A Mermaid's Ransom

by Joey W. Hill

  Seven

  "JONAH," Mina warned, "Do not make me knock you unconscious." "In her human form, the witch's head barely reached the middle of Jonah's chest. But David didn't feel like laughing, nor did anyone in the seawitch's underwater cave. As Prime Legion Commander, Jonah was the second most powerful angel in the Goddess's army, capable of destroying worlds with barely a thought. As powerful as he was, Mina could outmatch him, her dark powers capable of consuming a galaxy.

  "This is not helping," David said. Since he was normally the quiet one, they glanced toward him. David met Jonah's gaze, nodded to the ledge behind him, hoping the reminder would help him hold on to his self-control. Anna sat there, her tail immersed in the water Mina had pushed back with an airbell so the assembled angels could stand on the wide platforms of stone. Anna's hands were clasped on her lap, her head down as if in deep thought. The golden tresses were so long the shining curls pooled in her lap, covering her fingers.

  She'd always been a creature of joy and light; in fact it was her very nature that had turned Jonah away from darkness and the potential of world destruction nearly twenty-one years ago. But now she had a look of anguish so profound, David could understand why Jonah was willing to tear anything apart to get his daughter back. That, plus the commander loved his daughter deeply. Alexis was the precious symbol of their love, grown into a remarkable young woman they would willingly die to keep safe. As would everyone here, even his irascible witch.

  On that thought, David turned his gaze back to her. "Mina," he said. "Tell them what happened, as you explained it to me."

  She gave him a querulous look with her unusual bicolored eyes, one jewel blue, one crimson red. Whereas Jonah used clean, hot rage that could shake the firmament like an earthquake, his witch would choose bitter, deep-seated anger that would skin it alive. They each had unique methods of dealing with stress. Both were effective when properly channeled, but scary when rubbing rough edges against one another. It was a delicate situation. David could handle Mina, but handling both was an unsettling business. He wished Lucifer was here. The Lord of the Underworld was strong enough to remind the usually levelheaded Jonah that he needed to think like a commander, not a father.

  "All right," Mina spoke at last. "Somehow, Dante pulled Alexis's physical body into the Dark One world through dream magic."

  "You should have killed him when you saw he was gaining power in his world," Jonah said tightly.

  Mina arched a brow. "You were just as aware of him, because I have been giving you the reports when I view that world through my visions and the doorway." She glanced behind her, toward a darkened tunnel.

  At one time, Mina had lived in these underwater caverns, and this had been her library. She returned here now only to practice spellwork that required stronger wardings, because this was one of the most heavily warded places on Earth, containing the one remaining physical portal to the dangerous Dark One world. For over two decades, she'd used it only as a one-way window, as she'd referenced now.

  "He obviously concealed much, because he is aware of my scrutiny. That ability was as impressive as the dream portal. He has become far more powerful in the past twenty years than either of us gave him credit to become. So do not lash out too much with your blame, Commander, until you flog yourself with it first."

  Jonah made a noise that echoed through the caverns with the deadly malevolence of a Kraken come to life. Mina hissed back, baring the sharp canines that revealed her Dark One origins. Her one blue eye and one crimson glittered with warning from beneath the strands of thick dark hair scattered across her fair brow. David tensed.

  "Please, stop it. Both of you." Anna, now shifted to human form to move across the rock, slipped past Jonah and gripped Mina's arm. Her face was pale but determined. "Mina, tell us what to do. I can't bear this . . . please."

  When Mina glanced toward Anna, relief swept David. The person for whom the two shared a deep love might be as effective as Lucifer. Temporarily.

  The seawitch sighed. "To be honest, I'm not sure yet. He sent me a message. It was faint. I think he depleted a great deal of his reservoir bringing her across. He's lucky it reached me," she grumbled, as if she wanted to chide him like a reckless student. "But it says"--she hesitated under Anna's strained glance--" ' I want out, as you promised me. This proves my worth. Release me, or she will die in forty-eight of your hours.' "

  David noted she didn't give them the full message, as she'd given it to him. The part detailing how Alexis would die, painfully and slowly. His witch had come far in twenty years. It would serve no purpose to share that with the agitated parents.

  "Let him out," Jonah growled. "He will not have time to draw one breath here."

  "A magic user capable of this may be capable of much more. You once underestimated me," Mina reminded him, the derision in her tone making David wince. "If we open a rift to him, he may bring the rest of the Dark Ones with him. Though it will be a much smaller force, he may have augmented them with more powers than they once had, and they were formidable then. Can you risk many in this world for one life?"

  Jonah snarled. "I will risk whatever is necessary to bring her home."

  "Which is why you are not the one who should be making the decision," Mina said ruthlessly.

  Jonah spat out a stream of invective in the angels' ancient language that was creative and frightening. Mina stood impassively, waiting him out, and his fists clenched. "You are as cold and heartless as ever, witch," he snapped. "Perhaps our mistake wasn't only leaving him alive."

  David stepped forward then. "That's enough, my lord. She's right. Listen to yourself."

  Jonah's gaze shot to him. A cool rush of air, tinged with sulfur, heralded another arrival. Lucifer materialized from the water, wielding his scythe. The dark angel's face was cold, mouth set. Jonah didn't turn, holding his attention on his lieutenant.

  "She's in that world, David. You told me what that world is. Have you forgotten that I saw what they did to you? She's never known . . . from the minute she was born, I . . . Damn you all, she's our child."

  The powerful angel broke off abruptly, turning away from them. Jonah had known loss for far too many years as a battle commander, the oldest of the non-Full Submission angels. He'd dealt with the fallout from that, but no one in the room needed to be told that his mate's love was what had brought him back to them. It was a fine line they all walked, fighting for the Legion.

  David swallowed and looked away, as did the four other angels in the cavern. Marcellus was one of them, Jonah's right-hand captain until he'd been nearly killed in the Mountain Battle. He bore scars that hampered his flying, at least for full battle, but his loyalty to Jonah had brought him here today. David knew the whole Legion would be in this cavern if they would fit.

  While they waited uncomfortably for their commander to get a grip on his emotions, Anna had no such reservations. She met his turn with open arms, holding him as she was subsumed in his own embrace, her body quivering in his arms. But she shed no tears, not now. The look on her face, the strained determination, reminded David that sometimes a mother showed a strength that could surpass the father's. It didn't mean her suppressed pain wouldn't shatter her if they lost Alexis. And if they lost Anna to that kind of grief, they lost Jonah. In Lucifer's face, he saw the same knowledge.

  Mina moved in then. In one of her unexpected acts of compassion, she touched Anna, bringing the parents' attention back to her, though her expression remained as flat as ever. "We'll get her back. She's my goddaughter, and I'm sworn to protect her. If you do not believe in me, believe in my resolve, which as you know is quite formidable." A cynical smile twisted her lips then. "I didn't say we were without options. I can bring them through but separate them, contain him, with a magic similar to what he used. But it will take a great deal of preparation."

  In Mina's gaze was a wealth of things David understood that no one else did, including the fact that Jonah wasn't the only one who'd seen what the Dark Ones had done to David. Mi
na had had a front-row seat. He knew the witch's heart was his, as much as every part of him was hers. As a result, when she looked at him now, he let that knowledge fill his gaze. The tension across her brow lessened.

  "I'll give you a list of stores I'll need from our home." She glanced back to Anna and Jonah. "I'll need blood from both of you, as well as my own. It's going to be a lot," she added, attention going to David again, "so cookies and juice for Anna might not be amiss, and manna to replenish Jonah when I'm done. I also need to work very fast without taking time to reassure or explain to anyone what I'm doing, because it will take hours to prepare. In forty-eight hours she'll be dead, no matter what he does to her."

  "Why is that?" Anna gripped the seawitch's arm. Rather than drawing away with the disdain she normally demonstrated at unwelcome touching, Mina covered the mermaid's hand with her own, met her blue eyes without flinching.

  "Because nothing other than a Dark One, and Dante, can live in the Dark One world longer than that. It drains life energy. You know that," she added softly. "She is weakening even now. She might have longer if he's shielding her somehow, but knowing Dante, I wouldn't count on that."

  Anna's lips quivered, but she firmed them. "Will she be okay, once she's back?"

  "We make sure she gets back here, and then worry about that," Mina said in her usual brusque way. "There's nothing we can do until we have her here."

  "All right, then." The pragmatic strategy seemed to rally Jonah. He kept his arm around Anna, however, as he turned to Lucifer. "I know your answer, but I will ask anyway."

  Lucifer shook his head. "The Lady sends Her grief and comfort, but you know She cannot touch the Dark One domain. Mina is your gateway." The Lord of the Underworld was the only angel with crimson lights in his dark eyes, and he shifted them now to the seawitch. "Though She said if you need additional energy to shore up your own, you need only call. Like all of us, She loves the merangel."

  A strangled sob escaped Anna, and Jonah laid a hand on her hair. "Is there somewhere she could rest, Mina, until this--"

  "No." Anna caught an edge of Jonah's wing, mopping her eyes in the feathers before tears could fall. "I'm fine. Alexis needs me to be fine. I'm not crying." She set her jaw and locked gazes with Mina. "Do what you need to do to get my daughter away from this bastard, so my mate can end him once and for all."

  The harsh mother's anger that rolled through the cave was so unlike Anna's gentle voice, a shiver rippled up David's spine. But Mina simply nodded. "Let's get to work, then."

  WHEN Alexis roused from her postcoital doze, her limbs felt heavy. It was strange to feel unwell and sexually sated at once. The buzzing roar was louder in her head, and she had a hard time lifting her upper body. But she pushed herself up, wrinkling her nose at the stench of blood, which seemed more pronounced than it had been when she was distracted by Dante's seduction, or perhaps--

  "Stop," she cried out, but it was too late.

  The humanoid, who reminded Alexis of the early Neanderthals she'd seen in pictures, was female. It was obvious because she was naked, and she'd been raped, her sensitive flesh torn, thighs and buttocks stained with blood too plentiful to be otherwise. Her breasts had been bitten, torn open. Where she lay on her stomach next to the ritual circle, her head was over the shallow basin. As a result, she was struggling, trying to keep her face out of the blood.

  Dante had a knee on her back. When Alexis cried out, he'd seized a hank of the female's hair, pulling up her head at a hard angle. The knife made his intent clear. Lex was already off the bed and moving, pulling herself by her arms, flapping her wings despite her weakness.

  He was far quicker. The efficient slash cut the female's throat open. Blood spurted into the circle, replenishing the pool. Alexis stopped, frozen, as life died out of the woman's eyes. She held Alexis's horrified gaze to the end though, as if she knew that was the only source of mercy in the room.

  Even as her body jerked, the soul struggling to free itself, Dante shoved a cloth in the wound, soaking it. When he dropped the head with a liquid thunk, the face landing in the blood, Alexis flinched. Moving to the door without further attention to either female, he began to refresh the broad slashing marks there, muttering another chant.

  Alexis scrambled to the female's side and lifted her head in both hands. With difficulty, she held her in one arm and used the fingers of the other to wipe the blood from the eyelids so the woman could see her. Alexis placed a trembling hand on the smelly, bloodsoaked hair, feeling the woman's terror and pain slowly ebb away with her life. She must have been brutalized out in the Dark One world, during the hours while Alexis slept. Bring me more blood, Dante had said. He hadn't specified how it was to be treated. That didn't matter to him at all.

  "I'm sorry. Go in peace." As she murmured the prayer of passage taught to her by King Neptune himself, the heart made its final beat, the woman's eyes now empty glass.

  Dante knelt on the other side of her, dipping the cloth in the fresh blood again. With a snarl, Alexis launched herself at him, using the wings to take her up and over the body. Weak as she was, she didn't get the clearance she needed, so she rolled the body like a log against him. But that added to his surprise as she plowed into him.

  She'd never been a violent creature. She'd dutifully learned to protect herself through Jonah's teachings and that self-defense course she'd taken with Clara, but she had no killer instinct. No plan propelled her, no thought of escape, just fury at what she'd seen. Self-revulsion galvanized her attack. Goddess, she'd felt bonded to him, connected. She hated this place, she wanted to go home, she never wanted to dream again. She wanted to bathe for days. She wanted to close her eyes, curl in a ball in her bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals, and not think until all the terrible memories of this place went away. And she never, ever wanted to smell blood again in her life.

  While Dante was much faster and stronger, she had the satisfaction of knocking him on his ass and getting in several swift, if ineffectual, punches in his face, one of which caused his fang to stab his lip and created a flow of blood.

  "Why did you kill her?" she wailed at him. "She didn't do anything to you."

  In a flash of movement he shoved her off him, lifted and slammed her against the stone wall. Several of the slender bones in her right wing broke, crushed beneath her. She snarled in pain, but the adrenaline carried her through it with barely a blink. She bared her teeth. "You're a monster. Mina shouldn't free you. You should be locked in a cage."

  "I am in a cage." He dropped her, so she fell to the stone at his feet, her wings limp around her shoulders like a blanket. Her scales scraped the rough stone. When he stepped back, his crimson eyes were orange and yellow flame, his mouth a hard slash. He pointed at the door. "Those symbols protect you from what's out there. That, and me, are the only things that protect you from what happened to her, and from you dying sooner here than you would otherwise."

  "I'm not going to thank you when you're the one who pulled me over here in the first place," she retorted, blinking back tears. "I would never want you to kill someone."

  "Even to preserve your own life?"

  "I don't have that right. No one has that right."

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. "That's incorrect, Alexis. In your world, lives are taken every day as a choice. Animals, because they cannot fight you. People, in wars, or in self-defense."

  "That's different."

  "Yes, it is." He pinned her with that hard glance. "Here you only live if you kill. You only survive if you kill. You only gain something of your own if you kill. I won't allow them to harm you."

  "What about her?" She looked back at the woman. Because she didn't want to be near him, she dragged herself back across the ground. The woman had blue eyes, like Anna. Like Alexis. "What about her family, where she comes from? Why did you let the Dark Ones hurt her first?"

  "Because there is a balance here," he said flatly. "You were awake to see it. I give them as much as necessary in order to maintain control ove
r them. I may be more powerful than they are, more clever, but if they all turn against me at once, there is little I might do against them. Now be still and let me finish this."

  He resumed his gruesome task, turning his back on her as if she mattered as little as the cooling corpse. A tool for him. Alexis stroked the woman numbly, studying her hard so she didn't have to look at anything else. This will be me soon. Painfully and slowly . . . She didn't know what was more difficult for her mind to process, what he'd just done, or what he knew they'd been doing to her while he'd been caressing and arousing Alexis's flesh.

  "Did you think of her at all? Feel any remorse?"

  He stopped, his arm poised over his head. The cloth was so wet blood dripped down his forearm, but he didn't appear to notice it. "Remorse, regret, sadness. Mercy and compassion. You want me to feel all these things. Have you ever raped someone to prove you could hold power over them? Killed them in cold blood because they stood between you and survival?"

  She swallowed. "No. I can't even imagine such a thing."

  He turned then, pinned her with his gaze. "Then you have the answer to your question. You cannot feel what you've never known. Nor can you pass judgment on it."

  He returned to the door. Alexis drew a trembling breath, her fingers digging into cold rock as she tried to breathe through her mouth so she wouldn't inhale the blood smell anymore. She should go curl up on those rags, shut down and wait for the resolution of this without speaking to him further. Jonah and Mina, the whole heavenly host, would rescue her, or she'd die, and it would be over.

  But she didn't sit around and wait for people to take care of her. Her parents had wanted her to stay in the safety of the Heavens or sea for at least another decade, but she'd chosen to go out on her own, take a human form and live a human life.

  Holy Goddess, it was ridiculous to compare that kind of bravery to this. One moment she was deep inside his soul, touching something indefinable but worth understanding, an elusive knowledge that called to her. The next moment he was a brutal monster she couldn't fathom.