by Brandon Witt
Contents
Untitled
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
Shifting Silver
Emerging Rebellion
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Brandon Witt
Lavender Shores
Cozy Corgi Mysteries
for Trenton
before there were dreams of novels,
there was a fat little
redheaded ten-year-old boy
who prayed for a little brother.
You were my first dream to come true. I love you!
Copyright © 2020 by Brandon Witt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Ron Perry Graphic Design - rperrydesign.com
(Inspired by original cover art, by Anne Cain, via Dreamspinner Press)
Wings of Ink Logo Design: A.J. Corza - SeeingStatic.com
Original Editors of first edition: Desi Chapman and members of the Dreamspinner Press team
Beta Reader 2nd Edition: Anita Ford and Desi Chapman
Visit Brandon’s Webpage: BrandonWitt.com
Amazon Reviews: Submerging Inferno
Created with Vellum
Prologue
3078 BC
Sunrise was less than an hour from birth, and Gwala, his naked body glistening obsidian in the fading moonlight, cut his way through the tide as he returned to shore. He glanced at the sky nervously as he realized he had spent too much time in the sea. A mistake only made by the young, he chided himself. He had enough time to make it back to the cave he and the others occupied during the day, but he would have to run, and Gwala hated running.
Still, he took another indulgence, pausing to let his body grow quiet, floating lifeless in the gentle swell of the waves. The motion lulled him, and he let his eyes close. Torrents of red gushed pleasurably behind his eyelids—the vision of his father’s eviscerated throat glistened in his memory. A groan escaped him as the rich flavor of his family’s blood filled his mouth. Three hundred years later, the recollection had not faded in the slightest. If anything, it grew sweeter as the years passed. He was able to slow the moments, to pause them, let the terror in his father’s eyes cause him to shudder in ecstasy. He’d saved his father for last, forcing him to watch his oldest child torture and devour his wife, three daughters, and newly delivered son. Even now, Gwala’s chest filled with pride at the memory of the life fading from his father’s eyes. He’d straddled the man, and with his face mere inches away, blood from his father’s ravaged throat dripping from his fangs, he’d watched as his father’s soul fled his body. Gwala, furious at how quickly his father had died, beat at his body until the bones were so shattered they no longer held human form.
When his rage had ebbed, he’d licked at the still-oozing wounds. “Was that lazy, father? Am I a man now?” The muddled mass’s failure to respond caused Gwala to pummel the bloodied flesh anew. When that didn’t suffice, he wandered out of his family’s hut and took his vengeance on the rest of the tribe. Like his father, they’d ostracized him. Two years past his coming-of-age ritual, he had continued to refuse to undertake the six-month spirit quest. His father being the tribe’s chief, the pride of Africa, doubled the pressure and the shame. One day after his rebirth, he’d shown the tribe an entirely new coming-of-age ritual. Maybe fourteen was late to become a man, but he was now more man than any of them. A man who would live forever.
Unfortunately, Gwala hadn’t fared much better with his vampire kin than he had with his tribe. Even with his vampire strength and prowess, Gwala preferred to feed on children—the younger, the better. The younger, the less resistance. Unlike most others of his kind, he would rather not have his meal struggle too much. While vampires had no moral qualms about preying on human children, Gwala’s apparent inability to hunt for more thrilling game made him barely tolerable to the other vampires.
Like his fellow vampires, it was not his natural proclivity to enjoy the company of his kind. However, in a time and place where the human culture not only believed in the existence of vampires and other creatures of the night, but took precautions to guard against them, vampires were forced to live in small family groups. Much like most human families, fighting was common, only a bit more violent. Due to Gwala’s lethargic tendencies, the violence found him repeatedly. The sea offered a refuge not only from his vampire counterparts, but also from human adversaries.
The only exception to his tendency to remain immobile was the frequent nights he spent drifting along the current off the southwest African coast. After a kill, he would often let himself spend the majority of the night in the sea. For the entirety of the moonlight hours, he would relive the slaughter of his family and tribe. It was his moment of glory. His entrance into manhood. He’d not cared for the opinion of his family, and it mattered not at all what the other vampires thought of him. Only at dawn would he join the small group of vampires living in the cave close to the sea. Even so, he rarely cut it this close to sunrise.
Letting out a sigh of regret, he began to swim and reached the shore in a few strong, sure strokes. Shaking the water off his body, he poised himself to begin his sprint to the cave.
It was then he heard the cry of fate. He paused, gradually straightening his back, straining his already powerful hearing. He heard it again, and this time he made sense of the sound. A voice, a human’s voice, but unintelligible. With another glance at the sinking moon, he turned away—the longer he stayed, the faster he would have to run.
Before he could move, his nostrils flared and the blood in his veins began to pound. He took another deep breath and let out a shudder. Blood. Blood of the like he had never known in all his centuries.
Blocking all else from his senses, he followed the intoxicating fragrance several hundred yards up the shore. His eyes, starting to burn from the rays of the sun not yet reaching the horizon, found the source taking shelter behind a large black rock at the edge of the tide. He could just make out a small, shockingly white hand splayed upon the sand.
Within a few hurried strides, he was even with the edge of the rock, his gaze following the hand up a tiny arm. His intake of breath startled him as he looked a
t her. He felt himself grow hard in his thrilled excitement. As a human boy, his sexual proclivities would have been the cause of his death, if his tribe had ever realized he had been the guilty party. Although a disgraced son, being the child of the chief had its privileges.
The girl’s long lashes rested on her smooth, porcelain cheek, which seemed to shimmer in the growing glow. Gwala’s eyes narrowed as he took in the hair framing her innocent face. Hair like he had never seen—so white, it had a bluish tinge. His eyes widened in shock as they traveled down her tender torso, seeking his reward below her waist. Instead of white legs, his eyes found a long, narrow bluish-silver tail, transparent fins jutting out on either side of her hips and peering out from beneath the seafoam lapping where her feet should have been. Falling to his knees, he tenderly brushed the shimmering hair away from her shoulders, exposing her chest.
At his touch, her eyes flashed open, revealing blue gems beneath their lids. Clouding with fear and confusion, her eyes darted around frantically, searching. Reverently, he let his fingers trace over her collarbone, make circles over her chest, and travel down to dip into her bellybutton, his hand at last flattening over her abdomen. His skin tingled as he caressed her scales. All thoughts of the sun were forgotten, the sensation of his blistering skin ignored in his ecstasy.
His hand upon her tail brought the girl to a state of panic. She began to thrash about, her arms stretching, nails falling desperately short of his face, her tail splashing violently in the waves. She let out a shrill screech as Gwala brought his hand over her shoulder and then a helpless groan as his fingers tightened until he heard a small snap. When she torqued her head away from him, his eyes found the gash along her left temple. The delectable smell of her crashed against him in a torrent. All previous thoughts of his desire fled him as his fingers tangled in her bluish hair, yanking her head further to the right.
She let out a terrified scream as he lowered himself and ran his tongue over her wound. He groaned as her blood coated the inside of his mouth. With another glance down at her tail, he lunged forward and sank his fangs into the base of her neck, feeling her fragile collarbone shatter beneath his force.
Her anguished screams died long before he extricated his teeth. He bit her several more times, on the arms, the cheek—trying to draw more blood. With only a moment’s hesitation, he plunged his fangs into the middle of her tail, her scales cracking as he penetrated. When he was certain he could get nothing more from her, he sat up, his body trembling and alive. He felt truly alive. It had been so long, he had almost forgotten. He ran his hand over her body once more, regretting he hadn’t taken advantage of the gift he’d been offered before satisfying his thirst.
After a final, longing glance, he stood up and looked around him. He let out a scream of his own as the glare of the sun cut into his virgin eyes.
After several seconds of cowering, his arms helplessly covering his face, he gradually came to realize he wasn’t on fire and his skin was not crackling and burning.
Peering cautiously out of the crook of his arm, Gwala looked at the sun for the first time in over three centuries. After glancing down at his naked body and seeing it whole and unblemished, he returned his gaze to the sun and let out a low, pleasure-filled laugh.
One
BRETT WRIGHT
Lelas turned and looked at me for probably the hundredth time in the past few hours. Finally the light was enough I could barely make out her eyes’ seafoam hue. We’d not slowed down since Syleen and Greylin had left us in the trench. Faster than I’d ever swam before. It took every ounce of my strength to keep up. After nearly six months with the mers, I had thought I’d gotten fast enough to keep an even pace with them. However, I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be before I fell too far behind. Lelas continued to look back at me, and I wasn’t certain whether it was to make sure I was still with them, or she wanted to talk.
Therin had glanced back a few times as well. He even smiled most of the time. Apparently, our little father-and-son talk had left him feeling more parental. Not enough to slow down, but I’d take what I could get.
Only Wrell hadn’t turned. He’d swum on tirelessly, both his splay of quilled fins and his long stone spear flat against his sides. It was a testament of how tired I was that I’d quit noticing his sculpted back and straining triceps hours ago.
At first, I’d been so overwhelmed by all that had happened I hadn’t paid any attention to where we were going, and followed the threesome blindly. So much had transpired I hadn’t been able to even begin to form it into a sensible picture. Therin’s assumed responsibility for my homosexual tendencies. Yawn! Same old family drama, only a whole lot wetter. There’d been an ulterior motive for him searching me out, much more than wanting a relationship with his newly discovered son.
What was throwing me off the most was the secrecy between Syleen and Zef. They’d always seemed like an inseparable unit, and the few times they hadn’t, Syleen was clearly always the trump card. To find out that Zef was actually the eldest of the group and Syleen was keeping secrets from him was more than I could piece together.
To top it all off, thinking about trying to find out what had happened to Ventait and the other lost mers seemed like an impossible task—especially considering the basis of our search was no more than pure speculation. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Zef. Sure, Ventait had been seen being pulled onto a boat. Horrible, to be sure, especially since he’d been a kid, but bad things happen. It didn’t mean that was the cause for every mer disappearance the tribe had suffered. Even in my short time with them, I’d witnessed a shark hunt, heard about the death of Wrell’s mother, the suicide of Ventait’s mother, and the disappearance of his father. Syleen had said that mers often went to war when they ran into each other. Not to mention all the things waiting in the ocean to eat you. Typically, the simplest, most obvious explanation for something is the correct one. Somebody kidnapping mermaids seemed nothing more than a conspiracy theory. And a desperate one at that.
Maybe it had been the clandestine meeting, getting caught up in the secrecy and drama of it all. Maybe finally having Therin acting like my father again. Who knows? But whatever had caused it, I’d been instantly invested in going out, finding the captured mers, and playing hero. The farther away from the tribe we got, the more I came to terms with the fact that we were really grasping at straws. Like a mother who searches for her child her entire life instead of accepting the obvious—the kid had been taken and killed by some sicko. Simple as that.
Wrell slowed suddenly and turned toward me, the filtered sunlight glistening across his chiseled chest highlighting the mottled burnt flesh and his superhero jawline. Hell, maybe it had been the prospect of getting to spend a lot of time alone with Wrell that had prompted my sudden buy-in for this half-baked scheme. He gave me a reserved smile as he nodded at me. Yep, definitely the most likely possibility… and not a bad motivation for searching around the entire ocean.
An image of the three of us curled up on top of the sand, Wrell buried beneath it, came into my mind. It only took me off-guard for a moment before I caught on. I shook my head, wishing I could direct my thoughts to him instead of the whole group. “No, Wrell, I don’t need to rest.”
A dark eyebrow rose toward his closely shorn hair.
“Okay, maybe slow down a little bit, but I don’t need to stop. Not yet.”
Therin reached behind him and pulled his long white-blond hair away from his face. “We have come far enough that it is unlikely Zef would be able to easily find us, since he is not privy to our destination. We can stop and rest, Brett.”
I shook my head again. “No, really, I’m fine. If we could slow down a bit, that would help.” I almost made a snarky comment about the ridiculousness of Zef being the bogeyman but caught myself in time. “How could he be privy to our destination? We’re just going to swim around aimlessly until we run into another tribe of mers and hope they don’t try to kill us.” I hadn’t even put t
hat bit of information together yet. Saying it out loud, or thinking it out loud, made me realize how truly ridiculous our plan was.
Therin’s face twisted in a quizzical expression. “Why would we swim aimlessly?”
I paused, unsure how to answer. That seemed too obvious to need a reply. “How else will we find other mers?”
“We are going to the Scarus tribe.”
I think Lelas must have been saying something to Wrell, because at Therin’s words, she whipped her head toward him, her shoulder-length blonde hair lashing about her face. “We are?”
Therin nodded. “Forgive me, Lelas. I had forgotten you were not present when we made our plans.”
“Neither was I.” I chose to ignore that I sounded like I was whining. “How are we going to find a specific tribe? They could be anywhere, just migrating around the ocean like us.”
“The Scarus are one of the tribes that have a permanent home. We know their location.”
Lelas turned and beamed at me. “I have always wanted to go where the Scarus live! I’ve only heard stories about how beautiful it is.”