A Taste of Mercy (A Recipe for Disaster Novel 2)

the scattered remains of sanity.

“So how do we cross this, I highly doubt it’s going to be a quick swim.” I remarked, indicating the vast span of water with my hand; there was no sign of the far shore. It was just perfect, flat water. Which wasn’t right; it had been a living sea with waves crashing across its surface raising a salty tang in the air just seconds ago. It stretched as a sapphire tinted gem across the horizon, having lost its lustre in frozen stillness so I turned a confused look at Nikka. She radiated a faint blue luminescence as she stared out over the rigid waves.

“We walk on water.” Her reply was distant as she walked down the shoreline. The waves crashing on shore had shattered into glistening shards that were razor sharp. I stopped and picked a piece up, the edge cutting into my thumb as if the skin offered no resistance. My blood stained the jewel a dark burgundy and it suddenly reverted back into liquid; the salt stinging into my cut. Everyone had stopped to look at me, Alex with concern, Sebastian with interest and Nikka with consternation.  “Cal, do me a favour and don’t bleed on anything. Right now your blood has enough power in it to undo my spell; only the top level is transformed and underneath it’s still all deadly ocean.”

“And here there be sea monsters?” I mock quoted.

“Exactly.” She replied tersely.

“Damn.” I said appreciatively and then unceremoniously stuck my thumb in my mouth. The raw magic in my blood nipped at my tongue, burning as if my blood was spicy. I could hear Alex shuffle as Sebastian sighed and nearly smacked myself for forgetting for even a second that blood has special significance for both Demons and Changers. Blood carries one’s essence and power, even when outside the body, and that made it almost intimate. It was almost easier to walk onto the sea than it was to deal with even the littlest thing here on the beach.

Once when Cass and I were children, Edward had a job in Toronto. We’d made a weekend of it and gone up the famous CN Tower and I had gone out onto the glass floor. It allowed me to see straight through all the way to the teeming life many kilometers below and a sense of vertigo had crawled up my spine as for a second I felt as if I had fallen through. These crystal waves were the same, I could see the sand in the shallows and the larger rocks where the coast line had been ground down. As we climbed out over the waves to deeper ocean, I could see the aquatic world continue ordinary life on just the other side of this most intriguing looking glass. We were all walking in silence, not the stiff silence of the previous areas but more of an awed reverence; and Nikka who had seen it all before was just ignoring it and leading us onwards.

After about thirty minutes of ‘left foot, right foot’, I heard a knock. As if someone was at a door, tap tappity tap tap. So I knelt and tap tapped back. A figure swam under the separating crystal until I could spot an orange, fish scaled monstrosity under me. It looked like a science fiction otter that was adapted to live entirely in the sea. A second creature swam over to join the first, this one a cloudy octopus made up of hundreds of tiny pink motes working together to hold a shape. Since I was no xenobiologist, I couldn’t even guess at what the creatures really were but I could hear them communicating, which was not something I suspected I should have been able to do. “Well, these are mighty fine curiosities that the Old One brings the Others. Wonder what made her break her self imposed exile?” the orange otter asked the pink octopus, and suddenly I felt like I had been immersed in a Dr. Seuss story, though with my luck lately it was probably more like a Grimm’s Fairytale; and those had been dire warnings long before humans had even know the monsters were real.

“Mayhap we should ask?” hundreds of tiny voices breathed in unison.

“Umm…. Hello?” I interrupted but both creatures just swam away from the crystal layer in shock instead of responding. I looked up from the hard surface to see Nikka looking at me with absolute shock tinged with horror, and although I have been slow on the uptake lately, I could bet good money on the fact that I should not have been able to understand those creatures let alone speak to them.