and everyone who was still on Lucian’s hit list. Yet when we walked into the atrium area, all thoughts of pity and dismay disappeared as I saw what lay before me.
The pool shimmered an eerie red and several body parts floated around at the surface. Two protectors leaned against the wall near the door, one helping to stop the other from bleeding out of a dangerous wound on his neck. It seemed hopeless and I watched as the injured merman who’d pledged his life to protect others, closed his eyes for a final time. His friend began to sob and it was almost too much for me to handle. Until something else caught my attention.
Near the wooden table Jeremiah used for impromptu meetings, laid the merman and his pet selkie. Malcolm was leaning over Jeremiah and whispering something to his master. He gently stroked his head and Jeremiah’s hand clasped tightly around the selkie’s arm. Graham and I ran forward.
“Malcolm! How is he?” I fell to my knees, suddenly afraid of what might happen to the man who taught me so much the past few days.
Malcolm shook his head. “It’s not good. They got his femoral artery. He’s bleeding out.”
“Can’t he change and heal himself?” I asked. But when I looked at Jeremiah’s face I knew the answer. His normally tanned skin glowed a sickly pale color and his barely noticeable breathing sounded forced. Graham knelt next to us without saying a word.
“Eviana…” Jeremiah whispered. I moved so I could lean down close to his face to hear him.
“I’m here, Jeremiah.” I nearly choked on my words. For as much as I loathed the man just a few days earlier, this was not how he deserved to die. I couldn’t stop the tears.
“Are you crying for me?” he asked in a strangled sort of whisper.
“Shh. Don’t talk.” I continued to rub his head while Malcolm and Graham sat silently by his side.
“You need to know…something…” Jeremiah started to cough and Malcolm suddenly cried out. The artery in his leg shot blood with each spasm and even though Malcolm had his hands pressed into the wound, it wasn’t enough. A large pool of blood seeped out around us, evidence that Jeremiah didn’t have much time left. He reached up and grabbed my hand.
“You...not…safe.”
“It’s okay, Jeremiah. They’re all gone. Graham killed all of the ratchets.” Malcolm’s head snapped up and he gawked at Graham. Whether it was because of the ratchets or the fact Graham had been able to kill them, I didn’t know. Now wasn’t the time to ask. Plus, Jeremiah was still trying to tell me something.
“Not safe…him…too close...” I had absolutely no idea what he wanted to say. I knew it wasn’t safe for me to be around Lucian. My parent’s death had shown me that. But it seemed as if he was trying to tell me something more.
“Go…home…and…speak…with…” he coughed again. His eyes rolled back and he finally took a deep breath. Only this time when he let it out, he never moved again.
“Jeremiah!” I shouted and shook him by the shoulders. “Jeremiah!”
Malcolm sat back on the ground and sighed. “He’s gone now.” He ran his hands over his face and head, and because they were covered in blood, it made for a gruesome sight.
“I need to call this in,” Graham announced as he pushed up to his feet and made his way out of the room.
I looked down at Jeremiah. Shunned by his clan, more arrogant than a god, and killed by a supernatural dog. Using my hand to close his eyes, I set his head gently on the ground and turned my back to his lifeless body. The sight in the pool didn’t help to calm me any, so I closed my eyes and listened to the distant background noise of the beating drum soundtrack Jeremiah liked to play in here.
“We need to do a body count,” Malcolm suddenly said. Looking at the pool again and remembering the carnage out front, I wondered how accurate that count might be.
“Start with the live ones,” I said. He nodded and got to work. I watched as he helped the protector leave his dead friend behind to assist with the task. Most of the protectors were usually ex-military so putting their emotions away to deal with an emergency situation should be second nature to them.
I, on the other hand, was not getting any better at handling all of this death and destruction. Lucian wanted a meeting with the Council and with me. They didn’t want to negotiate, but after witnessing this bloodbath tonight, I knew I had to change their minds. All of these senseless deaths could have been prevented. Should have been prevented.
My thoughts drifted to that overturned cruise ship. Thousands of innocent people killed in order to make a point. Lucian Sutherland was insane, but the only way to fight that right now was to hear him out. He obviously wanted to make some demands, and I needed to convince the Council it was worth our time to at least listen to him. Then we could strategize for the best way to take him out.
I stood and found a discarded towel with only a little blood on it and used it to cover up Jeremiah’s body. Closing my eyes, I wished for him to have a peaceful afterlife then walked out of the room.
I continued until I reached the front door where I saw Graham pacing back and forth yelling into his cell phone. To my right was the dining room where the three of us had recently shared our meals. Now those nights felt like a lifetime ago.
Everything was changing again. War with Lucian would be inevitable now, and how we handled ourselves from here was yet to be determined. Graham stepped into the house and let out a long breath.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
I must have startled him because he jumped a little to the side when I spoke. “The Council is sending a clean-up crew now. They should be here in an hour.” A clean-up crew? That sounded so horrible.
“Did you tell them about Jeremiah?”
“Yes.” He paced around the room some more until Malcolm’s appearance stopped him dead in his tracks.
“There are only ten of us left, Mistress.”
“Ten?” I gasped. There had to have been at least three times that many living here just a few hours ago.
“Yes. Ten. Six humans, three protectors, and me.”
“Jesus,” Graham breathed and ran another hand through his head. “We need to get out of here.” He began pressing buttons on his phone again.
“Mistress Eviana?” Malcolm edged closer to me. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
The question caught me off guard. “Wouldn’t you like to live on your own?”
He shook his head. “Maybe the humans would, but the protectors and I don’t know what else we would do. This is all we know.” The sadness in his eyes nearly made me cry again and before I could stop myself, I had a solution.
“Then come home with me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We’re all going to need more protection and there is no reason for you to stay here.” He lurched forward and grabbed me in a hug. The smell of selkie washed over me, and I felt nostalgic for home.
“Thank you.” He squeezed me for a while. “I’m going to tell the others.” Before I could stop him, he was gone. Graham stared at me from the doorway.
“You invited him to your home?”
“Yes. He and the protectors still left alive. They have nowhere else to go.”
“Huh,” he grunted while scrutinizing me with his eyes. “You really are something else.” I ignored him and asked a more pressing question.
“What do we do about the humans?”
“The team will erase their memories and patch them up.” He gave me a sarcastic glare. “Unless you invited them to California too?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.” But maybe I should. Would having their memories erased really be the right thing to do? Although bringing them back with me into what certainly was going to be a war, really didn’t seem like the best idea either.
“Our ride will be here in an hour,” Graham continued. “We should collect what we can and let the clean-up crew handle the rest.”
I nodded in agreement as he trudged up the stairs toward his room. I didn’t really want to pack when all of these people around me had just lost their lives. Something about it seemed wrong. It wasn’t fair that I lived and they didn’t. It’s wasn’t fair that my friend Lily had been killed simply because she was a mermaid. So much death.
I slid to the floor, momentarily frozen with grief. I thought of my parents, especially my mother. The way Lucian snapped her neck so coldly and methodically…it ripped my heart out. I began to cry and once the tears started, I couldn’t stop them if I tried. Thankfully, everyone left me alone and gave me the privacy I needed. I cried for my parents, my friend, Jeremiah, and all of the protectors that lost their lives tonight.
At some point the tears stopped and I forced myself to collect my belongings for the trip back home. My cell phone buzzed with messages, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone else right now. I just needed a little more time before I dealt with the world.
“Are you ready?” Graham’s soft voice asked from my opened door.
“Almost.”
He stepped inside and sat on my bed, watching me as I packed up the final pieces of clothes. “They’re going to fly us to the airport and then we’ll start home.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Seattle for now,” he replied and something in me felt relieved. I was attracted to Graham’s strength and confidence and tonight’s experiences only made that stronger. But I was glad he wasn’t going to California where Brendan be. Plus, I needed to stay away from Graham Forrester.
“For now?”
“Until they decide their next move.” He sighed and looked out the bedroom door. “I’m going to tell them we have to meet with Lucian.”
His words surprised me. “You are?”
“Yes. I think you were right before. If it stops more deaths, then we should at least meet with him and hear him out.”
I stood there in shock for a bit. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he huffed. “I’m also going to tell them you should be there as well. After all, he’s personally requested your presence.”
“Do you know why that is?”
He shook his head. “No idea. Perhaps you’ve intrigued him, too?” His eyes sparkled when he looked up at me and I quickly averted my gaze back to my suitcase.
“I’m really not that special.”
“Some would beg to differ,” he replied nonchalantly. I had nothing more to say to that comment and after several moments of silence, he stood. “They should be here soon, so I’ll see you downstairs, okay tart?”
“Yeah.” Even his nickname for me couldn’t elicit a reaction. I felt numb right now and getting out of this house was probably the best for all of us.
Just before sunrise, a helicopter landed in the front yard. The clean-up crew had arrived along with our ride to the airport.
When I panicked in a plane, I was being silly. My fear of airplanes was nothing compared to my newly discovered terror of being in a helicopter. It felt like a roller coaster, only several thousand feet in the air. When I saw the skyscrapers and metropolis of Washington, D.C. in the distance, my heart calmed down because I knew we were almost there.
Two personal jets waited for us courtesy of the Council and Graham’s insistence that we needed privacy in order to conduct our business. At the hanger, Graham pulled me aside just as I was about to board.
“Is is all right if I call you?” I arched my brows at him. “I might need you to help convince the Council that our plan will work.”
“Our plan?”
“Meeting with Lucian,” he waved his hand around. “They may not totally believe me and might want to speak with you to confirm.”
I nodded in understanding. “Yes, that will be fine.”
“Good.” He shifted nervously on his feet and looked at the plane behind me.
“Is there something else?” I asked.
He smiled and I melted again. “No. Just be safe, okay tart. I’ll see you again soon.”
He bent down and kissed me full on the lips before pulling away and jogging toward his plane on the other side of the hanger. I stood still, following him with my gaze. His lips were just as soft as I imagined. I sighed with disappointment. Perhaps in another life we’d be better suited for each other. But now just wasn’t the time.
I tried to convince myself of that the entire five hour plane ride back to my home. Keeping my mind occupied, I called my sister to tell her I was on my way. She hadn’t woken up yet since it was only early dawn on the east coast. I left her a message and called our driver so he’d know when to pick me up.
The long night had been so devastating both physically and mentally, I was surprised when I fell asleep somewhere over Ohio. When we landed, I made the introductions for my new companions and Jeffery, my driver, smiled and welcomed them to the family. I was happy to see they’d be all right, but I really didn’t know if I could say that about the rest of us. There was so much work to do when I got to the house. So many calls to make. So much training to accomplish. The thought of it made my mind spin and I reluctantly tried to enjoy the last few moments of peace I suspected I’d have for a long time.
