Blood of a Mermaid (4 page)

Something unknotted in his stomach.

Feelings were proving a trickier thing than learning to swim.

“Okay, then,” he said, still feeling slightly uncertain. “What is it we need to talk about?”

Shea lay on his back, his eyebrows furrowed with frustration and anger as he stared at the ceiling over his bed. The “talk” with Kae hadn’t been what he thought… it had been worse. She was leaving Cape Cod in the morning, and this had been goodbye. He’d been expecting goodbye. But not like this.

He knew he was being petty and self-centered, but he didn’t want her to go. It wasn’t fair, and he’d said that to her. Even though he knew she had no choice in the matter, he’d picked a fight and almost made her cry.

He ran his eyes along the tiny hairline cracks that fingered their way along the edges of the room, showing where the old house had settled over the years. Some type of small spider had taken up residence in the corner over the window, successfully trapping the flies and gnats that snuck in through the tear in the window screen. The spider moved back and forth slowly and methodically, repairing a damaged section of its web to prepare for another night of hunting. As he watched the rhythmic movements, Shea felt his breathing steady and his anger abate.

This was the same ceiling his dad had probably stared at, back when he was a boy. Back when the houses up along the ocean probably still looked a lot like the MacNamara house. Shea wondered if the same cracks had already been there for his dad to trace with his eyes, and whether there had been similar spiders intent on spinning similar webs.

It wasn’t the first time Shea had thought about his dad, wishing he were still around to give advice. Plenty of questions had piled up in the last two months that Shea burned to ask his father. Entire topics of conversation that had never even occurred to Shea when they were back on the farm in Oklahoma. Like, how much did Tom MacNamara really know about the mermaid he married? How much did he understand about undersea politics, and the wars between the clans? Questions that his father would never get the chance to discuss or answer.

Demyan had taken that option away.

Shea still didn’t fully comprehend how anyone could control the weather, or how mermaids could travel that far from the ocean without losing their magical abilities. When his parents had made the plan to move inland, they had obviously thought Oklahoma was far enough away from either coast to be a safe from mermaid magick. Demyan and his sorcerers had proved that idea wrong, conjuring a fierce and concentrated tornado to destroy the MacNamara farm and its inhabitants. Including Shea’s dad.

Part of Shea still wished he’d stayed home from school that day. Maybe there would’ve been something he could’ve done to change things. To stay with his father.

“Demyan has to pay for what he did,” Shea muttered. Someone knocked softly on the bedroom door. “Go away,” Shea yelled. “I don’t want to hear any more about
summer plans
.”

“It’s me, boy-o,” came his grandmother’s voice, muffled by the door. “Let me in.”

Slowly, Shea rose and went to unlock his door. His grandmother was still wearing her faded housedress and apron, but she’d unpinned her tight bun, her thick grey hair hanging down her back in a single long braid. She stepped through the doorway and walked to the window, looking down on the street below with her hands clasped behind her back. Lucky followed her into the room, toenails clattering on the wooden floor.

Shea flopped back onto his single bed. “I’m gonna be stuck here alone all summer, while my friends go off on their adventures. It’s not fair. I’m the one who helped expose Demyan, after all. I should be going to that hearing. Why does Kae get to go to Atlantis to give her testimony while I’m forced to stay here on Cape Cod?”

Martha turned from the window, narrowing her eyes at her grandson. “And what makes you think you know better than King Koios?”

He threw an arm over his face to shield himself from her penetrating stare. “It’s not that I think I’m smarter than the king. I’m just saying I should be going with Kae to Atlantis. I’m fifteen. I’m not a child.”

“You’re the heir to his throne. Perhaps the king doesn’t feel it worth the risk for you to make the long journey when Demyan is still out there somewhere.”

“So why are they having the trial already if they haven’t even captured him?”

She shrugged. “The High Chancellor was killed. There needs to be a hearing.”

Shea felt his frustration building, the muscles in his throat constricting, making it hard to choke out his words. “I was right there, Gramma. I saw him kill that old merman. Before that, he threatened me, to my face, and slashed Kae with a knife while I stood there helpless. He poisoned the king and blackmailed my mother into almost marrying him. Demyan is totally evil and they need to capture him and put an end to his reign of terror, once and for all.”

“In this regard, you and I are in full agreement,” Martha said. “Demyan needs to pay for his crimes. But the courts of Atlantis must first determine which crimes he is truly guilty of, before passing judgment. You must understand that the law is the law.”

Shea’s laughter was empty, sounding hollow even to his own ears. “You’re just full of wisdom today, Gramma. ‘Nothing is certain until it is certain,’ and ‘the law is the law.’ Where did you dig up this new bag of tautologies?” He was tired of her cryptic words and phrases. “Say what you mean, or don’t bother.”

She was silent for so long that Shea began to wonder if she’d left his bedroom. He lowered his arm to peek, and saw that she was back at the window, staring out into the sunshine again. Finally, she spoke. “Demyan caused the deaths of my husband and both of my sons. He should be held accountable for those deaths, and all of his other crimes against drylanders and merfolk alike. Unfortunately, it’s said the courts of Atlantis don’t consider crimes committed above the water’s surface.”

Shea’s eyes opened wider. “I’m sorry, Gramma. I almost forgot about Grandpa and Uncle Rick in that hurricane. That was Demyan messing about with the weather too? Like with the tornado back in Oklahoma?”

“They say the Adluo sorcerers are some of the most powerful under the seas. It’s been rumored for a long time that they can manipulate the weather on a far grander scale than others have ever attempted. Demyan can not be allowed to harness that power again.”

He considered her words, letting them roll around in his head for a moment or two. “Gramma, what do you mean when you say the rumors have been around for a long time? How long have you known about the mermaid clans?”

She turned from the window, her blue eyes glittering. “I’ve known about the clashes between the Adluos and the Aequoreans for my whole life.”

“But…how is that possible?”

Martha sat on the edge of Shea’s bed, next to where his legs were stretched, and patted his knee. “Things are not always as they seem, you know. For instance, how old would you guess that I am, right at this very minute?”

Shea had no idea, really. He could tell by her grey hair that she was pretty old, but her exact age was one of those things he’d never quite worked out. His own dad had been pushing forty, so he figured his grandmother must be at least twenty years older than that. He decided to take a conservative guess. “Are you about sixty?”

“I’ll be one hundred and forty seven come September,” she said in a gentle voice. Shea’s jaw dropped open in surprise. “I was born into a small eastern village of the Aequorean clan, back in a time when tall sailing ships commanded the seas and Queen Victoria still ruled the British Isles. I met your grandfather when I was a mere ninety-three and he was a sweet young U.S. Naval officer of nineteen.”

“So Grandpa wasn’t…”

“British? No, dear, he was an American,” Martha said with a smile, a faraway look in her eyes.

“That’s not what I meant, Gramma,” Shea muttered, but she’d already started speaking, continuing her story as if he hadn’t interrupted.

“I fell head over tail in love with that man the first time I saw him, I must say. He would tell you the same, that is, if he were still here to tell you. Sometimes you just know it, when you meet the person that you’re destined to spend your life with. More’s the pity that you never had the chance to get to know him. Given all that has happened, I don’t doubt that your mother was right in sending you away, but now you’ll never have the chance to know what a kind and decent sort your grandfather truly was.” She patted his knee one last time and then folded her hands in her lap, waiting.

“So you’re…” Shea couldn’t finish the sentence.

“…a mermaid.” Martha nodded her head as she spoke as if to confirm her words, but Shea couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I was born a mermaid, at least, many moons ago. I’ve been on dry land for so long now I mostly think of myself as a drylander. It’s hard to know whether I’ll even remember how to use the transformational magic.”

“But, how? When? Why?” There was so much about this revelation that Shea just didn’t understand. “What about my father?”

Martha sighed, smoothing out the front of her apron as she stood. “I’m headed downstairs to put the kettle on the stove. Why don’t we finish this discussion in the kitchen, over a nice cup of hot tea?”

It was certainly a risk for Zan to return to Nantucket Sound. Despite his changed appearance and the magick aura cloaking his journey, he felt exposed.
Why am I doing this?
As he rounded the tip of Cape Cod to head into the waters on the southern side of the land, he dove deeper toward the bottom, avoiding the tumultuous currents that raged near the surface around this volatile stretch of shoal. He wondered, for what felt like the millionth time, how he had let Demyan bully him into putting his life on the line yet again.
Is there no limit to what I must do for that merman?

Was it fear of his own death that kept Zan from fleeing? For certainly, those Nerine forces currently working with Demyan would hunt Zan down and kill him if he dared to disobey Demyan’s orders. But just as certain was Zan’s execution in the name of Atlantean justice should he be captured on this mission.

Death was a foregone conclusion no matter what path of action Zan chose.

Loyalty, then. Some twisted sense of devotion was holding him to Demyan, and to the path of revenge and resurrection the madman had outlined in that Arctic cavern.

“I owe him my life several times over,” Zan repeated to himself aloud. “He deserves my fealty.” But as he repeated the phrase again in his head, he realized that most of the times his life had been in jeopardy over the last ten years were a direct result of Demyan’s actions. Demyan was the one to put him in harm’s way, just as Demyan had been the one to save him.

Zan stopped swimming, resting his hand against a boulder to steady his body as his mind reeled with sudden realizations, feeling much older than his seventeen years. It was Demyan, after all, who had discovered him covered in blood all those years ago and given him this second chance at life.

His parents hadn’t known what to do with him. As he grew, odd things tended to happen around him, both good and bad, depending on his childish moods. In desperation, his father had made a deal with the stable master and left Zan to live there with the dolphins at the age of six. Life in the Southern Ocean was never easy, but even worse for palace slaves.

One day, the older stable boys were making fun of Zan, calling him names and poking him with their rakes. He’d been scared, unable to protect himself from their jabs and prodding, until his frustration reached the point of anger and the current around him start to heat, unbridled magick swirling around him. The older boys didn’t seem to notice the change in water temperature until it was too late. The two who were in closest proximity to Zan began bleeding from their ears and noses, their blood gushing in a steady stream joining the swirling eddy of magick that circled the smaller boy. The others fled the stables, screaming.

When Demyan and a second soldier arrived to investigate, the two older boys lay dead on the sandy floor as a dazed Zan hovered above them, bathed in their thick blood and twitching like a seahorse’s tail. Demyan quickly assessed the situation, realizing the potential of Zan’s innate magical ability and the danger of leaving it unchecked.

It was Demyan himself who pleaded for Zan’s life in front of the Adluo king, insisting that Zan was too young to understand the power of his own magick. It was Demyan who convinced the king to secure a place for Zan at the University of Atlantis instead of throwing him to the sharks. As the king’s only nephew, Prince Demyan’s word held some sway.

At the University, they taught Zan to harness the magick so that he controlled it and not the other way around. After several years, they sent him back to the Adluo Palace, no longer a stable boy but an accomplished practitioner of the Arcane Arts. Anything and everything he desired could be obtained with his magick. But for the most part, it wasn’t his own desires he fulfilled, but those of the Adluo king who had spared his life. And those of the king’s cruel nephew, Prince Demyan.

There were times when the magick still got the better of him and Zan lost control, but for the most part he was its master. And Prince Demyan was, in turn, Zan’s master.

At this point, he felt he had no choices left. He’d tied his fate to Demyan’s until one or both of them ended up as shark food. Or worse.

At the entrance to the courtyard, he paused his swimming once again to survey the surrounding gardens. He’d spent a week at this castle of the Aequorean king during the Summer Solstice celebration, but had spent almost none of that time outside of the castle walls. He’d been too caught up with the machinations of getting Princess Winona to poison her own brother, too busy flattering both the old mermaid’s vanity and her ambition to take much notice of his surroundings.

He could now see that the gardens were beautiful, the swaying greenery flowing gracefully with the current under the watchful eyes of a tall statue of Buddha, with the crossed legs of his human form. Just inside the archway, blue-haired servants were loading a wagon with several trunks, carrying them out from the main doors of the Great Hall. Stable hands secured a pair of dolphins to the front harness.