Page 2 of Whispers of the Deep
A shadow passed over her hand. Strange, because she hadn’t seen any large animals since she’d started welding. Every now and then, she was treated to the sight of a massive whale in the distance. And sometimes at night she listened to their haunting songs as they swam by the city. It was beautiful, and for some reason, it always made tears sting in her eyes.
Mouth full, still chewing, she looked up to find the source of the shadow and froze.
A monster hovered in front of the glass. His black tail, so long it tangled in the kelp, was at least ten feet long. Blue slashes of fins, so deep they blended in with the water, undulated all along the black scales. It stretched up to his waist, seamlessly turning into that pale, almost gray skin. His body was as all the rumors claimed. So handsome it was painful to look at, and eerily like the gold sculptures that surrounded her.
Dark claws on his hands were intimidating enough, but it was his black eyes that felt like they’d somehow captured her soul. Black, entirely. Inky and dark, they stared straight through her as though she was nothing. Just a maggot wriggling beneath him. Long dark hair floated around him, perhaps waist length, although there were thick cords interspersed through the strands, much thicker than her own, almost like tentacles.
And if the rumors were true, his plush mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth. He tore through his prey like a shark, but so much more intelligent. So much more dangerous.
Fuck, she shouldn’t be here alone. The undine—what her people called his—rarely came around the cities. And if they did, it was only for a shitty reason. They were known to attack cities like her own and perhaps had been behind the sinking of Gamma. But they weren’t seen around her city. No one in Beta had seen an undine in... years.
Unless they were watching her people. Using routes like this one, where they knew no one was going to be in the room while they passed by.
How long had he been watching her? Had he seen her working? The fire should have startled him away. It scared everything else.
Why was she frozen here staring at him, terrified, when she should be running?
Her eyes darted to the crack in the glass and after a second, she realized he looked in the same direction. So they were intelligent. He’d watched her body language as though he was familiar with it, and when he saw the crack, a wave of rippling electricity lit up his body.
He looked down at her and grinned. Those sharp, gleaming teeth were a clear threat.
There was so much hatred in that gaze. Beyond anything she’d ever seen before.
They moved at the same time. She bolted for the door and he swam for the crack. She heard him. The massive bulk of his body as he slammed down on the glass and... and...
It held.
She spun to look at him as she reached the door. Some curious stupidity made her look back. The black, undulating tail laid on top of the glass, and the undine stared down at her. He lifted his claws and scraped them down the surface, the sound echoing and ear piercing. He snapped his teeth, then looked up and sped away. She watched him getting smaller and smaller toward the surface, and then he turned around.
Oh.
Oh, no.
She was frozen again, her mouth open as he torpedoed through the water toward the glass and she thought for an insane second, “He’s going to kill himself.”
If he hit the glass, the force of his body would surely send him catapulting into the room with the water. What did he think was going to happen? He’d be in the glass dome as well. He’d be stuck in here, like those fish the people in Alpha supposedly kept.
But he wasn’t stopping, and she wasn’t dumb. Mira spun around and hit the button to open the door. She slid underneath it as soon as there was enough room for her to crawl and hit the button on the opposite side with a punch that almost broke her finger. The blast doors started coming down and she hissed out an angry breath.
“Come on,” she muttered. “Come on.”
Impact.
The sound of his body hitting the glass was a sickening thud, like someone had jumped from too high. It shook the room like an earthquake. Everything rumbled around her, the metal framing that she’d just fixed whining with the pressure and then the rush of water.
Liquid rushed out of the room over her feet and then stopped as the blast door finally sealed shut. The rubber held. The metal was so much stronger than flimsy glass. It would hold even if the undine got ideas.
But some part of her, some worried, fearful part, opened the tiny viewing door that was even smaller than her porthole in her bedroom. Her hand was shaking as she slid it open and peered into the now flooded room.
Bubbles obscured most of her vision, but she could see her lunch box floating in the distance. Water filled the space, but there was no giant sea creature floating inside it. How had he managed that? She was certain he would strike it so hard that he wouldn’t be able to...
A hand slapped the viewing door. Black claws raked down it, leaving deep furrows in its wake. And then she saw him. So close she could see her own reflection in those black eyes. His tail coiled behind him, looping like a large tentacle of its own.
But oh, he was so beautiful. Those hard edges of his face, almost human but not quite close enough. The sharp teeth bared at her, like this was her fault. Like she had somehow done this. As she stared into his gaze, she wondered why there was so much hatred in those eyes.
Everyone who had ever whispered about undines claimed they were unfeeling monsters. But this one wasn’t. Hate like this burned through a person for years before it ever got this hot. He wanted to murder her, and he didn’t care if anyone would miss her. She could see all of that in his angry gaze.
So she bared her teeth at him as well, mimicking his expression as best as she could. “Sorry, you pretty bastard. Better luck next time.”
