A Mermaid s Kiss

by Joey W. Hill

  Rescues . . . A person who'd been caught in a flood. When she couldn't hold on to a tree branch another moment, she'd felt hands, strong hands, helping her hold on to the tree and to her toddler a little longer. Just long enough.

  Seductions . . . Those who felt it was possible, despite the lore that angels were sexless, they'd been sensually awakened, lifted to a plane of spiritual ecstasy and physical fulfillment that would never be matched again by a mortal lover. Jonah raised a cryptic brow at Randall's quizzical look.

  Then came a call by a man who claimed he was attacked by an angel when he tried to mug a woman in New York. He bore the burn scars of the angel's fingerprints on his chest, but considered it the most fortunate thing in his life, for he'd turned his back on crime, struggled through his hardship by honest means and come out the better for it, realizing there were consequences to his actions beyond this life.

  Subtle details told Jonah which stories had probably involved his brethren and which ones were rationalizations of extraordinary luck or resources the person involved hadn't known he or she possessed. There was the usual cadre of attention seekers with no real knowledge or belief. Impressed, Jonah noticed Randall weeded almost all of them out of the panel he put on the air. The radio talk show host knew his business well, had learned to judge people by voice quality, intonation, what they did or didn't say. And he did it with quiet ease.

  That impression was further reinforced by how Randall looked toward him after each story. Not to seek a confirmation, just studying Jonah's face, his body language. Though Jonah made no indication one way or another, a slight smile appeared on the commentator's face at different times, as if he'd received a response. Jonah found himself wondering if his expression was as unreadable as he'd always assumed it was. Or perhaps Randall Myers was just that good.

  But there was also a fragility to his unflappable demeanor. Jonah narrowed his eyes, remembering the articles. The mention of a wife. A wife struggling with cancer, perhaps explaining the cancer metaphor, though he suspected it was the last thing Randall wanted to think about. But he loved her enough that it pervaded everything. Her suffering, her impending loss. They'd likely hoped the proximity of the Schism would slow it down, and it probably had, for a while.

  "Rescues, attacks, seductions . . ." Randall repeated, bringing the show to a close. "Maybe they are what so many think they are. But sometimes, folks, I wonder if angels are another level of life, like ourselves. Maybe they're searching for meaning, too, as they interact with us in their mysterious ways we don't understand. Is the Great Beyond any more forthcoming with them than It is with us?

  "Again, I go back to it. What if the birth, life and death of hope and meaning are inside ourselves? That whether God lives or dies is up to us and our actions?" Randall took a drag on a new cigarette, seemingly unconcerned with the moment of radio dead air as he pondered. "Gives a whole new meaning to taking responsibility for your own deeds, doesn't it?" His rich voice paused for a chuckle, and as if he knew Jonah's attention had lifted and fixed on him, he glanced toward him and nodded. "This is Randall Myers, and I'm going to call it a night. I'll be back tomorrow, same dead-of-night time. Good night."

  Laying down the headphones, he switched the station to a classical program, shutting down the microphone before he turned. "Despite my earlier comments, it's obvious you're very protective of that young woman," he noted, his gaze passing over Anna's sleeping form.

  "She's risked her life for me. Several times. Despite that utter foolishness, she's worth protecting."

  Randall's eyes glinted and Jonah bent over her. "Little one . . . Anna. Wake up. It's getting near daylight. We need to go."

  "They say radio frequencies can carry the energy of spirits," Randall observed. "There was a good energy to the calls tonight, as though they could all feel it, sense it."

  The idea at first struck harmlessly off Jonah's mind, but then abruptly he was standing, lifting Anna on her feet though she was only half awake. "Wh-what?"

  "We need to go." He could be wrong, but he hadn't thought . . . Fifteen miles to go, and an unpopulated desert, where they'd stick out like a sore thumb.

  "Wait." Randall rose, pulled out two more bottles of water. "I'd drive you, but I can't leave the station until . . ."

  "That's fine. We'll get where we need to be."

  "All right then." With obvious reluctance, Randall cleared his throat and led them to the station door, held it open.

  When she stumbled, Jonah bent and lifted Anna in his arms, despite her sleepy protest. Now he turned to look at the man and the small building, antennae thrust into the sky like reaching, yearning fingers. "Thank you."

  Randall nodded, then paused. "Can you . . ." His voice got thick, which he immediately covered with an embarrassed shrug. "Ah, hell. I don't know who you are. But sometimes your gut tells you things. I don't need to know exactly what comes after. I just need to know . . . Well, death just seems too damn ugly for there to be anything merciful afterward . . . Will she . . ." He swallowed. "Damn it, I can't bear thinking there won't be an end to her suffering, a place where she can be happy and well."

  Anna, waking to the broken tone of a man she'd sensed was otherwise as stalwart as the silent rocks of this desert, wondered if there was anything more heartbreaking than a man who refused to cry when the thing he loved most was being taken away from him, one torturous inch at a time.

  Though Jonah hadn't yet answered, she stretched out a hand from her position in his arms and Randall, still looking self-conscious but determined, tentatively closed his fingers on it. She squeezed, making him meet her eyes.

  "I've always thought that death is so ugly so that we don't give the gifts of mortal life short shrift. If getting to Heaven and a life of no cares was as easy as wishing it to be so, no one would value what we have here." Glancing up at Jonah, she put a pleading desire in her expression. Say something. Be compassionate.

  Her angel bit back a sigh. "If your wife has lived a good life, then her soul will be reborn. She will not come to harm in the afterlife. Of all the species in all the universe, you are most protected by the Lady. That in itself should bring hope."

  Anna could tell it was an effort, but he kept the derision from his tone, so he didn't sound as if he were delivering a message of doom. Randall's expression eased at the same time hers did.

  "He's very cynical," she said quietly, summoning the shadow of a smile. "But he's not himself lately. There is hope. There always is." She got Jonah to let her slide down and stand on her own feet. As she reached out a hand to Randall again, she noted that Jonah grudgingly softened when the radio man enclosed it gently in both of his this time. "Good-bye, and thank you for letting us spend the evening with you."

  "Wait a minute." Randall brightened. "I just thought of something."

  Retaining her hand, he pulled her toward a storage shed next to the station, Jonah following them both. Randall opened the door, gestured to two bikes with thick tread wheels. "The sand is packed enough in places they'll save you some time, and there's a basket on this one for the pack. If nothing else, it will give you something to lean on. I'd give you the four-wheeler, I swear, but my wife, she's undergoing chemo treatments and I have to have emergency transport for her if she has a seizure. We don't have any close neighbors, and--"

  "This is fine," Anna said, laying her hand on his forearm. "We wouldn't want to endanger your wife. We're not far from where we need to go." Eyeing the bikes, she wondered if Jonah knew how to ride one. "This is the way it's meant to be. Don't worry."

  As the ray of morning sunlight speared down into the valley where Randall's station rested, Jonah's wings began to dissolve and disappear, the feathers sizzling into ash in the air.

  She heard Randall's breath draw in and turned to see the handful of feathers blow past his legs. A couple caught on his pants leg, compelling the dogs to dance behind him to avoid contact.

  "See, you were right," she said with tired amusement. "Just paste and glue."


  Eighteen

  "WHY did his question bother you?"

  "It didn't." Jonah imitated Anna, putting his leg over the bike when they were out of sight of the station.

  "It's like the dancing," she encouraged. "Just find your center balance. And now you're lying to me."

  He gave her a warning glance, but sighed. "When angels die, we experience a form of oblivion, out of reach of the memories of those we loved and lived with. We become part of the cosmos, of the Lady's energy, adding to Her strength. Humans have the choice of being reborn. While they have no conscious memory when they're reborn, they tend to reconnect with the souls that meant the most to them, again and again. And then those that reach enlightenment are able to at last reunite with their loved ones, with full knowledge of who they are. It . . . pisses me off."

  She bit back a smile. "You're becoming somewhat more human yourself, my lord."

  Jonah narrowed his gaze at her, but fitted his foot to the petal. While he wobbled, in a relatively quick time he steadied.

  The sun hit the horizon as they made the crest of the first hill, and Anna paused, taking a deep breath. "We'll make it there today," she said.

  Jonah put a hand on her arm. "Anna, why are you getting weaker? It's time for you to stop lying to me as well."

  She glanced up at him, the shadows under her eyes making them look more sunken. "I'll be all right, my lord, once I get you there. It's the ocean. The salt water. I just get a little bit weak when I'm a certain distance from it. What I have left in the pack should get me the rest of the way."

  Of course. It was as simple as the glare of sunlight on the sand that would soon become blinding. He'd taken a creature of the sea farther and farther from her home. From the first he'd known Anna's truest form was the mermaid. He was a self-centered idiot.

  "Don't, my lord." Her chin was suddenly quite resolute, her eyes flashing at him. "It has always been my choice. You compelled me to do nothing." A teasing smile tugged at her mouth. "You didn't even want to come, remember? I've had to haul you grumbling the whole way."

  "You are a constant thorn in my side," he said with a lightness he didn't feel. "I only went to spare myself the nagging until my wing healed and I could fly away from your shrewishness. Anna--"

  "I thought as much." She nodded. Then she pushed off and went coasting down the next hill before he could argue with her further.

  As he followed, he thought of what she'd said about dancing, swimming, flying--how finding a balance for each of them was the same. Maybe she'd meant something more than that, that the source of balance was the same, physically or emotionally. He wished and wondered if it could be as easy to find his own center, so he could make her suffering worth this. He needed to send her home.

  Free will. There was one of the more ridiculous codes of the Lady. But he still had a hard time shaking it, even as everything inside him was starting to shout that it was time to override Anna's wishes and put her well-being first. She thought she was fated to die at twenty-one. He sure as Hades didn't want to be the next link in the curse, any more than she wanted to die without purpose, as her mother had. Damn it.

  As the sun rose higher, they were able to balance the increasing heat with the occasional breeze from a downhill slope. The bicycle did make it easier, for there were flat rocky areas they were able to traverse, after Jonah got the hang of riding. Even so, Anna was more confident and practiced, and should have been able to stay ahead of him. Instead, she kept dropping back, until he was slowing to ensure he didn't lose her on the rise of a hill. He also took frequent breaks, until it was late afternoon and they'd only covered about eight miles.

  Jonah tried not to outdistance her too much, but he found pleasure in taking the hills downward at a good speed, feeling the wind through his hair, against his face, watching the sun descend. When he got to the bottom of one and estimated their distance at five more miles--if Randall was right and the Schism was cooperative--he turned, waiting for Anna to crest the hill to give her the good news.

  He anticipated her coming down, her hair streaming, face lifted to the blessed touch of the wind, blowing the thin T-shirt flat against her soft but firm breasts, the hint of nipples. It made him think of the night before, in the cellar, her body lifting to his. He hadn't had that pleasure last night because of their time with Randall, which was fine, because Anna had gotten to rest in a cool place, but he felt his loins tighten now with the anticipation of the evening.

  She still hadn't crested the hill.

  He waited thirty seconds before he was off the bike and running up the slope, reaching the crest to find her bicycle on its side, probably no more than a couple of pedal strokes from making the top. Her body was crumpled on the ground next to it.

  "Anna." He skidded onto his knees beside her and lifted her upper body. He pulled off the hat and discovered her pallor was gray, her lips bleeding. Her violet eyes were glassy, almost pale, as if the color was leeching away with her life force.

  "Keep going, my lord," she rasped. "You're almost there."

  "You know far less of me than you think you do, if you think I would leave you here to die."

  She shook her head, coughed, and he saw blood fleck her saliva. "I'm going to die anyway, my lord. This is important . . . and you have to go. They're coming. We've somehow . . . I'm sorry my lord, but I think we were on the fault line, but now we're not. It was protecting us somehow, and now we've strayed off. The directions Mina gave me . . . They're coming. I can't feel where it is anymore. You need to keep moving."

  He lifted her in his arms and jogged back down the hill, to the bottom of the slope where there were several clusters of rock, a formation of fluted erosion that provided some shade.

  "There's a road, there. Look."

  He saw the faint impression of one winding away to the west and nodded. "Another track for the people who live out in this wasteland, I'm sure."

  "You have to go on, Jonah," she insisted. "That's it. Take that road a few more miles, and you'll be there."

  "Anna. Tell me the full truth. This is more than what you're telling me."

  "The sea," she said wearily. "I can't get too far from the sea. But I thought, with the water and shells, I'd make it further than three days, no matter what Mina said. I had to get you here. That was most important."

  "Like hell." Easing her down to the sand, he rummaged quickly through her pack. One third of the seawater left, her bag of sand and shells. "Can you use this, no matter what form you're in?"

  "Yes, the mermaid is the core of me . . ."

  "Stop talking. You answered the question." He stood, scanned the scattering of rocks around them. There. A rock about four feet tall and three feet across, which had a concave top likely accomplished over the years by dew dropped from the spines of the yucca overshadowing it. "Anna, can you shift? To the pixie?"

  When she blinked, he recognized the disorienting effect of dehydration. He cursed himself for being an idiot, for relying on his powers of intuition instead of his own damned eyes. "Anna. Shift. To a fairy. Right now." And God help him if she misunderstood and shifted to a mermaid.

  "But it'll take me . . . long time to turn back. Not strong."

  "It's okay." He gentled his tone, touched her face, felt something twist hard in his heart at the immediate gratification in her face, her pleasure at his spontaneous touch. Why didn't he do it more often, all the time, so that she'd know how much he thought of her?

  "Want you to touch me. Be inside me before you go. Can't if change."

  "Anna." He crouched, took her shoulders, and gave her a look that would have made even one of his most battle-hardened captains piss himself. "Do it now."

  Giving him a grumpy but fairly vacant look, her body shuddered, rippled. The lights started gathering over her, but they were weak, faint. Almost transparent.

  "It hurts." It tore him apart to hear her cry out, his always stoic little mermaid. He wanted to hold her, touch her, but of course he couldn't while she was shi
fting. Despite himself, he thought of what Luc had said. Will she be your concern, when she is dead?

  Then it was complete, and she was sprawled at the base of the rock, so disconcertingly like a dead butterfly, her wilted wings covering her shoulders.

  Lifting her gently to the surface of the rock, he removed the remainder of the seawater and pulled out the shallow bowl she'd been using. Pouring the water into it carefully, he tried not to spill any in his haste. Then the shells, arranged on the side, a bit of the sand thrown into the basin. He propped the pack up where it would shade the whole area. At the smell of the seawater, she'd started to move painstakingly toward the pond he'd created, but he gently nudged her onto his hand with a finger and lifted her, lowering her into the water. She hooked her arms onto his forefinger to hold on, so he was able to watch her expression ease as the salt apparently penetrated through the outer physical form of the fairy and found the waiting mermaid soul within. With his other hand, he gently stirred the water so it lapped upon her in a credible imitation of the ocean.

  He shook his head. "We'll travel after nightfall."

  "But Mina said not to travel at night. To get under cover."

  "Stop arguing with me." Sliding a thumb gently beneath her face as well, he frowned as she leaned her head against it. "You're so determined to follow everything that witch says, except when it applies to yourself."

  "If anything should happen to me--"

  "Nothing is going to happen to you. Perhaps this shaman can help. If he can't, or if we don't find this place tonight, I'll summon David and he'll have you back to the sea and your cottage in ten minutes."

  "Like a supersonic jet," she murmured. His lips twitched, but he nodded.

  "Faster, I'll warrant. I should summon him now." He put a finger on her mouth, part of it on her throat, since the pad of his finger could almost cover her face. "But I won't. Don't distress yourself. I understand how important this is to you, Anna."

  But not to you, Anna thought, trying to ignore the sinking of her heart. All the times she had seen passion in him, it had always been on her behalf. He was very angry with her now, but because she'd risked herself. Protecting her, lying with her, arousing her, all those motivated his desire, but he had none for himself. For life.