“We don’t have time for honorable,” Sam declared. “We have a kingdom to save.”
* * *
—
Vance Vantana was in his full ranger uniform when he escorted Princess Iaira into the parking garage beneath the Eklund Energy building. He thought it would give him more credibility if he appeared to be a law enforcement official, rather than a driver, as Sam had initially suggested. The doctor had his arm draped around Iaira in a protective manner, and she had her head down, her face hidden with a scarf, as if trying to avoid the prying cameras of the paparazzi. As they approached the service elevator, which was in a corner beyond the main bank of elevators, Vantana spotted not one but two security guards.
“I guess Tashi was right,” Vance whispered. “Looks like Lief beefed up security.” This was definitely a red flag for the doctor and potentially disastrous for the Department of Mythical Wildlife. They were walking right into the hands of a very wealthy and powerful individual who knew Iaira’s true nature and might have been exploiting her for his own benefit. As they arrived at the service elevator, Vantana just hoped it wasn’t too late to stop Lief from exposing Iaira and her kind.
“This isn’t a public entrance,” the taller of the two guards said. “The building’s main elevators are behind you.”
“We’d love to use them,” Vance told him, “but we can’t risk her being spotted.” With that, Iaira removed the scarf and revealed herself. The guards were stunned.
“Ms.—Ms. Eklund?” the other guard stammered.
“I’ve come back from my mission earlier than planned,” she explained. “I was hoping to surprise my father. Thankfully, this lovely park ranger helped whisk me away from some reporters who were staking out the airport. They must have been tipped off.”
“Good to see you,” the tall guard said cautiously. “Call it in,” he told his partner. Then he turned back to Iaira to explain. “We have orders to contact your father as soon as you return home.”
“Well, that’s weird,” Iaira replied. “He knows I’m on a mission…unless he already knows I’m coming to surprise him and he’s got something planned. Like a party.” She pretended to be excited at the thought. The guards looked at her blankly.
“Mr. Eklund isn’t here,” the other guard said. “He’s on an expedition aboard the new drilling ship.”
“Right, of course,” Iaira responded, as if she’d just remembered.
“Hold on. Aren’t you that guy from San Francisco?” the tall guard said to Vance as he eyed the ranger more closely. Uh-oh, the doctor thought. The tall guard’s demeanor changed and he reached for his earpiece.
“I’m calling this in,” the guard announced.
“Enough chitchat,” Vantana said. “Tashi?”
“Who’s Tashi?” the other guard asked.
“I am,” the Guardian proclaimed. The guards spun around as Tashi bowed. Then she leapt up, delivering a flying kick to the tall guard’s face. When she landed on the floor, she twirled her shekchen and touched the tip to the other guard. He took a massive jolt and dropped like a rock. “Sam?” Tashi called out. Sam popped up from behind a parked car, and the four made a beeline into the service elevator.
“I think it best that we split up and look around before those guards wake up or someone finds them sleeping on the job,” Vance told the others, who nodded their agreement as the elevator neared the Eklund penthouse. “If you find anything, holler.”
The doors opened, and they all went off in opposite directions. The penthouse that Pearl had called home was easily the most luxurious apartment Vance had ever seen. It was eight thousand immaculately appointed square feet filled with priceless art and furniture, located atop one of Miami’s tallest buildings. Once outside the elevator, Vance headed to his right through a foyer that acted as a connector to the various rooms at the far end of the penthouse. This foyer contained an aquarium so large, it could have been a diving tank. He stepped quickly past it and through a doorway into what turned out to be a study.
Like the rest of the penthouse, the room was beautifully furnished and contained a fainting couch, two chairs, a large mahogany desk, and a matching built-in bookcase with cabinets and drawers, as well as shelves filled with photographs and books. Vance walked to the drawers behind the desk and began looking for clues. The first drawer he pulled open contained letterhead and envelopes, but the second had a digital recorder, pads with handwritten notes, and a stack of memory cards. The cards were in plastic cases that were labeled with the words “Syrenis,” “Gorgonas,” and “Vannari.” Vance instantly recognized them as the names of the mer-people colonies that had been compromised by the methane hydrate drilling. Lief’s connection to the plight of the mer-people and selkies was looking more incriminating by the minute. He slipped one of the memory cards into the recorder and pressed play. But instead of Lief, Vantana heard a woman’s voice.
“Pearl? Can you hear my voice?” the woman said. That must be the Dr. Hawkins that Iaira mentioned, Vance concluded.
“Yes,” Iaira answered robotically. The princess sounded as if she were in a trance. Her response came out in a monotone, staccato fashion.
“Good. I need you to think back, back to before your boating accident,” Hawkins said. “Can you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Your real home…do you remember it?” the psychiatrist asked.
“Ta Cathair…,” Iaira said wistfully.
“I need you to tell me where it is….I need to take you back there. Where is it, Iaira?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“I have asked you countless times, Iaira,” Dr. Hawkins said. “You will upset your father if you again refuse to tell me.”
“I don’t know,” the girl replied once more, her voice cracking as if she were pained.
“Tell me now!” Hawkins declared angrily, her voice deep and menacing. Vantana could hear Iaira crying softly on the recording.
“I don’t know,” she said meekly through tears.
“Fine,” the woman told her in a suddenly calm, sweet demeanor. “I will ask again later and I won’t tell your father you refused. You do want to make him happy, don’t you?”
“I do,” Iaira responded.
“Good. Fortunately, I have another way for you to please him. He wishes to know where he can find a place called Syrenis.” There was a long pause, before Hawkins added, “It is just a colony. Surely you can tell me where it lies.”
“Syrenis…is in the Middle Sea in the Calypso Deep….” Vance clicked off the recording, having heard more than enough to make him sick to his stomach. Iaira had confessed the locations to Dr. Hawkins, who must have been working for Lief. The psychiatrist was not intending to help Iaira deal with the fake loss of her parents—she was trying to procure information from Iaira through hypnosis. But something still felt off. How did the psychiatrist know Iaira’s real name, as well as the existence of Ta Cathair and the colonies? It was possible that Iaira had talked about them in earlier sessions and revealed their abundance of methane hydrate, Vance postulated, running his finger along the memory cards. Whatever the case, it was clear that these humans were exploiting the princess for their own personal gain.
The doctor gathered up the cards, notes, and recorder and headed out of the study. As he stepped back into the foyer, Vantana got a better look at the massive aquarium that sat close to the wall and took up most of the space. This time he took note of the horrendous quality of the water. It appeared as though the tank hadn’t been cleaned in quite a while. Did the filter break? he wondered. Lief clearly loved fish, yet this aquarium didn’t appear to house any. The water was murky and seemingly devoid of life.
“Dr. Vantana?” Vance heard Tashi call. He glanced over to see the Guardian approaching from one of the other rooms.
“What’s up?”
“I
believe I have found a secret room in the library. It is behind the bookshelves,” she revealed. “Though, I have not determined how to enter.”
“Interesting. I found something too. Looks like Doc Hawkins wasn’t on the up-and-up,” Vantana informed her. “We should talk to Iaira,” he added. Then he eyed the aquarium once more. “Tashi, does it strike you as strange that there’s a big ol’ aquarium in this room with no fish in it?”
“How can you see there are no fish?” she asked. It was a valid point, but no fish had swum close to the glass for the entire time Vance had been staring at it. Surely he would have seen one or two. “What does occur to me as strange, however, is that there are stairs behind it, leading up to the top of the tank.” Vance raised an eyebrow and moved to the rear of the aquarium to get a look. As Tashi had indicated, there was a steep set of wooden stairs that had been pushed up against the back of it.
“Maybe Lief uses it to practice diving,” Vance suggested. He climbed the stairs and gazed down into the forest-green liquid. The water appeared to be covered with green algae. Vance kneeled down for a better look, then leaned over and sniffed the water. It had a strong scent of rotting fish. He grimaced as the putrid stench entered his nostrils. Then he thought he saw a flicker. A fish, perhaps? In this muck? He eyed the water for another sign. Without warning, a webbed hand with long, thin fingers sprang from the water, clutched Vance Vantana’s face, and pulled him in.
Sam London didn’t care for surprises. He didn’t even care for the idea of surprise birthday parties. In fact, he made his mother promise to never surprise him with one. The thought of having a bunch of people jump out and scare the living daylights out of the honoree of the party was not appealing in the least. Birthday parties were something to look forward to, not to be lied to about. Of course, there were exceptions to Sam’s surprise aversion, including surprise gifts, treats, and trips to the amusement park. But surprises meant to shock or stun an individual were not his cup of cocoa. Case in point, the surprise he received on the day he returned to Eklund Energy.
Sam London had already torn apart Lief’s master bedroom searching for any clues regarding the energy magnate’s involvement with Maris’s disappearance or the drilling beneath Ta Cathair’s colonies. Unfortunately, he’d had no luck on either of those fronts, so he decided to check on how Tashi and Vance were faring. Approaching the north side of the apartment, he looked ahead to the foyer and saw a puddle of water beside a massive aquarium. Was that puddle there before? he wondered. As he went to take a closer look, he heard two female voices from the other room—one was unfamiliar to him, but the other was definitely Iaira’s. He turned and headed toward the living room. Rounding the corner, he spotted the princess on the couch, staring straight ahead, and a woman standing beside her.
“Sam London, is it?” the woman inquired, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m Dr. Hawkins. A pleasure to meet you.” She reached out her hand to shake Sam’s, but he shifted his eyes to Iaira, who appeared to be in a trance.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Iaira and I were just having a little chat,” Dr. Hawkins explained. Sam’s heart took a trip to his throat.
“Did you just say ‘Iaira’?” Sam asked. How would Hawkins have known that was Pearl’s real name?
The doctor let out a long, slow, menacing laugh, and that was when Sam noticed a trail of water that led from the puddle near the aquarium all the way to the doctor’s feet. He looked back to find that the doctor’s face was now pulsating as she laughed. Her skin bubbled up and began to disappear, as though it were being absorbed back into her body, leaving just a scaly, slimy surface behind. Her eyes moved farther apart across her face, then grew larger into vertical oval shapes that turned yellow as Sam watched in horror.
“Surprise!” Dr. Hawkins said with a monstrous smile. Sam’s eyes turned to saucers. “Mr. London. I want to thank you for all of your help. I will have to kill you, of course. But I did want to express my appreciation.”
Sam didn’t have a weapon to fight off the creature, but he did have reflexes, and quick ones, at that. There was a tall, circular glass table in front of him. It had a large—likely priceless—vase on it. He pushed the table as hard as he could toward the monster, who leapt back to avoid it. The vase and table shattered on the floor, and the noise was enough to snap Iaira from her trance.
She spotted the creature and screamed, “Finfolk!”
“C’mon!” Sam yelled, grabbing Iaira’s hand and pulling her off the couch. They ran toward the study. “We have to warn Vance and Tashi.”
“There’s nowhere to run,” the monster chided with an evil snarl as she stalked after the pair.
When they reached the study, they found Vance and Tashi soaking wet and unconscious on the floor. Their hands and feet were bound in seaweed. Sam could hear the creature walking toward them, her wet webbed feet slapping against the marble floor like suction cups.
“Wake up!” Sam yelled as he shook Vance, but there was no response.
“They can’t help you now,” the monster sneered. She stood in the entryway near the aquarium. Sam and Iaira took off down the other hallway, and the creature tracked them from a parallel hall, effectively blocking their access to the exit. As they reached the south end of the apartment, the finfolk leapt out in front of them. Iaira screamed, and Sam pulled her into the nearest room and slammed the door shut. It was Iaira’s bedroom, and the two began pushing the furniture in front of the door. A nightstand, table, chairs—anything they could find and had the strength to move.
“This is not going to hold that thing!” Iaira cried as a snarl reverberated from the hall. “The finfolk are very strong…and they have magic. We can’t fight it.”
“I know,” Sam told her. “We need a plan.”
“Can we call the police?” she asked.
“And tell them what? We’re being chased by a mythical sea monster? Even if they did come, who knows what that creature is capable of. She could shape-shift and convince them of anything.”
Thwack! The monster banged against the door.
“Come out, and I’ll let one of you live,” she said. “On second thought…” She banged again, but this time the wood splintered and the door buckled. They had a minute, maybe less, before it was curtains for them. Sam quickly scanned the room and spotted a laptop on the desk, and a lightbulb blinked on in his head.
“We need reinforcements. And I know just where to find them.”
* * *
—
Vance Vantana had wrestled a few alligators in his youth, but that was literal and figurative child’s play compared to the creature that pulled him into the aquarium in the Eklund penthouse. Of course, he was caught completely off guard and didn’t have a chance to take in a full breath. Stopping to form gills would have taken him out of the fight completely, so he held what little air he had in his lungs and struggled against the monster in the water—a monster he couldn’t see. The water was so thick with algae and other debris that he was unable to get his eyes on his opponent, but he could certainly feel the beast. Scaly hands were on him, pushing him downward, no doubt expecting him to drown. The doctor felt a rush of water—Tashi dove in to help. But the creature was unfazed by the Guardian’s attempt and grabbed both of them by their necks, before leaping out of the aquarium. The monster landed just outside the tank and threw the two onto the floor like sacks of potatoes. It quickly raised its hands and made a clawing gesture. Vantana felt his body freeze, but the sensation wasn’t like the paralysis he’d experienced with a banshee. That was a neurological seizing up, and this felt like being physically held down by an invisible force.
Vance immediately recognized the creature standing before them as finfolk. They were a legendary race of magical, shape-shifting sea creatures from Orkney mythology. Until this moment he had assumed they had all died out. No one had seen the finfolk for centuries
. According to mer-people and selkie history, the creatures disappeared after their defeat at Ta Cathair. But here one stood. The doctor struggled against the enchantment that was keeping him from moving, but to no avail. Tashi was attempting to break free as well, with no luck.
“Human…as weak as all the others of your kind,” the creature said to Vance, before shifting her eyes to Tashi. She appeared amused by the Guardian’s inability to overcome the enchantment. “I expected more from you. But it appears the gryphon did not give you much magical protection. Oh, he made you formidable. Strong and immortal, if the rumors are true. But you can be stopped quite easily.” Vantana instantly recognized her voice as the one on the digital recordings. This creature must have shape-shifted and posed as Iaira’s therapist all this time in order to extract information. Before Vance could say a word, the finfolk suddenly clenched her fists and hissed. Vance’s eyes closed against his will and he lost consciousness.
* * *
* * *
Vance couldn’t tell how long he had been out, but when he awoke, things had changed—and not for the better. He was sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall of the study. His hands and feet were bound in seaweed, and the creature loomed over him.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said in a mocking tone. “I brought you some friends.” Vance glanced to his right to find an alert Sam and Iaira sitting next to him, tied up as well. Tashi was on his other side, also awake.
“Everyone okay?” Vance asked.
“Not exactly,” Sam answered.
“I’m so sorry,” Iaira said. “It was all my fault. All of it.”
“She used dark magic on you, Iaira,” Vance reminded her. “There was nothing you could do.”
“I betrayed my people by abandoning them, and then I betrayed them again by exposing them,” Iaira said.
“You sealed their fate, as well as your own,” the creature remarked with a slimy grin.
The Selkie of San Francisco Page 24