Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

I turn my head to see Rusalka storming onto the beach. Breanne is attacked and cut open. She falls to the ground, clenching her belly. Without her defenses, a dozen more Rusalka charge forward. They cut down Suzi, and a boy named Tucker, and Priscilla, leaving them bloody and in shock. Tucker can’t stop looking at the wound on his arm. He’s set upon by others. I hear his screams over the gunfire. The Rusalka leap forward, cutting five soldiers in half. One snatches up a loose rifle and accidentally shoots itself in the face.

And our luck runs out. One of the Rusalka turns to find out what drove them to shore and realizes we are in the water behind him. He lunges forward and digs his claws into Jonas’s leg. The boy cries out and falls backwards into the water. Losing his connection causes the rest of us to lurch with pain.

Another Rusalka leaps to slice me open, but I kick it in the face and it tumbles back. Five more follow. Riley manages to punch one before it can hurt him, and Emma turns her glove on the creature, crushing it between two spouts of water. Unfortunately her diversion weakens our hold even further. The energy needed to hold back the wave feels like it is ripping me apart, and I know if it’s this bad for me, it’s hurting the others even more. This is how it felt that day on the beach when I failed everyone. I fought and fought, but it was pointless. Everything was destroyed anyway.

Everything.

“Let go!” I shout to the team.

“We can’t!” Harrison cries.

“Let it go. Turn your attention on our people. Get them out of the water before they are swept away.”

I call names out to the sea, asking it to keep everyone safe. When I say Arcade’s name, a wave shoots her into the sky. I see it happening to everyone on the beach. Kita, Jackson, all the soldiers and children. They are all hurtled skyward when we let the water go.

Riley and I shoot into the sky as well, just as the monstrous wave stampedes beneath our feet. It crushes everything that dares stand in its way, even the Rusalka who created it. It swallows them up and chews them apart, and I feel my connection to their gloves snuffed out.

The wave rolls up the beach, smashing into Childs Restaurant, knocking it off its foundation. It continues onward, bulldozing everything in its path. The destruction from this wave will wipe out neighborhoods that survived the first. I hope the die-hards who would not leave have a chance to escape. My mind searches the water for my parents and Bex and Chloe, but they aren’t out there. I hope Jackson fulfilled his promise. I hope they’re on their way to safety.

When the ocean has had its way with the land, when it is just a simmering boil of hostility, I nudge it back to where it belongs. The other children help me until we can see the beach once more. There is nothing left, no debris, no weapons, no evidence that this place was once a neighborhood.

We ease everyone back to the ground and gather in the wet sand. Arcade waits for me. She points at a jagged cut on my thigh. A Rusalka must have slashed me and I didn’t notice. I’m so full of adrenaline right now, I can’t even feel it.

The children cry at their losses. There were thirty-three of us when we arrived. We lost nine in the fight. I stretch out and find their bodies. There is no life in any of them. We lost Breanne, Jonas, Emma, Tess, Leo, Georgia, Pierre, Tucker, and Danny.

“Look!” Finn shouts.

There’s a splash, and then something lands at our feet. I almost fall backwards in fear. Another Rusalka has arrived. Its yellow eyes study us for a moment, and its forked tongue licks the air. It barks and howls at us in its ugly language, but I can’t begin to understand what it wants.

“He is not here!” Arcade shouts at it.

The Rusalka stomps its feet and growls angrily.

“Then he is a coward. I demand he retreat. His invasion has failed,” Arcade shouts.

The creature lets out a defiant huff and springs back into the water, disappearing from view.

“He is coming,” Arcade says.

“Who?” Cole asks.

“The prime. I will fight in Fathom’s place,” Arcade says, then stares at me with serious eyes. “I will not allow interference.”

“This is my fight too!” I shout.

I see the tips of tridents and swords rising out of the surf. All along the shore as far as I can see, they come, hundreds of Rusalka marching in our direction. Unlike the others, they wear the same armor that the other Alpha have been known to wear. It’s made of shells and bones and claws. In their midst is the prime and his pregnant wife, Minerva. They each bear smiles a million times more terrifying than their monster army. Once they are in position, they all stop and stand tall before us.

“Where is the traitor?” the prime says, his eyes gleaming with hate.

“Ever the coward,” Minerva hisses.

“No mind. He will learn the new way of things when we root him out,” the prime says. “As for the rest, you may kneel and beg for a quick death.”

“That is merciful,” Minerva says with all sincerity.

“You are no prime,” Arcade cries. “The Alpha Nation is dead and scattered, all thanks to you. You are the leader of memories, not First Men.”

“I think this child has lost her ability to see,” Minerva says. “Isn’t the empire standing before you? Only a small portion of it, of course, but it grows with each passing day. The Alpha live on.”

Arcade looks up and down the beach at the beasts.