Falling in Deep Collection Box Set

by Pauline Creeden

  “The short version,” she said as she checked around my hairline, then both of my hands, “is that the two of us used ancient magics to contain two of the Old Gods—the Titans, according to Greek legend—in their own realm, the one to which they were banished by Zeus.”

  “And if I don’t believe in magic?” I could hear the skepticism in my voice.

  “Then…” The mermaid paused, and something almost electrical snapped around her face before she found a suitable answer. “Then you and I engaged in the manipulation of quantum physics to maintain a secure environment for a hostile species.”

  “I’m not really sure that’s any better,” I muttered.

  “Sorry,” Skyla said. “It’s the best I can do under these circumstances.” She lifted my chin. “Open your mouth and say ahhh.”

  I followed her instructions and she shook her head. “This isn’t good.”

  Pulling away from her, I leaned over to tug a tiny curtain away from the window. “So that thing out there. It was really a monster?”

  “Of sorts.” With a sigh, she sat back on her heels. “If they had gotten through the portal, the people of Athens certainly would have thought so.”

  I rubbed my hands across my burning eyes. “So you’re saying we saved the city?”

  “Yes, we saved the city.” A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She tilted her head to regard me. “In the power transfer, I gained a sense of … well, a lot of things. Including superheroes. And I can hear you thinking that we’re like superheroes.”

  An odd, almost uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach. “Is there something wrong with that?” I asked, maybe a little defensively.

  “Nothing,” the mermaid said, standing long enough to stretch before sitting down next to me on the bed. “Nothing at all,” she repeated, this time more quietly.

  I stared down at my hands, remembering how they had looked just before I had collapsed—bathed in a silvery blue light, all running toward Skyla. “Now what?” I asked.

  “I need to see if I can give you back that which I have taken.” Her eyes were serious, and it might have meant more if I’d had any idea what she was talking about.

  “What you’ve taken?” I shook my head.

  Another half-smile suggested that Skyla might have accessed another memory of mine. “Your essence. The part of you that makes you who you are. Your soul, if you prefer.”

  “You took my soul? I don’t think so.” I wanted to add a derisive laugh, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “I hope you are right,” she said, even as she leaned in to kiss me.

  Skyla

  Every kiss is different. I remembered that from my time before with human men. I had forgotten the rush of heat that came with earth kisses, the power that flowed through such a simple touch.

  I had never expected to feel it again.

  Atlantean men, pale and cold and wan, had never attracted me. It had been centuries since I experienced the pull of hot desire stemming from the touch of someone else’s lips upon mine.

  Adam Clayton’s memories overlay that, as well, the heat of humanity steaming against my own desire both in my mind and against my mouth, until I couldn’t tell if the small, needy noises came from his memory or my own body.

  But his hands shimmying down my sides were definitely real—a product of his action, and not merely a memory. As he shoved the sheer fabric of the skirt out of the way, the calluses on his fingers rasped against the tender new flesh of my skin, and I whimpered at the contrast.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured against my lips. “Fingers like sandpaper.”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t stop. I like it.” I couldn’t find the words to tell him how much I craved that difference, that initial clear distinction between the hardness of the earth and the give of the water, and the way that moment changes to the one when earth crumbles into water, when water soaks into earth.

  But even without words, we found it.

  I had meant to give him back his soul—that part of him that I had held in safekeeping for him, that he had given me to use in the comparatively short battle against Epimetheus.

  Instead, I found my own as he slid inside me, staring into my eyes in a dance that needed no words.

  When it was over, I realized that as much as I had stolen his soul, he had taken mine.

  Clay

  I hadn’t meant to have sex with her.

  Hell, I hadn’t meant much of anything that had happened since I left Dallas.

  Or before, really.

  Ever since the night I confronted Dennis Charalobos in front of his family’s home and he pulled a gun on me, everything had seemed to culminate here.

  Like fate. The voice that had led me to Skyla in the first place whispered to me, and with a sudden lurch, I realized that I could picture her home beneath the ocean, stone pillars covered in barnacles and seaweed.

  Not imagine.

  Actually picture.

  Just as Skyla had said she’d been able to see parts of my life after she took my soul—whatever that meant. I wasn’t even sure I had a soul.

  But I was certain that whatever Skyla had, I now carried a piece of it. And probably vice versa.

  At some point, I had tossed that filmy dress of hers across the room. As I stood up to hand it to her, I tried to gather my thoughts as well.

  What do you say to a mermaid you just had sex with?

  As it turns out, I discovered, nothing—at least with this mermaid, she does all the talking.

  “That was not what I expected,” she said, a deep crease furrowing her otherwise smooth brow.

  Her comment threw me for a bit of a loop. “What did you expect?”

  “Something less…” I waited for her to find the right word. “Less esoteric,” she finally said.

  “And is that good or bad?”

  “It simply … is.” She shook her head. “I am disconcerted.

  “Me, too,” I muttered.

  “I need the ocean.” She pulled on her sandals quickly, and I rushed to follow her.

  “We’re still some distance from the coast, Skyla,” I said.

  She spun in a circle, her movements growing jerkier and jerkier. “Water, then,” she said, her voice almost a wail. “I need water.”

  “Come with me to my hotel.” I tried to keep my tone soothing. “We have a pool there. Plenty of water. You’ll be fine. Or we can take a taxi to the beach. Whatever you need, we can find it.”

  She pulled in deep breaths, slowed her breathing to calm herself as we walked to the hotel. “Everything will be fine,” she muttered.

  “Why do you need a pool?” I finally asked when she seemed less panicked.

  “I…” She started to speak, then paused. “I need to see if I can shift,” she said.

  “And that has to happen tonight?” I glanced around the small streets as we made our way toward the Temple of Zeus near my hotel. “It can’t wait until tomorrow? Is there another danger I don’t know about?”

  “No.” Her voice was soft and drew the word out. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what?” I reached down in the darkness and took her hand with mine. After an initial jerk, she let her hand rest in mine, her fingertips running across the calluses that ridged my fingers.

  “I think perhaps I should go to the ocean, after all,” she said as we drew up to the corner across from my hotel, her voice so quiet I could barely hear it.

  She didn’t speak in the cab I hailed, and when we got out, she moved down the beach toward the water as I paid and reassured the cabbie that we weren’t the sort of tourists who would get mugged on an empty beach in the failing light.

  I watched the back lights of the car as it pulled away, then turned to find Skyla.

  She stood in the ocean with the water lapping at her waist, her skirt spread out in a circle around her. As I watched, she raised her arms to the sky, turned her face toward the setting
sun, and began to sing.

  The sound wound through the air and around the rocks, pitching higher and higher, until I could almost see it cut down through the water, sliding around her legs and churning the water.

  But nothing more happened.

  Eventually, Skyla’s song wound down until it left us alone, just the two of us, standing in the water with the ocean pulling at our legs.

  When she turned to face me, tears crisscrossed her face.

  I reached out to cup her cheek and wipe one tear away with my thumb. The instant my skin made contact with the saltwater from her eye, everything around us froze for a moment, and then came alive with power.

  Everywhere I looked, silver light outlined objects around me—rocks, waves, plants, even, if I looked closely enough, individual grains of sand.

  Skyla’s already luminous eyes grew larger and wider as she took in the world around us.

  “What is this?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, but something on her face suggested she might not being telling the whole truth.

  “But?” I asked.

  “But there are stories of pair-bonded mermaids who could do extraordinary magic.”

  “Pair-bonded?” I asked. “Like with a human?”

  “No.” Her dark hair whipped around, first as she shook her head, and then as she continued staring at the objects around us.

  I took my hand away from her face, and the light surrounding everything began to fade. When I reached up again to touch her cheek, everything glowed again.

  “That’s what’s so odd,” Skyla continued. “The pair-bonds were always both magical.”

  I took my hand away again. “But I’m not magical. I’m just a regular, everyday cop.”

  Not everyday. The voice in my head whispered again. But this time, Skyla heard it, too.

  “Poseidon?” she called out. “My lord?”

  Though the voice itself seemed to boom around us, the phrases that came through were fragmented, as if from a great distance.

  Pair-bonded.

  Power against the Old Ones.

  Shift.

  Find others.

  “Did you catch all that?” I asked Skyla, when the voice had faded away.

  Chewing on her bottom lip, she nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek, “that we have a duty to fulfill. The Old Ones are coming in force. And it means that I am no longer entirely mer, and you are no longer entirely human.” As she stared at me, a single tear dropped from her eye. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  The entire world convulsed around me once, and I splashed into the water, a fin flashing behind me as I learned to use it.

  Mer.

  Skyla

  Mermaids do not bring love.

  My story is never one of happiness, of joy, of laughter.

  I cannot walk these shores without pain—my pain and the pain of others.

  The little mermaid always feels as if she is walking on knives, her feet bloody and torn, even when no one else can see it.

  Humans and mer are not compatible. As with all things, there is a price to pay for change. As with a mermaid who, for love of a human male, traded her fins for legs—and in so doing, lost the voice that the man had loved, gaining only the agony of two legs forevermore.

  The world of men offers little but pain, and silences our songs.

  But if we can draw humans to our needs, we can use their strength to protect our world—sometimes, even protect their own world, whether they will or no.

  For now, until this threat is eliminated, the beautiful human, drawn to me by my voice, my song, my story…we are together ever after.

  This is not a love story.

  But we will prevail.

  About the Author

  Margo Bond Collins writes contemporary romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal mystery. She lives in Texas with her daughter and several spoiled pets. Although she teaches college-level English courses online, writing fiction is her first love. She enjoys reading urban fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and the women who love (and sometimes fight) them.

  Connect with Margo online:

  Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com

  Website

  Blog

  Facebook

  Pinterest

  Check out Margo’s other works on Amazon

  To Each His Own by Anna Albergucci

  Douglass McGrail is a Scottish water horse—his clan the deadliest in the British Isle. When the shifter chooses to save—rather than eat—a young lassie, he never expects her innocent face to mark his memory so strongly.

  Months later, he stumbles onto a perceived attack in progress and plays the hero once more. He’s shocked to find the victim is the same lass who haunts his dreams.

  Jinny Fairchild is an English miss who’s come to the Highlands to live with her last remaining family. She is pursued by her handsome older cousin, Lachlan Brockhouse, but he has a dark side that lands her in the path of the mighty Douglass McGrail.

  Douglass wants Jinny for himself, yet discovers she is connected to the attacker she denies knowing. He’s determined to find the truth.

  Jinny loves Lachlan, even with his dark side. And she loves Douglass, even with his dark secret. Her heart is torn, but one thing is certain—no matter which of these men she chooses, she will be choosing a monster.

  Prologue

  Scottish Highlands

  May 27, 1829

  Jinny Fairchild

  I lowered my book and turned my gaze toward the carriage window. The bright sheen of the waning day skipped upon the water as I looked out across the deep blue sea—the impregnable haven that awakened my soul. Would I ever again return to a life there? The squeeze of my heart brought my hand to my throat, and I determined not to question such things—the land was my home now.

  My gaze trailed the shoreline below where the two came together—land and sea—the white waves swelling against the sand and pebbles, only to withdraw once more into their yawning abode.

  Again, my heart yearned for the comfort of home as every aspect of my future life would be unlike anything I’d known. I was alone now, and no one’s little girl anymore. Would I be welcomed in this new dwelling place? Would my days turn to needlepoint and discussions about the latest gossip? No, surely not. This was the Highlands of Scotland, not London, England.

  Lurching forward as the carriage wheel made a harsh dip into a rut, I steadied myself and silenced my daydreaming. Leaning my head out the window to see along the sea cliff road, I was gripped by the unexpected sight of a vast castle a short distance ahead.

  It sat atop a mammoth bluff that jutted into the ocean, and there had to be at least a thousand sheep grazing atop that bluff. The opposing sight of ominous waves crashing furiously against the bluff’s foot as the wooly creatures so peaceably nibbled the green pasture above enthralled me.

  I could almost hear my father’s voice. “Jinny! Come away from there before those waves swallow you clean up, girl. How many times must I tell you you’re no match for the mighty hand of the sea?”

  I remembered the feel of his protecting arms as he pulled me from the railing of the lobbing ship those months ago. His secure foothold never faltered as he’d carried me to safety.

  Tears burned my eyes. Papa. I sucked the memory back into my heart with a lungful of air.

  “Sir,” I yelled to the driver. “What is that place up ahead?”

  “Good Lord, lass! I ken ye are English by yer accent, but I thought everyone could name Cainneach-Balfour, home to the mysterious Clan McGrail.” He put a trace of warning into the word. “Have ye never seen a drawing of the castle?”

  “No.”

  “And have ye no’ heard of the clan neither?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they are elusiv
e.”

  “Why did you call them mysterious?”

  “Och, do ye no’ listen? I just said they are elusive, which makes them a mystery, does it no’?” He chuckled. “While they own all the coastal land for miles this side of Balfoureigh, they keep to themselves, and no’ a soul crosses their threshold.”

  Not a soul?

  Taken aback by such an outlandish claim, I sat back and said nothing more, yet wondered about the ‘mysterious and elusive’ Clan McGrail as I continued marveling over the majestic stronghold that sheltered them. It was a spectacular view. The bluff, protruding into the sea as it did, created an inlet, and the castle atop it was nearly parallel with us now as we followed the cove around.

  Putting aside the unlikely notion that no one entered their gates but them, I couldn’t help but think what a lucky clan they were. If one had to live on land, that castle, with the sea lapping at its foot such as it was, would be a thrilling place to do it.

  A deepening roll of what sounded like thunder drew my attention, and I looked to the sky to discover there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. Yet the rumbling grew loud. I dropped my gaze and leaned my head out the window again to search for the source. I came off my seat and farther out the window at the unexpected sight of a herd of extraordinary horses on the beach below us, rounding the bay not half a furlong ahead. They were coming our way from the direction of the castle road.

  The creatures—led by a great black stallion—were magnificent and massive, with long, shaggy manes and heavy, feathered hooves battering the earth and water, which sprayed in all directions around them.

  They were so close now I could see they were quite threatening. The herd was a good thirty feet below us, but the tension of it still caused me to draw myself inside, only to be immediately flung headfirst at the opposite seat as our conveyance slammed to a brutal halt. With my bonnet set askew, I found myself plunked in a most unladylike position on my bum on the floor. I thanked the heavens the seat had been cushioned against my head and that I hadn’t remained hanging out the window; had I, I was sure I’d be tumbling down the rocky terrain at our side.