“I don't know. No Gloombeast did this. It's a waste of shock troops.”
“Nammu and Thalia must be inside. Maybe these mers died covering their escape,” Kai guessed. Tension rippled from her in the water. “What if they reach her before we do?”
Thalassa’s call echoed in his mind, a persistently sweet song that drew him nearer. “They haven't yet. I still hear her call for aid. She just let me know she's still here and waiting.”
“Okay, then we—”
The sand bed cracked in half, a thirty-meter portion of ground rising to tilt on a sharp angle and displacing sand in a shower of granules. Long arms guarded by a black exoskeleton reached from within hollow ground and grasped Kai around the waist. Her terrified scream chilled him as much as the visual that followed—the many-legged creature dragging her inside the shadows of its lair.
Before the beast could escape with its prize, Manu pulled the Trident of Pontus into being and drove its pronged tip into the false door, obliterating it on impact. Instead of releasing his wife, the ground-dwelling thing shot into the darkness, taking Kai with it.
With her arms pinned to her sides, Kai could do nothing. The sea spider skittered over the ground at the speed of nightmares, all the while pinching her in a grip that cut off the circulation to her hands. Even breathing proved difficult.
“Kai!”
“It’s a sea spider!”
It ran into the darkness, Kai a captive trophy between its two front legs.
“Kai!” Manu’s voice carried through the enormous body of water, coming steadily closer.
All at once, she was free, plunged into absolute darkness when the creature shoved her into a pocket in the sand bed and pulled a boulder atop her. Try as she might to free herself, Kai found it immovable. Her cell couldn’t have been larger than a shower stall.
“Fuck!”
She beat the rock with her fists until her hands was raw, and then something familiar reached her nose. And a glint in the darkness, though no light source existed in the tiny spider-carved cavern, gave the cramped space minimal light.
A soft red glow was partially buried in the sand.
Freeing it revealed a strand of pearls and rare fire garnets only found in the depths of Ore Mountain, a priceless commodity the Dwarves rarely sold to anyone.
Kai’s pulse picked up speed.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.
Sense told her to close her eyes.
Curiosity had her applying a little power to the strand of gems, igniting them with magic as if she held five, marble-sized fireballs underwater. Their scarlet glow illuminated a crumpled corpse in the corner of the cell, still wearing a tiara Kai had seen too many times for her own sanity.
Nammu had not found Thalassa’s resting place. She had been given one of her own.
Kai returned slamming her fist against the boulder and screaming for Manu again. The godsawful smell that infiltrated her nose had been the stench of a merwoman stewing in her own juices.
If her mate didn’t find her, she would join Nammu as the next treat on the menu, another ingredient in the sea spider’s soup.
31
The Watcher of Night
Without knowing where the beast was headed, Manu hurtled after them at a speed he’d never accomplished before. The water rushed by him, and through darkness, they raced by the encampment where Thalia’s team rested each day.
“Kai!”
The thing was larger than any underwater arthropod he’d ever crossed paths with before, an unfamiliar creature of nightmarish proportions, easily as large as the krakens imported from their brothers in Greece.
He pushed against its willpower, and found a slippery, resistant force barring him from the creature’s mind. It raged against the attempt, feral, wild, and starving; its meals scarce over the years of solitude within the depth of the Erebothian Trench. It could not survive the warmer waters beyond the trench to hunt, and its starving brood had cannibalized each other, weakened, and eventually perished. Eventually, it fell into hibernation and slept undisturbed for centuries.
The digging awakened it. Explorers entered its lair.
The young goddess told it to devour.
Come on, come on!
Features manifested in his mind, of dusky, near-violet skin and a body distorted by Gloom, features eventually coalescing to resemble the homunculus he and Kai had slain on their wedding party’s shores.
Narkissa.
Her laughter echoed across the cavern, carried by the stagnant water currents.
Kill them, pet. Her command sliced across the creature’s thoughts past Manu’s urgent pleas.
Rabid delight and the hunger for soft flesh bubbled from the spider’s consciousness, but no amount of pressure urging it to relinquish Kai worked. Of all the times for the gift of Pontus to fail him, now, when he needed it most, his panic arose. The spider proved more powerful than any jag, a creature of higher intellect and a deep, fathomless hunger. The jag had been nudging a gentle child. The sea spider, however, surged through the water like an indestructible juggernaut, always ahead of him as he followed it through the unknown. Narkissa’s willpower augmented it, emboldened it. It needed to feast.
It stopped only for as long as it took to stuff Kai into a hole in the ground and pull a boulder over her, skittering around then to protect its prize. Two large black eyes reflected the gleam of Manu’s trident as it rushed him with renewed ferocity.
He countered its savagery with his desperation to reclaim her. The terror in her voice drove him, and long, sweeping strokes of the trident sliced through one of the dangerous forelimbs. Another spiked toward him, and should have penetrated his chest, but blunt force struck Manu instead. He went spiraling through the water as pain exploded through his torso.
His chest ached, but Manu counted himself lucky that he wasn’t bleeding. A blow from a weapon that sharp should have punctured him like wilting seaweed. One glance down revealed why. Beneath his protective shark skin, he’d grown a layer of chitinous armor tougher than the creature he fought.
He collected himself. It was wild; he was not. “You can’t have her.”
It desired Kai most of all for the magical force she exuded, craving the taste of her as much as it wanted the other merwomen. But one had escaped it and this replacement was its gift from the new goddess it served. The watcher, as it had once been known by the ancient goddess of the temple, poised its body over the lair where Nammu’s corpse ripened for consumption.
Gods. It killed Nammu.
Manu lunged at it, twisting through the defenses of the remaining forelimbs to lodge his trident in the body. It reared onto its hind legs in pain and thrashed in the throes of agony as he jerked his weapon free. Desperation drove its next movements, the stabbing of long legs with blade-like ends. It lurched forward with an extended proboscis. He knew its thoughts and every intention—a potent venom intended to slow and numb him was contained in the sea creature’s mouth.
Though it posed no danger to him, the next elegant twirl of the trident sliced the sharp edge of a prong through the sensitive body part. Pain became its world and only thought, overcoming the desire for food and any hunger. No longer on the offensive, the creature recoiled and limped away.
Manu smashed into the boulder. It was no match for his power, and the moment he struck it cracked into several pieces, all of which went rolling over the sand bed and freed Kai.
With his wife safe from harm, his attention returned to his fleeing prey.
He had never wanted to take her into his arms more than he did then, watching her breathe, but the feeling was overcome with a need to destroy her attacker. He turned toward the spider, raised his trident, and went in for the kill.
Then Kai was in his path. He stopped before the lethal prongs came within an inch of her.
“What the fuck are you doing, Kai?” Manu snarled, promptly lowering the weapon. “I nearly struck you.”
“We don’t have to kill it!”<
br />
“But—”
Her gentle hands curved over his tensed shoulders. The battle rhythm still pounded in his veins, a sense conveyed through the fragile link between them. Her fear had been his terror. “He’s wounded, Manu. Look.”
The sea spider shrank away from them, curling long legs around a surprisingly fragile body in a protective manner. While enormous, it was not bulky or protected by layers of armor. Speed had been its greatest strength, something Manu overcame with his divine gift.
At that moment, she couldn’t force herself to deal the killing blow anymore than she could allow Manu to finish it off.
“When I was a child, I was told the colossal sea spiders went extinct a thousand years ago.” She turned from Manu and approached it. It skittered away on the uninjured hind legs and feinted as a wounded animal might. Pain and fear billowed from it in waves of confusion as well as failure to understand why the great mother had forsaken it. “Here’s one. I won’t be responsible for ending its species.”
Manu sighed. “As always, you are the voice of reason. Can it recover?”
“With help, yes. Listen to her.”
Panic clawed to the surface of disjointed thoughts amplified by pain. Through Manu, she experienced what the creature endured. Manu stepped forward as the trident dissolved into bubbles.
When Kai placed her hand over the spot between the creature’s beaded eyes, Manu did the same, his palm huge beside her smaller fingers. He closed his eyes and spent the next moments of quiet breathing reading the senses of a beast crying out for help.
Little by little, the rip in the creature’s exoskeleton sealed.
“She learned. She isn’t a threat to us any longer,” Kai murmured, encouraging.
Manu’s next breath was ragged, shuddering in his lungs. His brows knit in concentration.
“The greatest measure of a ruler isn’t his power, but the depth of his compassion. Look.”
When Manu removed his hand and opened his eyes, the damage dealt to its torso and wounded mouth no longer existed and the bleeding stumps of its severed limbs no longer leaked fluid into the water.
Not much later, after Kai had recovered from the event, they ventured toward the entrance of the imposing ziggurat dedicated to Nyx. Kai found herself struggling with Nammu’s death, too low on compassion to grieve for the woman she’d known since childhood.
In another family, she would have mourned the loss. In another family, her own aunt wouldn’t have tried to have her murdered. Too numb to feel any emotion beyond relief that it was over, she trudged alongside Manu toward the stone stairs.
“Do you suppose Thalia is out there in one of those holes, too?”
“Thalia escaped,” Manu replied. “The watcher regretted that she was able to flee. I saw it in her mind; when she captured Nammu, Thalia left her to die.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes. On top of that, I’m certain I heard Narkissa. I heard her laughter while I chased the spider to rescue you.”
“Then she’s one step ahead of us, too, and we have a dozen levels to search.”
Kai gave a bitter laugh. “Too much to hope that they kill each other?”
“We’d never be so fortunate.”
Power pulsed in the temple’s threshold where great stone doors permitted them entrance into darkened halls illuminated by carvings in their immaculate walls. For a structure thousands of years old, it appeared untouched by age and unworn by its environment.
A humming in the water and palpable vibrations seemed to ebb from from the center of a place no living mortal had tread for centuries. Then they wandered for what also felt like centuries.
Manu’s strong hand touched the small of her back. “We’re on the right path. I hear her. She calls us.”
“I’m pretty sure we just wandered in a circle—”
A door manifested where none had been moments before, dark and gleaming in the corridor. Kai abruptly halted in place. “She heard us.”
Manu’s hand closed around her wrist. “Let me go with you.”
For a moment, she nearly let him.
That moment stretched for an infinite amount of time, then she gazed at the divine doorway that seemingly led to nothing. “No. This is something I must do alone. She called me here to meet her. She’s my ancestor, and it feels as if it would be an insult.”
“She called me as well, Kai. That gateway could go anywhere or be some foul trick from Narkissa.”
“Is it?” Kai asked, taking his other hand in hers and interlacing their fingers. “Tell me what you really feel from this gateway, Manu. What does your heart tell you?”
Heavy brows drew together. Concentration lined his face, giving way to indecision that eventually smoothed behind an unreadable mask. Then, a heavy sigh left him that dropped his proud shoulders. “It tells me that this portal is safe. I still dislike the thought of you heading through it alone, but…you are correct. I feel only safety and a security much like what we experienced in the sunken temple.” He dropped his head and sighed. “It feels like her.”
“Then let me do what needs to be done. I must go alone as she asked of me. She won’t hurt me.” Kai pressed her forehead against her husband’s brow. “I love you. No matter what happens, I love you.”
“I love you, and it kills me that I cannot protect you now.”
“Sometimes your protection isn’t what I need, Manu. Right now, I need your support. I need you to believe in me.”
Strong fingers loosened their hold of her hands. “I will always believe in you, Kai.”
Kai parted from him the moment his grip slackened. A flick of her tail propelled her toward the shimmering gateway, but no amount of distance between her and Manu diminished the waves of tension rolling off him.
A zapping, electrical sensation resisted her entrance initially, but then it yielded, stretching around her with the elasticity of a rubber band prior to snapping. Kai tumbled from water onto dry ground, landing gracelessly on stone ground. Silver flame cast her shadow against the polished wall behind her as she rose onto her elbows and willed her tail to divide into two legs.
Her eyes adjusted to the ethereal glow from twin torches, revealing the interior of a grand temple predating anything she’d ever studied in Ancient Greece. When she turned to face the way she’d entered, she encountered only smooth stone.
There was no way but forward, and now she was alone.
32
Conviction
“Give me the child, Amerin. Please, don’t make this difficult. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Is this why you stayed behind? Does Heracles know?”
Jason shook his head. “He’s too soft. And a joke of a leader. This child, though, she’s a threat to more than our queen. Her very existence endangers Atlantis.”
“She’s a baby!”
“One spawned by a monster.” Jason glanced down the corridor behind them then held out his hand again. “That creature is here now, rampaging through the Palace District on its way to collect the brat. It must be destroyed. Look at it. Look!”
Amerin glanced down to see that the warm flush of life in Atalanta’s cheeks had darkened, a gray cast taking over her skin. Her stomach dropped, leaden, anchored by raw terror. “No…”
Jason reached out a gauntleted hand for the infant. “As I said, she’s no longer a baby. You can hand her over, or I can take her.”
How many days had it been since the first time she’d held Atalanta in her arms and promised she would be the mother she deserved?
Nammu stole one child from her.
Court politics and the evil of mers had robbed her of the likelihood of bearing another.
Her shoulders shook as she raised the squalling bundle toward the Royal Guard before her. He leaned down to take her into his arms.
More than Amerin didn’t want to die, she couldn’t bear to go back on her word.
The small dagger she’d kept beneath her blanket for weeks flashed in the microse
cond between her whipping it from the sheath against her thigh and plunging it into Jason’s throat. Ripping it free produced a satisfying noise of tearing tissue and a gurgle, and blood spurted in hot bursts from the severed vessel.
Amerin screamed. An apology surged to the tip of her tongue. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!
But was she really? Insidious thoughts whispered no, and desperation maintained a tight grip on her knife, even as slick blood trickled down the handle and the scarlet arterial spray painted her blanket.
Jason’s brain appeared to acknowledge what happened seconds late, understanding dawning and eyes bulging in their sockets. He stumbled away from her with his hands raised to his throat. She didn’t wait to see what happened.
I won’t let anyone harm you.
Amerin wiped the blood on her blanket and hastily shoved the dagger aside. The chair that had always seemed expedient to her in the past moved slower than a starfish. She hurried down the corridor deeper into the palace, even as the world around them shook and trembled, instability sending pieces of ceiling crumbling in particles of shell dust. She had to get to open ground. Had to get to…
The garden!
The next explosion tossed Amerin from her chair. Instinctively, she wrapped herself around the bundle in her arms as she fell to the ground. Her own head struck the pavement and the world spun, stars bursting behind her eyes. She didn’t know how long she lay there dazzled before she leaned up on one elbow and peered at her surroundings through blurry vision. A piece of the ceiling had fallen on the chair and crushed it. With no other alternative but to crawl along the floor, she nestled Atalanta against her body with one arm, and she scooted over the ground.
Not far, a red light glimmered. Another wasn’t far from it. Instinct drove her to wiggle against the ground toward the serene ember light without to discover a flame-red sea slug trail.
Sea slugs had led the Myrmidon squad to her.
Goddess of Sea and War: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 3) Page 23