Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

A luminescence grew beneath me. Down where the sea went black, a hundred-hundred bright eyes opened up, as if seeing for the first time in ages. They blinked up at me in a syncopated rhythm, sending me signals from the dark. I didn’t know what the meaning was, but I would learn. I was sure the light would teach me.

Something grabbed my foot. Asher? Ruining this? I kicked, and the thing grabbed up my leg.

There was a ripple in the water in front of me that spun me around, although this far down I didn’t know which way was up. Hands grabbed my armpits, shoving me through the water, pulling me where I didn’t know. I felt currents of water moving against my flesh, and something strong kept hitting my feet with a thump.

A song kept time with us, so sweet. No wonder I had jumped. If I hadn’t, I never would have heard anything like it.

The water got lighter; then we breached and I was divorced from the waves.

A child’s smile rose up in front of me, her face low. Emily. I could see the gills on her neck below the waterline, pumping, and envied her them. I knew she was still singing as her new tail beat time.

“Thirsty—” I explained. For water, for answers, for the light-in-the-darkness’s touch.

“No,” answered a voice behind me, and I felt strong hands on my back hoisting me up and into the life raft again. I felt abandoned as Asher looked back behind himself. “Thank you for this. I’m glad you’re well.”

I leaned up to fight with him, to get her to take me back, but it was too late, just a ripple and the flick of a tail flapping against the surface of the sea. There was no way to tell where she’d gone. Why wouldn’t she take me?

Asher crouched over me in the life raft. I was so mad at him I couldn’t even put it into words.

“Thirsty,” I spat out, when I could figure out how.

“I love you, but I’m not listening to you say things like that.” He took the end of the cord that had inflated the raft and started wrapping it around me.

Asher tried to stay up, but couldn’t—so instead he fell back asleep on top of me, me tied, him perpendicular across my legs. My mouth ached it was so dry. I would do anything to drink. I wondered if this was how vampires felt.

A piece of the surrounding dark detached itself in the moonlight and crossed the bottom of the life raft, scurrying like a large beetle. I shook my head and tried to free myself, but it came up the side of the raft, so close I couldn’t turn my head to see it, but I could feel it crawl into my ear.

“Hello, Edie!”

The Shadows or a piece of them. Of course they’d survived. At my thinking this, they laughed. They were in my head now, and they sounded excited to see me. Great.

“We didn’t think you’d manage to last this long!” they said, and sounded cheerful as they said it.

No thanks to you.

“Well, we are the reason that you’re here. Maybe you’ll thank us later. You never know,” they said, and laughed like they’d made a hilarious joke. “Ah, no, really, your son’s been doing all the hard work of keeping you alive. Shapeshifter DNA—if you can call it that—is really quite amazing. Very robust immune systems. We’re hoping you live now, so that we can get the chance to meet him. We’ve never met a human–shapeshifter hybrid before.”

I didn’t want them to ever meet my son, if that’s what he wound up being. I imagined giving birth on the face of the sun, under lights so bright even the Shadows had to hide. They laughed at this—and then all my imagined light reminded me how parched my mouth was, how this night was very dry, and all I wanted to do was drink and never stop—

“That’s the worms talking. Don’t listen.”

But there was nothing else I could think of other than my thirst—my thirst and the thing I’d seen when I’d tried to quench it, the thing beneath the waves, with a thousand all-seeing eyes—and I felt the Shadows inside my ear jump.

“Did you tell it that we were here? Does it know?”

Know what? I rubbed my head against the bottom of the raft, trying to get them out.

“About us!” they whined, painfully loud in my ear.

“I don’t know!” I whispered around the gag in my mouth so they’d shut up. Why are you scared of it?

“You of all people know what it’s like to have relatives you’re ashamed of, Edie. Ashamed of, scared of—trust us, our relatives are worse.”

Asher stirred, and I willed him to go back to sleep. I thought if he were awake the Shadows would stop talking to me, and for the first time ever they seemed willing to share answers. Nathaniel’s dead, right?

“Fish food. Literally.”

Can you go get help for us?

“We’re as stranded as you are. We got here inside your shoe. Decided to hitch a ride on you inside the morgue.”

So not only can you not save me, I saved you. Awesome.

“We’d say that we’d owe you one, but we’re not entirely sure you’ll survive. We’re cheering for you though.” Then they shouted, “Go Edie!” sarcastically.

I bounced my head off the bottom of the raft, hoping to knock them loose, as they laughed very loudly. I gave up, and they settled down.

I asked the only question I had left to ask. Are you sure it’s going to be a boy?

The aura of smug mystery finally returned to their voices. “What do you think?”

I woke up with a start, gasping for air. I have to tell Asher something.

Everything’s bright and orange, and I can only see through one eye. The other eye’s swollen shut; it burns when I try to open it. Water slaps rubber, over and over, in endless slow applause. I remember the sound from childhood, floating down a lazy river in an inner tube, drunk from beer my older brother had snuck me when I was sixteen.

“Edie? Are you okay?” Asher’s leaning over me. His voice is hoarse.

I have to tell him something.

But I can’t. There’s rope in my mouth. And I can’t pull the rope away because my hands are tied. My feet too. I’m hog-tied, and when I move my shoulder starts to throb.

“Is it still you?” Asher asks me. I don’t know why he’s asking. I don’t know what he means.

I have to tell you something, I try to say around the rope, even though I can’t remember what it was.

“I’m so sorry, Edie. I’m so, so sorry. It is you, right?” he asks, and his voice cracks.

I want to comfort him. To tell him that I’m okay, even though it’s clear that I am not. He looks so afraid right now. I’ve never seen him this afraid before.

“We’re going to be all right. We’re going to get away from here. I’m going to save you,” he says, more to himself than me. He scuttles backward and brings up what I realize was a paddle, then leans over the side of the orange thing we’re riding on and paddles for all his might.

Inside my mind, things slide into place. My ties, our lifeboat. What I want to say to him.

He’s paddling so hard to nowhere that salt water is spraying my face.

And I remember.

Everything.

The sound of helicopters in moonlight. One flits over to us and dips down like a dragonfly.

All this—again?

Men descend from the sky, only this time Asher helps me over to them. Strange hands grab me, fasten me down, and then hoist me up. I’m frantic until Asher’s brought up too—they let him sit beside me. They leave me tied.

I lose track of time. I can’t hear anything, and Asher’s buckled in. I wake up when we land with a bounce.

Men undo the latches that hold the gurney in place and bring it into a room. Somewhere. All I can really see is the ceiling—and I know with unflinching certainty and sadness that they are taking me away from the sea.