Diary of a Radical Mermaid (22 page)

“Listen, you shark whisperer, you won’t get away with this. You can’t trap us here while you go out to Echo Marsh and murder Rhymer McEvers. He’s a Mer. He’s your . . . your brother-in-law.”

“He stole my children.”

“Your children? You don’t care about those girls. You’ve never even met them.”

“I’ve visited them many times, I assure you. I’ve watched them for years. They just didn’t know it was me.”

After a stunned moment I blurted, “So what? They don’t know you, they don’t want to know you, and they’re terrified. Leave them alone. You can’t kill Rhymer and just take them. He’s their uncle. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“To be blunt, No. I’ve killed hundreds of people in my lifetime. From Spanish conquistadors to UniWorld scientists. Mer or Lander, it makes no difference to me. Family ties mean nothing either.”

Tula stepped up beside me. “Explain what you mean by that. Until now, most Singers — myself included — believed Mers such as you were just a fairytale. Or maybe a nightmare. You could have dispelled our prejudices. If you wanted to be part of the Mer community, you could be. Tell me why you’ve rejected our society. Tell me why you reject your own children.”

“Because I’ve watched my children and their mothers grow old and die, time and again. Lander or Mer, they always die. Loyalty to a family is a curse, not a blessing.”

Tula held out her hands in supplication. “But your own daughters—”

“Are of no importance to me except as property.”

She stared at him. “You can’t mean that.”

“I always mean what I say.”

I jabbed a forefinger at him. “Bullshit. You just need a good therapist.”

Orion stared at me as if I were a lame video game in a theater lobby. I was only worth a couple of quarters before the feature started. “It will be a shame,” he said finally, “if you’re eaten by the shark. You’ll give him indigestion.” He left the cabin. We heard the rumble and click of the hatch’s lock being secured, then the quick, heavy thud of his footsteps striding across the upper deck, and, finally, the precise swoosh as he dived into the water.

Silence. The yacht rocked gently. Tula and I traded worried looks. Jordan struggled off the couch. I quickly slid an arm under his shoulders as he stood. He dripped blood on the floor. “We’ve got to find some way to get out of this cabin,” he said.

“Unfortunately, jimmying locks is one of the rare, nefarious skills I don’t have.”

“I do,” Tula said. When we looked at her incredulously, she sighed. “The Lander I loved — the one whose memory of me I erased? I never told you much about him, Juna Lee, because it’s painful to discuss him, but he grew up on the streets of Los Angeles. Long before he became rich and notorious, he was poor and notorious. He led a street gang. Once, for fun, during a long, romantic weekend in the south of France, he taught me to pick locks and hack into the computer systems of major governments.” She paused. “He was multi-talented.”

“Your mysterious Lander was a streetwise super-hacker? Was his name ‘Neo’ and did the Matrix finally suck him back into cyberspace?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she muttered, then headed for the galley’s utensil drawer to search for breaking-and-exiting tools.

Clash of the Titans
Chapter
22

Moll looked a little frail and lost in the driver’s seat of her big bus, but her face was set in determination. She hung her mermaid cane from the back of the seat. Behind her, their faces shadowy in the light over a dining table, the girls huddled like unhappy doves, watching us. I stood beside the four of them, my throat closed and aching.

’Tis no small thing for a man trained in fighting to give himself over to the peacefulness of love.

“You do as Moll says,” I told the girls. “She’s the commander of this operation now.”

They nodded. Moll’s throat worked. “I’ll hold the fort until your return.”

“Aye. I’ll see you soon.”

Probably a lie. I didn’t expect to survive a fight with Orion. I tried to hide that thought from Moll, but her eyes squinted in pain. “We’ll be waiting.”

I caught her behind the head, wound my fingers through her soft brown hair as if tasting silk through my skin, and kissed her quickly, twice, on the mouth. She raised her hands and dragged them down my cheeks and neck. I pulled back for both our sakes and looked at the girls. “Never doubt I’m proud to be your uncle, such as I am.”

I turned to go.

Venus launched herself and grabbed me ‘round the legs. Stella and Isis crowded in behind her. The three looked up at me. “We love you, Uncle,” Stella said.

Moll and I traded a look. Her eyes tearful, she spoke to me privately, inside my mind. We all love you. Say it back.

I nodded. “I love the lot of you,” I said to her and the girls hoarsely. “You’re what makes the oceans rise and fall to me.”

Then I turned, stepped down from the bus, headed for Bellemeade Bay without a backward glance that might undo me, and dived into the water.

* * * *

“Nice night to be eaten by a shark,” I said grimly. Tula and I sat cross-legged on the yacht’s deck. The small cruiser rode the summer swells in silence except for the erotic, rhythmic slurp of the ocean against the bow. I kept a hand on Jordan’s shoulder. He was stretched out beside us, his forehead sweaty and eyes half-shut in pain.

Tula got up and looked over the side. A silver fin slithered through the starlit water. The deep, primitive hum of a shark voice — imagine a big dog growling underwater — filled our heads. Tula snorted. “Go away, you oversized minnow. We’re not afraid of you.”

Just your teeth, I thought. Normally, Mers swim in the company of dolphins. The dolphins are like pet guard dogs, fending off jelly fish and small sharks. Loyal dolphins will even attack a Great White and drive him away. But we couldn’t wait for a dolphin cavalry to come to the rescue tonight. Sharks don’t converse with us the way dolphins do; like most fish, they’re nearly as primitive in their thought process as some professional football players. Speaking to one is like pleading with a big, dumb, hungry linebacker.

Tula sat down beside me. “You try talking to him.”

I got up and went to the rail. “Hey, you. Howz about I call up a nice little school of fish for you to eat? Hmmm? I’ll do that for you if you’ll promise to leave after you clean your plate.” Our finned prison guard raised his snout from the water, opened his mouth, and displayed a maw large enough to swallow me whole, outlined with sharp teeth. It was easy to guess what he was thinking.

I don’t want an appetizer. I want a main course. Jump in.

“Eat this,” I said, and flipped him a bird. I stomped back over to Tula.

“What did the shark say?” Tula asked grimly.

“He’s auditioning for a remake of Jaws. He wants me to play the part called Naked Swimming Girl Who Gets Eaten in the Opening Scene.”

“We’re screwed.”

“Orion said if we sang out, no one would hear us. But that’s not true. Mers all over this part of the coast will hear us. The problem is, there’s a ninety-nine percent chance none of them can get here in time to help us.”

Tula frowned at me. “When I was a little girl and I’d come spend the summer with you in Charleston, I always admired you for jumping down that storm drain in your parents’ back yard, even if I was too afraid to jump with you. You never calculated the odds. You never hesitated.”

I looked at her, my throat burning with emotion. She was right. “Let’s work on that one percent.”

We sang.

* * * *

Echo Marsh. Where the dead can speak.

Aye, just superstition; a spooky tale told by African slaves and coastal planters I’d read in a local history book from Lilith’s library. If the dead could really speak, my sister would be here, telling me whether I should fight the father of her children to his death or mine.

Yet as I swam through black, narrow channels into the marsh I felt the ghosts, the dark slip of large shapes in the water. Out in the ocean some miles away I sensed a military submarine cruising silently in the deep. Probably nuclear, hopefully American. During my time in the British service I had worked in a unit controlled by Mers — passing ourselves off as Landers, naturally — quietly going about the job of tracking the Russian subs, and others, that creep beneath the seas with all the subtlety of submerged junkyards. I’d thought only the man-made monsters of the deep threatened the rest of us.

Now I had naught but my own kind about me, those monsters. Those shadows. A small, lost whale navigating the salt-marsh rivers? A sea turtle? Orion? Perhaps only he was there, casting his illusions. Speaking as the dead.

My arms brushed the milky surface of rotting grasses. As I swam downward in a shallow channel my fingertips dug into the soft bottom, stirring up shrimp. They tickled my palms. Reading them sonically, I watched them dance in front of me in the murky black like large, invisible fireflies. This watery world that Landers dismissed as if it were naught but the dank basement of their house was no’ a basement at all; ’twas a whole other dimension, a universe atop which Landers only floated, thanks to their dry boat of an island, unaware that the ocean was big and they were small.

We Mers know the difference. We see the much greater side of the world when we swim. Most of it is noble. Most is breathtaking.

But this marsh, this bloody, black, muddy, haunted marsh, was no better than a maze of dirty alleys in some dangerous slum.

Help us. Help. We’re stranded. Danger. Help. That message filled my head, strong and feminine, a duet. I halted, listening, as I anchored myself with a fist around the corroded flute of some long-lost ship’s anchor, sunk deep in the muck. Danger. Help. Come and find us. Help.

My skin prickled. Tula’s voice. And the notorious Juna Lee. Where are you? I began, then cut myself off with a silent curse. If I sang back I’d give away my position to Orion. I couldn’t risk him cornering me in one of these narrow marsh channels. He’d tear me apart before I could even free my sword from its scabbard.

Help us. Any Mers who hear us. We’re trapped. We have a wounded man. Help us. There’s no time to lose.

Wounded? They must mean Jordan. What the hell had Orion done to the good cousin who was like a brother to me? I pounded a fist on the anchor’s rough surface. I couldn’t help them. I had to face Orion here in this marsh, or none of us stood a chance. There were hundreds of Mers scattered along this section of the Georgia coast. With any luck, one of them would find Tula, Jordan, and Juna Lee.

Giving a low groan of frustration, I headed toward a stretch of open water at the marsh’s heart. When I speared the surface I saw the starlit outline of a small, flat island — just a sandy hummock speckled with clumps of tall grass. I had been drawn there, baited and lured, by Orion. And now he spoke to me from somewhere in the water.

Welcome. Stand on the land and fight.

Dripping mud and saltwater, I climbed onto the tiny spit of sand. A quick pivot revealed naught around me but miles of black ocean on one side and miles of black marsh on the other. Behind the marsh, Bellemeade was just a cluster of tiny lights, winking like the stars overhead. I took a deep breath and slid the ancient blade of Mer tradition from its scabbard.

Come along, you bastard. The fight is waiting.

Across the hummock — no more than two dozen paces from one end to the other — the black nightwater rippled as if some great beast swirled below the surface. A dark shape rose from the water. A large, thick head and massive shoulders narrowed into a sharp V atop long legs with powerful thighs. Heavy arms unfurled and flexed against the starry sky. Broad hands spread, showing the silhouettes of webbing and curving, hooked tips. Claws.

Yet he had the shape of a man. My sister had loved this . . . man. My head tilted back as he straightened to his full height. He towered against the sky, more than an arm’s length taller than me, a Goliath. No Mer was this tall, and no Lander either. I tightened my hand on my sword. This freak of our kind had seduced my sister for years on end, fathered daughters he didn’t want, then lured their mother into danger, deserted her, and finally had the cold-blooded cruelty to steal the only thing left of her — her body.

In the darkness, his eyes settled on me. He heard me hating him.

Give up, he whispered. There’s no way you can win this fight. You’re ordinary. Just a Singer. I can kill you with one sweep of my hand.

Let’s see how serious you are about trying.

Tell me where my daughters are, and I’ll let you live.

Don’t waste my time.

What, no gun? His voice, even inside my head, was streaked with odd lilts and forgotten accents. He was old; he’d spoken lost languages, lived in cities that were archaeological rubble now. He circled me, a giant, a throwback to some past when our kind was more of the ocean than the land.

Since it’s just you and me, I decided to forgo the pleasure of shooting you.

Sentimental, I see. You’re not sure what I am, so you give me the benefit of a doubt. She convinced you to do that. The writer. Molly. She has faith. Perhaps foolish faith.

You met her in Savannah. You could have killed her that night, or you could have kidnapped her. But something about her stopped you from harming her. If there’s anything decent about you, she brought it out.

I let her live. A trade. Now give me my daughters.

So you can betray them the way you betrayed their mother?

You’re going to wish you’d brought a gun.

I want your daughters to know I gave you every chance to surrender.

Tara always said you would be the last man standing in any battle. She said you never gave up. You’ll have to prove it.

Do no’ quote my sister’s words to me, when you’ve done nothing honorable by her.

On that point, you may be right. Regardless, I want my daughters.

To hell with you.

I will kill you slowly.

I raised the sword. You’re welcome to try.

We began.

* * * *

Help us! Hey, aren’t any Mers listening? It’s me, Juna Lee Poinfax, of the Charleston Poinfax’s. Knock knock, who’s there? Ivana. Ivana who? Ivana get some freakin’ help out here!