by Jade Kerrion
“I was on deck watch early in the morning when the water started moving, unnatural-like. As if there was something big moving the water beneath the surface in spite of the current. Then something launched straight up, out of the water.”
Damn it! The Beltiamatu she had hurled into the air. She hadn’t realized the Veritas was close enough to witness the event, or that the most alert and canny of her crew might have been on the deck at that time.
“Might have been a really large fish—I was too far away to tell—but that scream didn’t sound like anything a fish might make.” Jackson shook his head. “The swirling water intensified for a bit, then faded away. Almost makes a man wonder if that crazy girl is right.”
“Ondine?”
“It feels wrong. Crew’s edgy, captain. Don’t know if you’ve noticed. And it’s not just Ondine making them nervous. The storms, the seas, how Varun almost drowned—it feels like we’ve run into more than our fair share of troubles in what should be familiar waters.”
“Not losing your nerve now, are you, Mr. Jackson?”
“I don’t know if we should be letting Varun dive again. He attracts trouble.”
“This ship was hired specifically to let Varun dive.”
“You’re captain. You can forbid it, right?”
Ashe glanced up through the large window of the bridge. The seas looked no different, the water provided no visible markers, but she knew they were entering the official borders of the Levantine Sea. She glanced at the coordinates Varun had provided. There were no good coordinates, no safe diving spots in the Levantine Sea; the entire area was too tightly controlled by the Beltiamatu. The particular coordinates Varun had selected, though, had potential. The surrounding riptides would force Varun to turn back long before he got anywhere close to Shulim, and he would be none the wiser that he had been thwarted. As soon as Ashe deposited Varun back on land, he would return to his university laboratory, and her ridiculous babysitting assignment would be complete.
She would then be free to get to the bottom of the mess she had created.
And Varun would be safe—far away from the brewing war between the merfolk and an irate Daughter of Air.
“We’ll be there in just about fifteen minutes, captain,” Jackson said. He glanced at the screen displaying the feed from the security camera aimed at the deck. “And it looks like our scientist is ready to go.”
Well, the family visit had been a waste of time, Varun thought as Ashe stepped out of the bridge to join him on the deck of the Veritas. Dawn was only a thin band of light on the horizon, but the research vessel was already entering the Levantine Sea. The pale morning light inched over the wooden deck and cast half of Ashe’s face into shadow. He stared at her, frowning. Varun had not had a clear recollection of the mermaid drawing prior to seeing it again, but he had hoped for a stronger resemblance to Ashe.
If he tilted his head, if he squinted, if he used a great deal more of his imagination than he should have needed, he might have been able to see a glimmer of similarity, but in truth, the mermaid in the picture was less pretty and more innocent than Ashe. The mermaid’s wide-eyed wonder scarcely resembled Ashe’s narrow-eyed glare.
Besides, they could hardly have been the same people. If the stories were true, mermaids lived for three hundred years, and the mermaid who had visited his ancestor would have been dead, as opposed to still alive, and infinitely pissed off.
Ashe’s muteness and her blistered feet.
They had to be coincidences, nothing more.
He had to stay focused on why he was on the ship in the first place. He was researching the dead spots in the ocean, not mermaids. “We have to be careful here,” he said to Ashe. “I know these waters well; it’s not far from Kalymnos. Fish teem in these clear waters, but we have learned not to fish here. Our nets come up destroyed, and the riptides have taken many lives. The fishermen say the Levantine Sea is cursed.”
Ashe rolled her eyes.
“Maybe the curse is expanding.”
She shrugged. The gesture might have seemed dismissive, but her eyes were thoughtful. From Ashe’s shoulder, Jinn squawked in response to her moving fingers. “You shouldn’t go in, Varun.”
Varun adjusted his diving equipment and made sure everything was working. “The data says the source is right here, and I’m the strongest diver on the ship.” Their eyes met, and he was grateful she did not convulse with laughter. She was, by far, the strongest diver on the ship.
However, he could easily and legitimately go down into the water. As captain, she could not—at least not until he ran into more trouble than he could handle.
Varun ran a final equipment check, which included a WASP knife, bang sticks, sonic guns, and electric pulse devices typically used against sharks. What good they would be against merfolk, he had no idea, but he was not planning on entering the water unarmed. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
For what, I have no idea.
Varun gave Ashe an ironic grin, a flippant salute, then tumbled backward off the boat into the water.
He entered an expanse of endless blue. Nothing seemed any different from his other dives, but his instincts screamed. He glanced down at his equipment. The numbers on his dive computer moved so quickly they were a jumble of black. His depth gauge spun like a drunken sailor. The Veritas was a comforting shadow a few kicks away, but to go back now when he knew the answer was close—so close—was beyond galling.
He could not go back.
He would find his way back to the Veritas one way or another, even if he had to navigate using the end of his nose as a compass.
Varun dove deeper—to hell with his equipment. The Veritas grew smaller, fainter. Sunlight faded.
A faint current tugged at his waist. Another brushed against his ankles.
His diving mask limited the tangle of curse words to a puff of bubbles He had to get out of the riptides, but he had no visual clues as to which way to swim. No matter which way he turned, the currents grew stronger in defiance of the laws of physics. Violent currents clashed against each other, strong enough to rip through sturdy nylon fishing nets. Strong enough to drag down and kill divers trying to return to the surface and to shore.
Don’t fight it. Just go with it.
Varun kicked with the current, swimming deeper instead of trying to return to the ship. The currents grew stronger until he had to hold his diving mask against his face to keep it from being ripped off. Water swirled in front of him, slashing his visibility to almost zero.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
In his mind’s eye, he imagined a cheerful blue Dory darting erratically through the currents.
He would have to fight his way through the rip currents back to the ship, but he would deal with it later. Somehow. He had too many problems for the here and now. The water darkened around him as sunlight faded to nearly nothing. He looked up, but could not see the Veritas. His dive computer was a useless jumble of numbers.
The riptide veered so sharply that he jolted. It tugged him away from a massive rock wall and propelled him back into open water. What the—? Varun twisted around and kicked hard. The dual motion tumbled him through a weak wall in the riptide and broke him out of the current.
He floated in the water, no longer buffeted and pulled by unseen forces. Too weird. He peered up at the invisible band of deadly riptides. There was nothing to distinguish that section of the water from another, but it had tried to repel him away from the sheer wall of rock that extended down into the dark ocean depths.
It stood to reason, then, that he would have to go down that way.
He swam through the clear water and pressed his fingers against the barnacle-encrusted rocks. Varun glanced down at his dive computer. It was still malfunctioning.
As long as I know which way is up—how hard can it be?
He followed the rock wall down. The water became cooler and clearer, until it seemed as pristine as the melt-off of an ancient glacier. He could se
e for miles, and far below, beyond the range of any surface sunlight, something glowed.
Varun checked his equipment. He did not know precisely how much air he had left, but if his sense of time were correct, he had probably enough to resurface. Just barely. But he was so close to the answer; he was certain of it. For a moment—only a moment—Varun hesitated, then he dove deeper, tracing the rock formation. It ended abruptly in what appeared to be the seabed. He frowned. It made no sense. His diving equipment may have been malfunctioning, but he had an innate sense of distance in the ocean. The Levantine Sea, he knew, went deeper.
Varun swam along the sloping seabed. Sand thinned into jagged rock. His heartbeat quickened when he realized he was on an ocean shelf—a vast ocean shelf that seemed to extend for miles. It meant that there was more below it. Varun traced the shelf to its edge, and then swam beneath the overhang.
An underwater city emerged like illumination revealing a slowly turned page. Concealed in a massive alcove that stretched wider and deeper than he could see, the sleek towers of the city soared the full height of the alcove, as if holding up the ceiling. Squat, bulbous structures sprawled across the floor of the alcove, like mushrooms in a field, competing for sunlight between massive tree trunks. Lights gleamed from many windows.
Varun had visited several underwater bases that served as marine research stations, but this one was unlike any he had ever seen. The scale of the structure went far beyond ambitious to staggering, and it was located in international waters. Which country would have had the audacity to build a base here?
He followed the curve of the alcove until he reached one of the towers. He swam around it. From a distance, it had seemed slender and narrow. Up close, though, it was larger than he had expected, and made of metal—his gaze traveled the length and breadth of the tower—a single piece of metal.
His mind reeled. There was no factory large enough to make a single sheet of metal this massive. The sheer sophistication of the technology…what country could have—?
Motion flicked across his peripheral vision. He twisted around in the water and saw three merfolk swimming toward the city.
No, that’s just crazy. Where were the coral palaces? The glitzy pink, blue, and green castles he had seen in cartoons and pictures?
Not this place. Not this underwater city, bristling with technology more advanced than anything he had ever seen in a science fiction movie. It was crazy.
Although no crazier than merfolk existing in the first place.
He had to get back to the ship. Ashe had to be told—
His involuntary movement rippled the water.
The merfolk twisted around. Their eyes widened when they caught sight of him. Low mournful wails, like the songs of the humpback whale rolled toward him. They launched themselves at him, their speed twice his. Their fingernails were long and their incisors sharp, but they did not even need those. Violent flicks of their tail slammed him against the tower. The impact flashed lights in his skull. He was still reeling when they ripped his mask from his face and tore his tanks from his back.
Blackness frayed across the edges of his vision.
The water around him flurried into a bubbling frenzy, and he realized he was no longer surrounded. Lips touched his. Air infused his lungs.
He could scarcely focus on the face in front of him. Ashe?
The currents shifted behind her. Varun’s eyes flared wide. He pushed her aside and lunged at a merman who had come up behind her. He wrestled with the merman, the differences in their strength much less telling now that he was no longer weighed down by diving equipment. Varun shoved the merman against the tower, then reached for the small knife he carried in a sheath strapped to his thigh.
The blade was not long enough to reach the heart, but he had studied the biology of the dead mermaid he had dissected. He knew where the large arteries and veins ran closest to the surface. Three quick slashes. One across the thigh. Another across the arm. The third across the neck.
The merman’s eyes flared with panic. He thrashed, churning crimson blood through the water, then went limp. His body slowly drifted downward.
Varun twisted around in time to see Ashe defeat the second merman, then turn on the final merman. Her hand curled into a fist in front of the merman’s face. His face paled, and his hands clawed at his throat and face, as if he were suffocating.
But how? What was Ashe doing to the merman?
Varun’s lungs stuttered on the remnants of oxygen. He pressed his hand against his chest as the last of his air bubbled from his lips. Ashe.
Then he was back in her arms. Her kiss refilled his lungs.
Mermaid…
Ashe’s voice snapped through his mind. I’m not a mermaid. Do you see a tail?
He stared at her. Actually, he did not. Oxygen flooded through his brain; his thoughts moved more quickly, but still spun in circles. No tail, but how…The mermaid’s kiss—
I’ve told you. The mermaid’s kiss does nothing. I am a Daughter of Air.
You’re filling my lungs with air.
Yes.
His eyes widened. And I hear you!
She rolled her eyes in that familiar, exasperated gesture. I am telepathic.
Then all that finger waving for Jinn to translate?
It seemed easier than explaining how I put the thoughts directly in your head. You humans are irritatingly prickly about privacy.
But if you’re a Daughter of Air… His eyes narrowed. The story—you’re not the mermaid who came to my family… You can’t be.
She glared at him. I am. I was the mermaid who visited your family three hundred years ago. As penance for my stupidity, I became a Daughter of Air. I’ve spent the past three centuries babysitting humanity, and I’m still at it. You were supposed to turn back and return to the ship when you got to the riptides. Why didn’t you?
I decided to push through.
The riptides turn back any sane, rational human.
Sorry about misleading you about my sanity and rationality. Varun glared back at her. If you expected me to turn around, why are you here?
You didn’t return. I had to figure out if you were taking the slow route back or the stubborn route forward.
Varun sneered. And you bet on the stubborn route forward?
She grinned, the golden sparkles in her eyes glowing.
The sheer unexpectedness of the gesture made the breath catch in his throat. Which was just as well; otherwise, he would have inhaled water. His mind fumbled, and he lost the retort on the edge of his tongue. He looked around, trying to buy time to regain his shaken emotional center. The riptides aren’t natural, are they?
No. They’re generated by the… She paused. He suspected she was translating concepts into words he would understand. Seismic devices the Beltiamatu implanted in the city of Shulim.
The Beltiamatu. He tested the unfamiliar word. The merfolk? What language is that in?
Our language. The one that eventually became ancient Sumerian.
His jaw dropped. How long have your people been around?
She closed the distance. Her kiss refilled his lungs. When she pulled back, their gazes remained locked on each other. Her eyes swirled blue and green like the sun-dusted waves, and he finally understood why.
Ashe’s thoughts touched his. The Beltiamatu have lived in the oceans longer than humans have recorded time. We should head back to the ship.
Are you crazy? No. We’re right here. He swept his arm out at Shulim, its massive breadth as dark and ominous as a military base in a science fiction movie. This is the source of the disturbance. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.
You’re going to get killed.
Not with you here.
I have no trouble keeping myself alive, but you humans are absurdly fragile underwater.
As long as you supply me with air, I’ll have no trouble keeping up. Ashe, I’m going in—with or without you. If you’re serious about keeping me alive, then you’ll be coming along
, won’t you?
He swam toward the city, and for several moments, he was painfully aware that he swam alone. The air in his lungs dwindled. His tether on life thinned.
Ashe grabbed his arm, spun him around, and kissed him.
For a moment, he had not been entirely sure she was going to.
His heart thudded, its rhythm erratic. His scientist’s mind struggled to filter through the sensory bombardment—the feel of her, the taste of her. One thing, however, was clear to him. The air she breathed into him was cleaner and fresher than anything he had ever drawn into his lungs. Clarity surged through his thoughts, energy through his body. Did she, as a Daughter of Air, tap into a primal source of power, of life?
When she broke the kiss and pulled away, he immediately felt its loss—a diminishing of the vibrancy that brightened all colors and heightened all sensations. He felt normal again—only it was now less than it had been.
He stared into Ashe’s startling, inhuman eyes. His heartbeat skipped. Forbidden fruit…
To distract himself, he looked around. Beneath them lay the vast expanse of Shulim. The underwater capital city of the Beltiamatu was not quite a dream. It was, in fact, closer to a nightmare.
And he was going there.
He kicked forward, but she did not release his hand. Wait.
He stared at her, then blinked, startled. Something touched the skin on his face. The firm pressure felt like the palm of a hand, but utterly smooth. It pressed against his nose and mouth, but a moment before he panicked, the suffocating sensation passed. He could almost feel it rushing outward.
Air.
He drew a deep breath and stared at what appeared to be a bubble of air around his nose and mouth. He was almost certain his eyes were crossing from the effort of trying to make it out. He tentatively touched it with a finger, which passed from the wetness of the ocean into the dryness of air, without passing through any barrier.
Stop poking at it.
Ashe’s irritable tone was actually comforting. He chuckled to himself; some things did not change. It was odd how a former mermaid, now a Daughter of Air, grounded him. The thought tightened an uncomfortable knot in the middle of his stomach. It was easier to focus on the immediate issues. What is it? Varun asked.