“Jesus Christ,” Marcus said, feeling as if all the breath had been sucked out of his lungs.
“It looks kind of familiar,” Beka said, tilting her head sideways to look at it again. “Do you know what it is?” She glanced back at him, her brows drawn together as she clearly saw something on his face that alarmed her. “What is it? Is it really bad?”
Shit, shit, shit. “That’s as bad as it gets, Beka,” he said, glad beyond measure that Chewie had been smart enough not to bring one of those canisters back up with him. “That’s the symbol for hazardous nuclear waste. And if the water in that trench is full of it, it is no wonder all those poor people are sick. They have radiation poisoning.”
He got a sinking feeling in his stomach, looking at her pallor and shadowed eyes. “And I hate to say it, but I think you do too.”
* * *
FOR A MOMENT, panic rose like bile in Beka’s throat, but then she got a grip on herself. He didn’t understand how impossible that was; what it meant to be a Baba Yaga. Fear slowly loosened the claws it had tightened around her heart.
“I believe that radiation poisoning is what is causing the illness in the Selkies and Merpeople,” she said, thinking it out. “That actually makes sense with the vague information I got when I summoned some elementals. And it explains why I couldn’t identify what was wrong with the water. I was looking for some kind of liquid or solid contaminant that had been added to the water; radiation is neither, although whatever is in those containers probably is. No wonder Kesh wanted to stop me from diving and finding them.” She sighed. “But it can’t be what is making me sick.”
“But Beka,” Marcus said. Anxiety and concern etched themselves as deep into his face as Chewie’s claws had etched the deadly symbol into the deck.
“No, really, Marcus,” Beka said. “First of all, the ones who got sick were those actually living in the trench. I never got anywhere near that deep. And even then, those affected are mostly the weakest and most vulnerable; the very young and the very old. As a Baba Yaga, my natural defenses and healing ability are much stronger than the average Human’s. A few dives into the edges of the contaminated water wouldn’t have had any effect on me at all. It has to be something else.”
Chewie shook himself again, transitioning back into his Newfoundland form as he did so. His doggy face wore an expression as close to Marcus’s as their different shapes would allow.
“I don’t know, Beka,” the dragon said doubtfully. “You first started getting sick right around the time you started looking into the water people’s problem. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“I’m telling you both, it would take a lot more than a superficial dose of radiation to make me feel this sick,” Beka insisted.
“Kesh,” Marcus said, fury transforming him almost as much as Chewie’s change from dragon to dog. “It was that damned Kesh and his fucking picnics by the sea.” His hands clenched and unclenched, as though they could wrap themselves around the absent prince’s neck. “I am going to kill that sonofabitch.”
Beka could feel all the blood drain out of her face. “He couldn’t,” she said. “He wouldn’t.” But she remembered all those times he brought her special bits of fish or lobster, caviar and clams; things he insisted he’d found just for her and refused to share.
Her legs went out from underneath her as the magnitude of his betrayal hit her, and she would have fallen if Marcus hadn’t scooped her up and returned her to the pile of rope they’d been sitting together on so blissfully only a few moments before.
“Great Aphrodite, risen from the sea,” she muttered. “That sonofabitch fed me seafood from the trench and sweet-talked me while he watched me eat poison, all the while trying to convince me to stop looking into the problem. Goddess, I was such a fool!”
“You were trusting and kind,” Marcus said, wrapping his arms around her. “That’s not a bad thing. Hell—it’s one of the things I love about you the most. Kesh is just a slimeball who took advantage of that. That’s his bad, not yours.”
Did Marcus just say he loved me? Sadly, Beka couldn’t bring herself to focus on that right now. Suddenly, she had a thought that perked her up so much she jumped to her feet, leaving Marcus to follow, looking alarmed.
“I’m such an idiot,” she said with a slightly shaky laugh. “We’re freaking out for nothing.”
“We are?” Chewie asked, sounding dubious. “Are you sure? Because I kind of feel like we’re freaking out for something.”