Heart of Siren (Merworld Book 1)

by D. N. Leo

  Chapter 38

  Jo galloped toward the entrance of the dome where they had parked the shell. Tadgh was right behind her.

  She had sent a signal to the vehicle earlier, and Clines had responded, saying he was waiting and getting the shell ready for them. But her instincts suggested otherwise.

  The departure from the gaxanxi palace was too smooth and uneventful given what Lavinia had told her before Tadgh came back from the battle. Tamari was sent to her bedchamber. Lavinia saw them to the door. That was it.

  It was too good to be true.

  Jo yanked the door of the vehicle open. Except for a large pool of blood, there was no sign of Clines. She didn’t know how to contact him or where he had gone. If he didn’t go with them to Eudaiz, he would soon be dead.

  Tadgh grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “Stop spinning around, Jo. It doesn’t help. Do you want to go back to the rebel dome to look for him?”

  She looked at Tadgh and remembered her thoughts and plans at the palace. She needed to get Tadgh out of this mysterious universe. They needed to get back to Eudaiz. Plus, Ciaran might be waiting for them on land right now. If they took no action, he would assume the worst and might go to war to get them back.

  “We need to leave, right now.”

  Tadgh kissed her forehead. “Clines will understand. I’m sure of it.” Then he completed some maneuvers at the control panel and accelerated the vehicle. Jo watched as they passed multiple dimensional gateways in mere minutes. It wasn’t a simple swim to the surface, and she was glad they had the shell to travel in.

  On the way down, the gateways had been wide open for them. But now they literally had to jump through hoops to make their way back to the surface.

  “We’re nearly home, Jo,” Tadgh said, pointing up to where they could see the light above the surface of the water.

  Jo nodded. “This is Earth’s dimension. We have to get out of the vehicle and swim the rest of the way up. I know how much you love swimming, Tadgh.”

  She smiled at him. He grinned, kissed her cheek, and took her hand. They got out of the shell and turned their eudqi on so they could breathe under the sea. Then they kicked their feet in the water and rose to the surface.

  Sunlight.

  Jo had never been so happy to see the sun.

  It was about two hundred yards more to the beach of Block Island, New York. The air around them wavered slightly, and the images around them flickered and darkened a few shades. The sunlight dimmed significantly.

  “That’s Ciaran,” Jo said.

  Ciaran would have already navigated toward their position and connected them with a cross-world transitional zone so that he could beam them home. To ordinary human eyes in Block Island, it would be just another sunny day. They wouldn’t see what was happening in another dimension, although it was occurring right next to them.

  On the beach, Ciaran stood smiling next to the latest XDR90056 model of the fastest spaceship in Eudaiz. A short distance away, a line of top-ranked commanders hovered in position in their combat machines, waiting.

  Jo knew Ciaran’s plans. If they were attacked, these commanders would crush any size army surfacing from under the sea.

  “That’s a bit of overkill, don’t you think?” Tadgh grinned. “Why didn’t he bring a boat to pick us up?”

  “Come on, don’t be a prince. Let’s get to land, Tadgh. Ciaran couldn’t possibly know exactly where we would surface.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Suddenly, she felt a suction from below them in the water. They still had their eudqi on, so they could swim quickly through the water which had started to whirl around them.

  They both swam as fast as they could.

  From the shore, Ciaran had seen the situation. He entered his spaceship.

  In addition to the downward suction, the water behind them began to rise up. Tadgh swam with one hand and pushed Jo with the other. She pushed him away, as she could swim herself.

  From the water, a giant stingray shot up to the surface. It had huge wings, and its body lifted from the surface of the sea as if it could fly. This was no ordinary stingray. Jo knew it was the same one that had attacked Tadgh. Tadgh knew it was after him, not Jo. He swam away from her.

  She couldn’t stop him from leaving her, but she knew it wouldn’t solve the problem. That stingray knew his weakness. It knew his fatal point. At the moment, he had his eudqi on, and a fatal hit could come to him at any moment.

  She waved at Ciaran’s oncoming ship. He flew slowly and hovered over the sea because he didn’t know what was happening. Jo couldn’t communicate with him. She knew Ciaran wanted to pick them up, but that wasn’t going to work, given their current predicament.

  Jo waved and pointed at Tadgh.

  She knew exactly what Tadgh would do. He would face the stingray, and to do that, he would have to switch off his superpower.

  Ciaran fired a beam from his spaceship at the stingray. Jo wasn’t surprised when it had no impact. The stingray flew at Tadgh, and as she predicted, he turned off his eudqi.

  The stingray wrapped its tail around Tadgh and dragged him down. Without his eudqi, Tadgh would drown.

  The stingray sank into the depths of the sea with Tadgh.

  Jo swam toward the swirling water to go down with him. Then she felt the water split, and she was sucked into the spaceship, with Ciaran at the control panel. The spaceship sealed after she was inside, and Ciaran dove after the giant fish that had already crossed several dimensional gateways with Tadgh.

  The light from the sky darkened above them as the water closed around them, and Nepolymbus, once again, opened its welcome gate for them, whether they liked it or not.

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  BONUS - PISCES - MERWORLD PROLOGUE

  Prologue

  The beginning of time.

  He picked up a ball of dirt hardened by time, space, and dimensional shifting and nursed it in his hands. This piece of land was a haven for him, a place where he could harvest the material to make his keys.

  People called him Keymaster.

  He didn't make just any keys. His keys unlocked sources of energy and power that all creatures in every world would kill for. He considered himself an artist in the key-making business.

  He had come from nothing. He didn’t know how he was created. He hadn’t had a shape, let alone a name. He couldn’t remember exactly when what he did had become his name, but he was more than happy to accept the name given to him by his clients.

  As for his form, he had gone through some trial and error before settling on his now human shape.

  He was a collection of energy. His creator—whom he didn’t know—had made him for a purpose. When he’d grown strong and had taken control of his own actions, his creator was no longer important to him, so he had terminated him. It had probably been too soon to kill his master—he hadn't yet had a chance to discover his purpose, what he had been created for.

  He’d wandered around the multiverse in search of a purpose and had taken many shapes and forms in many worlds. But in the material world, the human shape had appealed to him most, so that was the shape he adopted. He was attracted to the everchanging skin tone of the Eudaizians, but he did not like their minds. Some might look at them as innocent, but to him, they were simply too naive.

  He had the mind of the underworld. Not only did he like it, he planned to keep his mind sharp for eternity.

  The ball of dirt in his palms stared up at him. He transfused some energy into it. It looked happy, he thought. He had made several keys over the years, but this one was the most special. He chuckled at that thought. He’d thought the same thing when he made his second key.

  “Damn!” He cursed when the ball melted and exploded in his palms.

  He blew gently at the burns on his palms, and soon the skin returned to its usual light blue tone. Right now, that was his favorite skin color. In a few hundred years, when
he was bored with this color, he might consider changing to another.

  “Too much mercury,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head to clear his mind. This experimental key was a bad idea. He should return to his usual method of key making and look for the main ingredient—precious stone.

  Hunger pains clawed at his stomach. Looking around him, he noticed a slight movement in a small shrub nearby. He sniffed the air and smelled the faint scent of flesh and blood.

  “I'm stronger than you think,” he growled. He hadn’t killed his creator for no reason. He’d been a good student—until his creator told him he was weak and couldn’t resist the temptation to kill.

  He made powerful keys and had saved thousands of creatures. He didn’t see the harm in killing just a handful of them. The multiverse would be less crowded for it.

  He hadn’t asked to be created. Thus, if he killed, that was the responsibility of his creator. He thirsted for blood, and he needed to kill…now.

  He strode toward the little bush, pushing away the weeds and tall grass.

  In front of him, sitting on a soft nest of wild daisies and feathers and smiling up at him, was a baby angel. Her little angel wings were as tiny as the hand-fans he saw the goddesses at the Babylonian court use for no apparent purpose other than decoration.

  “Aaa brbrb.”

  The baby curved her lips and cooed, then made other noises that made no sense to him. She flapped her fancy little wings.

  “You know I'm a predator, and I'm hungry, right?”

  “Arrhh,” said the baby.

  “If you want to fly, you’ll have to flap your wings harder than that. And if you want to communicate, you’ll have to use a different language. I don't speak baby…if that's what it is.”

  The angel made more cheerful cooing noises and clapped her little hands.

  He was about to leave but then saw what he had been seeking for a very long time. He shook his head and couldn't believe his eyes. Just behind the baby angel, a colorful piece of rock blinked up at him.

  “What have we here?” he muttered. He reached over the baby and grabbed the rock, trying to pull it up from the ground. It was heavier than he’d thought. He shifted and looked at the baby angel.

  “I’m going to have to move you aside for a bit. I need that rock, and you’re right in my way.”

  “Braaa.”

  “I have no idea what that means, but I’ll take it as a yes.” He lifted the angel gingerly out of the way and kicked up some grass and wildflowers to make a soft surface before placing her on the ground behind him.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll put you back when I’m finished with this rock. Your mother will never know you’ve been moved. Okay? So keep quiet.”

  “Ahrrr.” Clap. Clap. Clap.

  He shook his head, turned around, and started digging at the base of the rock. He realized it wasn’t as heavy as he’d thought—it was just half buried in the ground.

  He’d seen this material before. On Earth, they called it jade. He liked its light green color. It was extremely rare to see jade on this elusive piece of land. He pushed the tall grass and weeds aside, brushed off some dirt, and smiled at the jade rock.

  He continued to scoop out the dirt along the side of the rock. It was much bigger that he’d thought.

  Then he smelled it—the scent of fresh meat and blood. His stomach gave a hungry growl. He shook the thought and the temptation away and kept digging. When he pushed the next little bunch of grass away, a feathered wing dropped out.

  Startled, he jerked back, falling on his backside.

  Gathering himself together, he approached the bush again. He had seen many dead creatures before. He’d killed some of them himself. After all, he was a predator.

  But something about this one made his stomach churn.

  He finished clearing the bush away and found the body of a woman. He knew an angel when he saw one, and he didn’t need proof to know she was the mother of the baby behind him. He had never been on good terms with angelic creatures and didn’t know them well. But one thing he knew for certain—you never saw the dead body of an angel. They dissolved into light when they died.

  The only reason he was seeing this dead body was that her death had been undignified. She had unfinished business—her child—and she would come back. He didn’t know what the angel had done, or what she would have to do to get back to the predator that killed her. And there was no reason for him to get tangled up in this.

  Before turning back toward the baby, he inched over to the edge of the cliff and peered down. On the ground below was the body of a male angel, his body just as damaged as the female’s.

  That must be the husband. Another angry angel spirit with unfinished business.

  He shook his head.

  He bent down, jiggled the piece of rock he had been working to loosen. The blood of the mother angel had soaked into a part of the rock, turning it an edgy amber color. Her white feathers and her milky skin had turned another part of the rock a shiny white.

  He wanted the jade, but there was no time to break the entire rock to get to it. He didn’t want to be here when the angry spirits of the parent angels came back, or when more predators came to finish off what the others had left. He didn’t need drama in his immortal life. He heaved the entire rock up onto his shoulder and walked away with it.

  Behind him, the baby angel clapped her hands and flapped little wings that would fly nowhere.

  Chapter 1

  Earth 2017.

  Lorcan reluctantly peeled the tiny recording and tracking device out from under the left sleeve of his shirt. This project and client were much too important for him to mess around. He couldn’t afford to have his cover blown by an amateurish mistake at this critical stage.

  He looked in the mirror and adjusted his tuxedo and neatened his hair to ensure he had the million dollar looks his cover required. One last job, and he'd have enough to retire from this line of spy work. Then he could focus on his tech job and spend more time with Orla, the love of his life. Retirement wasn’t his focus, but a proposal was. He wanted to buy a beautiful ring and propose to Orla. Just thinking about it made him smile.

  Admittedly, both his tech job and his spy job involved stealing information. But he only stole from the worst kind of criminals. As far as he was concerned, his work was justified. Last month, he had given an anonymous tip to the police based on some stolen information, and his tip had helped stop an armed robbery at a major bank. Didn’t that count for something? he thought.

  The phone rang.

  “Your transport has arrived, sir,” the concierge said.

  “Thank you. I'll be right down.”

  Adopting a polished accent wasn't too much of a stretch for him. Sometimes he wondered why he'd never told his parents he appreciated his privileged background and what they had given him. But what was the point? He shrugged absently. He’d been a runaway child, the black sheep in his family.

  The target didn't trust him with information, so he had no idea where the party would be. As predicted, they sent him the most conspicuous limousine available in the country. He reciprocated by letting the target pick him up from the most exclusive hotel in London—one he’d booked by charging the client thirty percent more.

  Big jobs cost big money. And they knew his rates weren’t cheap.

  The limousine dropped him off at a yacht club in Brighton. He mentally rehearsed the steps and strategies once more before stepping onto the dark blue carpet, carpet so thick his shoes sank an inch when he set foot on it.

  He chuckled inside as he entertained a vision of these pretentious upper-class criminals scrambling around after discovering he had robbed them of their precious artifact. What it was exactly, he had no idea, and he didn’t care. His job was to steal it and bring it back to the man who had hired him. He never got too attached to the details of a job because attachment was the first step to disaster. Spy and Thief Practice 101.

  He kept his shoulders back and his hea
d high, and he looked like any other aloof businessman going to a prestigious party. A flash of anxiety crossed Lorcan’s mind when he saw the entrance to a lavish lounge room on the boat and a group of polished-to-the-bone people having pre-dinner drinks.

  Something felt seriously wrong.

  He didn’t usually operate on hunches, but he couldn’t squelch his intensifying unease. He inhaled discreetly, hoping to shake off the feeling, and he walked toward the bar, sitting down nonchalantly on one of the stools. He positioned himself to keep an eye out for the target. A loud air horn went off, making the yacht rumble a little. He looked askance at the bartender.

  The bartender smiled politely. “It’s just a signal that the boat is casting off,” he said.

  Lorcan maintained his composure, nodded, and ordered another drink. He hadn’t realized the boat would be casting off at all. He thought it would remain in the harbor, making it easy for him to escape once he had what he wanted. He didn’t like swimming. Swimming from just outside the harbor was bad enough, but he didn’t at all like the idea of having to swim from open sea to the shore, especially when it hadn’t been a part of his plans.

  He thought of Orla again and smiled to himself. She would have laughed at him right now, seeing his reaction at the boat leaving shore. She could swim like a fish, but swimming was definitely not his forte.

  Ten minutes or so went by after the boat had left the harbor, and he still hadn’t found his target, the host of the party. The man had to be on board. A stunning blonde woman in a long, blood-red velvet dress walked toward him. He had no desire to engage in conversation, so he turned quickly and pretended to look for the lavatory. On his way, he glanced up at the VIP section of the balcony above and behind the bar, and he froze. There he was, the business tycoon who dabbled in electronics—his target.