Winter's Mermaid (Mermaid Series Book 1)

by Dan Glover

  "That depends... I need to find my colleague before I'm able to go back home. She has some important information that I require to complete my research."

  "So this person is a thief? Shall we involve the authorities?"

  "Oh no... nothing like that. She simply does not realize how important to me the papers are that she carries. I'm positive that she will relinquish the needed information once I make it clear to her how desperate that I am."

  "You'll have to pardon me, Karen, if I say she sounds like quite an unsavory character to be mixed up with."

  "In truth you're more correct than mistaken in that assessment, Alex. I might require your assistance should things not go as well as I hope. Do you feel up to it?"

  "Do I detect an air of intrigue?"

  "Can you keep a secret, Alex?"

  She knew the best way of gaining an ally was to involve them in a clandestine plot for the betterment of as many people as possible. Laying her hand on top of his she again felt an instant revulsion. Damn all the men of the world, anyway. Must they always be so sweaty and rough?

  "I should say I can keep one as well as the next person."

  "I happen to be working on solving the greatest medical mystery the world has ever known. If I'm successful in retrieving what I require... well, it may lead to an enormous breakthrough that will positively affect the lives of every single person on the planet."

  She bit into her toasted cheese sandwich while watching the wheels in Abercrombie's head go round and round. Her food tasted as if it had been fried in buttered shit. Putting a napkin to her mouth she spit it out, balled up the napkin, and placed it discreetly beside her plate.

  "Are you working on a cure for cancer, Karen?"

  "Something along those lines, yes."

  "My mum died of the cancer just last year. She had a time of it too. Count me in... I'll do whatever I can to help you."

  "I'm so sorry to hear of your loss, Alex. If we're successful no one will ever have to suffer the way your poor mother did. I can promise you that. Tell me, what do you do for a living?"

  "Most of my adult life was spent as an accountant. After mum passed the lawyers rang me up to inform me that I was left with a sizeable inheritance. I never cared much for numbers, if truth is told, so I gave up my career in business to become a travel writer."

  "Bully for you, Alex! Perhaps you might even write of our exploits someday."

  "I believe there is much fodder here for a great story, Karen."

  "When do you expect to hear from your acquaintances as to the whereabouts of Orchardton Hall?"

  She had of course scoured the Internet for the location of the castle but oddly came up empty in the search. Someone either didn't care about the castle or else cared enough to keep it as private as possible. She had begun to wonder if the postcard she found at the cabin in Russia was in fact planted there to lead her astray.

  Lily was no idiot. It would be just like her to leave false signs lying about while taking off for parts unknown... especially if she had taken up with someone as adept as her partner seemed to be. The fact that the woman could fell Hector with a single blow impressed Karen perhaps more than it should.

  "Why can't we just let her go, Hector?"

  Her own words came back to haunt her. Maybe it would be better for all involved if she called off the hunt for Lily. Still, she was in too deep, maybe, to turn back now. If she gave up, questions of immortality would doubtlessly haunt her for the rest of her life.

  "Being as it is Sunday I sincerely doubt I will know anything until tomorrow... I'm sorry, Karen. I know you're anxious to find your colleague."

  "I'm very tired, Alex. I fear the jet lag is catching up to me. Is there a place nearby where Mr. Abercrombie calls home?"

  Chapter 56—Turning Point

  Lily saw Nate as a reluctant leader.

  She often counseled him to be more assertive yet she understood it wasn’t in his nature to command others. Rather, he tended to lead by example and often times seemed frustrated when the People attempted to take advantage of him.

  "Don't they realize the work we're doing is for the good of them all?"

  They were in his shop where he was completing the assembly of a solar panel which would need to be mounted on the roof of the castle to be effective at gathering the maximum amount of sunlight. Several of those he asked for assistance balked in doing the task.

  "Don't worry, sweetie. Between you, me, and Lauren we can manage to set it in place."

  "That isn’t the point though, lovely Lily. Everyone stands to benefit from this. Why should we be the only ones doing the work? I just don't get it."

  Lily had no answer. She understood Nate's frustrations all too well having dealt with the People herself over the years. When Kirk was pardoned and allowed to stay on she had real hopes that the boy might one day become a useful citizen. Instead he had done nothing but undermine the authority of the Ladies.

  As the only human male left on earth he seemed to take pride in impregnating as many girls as he could, always proclaiming his hopes at producing a male heir. Like Drummond, the girls seemed to flock to Kirk despite his dull wits and lethargic attitude toward doing anything to assist in the chores necessary to keep a large estate like Orchardton Hall functioning.

  "We should have exiled Kirk when we had the opportunity, darling Lily. I know it's partly my fault he is still here."

  Nate seemed to have a knack of reading her mind which Lily had come to accept. In some ways it pleased her to be so close to him and yet that propensity of his didn’t lend her the privacy she sometimes needed.

  "No one can know what the future holds, darling Nate. It may well be that Kirk will yet play a pivotal role in our evolution. I know among my kind it often takes thousands of years for some individuals to mature even though they seem to be adults. Kirk too may find himself with the passage of time."

  Karen gave birth to Sileas on old Christmas Day nearly two years after what came to be known as the Day of Reckoning. Like Maon she was the first of her kind, a hybrid species made up of both the old and the new.

  Lily heard rumors of how the birth of Sileas was looked upon with both awe and fear among the People. Perhaps they saw their own end coming. She often talked with Ginger and Amanda who had become de facto leaders in their own right having helped the Ladies to avoid Marilyn's web of deceit.

  "I hate to think that Kirk will be the last man, Lady Lily. He is such a stooge. What a pitiful way for human beings to end."

  "There are no endings, sweetest Ginger... only new beginnings. With the birth of Maon and now Sileas, a new chapter starts for both our kinds."

  "If Karen could help Natalia give birth to Nate, why can't she help one of us give birth to a male child, Lady Lily?"

  "Even if this were possible, to what ends will this procedure lead, darling Amanda? A human male will only have the ability to produce female offspring. That was why Karen worked so hard to help Natalia have a chance at bearing a male child."

  "But Nate isn’t human."

  "He is not of my kind either; dear Ginger... he is all our hopes for the future. Without Nate the People would be a gathering of women taking turns with the only male left in existence. With Nate we have the opportunity to propagate once again. You are right that these new offspring will not be purely humans. This is not a reason to fear them, however."

  "Will there ever be another man besides Kirk, Lady Lily? I so wish for a child but I loathe that man."

  "Yes, my precious Amanda... I promise other men will emerge. Be patient, my sweet child. In the dawning centuries many men will appear. You will find one who treats you as you deserve. I see this in my dreams."

  "I like talking to you, Lady Lily. You make me feel like everything is going to be better."

  "I am happy I can do that for you, lovely Ginger. Remember... you are immortal. These years that now slip by so slowly will one day blossom into eons. You will live to see the whole world populated again, and this time
there will be no wars, no hatred."

  As the girls walked away Lily thought of Nate's gentle demeanor and the wonder of a world full of such beings. Even the stars seemed to be awaiting a visit from this new species.

  "I've found an old airplane, lovely Lily. I believe I can make it fly. Think how much faster we can make it to Lake Baikal."

  "Please be careful, my darling Nate. Those old machines may break down while you are high in the air. I do not wish to lose you in such a manner."

  She knew better than to forbid Nate to fly the old machines. And besides, he was right. If they flew to Lake Baikal they would make the journey in hours rather than days. Though Nate was now working on a small single engine craft she knew jet liners were parked inside hangers in Aberdeen awaiting the day when someone learned to once again make them fly.

  Like it or not, Nate was the leader now, so Lily smiled at her lover while admiring the way his muscles rippled beneath the tee shirt he wore. She knew she will follow this man anywhere, even into death if that was where he guided her.

  Yet portends whispered she must one day let him go.

  Chapter 57—Hate

  It was done.

  Marilyn felt a surge of power coursing through her veins that she had not felt since the day her abusive husband succumbed to the tender morsels that she so lovingly proffered. She wondered why there wasn’t more guilt associated with such atrocities. Standing over the monitor she witnessed Tommy Thomas shudder his last as his body was riddled with the same mysterious crystals that grew in Maxwell Corrigan after she dosed his tea with a miniscule amount of Lily's blood.

  She hated men like them. They bullied their way through life trampling on women as if it was their destiny to be gods. After Maxwell died Marilyn took great care in the handling of the body the way she had learned from Karen: the best method of disposal was freezing in nitrogen. Dressing in a haz-mat suit and full-face respirator she encased the body in protective sheathing before rolling it onto a gurney.

  In the sub-basement of the laboratory were the refrigeration tanks. When an infected body was too dangerous to immediately deal with they were often frozen and stored there. While showing her around for the first time, Karen told Marilyn how the refrigeration units were designed to operate even if the power went out. The natural gas supply which was used to power the refrigeration engines didn’t rely on electricity but pressure.

  Swinging open the gargantuan steel doors she felt as if she was opening the pit to hell. The body slid into the stainless steel tank without a sound. She slammed shut the doors, locked them, flipped on the cooling mechanism, and punched the digital thermometer to a setting of minus two hundred seventy degrees. She then went back upstairs to shower before removing the haz-mat suit and showering once again.

  Though she suspected Lake Baikal syndrome was spread only through bodily fluid she was careful nonetheless not to come into contact with any of the crystals she may have inadvertently roused by moving the body.

  Tommy Thomas would be missed the same way Maxwell Corrigan was but without anything to trace him to the CDC those searching for him would be forced into looking elsewhere. She disabled the security camera on the outside of the building by flipping the override switch to continuous loop.

  Though it was required of all visitors to sign in she purposefully neglected to have Tommy Thomas do so knowing it would prove he was at CDC headquarters. Corrigan was too arrogant to sign in like the rest of the employees so there was no record of him being at headquarters on the day he disappeared.

  "Will you be home soon, Karen?"

  Marilyn missed Karen's touch and the curves of her body but most of all she yearned to spend time with her friend again. She remembered how they talked the night before, briefly, and without any mention of recent happenings.

  "I have to go to Scotland first, Marilyn."

  "Can I meet you there?"

  "No... I need you to take care of things there, Marilyn. If all goes well, I'll be home in a couple days."

  "And if they don’t go well?"

  "We need to stay positive."

  "I don’t understand why you have to go to Scotland. Can't it wait? Come home for a few days, Karen, and then we can go together."

  "Impossible. Look Marilyn, I miss you too... but I don’t want to spend the little time we have together on the phone arguing... do you?"

  The tears came as they always did, silent and yet profound. She listened for a moment as Karen breathed into the phone apparently waiting for her to say something. She did her best to stifle a sob. When she found her voice it sounded hollow, bereft of any feeling it might once have held.

  "I understand, Karen. I'm sorry to be such a pain in the ass. Go and find your monster. Bring her back. I'll be here waiting, like always."

  "Don't do that, Marilyn."

  "You know what? Screw you, Karen."

  Now she regretted the harsh words and for hanging up on her boss and her lover before they could settle their disagreement. She had half a mind to pack a bag and go straight to Scotland, to hell with the consequences. At the same time, however, she knew she couldn't leave the CDC compound unattended, or rather unattended by a familiar.

  Karen trusted her. Christ, she was forty years old and no one had ever had the confidence in her that Karen did. She was privy to information that might change the world if it didn’t first destroy it.

  The recent outbreak of Lake Baikal syndrome had subsided. They were more than lucky. She put that off to the health warnings put out by the CDC—by Marilyn herself—cautioning the public to stay away from anyone exhibiting the symptoms... to call in the authorities immediately and let them deal with it.

  Karen explained the specifics of the disease to her after she was hired. She said how she'd never witnessed any disease with the kind of mortality rates as the Lake sickness; the speed at which the symptoms progressed inexorably to death was startling. Yet Lake Baikal syndrome wasn’t a disease in the classic sense.

  "There is a symbiosis going on between the infected and the source of contagion. Lily told me how she once married a man, a human male. I asked her how that was possible... wouldn’t he die if they made love?

  "She explained that as long as she stayed with him, he was fine. In fact, he was better than fine. He not only inherited Lily's immunity from all diseases but he enjoyed the same long life as she. But when they became separated, he got sick and died within hours.

  "There is some kind of unknown interaction taking place between human beings and these creatures of the Lake. It must be based on our shared morphology. That's when I realized we're dealing with something completely new and unknown here and how deadly this thing could become should it escape confinement. I was tempted to take Lily back to Lake Baikal myself but I knew she would never stay there.

  "We're sitting on top of a powder keg here, Marilyn. When I arrived at Lake Baikal to investigate the outbreak of a deadly disease I discovered it wais a hundred percent fatal to human beings... a hundred percent! I've worked with communicable diseases my whole adult life and I've never come across a killer like this.

  "What makes this all so intriguing is the effect Lily has on infected human beings. It is as if she is putting off some type of invisible energy that not only protects them from illness but lends them greatly enhanced abilities so far as aging goes. She is a virtual fountain of youth."

  "Have you informed Dr. Ramirez of all this?"

  "Of course I haven’t. I won't, either. He'd take the credit for all of it. No, we need to maintain a vigil on this new information ourselves. If it falls into the wrong hands we'll be shunted aside. I'm sure of it. Can I trust you, Marilyn?"

  "Need you ask?"

  Marilyn wondered how the two of them could be so close in body and in spirit and yet so disparate in matters of business and the affairs of the world. She believed that at one time in the distant past Karen must've been badly hurt by someone close to her and how that had colored her opinion of all her fellow beings. She und
erstood that no matter how close they became, Karen would never fully trust her, and she accepted it, counting it as a price of love. She learned long ago that love always had a price.

  Chapter 58—Burning Questions

  Maon wondered why he didn’t feel more at home there.

  He watched Sileas as she dove deep beneath blue Lake Baikal. The waters were cold so far down... too cold for him. Yet the girl seemed to revel in them just as the Ladies did. This was his fourth trip to the Lake and though he felt the need to return every seven years he did not enjoy the week-long trip.

  "What's wrong, sweet Maon... you look troubled today."

  "Nothing is wrong, darling mother."

  "Come on, my lovely son. I know you too well. Tell me what's on your mind."

  "I wish we didn’t have to come here all the time. I want to go other places... to see the rest of the world."

  His mother laughed at him so he felt the need to defend himself more strenuously.

  "Dad says how we will take a trip around the coast as soon as he gets his boat finished but it's been ten years now. Why does everything take so long?"

  "We have all the time we need, darling Maon. This impatience that you feel now will pass. You just turned thirty. You are yet a young man, not much more than a boy really. Have you discussed any of this with lovely Sileas?"

  "No... when I try to talk to her I get all mixed up inside. I end up saying stupid things."

  "Ah... the perils of love."

  "I am not in love, my dear mother. I just don’t know what to say to her."

  "Be yourself, sweet Maon. Remember, we are immortals. In a billion years when the continents have shifted around and the sun burns brighter we will still be here. If you keep this in mind perhaps it will help to mitigate these feelings of impetuousness."

  "What if I like one of the other girls? Will you and dad be upset with me?"

  "Of course not... but you should know something too. Those other girls are not your equal. They will never be your equal."