Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(55)

And I was so exhausted, I couldn’t even pull myself into a sitting position as I watched bloodied survivors wait at the edge of the ruins. Some were crying, some were praying aloud that their loved ones would be among those still being pulled out from under the collapsed house. I couldn’t hear heartbeats beneath the rubble, but I hoped that was because of all the noise those digging through the ruins made. I wanted to join them to help, but I couldn’t seem to move yet.

When something foaming and deep blue rose up from the sea, for a moment I thought it was a rogue wave. Then I realized it was several Leviathan forming out of the waters. Of course, once they did, they came out of the surf and headed right toward me. I couldn’t even summon the energy to be afraid. All I could think was, Took you long enough.

Then ripped black pants filled my vision. I followed them upward to see a muscled, pale back and soaked auburn hair. Ian raised his arm, and the horn that had been wrapped around it stabbed at the air as if wishing it were flesh.

“I chalked up the first threat to her life as a cultural misunderstanding, but now I’m all out of fucks to give,” he said in a loud, chipper tone. “So if any of you water-logged sods comes near her, I’ll shove this horn so far up your arses, Poseidon himself will be screaming from his new hemorrhoids!”

If that was the last thing I ever heard, at least it was memorable.

“That will not be necessary,” a smooth voice stated.

I don’t know why I thought it would be Yonah. Probably because I’d saved at least some of his people, so I’d hoped the demon would speak up in my defense, if it came to this. But the man who stepped into my vision had long white hair instead of a shiny bald pate, and his skin . . . Wow, I thought hazily.

He must’ve had it covered up by an elegant tuxedo at some point, but deep rips in the fabric revealed skin that at one moment was so pale it resembled moonlight resting on the waves, while in the next it was deep blue shot through with silver. Staring at it was like watching light refract and diffuse as it penetrated through water, and now I knew what his hair reminded me of: the roiling froth that formed when seas were at their stormiest.

“The Leviathan ruler,” I mumbled. I might not have seen him when my other nature took control earlier, but I’d felt him, and that was enough to recognize him now.

Ian turned, placing himself now between the stranger and me. “You don’t say?”

Ian’s drawl didn’t fool me. His aura burst out like the detonation of a bomb; a warning as clear as the deadly horn now pointed at the tall, white-haired Leviathan ruler.

“As I said, that won’t be necessary,” the stranger replied. With that, the Leviathan melted back into the sea.

Ian didn’t relax his stance. “Do I owe you thanks, or did you call off your sea dogs to take a crack at Ariel yourself?”

“Ariel?” The Leviathan ruler’s lips twitched as he looked past Ian to me. That’s when I finally noticed that if his skin wasn’t so unusual, he’d look like a normal, handsome young man. “You of all people named yourself after a fictional mermaid?”

I summoned up the energy to reply. “That book wasn’t written until the thousands of years after my sire named me, but the irony of it isn’t lost on me now.”

Another smile touched his mouth. Then he looked back at Ian. “I mean her no harm.” But you couldn’t stop me if I did, his newly hardened stare added.

Ian’s smile made me drag myself into a sitting position. I’d seen that same smile right before Ian threw himself into a gleefully violent fight to the death.

“I could use some help,” I said to distract Ian. It wasn’t a lie. My body felt like a wet rag, and now Yonah was striding toward us with his wings out. That couldn’t mean anything good.

“I’ve finished taking the wards down, so I and my people are leaving,” Yonah announced, seeming to speak more to the Leviathan ruler than Ian or me. At his declaration, everyone stopped working with a suddenness that made the new silence eerie. “I will give you our new location when it is safe,” Yonah went on, again seeming to speak to the Leviathan leader alone.

They grasped upper arms in the ancient form of a handshake. Since Yonah didn’t immediately start spewing water from his mouth, the Leviathan leader must not have the same “drown upon contact” limitations that his fluid-formed kinsfolk had.

“Safe journey, Yonah,” he said in his unaccented voice.

“To you as well, Indus,” the former demon prince replied.

Indus. The name of a river not far from my homeland in ancient Mesopotamia. Coincidence? Or had the cradle of civilization birthed much more than I’d realized?

Ereshki distracted me by limping up to our pile of debris. “Please,” she said. “Please, Yonah, do not leave me behind!”

“Rules state that only the most trusted members are brought to a new sanctuary after an attack,” Yonah replied in a harsh tone. “You are the newest, so you are the least trusted. Even if you were not, this place has been a haven for over five hundred years, but less than a month after your arrival, an earthquake levels half the island when it is nowhere near a fault line? No! Dark magic was afoot. I can sense it, meaning this one”—he stabbed his finger at Ian—“is right. Your enemy tracked you here, and I cannot allow him to track you to where we are going.”