A Mermaid s Kiss

by Joey W. Hill

  He'd had the hostess direct them to a booth in a far corner where he could watch all angles of approach. The automatic decision comforted him, for it told him his training was not affected by his human form. He had a limited ability to defend and protect, even if he did not have an angel's extraordinary strength and maneuverability.

  He also discovered he could still read a human soul at a glance. The family that had come in behind them had a grim, gray aura which made the occupants of the tables nearest them glance up uneasily. While they wouldn't recognize the aura, it wasn't too difficult to pick up on the situation.

  The man's soul was well compromised, for he was beating his wife. Hers was dangerously teetering, because she knew it wouldn't be long before his fist would find their child, now just a toddler. She moved stiffly, telling Jonah the man was one of those who left his marks where they weren't obvious. Nothing could conceal the wariness of her body language, however, the way she kept her body between him and the toddler, a mother's protective instinct not beaten out of her--yet.

  When the waitress brought Jonah's plate, sliding it before him, he shifted his attention away from that table to examine his meal. He'd studied human behavior, so eating like one of them was not difficult, but he wondered if this meal would be rejected if not fully digested when he resumed his angel form. If so, he might just need to accustom himself to his stomach growling during the daylight hours. However, for now, maybe because some part of him was hoping there was an element of truth to Anna's words about the comfort of a full stomach, he dug in. Eventually he coaxed a bite of the apple pie she'd ordered with her own breakfast, enjoying it enough she had the waitress add a second piece to their ticket.

  When at last he came up for air, amazed at how satisfying it was to fill a hungry stomach, she'd finished her breakfast and was studying the family herself.

  "Looks like they're tourists, here for the week." She said it quietly, as the toddler started fussing and the woman hastily worked on quieting him.

  Jonah nodded. Anna brought her attention back to him. "Look at all of us. We look away. We all know what's going on, but we don't feel like it's our place to interfere. Humans have such a strange, isolating culture. In the sea, it would be brought to Neptune's ears immediately, and he and some of the other merpeople would bring the male before them and tell him his behavior would change, or he would be expelled, forced to leave his family behind."

  "And yet, he does nothing about their ostracism of one of their own. Two, if you count the seawitch."

  "Oh, I think he would . . ." Anna shook her head. "It's different. No one is physically hurting me, or threatening me. It's just . . . I don't want merpeople to be forced to accept me. In that type of situation, people accept when they're ready to accept. If you force them, it may work out in the end, but it's always best for them to get to know you and then accept you, if you can do it that way."

  She switched direction, obviously having no desire to speak about her own situation. "What would you do about that man? I mean, as an angel, if you could. Well, I mean, of course you could . . ."

  "I know what you meant." He paused, studying the trio of humans. The man was detached, drinking his coffee, but it didn't affect the wary alertness of the wife's gaze, the tension in her shoulders. "Kill the child," Jonah said at last.

  Anna's head whipped around. "What?"

  Jonah shrugged, added more of the sweet-smelling stuff called syrup to his last pancake. "Earth is the karmic field for humans, Anna. So the man must stay here and be punished to learn from his brutality. Even if he was removed, the woman's soul is weak. She would simply hook up with another abuser. The child is innocent. His soul is not that of a former abuser, so he's most deserving of returning to a Hall of Souls for reincarnation to a better situation."

  Something shifted behind Anna's eyes, something raw and unreadable. "I'll take care of the check and wait outside," she said, rising and leaving a few dollars on the table for the tip before proceeding with her awkward gait to the cash register by the door.

  Of course she had money. Neptune would have seen to that. But he didn't like the feeling of her providing for him any more than he liked seeing the stiffness in her walk, the obvious comparison it drew for him to the gait of the beaten woman. There didn't seem to be much he could do about either right now, however. Jonah swallowed the last bites, which went down like sawdust.

  Maybe that's why he did what he did next, interfering in something he knew was like taking one raindrop out of a flood.

  As he passed the table, he stopped when he was aligned with the man, laid a hand on his shoulder. Shot a full measure of light energy into him as he glanced at the toddler, forced a smile that made the child gurgle and gave the mother a startled moment, a passing ease to the fear in her features.

  The man stopped eating, placed his hand over his mouth and erupted from the table, dashing for the bathroom. Once he'd retched out the darkness, Jonah knew, he might have half a chance of seeing things in a different light.

  He could do something like that, but he couldn't heal Anna until he had wings. Stifling an oath and leaving the diner, he found Anna following the sand on the ocean side. She'd apparently known he'd catch up to her painful walk in no time, if he'd a mind to follow.

  When he reached her, he tried to take the weight of the backpack from her. She stubbornly held on to it. "I'll manage."

  "Tell me what's wrong. I thought you'd be glad to think of the child out of harm's way."

  She whirled on him. "Is that what my mother was thinking, when she said, 'I don't have the courage to kill you'?"

  As understanding dawned, he cursed his carelessness. "Anna--"

  "I have the right to try to overcome the challenges in my own life," she continued fiercely. "Who's to say that's not what makes us strong and decent? How much character and strength do you think someone who's never had any sorrow or loss or hardship possesses, my lord? Everyone should be able to command his own destiny. You don't get to make that decision for me, or for that child." She poked a finger in his chest, startling him. "If I'd had that taken away from me, I wouldn't know Mina, have flowers . . ."

  I wouldn't have met you.

  He knew she wouldn't immediately realize he'd caught that direct thought, but he grabbed her hand and refused to let go. She pulled against him hard enough she sat down on her backside in the sand so that he followed her down, dropping to one knee between her splayed feet. The wind whipped her hair across her angry eyes.

  He sought for something to say, and could only come up with what was at the forefront in his mind. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about it the way you were."

  She blew out a breath through her nose, shook her head. "Why would you say something like that?"

  "I don't know." Jonah shrugged, examined her fingers in the grip of his. "An abuser like that feels helpless, angry about something outside his control. He lets darkness close in around his soul. Striking out at something weaker makes him feel more in control, more powerful."

  While it had a bitter taste, he made himself face the simple truth, say it aloud. "I hurt you in the pool because I was feeling out of my element, out of control."

  Shock coursed over her features, replacing the anger in a blink. "No, my lord. You are nothing like that man. You had no intention of harming me. There is pain in your soul and you were protecting it, until it's ready to heal."

  The simple words, the touch of her hand, balanced him, even as the sense of shame didn't abate. Regardless, he wouldn't add to his crime by making her expend energy to assuage his guilt. "You would pull a thorn from a lion's paw, Anna," he said with forced lightness.

  Anna gave him a disparaging look, then let him help her to her feet, take the backpack. They resumed their walking silently, and when they left the causeway, they crossed over to the main beach, a wider stretch where the road disappeared behind a dune ridge.

  As Anna thought about what he'd said, she realized it wasn't his assessment of the family's situa
tion as much as the dispassionate way he'd said it that bothered her. Of course he'd have a different perspective on such matters, for he saw a far wider picture of such things, whereas she had demonstrated quite embarrassingly that she saw things in perspective to herself and her own experiences. But there'd been something . . . unsettling about his analysis. The more they walked, the more the question burned into her brain, until she had to ask it.

  "Why do you hate the humans so much, my lord?"

  "I don't hate them," he said. Turning away, he sat down on the sand to pull off his shoes as she had already done for herself. He added them to the backpack.

  Almost an automatic response, she noted. As if he'd had to answer it before. "But you hate this human form," she persisted.

  "Of course," he said with a derisive snort. "No wings, no healing power . . . Then there's these wretched shoes."

  "You haven't lost your most important powers. You did something to him in there. I saw it through the window."

  "So you weren't merely fuming at me," he observed. Anna gave him a pointed look and he sighed impatiently. "I took him back a few years, to where he could remember wanting to be better, wanting to love her, wanting a child. The choice to walk the same path or not is his. And he'll also remember what he became. If nothing else, it will give her a breather for a little while."

  Her gaze softened. "So you do care."

  "No," he said shortly. "Don't think well of me on this, Anna. I don't care about them."

  "So while all of us were helplessly restrained by our embarrassment and standards of public behavior, you were just apathetic? I don't believe that."

  He lifted a brow. "Why should angels help them? Humans harm each other every day."

  "Because angels are like the police." She squatted by him, her skirt pooling around her ankles, even as she registered his growing irritation with the topic. "Humans are supposed to be able to trust them, count on them. The police aren't supposed to be apathetic."

  "That's just idealism."

  "Yes," she agreed. "Something to hope for, like Heaven. Maybe the Goddess has angels to protect humans because it gives humans the time to overcome their weaknesses to discover . . . enlightenment. She's exercising compassion, helping them find their right path, like a parent to a child."

  "They're definitely like children," he snorted. "But you're right about one thing, little one. They have an abundance of the Lady's compassion. Though only She knows why."

  "You have compassion, my lord. It's just spoiled with contempt. I'm not trying to make you angry. I'm just trying to understand why."

  He muttered an oath and got to his feet. "Some topics are best left alone, Anna. But since I can tell you're not that sensible, let's talk about spoiled. Do you know where Dark Ones come from?"

  She shook her head, rising as well. Something ugly took over his handsome features. Something close to hate, like what she'd felt from him this morning when the magic had rebounded on her. He was toe-to-toe with her, so she had to tilt her head. Goddess, but he was intimidating when he was like this. But he wouldn't hurt her intentionally. He wouldn't. She was sure of it. So sure her fingers itched to lay a hand along his face, stroke a soothing hand across his temple, even if he kept that forbidding expression and the hard line of his mouth.

  "They come through rifts in time and space, caused by human evil," he continued. "Human darkness. Whenever there's a massacre, a war, enough women struck by their husbands' fists, there can be a tear, a puncture. The stars are the holes angels have sealed. The vast darkness left is the possibility of rifts to come.

  "Given any opportunity to do so, humans will destroy Creation," he said decisively, his mouth taut. "They lack the necessary respect or understanding. And yet, they embrace their ignorance and they have free will, Goddess only knows why."

  The frustrated resentment in his expression was another puzzle piece falling into place, but any foolish idea she might have harbored to pursue it further was interrupted.

  The sound of grinding gears and the knocking cacophony of an overworked engine coming over the dunes heralded the ironically timed arrival of a school bus full of laughing, excited children, glimpsed through the opening for the nearest public access.

  Twenty children of mixed races poured out, herded by their chaperones, who apparently gave them the freedom to make an abrupt dash for the water. They exploded with energy, pounding across the narrow channel of sand between the dunes to charge down to the beach just below where Anna and Jonah were.

  Seeing the two of them at the last moment on this otherwise deserted stretch of beach, one of the chaperones called out, but it was like calling back an infantry charge. Jonah drew Anna to his side, putting his arm around her to hold her in place as the class ran past them, shouting, taking little notice of the two of them against the excitement of seeing the vast ocean.

  Anna turned to watch them, bodies formed of the various colors of the earth flashing past, arms pumping, white teeth flashing. There were screams as they plunged in and registered the first cold. Some hung back, coming to a halt and venturing forward far more slowly, getting used to the temperature. Some of the chaperoning parents had brought younger children, two or three little ones they settled in one of the tidal pools with buckets and plastic shovels, as well as a tiny red float that looked like a lobster. The claws were armrests, the whimsical face forming a headrest.

  As she watched him register the creature the float was supposed to represent, she felt some of her own tension ease when his lips twitched. "Now, my lord," she managed with a straight face, "a species that can come up with something as useful as that can't be all bad."

  The inner-city schools sometimes had field trips out here, she knew, bringing kids who'd never seen anything but the bleak vista of their gang-torn neighborhoods to a different view. She loved watching the children, their exuberance, their discovery of a place she knew as well as her own beating heart. While she also knew she and Jonah should keep moving, in a day's time they would be out of reach of the ocean.

  So she cast off her dress, carefully pulling it over her head to reveal the swimsuit beneath it she'd decided to put on after her cool bath, before they'd left. She always wore it beneath her clothes in case the pull of the water got too strong when she was in her human form, and despite the discomfort the straps caused to her back, today was no exception.

  "Let's go swim with them, my lord. The adults can use our help to keep an eye on all of them."

  As Jonah dragged his gaze from the float and registered her intentions, he wondered if it was possible to hold on to anger around such a creature. He was already sick of his rudderless anger. Her fingers whispered along his arm, her eyes acknowledging the seriousness of what lay beneath their argument even as she left it floating behind like foam in the water. She splashed in, catching up with one of the teachers and introducing herself as an off-duty lifeguard before being accepted in a matter of moments by a short staff, grateful for the help.

  "Your woman is fine."

  Jonah looked around, then down, at a young boy who didn't quite reach his waist. The boy's cocky assertion had Jonah's lips twitching again. "Thank you," he said gravely, then incited a shriek of alarm which quickly turned to laughter as he caught the boy up under his arm and turned him upside down to toss him into the surf with the ease of a football.

  THAT was all the invitation the boys needed to accept Jonah. Anna had anticipated the teachers' wariness, particularly of a man with Jonah's intimidating size and presence. However, she'd underestimated the underlying, instinctual recognition of what he was, and so except for the occasional careful sweep to ensure he was staying close with the boys, the teachers accepted him.

  When they saw him wrestle their fellow into the waves, the children needed no other encouragement to hurl themselves on him, en masse. He went under, taking six or seven with him, arms and legs tangling with his. While it was mostly boys, there was at least one girl.

  Anna couldn't blame her. She wou
ldn't mind tackling him herself, though she'd have far less tomboylike motives. Unlike her, he wasn't wearing a swimsuit beneath his clothes, so he'd simply stripped off his wet shirt and tossed it onto the beach, where some maternal parent had laid it out over some dune vegetation to dry and dislodge the sand.

  When he wrestled in the shallows, the water and sunlight glinted on the muscles of his upper body, the wet jeans clinging to his hips and legs. She couldn't help herself. She salivated. It was ridiculous. Of course he was beautiful. But lust alone shouldn't make her heart hurt like this. She told herself it was fine to dwell on the physical, but not if it mired her in more dangerous emotional waters. Damn Mina for planting the idea of a daily prescription of Joining Magic. Damn him for choosing it in the first place. She could hardly finish getting mad at him for one thing before she wanted him touching her again. She must be losing her mind.

  When he emerged onto the beach a while later to wipe his face with a borrowed towel, he shook his dark hair like a dog, amusing the parents. Anna was holding the hands of two of the more timid children, having coaxed them into the water. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him sit down in the sand near the toddlers in the tidal pool.

  Drawing his knees up, he linked his hands over them. There were two little girls, both with tiny, sausage-shaped bodies, arms held carefully at their sides for balance when they walked. One waddled over, falling against his legs. The other took a fistful of his hair to climb up his chest. They were like puppies nestling on the alpha of the wolf pack when he was in a benevolent mood.

  Daylight, human form and bad temper--he was still an angel. No one sensed that better than children. It radiated from him. Forcing her attention to her charges again, she immersed herself in their simple joy, rather than the confusing complexity of her own emotions and apprehensions.