by daisy harris
It ran down his chest and speared into his jeans, as if she needed the line to direct her eyes! Sophia couldn’t help but wonder how far the mark ran and where it went. Did it feel different than the rest of his skin? Was it sensitive? She wanted to touch it and find out.
His eyes flew open. “Don’t.” It was half a growl and half a plea. Her brows drew together in confusion. She felt her finger drift to her mouth so she could bite at her nails. Her mother constantly harped at her for the habit, but here in the bowels of a pirate ship no one would notice. “Don’t what?”
His fists clenched above him. “Don’t pity me.”
Sophia searched her emotions to assess what she had been feeling. No, pity wasn’t it. “I wasn’t going to.”
He sighed, prideful and irritated. “Liar.”
There were many things Sophia didn’t mind being called— spoiled, flighty, even irritating, but untruthful was not among them. “I do not lie.” Then she muttered under her breath. “Frankly, my life would go a good bit smoother if I did.”
“Oh, cry me a river, sweetheart,” the shark-shifter snapped.
The lilt of his voice struck her, and that, combined with the pale skin of his birthmark, led her to a realization. “You’re part mere, aren’t you?” His brown skin, spiky hair, even his aggression suggested shark-shifter, but she was certain, yes, certain, that he also seemed mere.
His jaw twitched and he looked sideways, as if to evade her probing eyes. “Just a slice.”
“I think your mark is very becoming.” She winced as the words left her mouth. They were true, of course, but probably not worth saying out loud.
“You will shut your mouth.”
On the surface he sounded frightening, but she saw under the subterfuge. “You are not like those others. In a way, yes, but in ways that matter, you are not.”
He snarled at her, low and long, raising the hairs along her arms and legs. His head shifted, elongated and became shark-like. Rows and rows of teeth populated his mouth, and he used them to bite cleanly through his one arm at the wrist, then the other.
Sophia screamed in horror.
His blood splattered against her face, spraying from his severed arteries. Tissue and gristle stuck between those jagged, curved razors. Hands freed, his head shifted back to human. He shook his arms as pink skin formed over the severed stumps. “Damn, that stings like a bitch!”
Fighting nausea and vertigo, she watched his hands regenerate. Of course, sharks. They healed fastest of any ocean shifter, so fast they could rarely be killed.
He circled her cage.
She swiped at her face, smearing his blood from her skin. Her eyes kept darting to the remains of his former hands in bits on the floor.
“I am the same as any shark on this boat, and I’m not going to live the rest of my godsdamned life in this hole. You ever tell anyone that you were anything less than terrified of me…and I’ll rip your arms from your body and leave you to be torn apart in the ocean.”
* * * * David watched with morbid fascination as Friedson cut the sedated shark’s flesh. The scalpel turned and cleanly lifted a thick flap of skin from the animal’s body. The blood pooled and then congealed almost instantly. Mottled granulation tissue rose from under the wound and the edges began to contract. David resisted blinking lest he miss a step of the process. Within the space of two breaths, thin, pink skin covered the area, and a half second later, the shark’s rubbery tail emerged unmarred.
“Impressive, huh? All ocean shifters appear to live about 250 to 325 years. But with the right engineering, shifting sharks’ life spans could—“ Friedman looked at David expectantly, and the younger scientist, rubbed his eyes, warding off the headache that had been forming all day.
Friedson noticed. “You must be exhausted from your trip.” “Yeah.” David trained his eyes back on the sleeping shark. “How can it even survive out of the water?” It seemed a silly question, with all the new and bizarre things he’d learned that day, but David had to start somewhere in making sense of it all.
The older man smiled, pulled out a syringe and inserted it into the shark’s dorsum. “Watch.”
The animal jerked once and then its body melted, sections changing shape in a grotesque metamorphosis almost faster that David’s eyes could follow. The head retreated and grew hair, arms sprouted from its side and the tail split in two until a man lay on the gurney instead of a shark. The man’s eyes shot open, and Friedson punched a syringe into his arm. The subject’s black eyes closed again.
“Human lungs. Problem is that it’s impossible to keep them sedated when they shift. The metabolism boost breaks down the drugs too fast.”
David stared in wonder at the newly-grown man. His body started to shrivel before David’s eyes.
“Oops!” Dr. Friedman drew something into a fresh syringe and injected it into the man, turning him back into a shark. “Oddly, their human form is more fragile on land. In the wild, they keep to boats and docks. Sharks have even less land range than mere.”
David pressed his glasses back up his nose and ran a hand through his hair. “And mere are mermaids?...and men?”
Friedman smiled patiently. “Mermaids are mythical creatures. They’re purported to have fish tails, and as far as Dendric can tell, they don’t exist. Mere are half-dolphin in their aquatic form.”
David’s mind roamed back to the beautiful merman…mere man…in the tank. He wondered what he would look like in human form. Shit, it really had been too long since he’d had a lover, if marine mammals were starting to look appealing.
“Let’s call it a night, shall we?” Friedman nodded toward the door. “I’ll get some of the lab techs to return this one to the tank.”
David followed the doctor out. “I’m going to take one last look in the lab.”
He wandered the wide, humid room. Bubbling tanks, beeping machines, and swishing water filled the air with sound. The merman was coiled again at the bottom of his tank. David wondered if the animal was allowed to swim in the larger aquarium ever, or if the sharks would tear him apart. At David’s approach, the merman spun, golden-blond hair billowing in a wide arc then hovering around a chiseled face.
Those eyes stared hard into his, and David felt a heated embarrassment rise under the collar of his dress shirt. He’d wanted to observe the creature, not be observed in return, and an urge to drop his gaze overwhelmed him. David snorted. His self-confidence must be rock bottom if he could be cowed by a lab animal.
A low, melodic voice sounded from the tank. “Why?”
David raised his head in surprise that the merman addressed him. Friedman had said that “Hank” never said a word to any of the staff.
“Um…” He felt strange responding to the animal like a person. “Why what?”
The merman only raised an eyebrow, which pissed David off. He was being thrown off kilter by something that until yesterday he’d thought only existed in fairy tales.
“Why am I here? Why are you here? Why is Dendric studying you? Why what?” He knew his voice rose at the end, and he hated that he was losing his cool. It reminded him of all those times kids would taunt him just to see him get all worked up and “girly” as they put it in grade school. “Faggy” as they said in junior high.
That firm-looking mouth curled up into a smirk, and David fisted his hands. He wanted…He didn’t know what he wanted to do. Maybe punch something. Either that or shove his hand in the water, grab a fistful of that hair, drag those lips to his and invade them with his tongue.
Instead, he turned on his heel and brushed aside the rubber curtain. His feet carried him out of the steam and back to the cool air conditioning and the stability of concrete walls.
Chapter 3
Dr. Donald Friedson scanned his inventory sheets, wishing desperately his mere supplier still delivered. Unfortunately, the Dendric Two currently fished near Capetown and the Dendric One was no longer in operation.
Pink clouds bruised the purple sky beyond his wide, l
ow window. Thick green foliage encroached from outside. His fingers danced along the staff’s requests for subjects and their various research proposals. He needed more sharks, and fast.
He nestled the phone against his ear, hitting three on speed-dial. The line began ringing in a tinny, faraway sound as he connected to the satellite phone Rhoaver Sharazzor carried on his yacht. It rang about twenty times, finally going to voicemail, but Friedson dialed again. The young heir slept at odd hours and often took ages to answer.
After another fifteen rings a lazy drawl answered the phone. “You have reached the number for Wang’s Special Massage. For happy endings, press one, for rub and tug, press two…”
Friedman cleared his throat to cut off the trust-fund prince’s attempt at humor. “Hello, Rhoaver. It’s Donald, Donald Friedman, you know, from…the Panama facility.” He scoffed at his care at not mentioning his company by name. Dendric brass knew perfectly well that their staff got subjects off the black market, hence DORC’s twenty million dollar per year discretionary budget.
“Freddy! I missed ya, buddy! How’ve you been?” Donald detected a slur but forged ahead, hoping that one of Rhoaver’s underlings at least would remember their conversation. “I need another shipment. Twenty at least.”
He listened as the young shark-shifter shouted at someone in the background, and then he heard the sound of a television turning on over the line.
“Can you deliver that quantity within, say, a month?” He hoped the new procedure they were developing would work. They’d lost too many subjects to side effects of the last one. And with another scientist on staff…Price wasn’t the issue with Rhoaver. The young shark might be spoiled, but he reveled in the power he held over Dendric’s operations.
“Hmm, let me think.” Friedman listened to the unmistakable sound of Rhoaver sucking air through a water-pipe.
The shark replied, his voice thick from holding his breath, “I can do that.” A long exhalation followed.
“I’ll wire the funds to the appropriate location.” Donald prepared to hang up, but a thread of hope steadied him. “Have you had any luck finding what we talked about?”
When Rhoaver didn’t answer, Friedson assumed the shark was thinking, but another loud, bubbling drag through the bong carried over the phone line. “Let me explain a little biology to you.” A series of coughs followed a long exhale. “When shark-shifters and mere do the nasty, they produce little baby mere. Same thing when dragons fuck mere. Those damn fish are like the cows of the ocean- plentiful, tasty, and easy to farm.”
Friedson rubbed at his temples. “But I’ve heard…”
In an uncharacteristically sharp moment, Rhoaver cut him off. “There is no such thing as a part-mere shark. If I found one, you know I’d deliver. Prices you’re offering? But that shit doesn’t exist.”
* * * * Raider could tell she tried not to, but every few minutes, the dragoness’s face would turn his way, as if she had a tick or something. He could tell she was just itching to talk. He hated the talkative ones.
“My name is Sophia, by the way,” she called over to where he sat on his pallet. “My parents are Russell and Alexandra Aleahar. Dragons don’t use last names much…so it gets confusing to follow family lines. Underwater City is as big and densely populated as the island of Manhattan in the US, but the nobility is a small community, so everyone pretty much knows everyone—well, everyone important that is.”
She babbled. Good, that was the first step to breaking down completely. Crayz always hovered on the edge while a newly-caught prisoner stayed sane.
The dragoness’s words continued to pour out. “Some call me Sophia the Honest, but I hate that one.”
He couldn’t stop himself from stemming the verbal onslaught. “Why?”
She stared at him, confused, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Why what? Why do they call me that, or why do I dislike it?”
Damn, this female returned his every word with fifteen of her own. “Either.”
She took a deep breath, and he could tell she was about to launch again. “Well, I suppose it’s complicated.”
I bet.
“As to why they call me that…Well, I tend to see the truth about things, even when others don’t. Like—I can usually tell when someone’s lying. I tend to know when one of the Council’s campaigns will be successful or not. And I’m not so great at keeping my mouth shut about it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then how did you get caught?’
She rolled back her shoulders and sighed. “I don’t see the future, just…well, the truth of things.”
“Seems useful.”
She scooted her butt across her cell to get closer. He tensed his muscles to stop himself from leaning forward to smell her hair. Maybe Crayz would let him bathe her, if she stayed long enough.
“You’d think it would be useful—that people would want to know the honest answer. But really, most of the time they don’t.”
Sophia pressed against the bars of the cell now, as close as she could get to him, like they were friends of something. Her thin arm twined around the metal and her coffee-colored fingers wrapped around one long pole. She placed her face against it and sighed. With a furtive hand, he adjusted the angle of his erection to appear less erect.
Sophia didn’t miss the movement. Her eyes went wide. He thought she’d scuttle back to the other end of her cell, but instead she blushed and smiled.
Oh, fuck me. “So what’s the truth about me?” He said it to get her mind off his pants, but then realized that perhaps she was right. He didn’t want to know.
“I know you’re better than this.” She said it with raised eyebrows, daring him to challenge her.
He took in the storage hold that had been his home for over ten years. Rats feasted on moldy crusts of bread in the corners. Blood, mostly his, coated some walls and several of the cage’s bars. He laughed bitterly. “I certainly hope so, sweetheart.”
She scrunched up her face in a sarcastic snarl at his response. “Yeah, pretty much every living creature is better than this.” She swept her arm to signify the room. “But you’re…I dunno. I think you’re going to do something important one day, something that will change everything.”
He moved as if electrocuted, pressing back with his legs until he reached the farthest corner of the hold. His mother had always said this same thing, until his father had swept through their habitat, burning every building to the ground in search of his mutant son.
His voice shook, but he needed to deflect her attention. “And you? What all are you destined to do?”
Sophia stood, walked back to her pallet of hay, and lay across her blanket. She spoke softly enough to only carry as a whisper. “If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that no one sees the truth about themselves.”
His eyes traveled to her neck and shoulders where they tucked under her dress. Deep indentations ducked at her collarbone. She needed more food.
He stretched his neck from side to side and then shifted to stretch lower muscle groups. “I’m going to go get some more bread and some cheese.”
Her eyebrows drew together, her face kind of cute in its confusion. “You can do that?”
“Long as no one finds out.” He gripped his manacle in one hand, and remembering himself, turned to Sophia. “I’d rather if you didn’t scream this time.” With a sharp tug, he crushed his ankle as he tore his foot free.
He heard her gasp behind closed lips. Damn, it made his cock jump when she did that. He hopped up onto his one good leg and waited for the other to heal. “I’ll be right back.”
* * * * Warm ocean licked at his skin. David dove for the sandy bottom, and skimmed wisps of sea grass, running his fingers over shells and smooth rocks. A strong hand reached out and grabbed his. David panicked, and his head whipped around to his attacker. His eyes met a deep turquoise blue. The merman’s gaze screamed with equal parts anger and want.
That firm grip pulled him in until David’s body pressed flush
along the merman’s. A solid, bare chest met David’s scratchier one. His erection nudged the rubber of the merman’s tail. Up close, David realized the creature was long and broad with a torso that went for miles.
He turned away from the beautiful vision, embarrassed by his nudity, his arousal, maybe even his humanity. But the merman gripped David’s shoulders and kissed him once, hard and fast, and then reached down to enclose David’s dick as if in a velvet vice. David groaned and bubbles rose from his lips.
Lack of air burned his lungs. He looked upward at the water’s surface far above. The merman tugged him hard. A deep ache formed at the base of David’s body, but suffocation threatened, and he pushed the merman away. David kicked, his eyes trained on the sun beyond the water’s membrane. Suddenly a dress shirt, slacks, and shoes covered his body.
The fabrics held water, and the shoes dragged him down. The merman appeared, again tearing at David’s clothes. At first David helped, eager to shed what held him back, but the merman thrust his arms under David’s open shirt and dragged him into another embrace.
David’s lungs screamed for air, and he struggled in the merman’s arms. The movement rubbed his aching arousal against the creature and drained the last of the oxygen from his thirsty blood. Wrenching himself free, he thrashed wildly toward the sky.
* * * * The alarm’s high-pitched beep launched David upright. Sweaty and twisted sheets wrapped around his flailing limbs. He gasped for air. In the corner, a windowsill air conditioner was losing its battle against the suffocating heat. He took a steadying breath.
He showered and dressed for work, but hours later, David still couldn’t shake the dream from his mind. His brain kept skimming to the merman’s face and remembering the feel of that firm, smooth body. In his office, sounds of the lab buzzed quietly in the background, tempting him back to the tanks.
His computer blinked on, and he entered his several levels of passwords. Then he opened his Outlook folders and reassessed his color-coding system. He logged onto his Kanban dashboard and organized his priorities, the first being to continue his study of the mountain information on Ocean Shifter species provided by Dr. Friedson.