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Cast in shadow, he seems mercurial.
But I’ve seen him up close and felt the hardness of his form. It is only a mirage that will fade once he steps into the light. “I tore them to pieces.”
A shudder passes through me.
The shadows shift, and he moves as if to emerge, standing taller than before. “Were they your friends?”
I can’t help a laugh from escaping, dry and mirthless. “They were Malachi’s men. No friends of mine. Does that assuage your guilt?”
“What is ‘guilt’?”
I turn my face away, confident that he doesn’t have the same plans for me. But he is a creature, not a man, even if he sometimes looks like one. He doesn’t hold the same values. I’m almost surprised he can speak, but his eyes speak to an intelligence of more than just a monster of the sea.
The shape of him is cut out of the shadows. “What is ‘guilt’?” he repeats most earnestly, his strange pupils narrowing with heightened focus.
I do my best not to lose ground. His presence still terrifies me. “It’s that feeling you get when you have to kill something. Like taura, when you slit its throat to feed a camp. Or chop the head off a gallus. It’s like a cold lump in your gut, you know?”
“I do not.”
My smile is small as I shake my head. “No, you wouldn’t, I suppose.”
He tilts his head.
Does he know confusion? Is he…curious?If so, does it matter if he intends to make me his next meal? “Are you… going to kill me?”
He doesn’t answer, slipping free of the shadows. He’s bigger than I remember, this Laiken. Monster in the shape of a man. But his tentacles never seem to go away, even on the ground, and his face doesn’t quite have the shape of a man, either. Those alien features are too prominent as he dwarfs me with his size.
I reconsider jumping into the pool on my left, but I can imagine he’s more agile in the water than on the rough cave floor. I shrink in his presence. All my experiences up to this point cannot help me here. I haven’t the first clue what a sea monster like him wants with me if he doesn’t intend to make me his meal.
“Whatareyou?”
His upper lip curls to reveal pointed teeth. “I already told you. I am Laiken.”
11
PENNY
“Laiken,” I repeat, gauging the distance between us.
In full view, I can really take him in, from his swirling brackish green skin to the odd and beautiful blue markings that coil over his features. His body is strange, and he has little in the way of a nose, but I suppose he doesn’t need one being a sea creature and all. As he is now, he has humanoid features, but I’ve seen him look different in the water.
I think I’vefeltthe press of his mouth against me in a dream.
There is nowhere for me to go as he stands at the center of this low cave. But he doesn’t advance further, giving me space to adjust to his presence. The sharp cut of his stomach is almost distracting, once I’ve gotten used to his odd effects.
“Oh. You’reLaiken,” I finally realize aloud. “That is your name?”
He nods.
“Are there others like you?”
Laiken offers a long look before his smooth brow rumples. “No.”
“You don’t seem certain,” I reflect, lowering myself to a seated position. If he was going to kill me, I figure he would have already done so by now. He wouldn’t have ‘changed’ me, as he claimed, and honestly, I should have realized it from the jump. It doesn’t make me comfortable in his presence, exactly, but at least it lowers my apprehension a little. This is a rare opportunity for me to learn about his kind, orwhateverhe is.
I recall how he dispatched the fishermen with the help of brutal claws. But his fingers are blunted now. “You had claws before, didn’t you?”
Without even flexing, claws slide from the tips of his fingers with ashink.He retracts them before I can fully take in their keen edges. “You have no claws,” he remarks, his gaze flitting over my own hands.
