Release (The Submerged Sun, #3)

by Garden,Vanessa

  I followed Sylvia to her rooms, but she slammed the door in my face.

  “If you don’t show me Lauren’s body I will make a nuisance of myself. I will tell Damir that you murdered her. How do you think he’ll react?” I rested my forehead against the door. “He will want your blood, Sylvia, and you know it. You know as well as I do that despite his evil, sick heart, Damir loved Lauren.” My words echoed down the long, vacant corridor.

  The door burst open and I fell against Sylvia.

  “Shut up,” she hissed and pulled me deeper into her bedroom. The room was dimly lit, most likely for the baby’s sake, which made it even harder for me to see.

  “Here, take the baby.”

  At first I thought she was speaking to me, but after hearing the older woman, the maid, clucking like a chicken, I realised that Sylvia must have handed her baby Angelina.

  “Here’s the bottle. Leave us.”

  Footsteps retreated until I could no longer hear them.

  A warm hand brushed my arm and I bristled and stepped back.

  “You used to let me touch you before, Robbie. Back when we were friends.” Sylvia’s voice was soft and playful. But I wasn’t in the mood for games.

  “I’m presuming you heard what I said outside your door?” I asked.

  Sylvia released a small, tight laugh and took a step closer. Her spicy perfume clouded my head.

  “I heard. But your little threats don’t scare me. Damir doesn’t scare me either. Do you honestly think that my twin is capable of anything other than weeping at the moment?”

  I must have shown something on my face, maybe disappointment, because she laughed again.

  “Yes, my darling Robbie, Damir has been crying for the past two weeks. He has been reduced to a limp, leaking, wet rag that is weighing me down. And when he’s not crying, he’s trying to invent mermaids, but he’s killing more than he’s creating. I think ten or so since Lauren died. Nearly one a day. I’ve had to invent all kinds of stories to tell the families of the missing women and my imagination can only concoct so many.” She swallowed thickly and gripped my forearm, her nails biting into my skin.

  “I’m so disgusted by him that I have forbidden him to see the child, which is for the best in the long run. I’m sure everyone in Marin would agree that Damir was never going to be a candidate for father-of-the-year.” She laughed again. “Anyway, too much negative energy may affect the child’s wellbeing and the child is my number one priority.”

  I brushed her hand away.

  ‘Mine too,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  “Yes. But without any surviving family, I am its only next of kin. So the responsibility falls on me.”

  My stomach clenched. She’d gone too far.

  “You’re wrong. Miranda and Marko are still alive. So are Miranda’s grandparents. That child is their great-grandchild. They have been asking to meet her. They have a right to see her.”

  I wanted to add that I had a right to see her, and that Lauren was almost like a sister to me after the past few months we’d spent together, and that I desperately wanted to protect that baby with everything I had left inside of me. But I said nothing. Better to not reveal how protective I was of the child or else Sylvia might use it against me.

  ‘No. I am the child’s guardian and for the time being I’m forbidding any visitors. The child needs to settle in and get used to me first. I am to be her one constant in life.’

  I shuddered inwardly. Miranda would hate this.

  “Then all I’m asking is for you to allow me to take a look at Lauren’s body. If we ever solve the fertility crisis in Marin I would like to know about the dangers of childbirth and what I can look out for to prevent it. Please, Sylvia. I need to see what went wrong.”

  I need to see if you killed Lauren.

  Sylvia must have turned away, because her voice sounded distant though her shadow remained.

  “Well, you can’t, now. Because I’ve already disposed of her body.” She sniffed as though she might be crying. “Damir experimented on her. I think he was trying to bring her back to life and then turn her into a mermaid. He did not succeed. I don’t think he’ll ever succeed in creating a proper mermaid. Thank God.”

  Rage tightened my chest. I couldn’t speak. The thought of Lauren’s dead body being mutilated was too much. How was I ever going to explain this to Miranda? I’d promised that I’d look after her sister. And I’d failed in the worst way.

  My hands made fists and I sucked in a deep breath, swallowing down the hard lump in my throat, before turning and storming away from Sylvia to head straight for Damir’s quarters.

  Damir had moved out of Marko’s rooms after Lauren’s death, choosing to return to his old quarters. And with the baby firmly within Sylvia’s clutches and Marko gone, security in the rest of the castle had grown lax, so I was able to reach Damir’s door without being questioned by a single guard.

  Hot blood pounded in my ears as I entered Damir’s dark set of rooms, but after calling out several times, with no response, I sighed with disappointment. He wasn’t here. Not that I knew what I planned to do if I did in fact run into him. Most likely question him about Lauren’s death before strangling him so that he never got to lay a single disgusting finger on another innocent girl again.

  As disappointed as I was that he wasn’t in the room, I took the opportunity to snoop around a little and felt around beneath his pillows until I found a lock of what I presumed to be Lauren’s hair, tied with a silken ribbon. More proof that perhaps Damir had truly loved Lauren.

  But as I turned to leave, I spied a flash of red hanging on a hook behind the bedroom door. When I reached out to touch it, I realised that it was a white shirt, stiff with what could only have been blood stains.

  Footsteps approached and I turned just in time to see a shadow appear at the door.

  Maybe I was wrong about security getting lax.

  ‘Who goes there?’ Though my hand itched to reach down for a boot dagger, I stayed completely still.

  The person laughed and I immediately recognised it as belonging to one of Damir’s guards, Redkin. My shoulders relaxed. Redkin was a short, stumpy man, no match for me even if I’d lost all my senses.

  “Get out of here, Mouse, before I cut off your tail,” he said, the shine of what must have been a dagger glinting in his hand. I hated that nickname. I was the resident “blind mouse” of the castle. So unoriginal.

  I blinked several times but my eyes remained blurry, much to my annoyance.

  “You’re a funny little man, Redkin,” I said, before shoulder bumping him on my way out, pretending that I could see clearly. “I was looking for Damir but he’s not here so I’m leaving.”

  “He’s in his lab. What’s it to you? Do you have a message from the mother?”

  I flinched, hating what everyone in Marin was calling Sylvia. Lauren was, and always would be baby Angelina’s mother, and I hated that the people of the city had forgotten her so quickly.

  It was Sylvia who got baby gifts showered upon her, Sylvia who received all the congratulations. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. And if Sylvia did in fact murder Lauren, then I wanted all of Marin to know that she had killed the one who had brought them their first baby in twenty years.

  “You’d better not disturb him in his lab,” Redkin shouted at my back as I felt my way towards Frano Tollin’s laboratory. But I ignored him, my fingers gliding across the stone wall. I wanted nothing more than to disturb Damir.

  “Damir!” I shouted, banging on the lab door as soon as I got there, purposely averting my gaze from the library door across the hall, so as not to think of Miranda—it had been her favourite room in the castle, her secret hideaway—and I hated to be reminded of her up on land, oblivious to her sister’s passing.

  The door swung open and there stood Damir, dressed in a white shirt. I could tell by the slashes of red decorating it that I must have interrupted another operation. My stomach churned and my muscles clenched. For on
ce I was glad for my distorted vision.

  “Yes, Blind Mouse, what is it? I’m in the middle of creating a mermaid and the anaesthetic is about to wear off.”

  He opened the door wider and thankfully my eyesight sharpened enough to see a partially covered body on the laboratory bench.

  “I’ve only just cut her and now I’m going to put her back together. You can be my assistant if you like, but by the look on your face you won’t be able to stomach it.” He started to laugh.

  Rage flooded my veins.

  In a flash I drew a dagger from my boot and gripped Damir by the hair with my free hand, before pointing the winking blade at his throat.

  “Is she dead?”

  “No,” he said, rather calmly despite the dagger biting into his skin and drawing a bead of blood. “But she will be if you kill me and don’t let me put her back together.”

  “Like the others?”

  Damir snorted. “The one good thing that came out of losing Lauren is that I’ve been able to focus on my work. Though I have lost a few girls, I have been successful, Rob.” His green eyes widened. “Very successful.”

  In shock, I drew the dagger away and released his hair. Acidic bile inched up my throat but I managed to swallow it down.

  “You’ve created mermaids?” Reluctantly, I cast my sharpened gaze around the room, searching for a tank but saw only the contents of the laboratory as it had always been, all shiny silver bench-tops and trays crammed with metal instruments.

  “Yes.” A strange sparkle lit Damir’s eyes. He took hold of my shoulders and shook me. “Yes, Robbie. I have several. All beautiful, with long golden hair like my Lauren. And they are mine.”

  “Sylvia will order your arrest,” I said, shrugged his hands off me, my eyes darting to the motionless girl on the bench top. The contents of my stomach once again threatened to shoot up my throat. Sweat trickled down my temples.

  Damir laughed. “Sylvia has what she wants now. She actually gave me twelve female subjects to experiment on, in exchange for full custody of the baby. She convinced me that I could never love the baby because of what it did to Lauren.” His eyes lost focus for a second and he stared over my shoulder before returning my gaze. “But I am not cruel and will allow it to live and thrive under Sylvia’s care.”

  “Her name is Angelina.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, after a flinch.

  “What if I told you that Sylvia may have been responsible for Lauren’s death, that Lauren was healthy when she went into labour and that I could see no reason as to why she would die during a textbook pregnancy and birth?”

  Damir’s face twitched.

  “I can see on your face that you think it possible.”

  “But it can’t bring her back, so what is the point? If I threw my sister to the sharks, the child would have no family to care for it. I’m no monster.” Damir shook his head then laughed half-heartedly. “Besides, we can’t use the tank for sharks anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Damir turned back to the girl who had started to twitch and tremble on the table, and I watched, horrified, as she woke and raised her head only to peer beneath the blood stained sheet draped across her body.

  Her mouth stretched open and a blood curdling scream tore through the room and no doubt travelled down every corridor in the castle.

  Damir slammed the door shut and swore, rushing to the girl’s side, as did I. Her clear blue eyes were wide and frantic. She grabbed me by my shirt collar and continued to scream, only this time she was shouting, “Help me, help me please. The pain. I want to die. I want to die,” between shrieks.

  “Where’s the anaesthetic?” I shouted.

  Damir, his eyes wild and crazy, stared down at the girl and then at my face before grinning slowly.

  “I’ve run out.”

  4

  Miranda

  “I have to find out if it’s her. I have to go to wherever the police are keeping the body and ask to see her.” The linoleum floor was cool beneath my feet as I paced the cramped kitchen of the shack. “I need to fly to Sydney.”

  Marko leaned against the kitchen table, staring at the newspaper article in disbelief.

  “Are you sure it’s her anklet? There are other bracelets with sun pendants on them. This can’t be the only one.” His eyes flashed to mine and I could see the horror hidden behind the calm façade of his steely blue gaze and a kind of faraway stare, as though he was searching for any reason as to why the girl in the picture could not be Lauren. “Because it’ll be an enormous risk for you, a missing person, to fly all the way to Sydney. To speak to the police no less.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but he kept talking, pausing only to clasp my hand in his and drag me to stand between his long, outstretched legs. He released a long sigh.

  “But I understand your need. If Robbie, or even one of my siblings, had washed ashore I would do the same. I’d need to know.” He swallowed. “I’d need closure,” he added softly, before slipping an arm around my waist.

  I gripped his free hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “I’m just trying to work out how I’m going to get past the police without raising suspicions. They’ll ask me a million questions...”

  Marko gnawed on his bottom lip while deep in thought.

  “Nobody has claimed her yet. The paper says she has no ID, so I suspect they’ll be calling for the public to identify her. Perhaps you’ll go unnoticed if there are others, family members of missing girls... ”

  Tears sprang to my eyes, to imagine my sister on a cold slab somewhere, unclaimed and unwanted.

  “That’s good. At least they’ll be expecting strangers to come forward. But I’m sure they won’t just let me look at the body. I’ll need to give them my name... which is only going to cause more problems.”

  Marko was thoughtful for a long moment before squeezing my hand back. “We could dye your hair. I’ll book us both tickets. Yours under a false name—mine too—just in case.” He let go of my waist and rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t want them linking me to the Tollin estate while we’re asking about a dead body. We’d run the risk of the police freezing my bank accounts and leaving us with nothing to live on.” He stared down at our hands, his eyes lost in thoughts and plans. “We need to be extremely careful with this.”

  “I know. And that’s why you can’t come.”

  Marko stared at me for a long while before he drew his hands away, and rested them against the table behind him.

  “I’m sorry Marko but you’ll have to stay. It’s the only safe way to do this. What if Robbie shows up, finally, to take us back to Marin?”

  The hardness in his eyes and the way his hands had formed fists were enough for me to know that he would give up his only chance at returning to Marin, all for me, but I just couldn’t let him do that. Not when I didn’t even know if the girl was in fact Lauren.

  I turned and stared out the small, salt-crusted window. The ocean was a rich, deep blue today, reflecting the perfect sky.

  “If you get caught, and they work out who you are, they’ll come here anyway. They’ll probably arrest me for your kidnapping so I may as well go with you, Miranda.” He came to stand beside me, resting a hand on my lower back.

  I spun around.

  “No, they won’t. They thought an old man took me anyway, and you’ll hardly pass for that.”

  “But what about your grandparents, and Lauren, who’ve been missing for over six months? The police are going to be extremely suspicious when they discover a strange man of no relation to your family, at your shack, alone. It’s better if I come with you.”

  He opened his arms, an invitation I normally couldn’t resist. He was making this so hard. I wasn’t sure why I needed to do this on my own, but it felt right. If this was my last moment with Lauren, then I just wanted it to be us two sisters, even if one of us was already gone. Plus, there was no way we could risk not having somebody here when or if Robbie showed up.

  Ign
oring his waiting arms, I folded my own across my chest. At this he threw back his head and growled in frustration.

  “So you’ve decided, then? Nothing I can say or do will change your mind, will it?”

  “No.” I swallowed thickly. “I have to do this on my own. And you have to be here for Robbie.”

  He reached for my hand and tugged it until I fell into his arms. “Though I respect your wishes, I don’t like this, Miranda. If feels off.”

  “I know, everything about this feels... unreal... like a nightmare.” I rested my head against his chest and breathed in the heavenly piney/ocean scent that was Marko. His heart was thudding nearly as fast as my own. I’d miss him so much while I was gone. I raised my head to meet his gaze. “But you’ll just have to trust me on this. I need to do this for myself.”

  Marko stared down at me with shiny, intense eyes for what seemed like forever, until I had to look down.

  “Okay,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “But I’ll take you to the airport and collect you when you return.”

  “Thanks.”

  I pressed my lips to his shoulder. After spending nearly every waking minute together the past few months, I was going to finally have to say goodbye to him, even if it was only temporary.

  The window displayed a perfect, cut-glass ocean. If only my insides could mirror the ocean’s calm. But then again the ocean had no need to fret or worry. It already had the answers. It knew how the city of Marin was faring without us. And it had either carried my sister’s lifeless body to shore or not.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later I was staring at a strawberry-blonde haired version of me, so starkly different from the brunette version of me.

  “It feels like straw, doesn’t it?” I asked when Marko started to stroke it.

  The blonde had brought out the olive in my skin and what appeared to be almost green flecks in my brown eyes. Overall the makeover didn’t look bad, but it just didn’t feel like me, which of course was the whole point.

  “I think I’ve damaged it forever. I’ve washed and conditioned it twice since I coloured it and it still feels dry.” But it would be completely worth it if I found out that the body wasn’t Lauren’s. I wouldn’t care about my hair anymore. I’d just be so happy to know that Lauren was alive.