Page 4 of Currents of Desire

I grip the machete tighter. The stairs are slick with algae and rain. One slip, and I go over the rail, into the dark, into the surge.

The scream comes again.

It’s louder now, closer, and directly beneath me. It’s a sound of agony, and it makes my blood run cold.

I take a breath, tasting the storm, then I take the first step.

Then the second.

And descend into the understory and the dark, hollow space beneath my house.

CHAPTER 2

Jack

As soon as my boots hit the concrete slab, the water is there, a violent, churning intrusion. Swirling around the ironbark stilts, the flood is shin-deep and rising, sucking at my ankles with a force that threatens to drag me down.

It’s warm, unnaturally warm, and it feels like bathwater that’s been left to go stagnant, teeming with silt and the rot of the mangroves.

Sweeping the Maglite beam across the darkness, light cuts a solid, white cone through the driving rain. The noise down here is deafening. The wind is howling through the lattice, the water is slapping against the piles, the house is groaning above me like a dying ship.

“Hello?” I yell, but the wind tears the word away before it leaves my lips.

Swinging the light toward the central support beam, I spot it. Wedged against the thickest pillar holding up the kitchen is a chaotic mass of debris. It looks like a beaver dam made of garbage, tangled green fishing nets, heavy driftwood, plastic jerry cans, and seaweed, all knotted together in a heap. The surge has hammered it against the pylon, locking it in place.

Suddenly, the mass moves.

Freezing, I tighten my grip on the machete handle.

A hand slaps the water. It shoots out from the tangle, pale and stark white against the dirty brown flood, clawing at the surface with splayed fingers.

“Hey!” I bellow, wading forward. “I see you! Hold on!”

Assuming some poor bastard got caught in the surge and swept up the estuary, my old SES instincts kick in. Pushing against the current, I fight my way forward as the water splashes up to my knees.

“I’ve got you,” I shout, aiming the light directly at the hand. “Don’t fight the net, you’ll just…” The words die in my throat.

I edge closer. The debris jerks wildly as a slender arm breaches the surface, but it's the shape moving beneath the water that freezes me in place.

A tail.

Thick as a python, muscular and terrifying, it thrashes wildly against the wood. Caught in the flashlight beam, the scales flash with a sudden, blinding iridescence of emerald green, deep violet, and a wet, slick obsidian. It scrapes against the ironbark with the sound of sandpaper on bone.

Stopping dead in my tracks, I let the water swirl around my thighs.

The shape in the net snaps its head toward me, and the light hits her face.

Staggering back a step, my boot slips on the algae-slick concrete. She doesn’t look like a victim but a nightmare. Her skin is the color of moonlight on a tombstone, luminous and pale, with wet, dark hair plastered to her skull. But it’s the eyes that freeze my blood. They are solid, void-like black with no whites or pupils, just endless, liquid darkness that reflects my torchlight like oil.

Her mouth opens in a snarl, revealing teeth that are too sharp and serrated, designed for tearing raw fish, not smiling. Just below her jawline, three vertical slits flare open and shut, gasping for air that isn’t there.

Gills.

“I didn’t think your kind came this close to the surface,” I whisper, the sound lost to the storm.

Everyone in Deception Point knows the hierarchy. We tolerate the Reef Mer who trade pearls for whiskey at the docks. We ignore the shifters who run the salvage yards. But this… she isn’t one of the locals, she comes from the deep.

The drunks at the tavern talk about them when the rum runs low, the royalty of the trench. The things that pull the tides. It’s supposed to be a myth. But seeing her tangled in my gear makes my stomach turn over. The deep water is spitting up things that belong in the dark.