Missing Linc Read online

  Missing Linc

  The Aegeans, Book 1

  by Ripley Proserpina

  For Becca.

  Missing Linc

  He emerged from the black waters to steal her heart.

  As a child, Edythe found out there were different types of monsters. Some were beautiful on the outside, but terrifying when the lights went out. Others appeared to be creatures of nightmares, but were loyal and honorable, ready to sacrifice their lives for those they loved.

  She learned the hard way which monster she preferred.

  Linc knew to stay away from humans. His kind, wary of being discovered, swam deep in the sea. Aegeans were legends, shifting shape from water to land. All his life, Linc followed the rules, laws set down to keep Aegeans alive.

  But then he saw Edythe.

  One glimpse and he knew she was his. He’d risk everything to protect her: madness, torture.

  Death.

  Fate may have brought Edythe and Linc together, but the world seems set on tearing them apart.

  Chapter 1

  15 Years Ago

  His screams hurt Edythe’s ears.

  They hurt her heart.

  She pulled her knees to her chest, sitting up in bed. Tugging her nightgown over her feet, she waited. It would get worse. She didn’t know how her mother slept through it. For three months, almost every night, Edythe heard the screams. The very first time she’d awakened from a dead sleep to hear them and realized it wasn’t a nightmare, she ran into her mother’s room to shake her awake. “Mommy! Who’s screaming?”

  Her mother had pulled Edythe’s hands away from her ears. “What are you talking about?”

  “Screaming! Can’t you hear it?”

  She didn’t. She couldn’t. Not the first night, nor any night since had Edythe’s mother heard the sounds of pain filling the house. Still, she let Edythe sleep with her. “Daddy’s down in his workshop,” her mother said. “Everything’s okay. It was just a bad dream. Go to sleep.”

  Edythe knew what happened in the workshop now. She knew it wasn’t a dream. Her father was a monster. Instead of boogey men or ghosts, Edythe’s nightmares featured her father dressed in his white lab coat, glasses perched on his nose, while he took apart the boy he kept in a cage.

  Her father’s “workshop” wasn’t like their neighbor’s. It wasn’t a place to make bird houses or fix an old go-cart. Her father had a much narrower interest. He was a biologist—at least, that’s what he told her.

  And he brought his work home. That’s what he told her mom. I have to go in the basement and work.

  Edythe didn’t know where the boy came from, or who he was, but she knew when her father said work, he really meant hurt.

  The scream reached such a high pitch it hurt Edythe’s skull. Her bones vibrated.

  Her teeth shook in her mouth, then like it never happened, it cut off. The house was silent.

  Edythe jumped out of bed. It was time to act. She pulled her backpack out of her closet. It was packed, ready to go. Every afternoon, she made sure she had the things she needed: salt, gauze, washcloths, a needle, and thread.

  Soon her father’s slow tread thumped up the stairs. Edythe pressed her ear to the door. He would never check on her—she didn’t worry about that—but she needed to be sure he went into his bedroom and locked the door. It was the sign. If she ventured out without making sure his door was locked, if she went into the basement before she was sure, it could make things worse. Linc had warned her such a thing could happen when she’d snuck down to see where the screams came from and found the most horrifying and amazing sight she’d ever seen.

  Go away! If you get caught, it will be worse.

  And she didn’t think Linc could survive worse.

  She waited and waited, but the sound didn’t come. Her limbs trembled with nervousness. If he wasn’t locking the door, it meant her father would shower. The only reason he showered was if things were really bad, if he’d been really mean.

  And her dad could be really, really mean to Linc.

  “Come on,” she urged. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  Finally, the shower shut off, and her father shuffled past her bedroom and into his. Finally! The door was locked.

  Edythe scurried into action. She bounded down the stairs, sliding across the kitchen floor and out the door to the backyard. The crickets chirped, and far off in the distance, she could hear the soft crash of waves. It was all so normal sounding.

  She had to open the bulkhead to get in the basement, and wished she was older, bigger, stronger. She wished it every night, when Linc screamed.

  But eleven year-olds could only be so big. Maybe she wasn’t the bravest, but she was smart, and she would use all her eleven-year-old smarts to save her friend.

  The bulkhead was always locked with a padlock. It had only stopped Edythe for a day. She’d found her Hello Kitty notebook and wrote down the name of the lock. Then she went to the hardware store, and with her birthday money bought the exact same lock.

  With the exact same key.

  Tonight, it took too long for her shaking hands to turn the key. Her sweaty fingers slipped off the edge.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry, her brain screamed.

  “Linc,” she said under her breath, hoping he could hear her. “I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m almost there.”

  She wrestled the lock, dropping it onto the grass before bracing her foot on one side of the bulkhead and lifting with all her might.

  Her house was old, and the first time she’d lifted it, the bulkhead was heavy and rusted. The sound it made when opened was so loud it frightened the birds out of the trees. Edythe found the blue can of spray oil her mother used on the bedroom hinges and squirreled it to the bulkhead. She sprayed the sides, and the next day when she lifted it, it didn’t make a squeak.

  “Linc!” she whisper-yelled just like she always did. “I’m almost there.”

  She listened for his movement. Sometimes, he would smack the bars of his cage, or on really bad nights, he’d flop on the cold concrete floor. Edythe would hear the wet slap of his flesh against the hard surface.

  Tonight, all she heard was the steady drip, drip, drip of water in the sink. She found her flashlight. Problem number three solved. It was dark in the workshop. On the first night, when she’d turned on the light, Linc screamed at the brightness. Now, Edythe flipped on her flashlight, the front taped with tissue paper so the only light was dim and blue. It was all Linc could handle, though Edythe thought maybe, when she got him out, his eyes would adjust to sunlight again.

  “Linc!” she called again, becoming more and more upset. She dumped the backpack on the floor and swept the beam across the floor.

  There.

  He lay on the floor, a dark pool of liquid around his body, his beautiful skin ravaged by her father’s merciless scalpel. The scales that covered his chest were pried off, cut in some places, ripped in others. All of them laid around his body, as if her father couldn’t be bothered to clean up his mess.

  “Oh, Linc.” Edythe’s breath caught. She hated her father, hated him! If only she was bigger, stronger. She could save him. No one would stop her.

  The flashlight beam shone on his glassy, pain-filled eyes, and she realized tonight was the night. She was never, ever letting this happen again. No matter what he said, what he threatened, tonight she was dragging him out of there.

  But first, she had to stop his bleeding.

  The keys to the cage were always just out of reach. Edythe found the stool her father kept next to his computer and dragged it to the middle of the floor. She looked once at Linc, who stared at her intently, his blue eyes blinking at her. She didn’t need him to speak to hear what he was saying
. Careful. Careful.

  “I’m always careful,” she answered.

  She climbed onto the stool, first her knees, then one foot, then another until she was standing. She stretched her arms to the side, finding her balance before she lifted onto her tiptoes and stretched her arms above her head.

  The first time she did this, she’d made the mistake of looking at Linc. He was so mad at her. The heat in his eyes surprised her. She knew better than to look at him now. Too bad for him.

  Her fingers caught the edge of the key, and she lifted, higher than before—onto the very tip of her big toes—and unhooked the keys. Tonight, her bare feet were sweaty. Anxiousness made her stumble, and she swayed. There was no room on the narrow stool to correct her balance, so she tumbled to the floor. Her hands hit first, the impact jarring her entire body from her wrists to her shoulders. She barely stopped herself from face-planting.

  “Edythe!” she thought she heard Linc say.

  “I’m okay,” she answered, pushing herself to her knees. She winced. It hurt when she pressed her hand against the floor to lift herself up. She limped to the cage, feeling Linc’s eyes on her the entire time. She didn’t look, but he radiated disappointment. “I said I’m okay.”

  In her mind, he growled even though she knew he hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken aloud.

  As soon as the door was unlocked, she grabbed her backpack and dragged it into the cage.

  She set the flashlight on the floor so the light shone on his body, but not in his eyes. “Oh, Linc,” she breathed, tears making the sight of his body blurry.

  Taking a deep breath, she began to collect the scales. They were the size of her palm, and hard, like a shell. They stacked like shallow bowls, one on top of the other. He couldn’t grow scales back, they had to be reattached. If they weren’t, then the flesh beneath would be forever bruised and scarred. The right side of Linc’s face was a mess of wavy scars from a time before she’d found him. Then, her father had inflicted an injury she wasn’t around to heal.

  “Why?” Edythe asked, like she did every night. “Why does he do this?”

  That was the mystery to her mind. Not, where did Linc come from? Not, what is Linc? She asked herself—and she asked Linc—why would her father hurt him like this, over and over?

  She skimmed her hand over Linc’s face, and he closed his eyes. She took a deep breath and stood: bucket, water, salt, gauze, sew.

  She found the paint bucket her father kept beneath the steps and brought it to the big utility sink. She made the sure the water was cold, as cold as she could stand it, and dumped in the baggy of sea salt. She plunked her hand in the bucket, stirring until the salt dissolved.

  “Tonight, Linc. After this, we’re going to the ocean. I could hear it all the way here tonight. It’s high tide, and it will have rolled all the way to the marshes. We’ll go there and hide, and when the sun comes up, I’ll run into town and call the police. They’ll arrest Dad, and then you’ll be safe.”

  She dragged the bucket out of the sink, lifting it carefully so the water didn’t slosh over the sides. It was hard to lift up and out, so she only filled it halfway before putting it on the ground. She added cup after cup full of water until the bucket was nearly full. Then she lifted with both hands, legs on either side. She could get it maybe an inch off the ground, and she had to be so, so careful not to spill. If it stained the floor, her father would know.

  Edythe suddenly realized it didn’t matter anymore. After tonight, he would be gone. No one would hurt him after she fixed him up.

  “This is the last time, Linc.”

  She slid the bucket next to him and dropped in a rag. As soon as she squeezed the cold, salty water over his face, he closed his eyes, and Edythe could feel his relief. His color improved immediately, though he didn’t move. He couldn’t right away. Whatever her father did to him, it paralyzed him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. All he could do was scream, and she was the only one who could hear him.

  And what could she do?

  Linc was big. When he could stand, he was twice as tall as her. When he wasn’t injured, when he was strong and whole, he could lift her while she hung on his arm like a monkey.

  She dabbed the cloth across his scales. The undamaged ones were hard, but not like a shell. A shell could be cracked; these were harder and smoother. There were no bumps or ripples on his scales.

  And she knew how her father pried them off. He left his bloody tools, the tools of a surgeon, out for anyone to see.

  Edythe picked up the first scale, pressing it against his skin. As soon as the scale touched him, it changed. It became pliable. It shifted and moved. The light caught the curved edge, and it glimmered, white and purple and blue and pink.

  Linc still didn’t move, and her worry increased exponentially. Every other night, by this time, he’d regained control over his limbs. He sat up. He groaned, or approximated a groan. He hissed when she pricked him with the needle.

  Tonight, all he did was follow her with his eyes. They tracked her movements. Watching as she threaded the needle, and as gently as she could, sewed the scales back on, one-by-one.

  “Linc,” she whispered. “One day, I’m going to see you in the sunlight. I’m probably going to need sunglasses, because you’ll be so bright. Like a rainbow.”

  She met his eyes, and he rolled them, causing her to smile through the tears streaking down her face. She wiped her eyes on her shoulder, pretending they weren’t there. She caught his narrowed gaze, but like earlier, she ignored his anger.

  By the tenth scale, Linc started to move. I’m not leaving.

  “Yes, you are.” Edythe tried to remember how her mother sounded when she gave directions which must be obeyed. She finished stitching another scale, this one to his shoulder, and he shrugged, rolling his shoulder back and then forward. From the corner of her eyes, she saw his legs shift and his fingers twitch.

  She looked at the scales that were left and then his body. She could see no place, save his face, where he was missing scales. They must be on his back.

  “Can you turn over?”

  She heard him mentally groan before he pushed himself over. There. High up on his shoulder blade, open and oozing, was the place. She dipped her cloth in the salt water, now tinged pink, and swept it across his skin. She held the scale to his skin, feeling it soften and bend, and stitched it quickly. When she was finished, she stood up and grabbed the bucket, pushing it closer to him. He dipped his hands inside, the look on his face making her smile. He cupped his hands, dragging the water over his forearms, and up his shoulders. He splashed it onto his face.

  He stood and put his hands on his hips. He stretched his neck, tipping his head back to the ceiling and then from side to side. Edythe stood and hissed, tweaking her wrist.

  I told you to go away.

  “I told you to stop being bossy.” She stamped her foot, hating when Linc got like this. Yes, he was older, but she wasn’t a baby.

  She had to crane her neck to look up at him. She thought he was a teenager, but she couldn’t be sure. He looked like a teenager, someone who was in high school and played soccer under the lights at the sports complex on Friday nights.

  “Are you ready?”

  Linc knelt, grasping her shoulders. I told you, I’m not leaving.

  “Why not?” Edythe glared at him. “He’s going to kill you.”

  I can’t.

  “Yes. You can. We’re leaving tonight.”

  Edie…

  She hated when he called her Edie. It made it really, really hard for her to say no to him. She didn’t know why it was so important for him to stay there. It hurt her to watch him be hurt.

  “Why, Linc? You have to tell me. He’s killing you. Every day he gets a little bit closer.”

  It doesn’t matter, Edie. I can’t leave. Linc stared hard into her face. Her skin tingled, almost like goosebumps, but sharper, a little bit more painful. It made her scratch at her arms,
and it made him start.

  Are you okay?

  She nodded. “Come on!” She grabbed his hand and pulled, but it was like moving a house. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was solid. Anchored. “Linc, please. Don’t let him kill you.”

  “Edythe!”

  She jumped, staring at Linc in horror. “He’s coming!” She started pulling harder, begging now, “Linc, now! Leave now!”

  She heard a slam so loud it shook the basement, then her father’s heavy footsteps pounded down the steps. The lights flashed on, glaring, brighter than daylight. Lights designed to burn a person’s eyes and bore into their brain. It made her throw up a hand to shield her eyes. She lost her balance and felt Linc pull her into his side, her head resting against his elbow.

  When she daydreamed, she pretended Linc was her brother. Someone to protect her and care for her. Over time, he morphed into a prince. Sometimes, when he was really irritating, he was a beast. But in every fantasy, he protected her. Now, though, with her father staring at them, his shoulders heaving and face sweating, she only wanted to protect him.

  The lights began to hum, and she felt sweat roll down her back, the moisture sucked from her skin. Linc swayed, and she realized the heat and light sapped his strength.

  Her father watched her, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

  The words stuck in Edythe’s throat. She could hear Linc’s voice echoing through her head. Run, run, run. She ignored it.

  “I’m taking Linc, and we’re leaving.”

  Her father laughed, a bark of disbelief. “What?”

  “This is wrong. You can’t experiment on a human being!”

  “Edythe, you don’t understand, sweetheart. He’s not human. It doesn’t hurt him. He’s not like us. Now go upstairs, and I’ll take care of this.”

  She wondered how her father could look the same as he always looked, sound the same as he always sounded, yet be so wrong. Her father was bad. Hurting Linc the way he did? There was no reason good enough for it.