Unknotted

Perfume and a Raft

Rokan

I caught the scent of the pungent perfume Topaz had been wearing and followed it to the elevator. I had to have eyes on her before the tide ebbed and I lost the enhanced abilities of my beasts.

Up or down? Which direction would Topaz flee in?

My first guess was up, to a level open to the sky so she could flee by air. But there were a lot more floors below them; she could have chosen to hide somewhere on the massive ship.

My gut, or the tickle of the magical cords against my back, had me pushing the buttons of every floor below. Each time the door opened, I poked my head out and inhaled deeply before stepping back in. No nauseating flower scent yet.

Two floors down, the scent permeated the narrow hall of the staff quarters. I crept forward, bare feet quiet on the low pile carpet. Passing door after door, the scent grew stronger, until it didn’t.

I backtracked, inhaling deeply, and locked my focus on a door to the right.

It opened. Topaz, somehow no longer a troll, stood behind, dressed in some kind of black costume or armor with a hood and mask drawn up. A massive toolbelt was fastened about her hips and thighs.

She gasped and promptly shut the door in my face.

I shouldered inside. The room was tiny, with a pair of bunkbeds on one wall, a door to a bathroom on the other. And no sign of Topaz. I released the door handle and stepped inside. The door slammed against me, throwing me into the wall cabinets. The door whipped wide again. Topaz slipped out from behind it.

I grabbed her around the waist. Her elbow jammed back into my bruised face, flaring stars behind my eyes. “Tides!” I grabbed my face, stumbling to regain my balance.

She was out the door and sprinting down the hall by the time I managed to follow. She took a hard left out to the deck. I tore after her.

I broke out onto the deck. Salty air whistled through the pillars of the covered walk. Staff quarters were almost a hundred feet above the water. I tried not to think about that.

Topaz was nearing the end of the walk, about to round to the back. Except, she jumped onto the rail instead.

“Stop!” I shouted, moving with ground eating strides. “Stop!”

Holding the rope to a raft suspended over the water, she leaned back out over the walk to face me. “When has shouting ‘stop’ at someone you’re chasing ever worked?”

She rolled her eyes, the only part of her body not covered in black clothing, and leapt into the raft, hitting a lever. The raft dropped from site in a half a blink. The raft’s winches screamed as the ropes ripped through it.

Tides, this woman was crazy. I must be half crazy too because I dove over the rail before I talked myself out of it. Had the tides not been in, I never would have had the courage.

I knocked into Topaz on the way down, taking us both to the floor of the raft. It was still plummeting, the ropes shrieking through the pulley system, when something jammed into my ribs, knocking the breath from my lungs.

“Get off me,” Topaz snarled.

Her elbow rammed against my ribs again, shoving me to the side, and dangerously rocking the small craft. It crashed into the water. Waves tossed the small boat as I struggled to stop my brain from rattling around inside my skull from the impact.

Topaz reclaimed her feet first, patted herself over, as if to check she was still intact. She laughed, a sound half victorious and half relieved. Then she stumbled to the tiller and kicked it into action. We shot away from the cruise ship. Sort of. Being that this was a rescue raft, its motorized propeller wasn’t exactly powerful. We inched, rather than sped, toward shore.

I stumbled to my feet, planting them wide to stabilize myself against the bounce of the raft against the water. Not exactly a hard feat at these speeds.

“This is your master plan? Escape in a raft?” I had her trapped, unless she took to the sky, and I was fully ready to follow her if she chose that route again. She must have sensed that because she didn’t switch forms.

“Are you questioning my grand plan?” She sounded genuinely insulted. “I gave you the slip once, I can do it again.”

She swung her leg into a high round house kick. I threw up my forearms to block, but between the impact and the sway of the boat, I lost my balance. My back hit the inflated sides of the raft and rebounded off. I staggered down to a knee as the raft, its tiller unmanned, stalled.

Her leg swung up again and dropped for my head. I caught her heel, snarling, “You got lucky the first time.”

“Please,” she scoffed, jerking against my hold, but I didn’t release her. “You’re as clumsy as a fledgling in the air. Who taught you to fly anyway?”

“As if there are hybrids to teach such things.”

She shrugged. “Fair enough.”

I pushed to rise and throw her off balance. She leapt, her second leg coming up to clock me on the side of the head. More stars flashed across my vision. Her heel slipped free of my hands, and we both tumbled to the bottom of the raft.

I scrambled toward her, grabbing at her ankles and calves as her legs flailed about. Tides, she was strong.

“I worked you over like wood on a lathe,” she hissed, a bit breathlessly.

Her ridiculous toolbelt jabbed uncomfortably into me as I straddled her thighs, my hand scrambling to catch her arms.

Venom filled her voice and a challenged gleamed like flames in her eyes. “Don’t think I’ll ever roll over for you again.”

My dominance crashed through all my barriers and blew the magical cords into a flurry. My thoughts grew fuzzy until the reason I had followed her faded behind my dominance and the Core’s demands to claim this woman as mine. Some small part, buried beneath the dominance’s fury was screaming, What are you doing, you idiot?! But I couldn’t stop myself from rising to meet her challenge, just as I had the previous night.

I snatched her hands, lowered my face to hers, and growled, “I don’t see that you have any choice but to.”

Though I couldn’t see her lips, I could feel her smirk. I had only a moment to feel worried before her forehead smacked into mine. My grip loosened a fraction, enough that she ripped free. She snatched the collar of my coat and bucked her hips hard. I rocked forward on top of the raft’s side. My legs slipped over the edge. Cold salt water drenched my trousers and sucked at my feet.

The woman was back to standing, pulling items from her giant tool belt. She darted to the raft’s bow and dove off the end. Spinning through the air, she threw sand dollars into the water and shouted, “I miss my father,” before plunging beneath the surface.

That was an odd thing to shout in the middle of a chase.

I dragged myself back into the raft and peered into the water. Ten feet from where the ocean frothed with bubbles from her dive, the surface roiled like a pot on full boil. Topaz’s hooded head broke the surface. She kept rising, higher and higher, until she was gliding on top of the water.

“What the—”

Otter-like creatures, their slick coats of purples and blues glimmering below the surface, ferried her toward shore. Ripples: the elementals who controlled water and its currents. Now the sand dollars and her strange proclamation—a secret she wished to bury in the sea—made sense. They were payment to convince the Ripples to aid her in escaping.

They sped her away. I, of course, didn’t carry sand dollars on my person at all times. Because I wasn’t a criminal in need of a quick escape at any given moment. I had no way to pursue; even if the Ripples didn’t steer me into a different current or sink my small craft, the raft’s pathetic motorized propeller would never catch up.

“Better luck next time, Whiskers!” She offered a mock salute. She rode those currents with such ease, as if she did this sort of stuff all the time.

“Whiskers?” I mumbled, shaking my head. She had to have a few screws loose.

I did have one last way to pursue. Summoning my beasts form, I launched into the air, wings expanding over my massive body. The raft popped beneath my claws, hissing out air and skittering away.

She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes narrowed. “The magic is going to ebb soon, you know that, right?”

“Then I’ll hold you between my teeth until it returns.” I drove my wings down harder, keeping close to the water.

She spun around, trusting the Ripples to carry her to wherever she was heading. We were in the sea that stretched between the northern part of Zalico and Zalico’s southern mainland, just off from Port Teober.

She was digging around in that blasted toolbelt. After she had pulled out sand dollars, I had a feeling she had a vast assortment of odd items in it. Sure enough, she pulled out a thin tube. What did it matter though? I was only five feet behind and closing.

“I wish I could speak with my brothers again,” she shouted over the roar of the wind and sea. She ripped the tube open. I didn’t see anything escape it, but a moment later, a white feathery puff caught on my wet nose. I went crosseyed to find a dandelion seed caught there.

I groaned.

The wind kicked against my wings, the force of it unnatural. Whisps, glimmering almost transparently, converged seemingly from thin air. Their electrified tentacles trailed them as they swept toward me. I was trapped—the air full of Whisps, laughing and eager to blow me away, and the sea below teeming with Ripples just as eager to drown me.

Tides…

Topaz’s laughter mingled with the Whisps’ giggles. “Told you I had a plan, Whiskers.”