Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

“I don’t know, honey,” I said, as Asher gave me a look that was both hapless and dismayed, clicking off the line definitively.

“He’s injured, a bullet shattered his leg. They took down one gunman, but one remains,” he said.

“We have to stop them,” I said, and Hal nodded agreement.

Asher took a measured breath and shook his head. “No, we don’t. What we need to do is get off this boat. We get to the third deck, and then we get the hell out of here—”

“But there’s still people alive on board. Not just the ones we talked to on the radio—we have to try to warn them. If this ship is going down, we have to,” I protested.

He paused, and I could tell he was choosing his next words carefully for my sake. “I can’t see any possible way this will work.” I didn’t know whether him being willing to leave everyone else to die was instinct, fear, or love—or maybe all three. Even worse, I knew he was right. But—

“Mercenaries don’t sign on for suicide missions.” Hal interrupted my thoughts. “Unless somehow those are government guns, those men think they’re getting off this boat alive. And if they’ve got time to get off, we’ve got time to stop them.”

Asher didn’t say anything. He just put his hand out toward me, palm up. It said everything he wouldn’t. Please. Just come with me.

Hal went on, in ignorance, or just plain old ignoring Asher. “I’ve got a plan. We’ll split into two groups. You two and the boy go upstairs, get up to where the intercom is, and see if you can figure out how to warn people to evacuate in all the languages you can think of. Tell them all to get to the lifeboat deck—and see if you can tell anyone on land what’s going on out here. Claire, Emily, and I will go downstairs. We’ll figure out a way to stop the ones down there from blowing up the boat.”

At this, the expression on Asher’s face changed to one of complete disbelief—an expression I felt mirrored on my own. An old man, a woman who couldn’t walk, and a little girl were going to take on armed men?

“I’ll go with you,” I blurted out.

“No way in hell,” Asher said. He looked from the door to me, his opinion clear. Screw everyone else but the two of us—we could make it if we left right now. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t going to go without them—and I was too big for Asher to pick up and carry. “You’ll figure out a way?” Asher went on, mocking Hal, his voice incredulous.

As much as I loved him, that was the fundamental difference between him and me. He could displace his guilt, push it away so that it was something reckoned with later or even never, his work with Nathaniel case in point. Whereas with me—I could never manage to feel guilty later for something I could feel guilty about right now. There was a helpless man with a broken leg watching other men put explosives on our boat. There were Marius, and Kate, and Jorge.

I swallowed and looked away from Asher. I loved him with all my heart, but that didn’t mean that sometimes he still wasn’t wrong. I looked over to Hal. “I’m in.”

“Okay. We should get going then.” Hal bent over so that Claire could clamber up onto his back.

Asher blocked me. “This is a bad plan and you know it. I didn’t just get you back only to lose you again.”

“You won’t. You’ll know where I am the whole time,” I said with false bravado.

I watched his jaw clench and his throat swallow. “You’re the only thing in the world that matters to me. I won’t let you die.”

Hal shrugged Claire up into place. “Does that mean you’ll help?”

Asher looked to me, giving me one last chance to change my mind. When I shook my head, he shrugged helplessly. “What other choice do I have?”

“I’m sorry. I love you so much.”

Watching his face I was afraid for a second that he’d be angry with me. But he looked crestfallen instead, so deeply, deeply sad. He held out his arms and I stepped into them, if not agreed with, then forgiven. He kissed me hard, scared, like he’d never taste my lips again, and then stopped just as fast as he’d begun, his face close to mine, looking deep into my eyes, as if memorizing this new me, the one that I’d changed into since the last time we’d touched. Then he inhaled and exhaled, dropping his frustration, putting on another mood like someone else might put on a mask, becoming the suave charmer who was always in control. “I love you too,” he said, then he looked over to Rory. “You ready, boy?”

“My name’s Rory.”

“That’s a yes, then.” He walked over and flung open the dead passenger’s closet doors, and then looked back to us and started stripping. “I can’t do what I do looking like this. I need a minute.”

To watch him while he changed would have been too tempting, and maybe that’s what he wanted, me to remember what I was missing. So I turned around as the others did, and when he was done, he coughed loudly for our attention and slicked his wet hair back with his good hand. He looked rumpled and under stress, but back in control, and he picked up the radio, pointing it at me.

“Meet you on the lifeboat deck in under an hour, or when we’re both underwater, whichever comes first.” He didn’t risk another kiss, for which I found myself both hurt and grateful. “Live, or else I can’t be held responsible for what I’ll do.”

“I will,” I promised.

He jerked his head at Rory, and both of them went for the door.

After Asher left, it was as if all the air’d gone out of the room. I’d known it would hurt, but—

“Such an interesting fellow!” Claire said, newly reperched on Hal’s back. “Ready?”

“Ready!” Emily said, eager to follow the older woman’s lead.

I tried to shake my fears away. Was that the last time I’d see Asher alive? I’d done the right thing but that, as I well knew, was frequently futile. I pressed my fingers to my mouth as though I could hold his last kiss there.

Claire coughed for my attention, and I looked up at her. “Is the siren-thing why your legs don’t work?”

“No. I’m just old. Gravity’s harder on a girl when you’re on land. Water’s kinder.”

“You used to live in the sea?” Emily asked.

“Yes. I loved it there,” Claire said, leaning over to speak to the girl.

“But you loved me more,” Hal said, shifting her back.

“Well, you know. You’ve been sort of fun,” Claire said, with an obvious tease. Then she squeezed his thick shoulders tightly. “We’ll go first, and if we see anyone, I’ll try to talk them down,” she said, and Hal opened the door to lead us into the hall.

I felt uncomfortable with Hal and Claire being in the line of fire ahead of me so I put Emily behind me to at least protect her. If I stopped being brave now, I might be too smart to start again.

“So how does he know so many languages?” Claire asked, looking back at me, using a normal voice.

“Um. Shouldn’t we be listening?” I whispered.

“I am,” she said, with a toothy smile.

Seeing as she’d heard us the other night, and now I knew she was a siren—“As a shapeshifter he knows the past of everyone he touched before. When he was younger.”

“And how did a nice girl like you meet someone like him?”

Little did she know. “I worked in a hospital wing for supernatural creatures once upon a time. We treated shapeshifters, daytimers, and weres.”

“Daytimers?”

“Humans who were exposed to vampire blood.”

“Ah.” She made a thoughtful face. “We don’t have vampires under the sea. Our monsters are much bigger, and much worse.”

“How did you all meet?” Emily asked. Her parents were seemingly forgotten in all the excitement, or because of something Claire had done.