Surrendering (Swans Landing) Read online

  I pulled back, my lips finding hers. I didn’t want to think about my dad or the finfolk or anything else right then. I wanted this, I wanted her. Always. I wanted to be as close as possible to her, closer than I’d ever been to anyone. I wanted her to make me forget.

  My hands moved under her shirt, my fingers tracing the lines of her ribs.

  Mara pulled back, breaking the kiss. “Not like this,” she said.

  I blinked, my mind clouded with hunger for her. “What?”

  She pushed herself away from me, shaking her head. “Not like this. We’re not having sex just because you’re upset and don’t want to think about your dad.” She crossed her arms as she looked at me, her eyes wide. “I want to, I really do, but when it happens I want it to be something we do because it’s the right thing. Not because one of us wants to forget our problems for a while.”

  I closed my eyes, sucking in a deep breath. My body ached with the need to touch her, but I knew she was right.

  I know with the way things are right now and with everything the two of you have gone through, it’s tempting to jump into things because you think there might not be a tomorrow, Lake’s words drifted through my head. I just want you to really know what you’re getting into before you act.

  I reached across the space between us, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her into a tight hug. Mara was tense at first, but then she relaxed, resting her head against my shoulder.

  “I love you,” Mara said.

  It was the first time she had said the words to me, and a tingling warmth spread through my body.

  “I love you too,” I said, certain that I meant it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dylan stepped out of his house just as I was passing by after leaving Mara’s. He looked at me and nodded curtly, but didn’t say anything.

  We kind of fell into step next to each other, both of us keeping our heads down and our hands buried in our pockets. Not that my mind was on Dylan or even on my watch coming up at the beach. The threat of Domnall couldn’t ruin the mood I was in right then. My mind was still stuck on that couch with Mara, reliving the feel of her body next to mine. Even though we hadn’t made it as far as we might have, we still took advantage of the time alone to make out a lot.

  I loved her. I could imagine myself spending my life with her.

  I felt relaxed and at ease and in the best mood I’d been in months. So I thought it was a good time to try to make amends.

  “Hey,” I said, glancing at Dylan. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

  Dylan harrumphed, then said, “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” I told him. “This isn’t the time for us to be fighting with each other.”

  “Why does it matter?” Dylan asked. “You and I are not friends.”

  I tried to keep the cringe off my face at his words. “We could be. We both care about Mara and Sailor, so we should be friends.”

  Dylan sneered. “I’m not in desperate need of friends, you know. I’ve gotten along just fine without you.”

  He wasn’t making this easy. He had always seemed like a nice guy, what little I knew of him from school. What had turned him into this negative, sour person?

  “Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “But for the record, the offer still stands if you change your mind.”

  We left his neighborhood and walked across Heron Avenue, following the sandy shoulder in front of the line of shops. I didn’t ask where he was going, and he didn’t ask me either.

  The silence that had settled over us was broken by voices overhead as we neared Moody’s Variety Store. The door closed behind Elizabeth Connors as she stepped out, with Kyle McCutcheon right behind her.

  They spotted us as they walked down the staircase and Elizabeth’s mouth twisted into a gleeful smile. She turned around to face Kyle, slipping her arms around his neck and leaning back to look up at him.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  Kyle’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “Come on,” she said in a syrupy voice. “You know you want me.”

  Kyle grinned, then leaned down, pressing his mouth to hers in a slobbering, sucking kiss that made my stomach turn. She was really laying the public displays of affection on pretty thick today.

  “Let’s go back to my house,” Elizabeth said in a loud voice, glancing over her shoulder at us. “My parents should be gone for a while.” She giggled and tightened her grip on Kyle’s neck.

  Dylan walked faster, not looking up at them. Good idea. I felt like I might puke if I had to listen to or see anymore of that. I quickened my pace and caught up with Dylan.

  Once we had passed Moody’s, Dylan muttered, “I don’t know what the girls in this place see in jackasses like that.”

  I shrugged. “Some girls like jackasses, I guess.”

  “He’s an oaf,” Dylan growled. “He has no common sense. He treats girls like crap, and yet they still go back to him. Every time! It’s ridiculous how stupid some people can be.”

  I peered at Dylan, furrowing my brow. “Why do you care?”

  Dylan stumbled a bit as he walked, but he didn’t look at me. “I don’t. Elizabeth Connors can date whoever she wants. If she wants to throw herself all over an idiot, whatever. It’s not my problem if all the jackasses on this island pair up. Let them have each other. I’m done with it.”

  Dylan turned off, stomping as he followed a narrow path between two sand dunes. I watched him for a moment, rolling his words over in my head and putting pieces together I hadn’t noticed before.

  I started walking again, considering the new idea that was forming in my head. It was crazy. It was too weird to even consider.

  But it made sense. It would explain a lot of things. Dylan’s bad attitude. Elizabeth’s showing off.

  Mara would probably say I was insane for even thinking it, but I was sure that something had happened while I was gone, something big, something that neither Dylan nor Elizabeth wanted anyone else to know.

  * * *

  I paced the stretch of beach, my eyes scanning the afternoon fog over the water. Nothing. There hadn’t been anything since I’d started my shift three hours ago.

  I wrapped my arms tighter around myself and stamped my feet on the sand, wishing I was back with Mara again right then and not out here on this freezing beach. Why was it so cold? It was mid-August for crying out loud.

  A movement out of the corner of my eye made me spin around, my body tensed. But the figure that walked across the sand near the pier wasn’t Domnall or any of his people. It wasn’t even a finfolk at all.

  It was my mom.

  “Mom?” I asked as I approached her. I kept enough distance between us that hopefully she wouldn’t become spooked and run off. Mom had never been well while I was growing up, always drifting in and out of weird spells that would make her yell or cry or throw things. She had been seeing a doctor on the mainland for years, but she never took her medicine regularly so it was hard to figure out what kind of mood she would be in from one moment to the next.

  I hadn’t seen her in days, not since she’d kicked me out. For the briefest moment, I thought that she had come to apologize and ask me to come home.

  But the vacant look in Mom’s eyes told me that she wasn’t in one of her better moods.

  Mom walked under the pier, weaving between the barnacle-covered pilings that held the remains of the rotting wood over our heads. The water crashed against the shore, lapping at my feet.

  “Your daddy died here,” she said. Her eyes were locked on the pier over us as she spoke.

  I shivered. “You should go home.”

  “His body washed up on shore right over there.” She pointed to a place just beyond the pilings, to a stretch of beach that looked like any other. No one ever talked much about my father, except that he had an affair and died because none of the finfolk in the water that night would save him. It was Song Night, and the water around Swans Landing was full of
more finfolk than the number that currently lived here. But none of them had seen my father fall into the water.

  He was buried in the cemetery near the white church on the island, but I had never known the exact spot where he’d died. Where he’d taken his last breaths. Where his body was found.

  I stared at the beach Mom had indicated, trying to imagine him lying there, wet and covered with sand. Dead.

  “The finfolk did that to him,” Mom said, her eyes wide. “They’ve been an infestation on this island for centuries. They tried to pretend they were just like us. They fooled many of us many times. Your daddy fooled me for a while. Making me believe he was human. That those creatures meant nothing to him. But he was obsessed. All day and night, he’d be out here, watching and studying them. Talking to them. Trying to be one of them. And that girl, that whore he spent so much time with. It was disgusting.”

  She let out a loud bark of laughter, which echoed under the pier around us. “Oh, he denied it. He said she was just helping him. That she was a friend. But I could see it. We all could see the evidence right there, growing in her stomach, that bastard girl she gave birth to.”

  “Mom,” I said, reaching toward her. “Go home. You should sleep. Have you taken your medicine today?”

  But Mom swatted my hand away, twisting out of my reach. Her nostrils flared and her hair whipped around her head in a frenzy. “I did it for you, Joshua. All of it. I did it to protect you, to keep you from growing up with a daddy who didn’t care enough not to destroy his family. I did it for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What did you do?”

  Mom’s eyes met mine, and I shuddered at the dark, glassy look in them. “You want to know how your daddy died, Joshua?” Her words roared in my ears over the sound of the crashing waves. Salt water sprayed across my skin as it hit the pilings around me.

  “I pushed him in,” Mom hissed.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak or think. My insides had turned to ice. A satisfied smile spread across Mom’s face.

  “He was here, up there.” She pointed at the pier above us. “He was watching them. Watching her. Waiting for her to come back to him. There I was, at home with a baby while he was out here with his fish whore. So I followed him and I found him. He stood at the edge of the pier, on the part that’s gone now. He didn’t see me, didn’t hear me coming. I pushed him off and watched him fall into the water. He hit his head on the pilings and—”

  “No!” I stared at my mother, my entire body shaking so bad I almost couldn’t stay upright. I reached out to steady myself against one of the pilings, then realized what I was touching. I stared at the wood, wondering if this was the one that had killed my father. Was this the one he’d hit, the one that had knocked him unconscious and made him unable to fight his way back to shore?

  “I did it for you!” Mom shouted at me. She stepped forward, her arms reaching for me. “My baby. My little boy. I won’t let them take you from me, like they did your daddy.”

  “Don’t touch me.” I backed away from her, staring at my mother. A trembling started deep inside my bones. My mom had killed my father. The man she was supposed to love. She had always told me it was the finfolk who did it. I had grown up fearing them, and then when I realized I was one of them, I had been afraid of that part of me. Afraid of what it was capable of making me do.

  But it was the human part of me that I should have feared all along.

  “Joshua—”

  But Mom’s words were cut off by a shout and a new sound from the water behind me.

  Rising from the crashing waves was an army pulling a boat. A long, slender boat, in which stood Domnall, king of Hether Blether, his mouth twisted into a fierce snarl as his eyes met mine.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Domnall stepped out of the boat, wading through knee high water until he stood on shore. The rest of the men and women that had come with him fanned out to each side. There were about twenty of them and they looked tired and thinner than before, their faces gaunt and cheekbones clearly visible.

  But Domnall’s smile was as wicked as I remembered. I moved in front of my mom, pushing her behind me.

  “We meet again,” Domnall said, inclining his head toward me in a mock bow.

  “We’re prepared for you,” I told him. “We’ll fight for this island.”

  “And the humans as well?” Domnall asked with a sneer. “Will you fight for them?”

  “Filthy abominations!” Mom spat behind me. “Go back to the ocean where you belong!”

  I tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, but Mom twisted away from me, screaming obscenities at the finfolk who stared evenly back at her, none of them seeming to be affected by her words. Artair, the captain of Domnall’s guard, stood at his king’s side, his face grim.

  Domnall’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Mom and then me. He opened his mouth and began to sing, a low humming that vibrated around us, mixing with the sound of the water.

  Mom’s cries fell silent as the first golden bursts sparkled in my vision. The human part of me made me susceptible to the song’s effects, but Mom would be even more so, being fully human. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in an O shape.

  “Mom!” I called, squeezing my eyes shut. “Don’t listen to it. It’s not real. Whatever you see, it’s not really there.”

  “Oliver!” Mom gasped. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

  My body shook with the effort to resist the song that wrapped itself around me. I could feel the call of it inside me and still saw the golden bursts even with my eyes shut tight. “Josh,” a voice whispered in my ear. A man’s voice, one I had only ever imagined and couldn’t be sure that it was right. I knew what I would see when I opened my eyes. I knew that it wasn’t real, but yet, I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

  My father stood on the beach, smiling as he lifted a hand toward me. I bit my lip, choking back the sob in my throat. It’s not real, I reminded myself.

  But he looked so solid. Mom fell to her knees, her shoulders shaking. “Oliver,” she said. “Forgive me.”

  “Their minds are so easily bent,” Domnall said. The song started to fade as he stopped singing and I felt my own conscious mind coming back to me. “So weak. So foolish.” He laughed. “Did you think I didn’t know about your little secret? Your sister was careless in letting me find out that you had human blood.”

  I remembered when Sailor told me back in Hether Blether that Domnall suspected we were part human. He had sung, trying to get her to reveal the truth about herself, but she had resisted him. She had fought back.

  We may have been human, but we were still finfolk too.

  “Do you know that I can control her mind with the song?” Domnall asked. “What should I have her do? Drown herself?”

  Mom stood on shaky legs and walked toward the ocean. She didn’t notice when the cold water lapped at her knees. “Oliver,” she gasped, pushing farther into the surf.

  She had lied to me. She had killed my father and let me—let everyone—believe the finfolk had been to blame.

  I clenched my jaw, fighting with myself. “No,” I croaked out as I fought the effects of Domnall’s song.

  “No?” Domnall asked, and Mom dropped to her knees in the surf. Her body shook with sobs as she crawled back onto the sand.

  “I didn’t mean to, Oliver,” she said, reaching a hand into the empty air, her eyes wide at the sight only she could see.

  Murderer, a voice in my head whispered. But the person on her hands and knees in the sand didn’t look like she could kill anyone. She cried out, her face wet with salt water and tears.

  Domnall was singing again, louder this time. I had to get away from the song. They would come after me if I ran, still singing. There was only one way I could go to block out the sound. A way that wouldn’t allow my mother to come with me. I had to make a choice. Stay and fall under their influence like my mother, or leave and save myself.

  Mara. I had to save Mar
a. I had to warn everyone else that Domnall was here.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, and then gritted my teeth as I opened my eyes again. I forced my foot to move. First one and then the other. I kept my gaze on the gray ocean, ignoring my mom’s cries behind me.

  “Stop him,” Domnall growled, the song faltering as he spoke.

  It was enough. I took the momentary relief to lunge forward, pushing myself across the sand and into the crashing waves.

  * * *

  My body tumbled through the current as the change overtook me. Pain seared through my bones as they popped and moved. My skin stretched and scales ripped through them, covering my legs as they fused into a tail fin.

  They were sure to come after me. I knew that water couldn’t stop them, but I had the element of surprise on my side, as well as the fact that I knew the island better than they did.

  I launched myself through the water, staying under the surface to make it harder for them to track me. I swam as hard as I could, rocketing along the coast, following the curve of the land under the surface that I had swam hundreds of times. I knew how far it was from the pier at the northern end of the island to the next point, the halfway mark where someone else would be on patrol.

  I barely paused during the change from finfolk to human, pushing myself toward the shore until my legs were two separate limbs again and I could walk. My jeans were tattered shreds, the ends floating around me on the water’s surface.

  The figure that waited on the beach had stood, his gaze focused on me as I rose from the water. I glanced over my shoulder, but there was no one else surfacing behind me. I hoped I had gotten ahead of them, I hoped I had bought us some time.

  As I drew closer to shore, I could make out the long blonde hair that flapped in the wind and the tall, narrow body that tensed at my presence.

  “Dylan!” I called as I pushed through the rolling surf that tried to pull me back out to sea. “They’re here! The finfolk are here!”