Marcus raised one eyebrow. “I survived three stints in a desert hell-hole. I think I can take on one Selkie prince. And let’s face it, Beka; you are too weak to do this on your own. You can barely lift that sword, much less use it to fight Kesh. I’m not letting you go alone.”
“I’m coming too,” Chewie said stoutly. “After all, there is nothing left to guard here. I might as well come help with the biting and clawing part of the program.”
Beka shook her head. “I’ll take Marcus with me, but I have a more important task for you, old friend. Two tasks, actually.” She held up a hand when he would have protested.
“I need you to go through to the Otherworld and get the Queen’s permission to use the Water of Life and Death to heal the Selkies and Merpeople who need it. You can tell her I couldn’t ask her in person because I was tracking down Kesh so I could bring him to her.”
She paused, arranging the supplies in front of her without really looking at them. “That way, if something happens and we don’t capture him,” she added softly, “at least the Queen will know who is responsible.”
“What about calling in the Riders to help?” Chewie asked, obviously not liking the odds any better than she did. Kesh was not only underhanded and dangerous, he almost certainly wouldn’t be alone. A prince wasn’t a prince without subjects.
“There’s no time,” she said. “The Mer Queen said the babies were getting sicker every day, and one elder has already died. And the Riders are still out looking for Mikhail. If they haven’t contacted me yet, they haven’t found him or he’s in even bigger trouble than they thought. Either way, we can’t wait for them. I could send for the Queen’s guard, but then she would find out that Kesh stole the Water of Life and Death, and that would be the end of my chance to save those children. Or myself. This is the way it has to be, I’m afraid.”
Chewie sighed. “Fine. I’ll go. I’ll even be polite. You said there were two tasks—what’s the second one?”
“Once you’ve come back from the Otherworld,” Beka said, “I want you to go to the Mer Queen and the Selkie King and explain what’s happened.” She didn’t envy him that conversation. She didn’t know how the King would react when he found out that his own son had been responsible for the poisoning of their lands and peoples, but she suspected that he might rival the Queen of the Otherworld for explosive potential. Luckily, dragons were pretty tough.
“Then ask them to gather all their sickest subjects and bring them to the beach down below us. If, by some miracle, we manage to find Kesh and get the Water back, we need to be able to get it to them as fast as possible.”
Chewie hesitated, then nodded. “Okay, Beka. You’re the Baba Yaga.” He gave her a big lick across the face, and an affectionate head butt that almost knocked her over. “Kill him once for me, will you?” he said, then vanished through the door to the Otherworld without a backward look.
Beka appreciated his show of faith in her. In truth, she wasn’t sure she shared it. But she didn’t have the option of failure this time. She wasn’t just fighting for herself, but for the lives of innocents who depended on her, and in a way, for the sea itself. It was time to prove Brenna wrong, once and for all.
TWENTY-FIVE
MARCUS WATCHED BEKA add one more knife to a sheath around her ankle and said, “Are you sure you don’t want another three or four, just in case?” Maybe it came from being a Marine, but he kind of liked her fascination with sharp, pointy things.
Still, there was a limit to how many one person could carry. He’d chosen to borrow one extremely large bowie knife and a small, deadly switchblade, and call it a day. He dearly wished he had some of his old weaponry from Afghanistan. Sadly, the military hadn’t foreseen that he’d be involved in a paranormal conflict at home, and had foolishly insisted he leave it all behind. But since that conflict was not only killing the woman he’d grown dangerously fond of, but threatening the livelihood of his entire community, too, he was going to take down the guy behind it if he had to use his bare hands.
Beka looked thoughtful, clearly not hearing the sarcasm in his voice. “Well, maybe just one more,” she said, and stuck a long, thin blade disguised as a hair stick down the length of the braid she’d twisted her hair into. She was looking a lot better than she had, although still nothing like her normal perky self. She’d told Marcus that when she’d done the magical work on Kesh’s pendant, she’d also cast a spell to give herself some more energy. But she’d warned him that it was only temporary—like the esoteric version of a large pot of black coffee—and it would wear off before too long.
They needed to be on their way soon.