Lord of the Deep (23 page)

Meg glanced about. She was safe. Even though the doors were unlocked, no men were allowed to enter. She would find a corner and stay until there was no more threat of Simeon or the other selkies finding her. Then, when night fell, she would slip away. She would have to cross water to reach the mainland, but as long as she didn’t travel
in
the water, she would be safe. A rowboat or skiff would suffice. There had to be one somewhere on the Isle. She would find one. If that poor dead woman could give her immortality away, though her heart was breaking, so could Meg give Simeon his. Leaving him was the only way, and she tiptoed off to a remote corner of the nunnery that didn’t smell of funeral flowers, where she found a large cupboard in the wainscoting under the stairs by the rear entrance. Curling up inside, she slept.

S
imeon and his virtual army of selkie males searched the Isle of Mists until dusk, but they found no sign of Meg. Finally, vowing to return at dawn and search again, Simeon dismissed the others, mounted Elicorn, and returned to the deep. He’d been on land too long without periods in his sealskin. He could no longer exist comfortably out of the water.

Even though he knew she would not be there, he searched the underwater ledges, haunted the subterranean pools, left no chamber unchecked, but she was not in the palace. It was nearly midnight when he stripped off his eel skin suit and plunged naked into the bathing pool. The fragrant soap he’d used to lather Megaleen and the sea sponge were still lying on the ledge where he’d left them. Simeon hoisted himself up beside them, raised the soap to his nose, and inhaled the intoxicating scent of night lilies. It reminded him of her. She ghosted across his memory just as the scent ghosted through his nostrils.

Simeon soaked the sponge, shut his eyes, and began working the soap into a lather. Rich and thick, it spilled over onto his wrists and ran up his muscular forearms as he squeezed it through his fingers. He soaped his chest, then his taut, hard middle, until the suds slid down his cock. That was all it took. His shaft sprang erect in memory of her hands soaping him there, and he groaned as his fingers closed around it.

He was exhausted, but that was no deterrent. His sexual drive was always heightened when fatigued. He needed sleep if he was to continue the search in the morning. Would release bring it? It was too late to wonder. His cock was hard in his hand, just as it had been in her hand, and the soap as soft as her caress gliding over his thick hardness, over the distended veins and ridged tip, over the swollen balls that ached for her.

Surging to his feet, Simeon stood on the edge of the pool and shut his eyes again, then opened them as if the gesture would materialize her out of the soft, steamy air. But he was alone, overwhelmed by longing, overtaken by the selkie need—a need like no other; all consuming, unstoppable—a palpable—passion that rendered him helpless under its spell.

He groaned, sliding his hand the length of his anxious erection, watching it grow as he soaped it. Slow, lingering strokes from root to tip set hot blood pumping through his veins, rushing to his engorged cock, making in harder still. All he could think of was Meg’s gentle hands spiraling up and down, riding on the silky cushion of lather, bringing him to the brink, then halting…to make it last.

His heart was hammering in his breast. His moist eyes hooded with mindless desire saw only the ghost of Meg’s exquisite body naked in his arms. He licked his fever-parched lips and tasted only the memory of her salty sweetness. His flared nostrils inhaled her scent. Sweet clover and night lilies enchanted him. She
was
a witch, and she had seduced the seducer from wherever she’d gone. Only a sorceress could do that. She had bewitched him!

His erection would not wait. His strokes became rapid, his breathing shallow, his pelvis jerked forward. For a moment, he froze. The minute he moved, it would be over. The minute the fingers frozen on his shaft so much as twitched, he would come. He waited until the throbbing threatened anyway, then pumping his hand in a spiraling motion along the hard bulk of his shaft, he gritted out a guttural moan as he came; the life flow spewing out of him in long, languid spurts. Then he remembered…She could well be carrying his child, and he dove headlong into the pool of warm water, loosing a selkie bark that reverberated through the coral dome above and hummed through the water he plunged through, scattering fish and lilies and underwater plant life in his path.

Down, down he plunged with no thought to where he was going or why. It was no good without his Megaleen. Why had she left him? Where had she gone? How could he have let her slip through his fingers on the Isle of Mists? Would she be there still when he returned at dawn to continue the search? It wasn’t likely. Spiraling and twisting, he plowed through the water in a blind passion until, spent, he surged back up through the maze of frightened fish and shuddering plants he’d left in his wake and broke through the surface of the pool.

Warm mist welcomed him as he climbed out of the water and struggled into his eel skin suit. Time meant nothing then. How long he’d been in the water, he had no idea, nor did he care. It was his natural habitat after all. He could stay under until the crack of doom if he chose to do so. However long it was, it hadn’t calmed his sex, and it hadn’t tired him enough to sleep. It was just as well. He had fences to mend, and he stalked off in search of Vega.

There was no reason to light the rush candles. They were in low supply anyway. Vega heaved a sigh. With all the press, he’d forgotten to send retainers to the marshes to gather more bulrushes. That could wait. Vega much preferred the dark, especially now that he had a nasty bruise on his jaw to nurse.

Phosphorescence from the water, a phenomenon of the moonlight above the waves striking the breast of the sea, and a constant flame in a stone basin at the end of the corridor cast enough defused light for him to see by in his sumptuous cubicle. It was more than enough, with his extraordinary night vision, for him to examine the amulet Glenda, his mother, had given him. Withdrawing it from his eel skin suit, he held it up and turned it to and fro in his hand. A sigh escaped him, examining the perfect black pearl dangling from a slender silver strand—a magical collar bought by his father eons ago in the name of love at a price that came dearer than diamonds and gold.

It was all too overwhelming. He should have greeted his mother more tenderly, but he had not, and there was nothing to be done about it now. It was too much of a shock discovering that she lived after believing her dead since a child. How could he have known, when there seemed none alive to tell him the truth of it save herself, locked away where no man could reach her? At first he bitterly resented the abandonment, but no longer. Now he saw it as the sacrifice it truly was then, and was
still,
for she had given up her life for the sake of others. Rubbing and flexing his bruised jaw, he couldn’t help but doubt the wisdom behind that decision. But who was he to judge? No one but the bastard of the deep, who, but for Simeon, would have been cast out long ago.

Still, he would never forget the look of his mother when age began to take her. It was swift and painful, he had no doubt, for she could not meet his eyes when it began, and left him at once. She was surely dead by now. It was over. But for him, unknowing, it had been over from the start. All that remained was to give the amulet to Simeon for Meg, hoping his father’s purchase so long ago from a wizard lost in the mists of time would continue to reap its rewards. Its secret would die with them and him, for immortality could not be bought except by magic, and if it were known that such a charm existed, their lives would be in the greatest danger from those who would move the moon and stars to possess it.

Vega heard Simeon approaching long before his brother crossed the threshold, and he tucked the amulet away inside his eel skin suit again. He would choose the moment to give it. Taking a seat in a gilded Glastonbury chair half-hidden in shadow, he waited. Simeon’s footfalls were heavy and borne down. Exhaustion or remorse? He would soon know.

Simeon thrust a rush torch, which he had evidently lit from the stone basin outside, and Vega shielded his eyes from the unexpected glare. “Put that damned thing out!” He said. “If I’d wanted a light, I would have lit one myself.”

“Still angry with me?” Simeon asked, leaving the torch in a wall bracket outside the cell proper.

“You should be sleeping. If you mean to continue your search in the morning, you will need all the rest you can get. You know your strength flags on land…unless you’re planning to go about in your sealskin?”

“No, I am not,” Simeon said. “I cannot sleep. She was there—right there—and now she’s gone. Where could she be, Vega?”

“I hardly know,” Vega responded. “I didn’t see her.”

Simeon waved him off with a hand gesture. “I didn’t come to talk about Megaleen,” he said. “I came to apologize. I don’t know what happened. I just…snapped. I had no right to take it out on you.”

Vega hesitated. Was this the time? Simeon looked so forlorn. Would it help, or would it make matters worse? There was no way to be sure. He had never seen his brother so distraught over a woman, and there had been many. He could give him the amulet and ease his mind, but what if Megaleen was gone? What if she never returned? What good the amulet then, except a heartbreaking reminder of what might have been. Love—all in the name of love! Selkies should have no truck with the emotion. Lust could be dealt with. There was no all-consuming madness of the blood with lust. A man could satisfy his urges, revel in his release, satisfy the demands of his aching cock in welcoming flesh, and sleep at night with lust. Why did Risa’s beautiful face ghost across his mind just then? He missed her dreadfully. Their relationship had just begun when Simeon banished the consorts. He heaved a sigh and shifted his position in the uncomfortable Glastonbury chair. He’d grown hard just thinking about her youthful beauty and graceful skill in the art of making love. Was it the lust of his selkie side or the penchant for love his human side awarded that made him hard against the seam? He wouldn’t probe that question too deeply. He was afraid of the answer.

“No,” he said at last. “You didn’t have the right to take it out on me, especially since I went to the Isle of Mists in your behalf.”

“In
my
behalf?”

Vega nodded. “And, I might add, at great personal hazard.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Vega laughed. “You think I’m talking about that piddling facer you planted on me? Hah! I went to the Waterwitch to learn some long-glossed-over points of my existence in hopes of helping you, and I put myself to the hazard. The old hag fed my cock to a sea anemone when I wouldn’t pleasure her in exchange for the information.”

“Fed your cock…Are you all right…are you…is it…?”

“As congenial as the creatures are, sea anemone do not take kindly to having men’s cocks rammed down their throats. Coming saved mine a nasty stringing or worse, but never mind that. I discovered that Glenda, my mother, was still alive—”

“Alive!” Simeon interrupted him. “That cannot be. We would have known? You believed her?”

Vega nodded. “I did,” he said. “And more than that, I went to the Isle of Mists and confronted my mother myself! That’s where I was coming from when I ran into your fist, brother dear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this? Why did you just disappear without a word? I was half-mad—you were gone—Pio had disappeared. I needed you!”

Vega slipped his hand inside his eel skin suit and withdrew the amulet against his better judgment. “I think you need this more,” he said, handing it over.

“What is this?” Simeon said, clearly nonplussed.

Vega watched Simeon turn it over in his hand. “That amulet is what has kept Glenda alive all these years,” he said. “Evidently Father wanted to keep her for his consort and paid a tidy sum to a sorcerer for that necklace.”

“But…I don’t understand?”

“Neither do I,” Vega said. “Suffice it to say, the magic works. I saw my mother—spoke with her. She was wearing that necklace. The minute she took it off her neck, she started to age. I have no doubt that she has died, for the aging was swift, and I am sure very painful. She gave me that for you to give to Megaleen. She was human, don’t forget, and in the same situation you find yourself in now.”

“But…to give up her immortality…?”

“Our father is dead, and to hear her tell it, she is tired.”

“But, Vega…”

“Has love so addled your brain that you cannot see?” Vega said, vaulting out of the chair. “Meg loves you just as you love her; I’m convinced of it. I believe she left you because you belong to the deep. You could not exist long upon the land and die a mortal death. She would not do that to you. Were she to come here, she would whither and die before your eyes while you remain as you are, young—virile—ageless. Neither of you could have borne that. Unless I miss my guess, her leaving was a gift—a sacrifice—for you. If I am right, that there in your hand could be the answer.”

“Can immortality
be
transferred from one being to another?”

“We shan’t know unless we test it, shall we? Simeon, Glenda, my mother, evidently believed it enough to give up her life to prove it. All I know is it worked for her.”

“I have to find her, Vega! I have to find Megaleen. Where was your mother on the Isle of Mists? I’ve combed every inch of those dunes. The place is a wasteland. How could we not have known she was there all this time?”

“Easily,” Vega ground out through a wry chuckle. “She was in residence at the nunnery there.”

“What nunnery? I know of no nunnery.”

“Neither did I, but it’s there. On the north shore of the island there’s a little hollow that is always thick with mist. The nunnery is cloaked inside that mist. You cannot see it, and no man can enter the sisters’ house.”

“Then how did you do it?”

Vega withdrew the Waterwitch’s geode from his suit. “With this,” he said, exhibiting it. “It’s one of the old hag’s charms.”

“So that is where you’d gone. I’m sorry…I had no idea. I was half-mad when I found Megaleen missing. I have to go. That nunnery in the misty hollow is the only place we didn’t search. We didn’t know it was there! If that’s where she is…if they’ve given her sanctuary…I have to find her, Vega, now more than ever. If you are right…”

“Wait!” Vega called out as Simeon darted toward the arch. “Take this—toss it into the mist in that hollow and you will gain access. It is the only way. It is cloaked remember.”

Simeon snatched the geode from him. Halfway over the threshold, he paused and turned back. “Oh!” he said. “When I couldn’t find you, I went to the Pavilion, hoping someone had seen her, but no. You are to have a visitor soon.”

“A visitor?”

Simeon nodded. “Muriel made me aware that Risa is pining away for you, and I agreed to have her—and only her—returned to the Palace if you wished it. I didn’t need to ask you. You wear your heart on your sleeve, my brother. I’ve just sent Pio to fetch her.”