“I will when you promise to leave me alone,” she stammered, barely managing the words.
“I’m being serious. This—it’s dangerous. Swim back to the bank and we’ll talk.”
We’ll talk. Likely. Lilac stared at the opposite bank just a short swim in front of her. It was growing colder by the second, and a ached pulsing through her muscles indicated that her calves would soon begin to stiffen. While Garin had ridiculed her response, he also hadn’t jumped in to pursue her. It was impossible to tread water forever, and she could always swim back and grab her bag when he left, and if not, leaving her belongings behind would be worth getting rid of the persistent creature. In the accounts she’d read on vampires, that seemed to be one of the most difficult things about them; they were creatures of immense patience when they had to be.
She decided and paddled further toward the outer bank, but Garin’s raised voice followed her. “Lilac, I’m not kidding this time. This is dangerous, come back!”
“What could possibly be more dangerous than you? Swimming back is the exact opposite of what m-my instincts are telling me to do.”
“I beg of you—”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Just past the midpoint, the moon’s reflection on the water ahead of her moved. At least, she thought it did. Ripples surrounded her—a school of minnow, she thought as they circled her slowly. But the ripples only intensified.
Something was wrong. Something was here. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand in spite of the moisture. Off to her right, a faint blue-white glow shone under the water. It wasn’t the reflection of the moon at all.
Garin roared something unintelligible after her. His voice was enough to shake her bones even from the shore. It was the first time she heard genuine fear in his voice, and she didn’t like it at all. “Don’t move!”
“Garin?!” The frantic shrill of her own voice was just as unrecognizable.
“Stay there! I’m coming in.”
She sucked a sharp breath in as another flash of cold shot through the water under her, this time numbing her toes. There was no mistaking it this time—something lurked in the depths of the Argent, and it was moving right beneath her. The light beneath the surface had taken the shape of an orb, and now there were two more encircling her, shimmering as they danced closer to the surface. Lilac paddled frantically, spinning in place to keep them all in sight. Something slimy brushed up against her bare leg under her dress, and she heard her own scream pierce the night. A cold hand grasped her shin and yanked down with tremendous force.
The last thing she saw before she was sucked under was Garin, bounding frantically toward her through the shallow end of the river.
She was enveloped in darkness. She clawed her way up, to what she thought was up, struggling beneath the icy plane. Fighting for her breath, she kicked and scratched until the bony hand on her ankle finally slipped off. It didn’t take long for her to lose track of the moonlight in the murky water; Lilac gave one last, hard kick. Panicked bubbles erupted from her nostrils, and she followed them up with the last of her breath.
As she broke the surface, she gasped and didn’t even have time to suck in a full lungful before two more pairs of brittle hands grabbed her and she once again found herself submerged, this time entangled in limbs and fine, slimy strands of seaweed. The pain in her lungs intensified, like a knife caught in her sternum as she struggled weakly against the fingers dragging her down. As her consciousness began to fade, the vibrations of an echoed, distorted giggle shook the water surrounding her.
Suddenly, a new set of hands, these ones sturdy and full of vigor, grasped under her armpits. The giggles turned into furious hisses. Helpless, she fought to hold the last of her breath—she was viciously yanked, between the hands on her ankles and the ones under her arms, until the hands pulling her up gave a vicious tug. Her legs broke free, and she shot toward the surface. Lilac sobbed and inhaled the air in desperate gasps, feeling as if she would never be able to breathe enough in. An arm curled around her waist and she screamed and thrashed in anguish.
“Stop that! Stop—it’s me,” Garin gurgled next to her, spitting water out. Hair slicked over his eyes, he slung her arms over his shoulder and around his neck.
He immediately began kicking his powerful legs through the water, one-handedly swimming back to shore. He moved faster through the growing current than Lilac thought possible. When they reached the shore, he pulled her out and then dropped her, just before she retched chunks of pie and river water, indiscernible between the mud and stones between her fingers.
Shivering and panting, she shrugged off her drenched cloak and began wringing it out the best she could. Her dress now clung to her torso even tighter.
“My clothes,” she coughed, wiping the spittle off her chin and staggering to her feet. “They’re ruined.”
“Ruined?” Garin spat from somewhere over to her left. He sat in the mud, emptying his boots. “They’re wet.”
“Precisely,” she snapped.
“To someone whose life spans a mere century at best, I’m sure that must seem terribly important.”
“Pity,” came a harmonic inflection from behind them. “Is the poor Darkling upset that his meal got taken away?”
“Ignore them,” Garin instructed quietly as he wrung out the front of his black shirt.
Them.
Lilac spun to face the river and couldn’t believe her eyes. Three bare-breasted creatures sat in the shallower water just beyond the riverbank. It hadn’t been seaweed that Lilac was tangled in, but their long, golden hair. Below toned stomachs, porcelain skin blended seamlessly into what looked like a wide serpent’s tail adorned in aventurine scales. Their complexion glistened with patches of gold smatterings, glinting impossibly in the moonlight as they turned this way and that to wring their hair out. As Lilac gawked, three sets of razor-sharp teeth grinned back at her, like the mouths of sharks.
She shuddered. They were the most aesthetically pleasing and terrifying things she’d ever seen.
Garin paid them no mind. He was too busy wiping the clay off of the baldric belt, taking extra care cleaning off Sinclair’s longsword. “They are why we don’t fancy the rivers,” he muttered, side-eying her. To her surprise, he grabbed her sack off the ground and slung it over his shoulder, then held out his other hand. This time, she gladly accepted it and allowed him to pull her upright.
“G’day, sweetheart,” another one of them purred, scales glinting green and purple as she slithered further up onto the bank. “By the moon, you’re ripe and plump. Once the curse is lifted, he’ll go right for it..”
Frowning, Lilac threw Garin a look of concern, only to find him observing her with the same expression. “Curse?” Lilac repeated. She shifted uncomfortably. How could they have known? It was public knowledge she could speak to Darklings, sure. But no one else knew she had come to Brocéliande to get rid of the ability to do so. Not even Garin.
To her relief he didn’t press further, only offering a grunt of annoyance. “Ignore them. The Morgen speak in riddles and lies.” He stretched the kinks from his free shoulder, re-secured the baldric belt across his torso, then took Lilac under his other arm.