Falling in Deep Collection Box Set
Page 15
I bowed to Imogen then cast a glance at the collected crowd. What a ragtag group they were, the last of the naguals and freshwaters, murdered to the edge of extinction by my uncle who had just sentenced me to death. In my heart, I had always known Creon had killed my parents. I’d known it like I knew my own name. Now, more than ever, I yearned to end what Creon had started. Now that, finally, someone had confirmed what I’d known all along.
Imogen looked at me. “What shall we do now?”
I glanced up at Hal who nodded to me.
“Now, we fight.”
Chapter 17
The moonlight glimmered on the waves. It was a cloudy night, wisps of gray covering the stars and fracturing the moon beams. Such haunting dark shapes in the sky added to the ominous feel in the air. The Atlantic waves crashed against the shoreline. The surf was heavy. It left a froth of sea foam all along the shore.
Word had come from the Atlantic. Creon knew I had left the scene at The Drunken Mermaid with Hal. How, I didn’t know, but Creon knew I was in Cocoa Beach. He’d called up his suffocators to find me and deliver me to him that night. He would come to land and retrieve me himself. But Creon’s lack of emotion would be his undoing. He had not anticipated that his own people would stand against him. Empathy was an emotion Creon did not understand. He never would have guessed that Roald and the others had turned against him to protect the freshwaters against Manx’s imminent assault. So, when Creon had called up his suffocators to find the renegade princess who’d murdered the king of the Gulf and run off with her nagual lover, he couldn’t have guessed that some of those mermen would warn us.
It was Roald who learned the news. With shaking hands, he’d taken a phone call in the billiard hall that afternoon only to return looking ashen.
“Creon,” he’d said, looking at me with a startled expression on his face, “has called for your death. He is calling it regicide. He’s sent the suffocators for you and Hal.”
“Is there any news from the Gulfs?” I asked.
“They’ve gone to ground, back to the Gulf. They will not rise against you, Ink. They believe the prophecy.”
The scope of what was happening was starting to slowly congeal around me. If I could wrestle power from Creon, I could truly ally the Gulfs and Atlantics in the name of peace. And I could protect the freshwaters and the nagual.
“Ink,” Roald said with all seriousness. “We must defeat Creon.”
“Yes, but how?”
“We will fight,” Milne said. “With our dying breath.”
“What of the Atlantics?” I asked Roald. “Creon’s guards? The scouts? Will Seaton and the others turn against me?”
Roald shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I looked back at Milne. “We Atlantics should face Creon alone. I don’t want any of you to die because of my people.”
“We will die either way,” Imogen said. “But, we will die on our feet beside you.”
“If Creon wants the renegade mermaid and her nagual, let’s give him what he wants. Tell them you have us and arrange a meeting,” I told Roald.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I cast a glance at Hal who nodded.
“Let’s lure the bloody king out of the deep,” I said, my back tingling as waves of rage threatened to spill out of me.
Hours later, I found myself staring at the waves rolling onto Cocoa Beach. From the other side of Florida, I could feel the Gulfs holding their breath as they waited on the outcome of this night. I hoped I survived long enough to make amends. All these years I had blamed the Gulfs for my parents’ death. And all along, their real killer had slept in the same home as me.
It was Creon who rose out of the ocean first, his trident in hand, his long white hair lying wet on his chest. A warlike beast, on land he was an impressive specimen. He rose slowly, surprised to find all of us waiting to meet him on that dark stretch of beach. I saw his brow furrow. He’d expected to see Hal and me bound and gagged, waiting for his majesty’s judgment, not to see every aquatic shifter in Cocoa Beach on the beach. But Creon had told his suffocators to bring Hal and me there, and that is what they had done.
Roald and the other Atlantics stood around me and Hal. I looked up at him. Hal’s face was hidden in the shadow of the hood he’d pulled over his head, but I could feel the rage growing inside him. There was an intense strength in him that he could barely control. The air around him vibrated with fury.
Behind me, I heard Imogen take in a sharp breath, but she did not move. I honored her bravery.
The mers of my tribe rose from the waters around Creon, a deadly looking force, their weapons glimmering in the moonlight. They’d come prepared, already transformed into human form, ready to drywalk. They were clothed in black and armed. Creon had brought at least three dozen mers, including my scouts. Among them, I saw Seaton who rose from the water behind Creon. His face was stony.
“You have the traitor?” Creon called. I could see him eyeing the assembled group. Surely, Creon would realize that these men were not his allies. But then again, Creon was not one to be bothered with the lesser of our kind.
“We have,” Roald replied.
“And the nagual?”
“Yes,” Roald answered.
“Cut his throat,” Creon replied, motioning for two of his most loyal guards to step forward.
“No,” I said then.
“Murderous mermaid,” Creon spat, “how dare you speak?”
“Do you fear my words, Creon? Are you afraid the tribe will hear me speak the truth?”
“Silence!”
When the guards rushed Hal, he bolted forward to meet them, his bare feet moving quickly across the sand. Hal kicked one of the mers so hard he fell back into a crumpled heap. The other got a punch in, but Hal stopped him, slamming the merman onto the earth. Neither man got up, but they were still alive.
“Enough,” Creon yelled then strode forward onto the beach, brandishing his trident before him. “What is this incompetence? Someone grab the nagual.”
“No,” I said again.
“You were always a willful one, weren’t you? King killer,” Creon said loudly, “you and your nagual lover must pay for this regicide. King Manx is dead because of you, mermaid. You assembled naguals, you brine-water mers, step aside so we may deal with this treacherous lot. Advance, Atlantics, and take them,” Creon called, motioning to the army behind him.
I stepped down the beach toward them and looked at my people, making eye contact with Seaton and the others. “Lay down your arms, my brothers and sisters,” I called. “The real killer stands before you here. Creon, son of Hytten, I charge you with the murders of Dauphin, Coral, and King Manx. Creon has lied to us for years. He killed my parents. It was he who ordered the death of Manx, planning to place the blame for his—and my own—murder on the renegade suffocators whom you see standing around me. But it was Creon’s people who did the killing. These brothers and sisters standing here with me left Creon’s rule when he and Manx ordered the genocide of the remaining freshwaters and naguals. I was supposed to die alongside Manx. But I lived and learned the truth. Search your hearts. You know me. Would I murder the king of the Gulfs? How many of you have doubted the story of my parents’ death? Atlantics, lay down your arms.”
“Usurper! Liar,” Creon shouted, but his face betrayed him. He was found out. At long last, his treachery was unveiled. The muscles around his eyes twitched.
Seaton tossed his blades on the beach. Achates and the other scouts following suit behind him. Moments later, my brethren, the Atlantic mers, laid their blades down and bowed their heads to me.
“You will stand trial for your crimes,” I told Creon. “After you’ve had a little time to think over your rash behavior in the shallows.”
“Never,” Creon said, then moved quickly toward me. With a hurl, he threw his trident at me.
“Ink,” Roald yelled.
Hal, however, moved fast, putting himself between the trident and me.
The king of the Atlantic screamed in agony as a large piece of his trident slammed into his chest. He clutched it then fell backward onto the beach.
A second later, the song dissipated, leaving only a bonging echo. I rushed to Hal who had fallen in the wake of the siren song.
“Hal,” I gasped, falling on my knees beside him, “are you hurt?”
He grinned at me. “My ears are ringing, but I’m alive.”
I held him, my body shaking, then gazed at Creon. Blood oozed from the massive piece of metal lodged into his chest. Streaks of blood marred the sand and water around him.
Taking a deep breath, I helped Hal stand then turned and faced the Atlantics.
“Is everyone all right? Is anyone hurt?” I called to them.
At first, no one spoke. They stood looking in awe. Then, Seaton stepped forward.
“Hail Queen Ink,” Seaton called then, “the Siren Queen.”
“Hail the Siren Queen,” the Atlantics chimed after him, kneeling in the water which was tinged with Creon’s blood.
“Hail the Siren Queen,” Imogen called, bowing. The other freshwater mers joined her.
“Hail,” Hal said then bowed, the naguals joining him.
For a moment, I stood motionless. The turn of events seemed so strange, so unbelievable.
“All of you, please rise. My friends, we have important work that must be done.”
“What work is that, my Queen?” Seaton called to me. I couldn’t help but notice the proud expression on his face.
I looked back at Hal who was smiling at me. Waves of love emanated from him.
“True peace.”
Epilogue
My hand hung out the open window of Hal’s car. I scooped light and air into my palm. We were driving away from Pensacola back to Cocoa Beach, which I now called home. I gazed out at the dunes. It was a pity that the Gulf had become poisonous. The white beaches looked like they were made of sugar, the surf a lovely sapphire blue. Maybe one day the Great Mother Ocean would heal the waters, but not yet. Not yet. I closed my eyes, inhaled the perfume of the ocean, and thought about the conversation that had taken place that morning.
“I saw you in the smoke, in the fire, the mermaid from the prophecy. We knew you were coming, but we did not expect things to end like this. Yet that is the way of things,” the mamiwata said that morning as we—the cecaelia, mamiwata, the Queen Mother of the Gulf, Hal, and me—sat on the deck of a nearly-empty café overlooking the ocean.
“After a lifetime of watching Gulfs and Atlantics kill one another for power, my son no different than his father or grandfather before him, it really isn’t a bad thing to suddenly find a mermaid on the throne in the Atlantic,” the Queen Mother had said. “Bittersweet.”
I took her hand. “I am sorry for your loss. He died in my arms. I couldn’t do anything to save him, and I am sorry for it,” I told her. There had been no love between Manx and me, and given the way he was, I doubted any love could have ever grown there. But in the end, he had died because he had wanted to save his people.
She nodded kindly, patting my hand. “When we first met, I told you that you are my daughter. I meant it. With Manx’s death, our line is finished. Our race is nearly finished. The Gulfs will rely on you now, Ink, to guide us, protect us, lead us.”
“With all my heart, I will do my best.”
“With heart,” the cecaelia said then, sipping her Bloody Mary. “What else can we ask for?”
As I sat beside Hal, driving away from that small, strange gathering, I thought about my new role, my new life. I was now queen of the Atlantics, the Gulfs, naguals, and freshwaters all under my protection.
I reached out and took Hal’s hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
“What more could I ask for?”
Hal lifted my hand, kissing it softly.
I closed my eyes and directed my energy toward the ocean. I let a nearly soundless siren song emanate from me. I felt the fathomless deep, the sea life, and the Great Mother Ocean. Her energy was alive, and soon, I would bring back her ways.
I smiled as I remembered a question Manx had asked me my first night in Miami. “What are you going to do with all that power, Ink?” I didn’t know what to tell him then, but now I knew. I would rule. I looked back at Hal who smiled at me. I would rule, with heart.
About the Author
Melanie Karsak is the author of the Amazon best-selling steampunk series The Airship Racing Chronicles, The Harvesting Series, and The Celtic Blood Series. She grew up in rural northwestern Pennsylvania and earned a Master’s degree in English from Gannon University. A steampunk connoisseur, Shakespeare nerd, white elephant collector, and zombie whisperer, the author currently lives in Florida with her husband and two children. She is an Instructor of English at Eastern Florida State College.
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Of Ocean and Ash by A. R. Draeger
Of Ocean
Cast into the sea at birth, human-born Ia found her adoptive family among the merfolk. While her underwater upbringing was peaceful, Ia’s blood-heritage and the strict societal rules of the merpeople lead her to wonder of the world above the waves.
And Ash
When a storm lands Ia ashore, she discovers her body has transformed into the human she would have been. Taken in as property by a callous plantation owner, Ia works alongside the slaves until she can make her way back to the water. There is nothing Ia wants more than to go home, that is, until she meets a handsome, troubled man named Matthias, who has a touch that can be as kind as his tongue is harsh.
Torn between two very different lives, Ia must choose – stay in his world and risk her life for a love untested, or return to the familiar arms of the underwater world that raised her and risk losing what may be the greatest love she will ever know.
Will Ia’s choice lead to her happiness or her destruction?
Prologue
Summer was waning when I was born, marked by the heat leaving the waters and the nights growing longer. My family wanted to migrate with the rest of their people, but they waited for me in the stillness of the waves, keeping an ever-watchful eye.
Mother heard the wails of the fisherman’s wife the night the woman discovered she carried me in her womb. The fisherman and his wife lived next to the water in a small, dilapidated shack made of rotten wood and leaky thatch. They had six children before me, although Mother knew not in what mixture their genders numbered. All but two were taken away at birth. The couple had too many as it were for a meager fisherman and his wife, and I was yet another mouth to feed.
The fisherman’s cries of mercy woke my family the night I was born. My arrival was sooner than expected, his wife not having carried me nine months in her womb. I was tiny, frail. My left leg was misshapen, my head oblong.
Mother watched him from beneath the surface, saw his tanned sailor’s skin, ebony and white streaked hair, and grey-whiskered face. He looked down at me, the fragile bundle cradled in his arms, and cried out through parched lips and crooked, black teeth:
“Forgive me, O God! Have mercy on her. I leave her to your care.”
He dropped me in the water with a small plop.
My sister, Liliana, caught me before I plunged too far into the depths. My family crowded around me, anxious and excited. My uncles debated eating me, seeing my size and stature, convinced I would not survive. Mother waved them off and took me from my sister’s arms, cradling me as my still-human lips turned blue.
It was an enormous challenge for a human to come into the fold. Not many of us were capable of such a change, but Mother knew my lineage had been on and in the water. She had watched my father and his father before him.
She lowered her lips to my nose and mouth, and she breathed into me the life of the sea dwellers, the merfolk. I sputtered a bit, and my body shivered, unsure of the transformation. Mother held me tight, sang me lullabies of the whales, and when all my family had lost hope that I’d survive, I woke.
My scream was shrill, she said. Loud, piercing. She was proud, surprised at the pushing force of the water I had generated. She knew I would be a good Caller.
With that, they gathered to me – my mother, sister, uncles, aunts, and cousins – and in a ritual almost lost in the passage of time, sang as my mother fed me two drops of her blood.
My legs lengthened and molded together, as her nourishment pulsed through my body, changing me inch by inch. Where my feet had once been, two fins took shape, overlaid with iridescent blue scales.
The process was beautiful, my family told me, rare, and yet there I was, the adopted, healthy and changing. Born human, and through the grace and love of the one I would know as Mother, turned into a creature of the deep, a daughter of the ocean, a mermaid.
Chapter 1
The Caribbean
1736
I ran my fingers through my hair, and the motion failed to ease my dissatisfaction. My locks had been cut short the day prior. The feel of the crude length in between my fingers disappointed me, and it always had.