She felt Silky come up close behind her, felt his tentacles slide over her slick-suited shoulders, circle the air hose of her oxygen pack, pull — “Silky!” The angry protest garbled as she sank her teeth into the regulator, to keep him from jerking it out of her mouth. She brought up her hands, felt more tentacles twine around them as she tried to protect her air supply; pulled her fin-awkward feet up to kick him away. And then she realized that two Silkys struggled beside her; saw the sheathed knife come free from behind the false one’s shoulder, swaying among tentacles like a fanged snake, caught between victims. She kicked out, thrusting him away with her feet, but not before the blade chose a victim and she saw the dark cloud of blood at Silky’s shoulder.
She caught Silky in her arms, trying to swim them both out of reach of the killer; but the quiet waters suddenly boiled with forms as the mers from the shore colony poured into the sea, were herded together with the rest into a panic-stricken mass. They thrashed around her, crowded her heavily, flipper, head, body, banging and bruising. She clung grimly to Silky’s sluggish, grasping tentacles, struggling upward through the chaos. But the brightening water above showed her the silhouette of the heavy net settling toward them, the black stain of a strange ship’s double hull breaking the surface of the bay. More figures that should have been Silky but were not guided the net’s fall as it settled on her like a shroud, dragging her back down in wild claustrophobia… The Hunt! No — it can’t be! Not here, not here—!
But it was useless to deny that the impossible had its fingers at her throat; that the mers below her were maddened by the pain and disorientation of alien sonics… that they would all die. She let go of Silky, keeping close by him, saw him nod and weave his tentacles through the netting as she bent double and pulled the diver’s knife from the sheath on her leg. She began to slash with all her strength at the strands of the net; it tore under the angry attack of her blade, left her a space wide enough for them to slip through.
She swam through the gap, drawing Silky after her, just as the net forced them down into the maddened mers. But she clung to the opening, still slashing, ripping, widening the gap. “Here! Here! Get out, get out, get out!” shouting into the ululation of then: cries, half sobbing with furious rage. But the mers’ panic was deaf to coherent thought, and the handful who tumbled through were only driven out by the heaving turmoil beneath them. She searched them for her mer mother, but did not find her. She went on slashing, cursing; gasping with the effort of pulling in air. But the mers were drowning, helplessly drowning themselves for their murderers, and she could not save them…
Silky hung at the net beside her, moving clumsily, stunned by his wound or by the sonics that had dazzled the mers. Looking up at him, she saw two of the Hounds fall out of the heights and bind him in tentacles, breaking his hold on the netting as More tentacles wrapped her from behind, half blinding her, wrenched the knife from her grasp as she tried to turn it on her attacker. Like flailing snakes they covered her face mask, found her air hose again, tore the regulator out of her mouth. Icy water squirted in through the mask’s seal, and panic gave her the strength of two. But the Hound’s bonds of flesh gave her no leverage, and it was only the strength of two women drowning…
Not until her head broke the surface, not until her bursting lungs opened at last to pull in air and not the final, agonizing liquid breath, did she realize that they had not held her under to drown; that they were not finished with her yet.
She stumbled, incredulously, as her fins caught in bottom-weeds; she squeezed the ocean’s fiery tears out of her eyes, saw the lapping water’s edge and the shore rising ahead. Two Hounds propelled her out onto firm ground; half dragged, half carried her up the stony beach of the mer rookery. There were no mers left on it now, and the Hounds let her fall untended, to lie coughing and choking. She heard another body drop beside her on the hard stones, saw Silky sprawled next to her. She levered up on her elbows to reach him, tried to see his wound but could not; squeezed his nearer shoulder with feeble encouragement.
She sat up, every breath crawling down her raw throat into her congested lungs; pulled off her fogging mask and felt the bitter wind stun her face. After a time more figures emerged from the water down the beach, hauling an unwieldy harvest of mer corpses into the shallows for the final processing. Moon ground her fists into the beach cinders, whimpering softly, but not for herself.
Standing nearer on the shore, watching them work, was a strange apparition in black, with a man’s form and the spiny head of a totem creature. She saw him wave and gesture, his toneless voice came to her half-inaudibly over the wind — a human voice. The first mers were dragged up onto the shore; she watched a Hound kneel by each, saw the knife flash, and the blood spill over the fur as soft as sighs, into the collecting bucket. And then, its grace gone, its life stolen, its joy and beauty torn away, the Hound left the body to rot on its ancestral beach and make a feast for the carrion birds.
Moon’s eyes swam, refusing to see more. Sickness rose in her, and a murderous hatred. Her hand closed over a heavy cobble, tightening and tightening; she got to her knees. Beside her Silky pulled himself up, climbed to his feet in one abrupt motion, leaning on her shoulder. She heard him speak, not understanding the words, but feeling the deeper wound he had taken to watch his brothers slaughtering his friends. He went forward, staggering a little, before she could follow. He started toward the inhuman being in black and the cluster of Hounds around him.
“Silky—” She struggled to her feet, kicking off her fins, cradling the stone as she started after him.
The man in black barely glanced their way. “Stop them.” He gestured indifferently, and three of the Hounds left his side to block Silky’s advance, surrounding him without hesitation. There was a burst of alien speech, and a muttering; and then she saw them struggle. Tentacles whipped at heads and silvered eyes, she saw a silvery knife bared again’ No Silky!” She ran forward. The third Hound broke away and caught at her, fcrew her aside — as she saw the serrated blade sink ki home. She screamed, as though she had taken the blow herself. Silky fell like a stone among the stones. The man in black turned at her scream, but even as he did she struck the third Hound with all her strength, clubbing him down. The others grabbed her, held her struggling between them as the third staggered, bleeding, to his feet and ripped off the hood of her suit, baring her throat. Her hair spilled loose over her shoulders, tentacles tangled in it, jerking back her head.
“Stop!” Someone shouted the word. But she had no voice and no time at all, only a last kaleidoscope of clouds and sky as the dripping blade bit her throatA shock of violent motion hurled the Hounds away from her, knocked her to the ground. “Get away from her! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The heavy boots of the man in black straddled her, sheltering her like a tree in the face of a storm. She looked up and up, seeing only his shadow silhouette against the desolate stone-washed shore. “…Because she’s a sibyl, goddamn it, that’s why! What are you trying to do, contaminate me? Get the hell away, and throw that knife into the seal” He waved them off, stepped clear of her as they left, and squatted down beside her.
Moon pushed herself up warily, felt a thin warm necklace of blood trickle down over the tattoo in the hollow of her throat, creep on into the neck of her suit and down between her breasts.
The man in black… she was sure it was a man now, hidden behind a mask. His eyes were all that she could see of him, and they were gray-green. He stretched an uncertain glove toward her throat. She cringed back, startled, but he wiped the blood from her tattoo with a sudden sweep of his hand. She saw him shudder at the sign of the trefoil; he rubbed his gloved hand convulsively on the stones. “Gods! Am I going crazy?” He looked away, searching the shore for a denial, an affirmation. “You aren’t real. You can’t be! What are you?” His hand rose again, caught her chin to hold her face in front of him; let it go, slipping across her cheek, along her hair almost like a caress. “Not her…” It was almost a plea.