Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

and you can return to the sea.”
     
    He lied. Even if he would set her free to accuse him, she could never go back. Not if he possessed her sealskin.
     
    And she knew it, cunning female, which was why she had hidden it so well. Resisted him this long.
     
    “I am selkie,” she panted. “Whatever you do to this body, you cannot end me. I will not die.”
     
    Tan straightened and stood over her. Nononononooo . . .
     
    “You will not die,” he agreed. He stroked his host’s cock, his hand slick with selkie blood, pleasuring himself with the human’s horrified excitement, the elemental’s impotent rage. “But I can make you wish you had.”
     

     
    Fog shrouded the beach and clung to the rocks like a thin film of tears. The trees rose against the dawn like the black masts of pirate ships, silent and threatening. The gray waves whispered and mourned.
     
    Artist Lisa Stewart fingered the plastic bags in her hoodie pockets, dutifully grabbed when she left the cottage with Buster and Brownie.
    Most people slept in on their vacations. But morning was the best time for the dogs, the only time Lisa could risk letting them run free on the beach.
     
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    Buster raced up and down in joyous swoops and bursts of speed.
    Brownie sniffed along the water’s edge at whatever the tide had left behind. Rock weed. Mussels. Limpets.
     
    Gull droppings.
     
    A big white bird with a yellow head and a cruel, curved beak stood in the shallows, cocking a blue-ringed eye at the dogs. Lisa caught her breath. She’d never seen a gull that size.
     
    Buster bounded out of the mist, pink tongue dripping. The bird screeched and lifted off, its black-tipped wings beating the air. Barking, Buster charged down the beach after it.
     
    Lisa grinned. But as long minutes passed with no sign of the dog, her smile faded.
     
    She whistled and lengthened her stride, Brownie trotting at her heel.
    Her sneakers crunched and slid on shingle and shale. Her breath rasped.
    The smell of the ocean, life, death, and decay, hung heavy in the damp air.
     
    There . Relief washed over her.
     
    Wasn’t that—yes, there was Buster, inching toward the shallows on his belly, completely ignoring the big white bird perched only yards away. His big dark eyes fixed on a rounded lump that rose from the wet shore like a dark jewel on a belt of beaten silver, its reflection staining the gritty beach, bleeding into the retreating water.
     
    “Buster!”
     
    Brownie whined and pressed trembling against her leg. The bird squawked and launched heavily into the still air.
     
    Buster’s hips wriggled. His top knot quivered. A wave rushed in and faded away, stirring the rusty seaweed clumped along one side of the rock.
     
    Lisa frowned. Not a rock. A dolphin beached by the tide? She tightened her grip on the leash and took a step closer. A seal? Or . . .
     
    Her stomach plunged. She pressed her shaking fingers to her mouth.
     
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    A body.
     

     
    In her dreams, the heavens wept blood and the oceans blazed.
    Margred struggled to breathe.
     
    Pain sprang at her out of the dark—brutal, insulting, slamming her onto the rocks. Her palms burned. Fire exploded in her head. In her knees. She tried to cry out, but the fire stole her voice, eating the soft tissue of tongue and palette, searing her throat.
     
    Margred tossed, her breathing harsh, her heart racing. She was burning, drying, drying up . . .
     
    She moaned and opened her eyes.
     
    Gray dawn licked at the edges of the window shade, the paneled walls, the row of books by Bradford and Conan Doyle. On the shelf below sat a picture of the child Caleb with Lucy on his lap.
     
    Caleb. She was in Caleb’s room.
     
    And Lucy—all grown up now—hovered in the doorway, wearing an apologetic expression and a green T-shirt with the word CLIPPERS
    across her breasts. The shadow of Margred’s dream clouded the younger girl’s eyes.
     
    Margred struggled from the shrouds of sleep. Something about the veiled depths of those eyes . . .
     
    Lucy blinked. “Sorry to wake you.” She held out her cell phone. Her eyes were bright and shallow again as sunlight on the sea. Warm, green eyes. Caleb’s eyes. “It’s Caleb. He wants to talk with you.”
     
    Margred sat up, sticky with sweat, and fumbled with the phone.
    “Hello?”
     
    “Maggie.”
     
    Her heart gave a foolish skip. “Yes?”
     
    “You’re all right.”
     
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    “Ye-es.”
     
    Why wouldn’t she be?
     
    But she was troubled by