Blood of a Mermaid (21 page)

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Zan hovered near the surface, his eyes just above the waterline, watching the island for signs of movement. He’d swum in as close as he dared, at least for now. He had no idea whether this was even the right group of drylanders, and he didn’t want to risk attracting more unwanted attention with his magick. The Atlantean soldiers were sure to be somewhere near, and he didn’t want to tip his hand too soon. Not until he knew Shea was actually on the island.

The sun had climbed partway into the sky already, the light sparkling as it danced atop the clear, turquoise waters. He breathed in the warm, salty air and felt a ripple of guilt pass through his body, thinking of Kae still trapped in that cold, Arctic cell. He put her there, gave her to Demyan. He needed to right that particular wrong.

He’d parted ways with the poachers earlier in the morning, after sharing a meager breakfast of sushi in the cave they’d found to sleep in. The pair remained skittish about the prospect of meeting up with any sorcerers, and tried to talk Zan into returning to the safety of their village. Zan managed to keep a straight face and politely declined their offer, repeating his lie about the girlfriend waiting for him in Atlantis. He didn’t want her to worry.

In reality, the only mermaid he cared about was trapped in a cell with a madman in charge of her fate. Zan was the one worried. He hoped that word of his magical outburst hadn’t made its way to Demyan’s ears just yet. He needed to have Shea in hand to justify his actions against the angry accusations Demyan was sure to hurl his way.

Something stirred on the wide sandy beach, and Zan sunk lower in the water as he watched. The drylanders were finally rising from their sleep, and Zan scanned the group for a tall blond teenaged boy. He’d never actually met the boy he’d been sent to retrieve, and only knew his drylander name and a general description. Zan had relied on the whelp turning himself over voluntarily, although that hadn’t worked out so well back in Athens. Hopefully there would be a better outcome here, in the middle of nowhere. The boy had few choices, and fewer places to hide.

He saw many of the humans wearing bandages wrapped around their limbs and heads. Not that he wished any of these strangers particular harm, but if he was lucky, the boy he sought would be weakened with similar injuries and easily captured.

More than thirty drylanders clustered together on the sand, coming and going into the small grove of trees. It was hard to know an exact number since they kept moving about, and humans all tended to look alike. As he panned his gaze over the group, he saw one of the grey-haired women standing at the water’s edge, staring straight out in his direction! Quickly, he plunged below the surface, wondering if it was possible for her to have seen him. How good could an old drylander’s eyesight be?

Still, he didn’t want to take any chances. He changed his position, swimming to his left several yards and then backing away from the island several more before making a slow rise above the water to take another look. The woman had disappeared from the strand line. He scanned the beach, searching for her. Some of the humans were at work rekindling the fire, and he finally pinpointed the old woman near the fire builders. She spoke with a dark-haired youth, who called to someone in the trees. Another male youth, this one blond, soon joined them. Could that be the boy he sought?

Zan grimaced, trying to decide his next move.
What would Demyan want me to do? What would Demyan himself do, were he in this position?
That answer seemed simple. Demyan would kill anyone who got in his way.

He would want Zan to kill everyone on that island in order to capture Shea.

Zan’s stomach churned and bile rose in the back of his throat. Though he had little regard for the humans or their way of life, he was not a cold killer at heart. Crashing an airplane was one thing. Controlling the weather was a magical ability that sometimes got out of hand, especially when emotions ran high.

But…

There was no way Zan could go ashore and simply kill people. The very thought twisted his insides into a gigantic knot.

An image rose unbidden in his mind of the Daeira traitor who’d died back at the Athens airport, blood fleeing the merman’s body like water flowing over a cliff, cascading into a red pool. That death was an accident, the unintended consequence of Zan’s anger. Could he cause such suffering on purpose? And to so many at once? The very idea roiled his stomach and he fought to keep down his breakfast.

He took a slow deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. With one last look at the drylanders, he sank below the waves to contemplate his next move. There had to be an alternative that didn’t include full-scale bloodshed.
How did things get so complicated?

For the first time in her life, Kae wished she were something – anything – other than a mermaid.

It felt like she’d been swimming forever already, and she knew they had miles left to go. She just. Wanted. To. Rest. To use muscles other than those in her tail for a change. Every inch of her fins ached, even more than they had when Xander brought her north in the first place. At least he’d been kind enough to stop and rest along the way. Her father hadn’t let them stop once since they started, instead feeding her raw cacao beans as they swam to keep up her energy levels. He said it was an old trick he’d learned in his University days.

If she were human, no one would expect her to swim halfway around the world. “I’ll bet Hailey never has to swim for days on end,” she grumbled to herself, struggling to keep up with Lybio’s fast pace. They’d been swimming for two days straight without stopping and were already near the western edge of the Atlantic. On the one hand, she was glad they made good time and would soon be close enough to help save Shea. On the other hand, Ouch, for Neptune’s sake! Her tail fin was killing her!

Lybio looked at her and frowned, never loosening his grip on her hand or slowing the steady beat of his powerful tail. “Did you say something? Do you wish to stop and rest, little one?”

Guilt flowed through her entire body as her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. She realized how selfish her complaints sounded, when there were lives at stake, maybe even the fate of the oceans. But her tail really did ache…

“I feel terrible even asking to rest for a second, Father, but I’m sore all over,” she admitted, feeling more heat rushing to her cheeks even as she spoke. It was humiliating to admit how weak she felt, like a guppy trying to keep up with a shark. “Could we stop swimming for just a moment or two?”

“Of course we can rest, Kae,” said her father, slowing abruptly. “Why didn’t you speak up sooner?”

“Well… I know we have to get to Atlantis as fast as possible…”

“Not at the expense of your health,” he said with a frown. “I guess I was too focused on the mission.” He waved a hand toward some large rocks. “Let’s rest here for a little while.”

“Thanks.” Grateful for the break, she settled herself onto a flat part of the nearest rock and watched her father stretch his own muscles. He looked the same as he ever did, yet she saw him in a whole new light since his appearance in the doorway of her prison cell. She’d always known he worked directly for King Koios, but she’d never seen him as some kind of secret agent-type merman. He was always just “Father” to her. Now he seemed different somehow. She’d discovered earlier in the summer that he had secrets, but how many secrets could there be?

His skills with prison breaks aside, Kae decided she needed to ask the main question swishing around in her head for the last hundred miles. “So, who was that blue mermaid and how do you know her? Is she an old girlfriend?”

He looked up at her sharply. “I’m not sure how that is relevant to relieving your aching tail muscles. Perhaps you should focus your thoughts on stretching your body, rather than your imagination.”

“But who is she?”

Lybio sighed. “An old friend, like I said before.”

“I didn’t think the Nerine made friends with other clans.”

“We were in Atlantis together, and shared classes at the University,” Lybio said, rubbing a hand across his eyes.

Kae eyed him skeptically, wondering if that was all they’d “shared,” but she said nothing. It felt weird enough thinking of her dad as a University student. Had he ever been that young?

When she didn’t respond right away, he let out another sigh, as if reading her mind. “Yes, I was your age once. King Koios and I actually attended University together, back in the day. That mermaid you saw in the Arctic caverns is a Nerine princess who was in our circle of friends. Koios and I even spent a few of our school breaks as guests in the Nerine court.”

“You hung out with the royals at University?”

“The king and I were boys together, the only ones of our age in the palace. When it came time for University, his father sent me along to watch over Koios, as even then there existed tension between the clans. We did everything together.”

Kae scrunched her brow, still having trouble imagining her father as a teenager, let alone hanging around with a bunch of uber-spoiled royals. Did everyone bring a servant with them to University? “So you were what, just a bodyguard?”

“I was his friend,” Lybio said firmly. “But yes, I had his back, just in case.”

“I didn’t know you were…best buddies with the king.”

“Things change.” The look on her father’s face was so sad that Kae felt sudden tears welling up behind her own eyes. “This is why I try to warn you about Shea, little one. The kingdom will always come first for the royal family. It has to.”

She didn’t want to go there. Not right now. Besides, her situation was different. Shea was different.

Shaking her head slowly, she moved the subject back to her original line of questioning. “So. That blue mermaid? You said she’s a princess. Her father’s King Naartok?”

“No, King Naartok has no children, and no heir as yet. She’s the king’s niece, but I fear her father is in league with Demyan. That is how she knew of the caverns where you were being held.” Lybio blew out a deep breath, bubbles streaming from his gills. “She took a great risk helping us today, for if she’s caught Demyan will surely see that she suffers, royal blood or not. He needs to be stopped once and for all.”

A fire lit in Kae’s belly. She could help stop Demyan’s schemes, and the knowledge filled her with renewed energy. “Come on, Father. I’ve rested enough. We need to find that sorcerer before Demyan’s plan goes any further.”

He smiled. “There’s a village not far from here, the Outermost Village. It’s the last one on this edge of the Atlantic, as the name suggests. We can find dolphins there to take us the rest of the way in a fraction of the time, and be to Atlantis within the day.”

Kae smiled as she grabbed her father’s hand and gave it a good squeeze. “So what are we waiting for?”

It took all day to come up with a new plan. One that didn’t include killing every living thing on the island.

As he watched the sun carve its path through the brilliant blue sky, Zan hovered near the water’s surface and contemplated his options. He examined and discarded each idea in turn until he narrowed it down to just one: sneaking onto the island under the cover of darkness. He’d find the boy and compel him with magick, just as he had with Kae. No muss, no fuss, and no one else bleeding to death. Not if he could help it, anyway.

He’d been observing the humans on and off throughout the morning and afternoon, and was fairly certain he knew which one was the MacNamara boy. Really, there only seemed to be one youth who fit the description Kae provided. That boy spent most of the day with another dark-haired youth, gathering wood and tending to the fire pit at the edge of the beach. Back and forth they went, almost like slaves in their relentless movements, keeping the fire burning and adding hunks of greenery to create billowing black smoke.

Zan knew they were trying to draw attention to their location with the dark clouds of smoke, but he’d cast a circle around the island early that morning to make it invisible to planes flying overhead. He knew the magick would eventually fade, and the smoke would certainly be visible if anyone drew near enough, but he hoped the isolation would last until nightfall. A few more hours were all that he needed.

His thoughts drifted to the mermaid trapped in the Arctic cell. Her hair felt like gossamer strands of the finest cloth beneath his fingers, the skin of her cheek as soft as a the belly of a newborn dolphin. Her lips were full and round, like the colorful wrasse fish he’d seen around the tropical reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Her green eyes sparkled like the glittering jewels on Queen Jessamine’s crown…he paused at that thought and frowned.

He’d been there when Demyan killed Queen Jessamine, thrusting his sword through her chest, thick mermaid blood flowing through the marble chamber. Her husband already dead in a suspicious accident, Zan thought he and Demyan were visiting the queen to comfort her. With one swift motion witnessed only by Zan, Demyan turned his little cousin Theo into both an orphan and the King of the Southern Ocean. A title the poor child didn’t hold for very long.

Zan knew no one truly believed the queen had taken her own life, and he still wasn’t sure if poisoning Theo was part of Demyan’s master plan, or a happy coincidence for the ruthless merman. Either way, the final outcome of the Solstice celebration was not as Demyan had expected. He almost took control of both the Atlantic and Southern Oceans in one fell swoop, but ended up swimming for his life. All because of this one drylander.

From this distance, Zan couldn’t understand what Kae saw in the blond boy. He looked a bit shorter and a lot less muscular than the picture her words painted in Zan’s mind. Though he seemed intent on helping his fellow drylanders, he hadn’t employed his transmutare magick to swim for help, choosing to remain in that useless human form. Fire and smoke seemed to be the only magick he could muster.

Regardless of his shortcomings, Zan knew this boy would be a formidable opponent in the fight for the mermaid’s affections. A fight Zan wanted desperately to win.