by Jaci Burton
Even in her thoughts his voice was hypnotic…husky and warm like a blanket in the coldest winter.
She looked at her watch. They’d been down for fifteen minutes. No human could withstand lack of oxygen for that long. Instead of shock or resignation that her guess was right—it was now a certainty that Dax wasn’t human—curiosity took hold. What was he? Was he even from earth? The old childhood excitement at the mysteries of the sea came rushing back to her.
All in due time, Isabelle.
I have so many questions, Dax. So much I want to know about you. She wished she wasn’t wearing the tank or the mask, which obstructed her view of him. A part of her was filled with jealousy that she couldn’t swim the same way he was…without a tank, without a mask, just her body and the sea.
You can. I’ll help you. Take off your mask.
She heard him, but couldn’t quite believe he’d even suggest such a thing. I can’t.
Yes, you can. Take off your tank and mask. Trust me.
Trust him? She barely even knew him. And still he hadn’t answered a single question. Okay, maybe she hadn’t really asked him many questions yet, but it wasn’t like he was jumping up to volunteer information.
And yet a curious excitement welled up within her. The opportunity to do what no other human had done. Was she actually considering the idea of taking off her mask and tank? Surely he wouldn’t let her drown, would he? Indecision weighed her down more than the dive weights on her belt.
Trust me, Isabelle. Nothing bad will happen to you. I’ll protect you.
But how? Oh, God, this was all so confusing! And yet deep down she knew instinctively that she could trust him. Even more, she wanted to do this.
Talk about a leap of faith. A giant leap that could cost her life if she was wrong. She unbuckled the belt holding the tank on her body. Dax swam behind her and lifted it off, but she was loath to let go of the regulator providing her oxygen.
Trust me.
She nodded and pulled off her mask, shutting her eyes against the briny water that she knew would sting and blind her. At the same time she felt his hand on her mouthpiece and pulled it away, he grabbed hold of her hand.
A sudden vibration shot through her palm and up her arm. Warmth soared through her, intensifying as if she drew closer and closer to a burning inferno. Fear sent her into a panic and she reached for the regulator, her arms flailing wildly. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, had lost her bearings completely. She was going to drown!
Relax, Isabelle. You can breathe.
No, she couldn’t! Her lungs tightened painfully with her efforts to hold on to the last oxygen she’d inhaled.
Open your mouth. Breathe.
I’ll die. I’ll drown! She was on fire, the burning in her lungs equal to the flames licking at her skin. Help me!
Dax pulled her against him. Open your eyes, Isabelle. Look at me. Trust me. You can breathe down here.
She didn’t want to trust him, shouldn’t trust him. Her ability to hold her breath dwindled with every second that passed. She opened her eyes, wanting him to see her damning look right before she sucked in an ocean full of water, wanting him to know that he’d done this to her. With a shudder of resignation, she gave herself over to her soon-to-be watery grave and opened her mouth.
The water rushed down her throat and she waited for the choking sensation that she knew happened when one drowned. Expecting the clawing, gasping for air, she was shocked when it didn’t happen. She could breathe, although she was breathing in water, not oxygen!
Confusion took over where panic had been. How could this be? How could she breathe ocean water? Her eyes weren’t blurred by the water. She could see—more clearly, in fact, than she’d ever been able to with her mask on. Every color was more vibrant, the water pristine and transparent.
And she wasn’t floating to the surface! She’d forgotten all about dropping her weight belt, and yet she hadn’t drifted up. In fact, she realized as she tentatively began to swim about, she had more control under the water without the belt and dive gear than she’d ever had before. Slipping out of her flippers, she swam about like a fish, undulating through the water, rolling and swirling like a child enjoying a lawn sprinkler on a hot summer day.
She turned to Dax, who had perched on a ledge.
He grinned. “Enjoying yourself?”
His lips moved, and she could actually hear what he said. Could she do that, too?
“Can I talk down here?” She heard her own voice as she moved her lips. “Yes, I can! Oh my God, Dax, I can speak down here!”
He laughed and swam off the ledge, stopping in front of her and gathering her into his arms. “You can do anything you want down here, my golden mermaid.”
Her heart flipped over at the endearment, but that’s exactly how she felt. Like she had a long tail and a fin. She was a fish. An overwhelmed, ecstatic fish. “How is this possible? Tell me. I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.”
“I know you do. Come with me and I’ll try to explain some of it to you.” They pulled apart and he held out his hand. She grasped it willingly, wonder filling her with every deep breath of ocean water.
With one inhalation, Dax had changed her life. What lie ahead she didn’t know. Where he was taking her she couldn’t even hazard a guess. But he’d asked her to trust him once, and opened up a new world for her. A world she hadn’t imagined existed. She didn’t know what kind of world it was, or even what would happen to her now that her very biology had changed.
But one thing she did know for certain. At this moment, she’d follow Dax to the ends of the earth and beyond.
Chapter Ten
Isabelle let the tears flow, the salty drops mixing invisibly with the water surrounding her. She was swimming along like a fish—like the golden mermaid Dax had called her. He held her hand, periodically turning his head and smiling that boyish grin that never failed to make her insides churn with need.
But her tears hadn’t come from the awe-inspiring events she’d already witnessed. When a dolphin swam up beside her, and she swore it smiled at her, she’d lost it completely, breaking down into a weeping puddle of joy.
The grey creature still moved along beside her, keeping pace with them. It looked over at her the same way Dax did, as if studying her.
“That’s Zeus,” Dax said, nodding toward the bottlenose.
“I see. And you know his name, how?”
“Because I told him.”
Isabelle stopped and pulled her hand from Dax’s. Okay, now that dolphin had not just spoken to her. She turned to Dax. “Did he do what I think he just did?”
“Yeah. He talks. Everything has a voice down here, Isabelle. Most people just can’t hear them.”
“I don’t talk to just anybody, either, but Dax tells me you’re okay for a land creature,” Zeus said, his smiling mouth moving open and closed with his words.
She knew her eyes must be bugging out of her head as she stared open mouthed at the dolphin. Her mind spun. This wasn’t happening. This world could not be real. “I’m dreaming this, right? We actually completed the dive earlier and I’m dreaming this entire thing. Or maybe I died when I took off my mask and tanks and this is heaven?”
Dax’s lips curled in a smile. “If that’s what you want to believe, then sure. You’re dreaming, my golden mermaid.” He held out his hand again and she tentatively slipped her palm in his, allowing him to propel them rapidly through the water. Zeus followed along, whistling. Isabelle shook her head, completely awed by this new world.
They reached a ledge in the ocean’s floor that seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. Dax moved forward but Isabelle stopped, tugging at his hand. Below the shelf appeared a crevice that fell into complete darkness below. “I can’t.”
He turned and frowned. “Why not?”
“The depth…I’ll be crushed.”
“No, you won’t. Come on.”
She chewed her bottom lip and shook her head, refusing t
o budge. “I’m not going, Dax. I know the maximum depth a human can travel and survive. We’re practically at that depth now.”
He tilted his head and said, “Can a human breathe water and live, like you’re doing right now?”
“Well, no.”
“Then trust me. I haven’t killed you yet, have I?” He winked and held out his hand.
He did have a point. She’d survived all the miraculous changes so far. Chances were he knew what she was capable of withstanding. She reached for his hand and let him lead her down into the darkness. Each meter they descended propelled them further into the black depths, much further than any known or documented exploration.
Isabelle tried not to let fear overtake her, yet she couldn’t help the trepidation shivering along her spine. This murky trek was the unknown. The dark, blind, unknown. More so than anything she’d ever experienced. Before, she could at least see. Now she was forced to trust that Dax knew where he was going. She felt him alongside her, and clung to his hand like a lifeline, surely hurting his fingers in her squeezing grip. But he didn’t complain once, just held on tight, his firm grasp reassuring her.
With every meter their speed seemed to increase. Before long they were bulleting downward at such a fast pace the water pressed in against her skin.
After descending for nearly ten minutes, she expected to feel the pressure. But she didn’t. Dax had told her she wouldn’t, and yet she still had a hard time believing she could defy physics.
The darkness began to close in around her, a suffocating squeezing of her body as if invisible walls were crushing her. Further and further they traveled down at lightning speed. Nothing physical affected her, merely the claustrophobic sensation of not being able to see. The only sound she heard was the fast rush of water flowing past her ears. Adrenaline kicked in and she tugged at Dax’s hand. She wanted to stop, to go back up. But he wouldn’t let her go.
And he wasn’t speaking to her, either. At least not to her mind as he had before. She couldn’t even look over at him to gauge his expression since she couldn’t see. The silence unnerved her.
No. She couldn’t do this. Fear coursed through her. She wanted to go back up. Back to the surface, where there was light. Where was he taking her? She didn’t want to be in this blackness, this complete void of sensation.
When she would have told him so, a flicker of light appeared below them. Faint at first, then growing as they drew closer. It was almost a glow now, spreading out before them, a golden light shooting out rays of colors.
Her anxiety forgotten, she propelled herself forward with renewed enthusiasm, wanting to reach the light, needing to know what was down here when nothing was supposed to live at this depth. Hell, she wasn’t supposed to live at this depth.
They were almost there, the light revealing a building of sorts. A structure? Like a house? But how?
Dax led her to some kind of glass enclosure. Intricate carvings of mermaids and sea creatures were etched on the outside of the glass, architecture like she’d never seen before. She looked over to him, intent on questioning him, but he looked straight ahead, leading her to an archway with no door. But where she would have swum through it thinking it was an opening, Dax stopped, waved his hand across the center of the archway and a nearly invisible door slid open. He pulled her inside, the door closing with a swoosh behind her, and suddenly they weren’t swimming any longer.
The water she’d been breathing completely disappeared and she sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Fresh, clean oxygen.
Despite the pressure of the ocean surrounding them, there was no water inside the structure. The place was a house of sorts. Although everything was glass, or at least appeared to be transparent. She walked over to what looked like a sofa, surprised to feel the give of its cushioned softness when she pressed on it.
“I don’t understand,” she said, turning to Dax.
“Ask your questions.” He had his back turned to her, fiddling with some kind of console against the wall. Oddly enough, with everything nearly transparent she could still make out objects. There was a dimension to everything, almost as if it were varying colors of transparency, from the brightest white to a near black, and yet no color at all. How confusing—stark, and yet utterly beautiful.
“What is this place?”
“My laboratory. My sanctuary. And occasionally, my home.”
“You live here?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where do you live at other times?”
He was touching invisible buttons and dials when suddenly a color image appeared on the wall in front of him, almost as if projected onto television screens. She peered around him, startled to see their beach and bungalow on one screen. Three other images captured the ocean, although she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where.
“How?” she asked.
“Advanced imagery. I couldn’t explain it to you because the technology as you know it doesn’t exist.”
“Try me. I’m fairly intelligent.”
He looked over his shoulder at her and smiled. “I know. One of the things I…like about you.”
She frowned, not sure what he originally started to say before he stumbled over his words.
“It’s a mental imagery,” he continued. “I can think of a specific area and it’ll show up here.”
“Any place you want?”
“Yes. For example, the hotel.” Without turning to look at the screen, Paradise Resort appeared.
“Is it a real time image?”
“Yes.”
“How are you able to do that?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Like I said before, Dax, I’m smart enough to—”
“There are some things I can’t explain to you right now, Isabelle. Trust me.”
She supposed, given what he’d already revealed to her, that she’d have to be satisfied with that answer. At least for now.
“Look around, if you’d like. I have a little work to do here.”
She nodded, grateful for the opportunity to get her mind around all that had happened in such a short time.
The place appeared to be like a regular house, with a living area complete with sofa and chairs, a kitchen and even a bedroom. She walked down a hallway, still giddy over traversing through a nearly transparent house, and entered a bedroom which contained a king-sized bed and a cover that felt like jelly. Yet it wasn’t sticky, just warm. It contained a regular looking bathroom that she couldn’t see through to the outside. She guessed even sea people like Dax wanted their privacy. Isabelle chuckled at the thought of taking a shower or a bath while surrounded by the ocean. How odd.
Everything was strange and different and yet in so many ways exactly the same as her house above the surface of the water. Her head pounded with the thoughts jackhammering her mind. She headed back towards Dax and found him still standing at the monitor screens. She heard his voice and looked around, expecting to find someone, but he was alone.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
Dax turned and smiled at her. “No one.”
She crossed her arms and fixed him with a stare. “I heard you talking.”
“I talk to myself sometimes. Make mental notes of things I need to do.”
“Uh huh. And what are those things you need to do?”
“Work things.”
“What kind of work is that, Dax?” But before he could answer, she hit him with another question, the one that had been burning inside her for days. “Wait. Don’t answer that. First, who or what are you?”
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Opened it again, closed it again. Jammed his fingers through his hair. Finally he sighed and asked, “Are you hungry?”
That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. But now that he’d mentioned it, her stomach growled. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
He motioned her into the kitchen and pulled the lid on a box, setting out plates and filling them with shrimp and what she could only assume was ve
getables.
“What do you eat?” she asked.
“Well, we don’t have cows down here so there’s no red meat,” he said with a half-smile. “But we eat small shrimp and other fish, along with sea vegetables that won’t be familiar to you.”
He set a plate in front of her and joined her, watching as she took a bite of a long, green crispy substance. A tangy flavor burst into her mouth and she turned to him in surprise. “It’s delicious! What is it?”
“It’s like plankton. Loaded with vitamins.”
Vegetables of varying colors, from purple to green to red, lined her plate. Some were round, some star-shaped, some flat like a piece of bread. All the flavors were different from sweet to salty. The shrimp, of course, tasted just like it did above the water. By the time she emptied her plate she was stuffed.
“That was fabulous. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He cleaned the plates at the sink and handed her a glass of blue liquid.
“What’s this stuff?” she asked, swirling the liquid in the glass.
“Think of it as sea tea.”
She sipped it, grinning at its sweet taste. “Yummy.”
“Thought you might like that.”
Satiated, at least as far as her hunger, she knew it was time. “Dax, about those questions I had…”
He lifted his shoulders and nodded. “Come with me and we’ll talk.”
She followed him to the sofa. It felt just like the one in her apartment back home in Texas. Dax turned to her and grabbed her hands.
“Okay, let’s start with your first question, who or what am I. I can tell you I’m as human as you are.”
“Not possible. You can breathe underwater.”
His lips curled in a smile that took her breath away. “So can you.”
“That’s different. You did…something to me. How did you do that, anyway?”
Dax laughed. “One question at a time. I’m human, with an added capability for underwater survival.”
“How?”
“Biology.” He picked up a strand of her hair and let it slide slowly between his fingers. “You know about biology, right?”
