Kerrigan's Race (The Syreni Book 1)

by C. M. Michaels

  The fluid was surprisingly cool, and seemed to shrink back from my arm at first rather than coat it. A mild tingling sensation started in the tips of my fingers and slowly climbed to the top of my hand. It became a little more intense as it crawled further up my forearm but not at all painful, nothing that would make me yank my arm away. When the black fluid rose above my elbow I shot Johnna a troubled, I-could-use-a-little-help-here, glance. His equally puzzled expression didn’t ease my frazzled nerves any. When it reached my shoulder I figured my pain tolerance was just higher and I’d missed the cue the others had reacted to. I tried to withdrawal my arm, only to find that my entire body was now paralyzed.

  Helpless, I watched in silent horror as more and more of the tar like substance rose out of the chalice, coating my shoulder and chest before working its way across to my other arm. Soon my breasts and stomach disappeared beneath the viscous blob. The last image I had of my oil-slicked legs before being blinded was of them being forced together.

  Then the pain began.

  Every inch of my flesh burned as if I’d been lowered into freshly erupted magma. Had I been capable of screaming, my ear-piercing wail would have echoed across the entire ocean, deafening all of the creatures in its path.

  Instead I stood perfectly stoic. Frozen.

  The onslaught ended almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving me surprisingly alive, but still very much blind. More than one pair of hands urgently wiped away the black goo from my flesh.

  This can’t be. It just…can’t.

  You cannot deny it, my general. The gods have spoken.

  But…she isn’t Syreni by birth. How could they expect her to ever be accepted as our queen?

  That sounds perilously close to questioning our god’s will, Aristos. Tread carefully, my son. I should hate to see our beloved general struck down before me.

  Queen of the Syreni? What the hell was he talking about? And what had been done to my body to make them think that was my destiny? I reached up to rub the filth from my eyes, only to have someone take a firm hold of my wrist.

  That will not help, my child. Neptune and Poseidon removed your eyes when they chose to transform you into our next queen. But do not fear, when you wake in the morning it will be the eyes of our goddess Athena that you gaze through. That is how our queens are granted divine sight—the ability to see events far away, and in some cases, even what is to come. Tomorrow I will introduce you to the Throne of Nine as Queen Camithia—the next given name in our line of succession. They will decide who will be bound to you to become our next king.

  Should it please my queen, Johnna calmly continued, as if I’d still be capable of comprehending whatever he was about to share in order to even be able to form an opinion, my eldest daughter, Armiele, would be honored to serve as your handmaiden until you are able to select your own servants and staff. She is with me now, and can show you to your temporary quarters. We shall have your permanent chambers decorated and appointed to your liking within the week.

  Somewhere between having my body flash-fried like a piece of chicken, discovering I no longer had eyes, and hearing that I was now their queen, my brain had shifted into self-protect mode, instituting an involuntary shutdown. All I was capable of at this point was nodding my head and taking hold of Armiele’s elbow while she led me to my room.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The birth of a queen

  * * *

  My queen? Are you awake?

  I am now, I thought grumpily. Evidently swatting her hand off my shoulder earlier had been too subtle of a sign to leave me the hell alone. Maybe a well-placed elbow would do the trick. Not that I really had any desire to hurt Armiele. It’s just that getting up meant confronting a horrible new reality I couldn’t even begin to get my head around. Denial was so much easier.

  My sincerest apologies, but if I am to have you ready in time for the council meeting we must get started soon.

  Okay…problem one. Where exactly do you go to the bathroom when you live underwater? Was I supposed to just let it loose in this weird contraption of a bed? Or did we swim off somewhere else to pee? I wasn’t crazy about the idea of inhaling my own urine. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. Preparing to execute what I hoped was a universal “I have to pee” body rock, I opened my eyes—the eyes of a goddess.

  My jaw literally fell open. I could see single-celled organisms floating in the water on the other side of the room with such clarity that it was as if they were magnified underneath a high-powered microscope. And the colors. There were so many colors. Interlaced with the high resolution images from my own line-of-sight were other streams of just-as-real pictures from various locations around Halon’s Gate, as well as other unfamiliar scenes likely from places far beyond. My brain separated and tracked the multiple streams of data without requiring any conscious thought from me.

  A lot of what I was seeing piqued my curiosity, of course, but only one set of images truly mattered. Gentry and Tara were resting side-by-side in some sort of medical recovery unit. Central line IVs were taped to their necks, just below their gills. The artificial respirators strapped into their mouths rhythmically pumped water through their gills to keep them from suffocating while they were under the affects of anesthesia. What I could see of their faces and upper chests around the myriad of other machines hooked up to them was coated in orangish-brown bio-salve. Everything below their breasts was bundled inside a tight cocoon of carnipula leaves that came to an abrupt and narrow end, making it obvious they no longer had feet. And yet I wasn’t alarmed. Somehow I knew they were recovering well from what had clearly been major but necessary surgery, as if an assessment of the situation from a very Syreni point of view had been conveyed right alongside the images.

  Quite a different perspective, isn’t it? Armiele’s radiant, motherly smile added some much needed warmth to an otherwise grim looking face. She didn’t quite look as ancient as her father, but she was no spring chicken herself. The irises of her eyes were an unnatural shade of orange that complimented the reds and yellows in her sun-kissed tail.

  I couldn’t exactly answer her, so I just nodded. Then I glanced down at my own body.

  The first thing I noticed was that the gruesome scar on my chest was gone. As in, poof. Never happened in the first place gone. And just below where the scar had resided—where my pelvis should have been—was a tail.

  As impossible as it seemed, my body now transitioned from a still relatively human-looking if semi-translucent scale-covered chest and abdomen into what could only be described as a dark burgundy Syreni tail. I decided to give it an experimental flop, more to prove to myself that I was hallucinating than anything else. A series of powerful, corded muscles contracted in response to my thoughts, sending the three-foot wide, pink and red flukes that now marked the end of my body on a lazy swish through the crystal clear water.

  Aristos’s earlier comment to Johnna about me not being born into their race took on a whole new meaning. The gods had done more than claim me. They’d altered my species. I was a Syreni female.

  Like Armiele and Damille—the only two Syreni females I’d met—my vagina now stretched almost nine inches, all the way from my hipline to above where my naval had been. Near the top of the sensitive burgundy folds sat a bump the size of a large marble with bioluminescent, jellyfish-like tentacles extending from it. Curious, albeit in a morbid sort of way, I ran my fingers across several of them. The white-hot surge of pleasure from the single caress felt like a thousand tongues were inside me. I let out an involuntary shriek and yanked my hand away.

  You can go blind like that, Armiele teased, playing off the old wives’ tale. She swept a few wayward strands of my dark burgundy hair away from my face, meeting my eyes with a kindhearted grin.

  Her good-natured humor didn’t eliminate the embarrassment and humiliation I felt from inadvertently playing with myself in front of her, but it certainly helped. I absently curled the offending locks around my fingers while I waited for the unwelc
ome stimulation to pass.

  The texture of my hair had changed in addition to the color. It had a softer, almost seaweed feel to it. Like Tara, my right wrist marked me as a daughter of Poseidon, but the vines extending from the trident’s handle didn’t end at my forearm like hers. The burgundy ivy climbed the entire length of my arm like a trellis. My left wrist donned the mark of Neptune, and like the vines on my right arm, the burgundy tails of the hippocamps encircled my arm every couple of inches all the way to my shoulder. From there, the vines and hippocamp tails crossed over top of each other as they wound around my breasts, then circled my body again just below my midsection before disappearing into the dark scales covering my tail.

  I’d seen enough. The unyielding determination to survive that had sustained me since our abduction instantly crumbled into dust. Even if I was able to someday convince Aristos to open the portal, returning to my old life was no longer an option. There was nothing left of the Kerrigan Austin loved.

  Still, what I was about to do filled me with a great deal of guilt. I would be leaving Tara and Gentry totally defenseless and trapped in this nightmare for life. Up until this very moment, I’d always struggled to understand how anyone could even consider hurting their loved ones by committing such a cowardly and selfish act. But living such a foreign life—without any hope of seeing Austin, my parents or my sister again—held no appeal to me.

  My fingers curled inward and stiffened as I reached for my throat, intent on shredding my gills. Both of my hands were intercepted and secured by Armiele’s iron grip. I struggled to break free until she was forced to lock my arms behind my back and pin me against the padded netting that formed the top of my sleeping chamber, using well-timed, powerful thrusts of her tail to keep me there. Damn. For an old lady, she was strong as a mule.

  No child. I will not let such a beautiful young woman throw away the promising life that lies ahead of her out of grief. It’s been a thousand years since a queen has been so heavily decorated upon her choosing. The gods have foreseen that you will play a critical role in the future of our kind. In time, I’m confident the overwhelming sorrow you feel for the life you have left behind will fade, and you will be grateful that I stayed your hands this day. But until you are no longer a danger to yourself, I have no choice but to sedate you.

  Now she was going to drug me? Oh, hell no. I may not have had any wish to harm her, but that didn’t mean I was going to let myself be turned into some comatose psych ward patient. I snapped my head backward, catching her squarely in the chin. Her grip loosened just enough to free my right arm. She was on me in a second, her left hand taking a firm hold of my scalp as she tried to place me in a half nelson, looping her right arm underneath mine and placing her hand against the back of my neck. Before she could complete the maneuver, my left elbow shot into her ribs with three powerful thrusts, the last of which knocked her off me.

  I hadn’t held anything back, and when I swam out from underneath her she made no attempt to stop me. I’d never have a better opportunity to bring what remained of my shattered life to a merciful end.

  But for some inexplicable reason, even though I had absolutely nothing left to live for, I just couldn’t do it.

  Seeing the shock and outright fear in her eyes as she gripped her injured ribs and wiped the blood from her smashed nose made me feel like a monster. How could I have done this to such a kind old lady who was only trying to help me? Shit.

  I swam over to help her, and felt yet another pang of guilt when she cowered away and guarded her face. I put my hands up in a sign of surrender and mouthed “I’m so sorry” as clearly as I could.

  I am clearly not qualified to serve as your handmaiden, my queen. I will let my father know so that he may work on finding someone far more suitable. My apologies for attempting to restrain you. Laying a hand on the queen is an act of high treason. You would be well within your rights to have me executed.

  “Please don’t go,” I mouthed. When she looked at me sideways I made a writing gesture with my hand. Apparently being transformed into a Syreni female hadn’t granted me the ability to telepathically communicate. That or I just didn’t know how to do it yet. This was one conversation I wasn’t going to able to handle with a couple of head nods.

  She disappeared into the space adjacent to where I had slept—their equivalent of a living room, I guess—and returned holding a stone tablet and what resembled an artist brush. She stuck the tip of the bone handled tool into the first of a row of small shells fastened to the bottom of the tablet, and painted instructions in a very neat hand. “Choose your color from below. Use light strokes, and when you wish to erase simply shake the tablet and the plankton will return to their homes.”

  She demonstrated by giving the top of the board a quick shake. Sure enough, the little bioluminescent creatures pulled away from the tablet and eventually settled back in the shell she had drew them out of. Okay. In spite of my mood, I had to admit that was kind of cool. I took hold of the brush and dipped it into the second shell—figuring the guys in the first one had been bugged enough—then lifted it and wrote “I’m so sorry, Armiele. I feel terrible that I hurt you. Please forgive me. I don’t want you to go.”

  She studied the board for a long moment before she regarded me again. Do you still wish to hurt yourself?

  Oh, I still wished to do far more than hurt myself, even if it would take me a while to erode my resolve and overcome my stubborn sense of self-preservation. I couldn’t think of an even remotely believable lie to convince her that I’d miraculously been cured of my suicidal ambition, so I simply replied “Yes.”

  Will you let me sedate you until those feelings pass?

  I knew if I said no she would leave, and I’d be stuck with whoever they assigned to me next. Somehow I doubted they would be half this nice. Not that I liked the thought of being drugged—again—anymore than I had five minutes ago. But after my ill-fated attempt to check out of hotel mermaid permanently, that was inevitable. The only choice I had was who administered it, and how much pain I suffered from struggling. “Yes.”

  That earned me a small, guarded smile. Then I would be honored to continue to serve you. I must say, for someone your size, you fight very well, my young queen.

  Armiele bandaged her own nose—stuffing carnipula leaves into the side that was bleeding—then let me assist her with binding her rapidly discoloring ribs. I urged her to let Damille take a look, but she just waved me off with a comment about how they couldn’t go running to their master healer with every bump and bruise. When we finished, she led me back to where I had slept and had me slip my tail underneath the padded netting to hold me in place. The bottom of the bed was lined with a massive pile of the furs from the chamber, but since I was just kind of floating against them, it felt more like I was cuddling with a seal than lying on a mattress.

  This is a heavily diluted form of Sherifan root, she thought as she coated the inside of both of my nostrils with a thick yellow cream. It may take us a while to get the dose right, but once we do, it should just leave you feeling kind of numb. Remember, this is only until you have a chance to adjust.

  Within seconds my breathing slowed to infrequent, labored breaths. My eyelids drooped closed. I could open them if I really concentrated on it, but even completing such an inane task was exhausting. I was about as close to being brain dead as you could get short of slipping into a coma.

  Okay… that’s a little much, I see. Not to worry. By the time I finish preparing you it should be starting to wear off. Let’s get you cleaned up so our people can meet their new queen.

  Armiele scooped me out of the bed and effortlessly carried me in her arms as she swam across the bed chamber. A beautiful mural of Athena dominated the crown molded ceiling, capturing her in full battle armor with a thick iron shield in one hand and a throwing spear in the other. A sword was strapped to her waist, and a massive owl was just taking flight from her shoulder.

  We passed by a carved marble vanity with a large
gilded mirror as we swam through an open doorway, and then around a dividing wall into a small, private alcove. My earlier squirming before I’d opened my eyes in bed must have been enough of a cue that I had to relieve myself, as Armiele headed straight to the far corner of the room. She motioned toward my vagina, waited a second, and then pointed at a nickel-sized, pinkish hole I hadn’t noticed near the middle of where my stomach had been. Ahh. Pee and poop. Check. When I touched my vagina in response, she tugged on one of five decorative white flowers sticking out of the floor, extending it a couple of feet before placing the end over my privates. The leaves of the flower-like device attached themselves to my surrounding scales, triggering the suction to kick on. When I was finished peeing, she pinched the base of the flower twice, causing it to immediately detach and recoil back into the floor.

  The flower balneo closes after each use so the entire unit can sanitize itself. As soon as it’s open again it’s ready. If you pinch the base only once, it will trigger a cleansing wash. Pinch it again when you want it to release. Understand?

  When I nodded she lowered me into a golden claw foot tub that had decorative, raptor-shaped hand grips scattered all around the top edge. Armiele coated a large purple sponge with shealing oil and set to work oiling my tail.

  It might seem odd that a species that has evolved to live almost entirely underwater would need to bathe, but routinely conditioning our scales with shealing oil is the only thing that allows us to spend time above the surface given our harsh sun. The women also appreciate the pleasant scent, and having more manageable hair, of course. We’re able to capture and recycle most of the excess oil by using a tub with water returns, which also keeps the scent from becoming too overpowering. You can image how much oil we would otherwise consume given that there are over twenty thousand Syreni living in Halon’s Gate alone.