“Show some respect, Mary Grace,” Contessa said, defending me.
“Eat excrement and die, Contessa,” Mary Grace snapped back.
I weighed what Mary Grace had said, and since the kraken was easily twice the size of the tower, and this island was not all that big, she was probably right. I glanced at the entrance to Hell. Clearly, the Lord of the Underworld was going to try and force our hand. It was not like going in there was an option! Only a small bit of smoke streamed from the entrance. He was waiting to play his next card. “Choices, vampire, choices,” a deep voice boomed from the hellish hole.
“To the tower!” I yelled, hopping behind Contessa on her steed. “The farther we get the kraken out of the water, the better chance we have!” Garlic jumped up behind me, balancing expertly on the hind end of the horse.
Even Mary Grace chose not to belabor her point, and we made for the tower, but right as we came close to Hell’s hole, a host of slobbering hellhounds burst from it, attacking our mounts and causing us to jump from our horses and engage them. Their demonic eyes glowed red like hot coals, and their jaws dripped with venomous bile. They were the size of cattle and moved with a sinewy speed that belied their size—they were simply black blurs of rampaging death. But they had no interest in fighting us and were focused on attacking our horses with savage ferocity, ripping into horse flesh with a sickening crunch as fang struck bone. We attacked these whirling, howling creatures with equal ferocity, Garlic barking into smithereens any hound that threatened the fair steed she was still perched atop of. The hounds retreated to the edge of the tower, flanking us, and putting us between them and the kraken, which was now half on the beach and half in the water. The hounds closed ranks and marched toward us—choices indeed.
Only Contessa’s horse had survived the hellhound attack, thanks to Garlic’s barks, my magical blade, and Contessa’s swordswomanship. Adelaide and Beatrice sniffed back tears behind their masks, while Mary Grace took a knife from her boot and slit her mount’s throat to end its suffering. That was one tough girl, I thought as we made eye contact. Her face said that I could be next if she had the opportunity, almost like she blamed me for her horse dying, then I realized that she actually did!
“I told you that going to the tower would be a bad idea.” She sniffed. “Good thinking, Master Assassin.”
“You really do have a lot to learn, Mary Grace,” I said, calmly surveying the beach. “Battles are never without their surprises, and in all my years of master assassinship, these are the first hellhounds I have ever encountered. So, if you stop talking and start listening, you might just survive this living nightmare, got it?”
On the hounds came, and the girls, including a put-in-her-place Mary Grace, looked to me for guidance. “All right then,” I said. “Let us get back-to-back. We cannot let the hounds outflank us, or they will cut us down one by one.” I looked at the sheer size and power of the approaching kraken. “Remember, the hellhounds want no part of that vile beast either. It will just as soon attack them as us, if they get in the way.” The girls nodded, and Contessa took to her mount with Garlic again riding point on her saddle. “One last thing,” I said. “I love you girls more than you will ever know.”
“I know. I love you too,” Contessa called from her saddle, but the others grouped around me had remained silent, and right then my heart hurt in ways I never thought possible. That wound cut deeper than any blade could, but I could not blame them. It was not their fault. I held the Blade of Truth high in the air, and saw Adelaide, Beatrice, and Mary Grace hugging me in its reflection. That was the reality as to how my reluctant daughters felt about me—they were just not allowed to love me. If they would only come to be as loyal and loving as Contessa—if we had another day together, that is! I cursed the Howler and Angus for the hundredth time.
We found ourselves pinned between the kraken and the hellhounds, and I briefly considered a rush at the hounds, thinking maybe one of the girls would get to safety. But that safety was an illusion, as the kraken would destroy the tower stone by stone, until all of us were dead. My sword glowed bright white like a mini-sun on the beach, and the hounds stopped with a painful yelp, turning their heads from us. A great horn sounded from the ocean, and then others joined it in a concert. Garlic howled long and loud, sending a welcome to those that were coming. I looked to the sea, and astride great orcas, a host of trident-bearing merfolk set upon the kraken with great ferocity.
Leading them was a mermaid of uncommon valor, her long golden hair flung out beneath her jeweled battle helm as she weaved her orca in and out of the kraken’s many tentacles, slashing at the kraken’s body again and again. “Look at her,” Mary Grace exclaimed. “Now she is a warrior!” The other girls murmured their agreement. “Who is she?” Mary Grace asked, looking in my direction as if somehow I should know the answer. I shrugged. Now, of course I was pretty sure that I had met her before in the see-a-seaperson-naked kind of way, but she had left Lundy Island before I learned her name.
Again and again the orcas came away from the beach with great tentacles in their mouths, returning a moment later to do it again. The kraken shrieked in rage and pain, wrapping its tentacles around a great orca and heaving it and its rider high in the direction of the tower. The merman leaped from the orca, heaving his trident at one angry yellow eye, dodging tentacles as he fell back to the ocean in a dizzying series of twists and flips. The orca fell short of the beach, landing in the water near the shore with a great splash, and a few of the hellhounds attacked. But the orca fought back, snapping and biting at them as it rolled toward the water. A great net, flung by a group of mermen, snared the orca’s tail, and they pulled it back to safety, dispatching the hellhounds they had caught in it with their tridents.
The merfolk seemed to have the kraken well in hand, so I rallied my girls to face the hellhounds. “Come on, ladies,” I yelled, wanting to take advantage of the confusion. “Let us avenge your mounts!” Mary Grace had hopped on Contessa’s horse, and on they charged with the rest of us right behind them. Adelaide’s hands were a blur, as arrow after arrow found the throat or heart of a hellhound. Not to be outdone, Beatrice cleared a path to the tower with her scythe, and the sand soon ran red with the blood of the hounds. We chased them back into the entrance to Hell and rejoiced at our victory. Garlic was running circles around us in the sand, yelping happily in spite of the fact that her white coat had turned a fine shade of crimson from the blood of the hellhounds. The kraken moved off the beach with the merfolk in pursuit. It plunged beneath the surface of the ocean and was seen no more.
The mermaid with the jeweled helm walked up from the beach on her land legs, and Mary Grace began to get excited. “It is her—the warrior woman,” she said, doffing her mask. For the first time, I saw Mary Grace was fairer than any of her sisters with reddish-brown hair and the green eyes of her mother, complete with the smoldering anger and snarky attitude—but not at the moment, since her eyes, and all of our group’s, were on the mermaid.
The mermaid removed her jeweled helm, which sparkled in the sunlight, and I found myself staring into familiar blue eyes. “It’s you!” I exclaimed, giggling like a proper English schoolboy. “And here I thought I was never going to see you again!
“These are my daughters,” I said proudly.
“How do you know her, Father?” Contessa said. “She is amazing—tell us, tell us!” Yes, she was amazing, I thought. I took a deep breath, prepared to give them a highly abridged story of our meeting. But, thankfully, the mermaid took charge once again.
“Hello, Sirius Sinister, it is good to see you,” the mermaid said. “And hello to all of you brave young lady warriors! Never before have I seen so much fighting skill from such young women. But as daughters of the legendary warrior Sirius Sinister, I should not be surprised.” I saw my daughters hanging on her every word, thrilled at being praised by her as legendary.
“What’s your name?” Mary Grace
excitedly blurted, interrupting our new friend. “Are you somebody important?”
“Mary Grace!” I scolded, ignoring her all-too-familiar look of disdain. Indeed, Mary Grace had inherited much from the Blackheart side of her family.
The mermaid laughed at Mary Grace’s impetuousness, and then she and I locked gazes, and I fell deep into her beautiful blue eyes. “My name does not have a translation into any land-walker language,” she said. “Underwater, we communicate in a language that has no equivalent on land. It would sound like a series of clicks and such to you. But on land I do speak French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and of course, now English.”
Our little reunion was interrupted by one of her soldiers. “Forgive my intrusion, my Queen,” he said, bowing his head. “But we are tracking the kraken to the north as it flees to colder and deeper waters. It appears to be on the run and shows no signs of return.”
“Excellent,” the Queen said. “Thank you for your report.”
“Queen?” I exclaimed. “You are a queen?”
“I knew it,” said Contessa. “She had to be a queen! Daddy knows royalty!”
I noticed that Mary Grace, Adelaide, and Beatrice were now more focused on the young soldier, who looked about their age, though he stood easily a head taller than me. Mermen were usually pale, like the Queen, and of average height, but this soldier clearly did not fit in with the under-the-sea contingent. He was wearing only a mesh loincloth and weapon belt that failed to cover any of his tan, bare, chiseled muscles—all of which I could see in well-defined fashion, as apparently could my girls. He looked like he was cut from a single piece of tan marble. I found myself wishing I had a spare cloak to offer him, to say nothing of a pair of voluminous breeches! Was Mary Grace really staring at his loincloth that was not doing such a great job clothing his loins?
“I beg your pardon, my good land folk.” His voice was strong and melodic. He paused, not sure what to make of Garlic, who was happily licking the saltwater off his calf. “Queen of the Seven Seas, and the entire underwater realm of this world, would be more accurate.”
Garlic looked up at him and continued licking his leg. “Get off him, you wretched Maltese,” I admonished her, and banished to the deepest part of my mind the very real possibility that my daughters would want to do the same thing to this adolescent Adonis. “Why didn’t you say you were the queen of the merfolk last time?” I asked the Queen, wishing the soldier would go back to the ocean, and his flowing blond hair would stop moving in slow motion in the wind. Did he really have to look all glistening like that? I thought I heard Adelaide and Beatrice sigh in concert. Damn.
“It never came up,” the Queen answered. “We were a little occupied with trying to escape the Winter Witch, if you remember. And then . . . well . . . things . . .” She cast her eyes downward and flushed slightly. Contessa was watching everything, as she seemed to be wont to do, and she pounced quickly.
“What things?” Contessa asked, trying to guess what the Queen meant. “Tell us about fighting the Winter Witch!”
“Your father was swimming in the open ocean when I saw him, and he nearly slew the Winter Witch’s familiar, who was in the form of a great shark beast. He saved a whole ship full of people,” the Queen said. “But he was gravely wounded, and I swam him to safety.”
“How did he breathe underwater?” Mary Grace asked.
“Oh, that is easy,” the young soldier interjected. “I can show you how we do that.”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for?” I bowed up. “Breathing underwater is not something a young, chaste woman should just do!”
“With all due respect, sir, the earlier they start, the better they get at it, and the more they enjoy it,” the soldier replied, pursing full lips that looked all too ready for the job.
My eyes grew wide and my temper rose, and I found myself trying to look the young and all-too-pretty soldier in the eyes, in spite of the height advantage he had. “I don’t think so, young man,” I said, staring into his big sea-green eyes and feeling my fangs coming out. “She is only sixteen years old. Don’t you have a whale to go feed or some shells to collect?”
The soldier stepped back and looked a bit confused, his eyes going to the Queen for guidance. “I meant no offense, sir,” he said. “Should I take my leave?”
“How utterly embarrassing,” Mary Grace said. “We don’t see you for our entire lives, and in the first hour you decide to play father. I am in need of some air, so no, you impossibly pretty thing, I am going to take my leave!” She walked away in a huff, and I honestly had no earthly idea what to do.
“Oh, so, so, so rude,” Contessa said. “The runt of ours has just offended the Queen. I don’t know how you are ever going to forgive her, Daddy.”
But the Queen was far from offended, and instead she laughed long and hard. I had no idea what was so funny. “Sirius, the way we traveled underwater is not what he meant. There are other ways. Soldier, please demonstrate for Mr. Sinister and his daughters.”
The young soldier held up a strange shell he had taken from his belt. “If a land walker puts this shell on their mouth, they can breathe for nearly an hour underwater without coming to the surface,” he said. “We have used them for centuries to help rescue people from shipwrecks.”
I nodded, feeling a little bit embarrassed. “I am sorry for the misunderstanding, soldier,” I said. “What do they call you? I guess we couldn’t understand your real name. But what do land walkers call you?”
The soldier thought for a moment. “Well, sir,” he said, “I have not been around land walkers much. But one day last week, I awoke from a nap on the beach and found myself discovered and in the company of several young maidens. I fled instantly into the ocean, but they kept calling, ‘Come back, lovely,’ so I guess that is my land-walker name.”
“You have got to be joking!” I said, grimacing. “Seriously. Lovely?”
“Yes, sir?” he answered. “How may I be of service?”
The Queen, Contessa, Adelaide, and Beatrice failed to contain their mirth, and I could only smile in defeat. “I think the name Lovely very much suits you,” said Adelaide in total mock seriousness. “Yes, suits you very much indeed.”
“I second that,” said Beatrice. “Thank you for the explanation.” She paused. “Lovely.” Beatrice and her sisters collapsed in a heap of giggles, and Lovely and I stood awkwardly together as he awaited his orders from the Queen.
“May I have a word with you in private, Your Highness,” I said, changing the subject.
“Yes, of course,” the Queen said. “Soldier, you may stand sentry here with the girls.”
We stepped away, and I saw Mary Grace come back from the beach and join them. They formed a semicircle around Lovely, who was quite clueless as to the attention they were showing him. “So why didn’t I get a shell?” I asked, giving the Queen a coy glance.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure how long we would be underwater,” she said. “And we might not have had the time to surface and switch shells without the Winter Witch catching us. As it turned out, we barely made it to Lundy Island at all if you recall. Besides,” the Queen added, “you have great lips.”
We both burst out laughing. I looked over to where the girls had apparently talked the innocent Lovely into showing them, one at a time, the proper way to hold a trident. “And apparently Lovely does too,” I said with a sigh of anguish as each of the girls took turns having Lovely reach around them to properly place their hands on his trident. “I am not sure I am cut out to be a father with guys like him coming around.”
“Nonsense,” the Queen said. “They love you instinctively. Contessa adores you almost too much, considering today was the first day she met you! But sometimes girls with daddy issues try to overcompensate.”
“Daddy issues?” I said. “Ah yes, absent from their lives through no fault of my own.”
“Y
es, and that’s the sad part,” the Queen said. “Contessa, well, she seems okay, and the others, well, they have sixteen years of negative words to overcome. They will get there. But remember, they have never had permission to love you.”
“It is that obvious, isn’t it?” I said. “Do you have children? If you don’t, you should, you would make one heck of a mother.” The Queen’s face grew flushed, and I instantly regretted my words. I seemed to have touched on a subject that drew great embarrassment from this iridescent creature. Drat it all!
“Why did you help us?” I asked, changing the subject. “And how did you know of Hades’s nefarious scheme to exact revenge on me by getting me to kill my daughters, or having them kill me?”
The Queen’s face had thankfully returned to its normal color, and she did not seem angry with me. “Well, it is kind of complicated,” she said, her blue eyes soft, wet, and inviting.
I rolled my eyes, wondering if a woman existed that wasn’t complicated. “Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else. You rescue me from the Winter Witch. And . . . and”—I lowered my voice—“we are together. And then you disappear. I think you are the one who tricked the Winter Witch into giving me the Blade of Truth. And then you show up here in Sardinia with a legion of merfolk to save me once again. Oh, and you are a queen. Of course, it is complicated!”
The Queen put her hands around my neck and pulled me closer, and this time those soft wet eyes did take me in. She kissed me ever so gently, drawing the attention of my girls and of Lovely, whose big green eyes nearly bugged out of his head. Apparently the Queen was not known to kiss. “When I saw you that day in the Irish Sea, I had been looking for you for a hundred years, Sirius Sinister,” she said.
“You had been?” I exclaimed. “But why?”
And that was the moment when all Hell simply broke loose, or more accurately, bursting forth from the gateway to the netherworld came the three-headed beast of the darkness—Cerberus. He was the size of a great bull elephant, and his three heads howled in synchronized rage, venom dripping from fangs the size of long swords. The earth shook, his great paws pounding the sand as he bounded straight for Lovely and the girls. Lovely whirled and hurled his trident, which flew true to its mark, but it bounced off Cerberus’s tough hide. The girls scattered in panic, but Lovely stayed his ground, armed only with a small dagger.
My Ex-Wife Said Go to Hell Page 32