Chapter 33
Two people, companions, they can prevail together against the terror.
from The Epic of Gilgamesh
Jazz gripped the handle of the door. It felt unnaturally cold in her hand, and she wondered if that was her imagination, her nervousness lending her surroundings a more ominous character than they deserved. The building was empty, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. Unconsciously, her free hand returned to the strap of her backpack where it rested on her shoulder, so heavy it hurt; but that abnormal weightiness was a reassurance today, her badge of courage.
Jazz turned the handle; it was unlocked.
Glancing both ways down the hall, seeing nothing but rows of blue lockers and the darkened windows of the empty front office, she opened the door and slipped inside.
Jazz had waited for over thirty minutes in the school parking lot; hers had been the first car there. The sky had been saturated with clouds, dark and baleful, and the sun had dribbled through them in violent splashes of crimson as it crawled its way over the horizon.
Her nerves were on tripwires. She hadn't been able to sleep the night before and had instead spent the time lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling and going over everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen, repeatedly. Her thoughts would reach the end and cycle back to the beginning, all while Danny was surely in a similar state one room away.
She knew she needed to talk to him. She had unwittingly hurt him in so many ways, and she knew that he must be afraid of her, afraid of what she could do with the knowledge she now possessed. Since the moment she decided to become a therapist, she had always preached the power of healthy communication. So, yes, she knew she needed to talk to him.
But at the same time, she knew that words were not going to fix the problems her brother was dealing with, and the wrong words could make things so much worse. He was clearly in a fragile state of mind, and she was afraid of hurting him further. She was afraid of freezing again like she had the night before, when he had looked at her with that expression of defeat, like he hadn't expected anything more than fear and disgust from her, like he had just given up.
So, was it selfish that she wanted to have something to bring to the table, like a peace offering or a supplication for his forgiveness? Something to prove that she was able and willing to help him tackle whatever he was dealing with? More than just words, she wanted to show that she could help him in a concrete way. But she wondered if this move was only to make herself feel better, to alleviate some of her guilt.
A small part of her brain kept whispering that she was making excuses for herself because she wasn't ready for the conversation that needed to happen. None of her books had told her what to do when you needed to tell your younger brother – who happened to have mysteriously turned into a mythological creature – that you weren't going to tell your parents – who happened to hunt that specific kind of mythological creature – about his strange new condition, or that he didn't need to fight literal monsters alone, or that he didn't need to carry the weight of the casualties from these monsters on his shoulders. She didn't know how this had happened to him, or if it was her job to help him turn back to normal (was that even an option?), or if she needed to convince him to stop fighting these monsters (was that an option?), or if she needed to convince him to keep his friends out of it (how far were they involved?), or, or, or…
She hadn't known the answer to these questions, and so she would start thinking about her mission – something known, something concrete, something she felt capable of doing – and watch the clock ticking over one minute to the next.
When the janitor had finally arrived at the school and unlocked the front door, Jazz had snuck in behind him. Since there was a staff member in the building, she wasn't breaking any rules by going inside; in fact, she was sure that Mr. Lancer or Mrs. Ishiyama would accept any excuse she gave them for being at the school so early, simply because she was Jazz Fenton. But she still thought it better that no one saw her.
Dr. Scylla's office was meticulous. There was not a paper out of place; the books on her shelves looked as though their spines had been lined up with a ruler, as though they were there purely for decoration. In the dark, the therapist's collection of fidget toys stood like sentries on her desk.
Hardly daring to breathe, Jazz tiptoed across the room. Rather than turning on the room's bright fluorescents, she slipped her phone from her pocket and used the soft light of the home screen to illuminate her surroundings. It was just enough to see by without, hopefully, shining underneath the door.
In the corner, exactly where she remembered seeing it once before, was the large tank for Dr. Scylla's pet coconut crab. Unlike before, there was a heavy blanket covering it.
Jazz swallowed heavily. She reminded herself that she was just confirming her suspicions. All she needed to do was look inside the tank and get out of there. Then, she would approach Danny at lunch, in the company of his friends whom he seemed to trust, and they could create an action plan together. First steps, baby steps, to mending things…
She reached out one shaking hand toward the blanket as the other raised her phone's light and aimed it at the tank. The muscles in her legs tensed, prepared to run if worse came to worst. Her fingers dug into the thick cloth.
She pulled it toward her.
The blanket spilled onto the floor. Her phone illuminated the inside of the tank, revealing a few inches of sand, two metal dishes, and – most conspicuous of all – no crab whatsoever. 'Bertrand' was gone.
The overhead fluorescents snapped on, flooding the room with light. Yelping, Jazz spun around. In the doorway, dressed in a crimson skirt suit, baring her teeth like a hungry predator, was Dr. Scylla.
"Looking for something?"
For a moment, Jazz's breath caught in her throat, and it felt as though her heart had stopped. Even though she hadn't found a shred of proof, somehow she knew – Penelope Scylla was the one who had killed Ada by ripping her heart out of her chest.
Scylla's expression twitched. "Oh, that's not good. That just won't do at all."
Jazz reminded herself to breathe. She thought she could still talk her way out of this. Smiling, she said, "Dr. Scylla! Good morning! Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, but I wanted to talk to you. About Danny." The blanket still dangled from her fingers. She dropped it. "Um. Did you get rid of your pet crab?"
Scylla snorted. "Jasmine Fenton. You really are too smart for your own good – but still not quite smart enough. Did you really come here without telling anyone? Before anyone else even arrived on campus?"
Jazz maintained her smile. "What do you mean?"
Suddenly, a tangible feeling of dread hit her like a punch in the gut, knocking the air out of her and sapping all the strength from her legs. Groaning, she fell to her knees on the tile floor of Scylla's office, tears rolling over her cheeks.
"Wh- what…?"
Scylla strode toward her slowly, her high heels sharply striking the floor with each step. "Please. Drop the act. We both know why you're here. And yes, I am the Siren." She laughed giddily. "I changed my mind. This is going to be fun!"
She crouched next to Jazz and swiped one of her fingers through the tears on her face. She turned her fingertip in the light as though examining the teardrop balanced on top of it.
"I'm forever fascinated by how you humans communicate your emotions. Why should water pour out of your eyes when you're upset? What purpose does that serve?"
"What… are you doing… to me?" Jazz managed to ask through gritted teeth. Shivers wracked up and down her body, her lungs were tight, and her heart was pounding in her chest. She felt like she was having a panic attack, but these weren't her emotions. She was being made to feel this way.
"You already know what I'm doing to you. I'm using your own brain to cripple you. Dreadful, isn't it?" asked Scylla gleefully. She tilted her head. "I was rather hoping to play with your brother a little longer. Tormenting him has been absolutely delightful. His mind is a complete mess! So much guilt, so much despair, so much loneliness and self-hatred. I really do think one more nudge in the right direction is all it would take to drive him straight into the king's hands. Don't you? Tell me, Jasmine, since you know him so well – once he watches you die right in front of him, helpless to save you, helpless to save anyone, don't you think he would do just about anything to protect the rest of his loved ones?"
"You won't… get away with this!" Jazz forced out.
"You silly little girl, I already have!"
The oppressive fear in Jazz's heart was abruptly replaced by a wave of numb exhaustion. Scylla straightened, grabbed Jazz by the wrist, and hauled her to her feet. It was all she could do to keep standing; pulling away from the Siren's grasp was impossible. Dazed, it was hard for her to focus on anything other than the deep dread resting at the back of her mind.
They were at Scylla's car before Jazz even fully registered that they had left her office. She was shoved carelessly into the backseat, where she lay on her stomach half-crushed under the heavy weight of her backpack.
The engine started, and Scylla began to drive.
Jazz was gone when Danny finally mustered the courage to go downstairs the next morning.
He had avoided her the night before. It was easy, considering she hadn't actually come looking for him. All it had amounted to was staying in his bedroom and not coming out. Easy.
He hadn't been able to get much sleep. A part of him kept expecting for his parents to bust through the door any second with a net, or a gun, or whatever the heck the Desiccator was supposed to be. That part of him had expected to be down in the holding tank by now. It hadn't expected to see sunlight again, let alone to get ready for school like everything was normal. Creeping down the stairs had been torture, because it wasn't until he'd found himself in the very empty living room of Fentonworks that his brain had accepted he was alone in the house and not in danger of being hunted by his own family members.
So far, there weren't any boobytraps. None that he was aware of. He'd looked.
And Jazz was gone, car and all. As much as he hated having to ride with her to and from school, he would have preferred it to this. The not knowing. The rejection. His overstimulated brain the night before, when not imagining his capture and/or demise, had passed the time drafting a speech, a defense he would have delivered to his sister on their way to Neptune High. He'd imagined the wide range of her responses, all the emotions that might have crossed her face, including the confusion and horror he'd seen on it the night before. He'd anticipated the questions and tried to come up with answers that wouldn't make him sound too monstrous.
His goal today was to convince her that he was still Danny, still human. That he wasn't evil like the merfolk from their bedtime stories or the creatures that had attacked Amity Beach over the past few weeks.
Because Jazz seemed to be under the impression that the merboy had come on land and replaced Danny Fenton, which would mean that her brother was probably dead, which would mean that he, as the merboy, was extraordinarily evil any way you looked at it.
Jazz was gone, the house was empty, and Danny felt incredibly tired. It didn't help that he had so many bruises he was starting to forget where they'd come from. Dread sat cold in his heart for the moment he had to see Jazz again. He didn't know what that would look like. Would he cross paths with her at school? Would she see him and run away? Would she scream? Or would she change her mind and tell their parents after all?
As he got out a packet of Toaster Tarts from the cabinet, his arms felt somewhat numb, like they had been pumped full of sand. Actually, his whole body felt like that. Even the dread was somewhat muted. He leaned against the counter and nibbled on the cold pastry, not because he was hungry but because it was a habit to eat every morning.
Today felt like an ending. Like events had reached their tipping point. Whether it came in the form of his parents, Jazz, the crab, the unknown Siren that had killed Ada, or Vlad-freaking-Masters, the other shoe was poised to drop.
He thought he should have felt more concerned about that, but he was too tired. At that point, he was ready to take whatever final punishment the universe had lined up for him. He just wanted to get it over with.
So Danny shrugged his backpack over his shoulder and left the house to walk alone to school. He thought about Tucker – reflexively wished he had his phone to text him so they could walk together – but then he realized he was fine alone. In fact, alone was probably better.
The sky was overcast. Maybe he should've brought his rain gear or checked that his umbrella was in his backpack, but he just didn't care at that point.
He smelled it before he saw it. Then he nudged it with his water mode to be sure.
Sighing, he opened his locker, took a quick peek inside, and closed it again.
It wasn't the first time he'd found a dead fish in his locker. As far as pranks went, his bullies had never been particularly imaginative. It was just that this was one of the last things he'd wanted to deal with today, and he'd recently developed a severe aversion to fish corpses. There always seemed to be one floating around whenever things were looking grim for him.
There was nothing for it. Danny dragged over a large trash can from further down the hall. Any hope of dealing with this quietly was thrown out the window as soon as the can's big plastic wheels started crunching over the tile and the students crowding the hall before their morning classes moved to make way.
He decided to just rip the band-aid off and get it over with. Locker opened, tail grabbed, body disposed of, done.
Or so he thought.
"Who did that?"
It was less a question than a demand. Sam Manson had arrived, and she was on the warpath.
"It's no big deal," he told her, wiping the fish slime onto his pant leg. "It's not my first dead fish."
"That doesn't make it okay! Actually, that makes it worse!" Glaring at the other students in the hall, who looked eager for the coming confrontation, she asked loudly, "Who did this?"
Danny cringed and grabbed her wrist, feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. It was like Sam had been trying to pick a fight with their classmates all week. "Sam!" he hissed. "Please, just drop it?"
She wrenched her arm out of Danny's grasp and stormed up to the nearest laughing jock she could find, one Dash Baxter.
She pushed up onto her toes to stare him dead in the eye. "Baxter."
He smirked back at her. "Manson. Long time no see. How's loser life treating you?"
"Did you do this?"
"No-pe," he replied smugly, popping his lips on the 'p'.
"Really?" said Sam. "Because you sure are laughing a lot."
"Yeah, 'cause I think it's funny, but I sure as hell didn't do it." He glanced at Danny. "I know better. So, you make sure your boyfriend knows I had nothing to do with it."
Color sparked on Sam's cheeks, but whether it was from embarrassment or an additional level to her rage, Danny couldn't tell. "He's not my–! Never mind. You tell all your teammates that when I find out who's responsible for this, I will destroy them!"
There was a long, low whistle at Danny's shoulder. In the middle of Danny's mortification, Tucker had also arrived. "I'm glad she's on our side."
"I almost wish she wasn't," Danny complained. He shoved the trash can away from them and turned his attention back to his locker. It still smelled like a dead fish had been sitting in it overnight, and the tops of his textbooks that the fish had been sitting on were stained and damp. Danny subtly pulled the moisture out of the pages, but it did very little to help with the now dried fish slime coating everything. He knew from experience that he'd need to leave them out in the open for several days to get rid of – at least most of – the smell.
"This sucks," he muttered. "Just one more stupid thing to deal with…"
Sam stomped back over to them, vows for a drawn-out and painful death streaming from her mouth.
"You know you're just asking to get fished, too, right?" asked Tucker. Her vengeful gaze snapped to him, and he gulped. "You know what? Forget I said anything."
Her tirade was aimed at Danny again. "If they had any idea of the things you've done for them–"
"–I'd be locked up in either my parents' lab or a government facility faster than you could say 'Vlad Masters is a creep'," said Danny. "It really doesn't matter. It's just a prank. I honestly don't care."
"I care!"
Tucker laid a hand on her arm, but his attention was focused on Danny. "Are you okay? You look like you got negative hours of sleep last night."
Danny's expression crumpled. He turned away from his friends and leaned his forehead against the locker next to his own, not caring that it brought his nose closer to the stench. He closed his eyes. "Guys, it's bad. I… Jazz knows."
"What do you mean, 'Jazz knows'?" asked Tucker. "You mean, like, she knows knows?"
Danny nodded wordlessly and then lightly beat his forehead against the locker.
"So…?" asked Sam.
"So what?"
"How'd she react?" She and Tucker had gathered close around Danny on either side, forming a human wall against the crowd in the hallway, who were quickly losing interest after realizing no one was going to start throwing punches.
He shrugged helplessly. He didn't think he could put the expression on his sister's face last night into words.
"Did you talk to her?" asked Tuck.
"Kind of?" He shrugged again. "I asked her not to tell our parents, and she didn't – not yet, anyway. But… I don't think she thinks I'm me. I think she thinks the merboy replaced her brother."
"Do you think she's going to tell them?" asked Sam.
"I don't know."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know!" he snapped. He sucked in a shaking breath and let it out. More softly, he said, "I don't know… I…" He beat his forehead against the locker again. "No matter what I do, it's the wrong decision. Even when I decided to do nothing, it was the wrong decision. I just don't…"
"It's going to be okay, Danny," said Tucker. "I mean, it's Jazz. There's no way she'd do anything that would risk your life."
"You don't know that," he muttered.
"Why don't we all talk to her, together?" asked Sam. "Tucker, you've been part of this since Day One. We just need to tell her what's really going on. Let's find her at lunch and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, I'll call Charles and we can go with our Plan B from when we did Tucker's intervention."
"Hang on, what was Plan B?" asked Tucker.
"We're not going to kidnap my sister," said Danny.
"You guys were gonna kidnap me?!"
"But we do need to talk to her," Sam insisted. "I know you don't want to. I know this is scary. But you have to." She slipped her hand into his and squeezed it gently. "The good news is, you don't have to do it alone."
The dead fish was only the beginning of the flak he received from his classmates that morning. They were, as it turned out, not especially happy that a giant crab monster had smashed up their favorite fast food joint and seemed to think this was the Fentons' fault.
Paulina even approached him at the start of first period English to air her complaints. "First they let an evil merman try to drown me at Mr. Masters's party, which by the way was at your beach, then they let a mind-controlling slug attach itself to my head–"
"Technically that was a leech," said Tucker. Paulina turned her lip up at him as though he were a bad smell.
"–then I was nearly trampled to death by a fish with legs, and now this crab thing destroyed one of the only places left that we thought was safe to hang out. Your parents need to either, like, get their act together and kill these things, or take their freakshow on the road and leave us alone."
Sure, his parents were kinda missing the mark when it came to killing these monsters, but it wasn't their fault the things were attacking Amity Beach. "My parents only moved here because there were already merpeople nearby," Danny pointed out. "And if they hadn't, you guys would have zero protection. You do realize that, right?"
"We might as well have zero protection," she said, and then she turned with a flip of her hair and stalked back to her seat.
And like that, Danny was back to being a social pariah.
"Who cares what Paulina thinks?" asked Sam, glaring daggers at the other girl's back.
"Pretty much the entire freshman class," Tucker reminded her.
The rest of the morning passed altogether too quickly, like the clocks were racing toward their lunch break and his looming conversation with Jazz. Outside, the sky grew dark as thick gray clouds rolled over Amity Beach. By the time the bell rang at the end of fourth period, raindrops were beginning to splatter against the windows.
All grade levels at Neptune High shared the same lunch period. The campus was open to juniors and seniors, so many of them normally chose to eat off campus, while other students were free to eat wherever they wanted around the building.
However, as a storm was about to break over the town and the Nasty Burger had been smashed to pieces the day before, the cafeteria was much more crowded than usual. And unless Jazz was busy with student council, helping a teacher, or doing some other 'model student' activity, she would be there, too.
Danny ducked his head and did his best to pretend he wasn't there. Sam and Tuck seemed oblivious to his efforts as they very purposefully craned their necks to look for his sister.
"I don't see her, do you?" said Sam.
Tucker shook his head. "Nuh-uh."
"Oh well," said Danny, "we tried, so why don't we–"
"Her car was definitely in the parking lot this morning, right?" asked Sam.
"I checked for it as soon as I got here," said Tucker. "I assumed Danny would be riding with her."
"You'd think we'd be able to spot her. How many students here have red hair?"
They looked for a while longer, even as Danny got in line for his tray and went to an open table to start eating. He assumed Jazz was avoiding him, the same way he was avoiding her. He wondered if that might become the new normal. Maybe if they just didn't talk about it, they could pretend that nothing had changed and that he didn't grow scales anytime someone splashed him.
In the end, lunch came and went without him running into her. He felt like he had dodged a bullet, and as nothing had attacked him yet today, he was a little more relaxed as he started to walk with Sam toward their health class.
"Don't you have to go see the counselor?" she asked him. Outside, the first flash of lightning lit up the sky.
"Crap," he muttered, and then he sighed. "No, you're right. I guess I should go get that over with."
He waved her a listless goodbye and turned around to make his way toward Dr. Scylla's office.
Today marked his third session with the school counselor. He wondered if this was going to be the day she actually started helping him; although according to what she told him yesterday, the plan for today's session was to find ways for him to fit in with his classmates.
That sounded miserable, and what's worse, it sounded hopeless. He knew the lady was just doing her job, that she couldn't have any idea what kind of impossible case she was dealing with, and he wondered if he just faked a turnaround if she would sign off on him. How hard could it be to pretend to be happy?
As it turned out – pretty hard. The closer he drew to Dr. Scylla's office, the more the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. That wasn't a great sign. His luck, that stupid crab was planning to crash through the wall in the middle of his counseling session. Danny paused outside of her door and took a deep breath, planning to use his water mode to get a sense of where it might be hiding. But then the counselor's door opened.
"Danny!" said Dr. Scylla, beaming at him over the tops of her sunglasses. "There you are! I was afraid you'd forgotten about our session."
Danny forced a smile onto his face. "Yep," he said, entirely without enthusiasm. "Here I am."
"Don't just stand there – come in!" she said, stepping aside and sweeping her arm toward the uncomfortable plastic chair in front of her desk. "We have so much to talk about today."
He clenched and unclenched his fists as he sat down on the edge of the seat, ready to jump up at the first signs of crab-themed chaos. His ears were pricked for the sound of screaming, and every nerve in his body was telling him danger was near. Thunder rumbled dully in the distance.
Dr. Scylla took her seat across from him and clasped her hands on top of the desk. For a long while, she just stared at him with a pleased smirk, eyes flicking back and forth across his face. It took Danny, distracted by the feeling of imminent doom, a moment to realize how unsettling this was, and his attention was pulled back to the present.
"Um… you said we had a lot to talk about today?"
The corners of her lips curled upward. "Danny," she said. She began to drum the fingers of one hand across her desktop as her other hand reached into a drawer. "What would you say if I told you that your sister was being held hostage by that giant crab?"
Danny chuckled awkwardly. "You mean, hypothetically… right?"
Scylla raised the hand from the drawer; from her fingers dangled Jazz's favorite turquoise headband. "No, I mean it quite literally."
Danny stared at the headband, unable to understand what he was seeing. Then he shoved to his feet, the plastic chair clattering to the floor behind him. "What did you do? Where's Jazz? Who are you?"
"Connect the dots, Danny. Jazz figured it out much faster than you. Then again, she always was the smart one."
"Shut up!" he yelled. "So… so you're the Siren." He felt like smacking himself in the face. Stupid! I can't believe I didn't figure that out sooner.
"Truly, it is shocking. I mean, I barely tried to hide it."
For a second, Danny was thrown by her reply. He shook it off, assuming he'd used mind-speak on accident.
"Where's Jazz?" he demanded again.
"I already told you. She's with Bertrand – alive, for now." Dr. Scylla shrugged. "Probably. Still, I'd hurry if I were you. Bertrand's been waiting for several hours, and between you and me, he's not particularly good at waiting."
"Where is she?"
The Siren's smirk grew still, until Danny could see the tips of her canines, and he realized they were elongated like fangs. He wondered if they'd always looked like that. "That's for me to know," she told him, "and for you to agonize over."
He hesitated, panic thrumming at his mind as he fought back the urge to just outright attack Scylla and beat the location out of her. But he didn't know how strong this Siren was, and if Jazz was in danger, he knew there was no time to waste. "If he hurt her–"
"Tick tock!" she reminded him in a sing-song voice, tapping at a nonexistent wrist-watch.
He ran out of her office.
Danny sprinted to the front doors of the school and out onto the patch of concrete underneath the overhang of the roof. There, he was met with a wall of rainwater. The sky was so dark that it looked like night, except for the bright flashes of lightning that streaked across it. Harsh wind whipped droplets onto his face and clothes. He wiped a hand over his face, and when he pulled his hand back, the darkness made it so that he could see the bioluminescence of his skin.
He stood there for a few moments, his heartbeat hammering in his chest, breaths puffing too quickly out of his lungs. There was too much water; it was almost like someone had stuffed cotton into his ears. Everything was muffled to his senses.
He tried to remember what Sam had taught him about breathing. He closed his eyes and purposefully slowed his breaths until finally the tremors in his shoulders and knees and hands died away. Maybe he had no idea where his sister was, but he still needed to look. He shoved his water mode outward.
But nothing meant anything. All he could feel across all of Amity Beach were the blurry pounding of rain and, in the little bubbles of air in houses and buildings, people going about their day. Nearby, the ocean roiled in the storm.
He ran a frantic hand through his hair. "Come on," he muttered. "If I were a giant crab holding someone hostage, where would I go?"
His eyes shot open as he realized two things. One was that he was looking for the wrong target. He didn't need to look for Jazz, one human circulatory system among thousands – he needed to look for the one heartbeat that couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's. Bertrand.
The second was that his enemies were a Siren and her pet crustacean. Where else would they lay a trap for him – and this was a trap, he was obviously walking into a trap – than the place where they were most in their element and would have the greatest advantage?
Danny took another deep breath, closed his eyes, and flung out his senses toward the coast, scanning every dock and pier and warehouse, every piece of waterfront property that the ocean's waves were crashing against. Not a minute later, he found what he was looking for, but–
"Why there?" he muttered, opening his eyes.
It didn't matter. What did matter was getting there as quickly as possible.
Luckily, Danny was still wearing his wetsuit under his clothes, which, admittedly, were the same ones from yesterday that he just never changed out of. He had just enough presence of mind to exchange his sneakers for the neoprene boots shoved into the bottom of his backpack. He then slung his bag to the side of the front entryway, hardly caring what would happen to it.
Danny pulled one of the massive puddles of rainwater to the front steps of the school and jumped out from the cover of the building to land on top of it. As soon as he was sure of his footing, he crouched down, tilted the disk forward, and propelled it into the storm.
Man, your brother sure is taking his sweet time, isn't he?
Jazz scowled at the crab but didn't reward him with a response. It wasn't a discussion, anyway. It was just Bertrand, talking, relentlessly.
He does know we're planning to kill you, right?
It also wasn't the first time the crab had reminded her of her impending death. There was only so many times anyone could say 'We're going to kill you' over the course of several hours before it lost its edge.
Of course Jazz was still scared, and of course she trusted that Bertrand and Scylla were, eventually, going to kill her. But she wasn't panicking anymore. Her fear had turned into a cold, persistent dread.
For the last few hours, she had sat in the sand in the darkness of the little beachside cave just north of Fentonworks, the one Danny and Tucker had often played in when they were younger and where Mr. Masters had found Danny earlier that week. It was damp and slightly cold, and any daylight that wasn't blocked by the heavy storm clouds was mostly blocked by Bertrand's bulk. Like a boulder, he was stoppering the entrance to the cave and making sure his and Scylla's bait didn't run off.
Scylla had taken her phone, or it had fallen out of her hand when the Siren had disoriented her earlier. Whatever had happened to it, Jazz didn't have it now.
She did have her backpack, though. It had still been strapped to her shoulders when she came to, lying uncomfortably on top of it in the sand, its contents digging painfully into her spine.
She had thought about opening it, but she had known that she would only have one chance; Bertrand wouldn't give her another.
Scylla's plan was to kill her in front of her brother and destroy his spirit in the most painful way imaginable. But if she acted recklessly and Bertrand killed her before Danny got there, the sight of her dead body, and what he would surely think when he saw it – that he had arrived too late to save her – would be just as devastating a blow.
Besides trying to ignore the words Bertrand periodically transmitted into her skull, she had spent a lot of her time there that morning berating herself for getting into this position in the first place. She was here because she had been too cowardly to talk to Danny, which she should have done the moment he'd given her that sad, broken smile and turned away. Instead, she had tried to do something to make herself feel less awful about her own reaction and wound up playing right into the bad guys' hands. This was her fault.
Now, she could only hope that Scylla's trap worked and that Danny did show up to save her.
Jazz had to be ready for that moment, because what Scylla and Bertrand didn't know was that she had a trap ready for them as well.
I really might just kill you, commented the crab. I'm getting tired of standing here waiting to get hit by lightning.
Jazz rolled her eyes. As if to prove Bertrand's point, thunder rumbled over the beach, shaking the walls of the cave.
Just then, the crab shifted. It was the first time he had moved since Jazz had woken up in the cave and found him blocking the only way out. Her eyes snapped to his dim silhouette.
Hahaha. Finally! rumbled the crab. He pushed up onto his legs, and wet sand rained off his carapace.
Jazz slung her arm into one of the straps of her backpack and scrambled to the entrance of the cave. Peering underneath Bertrand's body and between his legs, through the sheets of rain pummeling the beach, Jazz watched her little brother step down onto the sand as though stepping out of the sky.
He stood in front of the monstrous crab with his feet planted firmly and his shoulders squared. His soaked clothing was plastered to his body. The exposed skin on his face and hands was white as snow and glowed with a phantasmagoric light, while his bright green eyes blazed. He bared long, sharp fangs at the crab. Then he shouted a question over the pounding rain and lashing waves, and what met Jazz's ears was unmistakably Danny's voice:
"Did you hurt her?"
Bertrand shuffled on his many legs and stepped aside so that Danny had a clear view of the cave and Jazz huddled inside of it, clutching onto her backpack. When those glowing eyes met hers, Jazz saw Danny's knees nearly buckle with relief.
It's no fun killing the bait before your prey shows up, sneered Bertrand, as though he hadn't spent the entire morning entertaining the idea.
Saying that, he reached out one of his gigantic claws to grab her. Jazz yelped and clambered away, dragging the weight of her backpack with her.
"Leave her alone!" Danny shouted. Suddenly, a frothing wave of ocean water slammed into the crab, knocking him into the cliffside.
Stunned, Jazz watched the water recede around Danny as Bertrand dropped a foot back onto the sand, stumbling on the landing.
Ouch, the crab grumbled, shaking out his limbs. Now that wasn't very nice.
Danny turned back to Jazz and waved a frantic hand in the direction of their house. "Jazz, run!" he shouted at her.
His voice shocked her back into motion. She took Bertrand's moment of distraction to scramble out of the cave on her hands and knees, propelling herself upright into a stumbling run, the heavy backpack bouncing painfully on her shoulder blade. She made it as far as the curve of the cliffside before Bertrand's giant left claw slammed into the beach, causing the ground to tremble and her knees to buckle.
She nearly fell to the ground. Horrified, she realized she had been running away, leaving Danny behind.
Steeling herself, Jazz turned back.
Across the beach, Bertrand was raising his left claw out of a crater in the sand while he used his smaller claw to snap at Danny. Every one of his attacks glanced off of a fluid, glassy shield that was flitting through the air around Danny, and the crab was quickly growing agitated.
You think you're hot stuff, just 'cause you can use a little hydrokinesis? he spat. I promise, it's not gonna help you for much longer.
As he said that, Bertrand swelled in size until he towered over Danny. He projected a dark chuckle into their heads and raised his left claw into the air.
Block this, hot stuff.
He swung the claw down on Danny like a battering ram. Jazz cried out in alarm, and a second later, the claw landed.
It landed – but what it didn't do was smash into the sand, crushing Jazz's little brother underneath it. There was a dull sound like thunder, followed by an agonized yell from Danny as he fell to his knees under a small dome of water. His arms were stretched out to either side of him, and Jazz saw a dark stream of blood running from his nose, black against his bright skin.
His eyes were alight with fiery determination.
What? Bertrand exclaimed. No! That's impossible!
He brought both of his claws down on Danny's shield, alternating them multiple times in rapid succession. Each time, Danny cried out in pain, and the water shuddered under the force of the impacts. He and the dome seemed to be sinking into the sand.
"Stop it!" Jazz screamed.
Bertrand ignored her, but Danny's head twisted in her direction. His eyes widened.
He tried to say something to her, but his voice was lost under the barrage of Bertrand's blows.
Then his voice entered her head, along with an overwhelming feeling of desperation. Jazz, go get Mom and Dad. Please. They'll keep you safe.
Tears poured out of Jazz's eyes as she realized what he was planning to do. He was going to distract the crab long enough for her to get to safety, and that was it.
She swallowed and shook her head furiously. Then she slung the backpack onto the ground in front of her, opened the zipper, and dumped its contents onto the sand.
She straightened a moment later, a weapon in each hand.
"Hey!" she shouted. Bertrand had just raised both of his claws, preparing to bring them down simultaneously on top of Danny. He didn't so much as twitch an eye stalk at her.
Then, a miniature harpoon flew just over the top of his head and embedded itself in the sand behind him. Bertrand finally looked at her.
You missed, he pointed out, the words laced with amusement.
"Yeah, 'cause I wasn't trying to hit you!" she called back (even though she had been). She dropped the Fenton Harpoon Hurlinator and turned to her brother. "Danny! Catch!" Saying that, she flung the other weapon at her brother.
Jazz really hadn't thought it through. She wasn't very strong, the weapon was heavy, and she was quite a distance from Danny. It was on a trajectory to land uselessly in the sand in front of her.
But Danny's eyes widened when he saw what she had done, and he reached out a hand. The water shield twisted into a rope and shot forward in the direction he was pointing. Before the weapon had a chance to touch the ground, the water wrapped around it. Then, it rushed back toward Danny, weapon and all, and deposited the Fenton Extendable Porta-Harpoon straight into his open hands.
He took a moment to grin at Jazz; then, he pushed to his feet.
"Guess what, Bertrand?" he said. "You lose."
The crab's eye stalks waved back and forth after it took in the squat, cylindrical device in Danny's hands. What are you planning to do? Bludgeon me to death? Can't wait to see this!
Danny's grin widened. He pressed the red button on the side of the device.
A spearhead popped out of the end of the little contraption, and in the next few seconds, pieces of the Porta-Harpoon rearranged themselves until Danny was holding a harpoon that was fully five feet long and deadly sharp.
Water rushed under Danny's feet, and then it flung him straight up into the air.
What happened next must have happened quickly, but Jazz felt like she was watching it in slow motion.
The water dissolved under Danny, just as a wave surged onto the beach. It split into two branches and washed over Bertrand, holding his claws in place against the sand. As the crab struggled to break free, Danny's upward momentum ended, and he began to fall back toward the ground, the Porta-Harpoon gripped in both hands and aimed directly at Bertrand.
Danny and the weapon crashed into the crab; he lost his grip on the shaft of the harpoon, smacked heavily into Bertrand's carapace, and dropped onto the beach.
But he had struck true. The harpoon pierced straight and deep into the crab's head, just between his eye stalks.
The water holding Betrand's claws down splashed inertly to the ground. He stumbled backward, his legs stabbing sharply into the sand and throwing it in all directions as he flailed his claws through the air. A wave of agonized emotion rolled outward from him, hitting Jazz like a punch to the stomach.
Then his legs collapsed, and he dropped to the beach. He didn't move again.
Danny groaned; he cradled his stomach and sat up with some effort. He swiped a hand under his nose, wiping away some of the blood, and turned to look at Jazz.
I've used that move in Doomed before, he told her sheepishly. I, uh… didn't think about the landing.
Jazz chuckled helplessly, hoping he hadn't broken any ribs.
"How dare you."
Jazz and Danny turned toward the voice. Standing in the surf was Penelope Scylla – the Siren.
She was still wearing her red skirt suit, which was now waterlogged and clung awkwardly to her frame. Her red hair hung dripping around her shoulders. Mascara ran down her cheeks, blending into the black scales that spotted her once-human skin. Pointed black ears protruded through her hair, and as she sneered at them in contempt, Jazz could see that her teeth had elongated into fangs.
The eyes that were normally hidden behind sunglasses glared at them, bright red in the gloom of the storm.
Lightning branched across the sky, throwing the scene into stark relief.
Scylla strode onto the beach. Each step revealed more of her legs, which had been completely overtaken by pitch-black scales.
Her livid red eyes were locked onto Danny. He got to his feet as quickly as he could, but he was struggling under his injuries.
Jazz started to move forward. Without breaking her gaze on Danny, Scylla raised a hand toward Jazz, and her feet were swept out from under her by an aquatic tentacle. She fell heavily onto her back on the wet sand.
Hatred emanated from the Siren. It was oppressive; Jazz felt like her limbs were weighted down as she slowly got back to her feet.
Scylla stood directly in front of Danny. One hand gripped his face, her sharp black claws threatening to draw blood. But Danny stared back at her defiantly, fists clenched at his sides.
Jazz stumbled toward them until she could finally make out the words Scylla was spitting at him.
"...told me I could do anything to you short of killing you. Believe me, after I'm through with you, you're going to wish you were dead."
"I'm not scared of you," Danny told her.
Scylla laughed scathingly. "Oh please. You and I both know that's not true." She tightened her grip, and one of her claws broke through the skin. Danny winced, and a thin rivulet of blood dribbled over his cheek.
The hatred suddenly changed into another emotion, one that made Jazz's chest grow tight, made it difficult for her to breathe, and made her legs quiver. The only word she could think of to describe it was 'despair.'
It quickly became clear that most of this psychic attack was directed at her brother, though. The defiance was wiped from his gaze, replaced with anguish; his shoulders drooped with defeat, and it even seemed like his aura dimmed.
The Siren chuckled. She released her grip on Danny, and he fell to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut. Scylla crouched in front of him, baring her fangs in a mock grin.
Her eyes flickered to Jazz, and she grabbed Danny's face again, turning it so that he was looking at his sister as she announced exactly what she planned to do to them. His eyes were glazed over, and shivers wracked his frame.
"Do you want to know why I killed that girl?" she asked. "It's because my body is imperfect in this form. If I don't replenish the human essence fueling this spell, it will cease to work." She ran her claw gently down his cheek. "Humans have such pathetically weak essences, too. That girl's didn't even last me a week."
Her grin widened, and she turned her hungry gaze on Jazz. "I'm going to take Jasmine's essence next, then I'll leave you here to take the blame. And in a way, it is all your fault, isn't it? It didn't have to come to this, but you crossed my king, and you killed my Bertrand, all while being so weak that you can't even protect the people who matter most to you. It's almost funny how much of a failure you are!"
Scylla turned back to Danny, and some of the power that had seemed to freeze Jazz in place was broken. She glanced around herself. The backpack sat, empty, a few feet away, and several other devices were scattered over the sand. Fingers trembling, she reached out for the nearest one.
"Don't think your parents will help you, either," Scylla continued gleefully. "They hate you, and they'll hate you even more when they learn the truth. No," she said, plucking some train of thought from Danny's head. "Stop making those weak excuses for them. You don't believe them, or else you would have told your parents from the start. But honestly, who could blame them? You're an abomination. You're a freak of nature who killed your own sister. Really, who could ever care for a thing like you?"
Her eyes narrowed as the red light in them blazed. "Now watch as I take everything from you. I promise it will hurt."
She rose to standing and turned to Jazz. By this time, most of the human skin on her face had been replaced with black scales. Her coloration made her look like a demon from hell.
Danny watched helplessly as the Siren began to advance on his sister.
Jazz swallowed, and then she raised her head and pointed the gun at Scylla. "First of all, I'm not dead yet," she said. "And you're wrong. I care."
She flipped open the panel on the top of the gun, as she had seen her father do once before. She smashed her thumb against the red button underneath.
Metal plating unraveled from the back of the gun, wrapping itself securely around her frame. She didn't dare move, afraid of what would happen if she got in the way of whatever algorithm was controlling this thing. It covered her from head to toe, and at the end, a thick plastic shield snapped over her face.
She aimed the barrel of the Fenton Desiccator at the Siren and pressed the button again.
A bright blue light shot from the gun and bathed Scylla in its glow. She shrieked and covered her eyes, and even Danny, while not in the path of the weapon, had to turn away.
Jazz squinted through the glare, watching as Scylla's skin started to shrivel and flake off. The Siren's screams rose until something in her anatomy broke, and she could only howl and writhe in silence.
Feelings of fear and panic beat against Jazz's mind, but she knew where they were coming from this time, recognized them as a last-stitch effort of Scylla's to escape. Instead, Jazz focused her thoughts on a single mantra: Don't run, don't run, don't run, don't run…
Jazz released the button when the psychic attacks abruptly stopped and Scylla's body toppled to the ground. It was rigid, no more than a mummified husk in a red suit. The rain splashed onto it, but it did little good now.
A few seconds later, the metal suit of the Desiccator packed itself neatly back into the gun. Horrified, Jazz tossed the weapon away from her, and she forced herself not to look at Scylla as she ran past her to Danny.
Her brother was still kneeling on the beach. Unlike Jazz, he seemed unable to wrench his gaze away from Scylla and stared at the body, expression blank with shock.
Jazz laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. He jerked, and his head whipped upward.
He still looked like the merboy, but in that moment, Jazz was shocked that she hadn't recognized him immediately the first time she had seen him. Everything about him was so unmistakably Danny.
Wordlessly, she reached out a hand to him. He stared at her and then at her hand before finally reaching out to take it.
Jazz led him to the little beachside cave, and he followed easily, though his hand was trembling in hers. Honestly, the cave was the last place she wanted to go after being held hostage there for most of the day. But it was close, it was private, and it was out of the rain.
She sat down inside and leaned up against the wall, pointedly facing away from the beach. Danny stared down at her warily, and his eyes flicked toward the mouth of the cave like he was planning to run away.
Jazz just smiled softly and patted the ground next to her.
"C'mon, Danny. I think we should talk."
A/N: Hiya! Look, a chapter. Woah.
(…Sometimes I think I'll abandon this story, because I'm not very interested in writing it most of the time, but then I remember that I promised to finish it no matter how many years it took and barring all obstacles but my death. So, yes, there will be more. Eventually!)
To be clear, Scylla is dead. I was rather too pleased to brutally kill her. (Does anyone really deserve the Desiccator?) This whole arc was emotionally exhausting. It needed to happen, but it was a lot. So, no more psychologically tormenting Danny for a while. The outline says he even gets a break next chapter. Phew.
Thanks to: Invader Johnny, TheReverseMerm, ssgoosecookie, Isa Wilson, MistFlame54, daddyphannypack, Alakazamboni, ReflectiveReader, ImaginativeGeek, MsFrizzle, Foxprints, 16, no1ghoul, RebeccaRosewood, nayshnay, didhero, gbiggs6292, and PoochKat for your reviews of Chapter 32!
Until our paths next cross,
T.F.C~