by Starla Night
“They weren’t starving,” Bella suggested.
“His bride was fuller and more rested than her ragged husband, but by his account, he was quite ill. He even contracted the disease. She never did.”
“And he recovered,” Balim mused. “She healed him.”
“Something, yes, healed him. I have spent my lifetime studying this field and this disease to answer how.”
“She used queen powers.”
Dalus tipped his head back, another smile on his face, and raised a brow. “Legends do not cure diseases. Healers cure them.”
“They are not legends. I have seen them, Great Healer.”
His mentor tsked with disbelief.
“So how did the healer cure him?” Bella asked. “You have a theory.”
“Very rudimentary. After consultation with General Giru, I have learned so many things. Humans classify their illnesses by the creature that causes them: parasitic, bacterial, and viral. They have promised me that once they have finished under their ‘microscope’ machines, they will tell me how to defeat the disease that annihilated the most powerful kings of history.”
“Which is it?” Bella asked. “Animal, bacteria, or virus?”
“That, human, is something I hope your people will explain.” He looked up again and rose, his fins descending as recognition filled his face with subdued welcome. “General Giru, I have held the intruders right at the lip of Oannes Field as you requested.”
Bella clung to Balim. “A double-cross.”
General Giru descended to their level.
He had a strange, unnatural coloration of pale skin and wore an unusual chest plate. Dark weave hid his shoulders and cushioned the skin beneath his daggers. Dark purple, iridescent tattoos tangled across his face like human blackberry vines.
Bella gasped. “The fake merman!”
“I am a true merman,” he barked, his chest vibrations rough. “You poisoned your city. Destroyed your castle. Murdered your king. You and the warriors who compromise our proud traditions are pond scum.”
Balim held Bella tight. His heart thudded out of control.
He was no warrior, and he could not fight off the second-highest commander of the All-Council, who descended to their side, nor his warriors massed around him.
“There is nowhere to escape.” General Giru vibrated with a gravelly tone in his chest. Congestion? But as he had proclaimed, he was no human. “Your weapons, Healer Balim, or I will cut you down where you float and leave your human bride without a protector.”
Balim relinquished his daggers and trident. Although a central tenet of the mer was never to injure females or young fry, the All-Council had decreed rebel queens to be not female. Some generals still treated them with honor and others as rival warriors. General Giru’s feelings were unknown. Balim would not risk Bella.
General Giru’s elite warriors bound Balim roughly. They turned on Bella.
“Leave her,” he begged. “Take her to the surface.”
“We will.” The general smiled coldly, his teeth white behind pale lips and semitranslucent skin. His soul was dark. He bit back great pain. “Great Healer. My draught?”
His warriors lassoed ropes to drag Bella without touching her.
Dalus gave the general a soft jelly flask filled with greenish-black liquid. He swallowed the inky substance. It must have been bitter because his throat muscles worked against his swallows, suppressing a gag. He finished the medicine, shuddered, and waited for it to take hold.
Dalus stood back watching. Just like Undine under the old king. Silent, judging, and leaving Balim to his punishment.
General Giru opened his eyes slowly. “Great Healer, bring the relic box.”
“You require another cursed dagger?” Dalus brought him the equipment he requested.
“The humans have one request.”
General Giru operated a modified metal version of Balim’s lamprey to capture a crusty dagger from the battlefield below. He donned a thick mitt and studied his prize. The dagger resembled any other weapon lost to the ages. Although invisible to the senses, disease seemed to radiate danger.
Through the mitt, General Giru clasped the crusty pommel and brandished the dagger at an invisible enemy. “Ha! Ha…”
Imagining stabbing someone seemed to give him relief. His shoulders lowered, and his cheeks went lax. He blinked and straightened. His pupils dilated, and a strange dullness crossed his face. He shook himself and turned on the captives.
Bella watched the loosely held dagger with wide eyes.
Now he knew she was immune, Balim’s fears eased. No matter what happened to him, she would survive.
General Giru focused on him.
Balim braced.
The general crossed the distance in a single, loose kick. He positioned the coral-crusted dagger against Balim’s chest, just below the heart, and sliced a deep line.
“No!” Bella shrieked.
His chest radiated pain. Balim’s nerves screamed, and his blood soaked the water. He thrashed, the cloud of disease growing excited as it interacted with his blood. Little stings like invisible anemones struck his veins, invisible sharks biting his body. Streaking, like the poison vial, into his chest and blackening his soul.
Bella moaned. “No.”
“General, I am disappointed in you.” Dalus sagged with a heavy voice. “Was injuring my trainee necessary?”
“Yes.” The general wrapped the dagger in multiple layers of seaweed and placed it in a stone box. He secured his glove atop it and sealed the box.
“He was a good healer. Risk-taking but dedicated. Willing to pursue the truth no matter how deep into the wolf eel hole.”
“Great Healer, a king killer, human sympathizer, and rebel cannot live. And do not forget that his injury is his own fault. If he had not shown how to acquire these cursed weapons, you would not have taught me, and I would not have made the allies I have.”
Dalus peered into the battlefield. “But I only shared this with you so you could bring me a cure. And you have not.”
“One is forthcoming. Failed Healer Balim shall again be instrumental in its discovery.” The general nodded at his warriors. The elite guard dragged Balim and Bella for the surface.
“He will be cured?”
“No, but his sacrifice will serve the mer.” General Giru turned away from the healing hall. “The Sons of Hercules need another test subject.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bella tried to kick her fins to keep from being dragged by the warriors and to catch up to Balim.
His skin paled like Pelan’s, turning translucent, and dark bruising spread out from the scabbed-over cut. His mouth opened and closed like a fish unable to breathe.
General Giru’s warriors escorted them to a cable anchored to a distant rock. They clipped on to the same harnesses used on the Atlantis cable and ascended straight up.
The general sneered at Bella’s anger. “Do you not enjoy the human marvels?”
“I thought the All-Council never surfaced,” she snapped, repeating what Aya had told her. “I thought the ancient covenant restricted you to the sea.”
“The founding of Atlantis destroyed the natural order. We must adapt until the order is restored.” The general’s lazy, complacent tone sharpened. “All will pay. Even me.”
They ascended and then stopped, hovering at a specific mark on the cable to reduce the pressurization effects. Mermen did not get the bends, but apparently, other effects were reduced by pausing instead of rocketing for the surface.
Balim curled over and shuddered.
The general watched him with a dead gaze.
“Why are you doing this?” Bella demanded, furious. “The Sons of Hercules are your greatest enemy. You should hate each other.”
“The enemy of my enemy is an untapped ally.”
“Their goal is to kill you.”
“They cannot poison the faithful,” he scoffed. “Only rebels who deserve to die.”
Bali
m clenched over his injury. “Does the All-Council know you made this treaty? That you have unleashed an ancient disease?”
“No one will question my results. When all mainland warriors are dead and Atlantis is a cursed boneyard, we will silence the rebel voices. Dragao Azul and Aiycaya will return to the All-Council. The mer will descend and revert to the natural order.”
“Aiycaya?” Balim screwed open an eye. “Aiycaya has rebelled?”
“You would not have heard, would you? You were exiled before the news.”
“What news?”
“Perhaps I will not tell you.” His cold smile widened. “Comfort yourself by knowing Atlantis is emptied of its army, and it is too easy for my warriors to stow explosive vials in the remaining castles.” He gazed at his cursed treasure. “Or worse.”
The threat stabbed into Balim. He hunched over and moaned.
She hugged Balim, as powerless now as she had been to soothe Jonah during his chemo when he’d cried because the insides of his bones ached.
Where were her queen powers?
“It’ll be okay.” She tried to channel something, anything, other than his pain-filled decline. “I’m here. This pain will pass. It sucks, but it will pass, and you’ll be stronger because you endured it.”
“He will grow weaker.” The general smirked. “He will wither and die like all warriors who turn their backs on the ancient covenant.”
This big, ugly bully poked at her furious heart.
Bella fired back at him. “No, he won’t. I will heal him with my love. It’s my queen power. I just have to develop it. You’ll see.”
“This human ‘love’ is a lie. Only resonance in the soul is truth.”
“And we’re soul mates.”
“More lies.”
“I transformed because of our resonance. Look at my fins.”
“Any female destined to mate a warrior can transform. But modern females cannot speak true vows. Their minds are distracted, and their words are weak.”
Balim’s eyes cracked open, and his gaze fixed on her. The distinctive red of his tattoos and the matching threads in his irises darkened. He heard the general’s words and believed them.
“No,” she insisted to Balim. “I haven’t loved anyone like I love you. It’s not just words. Believe me.”
But did he? His eyes closed again, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
Distant notes of discord filtered past their argument.
Her hope rose.
Octopus Kong? Nora?
The general tilted his head, rotating his chest in a circle to pinpoint the direction, and then frowned. “Spread out.”
His elite warriors obeyed.
The noise faded.
The general’s sharp gaze faded into the same lazy fog that had taken over his expression after drinking the medicine. He ordered his warriors to rise once more.
“You vow to love each other forever,” the general taunted her. “But you are a modern human who will change her mind as soon as you meet another warrior more to your taste.”
She hugged her unconscious warrior. “That will never happen.”
“You think you are wise.”
“Obviously you’ve never found your soul mate.”
“Now you are the foolish one. I could not hold this position unless I fathered a young fry.”
But doubt flashed in his eyes, and he turned away.
They approached the surface. The cable they’d been using ended at a floating buoy, and the warriors unclipped everyone, leaving Balim for Bella to handle. Close by, a long boat floated in the middle of nowhere. It pulled on its anchor chain, drifting on the current. She had never seen such massive metal. Each chain link was the size of her own body.
Satisfied that they were alone, the general broke through the water barrier and shifted to air-breathing. He looked even paler but less translucent. And the sunlight revealed marks of an old fight bruising his skin.
Bella knew nothing of boats but what she’d seen on TV, which wasn’t much. The boat was painted a military greenish-gray and the massive deck was stocked with cranes, submersibles, and bristling with antennas and satellite dishes. It looked like a cross between a polar icebreaker and a scientific vessel, stable enough to cross the roughest, stormiest Atlantic swells in the middle of winter. How many people lived there? A hundred?
The general led them to the back end of the boat, ordered his warriors to hide beneath the waves, and yanked a long rope to signal his arrival.
A bell pealed.
They bobbed in the large waves.
The general frowned and pulled the greenish, algae-slicked rope again.
No one answered his summons.
He swam to a plunging ladder, clambered to the deck, and disappeared.
A platform descended to sea level. His elite warriors dragged Bella and Balim onto the crashing metal and then slipped beneath the waves.
The platform rose.
On the deck, the general stood with his trident out. He was nude aside from the weapons and armor, and his flaccid cock dangled between his legs. “Get off.”
She obeyed, pulling Balim with her. They were both nude too. She never noticed that in the water but the instant she was on land, she shrank into a form small, vulnerable, and afraid.
The general sliced through her bonds with the deadly, sharp middle spine of his trident. He freed Balim, rotated the weapon, and nudged him with the rounded base.
Balim groaned.
The general grimaced. “Wake your so-called soul mate.”
“He’s sick,” Bella protested.
“Wake him or I will.”
She caressed Balim’s pale, scraped cheek, murmuring her wish. It worked. His lashes fluttered, he blinked, and then rolled over and ejected the water. Gasping on his forearms and knees, he gathered strength.
His cut looked horrible. Purplish-green, festering, and bruised. A direct injury with a diseased dagger was much more virulent than whatever had infected Pelan. The ghostly blue rings hidden beneath his tattoos spread out across his body from the cut.
“Get him up. Walk with me.”
“He’s sick,” Bella repeated, snappish.
The general’s dead expression showed how he did not care.
Fine. Well, not fine, but Bella would try. She swung Balim’s biceps around her small shoulders, hardening herself against his pained grunt and wince so she could be the caregiver he needed. “I’ve got you. You’re with me. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Balim forced one half-human foot after another, stumbling and dragging himself on her command.
They staggered after the general.
Bella was not a natural caregiver. She was too selfish. But for Balim, like for Jonah, she cared in sickness or health. And the way her spirit was firing for revenge, she’d be there fighting for vengeance long after they were parted by death.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bella helped her soul mate stagger after the general.
The boat, which could hold hundreds of people, was empty. And that flummoxed the general. He wandered through passageways with no idea what to do.
“Hercules?” His gravelly call echoed down the hall. “Humans? I have your dagger and your test subject.”
“Where is everybody?” Bella asked, looking up from focusing on her footing with Balim.
He raised his voice. “Where are you?”
No one answered.
The boat creaked. Distant waves splashed. It was strange and creepy.
They entered a room full of scientific equipment. The chairs were pushed back and the coffee was overturned, still a wet brown stain on the floor, as if everyone had abandoned the ship in a hurry.
“Something bad happened here,” she warned him. “This is where they studied the dagger? We should go. Now.”
He grunted. “The small boats are no longer attached.”
“The lifeboats?”
A tank of blue water rested on a table. Inside rested a crusty d
agger just like the one he had removed from the field and used to stab Balim. The general set his wooden box with the new dagger in it next to the tank, on top of a stack of papers, soaking everything and making the ink run.
“Make your people answer.”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
He gestured at a flickering monitor. “Hercules conveys orders through this device.”
She eased Balim into a chair, stretched, and then examined the computer station. A locked screensaver told her the company owner. NGMT Enterprises. The letterhead on the wet stack of papers spelled it out. Next Gen Mil Tech Enterprises. It was stamped with a government seal.
Next Generation Military Technology.
A government contractor? They had badly underestimated the Sons of Hercules’ importance, influence, and reach. They were not “mere” college students, even though the active shootings and bombings had been performed by disgruntled college-aged men. They must be the expendable grunts. The true organization was obviously much, much larger.
She tapped the keyboard. It popped up a password field. She walked around the other computers. “They’re locked.”
He unsheathed the normal, non-diseased dagger strapped to his bicep. “Do not defy me. I will carve my dissatisfaction into your exile.”
“I’m not defying you. Look.” She wiggled the mouse and revealed identical password screens. “Do you know the password?”
“Pass…word?”
“The word to unlock them.”
He considered. “Hercules.”
She typed it. “No.”
“Rebel.”
“No.”
“Anathema bride.”
“Really?”
“The Sons of Hercules do not tolerate them,” he replied, but of course it didn’t work either, and the third attempt locked her out with a warning that the station had to be unlocked by the system administrator.
She needed Starr.
“We need to find an unlocked computer,” she said.
The general made her shoulder Balim once more and follow him around the boat to the bridge.
It too was empty and filled with buttons, dials, switches, and gages. What did any of them do? Even the maps were strange looking, but a satellite image showed their position: the middle of the Indian Ocean.
