Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (5 page)

The beach was quiet and the moon was bright enough that she didn’t need a flashlight. She kicked off her shoes and left them where they lay. She’d get them on the way back. The sand was still warm from the hot day and was a gentle massage on her sore feet. The waves were calm and rolled gently against the shore, the smell of salt water calming her and reminding her that she was home. She’d grown up on the coast of Virginia, and although the news and people told her times were more dangerous, she never would have walked on the beach alone at night in Virginia Beach ten years ago, either. With the severe weather and the rise of the oceans people everywhere had lost loved ones and possessions, their homes. People had learned to fear nature in a way they’d once forgotten. Besides that, the loss of coastal cities, particularly the big ones like New York and DC, and every one of the major shipping ports, had ruined the economy and panic had spread everywhere.

People had banded together for a while, to clean up the mess and find homes for refugees, to deal with the new weather patterns and the changed shape of the world. And, sure, there’d been a lot of desperate people and there’d been violence and crime. In Liza’s opinion, the crime hadn’t increased as much as people’s fear had increased. The threat of violence just gave people one more excuse to hide in their homes and keep to themselves. Hoard their resources in case the climate catastrophe was only the beginning. Liza had been sixteen, and she hadn’t wanted to hide, so she’d seen the good in the people who’d had to rebuild, the good that countered the bad. It didn’t mean she was stupid enough to walk out alone at night without some form of protection, but she wasn’t going to hide in her apartment on a beautiful night, either.

After the seas had calmed and the weather seemed to stabilize, businesses had moved and rebuilt. The gap between the poor and wealthy and between those who could adapt and those who couldn’t had widened and the unemployment and homeless rates were still high.

She was dipping her toes in the water and admiring the reflection of the bright moon, when she felt a hand on her elbow. She pulled her mace out of her purse, spun free of the hand and held the mace to the person’s forehead.

“Whoa, whoa,” the man said, hands in the air, backing up. “It’s me Agent Fulsom. We met yesterday.”

She couldn’t believe her luck. She’d found Fulsom without even trying. She looked around for Agent Rice, but didn’t see him on the beach. She lowered the mace and slid it into her purse, but she kept a hand on it. “Sorry about that,” she said, giving him a bright smile, but keeping her distance.

“It never hurts to be careful,” Fulsom said. “You really shouldn’t be out here alone. You meeting someone?” There was a hungry look in his eyes and she took another step away from him, until she was ankle-deep in the surf.

“Yes,” she lied. “I’m meeting my fiancé, Ellison. He should be here any minute.” She’d always believed if you’re going to lie, you ought to go all the way.

“Your fiancé, huh. That’s too bad. I’m meeting my partner here, but he’s late, and I thought you might be interested in getting a drink.”

Fulsom’s phone rang and he answered it before Liza had to respond. She considered walking away while he was on the phone, but she wanted to talk to him about the mermaid and her dream.

“Shit. Yes, we said we’d meet at the marina, but the boss doesn’t want us to go out there tonight… Sorry, I forgot to tell you. She says Mel will meet us near shore… Yeah, by the black rock… I’m on the beach, asshole… Don’t take your pissy mood out on me… Yeah, okay.”

Fulsom hung up the phone and looked at Liza, like he’d forgotten she was there. “Change your mind about the drink?” he asked.

“No, actually, I wanted to talk to you about the mermaid on the beach.”

He grinned. “Mermaid, ha! You mean the lady dressed like a mermaid?”

He was overcompensating, his voice boisterous. She wondered how he’d ever gotten to be an agent when he lied so badly. She wondered if he really was an agent at all and the idea of telling him what she’d seen in her dream when they were alone, on a dark beach, seemed suicidal suddenly. “Yeah, anyway, I never got your card and I wanted to call… your office and tell them what a great job you did and how professional you were.”

Fulsom smiled and winked at her, before pulling a card out of a pocket of his suit jacket and handing it to her. He snatched it back before she could put it in her own pocket, though, pulled out a pen and wrote something on the back. “In case you change your mind about that drink,” he said. She took the card and he started walking away. “I’ve gotta go, but I hope to see you around again sometime,” he called over his shoulder.

What a gentleman. And he’d left her alone on the beach without offering to wait with her until her fiancé showed up. A real gem, that one.

*SLOANE*

Sloane had expected to meet Fulsom at the marina, sail out, scuba down, and talk to the merfolk, so he’d worn tattered jeans, a t-shirt, and flip flops. He kicked off the flip flops as soon as he got to the beach and stomped down the shoreline. He passed a woman, who looked vaguely familiar, going the opposite way, but he was mostly seeing red, so he kept moving without giving her another thought. He saw Fulsom sitting on the black rock, his head looking even more bulbous in the moonlight. God, he wished he could do this job without a partner. He climbed up onto the rock, which was actually what was left of an old elementary school, buried mostly in the sand and weathered to black, and sat next to the troll. “Where’s Mellita?”

Fulsom shrugged and Sloane wanted to push him off the rock into the water. “Guess she had to take off. She’ll be back. She knows you’re never on time.”

Sloane grunted, not wanting to fight. Fulsom was the one with the time management problem, and he was poking at Sloane for his own amusement. Sloane knew this, but he couldn’t help getting angrier. He hadn’t spent enough time at the gym that morning. He needed to punch the bag for another few hours and shake it off.

“How’d it go with Frankie?”

“She’s moving out as we speak,” Sloane said. He didn’t want to tell Fulsom that much, but he knew trying to keep his personal life to himself would only make the troll more curious. Sloane might also want to talk about it, but he’d never admit that to Fulsom or to himself.

“Ah, and how do you feel about that?” Fulsom asked.

“Peachy,” Sloane growled. He’d never seen Frankie’s face so red before. She’d blamed him, blamed him for wasting two years of her life. Wasted how? They’d had fun together. He thought they’d had fun together. Of course, when he tried to explain that to her, it only made her angrier. Women were so irrational.

Fulsom shrugged. “You know it’s for the best. Now she can move on. Find a man who wants to give her a family. You know that’s not what you want.”

A family. He hadn’t realized she’d wanted one. Not until she took all of her clothes off and threw herself on him, demanding that he at least give her a baby so she could get something out of the relationship. How had he not realized sooner how crazy she was. When he turned her down, she started crying. He hated it when women cried. He’d held her until she’d calmed down and, when she started packing, he’d left to meet Fulsom. He’d never been so happy to get out of his own house in his life. “She never told me she wanted a family,” he said, his tone sounding childish and whiney even to his own ears.

Fulsom looked at him, his eyes wide and bright in the night. “Then you weren’t listening. I got that message last year when we went on that double-date.”

Shit, how had he missed it?
Because you didn’t want to see it
, a voice said in the back of his head. Damn but he was a shitty boyfriend. Thank god, she hadn’t gotten pregnant. He wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. Luckily, Mellita’s head popped out of the water and ended their conversation. Mel was gorgeous with coffee-dark skin, huge brown eyes, the bone structure of a super-model, and thick, dark hair. Too bad she only had one use for men and was as likely to drown them as fuck them. “Hi, Mel,” he said, smiling at her. He liked her, no matter how many unsuspecting men she’d lured to their deaths.

“Hi, Handsome,” Mel said, her smile broadening to show sharp teeth. “And Ugly. Want to explain why you kept me waiting?”

“Romeo here was ditching his girl,” Fulsom said.

Mel looked at him, her eyes sparking with new interest. “Really? Well, Sloane, you’re single again. How wonderful.” She swam closer and Sloane was pulled in by her beauty and her gaze. He wanted nothing more than to sink into the water with her and forget the pain on Frankie’s face. The pain he’d caused.

“Tempting, but I like breathing air.”

Mel laughed. Her laugh as seductive as everything else about her. “The rumors about me and my sisters aren’t true, Sloane. We’d treat you well.”

He suddenly had an image of Mel and her sisters, who were just as seductive and gorgeous as her, taking care of him and he groaned, his body hardening in important places. He swallowed and tried to think about something mundane, while Mel laughed, fully aware of the effect she had on him.

According to Mel and her sisters, the only people immune to the mermaids’ charms where the mermen, but he’d never met one so he couldn’t be sure. The mermen stayed home and the women hunted and interacted with the topside world. Under the sea, the women were in charge and the men cared for the home and family. “You wanted to talk to us about one of your sisters?”

Mel’s expression changed from flirtatious to serious in an instant, and Sloane knew her well enough to know that her flirting had been a distraction for herself as well. “Yesterday. We’ve been sending out hunting parties to the edges of our borders to make sure all is peaceful, and one of them didn’t come back.”

“You send them out alone?” Sloane asked, his body forgetting all about emotions like lust.

Mel shook her head. “I send them out in teams of three, but Luella wandered off when the others weren’t watching. She’d been agitated all morning and kept saying she heard something, but no one else heard it.” Mel sighed and looked out over the water. “Something had been off with her for a few days.”

It fit with what the doc had said about the disorientation Aria experienced before death, but would it make her hear things? Sloane had worked with the mermaids for more than five years, and they were the most level-headed fae, the most level-headed
people
he knew. If this Luella had heard something, he tended to believe her. “Did she say what the noise sounded like?”

“Like metal grinding against rock,” Mel said. “She said she only heard it when she got near our Eastern boundary, so I sent extra scouts out there, but none of them heard it. She was always more sensitive than the others.”

“You think she really heard something,” Fulsom said. He knew as well as Sloane that mermaids were a grounded folk.

Mel nodded. “It reminded me of the stories of the old days, when humans drilled into the sea bed for oil. Some of our kin are more sensitive to the vibrations of the seabed than others, so when Louella said she heard something, I think she actually felt it. She is more affected by spills of oil, even from miles away, and she is more affected by the warming of the sea. I believe she really did feel something.”

Sloane leaned back on his heels. He believed that Luella had felt something, but he doubted she’d sensed drilling. Drilling the ocean floor had been banned ten years ago, when the oceans rose and so many people died. “Where is your Eastern boundary?” Sloane asked.

Mel gave him the coordinates and Fulsom wrote them down while Sloane stared out over the ocean and hoped they’d find Luella alive. He’d never met her, but he knew Mel cared about her and he didn’t want to have to bring Mel more bad news. “You have your sisters out looking for her?”

“We’ve scoured our territory. She is beyond our boundaries,” Mel said.

“We’ll walk the beach tonight, and we’ll dive tomorrow.”

Mel nodded and dove back down beneath the ocean surface without a splash. Fae didn’t abide by human manners. To thank someone meant you owed them, and fae didn’t like to owe anyone.

Sloane stood and stretched, his muscles stiffening from his workout and from squatting in one position for so long. “I don’t like this.”

“You got one of your bad feelings?” Fulsom didn’t bother to hide the sneer in his voice.

“I don’t like to see the mermaids dead or in trouble. They’re a good people.”

“They seduce and drown men,” Fulsom said.

“And trolls eat the ground bones of humans. Given the choice, I’ll take death by mermaid. Besides, I’m not sure I believe the stories. I’ve never met anyone drowned by a mermaid, have you?”

Fulsom snorted and hopped off the rock and onto the sand behind Sloane. “You gonna take her up on her offer, then? If I have to go, I think drowning by Mel and her sisters would by my preferred method.”

Sloane smiled for the first time all night. “That might just be the one and only thing you and I agree on, Fulsom.”

*LIZA*

It was so dark the moonlight barely penetrated to her beneath the water, but she could see perfectly. The sea world through her eyes was slate grey and so beautiful. Fish flitted like silver wisps in her view and she wanted to stop and watch their dance against the backdrop of the sea. Unfortunately, the horrible noise, like bones grinding, wouldn’t stop, and it made her head and body ache. She wanted to swim away from it, but she needed to know what it was. The sound had been bugging her for days and it was making her sick. She needed to make it stop.

“Louella! Louella where are you going?” She heard her sisters behind her, but she couldn’t go to them. She needed to make the noise stop. She swam around a large rock and she saw it, a huge, shiny grey tube, like a spiral shell, that was pushing down into the earth, making that awful sound. There were men swimming around the metal tube, far enough away not to touch it or the rocks flying up from it. She backed up, but it was too late, one of the men had seen her. She turned and started to flee, confident she could outswim him, but then a jolt of electricity hit her, and she felt arms wrap around her. She looked up into the human face behind the mask, and tried to smile at him, hoping she could seduce him into letting her go. The man sneered, and she knew he hated her. She would be able to persuade him of nothing. As he dragged her closer to the metal tube and the grinding noise, her head started to spin and she closed her eyes and let darkness take over.