Page 12 of Sea of Love

“We can follow at a safe distance to assure it poses no harm to the mortals,” Michael said. He retrieved an oil lamp from their room, and handed Troy an extra dagger. To Summer he gave a small stoppered bottle. “It seemed to like your power, so perhaps you can lure it into this.”

The water sat coiling at the base of the stairs, but as soon as they caught up it poured onto the outside walkway. It formed a sphere and bounced across the stepping stones. It rolled between the feet of several men who were standing and drinking outside a tavern. It slipped around a chained, barking dog and disappeared into a darkened doorway.

Summer pulled her palla forward to cover her face as she and her mates passed the tavern’s patrons. Michael quieted the guard dog with a pat on its head before he peered into the doorway.

“There are steps leading downward,” he said as he held up the lamp. “I think it is a cellar of some kind.”

Summer breathed in. “It doesn’t smell like a cesspit or a laundromat.”

Michael went first and Troy walked behind her. The scant light from the lamp revealed the room at the end of the steps to be a huge, empty square completely lined with smooth stones. Regularly-spaced holes pocked the walls, and a fine layer of dirt covered the bumpy flooring.

Summer looked all around them. “I don’t see the water.”

“It’s here somewhere,” Troy said. “I can smell it.” He gestured for Michael to bring the light closer to one wall, which he touched. “Look at these lines, and how the stains darken closer to the floor.” He turned all around before he went still. “This isn’t a cellar. It’s an old cistern.”

Water burst out of the holes in the wall, splattering the three of them as it poured in, pooling around their feet and then rising to form undulating columns.

“Spell trap,” Michael shouted over the flood, and grabbed Summer. “Upstairs, now.”

Before they reached the steps one of the water columns fountained up to block their path. The door to the street above them slammed shut. A blast of power demolished the water barrier, and Summer turned to see Troy glowing bright blue from head to toe.

“We’ve already had a bath,” he said through his clenched teeth, and raised his hands to push back the other swelling columns. “Paladin, make us a new door.”

Michael waded over to the nearest wall, pressing his hands against the wet stone as he inched along it. When he found the spot he wanted he pulled back his hand, which blazed a hot amber as he made a fist. He rammed it into the stone.

Summer summoned her power to channel it to her mates, and then felt something cold grab her feet. She looked down to see an impish transparent face grinning up at her from the water. It quickly curled two shimmering hands around her ankles and yanked her off her feet. As it crawled up over her its impossibly heavy weight submerged her.

Open your lips. Drink me in, a low, icy voice whispered in her mind. I will fill your emptiness, and make you my Queen, fair one.

Get off my chest, she thought.

Summer blasted the creature with all her power, and watched through the water as it dissolved into mist.

“Beauty,” Michael said and snatched her up. He braced her with his arms as she choked and coughed.

“It’s okay,” she said, gulping in air. “We need to disperse the spell trap so it doesn’t catch anyone else.”

Troy waded over to them. “I don’t think it was a spell.”

Summer took a moment to catch her breath, then sloshed around the cistern. She tried to pick up on any lingering magic, but there didn’t seem to be any.

“It may be a kind of Fae magic we cannot sense,” Michael said. “Wickerman was stealing their artifacts for centuries. That water sprite that tried to drown you could have been one of his golems.”

“It spoke to me in my thoughts,” she said. Remembering that deep, cold voice whispering in her mind made her skin crawl. “It wanted me to open my mouth.”

“Which is how his golems kill,” Troy reminded her. “And drowning is just another form of suffocation. The bastard.”

As the water emptied out of the huge hole Michael had punched through the stone, Summer saw what the silt on the floor had been hiding.

“Look,” she said. “Michael, bring the lamp.”

Summer stepped back from the intricately patterned mosaic, which depicted an underwater scene. Mermaids and mermen swam around a coral-covered structure in which an enormous silver statue of Neptune sat on a throne made of pearls and shells. On his left arm he wore an abalone shield, and in his right fist he clutched a spear with a small pronged tip. Instead of using ceramic tiles or shells to make the spear, the mosaic artist had formed it out of bright blue gems.

Summer looked up at her mates. “Could that be RainLance?”

Michael bent down and swiped at the muddied water above the temple mosaic. Grey, white and purple tiles appeared, forming a sunset sky over the sea scene, with boats sailing in toward a harbor.

“This is the bay,” Michael said, and shuffled back to reveal a road leading to a long wall around a cluster of streets and buildings. “And the city.”