The Mercreature

HOLLY

~I was just going to take one soul, but now I’ll take two…~

This was the voice I had heard in my dreams.

The voice of a woman who I’d thought wanted the best for me…

Wanted to ~be~ with me.

But now, as I stood trapped in her bubble, I was forced to face the truth:

She only wanted to take from me.

Rose had been right about Freya all along, and I had walked right into her trap…with Bambi.

Freya began chanting her soul-catching incantation. Her beautiful physique disappeared entirely, and all that was left was her decaying skeleton.

She raised her hands and white ghosts began to swirl around her…

She tipped back her head, singing her cursed spell to the world above.

In a frenzy, I began to whisper a spell blocker.

But as I released the magic, it just bounced around the bubble.

I was in a magical echo chamber. A sitting duck.

“Holly!” Bambi called. She banged on the fluid wall of her bubble but couldn’t break through.

I thought of how scared she must feel, unable to see the nightmare unfolding around her.

I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I had gotten her here, to say I would get her out. I would find a way out of this.

But that was a promise I couldn’t keep.

Instead, I shouted: “I’m sorry, Bambi!”

And then, before I could respond, I turned back to the witch who had won my trust.

“How dare you?!” I spat at her. “Do you know who you’re messing with? We have a…a whole army waiting on shore!”

It was a bluff, obviously, but I could only pray that Rose would know I’d made a foolish decision…that I’d disobeyed her advice.

She had to come quickly—before Freya took my soul…

The ghosts that swarmed around the skeleton began to solidify, tightening into small orbs that depicted the facial features of their living bodies.

The chorus of sad voices called out to me once again, and suddenly it all became crystal clear.

The mouths of the ghosts were singing the sailor’s song…

They were the souls that Freya had already captured—

The souls already lost—

Trying to help me save mine. And I had ignored their warnings.

And for that I would pay the eternal price.

Bambi and I were going to be turned into milky white orbs, strung around Freya’s torturous head. I would become just another pearl on her strand of souls…

As I gaped in horror at the scene before me, I heard Bambi begin to weep.

“Holly, I’m so sorry!” she shouted in desperation. “This is my fault.”

“Bambi, no!”

“I…I…couldn’t accept that my life had changed. I was willing to risk my life to bring back my sight! And now we both have to pay the price.”

Even as tears streamed down her face, Bambi was composed. Her hands touched the wall of her bubble gently.

To see her give up so calmly was even worse than if she were kicking and screaming…

And the worst part of all was that Bambi blamed ~herself~…

“Bambi, I was fooled too!” I cried, slamming against the wall of my bubble. I wanted to wrap my arms around my friend.

“I led you down here!” I lamented.

At that moment, Freya’s chanting stopped. There was no more time to feel sorry for ourselves.

As the evil witch splayed her long fingers of white bone, all I could do was brace myself…

And send one final cry for help to Rose…

ROSE

I sprang from my bed as if an alarm had wrenched me from my sleep.

But this was something worse.

~A cry for help…from beyond…~

Though a younger witch might have struggled to locate the source, I knew immediately.

Because my long life had taught me the nature of humans and witches alike…

Nobody liked being told what to do.

And that was how I knew it was Holly. I closed my eyes, willing to hear her voice one more time…

~Help…~ the message was short, unimpassioned, bubbling to the surface.

It seemed to lack the urgency of the living, which was the most troubling part of all.

Holly wasn’t totally alive…but she wasn’t quite dead either.

~Not unlike myself…~

I knew there was no time to waste.

Still in my nightgown, I flung open my bedroom door and sprinted down the hall.

As I switched on the light in Ekon’s room, I found that my suspicion had been true.

Holly had taken Bambi with her.

I grabbed my son’s shoulder and began to shake his body. He had always been a deep sleeper.

He reached for Bambi in the bed beside him, and when he found her place vacant, he groggily opened his eyes.

“Son!” I shouted as I whipped back his covers. “I hope you’re up for a late night swim.”

EKON

My mother and I stood at the end of the rickety dock in the harbor, catching our breath after sprinting from the house.

“I cast an underwater breathing charm for us,” she panted.

Without wasting a second more, my mother dove into the black ocean. I followed a beat behind her, taking a moment only to look up at the bone-white moon.

Mom cast a beam of light before us, though I could make out little in the dark water.

I focused only on moving forward—on getting to her.

~Bambi.~

She must be scared now. In the dark, trapped in a witch’s twisted game.

Her soul in limbo.

There was no other option in my mind than to save her.

I couldn’t live without Bambi’s beautiful soul. It was the most important thing to me in the world.

I would tear that witch apart with my teeth.

I would make her wish she was never born…

Mom’s light cast on an eerie city resembling a dead coral reef, surrounding a massive, wrecked ship.

I followed her toward a porthole in its rotten structure, and when her body disappeared through it, I followed at her heels.

And then I saw her. Bambi’s body—crumpled, lifeless—beside Holly’s…

At the feet of a witch I knew must be Freya.

The sea witch floated before a throne, her blonde hair flowing over her bare body.

She smiled ominously.

“Company’s arrived,” she sang cheerfully.

~So the bitch has been expecting us.~

Her beauty flickered, revealing her true, rotten self beneath the decorated exterior.

The blonde hair became seaweed, the haunting white skin gave way to rotting flesh and bone.

“You will pay for what you’ve done,” Mom growled. “Though I look young, I am an experienced and fearsome witch…who will enjoy watching you die.”

Freya’s smile flickered to a toothy skull.

“Welcome. I am glad you’re here,” she whispered, “because we are just so ~hungry~ for souls today.”

Then she snapped her bone fingers and two massive sharks swam through the open doorway.

I glanced at Mom, who nodded at me before directing her attention to Freya. I shifted underwater, my wolf clawing at the boards of the ship’s floor.

When Freya snapped again, the sharks rushed me. Their massive bodies, composed of two thousand pounds of pure muscle, sliced the water as they swam toward me.

As they moved, I stared into the countless rows of razor-sharp teeth in their cavernous mouths…

If I was going to defeat ~two~ of these beasts, I needed to be smart.

They were in their element—and I was very much out of mine.

I sprang from the floorboards, rising into the water above where the sharks were aiming. They chomped on empty water before angling up to me.

But I was ready.

With my massive claw, I slashed along the length of one shark’s sensitive snout, gouging his tough skin.

With my other, I caught a claw in the shark’s eye, rendering him blind.

They snapped their deadly jaws wildly, but neither of them could catch me…

Blood swirled in the dark water, casting a red hue over everything I saw. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mom sparring with Freya, her hands raised.

Incantations gurgled through the water…

The sharks were wounded, but that only made them angrier.

They planned their next attack together and circled back to me at the same time.

But I was faster…

I bore my claws and opened my huge jaws—and finally, I sank my teeth into the flank of one murderous fish.

I gashed the tail of the other with my long claws…

As the shark in my jaws tried to squirm from my clutches, I only bit down harder. Finally, I pulled a chunk of meat from its side and spat it into the bloody water.

The sharks were getting weaker—and even more importantly, they were ~scared~.

They cowered away from me. I growled, vibrating the walls of the ship with the guttural noise.

I turned to my mother to see if she needed my help, but she, too, was getting ahead.

Freya skulked away from the spells blasting out of Mom’s fingertips.

“Enough fun and games,” Freya shrieked, her voice echoing through the room.

With that, her blonde hair cascaded to the floor. She shed her skin completely and clenched her bony hands.

Her skeleton grew larger; it was covered by barnacles, coral, algae—until she no longer resembled any phase of human decomposition.

She had become something else entirely.

Even my mother readjusted her stance, backing away from Freya…

The sea witch was no longer just a witch.

She was a fearsome monster of the deep.