This time, Calder nodded. Gaire continued, “I’ll be forced to deal with her someday, but when the Adrial’s neck is threaded in the noose, we’ll lay her treachery bare. Justice must find her.”
Calder nodded again, solemn, feeling her determination through the bond. He hoped he was prepared to shoulder the weight of leadership, sharing Gaire with the colony, without complaint. He swore to be the man she needed.
“But, for now, I am yours.” Her words reminded Calder that she could hear his thoughts.
He pulled her against him. “When the other time comes, we’ll deal with her together.” Their lips met in a deep kiss.
Epilogue
A few months later…
Calder did not answer Gaire’s thoughts, but listened to the bits and pieces crossing his mind. He sketched on the parchment, the peacock feather quivering above the quill. I think your wedding tattoo is coming along nicely. Another few days and it will be done. Do mermaids always tattoo their hands?
A light-hearted smile dimpled her cheeks, her eyes twinkled. Yes, mated ones - always in blue and always on their hands and always during the ceremony announcing their first child.
A scowl crossed her face. I still want to find out what happened to your mother, Calder – I think Adrial knows.
Pushing aside the twinge of melancholy, Calder laughed instead. Tomorrow’s worries. When do you think we’ll be able to announce our first fishling?
She agreed, in his mind now. I have a feeling it won’t be very long. You had better hurry with that tattoo. I’m the queen now, you know, maybe I’ll make a new tradition. Do you like purple ink?
Purple would be perfect. Things have turned out rather nicely.
He nodded at Mike. He recognized the intense look on his friend’s face. Hope was seated next to him, speaking animatedly. Mike had settled into life on Three Fingers, and Hope was the puzzle before him, and Mike intended to figure her out. Good luck, Mike.
Gaire burst out. “Oh. I have something for you. I asked Melody to put it in a safe place until we returned.” She reached into a seaweed woven pouch hanging at her waist.
She scooted in front of Calder, bringing herself forward onto her knees. He noticed little sand grains held to the edges of her scales. Calder brushed his hand over her, staring into her intense gaze. “I saved this for you.”
With her left hand, she positioned Calder’s two like a cup. Lowering her tightly fisted right over his open palms, her face awash in happiness, he felt something drop. She pulled her fingers away and waited.
A cobalt shell rested in his grasp, covered in stripes and spots. The memory of a system kid filled his mind.
Mike asked, “So, what was it?”
“It was a shell, a weird blue one. I can’t remember what she looked like, but that shell still smelled like my mom, or at least I think it did.” Calder shrugged. “Smelled like home anyway. It’s long gone now. They chucked it down the storm drain.”
“Never know. Sometimes things work out.”
“They don’t for me.” He took one last look toward the dark hole in the long stretch of roadside curb. “It’ll probably be that way until I die.”
That was a lifetime ago. Awe filled his heart. “Gaire? Where did you find this?”
“On a San Francisco beach, while I sought the one my heart loves.”
He pulled her close, breathing in her smell. “I have always been chasing you.”
About the Author
Bokerah Brumley is an award-winning freelance writer. In her spare time, Bokerah enjoys climbing trees, photographing peacocks, and writing flash fiction. Two novellas and one novel are planned for 2015. She lives with her husband, five kids, and three dogs in West Texas where she serves as the blue-haired publicity officer for the Cisco Writers Club.
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Immersed by Katie Hayoz
WHAT IF LOVE TURNED YOU INTO A MONSTER?
Forget petticoats and demure female behavior. Melusine Doré prefers armored corsets and knives and slays evil creatures for a living. The grim and gruesome don’t frighten her; she’ll take on a cyclops or a dragon and not even break a sweat. But when her rival, the charismatic Levi Cannon, comes to town, all her buried fears begin to surface. Melusine realizes she is in danger of something much more horrifying than facing blood-thirsty beasts – she’s in danger of falling in love. Because love alone has the power to reveal a secret terrible enough to completely shatter her world.
Set in the muddy streets of 1850s steampunk Chicago, Immersed by Katie Hayoz is a dark yet romantic fantastical romp. It is a stand-alone novella, the first in a series of adventures that follow Melusine on her quest to rid the world of monsters…and her struggle to come to terms with every monstrous facet of herself.
Note from the Author
Set in a steampunk version of Chicago, Immersed is fantasy. However, while the story and gadgets and monsters may be make-believe, the setting is not. Built barely above lake level, before the mid-1850s Chicago had no proper drainage system and was a cesspool of disease and muck. So city officials as well as property owners took on the enormous feat of raising the streets and buildings anywhere from 30 inches to 14 feet! It was common to see entire structures lifted by jackscrews, or even for houses to be moved from one part of town to another. There were also building owners who decided not to raise their property. Some of these houses partially below street level can still be seen today.
If you want to read more about Chicago raising its streets, you can start with these websites:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2010/Raising-Chicago-An-Illustrated-History/
http://gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/city_streets_how_chicago_raised_itself_out_of_the_mud_and_astonished_the_world/
Chapter One
LEVI CANNON BACK IN CHICAGO. NO NEED TO FEAR THE BOGEYMAN shouted the headline of the newspaper spread out on Melusine’s dresser. A skilled drawing of Mr. Levi Cannon stepping on a monster with one giant eye was directly underneath the headline. Below that was a quote that made Melusine fume: “Miss Melusine Doré is now free to learn flower arrangement and make social calls. There is a man in town to do a man’s job. I promise you all that the beast found hunting here will be gone in a matter of days. Unlike Miss Doré, I do not take precious time to see if a monster has a heart of gold or not. It’s a monster, after all, and if its heart happens to be gold, well then, I shall rip it out and sell it for a fortune.”
Grabbing her fountain pen, Melusine inked warts onto Levi’s nose and cheeks, and filled in the area between his eyebrows. She gazed down at his lifeless face and grunted. Warts and all, Levi Cannon still looked good. Too good.
Once a year or so Levi would come into town, challenging Melusine, leaving a trail of dead monsters and smitten women in his wake. But she never rose to his dares and instead stayed out of sight until he left.
He was too dangerous, for so many reasons.
Tonight, however, she had a job to finish. She’d be quick as a bullet, no dallying. Then Mr. Cannon would have no reason to stick around. She fastened her scabbard around her right thigh and headed down the worn wooden stairs on tiptoe, but Mrs. Steed heard her regardless. The landlady stepped out in front of her, her red-gray hair coiled round her head like a snake ready to squeeze.
“Where you off to, Miss Mel? I don’t want you bringing any beastly body parts back here, you hear me?”
Melusine sidled past her, stifling a grin. “It was just the once. Every part of a Silver Spined Dragon is useful; I couldn’t allow the corpse to go to waste.” The dragon meat was roasted, the claws carved into weapons, the scales ground up and sold and the vertebrae made into bullets. The wings paid for one month’s rent and a bag of butterscotch candy. If Melusine had another beast like that to bring back, she wouldn’t hesi
tate.
Mrs. Steed harrumphed and pointed to the boarding house door. “Pull it tight behind you.”
Outside, it was approaching dusk, the smoke and steam of the city blending into the blue of the darkening sky and the white of the rising moon. Across the street from Melusine, workers swore, sang and grunted, preparing a block of buildings to be raised by lifts out of the muck that was Chicago. Up above, an airship hissed over the city, and down the street a clockwork horse whinnied a brassy sound.
A steam carriage huffed its way through the mud to stop directly in front of the boarding house. As she trod down the steps, Melusine thought she saw something move in the alley next to the building. A man, perhaps. Thieves and assassins were common in Chicago, killing for a penny if they could. Mel narrowed her eyes, scouring the darkness, but the driver pumped a lever and the coach coughed out a cloud of hot vapor. “You getting in or not, Miss?”
She threw her shoulders back and climbed into the carriage. Whatever it was that was out there was by far less worrisome than the thing she was on her way to face.
There were definite low points to Melusine’s job. Looking out the coach window to see an enormous house rotting in the moonlight, Melusine thought, this is one of them. Monsters never seemed to lurk in palaces with fancy rooms for rent. They almost always chose buildings that looked about ready to crumble.
The house must have been white at one time, but now the paint was dirty and cracked, the gray wood peeking out from underneath. A small porch hung onto the ground floor, a well-worn wooden rocking chair standing guard at the top of the steps. The bottom step was half hidden in the sodden ground. Melusine imagined it wouldn’t take much for the mud to swallow the house whole.
Her spine was jolted as the steam carriage drove over tree roots poking up through the dirt. The driver didn’t even call out an apology. Had she been like other women, he’d have tipped his hat when she’d stepped onto the coach and he’d have apologized for a rough ride. But she was unaccompanied, armed, and dressed more like a cut-throat than a lady. She wore a stiff leather corset lined with metal that had saved her life more than once, as well as calfskin leggings and knee-high boots. She wore no hat or ornaments in her dark hair and instead of keeping it in a smooth chignon, she’d tied it into a messy knot, the ends trailing over her bare shoulders.
She was often treated like she had the pox.
The carriage belched out black smoke and continued down the road, leaving Melusine to mount the house steps alone. She tightened the pack on her back, loaded crystal bullets into her Colt Dragoon and verified her ease of access to the silver dagger in her scabbard. Before turning the knob on the front door, she inhaled, the breath stretching into every part of her. She counted – one, two, three – and then felt the familiar tug. So it was here. A monster’s presence announced itself like an itch from an invisible thread stitched underneath her skin. Some would call it luck, others the Sight and still others a curse. She played it off as talent and a job well done.
The door whispered against an Oriental rug, sending dust motes flying upward into the moonlight reaching lazily through the windows. Melusine allowed her eyes to adjust to the dimness, then moved forward. The scent of rot and decay got stronger as she closed in on the parlor. The hum of hundreds of flies filled the otherwise silent room. Both human and animal carcasses lay all over the floor. Several factory workers had gone missing before anyone had thought something might be amiss. The police did some detective work, but what they’d discovered was not the kind of adversary they were used to—a carnivorous Cyclops with an insatiable appetite. The monstrous was more Melusine’s domain. Once she’d determined a beast was a real threat—and once someone came up with enough gold to pay her—she’d agree to even the most grisly of jobs.
Despite the half-eaten bodies all around and the wriggling maggots decorating them, this was not nearly as grisly as the scenes she was used to. A Cyclops was huge, strong, quick and hungry. But not particularly smart.
The itch under her skin was nearly unbearable now. The Cyclops had to be in the room with her. She squinted into the shadows, keeping her breath even, her stance strong.
The darkness shivered next to a broken china cabinet. A long arm reached out, claws swiping at her stomach. The Cyclops was directly in front of her then, nearly twice her size and faster than any human; it pushed her down, pinning her to the floor. One giant eye blinked at her, a ragged set of teeth underneath it widening into a leer. She felt hot breath on her cheek, the odor of rancid meat accompanying it.
Melusine pulled the trigger on her pistol. At the same moment that she sent crystal bullets exploding into the beast’s stomach, a long saber glinted out of nowhere; it swept down and sideways, slicing into the Cyclops’ neck. Time stopped as the monster’s head wobbled then fell, slick, dark blood oozing all over Melusine’s chest and throat.
She swore as the hot liquid trickled down her shoulders and beneath her corset. “What in the blazes—?”
“I believe you meant to say ‘thank you’ and, of course, you’re very welcome.”
She knew that voice. Its deep tone reminded Melusine of the molasses taffy from the confectioner’s down the street from her room. Damn it all to pieces. There was no hiding this time.
“Mr. Levi Cannon,” she said, pushing the Cyclops corpse off of her. “What are you doing here?”
“Looks like I’m saving your life.”
Now that Melusine was no longer lying under the creature she could see Levi standing in a ray of moonlight, his dark auburn hair falling over his forehead.
“The Cyclops was already dead.” She motioned to the empty hole where its stomach used to be. “I used crystal bullets. Clean and tidy. Crystal makes no mess. Then you have to go and ruin my clothes with all this, this…blood. She pulled at the top of her corset, her mouth turned down in disgust.
“You could always take them off. I wouldn’t mind.”
When Melusine’s only response was to glare, Levi continued. “Besides, Miss Doré, you shouldn’t be in this business if you can’t handle blood.”
“It’s not the blood I mind. It’s the needless mess.”
“Ah. “ Levi removed leather gloves from his hands and stuffed them in his pocket.
“Gloves?”
He winked and moved to help her up. “I don’t like to get my hands dirty.”
Ignoring his outstretched hand, Melusine jumped to her feet so she could glower at him from a better position. His eyes were the color of dark honey and when they settled upon her, heat burned her cheeks.
This was Levi Cannon, the only other monster hunter in the country whose skill could rival her own. He came from fortune and probably shat gold and yet he regularly yanked jobs out from under her feet – jobs she needed to pay the rent. It was a joke to him. It was survival to her.
“This is my kill. Don’t even think you’re going to take credit. I’m the hunter in this town.” Melusine slid the pack from her back and grabbed the creature’s head by its hair.
As she began to put it in the bag, Levi reached out to stop her. “Sorry, Miss Doré. If you want proof of the kill, you’re going to have to take the body. I’m the one who beheaded the beast.”
She glanced over at the corpse. Even without the head, the Cyclops was at least seven feet long. There was no way she was getting that into her pack or carrying it. She’d have to chop it into pieces.
The swoosh of metal scraping leather filled the air and in an instant she had her dagger at Levi’s throat. “I’ll take your head back with me if need be. It would be a pleasure.”
There was no fear in Levi’s eyes, just a glint of amusement. He licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows.
Melusine’s rage made her hand shake: he was enjoying this.
He put a finger to her dagger and slowly pushed it away from his neck, never taking his eyes off of her, his smile never faltering. “If you feel that strongly, I won’t argue. You can take the filthy head. That’s not why I’m here
, anyway.”
Melusine shoved the dagger back into her scabbard and fastened the pack closed over the monster’s hair. “Well, then, Mr. Cannon. Enlighten me. Why are you here?” She stood up straighter. “Wait a minute…I’ve been tracking the Cyclops for days. How did you know to come to this place? Did you plant the monster here? I wouldn’t put it past you to sacrifice innocent lives to boost your reputation as a hero –”
Levi laughed, the sound of it deep and strong. “Oh, come now, Miss Doré. You don’t believe that.”
Melusine looked him in the eye, her voice strong and serious. “Yes, Mr. Cannon, I do.”
She saw the sparkle in his eyes dim somewhat and his smile slipped. “Ah. Well…in that case…” He coughed. “I followed you.”
“To home in on my kill. You told the Chicago Times that the creature would be caught.”
He gestured to the decapitated body on the floor. “And so it is.”
“You were outside my building! You sneaky—”
“Alas, Miss Doré, I did not follow you to claim the Cyclops. I’m here because Sir Edwin Aldridge asked me to speak with you.”
“What about a telegram?”
“He said he’s sent his card several times. He’s also knocked on your door twice in the past three days. Your landlady told him you hadn’t been very…social for a while.”
Melusine threw her hands up. “I’ve been on the job. Sir Aldridge knows I don’t concern myself with other things while I’m working.”
“Yes, well, something of significant grandeur must be happening. Why else would he beg me to come back to Chicago only to entreat me to find you? He knows we stay out of each other’s way.” He popped open the cover of a shiny gold pocket watch. “We’ll need be to going or we’ll be late.”
Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Page 104
