Page 10 of Currents of Desire

The plate drops from Jack’s grip, shattering on the floor. He doesn't look down. He just watches my lips.

The storm’s static seems to have moved inside, prickling against my wet skin. The dynamic has shifted. I am in his tub, in his home, at his mercy. And yet, he is the one trembling.

“Your… mark,” he whispers. His voice is rough, a rasp of sandpaper compared to the liquid smoothness of mine.

I sink lower into the water, until only my eyes and nose are visible, watching him over the rim of the porcelain. The pain in my side is a distant memory. The fear of the dry air is gone. There is only the water, the blood, and the man.

He steps back, retreating toward the door, but his eyes never leave mine. He looks like a man waking from a dream or perhaps walking into a nightmare he cannot resist.

He turns off the light, plunging the room into gray shadows.

“Sleep,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea, then he closes the door.

I am alone in the dark, but the darkness is my friend. I curl my tail tighter, resting my head on the cool porcelain rim. I can still taste him on my tongue. The storm rages outside, battering the house, but inside, the water is still.

I close my eyes and listen to the house’s rhythm. I hear his footsteps overhead. I hear the creak of a bedspring. I hear the slow, steady thump of his heart, separated from me by wood and plaster, but loud as a drum in the silence.

He is marked and mine.

Tomorrow, if the dry air does not kill me, I will find out what that means in this strange, heavy world.

CHAPTER 4

Nerida

The white shell is a coffin.

I lie curled in the porcelain hollow, the water turning lukewarm and stagnant around me. My tail is cramped, the powerful muscles twitching with the need to stretch, thrash, and propel me through the crushing dark of the deep. But here, there is no depth. There is only the hard, unyielding ceramic pressing against my spine and the metal spout digging into my shoulder.

I cannot heal like this.

The wound in my side, the hole where the wood pierced me, throbs with a dull, rhythmic ache. It is a hungry pain. It demands energy, flow, and space to knit the flesh back together. But I am folded up like a dead thing in a preservative jar. The circulation to my fluke is cut off, and my fins are pinned. The stagnation is a poison, seeping into my mind, making the edges of my vision blur with gray static.

I shift, and the water sloshes loudly, a turbulent sound in the quiet room. My tail strikes the side of the tub with a heavy, wet thud.

I hiss. The sound is sharp, bouncing off the tiled walls.

I need to change.

The realization is not a thought but a biological imperative. In the trench, we are fluid. We are the pressure and the dark. We adapt. When the currents shift, we shift. When the prey moves to the shallows, we follow. But to follow here, into this dry, gravity-heavy world of the land walker, I cannot remain as I am. This form is built for hydrodynamics, for speed in a medium that supports me. Here, I am just heavy meat.

I look at the door. It is closed. I can smell him on the other side, the salt and iron of his blood, the musk of his fear. He is pacing. His vibration travels through the floorboards and into the water, tapping against my sensitive lateral line.

I close my eyes and reach inward, past the pain in my side, past the hunger, down to the genetic slurry that sits dormant in the marrow of my bones. It is an ancient mechanism, a survival trigger pulled only in the direst of straits. It is the Shift.

It begins with an itch.

Not on the skin, but under it. It’s a maddening, crawling sensation that starts at the base of my skull and ripples down the length of my spine. It feels as though a thousand tiny parasites are burrowing through my meat, severing the connections that hold my shape together.

I gasp, arching my back, water cascading off my chest.

The heat comes next. It is a fever that spikes in seconds, boiling the water around me. My blood, usually cool and slow, turns to liquid fire. It races through my veins, hammering against the walls of my heart until I think the organ will burst.

Then, the breaking.

A sound tears through the room, a wet, sickening crack like a branch being snapped in half.

It is my hip.