Riding a Rogue Wave is available for preorder on Amazon.
When a Nixie is matched with a human, wet and wild adventures take place.
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“Come on man, gun that thing!” Kush hollered, gunning the
throttle on one of the jet skis he, his brother, Neo, and their small circle of
friends had liberated from the human world the moment the boat house shut down
for the night. With a portal right beside the lake, it was easy, peesy, lemon-squeezy,
as he’d heard some of the humans say.
If only they truly knew
how easy it was for the monsters to creep into their world and play with
all the shiny toys they left lyingeye around. Kush didn’t see what challenge
there was in riding in the daytime anyway. Just about everything was visible to
the naked eyes and entirely too bright if one were to ask him.
Navigating the pond at
night was different. With no stars and no moon, they had only their reflexes,
the bow lights on the front of the jet skis and the stern lights on the rear, to
aid in navigating. At the rate of speed with which they drove the powerful
machines, they’d learned to be grateful for that little bit of light and thrilled
that several humans at the nearby marina had outfitted their machines with them
for the rare times when they rode after dark. Coupled with the feel of the
machine beneath them, the ride was a test of cunning, agility, and reflexes.
Of course, it helped that their amphibious
bodies could spread out in a way that human flesh was incapable of, but if the
impact appeared to be too great, they’d simply become the water that was theirs to command, and emerge unscathed wherever they wished to appear next, provided there
was at least a drop of water around.
The machines, however,
weren’t so lucky and had suffered damage a time or two, with the worst being a
smashed front end after Neo had missed the sound of water flowing around a boulder
and struck the giant rock instead. Neo had been just fine, save for a few
scrapes and a painful case of humiliation. They’d left the machine in the human
world bobbing on the waves in front of a similar-sized boulder, giving the
appearance of teenage humans gone joyriding, which had been partially true at
the time. The teenage part, anyway. They’d learned a lot about human behavior
in those years, including the value so many of them placed on mechanical
things, like the very vehicle he swerved, as his next-to-oldest brother, Soren,
made the flat pond in front of him buckle into a rolling wave.
That was the other part
of their game.
With their ability to
manipulate the water that they were riding on, they’d become proficient at
creating obstacles for one another. Kush’s response to his brother’s wave was
to create a water wall, then listen to Soren’s gurgling bellow when he failed
to avoid it and drove through only to find a water tunnel waiting for him on
the other side.
The lights below him,
from the bow light on his brother’s machine, allowed him to see that his brother
had taken his idea of the underwater tunnels and expanded upon them so he could
ride beneath Kush and their cousin Willow to create a rolling squall of bouncy,
high crested waves that left Kush damn near riding parallel before he reached
the top. The launch over the lip of the wave was spectacular, and there was
nothing in the world like the crazy upside-view of the pond’s surface and his
brother beneath it in the water tunnel. Was all shimmery, surreal, and damned
near as magical as the will o’ the wisps that carried messages through the
swampland Kush called his home.
“Bank left!” Gaius
yelled, so Kush did as his oldest cousin bade him and they rode a zigzagged
pattern across the lake’s surface before Gaius bellowed, “Down!”
Kush got what he was up
to now. They were creating more tunnels, the game having dipped beneath the surface
of the lake, another favorite maneuver of theirs. There were half-filled underground caves in the side of the mountain that bordered this portion of the
lake, and rumor had it that a portal existed deep in the twisting caverns, but
it was strictly off limits to them, one of the few rules they actually obeyed,
probably because it came from their grand-mere, rather than some stuffy
authority figure who was so out of touch with what was truly going on within
the community that it wasn’t even funny.
Down here, the whine of
the jet ski engines echoed until it was like being encased in the sound. It
messed with the rest of their senses, which upped the level of difficulty when
it came to maneuverability. Kush rocketed past the remains of a jet ski’s
handlebars wedged between two rocks. They’d salvaged the rest of the bike and
carted it home to the swamp where they were busy devising a hybrid that would
work similarly to an airboat, only small and far more maneuverable. They’d have
taken the handlebars too if they’d been able to pry them loose, but no amount
of force had been able to free them, which was rather unfortunate.
The sun was beginning
to peek over a cloudless horizon by the time they popped out of the tunnels and
did a quick headcount to determine that no one had gotten lost during their
little game. Six heads…but only five jet skis. Son of a water beetle, what the
hell had happened to the sixth one?
Willow, Gaius’s younger
brother and the youngest cousin among the mix tonight, sat behind Kush’s middle
brother Cullen, looking extremely sheepish.
“What happened?” Kush
asked as he circled his machine around to pull up directly in front of them.
“He got hung up in Rougarou’s
backbone,” Cullen replied. “We’ll have to come back with a pirogue to salvage
what’s left of that machine.”
“You know what that means,
don’t you?” Gaius said, his stern red gaze would have melted holes through his
brother if he possessed the ability to shoot fire out of them like some of
the desert-dwelling elementals did.
Willow just huffed and
hung his head, the fringed webbing around his face dropping in a look of
contrition. “We’re not gonna be able to ride for a little while ‘cause the humans
are gonna assign more security to work the docks at night.”
“That’s right, and I’m not intercepting another midnight pizza order intended for the boathouse, just so I can doctor it up with more of those blue gill mushrooms. You knock someone loopy with them too many times and they start craving them something fierce. Once that happens, people start asking questions and taking blood samples and they’ll know exactly what part of monster country they come from, considering they only grown in the swamps.”
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