Page 43 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
After picking their way along, they reached a gravelly bank. Mai leaned forward, noting where the shallows ended and the bottom dropped, sudden and deep, into a fathomless blue.
She left Rake’s clothes and her own belongings on the bank, stripped to her underthings, and waded in as far as she dared, encouraged by Baz, who was bobbing out in the center of the lagoon. He’d fallen in fully clothed, but he didn’t seem to care. He took off his shoes underwater and tossed them to Corklan.
“Where’s Rake?” Mai called to him.
“Exploring,” Baz called back. “Trying to find the bottom, maybe.”
Mai had lived her whole life by the sea, but for most of those years there had been a wall between her and it. She didn’t mind ships, either, as long as they had solid railings. But the lagoon was too much like the open ocean; she had a healthy fear of sinking into its depths and never resurfacing.
She hurried back to her satchel and pulled out the breathing device she had brought. It was mermaid technology, designed to help humans survive below. The mermaids around Kiken Island had used it to keep prey alive for a while, but Mai wondered if perhaps, in kinder times, it had allowed humans to visit mermaids and work with them on the creation of amphibious technologies.
Her pulse quickened as she pulled out a golden belt as well—one of the devices that could give a mermaid legs. She had a theory about it—one that could either be exciting or very, very dangerous.
“Don’t look,” she called to Baz. “Turn around. You too, Corklan. I want to try something.”
“Something you have to be naked for?” Corklan raised his eyebrows, but he turned his back, and so did Baz.
Trembling, Mai kicked off her panties and put the golden belt around her waist. She spun the dial in the opposite direction from what Rake usually did, and flipped the lever.
A needle-thin bolt of agony pierced her spine, and she bit her wrist, trying not to scream.
12
Rake surfaced just in time to see Mai taking off her underwear.
He was too far away to catch more than a glimpse before her legs dissolved, her torso suspended in midair for a second as the energy field of the golden belt held her aloft. Meanwhile, the particulates that were once her legs gathered and coalesced into a vibrant green tail—the brightest he’d ever seen. Her scales were the color of kelp waving right beneath the surface, with rays of sun lancing through them—vividly luminescent.
He plunged through the water, an arrow streaking straight for her. His heart pounded so hard he thought it might burst.
Right before he reached the shallows he lurched upright, breaching the surface and flinging his hair back.
And there she was, lying on the gravelly shore, flipping her beautiful green tail back and forth. It was much slimmer than his, narrow and lithe. She hadn’t changed above the waist—she was wearing a corset-like chemise that left her lean stomach exposed, and no gills had appeared along her slender throat.
Seeing her thrilled Rake’s heart with tender pain. She looked like one of his kind, only far softer and smoother. She looked up from admiring her tail, and her gaze met his. In her wide dark eyes he saw a glorious, wondering triumph. The delight of a theory proven.
Rake touched the tips of his claws to his chest. He felt something beating through his blood—something fierce, powerful, protective—a sweet ache, a lovely hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the girl who had just risked her whole self for something new.
Mai reached for an object beside her—one of the breathing devices the mermaids used on humans.
“I think Flay intended for you to learn how to swim as a human,” Rake called. He felt as if his face might split from the breadth of his smile.
“He and Kestra would never have let me try this,” she called back. “It’s incredible. Will you teach me to use it?”
“Use what?” said Baz, his voice rising.
“Can we look now?” groaned Corklan. “If someone doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I will turn around. I’ve seen females aplenty. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure.”
“You can look,” Mai told them. “I thought the effect might work the other way too, but I wasn’t sure. This device uses a person’s inner codex, rewrites it to create the requisite body part for surviving in either land or sea.”
Corklan approached, awestruck, and reached down to run his fingers along the green scales.
Baz swam nearer too, his jaw hanging open with shock. “You make a rutting fine mermaid.”
Rake suppressed the urge to growl at him. It was a sudden instinct, bone-deep and ferocious—a wordless, irrational refrain ofminethat coiled in his gut and vibrated along his nerves.
“Come, Mai,” he said. “I will teach you to use your tail.”
Corklan had to help Mai into the water, and Rake felt his own lips twitching back, curling in a silent snarl as the big sailor’s hands brushed Mai’s chest.
