A Mermaid's Ransom

  Easier said than done. Her body was still twitching from that latest encounter with the charged sides of her prison. She pushed herself up on her arms again. At least the blood was helping keep her scales somewhat lubricated, but that wouldn't last long. Dante stopped his chant then. He picked up a tattered cloth from the arm of his chair, wiped his face and chest with his back toward her. As he turned, a smear of it remained on his throat and jaw, like a warrior's face paint. Her heart leaping into her throat, she took her first look at her captor, her dream, in the terrible flesh.

  The dream had been a bridge between their two realities, not a distorted view. At least not physically. Still tall and beautiful in an unsettling, unearthly way, still sculpted with lean muscle. He wore a pair of ragged trousers only, and she wondered where he'd obtained them in this strange place. Then she remembered his words. Bring me more blood. She recoiled. Whose blood was she in? Whose blood had provided the tracings for those brands on her flesh? He'd put his mouth on her, his hands, his . . . Oh, Goddess.

  "Why?" she rasped, when he didn't seem disposed to speak first.

  He crouched on the outside of her circle. Unlike his fellows, apparently the caster could cross the edge. But when he did, reaching toward her face, she scrambled back, careful not to hit the opposite side, but making it clear she was not willingly going to allow him to touch her again. "It was all a trap. A lie."

  His face remained dispassionate. "Yes. A trap."

  "Why? What do you want from me?"

  "Nothing." He cocked his head, a sparse motion. "A witch made a vow to me. I'm holding her to it, and you are the way I will do it."

  "Mina?"

  He nodded. "She promised if I proved myself capable of leaving this world, she would free me. I have taken her goddaughter, and you will die, slowly, painfully, if she does not release me. That shows I am capable of doing what is necessary to leave this world. I have sent her that message. It was even more difficult magic than what was necessary to come into your dreams, so the message is short. But if she heard it, she will respond to me."

  "Please . . ." Lex tried to drag in another breath. "Stop scaring me."

  Dante's brow creased. "I am simply telling you what is."

  "I can't breathe."

  "You are in your merangel form, so your lung capacity is diminished. The air here is not suitable for your life-form. Any of them," he added, his attention pausing on the wings, then coming back to dwell on her face.

  Her father and mother spoke little of the Dark One world, but she knew that something that wasn't a Dark One couldn't survive long here, no more than a Dark One could survive long away from it. Which meant the being before her was at least a sorcerer, for she was being protected by his spell. Since her breath was still labored and the crush of all those despondent energies upon her felt like she was in a box that would soon cave inward, either the spell was weak or the outside energies were that strong. Studying his crimson eyes, she was betting on the latter.

  "What are you?" Though she wasn't sure she wanted to know. His ability to tear the head off a creature that looked strong as an ox confirmed he wasn't just a sorcerer.

  "Dark Spawn. Half vampire, half Dark One."

  "Vampire?" Of course he was a vampire. He'd drunk her blood in the dream.

  Think, Lex. What are your strengths here? What can you do? Now that the other creatures were gone, her skills as an empath were more accessible. She could detect his feelings and emotions. He hadn't been an easy read in her dreams, but what about here? It was possible her own feelings had distracted her there, not any shields he had.

  He'd circled around to the other side, and was trying to touch her again. Lex scooted away and winced as several of her scales rubbed the wrong way. "Stop it."

  "Why? I wish to touch you."

  "You've kidnapped me, thrown me in a pool of blood, threatened me with gang rape by a group of monsters and told me that if you don't get what you want I'm going to be the pawn you kill--painfully and slowly."

  "I did not say I would kill you. I said you would die. You liked it when I touched you before. Why would you not take pleasure from that now, particularly if there may be no pleasure later?"

  Alexis stared at him. "You must be joking."

  Dante's lips firmed. "There is no laughter here. At least, not the kind you suggest. I've seen that," he added. "When the rifts to your world could be opened, I saw it as if through this window here." He nodded toward the archway. "Sometimes the rift opening gave me little except for the colors of the terrain, but sometimes it would open into a smaller place, like a building, and I could see humans.

  "I did not know then what I saw was laughter, but the Dark Ones called it that. What causes laughter? I saw you do it when I followed you in your dreams, before I ever touched you. You laughed a great deal." He stretched out his hand again. "I want to touch your face. Come closer. Or I will come into the circle."

  Alexis held his gaze, her mind whirling. "No. I don't want you to touch me."

  There was a quaver to her voice she could tell he registered, but she held her ground. He could come after her, yes, but she would not move.

  After a long, charged moment, when she wondered if he'd throw her against that electrified barrier himself, he spoke. "If you were not frightened or hurt, would you want me to touch you?"

  When she swallowed, she realized her jaw hurt from holding it so rigid. In fact, her whole body hurt for that reason. She'd never realized how being terrified could turn the body into stone, all the muscles stretched to the point the fibers would break, the stomach in permanent knots.

  "I don't know. You really can't do anything about that, can you? I mean, you just said you'll do terrible things to me if Mina doesn't let you go."

  "That is later. What matters is now. What can I do now that will make you less frightened?" There was a touch of impatience in his tone.

  "Of course later matters." Lex struggled to stay calm. "How can I just forget what might happen later?"

  Dante sat back on his heels, propping his elbows on his thighs. There was frank puzzlement in his expression. "Because here, only now matters. Nothing is hurting you right now. Nothing is happening to frighten you. In five minutes that might change, so you should not waste this moment thinking about what will happen in five minutes."

  It was Zen, but Zen applied in a way she'd never considered. No, that wasn't correct. Something about the words was familiar. Forcing back her anxiety with her circumstances, she searched her mind. Yes, that was it. A book she'd read in a sociology course she'd audited, written by a survivor of the Holocaust. He'd spoken about the need to savor the maximum in every relatively peaceful moment in the concentration camp, because that moment was all you were assured. When you lived in daily horror, there was nothing else to do.

  She took deep breaths, a meditation exercise much easier in the tranquility of her back porch with the sun rising and a day of pleasures stretching ahead of her. "Dante, how long have you been here?"

  "I was born here."

  "Your parents, then. They--"

  "My mother was brought here. I was spawned by the Dark Ones who raped her."

  She knew little of vampires, but natural offspring were very rare and usually hybrids. Dark Spawn, as he'd said. "Is your mother--"

  "I killed her."

  While his expression didn't change, Lex felt something from him, her senses grasping through her fear to find it. It wasn't regret, but it was loss. Muted, dulled, but there. The truth was more than a cold-blooded life taking. She just wasn't brave enough to pursue it further at this second.

  Plus, she was picking up a strong yearning. He did want to touch her. It wasn't a sexual need, though there was a component of that there. It was more like he craved something he'd had for far too short a time, and he wanted more of it.

  "All right," she said quietly. "I'm going to try to live in the moment, but you're going to have to help me, because we don't do that in my world. And I am very frightened,
Dante. You scare me, and those creatures, they scare me even worse."

  "They will not touch you." The change in his expression and voice was instant. Strong, deadly, and his hand closed into a fist on his thigh. "They should not have tried. They will not do so again."

  She nodded, digesting that. Knowing her pulse was leaping in her throat like a bird about to keel over dead from stress, she flexed her hands on the wet stone. She winced at the slimy texture, the stronger waft of odor making her stomach turn over again. "Do I have to stay in this circle?"

  "It was to keep you from running away, and them from getting to you. I have warded the door, but you would be able to leave."

  "I won't leave," she said, and meant it. She knew what was outside that door and no way in hell was she going out of it. "But it would really help if I could get out of this blood and clean up. Is there water? My tail needs to stay moist. It won't fall off or anything, but the scales get brittle if they dry out, and it's painful."

  He held her gaze again, that penetrating stare. It was astounding, how handsome he truly was. Knowing she might be dealing with a sociopath of a magnitude even humankind didn't have the circumstances to produce was beyond unsettling. "You want to touch me, too," he observed.

  "It's a biological reaction, not an emotional one," she snapped. His brow raised and she pressed her hands to her face, trying to calm herself. It smeared more blood on her cheeks. "Please, let me out of this. I can't bear it."

  He leaned forward in his kneeling position, one foot entering the pool. She flinched as he slid his hands under her body. "I don't want you touching me."

  "Yes. But you can't walk, and you are too weak to fly or pull yourself across the chamber."

  Gazing over his shoulder as he strode across the room, she saw his bare foot leaving a trail of bloody prints. As he moved into a separate, smaller area, she tried to wrap her mind around what she was seeing before her.

  It looked like a miniature replica of an aboveground small pond, complete with tall grasses clustered around it, colorful, sparkling flowers peeking through their strands, rocks piled around the base to hold them. There was a butterfly in a sphere of light, floating over the water like a bubble.

  "The water comes from our ice. I cut it into chunks and put it here, and it melts. It is not very clean, but I was making one of your ponds."

  "That's what it looks like," she said. His surge of satisfaction was instant, though it was guarded, bound up tightly in other emotions she couldn't read.

  As they moved closer, she saw the reality of what he'd created. The vat was a large piece of metal roughly molded into something capable of holding water. The edges were sharp, unfinished. What appeared to be grass were tendrils of hair, waxed and textured to emulate the wheaten blades. The flowers were precious jewels bound with pieces of the hair to slender black twigs so they bent like flowers. The butterfly in the sphere was real but dead, its wings forever spread.

  It was macabre, but an undeniable artistic accomplishment. She tried to focus on the latter as he lowered her into the water. It had a terrible sulfur smell, but at least it wasn't blood. She reached out with trembling fingers to touch the lighted sphere. She couldn't bring herself to ask the question, but he answered anyway.

  "It came here before the Earth rifts were sealed. It fell off the body of a human and the other Dark Ones didn't notice. Preserving it was the first magic I learned."

  "Did someone teach you?" Alexis pushed on it, watched it circle back to her, float around her head.

  "Before the Mountain Battle, our strongest Dark Ones were mages. I was taught to read their texts to help them with their spells, but I wasn't able to try any of them until after they were gone. This tower was destroyed by the witch, but I dug out the books and rebuilt it. There were many things to learn here. I learned all of them. And more."

  There was no boast to it, only simple acknowledgment. Digesting that, Lex rubbed the blood off her body, working carefully around the throbbing symbols burned on her sternum, below her breasts, and on her lower abdomen. She wanted to douse her wings as well, but when she tried to bring them into the "pond," they caught on the unfinished edges of the tub.

  As she struggled to free herself, Dante bent forward. Grasping the curve, he stretched out the closest wing and lifted it free, then guided it into the water, following the contour so she could fold it to her back. He repeated the same process with the other. He stroked her feathers before letting her pull them in. The way he studied them brought to mind how the Dark Ones had leathery wings, no softness or feathers to them.

  When she'd removed the blood, she stretched both wings out, lifting them high enough to clear the tub this time, and gave a vigorous flap to dislodge the water. Water sprayed everywhere, including over the immovable Dante. What causes laughter?

  "If circumstances were different," she ventured cautiously, "that would have made me laugh." Very different. Laughing was the last thing she wanted to do right now.

  His brow furrowed, the droplets sliding down his cheek. His crimson gaze moved from her wings to her throat and face. Leaning forward, he kissed her.

  Six

  NO. A part of her immediately rebelled, but as if anticipating her, he put his hand on the back of her head, holding her in place.

  Live in the moment, Alexis.

  Now that she knew she wasn't in a dream, his voice in her head stunned her, such that she remained frozen. He should have been rank with blood, and she did smell it on his breath, but perhaps because he was a vampire, it was integrated into whatever he was and didn't repel her as she expected it to do. But her own body's response confused her even more.

  Her betraying lips softened under his, parting as he slid his tongue between them, played with her mouth in a way that reinforced again how quickly he adapted to direction. Gentle but passionate at once, and it muddled her head in a way it shouldn't have. No, it should. Because she was getting myriad signals from him. The simple ignorance of a cruel child, a man's passionate, overwhelming desire for her and something deeper, the thing that perhaps was most confusing and compelling of all. She couldn't say what it was, but somewhere beneath the layers, it drew her. It was related to need, his need for her specifically. Her certainty that this need wasn't related to her role as a bargaining chip was what kept her from drawing away. This was something indefinable, maybe something even he didn't recognize.

  "Why did you do that?" she asked when he raised his head.

  "You relaxed when you kissed me, before, so I thought it would help you be less frightened. And I wanted to kiss you." His eyes heated. "I want to be inside you again."

  It was possible to do that, of course, even in her merform, but she wasn't going to tell him that. However, when his gaze flickered, she stilled in shock. "You can hear my thoughts."

  "Yes. The second mark is one of the ways I was able to pull you through to my world. That, and many sacrifices."

  "Sacrifices? As in living beings?" Lex's gaze went back to the circle. Of course, living beings, you idiot. Did that kiss scramble your mind? The blood didn't come from him. Despite her attempt not to go there in her mind, she remembered the blood streaked on his body, along with the barely leashed savagery she'd welcomed as a titillating part of her dream. But as an impassioned lover, not as a creature who'd come to her by ripping away the life of another. What was the matter with her?

  "That's hideous. Stop touching me." She drew as far away from him in the tub as possible, the trapped feeling of her weakened and transformed state returning. "Oh, Goddess, you don't get it, do you? Please tell me you don't, because I don't want you to be this hideous. I don't want to know that I enjoy kissing a complete monster."

  Dante frowned. "It needed to be done. It was the only way to become free of this place. The seawitch said--"

  "That's not what Mina meant," she shot back. "She meant you had to prove yourself worthy to leave this place. A good person. Good works."

  He gave her that look as if she were speaking a
foreign language again. "I've fought to be the leader of all that are left here. I hold complete control, if I am ever vigilant. I have mastered what magical energies exist in this world and myself to bring you here. What else can I do?"

  He stared at her, a hopelessly beautiful man in ragged piecemeal trousers, his broad chest still stained with blood, black hair lying on his shoulders like a silken prince's mantle. Crimson eyes intelligent, piercing, but so uncomprehending. Despairing, so close to giving in to her own hysteria, Lex glanced toward the window, and saw the barren landscape again. Chilling images of fire and ice, those horrible, soulless creatures circling like flies searching out carrion, though flies had a nobler purpose, a part of Nature.

  She recalled again the Dark Ones who'd been allowed into the chamber, the overwhelming flood of desolation and death from them. She'd felt no compulsion to ease their suffering, because there was nothing to them but death and evil. It was the first time in her life she'd felt that way. So if they were the only species in this world, all he'd ever known, what could he have done to prove he was capable of living in that other world?

  "Why didn't you just ask for help?" she asked.

  When she turned her attention back to him, she could tell she'd surprised him. He was still squatting on his heels by his makeshift pond, his fingers curled on the lip, unaffected by the sharp metal edge. Swallowing her fears and following instinct, she made herself move back across the tub and laid her hand over his. Focusing hard on their hands and not the blood staining his body, she pressed her fingers into the spaces between his, moving his attention there so she wasn't pinned under the weight of that unsettling gaze. "When you were in my dreams, why didn't you just ask for my help?" she repeated. "I'm her goddaughter, after all."

  "Why would you help me? You have no reason to do that, nothing to gain." He raised a shoulder. "Once she'd known I was in your dreams, she would have sealed that avenue to me. It has taken me a very long time to build it. Ever since she came here."