Fathom: Intergalactic Dating Agency (Mermaids of Montana Book 3)

by Elsa Jade

  “No zapping,” he noted.

  “I don’t want to,” she said with a defensive pout. “But sometimes I can’t stop myself.”

  “Did you know that Tritonans can drown?”

  “What?” She jerked straighter.

  He nodded once at the surprise in her voice. “Although we can breathe underwater, we need to purge our lungs occasionally or the tissues absorb too much water, swell, and no longer function. If you zap me and I lose consciousness, I could die.”

  She blanched. “If you’re trying to scare me into controlling myself, you’re going to get us both killed. I already told you I can’t control it.”

  “The war taught me that sometimes having no choice is the best incentive.”

  “And sometimes in war people just die,” she snapped. “But that’s over now.”

  Depending on the identity of the other ship, she might be very wrong.

  Digging through one of the storage compartments of his battle skin, Sting extracted a small pouch and held it out in his open palm. But he didn’t extend his arm completely—to accept the offering, she’d have to step closer. “If you want to go with me, you’ll need an external gill.”

  Since Tritona was seeking immigrants like the part-Earther females who might or might not breathe water, every Tritonan now carried an extra gill or two. Sting had dutifully accepted the negligible weight, never thinking he might actually need it. Because who would ever want to accompany him to the deeps?

  Certainly Lana seemed undecided at the moment. Her brow furrowed as she fastened the central seal of her e-suit, hiding away those intriguing curves and hollows he’d admired. “I know you have a tow rope,” she muttered. “Maybe that would be safer.”

  He shook his head. “Over the distance we have to go, the drag would be unacceptable.”

  She eyed him. “Are you saying you’re not strong enough? Or are you saying I’m too big?”

  He straightened to his full height to stare down at her. “You are very small and I am very strong.”

  “Then who cares about the drag?”

  He’d walked right into her trap. And it had been a very simple trap. Maybe the failure should embarrass him, but he’d never claimed to be a strategist like Coriolis or a leader like Maelstrom. He should not try to trick her. “I want to hold you,” he said. “I can keep you warm and we can go fast if we are together.”

  She had the e-suit sealed all the way up to her chin, but despite the thickness of the material the slow throb of her pulse was revealed to his sonic ping. “Fast and hot, that’s what I’ll get with you?”

  He nodded slowly, though something about her tone made him wonder if there was more to her words, as there was with monster. “Hotter and faster than by yourself.”

  She huffed under her breath. “My zaps have made it way too fast and way, way too hot,” she grumbled.

  Since he didn’t want to say the wrong thing again, he simply stood with the gill in his open hand. Still, he would not bridge the distance between them. She had to come the rest of the way herself.

  She bit at her lower lip until that already plump, reddened flesh had swollen like a ripe pixberry. Why did he think so much of her mouth and berries? He’d seen his commander and Maelstrom put their mouths on their Earther mates even when they were not sharing air or food. Had those mouth moments helped the females match with their Tritonyri mates?

  She said something low under her breath, more words he didn’t understand—and jolted toward him to pluck the gill pouch from his hand. When she bit down into the mouthpiece and unfurled the oxygen exchange filaments, the gill covered her pretty mouth. Which should’ve eliminated the distraction. Instead, he found himself captivated by her dark brown eyes, so unlike the oceanic colors of the Tritonesse who’d made him, raised him, and tortured him. Sin-man brown. His gut contracted with the strange hunger, nothing like the appetite that would’ve sent him searching for plankton or pie.

  That gaze was locked on him with an intensity that would’ve knocked him back a step if he’d been a smaller creature. But he held fast, as if his feet had grown hectopi tentacles with a thousand suckers to hold him in place until she came to him.

  With a silent breath that fluttered the gill filaments, she put her hand in his.

  A tingle, but no zap. He closed his fingers around her wrist, drawing her closer. Her eyes widened, and inside, he steeled himself for a brutal jolt.

  Instead, his pulse raced, hot and fast, as if she were dragging him through some unfathomable darkness.

  When she stepped into his space, wrapping her free hand around the central strap of his battle skin, he fell backward into the lake water swamping the partly submerged hatch.

  The slap of cold water did nothing to dampen the reckless rush of his blood. And when he curled himself around her to protect her, the taste of her on the water—the way he tracked anyone through the seas—only ignited a deeper craving.

  With a rumble, he heated the water around them as he descended slowly toward the current that led to the hidden aqueducts tracing outward from the Atlantyri.

  He’d forgotten that she’d need a light as well as air, so he flexed the bioluminescent chromatophores in his skin. She didn’t need to be afraid of the darkness.

  In the murky depths of the lake there was nothing to see. Except each other. He kept her snugged up against his chest although perhaps it would’ve been easier to sling her to his back. But it was easier to maintain a comfortable temperature in the shelter of his chest.

  Also, he just liked the feel of her in his arms.

  The thick, coarse curls of her hair came undone in the tug of the water, and the lengthened strands flailed against the bare skin of his shoulders like hundreds of tiny whips. Pleasurable whips, which he wouldn’t have thought possible considering what he’d endured during his conditioning, but Lana made it so.

  Despite the speed of their passage, she stared straight ahead, the gill clenched in her teeth, her dark eyes wide. For no good reason, he expelled a tight cone of bubbles ahead of them, the same way he would hunt in the wild, confusing his prey. The cone expanded as they rushed through it. With his skinshine alight, the bubbles streamed past their bodies like tickling, twinkling stars.

  Lana tilted her face upward to his. With the mouthpiece clenched between her teeth and hiding her lips, of course she could not speak, but something about the sudden wrinkles around her eyes made him think she might be smiling. Was she enjoying the rush as much as he did?

  Kicking up his effort just a notch, he rocketed them through the depths. She did finally make a noise, a little squeal of shock, as they reached the rocky entrance of the aqueducts and he zoomed them through. He slowed again, more for her comfort than his own need since his echolocation gave him a clear view of the tunnel ahead even beyond what his bioluminescence and eyes could distinguish.

  She was a good passenger, tucking herself close where the rock walls narrowed, instinctively angling her body to make them more hydrodynamic together. He’d carried trained, hardened, Tritonyri warriors into battle a few times, and none of them had fitted themselves to him so perfectly. But the little nul’ah-wys was no fighter. She’d made it clear she feared and hated those hints of violence.

  Despite the warmth he kept around them, a thin, cool needle of cold arrowed through his heart. She’d fled his world, wanted nothing to do with him. She was only with him now because he’d lied to her and threatened to expose his alien self to her world.

  She would be so angry when he overpowered her and took her away again against her will.

  For once, the thought of bloodshed did not excite him, not even the part of him modified from the most savage predators in Tritona’s deeps.

  When they came to a widened chamber, he propelled them up out of the water onto a rocky ledge. The bubble of air was big enough for them both to stand upright, and he released her immediately.

  But she clung to him for another moment before finally taking a step back to spit the gi
ll into her palm. “That was great!” She gazed up at him, her eyes bright with his reflected skinshine. “Like the best amusement park water ride ever.”

  He grunted. “Earth has such things?”

  “Just because Earthers can’t breathe under water doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate a dunking every once in a while.” Then she wrinkled her nose. “Although we haven’t been the best stewards of our oceans, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s hard to care for a thing that you don’t understand.”

  She shook her head, and the locks of her soaking hair began to curl around her shoulders once again, indomitable. “Maybe you’re right, but…I think we can love a mystery too. Not everything has to be spelled out in black and white.”

  That wasn’t what he’d been told. The Tritonesse had made it very clear that he was a monster and the Tritonyri were heroes. His only purpose had been serving as the blackness they needed to fight their war against the Cretarni.

  With those battles won, what was he now?

  “Catch your breath,” he said. “Then we’ll continue on.”

  She angled her face farther up, studying the cavern ceilings where eons of dripping water and mineralization had made fanciful shapes of liquid stone. “Before the symptoms of the Wavercrest syndrome got me, I paid the bills by charting astrology for people trying to figure out which way to go in their lives.”

  “Steer around suns. Don’t get too close to black holes. Bring more plankton and pie than you think you’ll need for the journey so you don’t get hungry and end up eating something you shouldn’t.”

  “I…” She squinted at him, as if his skinshine wasn’t quite bright enough. “Okay, yeah, that’s probably better advice than anything I ever gave.” She let out a little laugh that didn’t move her breasts or crinkle her eyes. “To be honest, even though I made a living off astrology, I wouldn’t have believed back then how much the stars were going to matter to me.”

  “If you didn’t believe in stars, how did you chart them?”

  “Astrology isn’t the same as astronomy. A lot of people think the kind of places I worked only sold drugs and delusions and distractions—crystals with metaphysical properties, cards and coins and tea cups for divination, bumper stickers to bring on the revolution.”

  He tilted his head. “Bumper stickers? Should Tritona have used these during the war?”

  “Er, no. Probably vinyl doesn’t stick as well to spaceship and submarines.” She shrugged, her e-suit creaking softly. “But what do I know? Nothing really clicked in my life until Marisol contacted me about Wavercrest syndrome and I found out that I’m descended from extraterrestrials. Now it all makes sense.” Her wry laugh was even creakier than the tight fabric of her suit. “Pretty sad when alien abduction only makes your life better.”

  “You went to Tritona voluntarily,” he reminded her. “You weren’t abducted.”

  Yet.

  Just as well she didn’t know how to scan his body to reveal his thoughts, or she would boil them both in this cavern.

  She only shrugged again. “Not literally abducted. I was carried away by the hope that somewhere out there someone else had a solution for my problems. But that’s never been true.” Taking a deep breath, she held it a moment, then smiled at him. “Okay, I’m ready to go.”

  Of course she didn’t mean leave Earth with him—she’d already sworn she wouldn’t do that again—but for some reason his blood surged like a moon-drifter breaking the veil between sea and sky when the nightlight called. That she was willing to merge her wake with his on even this short journey felt strangely more perilous than diving into battle.

  But he didn’t grasp her close and dive. Instead he gazed at her. “Why did you think there were mysteries in your life before you discovered your blood is not Earther alone?”

  She glanced away from him. “Doesn’t everyone have mysteries about themselves they can’t reveal?”

  “No. My trainers in the weapons conclave let me have no secrets. I always knew what I was.”

  Her jaw hardened. “A monster.”

  “Exactly what they wanted.”

  She let out a hard, gusting breath that fluttered her lips—the lips he couldn’t help watching even as they were tightened with some old memories he didn’t understand. “It wasn’t right that they made you for their own purposes,” she said gravely, “and then decided you were too much so they forgot you.”

  A bitterness in her voice, like toxin in the waters, warned him of hidden dangers he couldn’t understand. Before he could dive deeper—the only way he knew how—and ask her, she huffed out another breath and added, “I know they felt they needed you to help save their world. But then they owed it to you to give you a place in that world.”

  He gazed at her. Had anyone ever acknowledged his place—or lack thereof? Even his commander and the other Tritonyri fighters had used him in their battles without question. War had made them ruthless even to their own.

  Was this the first time he’d ever acknowledged to himself that he was one of them?

  Shifting from one foot to the other, he edged back toward the dark water. “If you’ve breathed enough, we should keep going.”

  He could wish whatever he wanted, but he didn’t need magical rocks or the charts of the unfaltering stars to tell him what he already knew: a beast of war had no place in peace.

  Maybe that was why he hoped to find intruders to justify his continued existence and why he couldn’t bear to listen when she suggested there might be something else.

  Chapter 6

  Tucked against Sting’s all-but-bare chest, Lana could only cling tightly as he rocketed them through the dark water. The strength of his arm held her close as her fingers cramped on the straps of his battle skin. Meanwhile powerful thrust of his legs zoomed them onward, never slowing. He managed to keep the temperature of the water around her warm enough to stave off hypothermia, but she needed the simmering heat of his body.

  Why had she told him stuff about dreams and being lost? He was certainly in no place to give her any guidance. With the possible exception of these moments when they were swimming through drowned-out underground tunnels.

  It had just been so long since anyone held her that obviously she was equating physical closeness with emotional intimacy. Sting had all the relationship availability of a great white shark cruising endlessly through the deeps.

  Maybe that was for the best. Considering what she knew about herself now, even if she found a way to survive the zaps, it would be unethical for her to pursue a relationship with some oblivious Earther who could never know the truth about what she was, all the while risking potential death by electrocution. And the Tritonesse had made it clear that she had no place with them.

  Sting was the only being in her orbit right now armored enough that she could be herself.

  Whatever that was.

  She lost track of time in the darkness, though she suspected it was longer than the swift rush of water made it seem. When the luminous glow of Sting’s skin was reflected in a brighter way from the walls around them, in sharp geometric lines, she realized they’d passed from the natural aqueducts to the carved pathways that surrounded the Tritonan exodus ship.

  A pang went through her. This was the home of her unknown ancestors. But was it a homecoming for her? Or just a reminder that there was no place in the universe quite right for her?

  She would’ve gritted her teeth, but the external gill got in her way. Yet another reminder that whatever she was wasn’t right for this place either.

  Fire-witch.

  Annoyed at her own dejection, she stepped away from Sting as soon as he powered them up into the open air.

  Hadn’t she learned a long time ago not to rely on anyone to stick around? Even Sting, weird as he was, didn’t have suckers.

  If she hadn’t been to the Tritonesse hall on Tritona, the clearly alien architecture of the Atlantyri would’ve shocked her. But to her semi-discerning eye, though the alien spaceship was clearly
more advanced than anything on Earth, it was not as advanced as the technology on Tritona itself. The Atlantyri was an old ship, launched in desperation from a failing civilization. The Tritonans were lucky to have recovered the living specimens of their past.

  Not that the Tritonesse had considered her such a valuable recovery.

  The foyer where they had emerged was empty except for the bioluminescent glow embedded in the walls. But Sting strode toward a wider circle and pressed his wrist datpad against the pale light. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Maelstrom left defensive commands with the ship’s old AI,” he told her. “I want to make sure it doesn’t deploy any of those defenses against us while we’re here.”

  She nodded even as she wondered who they were defending against. The alien ship had remained safely hidden on Earth for centuries, at least until the Cretarni had tricked Ridley, an unwitting Atlantyri descendant, into opening its doors. She glanced around. What had the Cretarni wanted here? There was only some glowing moss and half-frozen undersea creatures from Tritona’s past. Nothing to justify the violence and even death that the Cretarni had instigated, breaking Earth’s closed-world status and lying to the Tritonans about their Intergalactic Dating Agency profiles.

  At least that was all over now. Marisol and Ridley might have thought they were doing work with the Intergenetic Data Agency, but in the end they’d found their alien mates anyway along with their new lives on another world.

  Lana wrapped her arms around herself. Sting’s sub-acoustic tricks had kept her warm on their journey, but nothing could touch the emptiness inside her.

  “Why are we here?” She couldn’t quite keep the peevish note out of her voice.

  “Because you stole the Diatom and fled Tritona,” he said in a reasonable tone, as if he were just reminding her.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Why are we here-here?”

  “I told you already. Since I’m here on Earth I wanted to review the security of the Atlantyri and the Wavercrest abode.”

  She grunted. “There’s something more to it,” she prodded. “You’ve been acting odd ever since you looked at the status report on the Diatom.”