Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

“It’s locked up with him. So I’m safe.”
     
    “No. The demon was driven out of Jones by your cross. It will seek a new host to come back. To come after you.”
     
    143
    “Why?” The word was nearly a wail. She coughed.
     
    Dylan waited while she gulped her water. When she set down her glass, he said gently, “I do not believe the demon seeks your death.”
     
    “Right. It just half strangled me and dropped me down a hole for fun.”
     
    His mouth tightened. “I should have said, its primary target is not your death.”
     
    “What does it want, then? I don’t have anything—”
     
    “The child.” Dylan’s eyes met hers. “Yours and mine.”
     
    Oh, God.
     
    Her breath went. Her vision grayed. For a moment, she was back in the caves again, in the icy dark.
     
    Dylan continued to watch her, his smooth, handsome face like stone, his thoughts and feelings buried. She wished he would touch her or something. Hold her hand.
     
    She forced another breath. Okay. Of all the pregnancy horror stories she’d been told or could imagine, “demonsseek your unborn child” had to be the worst. At least it explained why she had been attacked. Sort of.
    And why Dylan was sticking around.
     
    For tonight.
     
    She moistened her lips. “I don’t know yet that I’m pregnant. I mean, not for sure.”
     
    “When will you know?”
     
    “Tomorrow. I have a doctor’s appointment.”
     
    “I think you are. You smell . . . different.”
     
    Good different or bad different? She pushed the thought away.
    “Have you smelled a lot of pregnant women?”
     
    144
    “No, you are the first.” His dark eyes flickered. “There are not many births among the merfolk.”
     
    “So, this baby is important, huh? If it’s, you know, selkie.”
     
    “Selkie and female.”
     
    “You want a girl?”
     
    Dylan’s breath was as deep, as deliberate, as hers had been. “There is a child foretold among my people,” he began. “A daughter of the house of Atargatis who will change the balance of power between Heaven and Hell. Atargatis was my mother. If you were to carry a daughter, yours and mine, the child would be of the lineage of Atargatis.”
     
    She took a moment to work it out. “Then . . . we’re on Heaven’s side?” That made her feel better. A little.
     
    Dylan did not meet her eyes. “Not exactly.”
     
    The lump in her throat was getting too big to swallow. “Then where do we stand? Exactly.”
     
    “When God made man, the elementals debated His decision. The children of air supported Him in this as in everything. The children of fire— demonkind— did not. But the majority of the First Creation, earth’s children and the children of the sea, concluded His wisdom would reveal itself in time. Or not.” Dylan’s smile revealed the edge of his teeth.
    “In either event, they— we— withdrew into the bones of the mountains and the depths of the seas, until mankind should either prove or destroy itself. We do not take sides.”
     
    “So you’re neutral.” Like Switzerland.
     
    “My people are, yes.”
     
    Regina heard his distinction. She saw past the thin, sharp smile to the turmoil in his eyes. He was not as neutral or as indifferent as he pretended.
     
    The realization gave her hope.
     
    145
    “Yeah, well, my people are human,” she said. “Which means my kid is at least half human.”
     
    “That’s not how it works. There are no fractions to the Change,”
    Dylan said tightly. “No degrees of difference. You are human or not. You are selkie or not. The child will be one or the other.”
     
    She heard his cool, clipped tones and saw the rigid set of his shoulders and ached for him, for the choices his mother had forced on him, for the confusion of the boy he had been, for the isolation of the man he had become.
     
    But he was wrong.
     
    “That’s a load of crap,” Regina said. “Family is family.”
     
    Dylan cocked an eyebrow. “Blood is thicker than water?”
     
    Was it? Wasn’t it? Could she love the child within her if it were born . . . different?
     
    “Yes,” she said recklessly.
     
    “So sure,” Dylan mocked. “And so blind. Can you honestly pretend you don’t see me differently now, knowing what I am? My brother and I are not the same.”
     
    “Yeah,” Regina muttered. “He’s not a jerk.”
     
    Black laughter sprang into his eyes. “There is that.”
     
    “And he didn’t find me. He couldn’t have rescued me. You did. So your