Chapter 40

Arya

How could this be possible?

Only four days ago, I'd gone from being the most useless mermaid in school—and possibly the world—to being the siren that was prophesied to kill the most dangerous vampire alive. And now, I was a chimera?

I knew what a chimera was, if only from a brief lesson about it in Shifter Biology. A chimera was someone who was a mix of two or more shifter species, and such a thing was so rare that it was almost a myth. It was a large part of the reason for different shifter species not to mate, because chimeras were unpredictable—dangerous.

How could I be one of those creatures? As if being a siren wasn't rare enough!

I hadn't stuck around Defense class after the accidental discovery. I needed time to process, and Caesar had respected that and let me leave before anyone else—probably so the other students wouldn't rise up and lynch me on the spot.

I ran to Ashlyn's room, closed the door, and curled up on the bed, trying not to have a nervous breakdown.

It was just too much. What did this mean? I didn't even know how I'd accessed what was supposed to be a harpy ability. I'd just been so overwhelmed with hatred for Cora, and I knew there was no way I could fend her off with my own meager mermaid powers. Something inside me just took over.

Did this mean that my dad was a harpy?

That thought stopped my anxiety in its tracks, and suddenly hope sparked. Maybe this wasn't a bad thing. Maybe this could lead to clues as to who my father was. If he was still out there somewhere, I could find him and maybe have somewhat of a family again.

If he even wanted anything to do with me.

A gentle knock at the door startled me out of my ruminations.

"I'm not here," I called at the door with a tone of irritation that I hoped masked my fear.

"It's me," Kendall's voice said on the other side.

I rolled my eyes. Where was he when Cora kicked me out? Or after I got attacked by vampires? He had been MIA ever since the Letti incident, and now he wanted to talk? His timing couldn't be worse.

"Still not here," I hollered.

Kendall opened the door anyway and came in. I huffed and glared at him, regretting that I'd been too distraught to lock the door.

"I know you probably don't want to talk about what just happened in Defense, but I have something hugely important to tell you. It's about your father."

All my walls disintegrated. I was now very interested in whatever he had to say. I leaned forward on the bed, my tone much softer when I said, "Okay, what is it?"

"Not here. There's something I need to show you. I'll explain on the way. Come on." He waved toward the door, beckoning me to follow.

My curiosity was on high alert, a burning need inside my chest. I swiftly followed Kendall out of the avian wing and through the hallways.

"Alright, spill," I whispered urgently. "What do you know about my father?"

"You know that I'm a seer," he began instead. "We've talked about it before."

I shrugged and nodded brusquely, eager to know what this had to do with my dad.

"Well, ever since I was a boy, I've had horrible visions about the future," he went on as he led me through the Grand Hall at a brisk pace. "A battle between shifters and vampires. Our kind dying everywhere. I've tried and tried to focus my gift so that I can find a way to stop it from happening, but every time I have the vision, it's always the same. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the purpose of these visions isn't to prevent them, but maybe just to save myself…and those I care about."

I listened to him with growing concern, not missing the fact that he was clearly leading me toward the exit of the Dome.

"Er, Kendall, I don't quite understand what we're talking about here," I said, slowing my pace.

"There's something else I've always seen in my visions," he continued.

He slowed a little, not enough to walk beside me, but not going so fast as to lose me, either.

"A beautiful girl with thick black hair. I never knew who she was or how she would impact my future, I only knew the feeling I got when I would see her. This girl was vastly important.

"When I first saw Letti a few years ago, I could've sworn she was the girl. She looked younger, of course, but visions aren't always clear. I couldn't know exactly when or at what age I would meet this girl. So I did everything I could to win her heart, waiting for the day that our purpose would become clear.

"But it never did. The more I got to know her…the less I liked the person she was. I kept thinking, ‘Were my visions wrong? How could this girl ever be someone worth loving as much as I did in my visions?' And then one day, you came along, and I realized I had chosen the wrong girl.

"Don't you see, Arya? You're the girl I've been waiting for."

He looked at me without slowing down and smiled that same charming, sweet smile. But I didn't feel the same warmth as before. I only felt a gripping sense that something was wrong.

That I needed to get away.

And we were coming very close to the door leading to the subway platform.

I stopped walking.

"That's very sweet, Kendall," I said, trying to be as delicate as I could. "But, uh, didn't you say you had to tell me something about my dad?"

"Yes, I was getting to that." He stopped, too, and came to stand within inches of me, gently taking my hands in his.

As much as I had appreciated being so intimate with him in the past, right now such proximity was alarmingly unnerving.

"Your mother, her name was Zaia, wasn't it?"

Bells rang in my head. I had never told Kendall that detail before. In fact, I hadn't told anyone at school my mom's name.

"How did you know that?" I couldn't keep the suspicion from seeping into my words.

"I knew it!" he practically shouted. "It all makes sense now."

I extracted my hands and took a slow step back, using my peripheral vision to take stock of my surroundings.

"What does?" I asked, hoping to keep him distracted.

"You and I have been connected from the start. Before we were even born!"

He had a wild, excited look on his face, and I was more than a little scared of what he might do. He was talking crazy. He closed the distance between us and grabbed my upper arms. I stiffened, my eyes wide as I stared with growing anxiety at him.

"Arya, eighteen years ago, my mother befriended a fresh-out-of-water mermaid named Zaia. Soon after they met, Zaia told her she had fallen for a vampire who wanted to use her blood to create potential hybrids—shifters that could be turned into vampires! That vampire was Hadrian. He was attempting to fuse different shifter DNA together in order to come up with a shifter that was strong enough to be turned into a vampire. He told her that it was so our two races could one day live in peace and stop fighting. The great unification, or something. My mother warned her against him, but Zaia didn't listen. She agreed to help Hadrian with his experiments."

I listened as he held me in place, unable to marry this version of my mother with the one I knew. It had to be a lie, or a mistake. Kendall had it wrong.

"One day, Zaia turned up pregnant," Kendall went on. "She said it was Hadrian's baby, and that it tested positive for multiple strands of shifter DNA. Zaia was suddenly horrified by all this, afraid of what Hadrian would do with her unborn child. Then she ran off, and my mother never saw her again. Hadrian has been searching for his lost child ever since."

He shook me, his eyes blazing with wild obsession bordering on mania.

"Don't you see, Arya? You're the lost child! That's why he wants you."

I flushed with panic from the top of my scalp to the tips of my toes. I didn't want to believe a word of what he'd said. My heart rejected it so passionately that I feared it might give out. But it was the only explanation that finally made sense.

It explained why my mom had been on the run all my life, always looking over her shoulder. Why we only left town during the day and why I was never allowed out after dark. Why Mom had never revealed that she and I were shifters. And the no social-media thing—that must've been because she was afraid Hadrian would find her there.

My hands rushed to grip both sides of my head, a futile attempt to keep my world from spinning.

Oh God, my dad was a vampire.

And not just any vampire, but the most notorious, wicked, and feared vampire in shifter history.

Any fantasies I'd had of some heartwarming father-daughter reunion with an angelic harpy crashed and drowned.

There were so many frantic thoughts bouncing around in my head that I almost forgot Kendall was standing in front of me, still holding my arms. I came back to myself, and it occurred to me that the usual guards of this area were nowhere in sight. After the vampire attacks, that wasn't just unusual. There was something very wrong here.

I moistened my dry lips with an even drier tongue, then said very slowly, "Kendall, what are we doing at the door to the platform?"

He let go of me and took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair, bracing for what he obviously expected to be an unpleasant reaction.

"I've seen the future, Arya. Shifters are going to be wiped out. Vampires are going to win, and our side loses. There's no way around it. But I know now why I've been seeing you for so long. You and I don't have to die. We can save ourselves."

"Wh—what?" I stammered, unable to believe what I was hearing.

"Hadrian wants you," he said, looking crazier and more desperate by the second. "He won't hurt you, not the daughter he's been looking for for the past two decades. If I bring you to him, you and I will be safe. He'll finally have you, and he'll reward me for delivering you. I'll be able to watch over you. We can be together, even as the world falls apart."

My heart pounded a death march in my chest. I realized with staunch horror that I had no idea what Kendall was really capable of. I had to handle this situation delicately.

"You're talking about abandoning everyone here and selling them out to the vampires?" As I spoke, I backed toward the hallway as slowly and seamlessly as I could, waiting for the right time to bolt.

"Please, don't see it like that," he pleaded, his brows creasing in a way that made him look sweet again. "I've seen their end. Everyone here is already doomed. But I know that I can save you—save us . That's what my visions have been trying to tell me. You and I don't have to join them in their fate."

"What if by doing this, you're causing your vision to come true?" I asked, drawing at one last straw to change his mind. "What if your visions are trying to warn you to take a different path?"

His jaw set and his brow smoothed. "That's exactly what I'm doing. Choosing a different path. One day, you'll understand."

As fast as I could, I spun and sprinted for the hallway. But before I had gone five feet, Kendall's arms closed around me, lifting me off the ground.

"Hel—" I began to scream, but Kendall's hand closed firmly over my mouth, trapping all sound as his other arm held me like an iron clamp.

"I didn't want to have to do this, but you've given me no choice."

He set me down next to the wall, then turned me to face it, keeping his hand firmly over my mouth. Pressing his body against mine to cage me against the wall and free up his other hand, he lifted something out of his pocket. In my peripheral vision, I could see the glint of a syringe with clear liquid coming toward my neck.

My eyes nearly popped out of my skull, and I squealed into his tight palm, expelling all the air from my lungs in the hopes that any of it would escape between his fingers. I didn't know what was in that syringe, but I was terrified to find out.

Despite my twisting and flailing, Kendall seemed to have me locked in an unbreakable wedge. When I felt the needle touch the skin of my neck, I closed my eyes, bracing for what was to come.

"Kendall? Arya? What's going on here?" Celeste's silhouette appeared at the end of the short hallway.

The brief distraction was all I needed. I pressed my knee against the wall and pushed forward with all the force my spent limbs could muster, my skull crashing into Kendall's forehead and jarring us both.

He stumbled back, and I crashed to the cold, metallic floor. I was so rocked by the impact that I was completely cut off from the world around me for a brief eternal moment. I squeezed my head between my hands, waiting for the throbbing to stop.

Hands landed on my shoulders and I jerked away, ready to fight to the death, even if I was still too dizzy to function. But when my vision focused, it was Celeste kneeling in front of me.

"Arya, are you alright?" Celeste asked.

Slowly, the dizziness dissipated, and I did what I thought was nodding.

"Where's Kendall?" I asked, squinting one eye and rubbing the back of my neck. There was a prick of pain where the needle had partially stuck, but I was grateful it hadn't gone any deeper.

"He's gone," Celeste assured me. "He ran to the platform and jumped onto the subway as it left. What happened? None of this makes any sense."

I eased myself into a sitting position against the wall of the entryway. "He was trying to take me to Hadrian. When I refused, he grabbed me. He was going to drug me and take me by force."

"What?" Celeste gasped.

"Where are the guards?" I asked, gesturing to the empty space around us.

"Well, Kendall told me that he foresaw an imminent attack on the other side of the Dome," Celeste explained, flustered and confused. "I gathered all our able-bodied personnel to the site, but there was no sign of danger. Even with my powers focused on this evening, I could sense no attack, which didn't make any sense. So I asked everyone to stay put while I searched for Kendall to ask for more details, but..."

I shook my head, clenching my jaw. "He planned this."

"Why?" Celeste asked, her red hair somehow looking even more fiery. "Why would he do this? Why would he take you to Hadrian?"

My chest burned with the painful knowledge I still struggled to accept.

"He said his mother knew my mother a long time ago, that my mother was Hadrian's lover, and apparently his willing test subject. Hadrian's not after me because he knows about the prophecy. He's after me because I'm his daughter. "