“Give me your hand.” His voice was strained.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, as I pulled again at the net.
“Just do it!” The panic in his eyes stopped all questions as I wriggled my hand through a tiny tear in the net to touch him.
“Can you heal my wound?”
I focused on the gashes that covered his body, the tattered skin and pink flesh waving ghoulishly in the ever-moving current. I knew how to use this talent well having worked with Maya, an incredibly gifted healer, to help many of the Oceanids who had been in the cave when I’d first met them, but try as I might and as hard as I willed it I couldn’t close Qinn’s wound.
I shook my head, “It’s not working.”
He muttered something in the liquid language of the Oceanids as he wriggled in the net, staring at my hand as I watched, in fascinated revulsion, as a rapid dark and light brown mottling raced up my arm. Quickly it spread over his too and then we both disappeared, camouflaged perfectly with the colours of the reef. The whispers were closer and they were discussing how to find me, their voices growing more distinct as I closed my eyes and strained to listen.“We picked up her scent at the surface just over the plate reef,” one of the voices was reporting.
“And then?” There was irritation in the question.
“Well, it got sort of garbled after that,” the voice replied. “I thought you told me you were the best tracker this side of the equator!” Definitely irate!
“I am.” The tracker was getting irritated. “She must have had some sort of help, or she knew we were onto her or something…” he finished lamely.
A sigh of frustration. “So where is she now?”
In sheepish tones: “I don’t know, it’s almost as if she got out of the water…”The voices grew fainter as our pursuers swam off into the distance. I sagged with relief for a moment, but then a
flurry of bubbles and a muttered curse from Qinn had my eyes flying to his face in panic. The mottling on his skin had grown faint enough for me to make out the fear in his eyes.
“Alex, I’m dying, I’m not going to be able to disguise you here much longer.”
I shook my head, tears welling in my eyes and joining the salt of the sea instantly.
“Qinn, you’re going to beOK,” I whispered, hoping he’d prove me right.
“No,” he mouthed.
I shook my head, reaching through the netting to touch his skin.
“Keep the reef behind you and swim hard until you reach the kelp forest,” he whispered. “You’ll be safe…”
“No Qinn, you’re going to come with me, we’re going to go together.”
I wriggled my hand out of the net and ducked beneath him, trying to find the anchor of the net. It was wedged so deeply into the bed of the rock on which it was caught that it could only have been set up like that by a sentient creature. Qinn had been right; he was caught in a very clever trap.
“Alexandra.” His voice was edged in pain.
I moved back to where his head now lolled at an unnatural angle, as if his neck was too weak to hold it up any more. I supported its weight and cradled him as he spoke.
“You must go now,” he told my, fire sparking in his eyes. “If they catch you all will be lost, please…”
“I’m not going without you,” I replied firmly, twisting away from him a little as I searched the reef for something sharp to cut the net with.
“Listen to me please.” His voice was tinged in desperation.
“Qinn, if I can get you out of the net I can heal you. I…I don’t know why I can’t heal you when you’re in the net but I’m sure if I can get you out it will work again.”
He groaned a little as he shifted one of his arms from where it had been wrapped around his midriff. Dark blood blossomed around us and bile forced its way up my throat. The net had only protected him from being carried away by the shark, but the ribbons of flesh that had clearly been ripped by sharp teeth had sealed Qinn’s fate.
I forced my horrified gaze back to his face.
“You are the leader we need, Alexandra, don’t let anything or anyone tell you differently…your journey is a hard one, but you must win in the end...for all of us.”
“Qinn, you’ll be there with me...” I told him past the lump in my throat as he shook his head slightly.
“I don’t have time...” he whispered, the spark fading from his eyes as each word came out in choppy breathlessness.
“…and…neither…do…you.” He mouthed the last words he’d ever speak as his eyes fixed on something just past me.
I held his head for a while after the faint iridescent shade of purple I’d noticed under his skin had faded and his skin had turned milky-white and lifeless.
There was a pressing need to leave this place, to get to the kelp forest and the land beyond it…but I didn’t know what to do with Qinn. To leave him within the net for the fish to feed on was unthinkable but I didn’t know what I would do with his body once I’d somehow managed to get him free of it. In the end the voices we’d been so focused on a short while earlier drifted on the current, far closer than they had been before.
“I…I just got a waft of her fragrance again!”
“She’s close, very close!”
I left Qinn, his head lolling sickeningly in death in the ever-moving current, and pressed myself into a crevice in the coral.
Closing my eyes I focused on the image of the mottling that had raced up my arm earlier, hoping that whatever the reason for me being unable to heal Qinn was a momentary glitch.. I knew I would be captured if I couldn’t perfect the disguise.
When I opened my eyes again I couldn’t see the hand I knew I was staring at and when I glanced up every muscle in my body froze.
If I’d reached out I could have touched the one closest to me. He was powerfully built, the muscles of his torso and arms highlighted by the slight emerald tinge that covered his body. He was scanning the reef where I lay, his beautiful face hard with hatred and furious determination.
I recognised him as the leader of the Miengu, a group of fiercely aggressive Oceanids, warlike in their thinking and physically capable of massive destruction.
I could feel my hair waving backwards and forwards as it swirled in the current just inches from where he stood.
“I thought you said she was here.” He twisted to address an Oceanid I didn’t recognise. He was slight compared to the massive Miengu, his behaviour petulant and wheedling as he tried to explain my disappearance.
“She is…or was…”
“Which one is it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The smaller Oceanid was inspecting Qinn’s body, tugging at the net and snickering to himself as each tug sent a flurry of flesh and blood into the water.
“Maybe the shark got her,” he said as he tugged, pointing at the gaping wound where Qinn’s abdomen had been.
Instantly a fierce hatred almost overwhelmed me. It would be easy to take the two of them out, an energy ball for each would wipe the mocking smirks off their faces.
The Miengu’s movements were blindingly fast and he had the smaller