She wasn’t fooled. I could tell by her smirk. But she conceded, addressing the young woman, Helena, again.
“Helena, we’re going to stop this. We need your help.”
She seemed puzzled. “Oh?”
“Well, you see I have this gun to my head,” Mrs. Costas half-laughed. “I don’t really have a choice but to ask you to help me.” Briefly, she described my plan. Helena kept glancing back and forth between Ciara, the battle, and me. She was confused, but she didn’t argue.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Ciara,” she said. “If you’re sure this is what you want.”
“I think it’s for the best,” Mrs. Costas replied coolly. “I have my reasons.”
Helena shrugged, unconcerned. “Nosizwe didn’t say not to, so…okay. Give me those,” she said to me, stretching out a hand for the water bottles.
I complied, passing them over. She held them in both hands, motionless. I was about to say drily, “Do you need help opening them?” when the caps fell off of their own accord. The plastic containing the water liquefied, dissolving into fluid, all while she was holding them. As they liquefied, so did her hands. The water splashed to the ground, and so did her body, dissolving. Before my brain could register what I was seeing, there was a large, silvery puddle on the ground, and Helena was gone, except for a face in the puddle.
“My turn, I suppose.”
Using upper body strength, Mrs. Costas pushed herself upright and then carefully wriggled her body out of her chair to slide into the makeshift pool. The instant her toes touched the water, a change rippled over her. The woman in the wheelchair was gone, and in her place with a true enchantress, a mermaid—not really a mermaid, but a Merrow. I can’t lie—it did look weird to see a beautiful half-woman, half-fish lying there in a large puddle in the middle of a field in Texas. Then again, what about this entire adventure, this entire night, hadn’t been weird?
She blinked at me. Her eyes had changed from an emerald green to a glassy blue-grey-green, shifting colors like the sea itself. Her raven hair spilled around her shoulders, down her back, to her waist. She was always lovely, even in human form, but here, as her true and natural self, she was breathtaking. When she turned towards the battlefield, opened her mouth and began to sing, she was exquisite.
I hadn’t known a voice like that existed. I hadn’t known beauty like that existed. The first few notes were so powerful they rocked me back on my heels, literally. I almost dropped my gun, but concentrated all of my willpower on my arms, my hands, my fingers to hold my stance.
Was she ordering me to drop it? I wondered.
I didn’t know, because she was singing in Gaelic. I couldn’t understand a word she said. All I could understand was what I sensed, and that was power: sheer, raw, magical power. Beneath the spell of her song, the battle stopped, nearly cold. I saw the first change with Adeola, the Nunda, who controlled the big cats. When he shifted back into human form, the felines stopped their charges, stopped their mauling, and lay down, tame as kittens, resting their heads on their paws.
The song continued, and it affected the men the most. From what I could pick out, in the shapes and shadows and figures lit up by headlights, it was the men who initially stopped in their tracks, backing off from their opponents, and shifted back into their human forms. It was the men who were glancing around as if confused, trying to figure out where they were, what they were doing, and why.
The thought occurred to me, If she has this much power to charm and control men, why didn’t she use it to control Sean a long time ago?
Logically, I knew Sean had probably considered that possibility and would’ve safeguarded himself with certain things, like the location of her cap. Not to mention, controlling the male shifters didn’t mean she had all control. From what I’d seen, female shifters could be every bit as powerful as male, and they simply weren’t affected by her magic like the men were. And Sean employed plenty of women.
In front of me, the women also stopped fighting, but none of them had the same dazed expression as their male counterparts. Like me, they initially appeared rocked by the power of the song. Afterward, they seemed more confused by the battle abruptly ending than by the Merrow’s charm. They were looking around as if wondering what to do.
The sounds of scuffling, of fighting, of death, died away. An eerie silence drifted across the darkened pastures, broken by the sigh of the wind and the Gaelic song of the Merrow. Never in my wildest imaginations could I have foreseen something like this in the Texas countryside.
Slowly, Mrs. Costas tapered off her music. The shimmering echoes of her voice died away. For a moment, there was peace.
Chapter Thirty-Four
For a moment, there was peace. Carter slid back into his human form, shaking himself physically to throw off the Merrow’s song in order to assess the situation. The terracotta warrior who’d been after him stumbled back, collapsing on the ground, breathing heavily. A hasty sweep of the area told him at least half of their numbers were down, either wounded or dead. Roughly a third of their enemies seemed to be in the same state. The Nunda with his army of big cats had done real damage. The cats were now resting on the ground. Some emitted low rumbles, almost like a purring housecat.
The war had ceased, at least temporarily, but why? Why had Ciara used her magic to stop the fight?
Carter scanned the area, squinting to pierce the shadows, until he located Ciara’s wheelchair next to one of the Stones. Only she wasn’t in her wheelchair. She was on the ground, in her Merrow form, and next to her was a slight young woman with blonde
