The difference in the stamina between mother and daughter was presenting itself now. Lisa was exhausted after only five minutes in the air. She circled back toward the beach, only to discover that there was someone walking the beach where she’d awakened. She couldn’t fly back and land without being seen. She would have to swim back to shore.
Soaring down near the surface of the water, Lisa folded her wings behind her, reforming her arms, and plunged into the icy water. The short fall drove the air out of her lungs and she struggled madly toward the light above her, every nerve in her body screaming and complaining about the sudden and drastic temperature change. She burst through to the surface, gasping for air.
Last night, she’d been gang-raped. This morning she’d flown with the gulls and now she was swimming in the icy Pacific. As she churned up the water, trying to swim to shore, she realized she had never felt so alive. She was free. She was immortal. She was experiencing life. She was happy.
She was drowning! She’d never swum before. She was just catching on to paddling around when she noticed someone, or some thing, had its attention on her. And it was approaching fast. Lisa picked up an image of her feet churning in the water. Along with that image was the knowledge of how wonderful her twitching legs were going to feel sliding down its throat.
‘Holy shit!’ Lisa thought, and frantically levitated straight up out of the water.
She looked down to see a huge, tooth-filled mouth following her up, up, out of the water! Terrified, she continued levitating upward. The tooth-filled mouth slowed, then fell away, revealing a long, black and white shark plunging back down and smashing into the water sideways.
She could feel its disappointment. It was used to being fed at least once a week. Some struggling, bleeding girl would be dangled above the water just about where she was right now. It would devour her alive. Usually, there were others like her around, watching from the safety of their craft. It remembered feeling the admiration and awe that radiated from the warm-blooded ones as it fed on their offering.
So that’s what happened to the girls he didn’t kill outright, she realized, stunned. They were fed to the sharks!
She felt less guilty about killing Juan, but now she had to figure out what to do about the shark. It would probably hang around until it found someone like her, too far from shore to reach safety in time, and ate her, or him.
The shark dove down thirty feet to the bottom, then rushed back up, breaching the surface again and arching into the air in a futile effort to reach her. It didn’t understand why she was so high out of the water. Usually, its meal was dangled only a few feet above the water so its admirers could watch as it tore its wriggling, squealing, juicy meal apart.
Lisa wrapped her mind around the beast’s tiny brain. It was a natural predator, but it was also extremely paranoid. It didn’t really trust the warm-blooded ones who had been feeding it their defective offspring. But until now, their offerings had been extremely pleasant, squirmy things to devour, and very filling.
Now Lisa reinforced that paranoia, convincing it that the feedings had been a ruse, a trap to trick the shark into a routine so it could be caught and pulled from the water to die in the thin, lifeless air above. It knew about that. It had noticed that happen to others like itself. It fled, convinced of her lie. She didn’t believe it would come back.
There was a boat approaching. Lisa dropped down into the water and reached out to feel the minds on the boat. They hadn’t seen her levitating and passed on by, not noticing her bobbing in the water. She let them pass, not certain how she would explain her presence this far from shore. She began paddling toward the shore again. Her body was getting used to the temperature of the water.
She found that it was pretty easy to float, so when she tired of paddling, she simply floated for awhile until the burning left her arms and legs. Then she would paddle for awhile. The shoreline seemed to be getting nearer.
The sun was up, now, and buzzing in her head. Almost automatically, she shielded her mind from its annoying roar. She didn’t really know how she did it, and had tried to teach her mom once, but her mom couldn’t generate enough power to neutralize the noise of the sun in her mind.
As she paddled, Lisa wondered if she was perhaps another advancement in the species. Her mom could do lots of things that normal humans couldn’t, but Lisa could do a lot of things her mom couldn’t do, like levitate, and burn things just by looking at them.
The waves were suddenly a lot higher. Lisa looked around, trying to figure out why. The ocean bottom was a lot nearer to the surface now. Maybe that was it. As she floated, wondering about it, she was lifted high into the air. Amazed, she looked around. There was water above her and below her. In addition, she was floating sideways in a vertical wall of water connecting the water above and below her. Then, she was upside down and falling down, out of the water – and back into it, below her!
As she fell, she discovered she was completely surrounded by water, except for a long, airy tunnel, stretching off in opposite directions. Then she was in the water again, tumbling wildly as the tunnel of air tightened around her. In seconds, her tiny tunnel of air was completely gone and she was slammed violently into the sandy bottom by tons of water falling directly on her.
Barely conscious, she felt herself being shoved along the sandy bottom by the violent forces surrounding her. There was no air in her lungs – the force of the water had flattened her that much. In a moment of comparative calm, she shoved away from the bottom toward the light above her.
As she breached the surface, gasping for air, she felt herself being pulled away from the shoreline. She looked around. Another towering wave of water was plummeting down directly at her. There was no way she could escape it. Before she could even think of a location to teleport into, it dropped down on her, slamming her back down against the bottom. This time, she hit a rock. Everything went dark.
Time passed.
Lisa became aware of water rushing around her – sandy water that filled her mouth with grit and got into her eyes, even though they were closed. Someone was dragging her through the sandy water. Then she was being dragged across hard sand. It burned her breasts and belly as she was dragged over it. Her legs, her knees especially, were being scoured raw. Then the hands let go and dropped her.
She felt someone pressing hard against the center of her back, over and over, again. The fierce, insistent pressure was hurting her rib cage. Then she was convulsing, spitting up water. She was surprised to find that her lungs had filled with water. It burned terribly as she spewed it out, choking and gagging violently.
“Well, you’re alive!” a male voice said, sounding relieved and breathing heavily from rescuing her. “I don’t know where your board’s at. It’s probably broken, though. Those waves are pretty fierce today. I’d never go out in surf like that.”
Lisa tried to struggle upright, pushing against the hard sand, but her arms were too weak to support her.
“I should tell you, before you turn over,” her savior said, his voice almost laughing cheerfully, “you lost more than just your board out there. The waves took your suit, too.”
“Huh?” she asked, then realized he meant that she was naked. “Oh.”
She dropped back down onto the sand. She felt his mind gently nudging against hers. She was still shielded against the sun. Not even her mother could penetrate that shield, and her mother was the most powerful telepath in the world. She wasn’t worried about him getting through and reading her.
Lisa’s mind was working better now. She could think again. In the last few hours, she’s been almost killed four times. Now she was lying in the sand, naked, next to some boy who’d pulled her out of the ocean. She realized that she possibly wouldn’t have awakened in time to save herself without his help. And he was afraid she’d be upset if he saw her tits.
“I owe you at least one good look,” she said, still breathless from her ordeal.
She turned over, exposing her breasts and belly to him. That wasn’t really why she did it. She wanted to turn over so she could see who had saved her.
They stared at each other with recognition in their eyes.
“It’s you!” they both said together.
“I’m sorry…” he began.
“Thank you,” Lisa said, interrupting him. “You were the one good thing that happened to me last night. And today, you saved my life.”
“About what happened,” he said, concern written on his face. “Last night. I know what he does to girls. But, Juan owns us. If we don’t do what he says…”
An image of a young girl, his sister, flashed across her mind.
“You don’t have to worry about Juan,” Lisa assured him. “Or his big stomping bastard friend, either. Not ever.”
“What did you do?” he asked, worried now about what would happen if someone angered Juan.
People got hurt when Juan was upset – innocent people – family members in the community, usually.
She looked at him. “He’s dead. Does it matter what I did?”
Lisa could see her savior was still worried. “He has two brothers. They will avenge him. If they can’t find who did it, they will start killing us until you are turned over to them.”
“Was one of his brothers the ‘stomping man’?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They were friends. I think they were maybe more…”
“That would explain his love for women,” Lisa said thoughtfully. “No matter now, though. They’re both dead.”
“What? How?” he wanted to know.
Lisa held up a finger to his lips. She could feel that he urgently wanted to tell her something.
“Okay, I’m waiting,” she said.
She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the sun as it finally was beginning to warm her cold, nearly drowned body. Also, her new friend seemed to be more nervous talking to her while she watched him trying not to stare at her naked body.
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