Page 98 of Oceansong
When in the eighteen levels of Hell were Ian and Marc allowed to comeback? She hadn’t seen them since Bàba suspended them.
“Get out of my way.” She tried to sidestep around Ian, but Marc blocked her.
“Or what, you’re gonna fight me? There’s three of us versus you,” Ian sneered.
Angie glanced toward Nick. They didn’t like each other, but would he really fight her? Before Angie could make another move, the merman beside them jumped out of his tank, his long arms reaching for Nick and clutching him around the throat. He pulled Nick into his tank so Nick was submerged beneath him, his glare murderous and his knuckles turning white as he tightened his grip.
“Boss!” Ian lost interest in Angie as he and Marc rushed to the tank.
Good, maybe the merman would finally drown the life out of Nick.
But Nick fought, grabbing at the merman’s fingers and trying to pry them off. His chest still heaved with inhales and exhales, and Angie knew. He’d breathed in the magic from the terrified mermaid.
From next to him, the mermaid pulled herself halfway out of her tank, screaming in Renyuhua. She spoke so fast that Angie couldn’t understand a word she was saying.
Ian and Marc jumped to the merman’s tank and dragged the mer out of it, throwing him to the floor on his back. He struggled briefly before flipping himself over. “You try to kill our boss? You don’t get to live, scaly scum.” Ian sneered, and after another brief glance at Nick, who gave him a firm nod, he pulled out his pistol.
“No!” Angie charged him. To do what, she couldn’t decide, but she could knock him off balance, knock the gun out of his hand. Anything so the mermaid wouldn’t have to watch her lifemate murdered.
Before she reached Ian, he shot the merman at point-blank range.
The mermaid’s mournful scream pierced through Angie’s ears and into the core of her being. The merman went still, lying facedown, his blood pooling on the ground.
Angie felt cold. The sound of the gunshot ringing in the enclosed space and resulting in the merman’s death stunned her into silence.
“You okay, boss?” Marc asked. “Really scared us back there. Thought you were a goner.” He and Ian helped Nick out of the tank, but Nick waved them off.
“I’m fine. Throat hurts a little, but that’s it. I tried breathing underwater after you pulled that fucker off me. And you guys, I could breathe. I could see. It’s amazing.” He finally seemed to notice Angie. “Angela. Is this what you’ve been hiding from us all this time? Sneaky, sneaky.” He wagged a finger at her. “Let’s go, boys. I have to get dried off. We need to tell the others about this. And how the merman tried to kill me.”
The three men brushed past Angie without another word, leaving her inside with the mer. She walked to the mermaid’s tank, whose head and shoulders were above water, her shoulders racking with anguished sobs. She dug her palms into the top of the tank, trying to hoist herself out. It was too high, and she slid back into the tank, never taking her eyes off her lifemate.
Angie reached for her hands when she crawled back up, and drove her heels in, trying to pull her out.
The mermaid was waiflike in her frame, but she was heavier than she looked. After two more tries, pulling with all the strength she could muster, Angie’s arms gave out, and for the third time, the mermaid was left hanging partway out of the tank.
What could she possibly say to the mermaid? She wasn’t sure the mermaid would understand her. So she stood with her side to the tank, and took the mermaid’s cool hand in both of hers.
The mermaid didn’t fight. Didn’t try to pull her hand from Angie’s. She cried and cried, her tears forming a puddle around Angie’s work boots.
In the tank behind the mermaid, Cyrus hung still and limp, but the movement of his gills told Angie he still lived.
“I’ll come back for you,” she said to him. He didn’t stir.
Angie stayed until the mermaid’s tears had dried, and left when her shift started an hour and a half later.
Angie returned to the outhouse when her shift was over, and most of the crew had gone home for the night.
What she had seen that morning struck deep into her being.
The mermaid was on her back in the tank, unmoving, her gills flaring open and closed. The merman’s body was gone, leaving only a patch of dry blood caked into the wooden floorboard.
The sight of Cyrus broke Angie in two. He was conscious, but floated aimlessly in the water with his tail curled, the horizontal tank hardly large enough to fit his length. His eyes, once so full of life and fire were now flat and dead.
“Cyrus.” Angie put her palms flush against the tank’s glass. Cyrus perked up when he saw her, and he wrapped his hands around the top rim of the tank, pulling himself up, his arms shaking, before they collapsed underhim. He folded his arms and rested his chin on them while taking in a large gulp of air.
“Angie?”
“Tian, what did they do to you?” She scanned him up and down, stopping at small lacerations on his chest. “Did they—?”
