Page 14 of Taken
The water curls away from him.Obedient.
He dips his chin, and it rises higher around my calves as if answering him.
As if obeying him.
I force a laugh that flakes away like dried salt.
That can’t be real. That can’t be happening.
“No,” he says, his voice low and resonant like distant thunder. “I shouldn’t be. But you called out to me,Telya.”
“Telya?” My mouth tastes like copper. The name stumbles out wrong. “That’s not my—I mean, what? I don’t know you. I didn’t call?—”
“It’s the word my people use for a strong current. Andyes, you did call out to me. I heard you, felt you over oceans of time and space,Telya. Now, I am here to answer that call.”
He lifts his hand, and the water answers.
“I didn’t call,” I whisper.
“You did,” he insists, “and now I’m calling you back.”
A whirlpool blooms beneath where I stand, pulling at me with a patient, insistent suck.
I stumble.
My knee hits the lip of the pool.
Cold water sprays my face.
For a stupid second I think of Aggie barking in the background, of the teacher waving at the kids, of that one mom filming everything with a smug little grin—none of them notice.
It’s like the world has closed a door and swallowed the sound.
“Wait—stop! Please,” I say, noting the water rushing around us both. “What are you doing?”
I grab the edge of the tank, fingers slipping on algae.
Panic scrapes up my throat.
No one is coming.
No one is seeing him or witnessing this kidnapping—though that word feels ridiculous at my age.
The stranger is arresting.Unearthly.
I mean clearly. He has horns and a tail, for Pete’s sake.
Power rolls off him like waves, thick and inevitable, and I’m helpless to look away.
His eyes are a storm.
They burn right through the panic and lay against some raw part of me I don’t have words for.
“I’m taking what’s mine, Telya.”
“I’ll drown!” I spit, because that’s the honest thing my chest can make, the small, animal protest of a body that knows water is both cradle and coffin.
“You won’t.”
