by Starla Night
“What did they think it was?”
He focused on her. “I diagnosed him with curling flatworms.”
She stroked his skin. “He made his own bed.”
“The mer do not sleep in beds.”
“I mean he killed your father and tortured you beyond your breaking point.”
“Yes, my father would have kept him in excellent health.” Flat again, and matter-of-fact.
“Who’s in charge of Undine now?” she asked for closure.
“I hope I will never find out. The king was not the only one who believed I must serve the city through any abuse. Nothing must tempt me to exact revenge.”
His cold rage did not chill her. She would salt the earth if anyone ever hurt Jonah.
It was just as well they would not cruise the oceans together.
Tonight was their truce. Tomorrow, they would return to their lives. Balim to healing his warriors. Her to pursuing Jonah’s cure and destroying the Sons of Hercules.
“Hmm.” He rubbed his chest with a frown.
“What?” She touched his broad fingers. “What is it?”
“I always imagined that telling another would unburden me. That I would feel absolution. But I still feel nothing.” He turned his red-threaded gaze on her. “Why do you think that is?”
She was the last person to delve into grief. “Because losing your father to senseless rage is a grave injustice, and you’ll never love another person ever again.”
He pushed out his lower lip. “Is that what it is? The king was my second father. The prince was everything to me.”
“And if you disengage your feelings, then you’ll never lose yourself in grief.”
“That makes strange sense.” He glanced at her, and his lips curved. “I have long been horrified by my feelings for you.”
She squeezed him happily. “That makes two of us.”
He leaned into her comforting hug. His amusement dipped to seriousness. “Atlantis differs from any other mer city. King Kadir is guided by reason and passion. His queens and warriors share their hearts. He is the future for our race.”
He took a deep breath, and his grip on her hand tightened.
“But if he or any other warrior hurts you, I will not hesitate to strike. It may take a lifetime. I will execute my revenge.”
“Luckily, you’ll never have to worry about me.”
He glanced at her sideways. “No?”
“You know why I can’t join you under the sea.”
“Yes, I understand. We will have a reverse relationship. Only on land.”
She couldn’t be Chaz. She’d never throw Jonah away to start a new family, not even to save a race.
But Bella also couldn’t tell Balim the truth. Not after everything else they had shared tonight. Instead, she fell asleep with him on the bed, snuggled together like two lost puppies curled up in barren cardboard box under a bridge, alone in the world, with only each other for warmth.
In the morning, she drove Balim back to the lab and left him there. He stood outside, watching her drive away.
Surely, in his heart, he knew the truth.
She would never have a relationship with him above the water or under it.
Never.
Bella used her rental car for the last few hours by driving leisurely to Jonah’s hospital. She had to select his new hospital before the end of the week. Might as well enjoy this last convenience before she upended their lives.
Parking in the lot, she got out of the car and checked her messages.
The phone was off.
Hmm. She’d forgotten it on the seat overnight and the battery had died. She plugged in her emergency charger as she crossed the semi-empty lot. Her phone booted. Notifications popped up from an unknown number.
Starr?
Or the Sons of Hercules?
She positioned the metal speaker at the back of her ear.
A guy reading his phone bumped into her, knocking her back a step.
“Hey!” she snapped.
He ignored her and trotted across the street.
Whatever. She affixed the metal and paired it. Her phone rang. She answered.
“Oh my god, thank goodness you’re all right,” Starr gasped.
“All right?” Bella repeated aloud, ignoring the looks of the others around her as she continued up the hospital stairs.
“You haven’t answered since last night, and Bella, there’s been a security breach.”
As they’d expected. “Where?”
“Everywhere! Your home, MerMatch offices, their lab—”
“My home?” She stopped outside the front doors. “You mean my apartment?”
“Yes! Two college guys broke in and went through your things. I have it on video. Of course I called Harv. He chased them out the back window, and he reported it to the cops.”
“Did they find out about you?”
“Not yet. We’ve been out of touch so long, and it’s not like you have my picture up in your apartment.”
A shaft of guilt spiked into Bella. She’d pushed everyone aside when Jonah had gotten sick. She had photos of Starr, but not anywhere that would compromise her.
“It’s like they knew you were taking Balim out of town. A big crew of people went into the lab. I called right away, but I didn’t know how to convince the security officers because I’m not persuasive like you. You’re blackmailing the Sons of Hercules, right, Bella? How could they risk your wrath?”
She had threatened them for daring to threaten her son.
Bella’s purse vibrated. Someone had snuck an unfamiliar phone into her purse.
No.
Bella pushed into the hospital lobby. She ran across the entrance and into the elevators. The metal box took forever to rise, and the ringing cut off. She exited the floor onto pediatrics long-term care.
The sweet nurse looked up from the desk and blinked. “Bella? What are you doing here? Did Jonah leave something behind?”
Bella raced past her. Her heart beat louder and harder.
“Hey!” The nurse chased after her. “You can’t come back here. Only parents of patients!”
“Bella?” Starr’s voice faded in. “What’s going on?”
She was the one in charge. She was playing with fire, but only she was supposed to get burned.
Bella flew past the locker room, weaving between surprised staff. The nurse couldn’t keep up. Bella was accelerated by the fears of a million years of parents returning to the safe cave where she’d stashed her child and finding it…
She reached Jonah’s room.
The plastic was dismantled. The room was empty. Nothing was inside it. Not her son. Not his clothes. Not his raggedy bear. Nothing.
Her heart cracked.
The nurse caught up to her, gasping, chest heaving. “You can’t…come back here…”
She channeled the deepest, blackest, most murderous pit of fury. “Where is he?”
“…anymore.” The nurse frowned like Bella was crazy. “What do you mean, where is he? You withdrew him yourself this morning.”
“No.”
“I was so sorry you had to move him when he’s so sick.”
“Who took him?”
“Your new private care physician.” The nurse patted her arm as she caught her breath. “Did you get the transfer time wrong? It must be nerve-wracking, given the risks. He had more color this morning, and he stayed awake while we moved him to patient transport.”
“Who. Took. Him?”
“The patient transport company. Here, hon, calm down. I know it's unsettling when you miss an appointment, but just breathe. He’ll be settled into the new hospital now. Shall we call together?”
Her heart suspended its cracking, holding together with trembling glue. She would not break. She didn’t have the whole story yet.
The nurse called on the wall phone. “Can you patch me through to an outside line? Yes. … Hello? Yes, I’m following up on a patient transfer. His mother’s here, and…wh
at do you mean you never received a call? I talked to you myself. Jonah Taylor. He…you don’t have a patient by that name?”
Bella’s purse vibrated again.
She yanked out the foreign phone and pressed it to her ear. “What have you done with him?”
“Bella Taylor.” The not-feminine distorted voice sounded pleased. “I hear your trip for the cure was unsuccessful. So, I have provided better care for your son than you can.”
She gritted her teeth. “I told you not to threaten my son.”
“And I am not. He is under private care.”
“Prove it. Show me my son.”
“Of course. I have left the details of the arrangement at your apartment. Conveniently enough, our expert is aboard a ship in the mid-Atlantic.”
“You will not blackmail me.” She lowered her voice as the worried nurses guided her to the hospital director, where, no doubt, paperwork would show her forged signature to discharge him. “I will destroy you.”
“Now, now. I took your words to heart, Bella Taylor. The Sons of Hercules must be portrayed as saviors. And we will provide proof to defame any false allegations otherwise.”
“You will regret making an enemy out of me.”
“Bella Taylor, I thought we were friends.”
She stopped outside the director’s office. “Our friendship ended the moment you stole my son.”
“That’s funny. I thought our friendship ended when you used our generous financing to secure the merman office against our surveillance.”
He had known. He’d known from her first date. They’d been spy versus spy this entire time, and Herc had just lit the dynamite.
“If you hurt Jonah, I will hunt you down and suffocate you with my bare hands,” she snarled, preparing to end the conversation while the nurses beside her listened in, shocked.
“Well then, you’ll be happy to know that you still have a very important role to play in Jonah’s cure.” Herc’s voice lilted from breezy to serious. “If you want him to live, then you will bring me a Life Tree flower. Understand?”
“I understand,” she snapped.
“And then, once we have this flower, you will destroy Atlantis.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Balim?” Mitch’s voice filtered through the open doorway of the hospital lab room to Balim’s office. “We have a problem.”
He rose upright on his portable cot and stretched. His human joints creaked. So much of his surface life was spent sitting and staring. He rubbed his eyes. “What problem?”
“I’m not sure. The specifications are correct. But…”
Balim stretched farther and groaned.
The same slacks and shirt he’d been wearing for the past three days hung off his body. They still felt a little like Bella.
The sensation of uniting with his bride defied words.
She had used a small bit of plastic between their bodies. He liked this barrier more than he should admit. His duty to procreate warred with the ingenious pleasure of the plastic creation.
She’d dropped him off yesterday with a long, tearful kiss. The short trip with her had changed his life. His soul. And, he’d thought, hers.
But in the parking lot, her soul had darkened, knifing him in the chest, and she’d cupped his cheek as she’d lied about seeing him sometime soon.
She would never see him again.
If he were a nobler warrior, she would submerge and mate with him…
He rubbed his pained chest. It was a good pain. Unlike the joint ache from sitting for too many hours in human form and sleeping for too few. He focused on logic. She was devoted to her child. He honored her devotion.
He’d never been devoted to anyone but ghosts. Ghosts, pride, and perhaps now her.
As soon as Pelan regained his health and Balim completed the mer hospital, he would chase her. She did not need to honor him above Jonah.
He would never demand that he be her priority.
Mitch leaned in Balim’s doorway, muffled a cough into a paper tissue, and cleared his throat. His eyes were red; the morning sunlight illuminated his first cup of coffee. “The problem is the tank. Don’t you think it’s off?”
“Off how?” Balim followed Mitch out to the main room.
The aquarium water was cloudy and strange.
He clambered up the steps. Scum bubbled on the surface. The whole tank smelled foul.
“Yes.” He requested Mitch to double-check his measurements. “It is ‘off.’ How long has it been like this?”
“I don’t know.” Mitch sneezed, blew into his tissue, and checked his logs. “I just got in.”
“Where is Pelan’s bride?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to drain the water.”
Pelan’s healing would stop again.
Was the tank flawed? Balim’s design simulated the undersea environment by the Life Tree. He was the first healer to design a surface crèche, and he had missed something.
He looked in on Pelan as Mitch hooked up the drains.
White foam coated Pelan’s gills.
Large, dark bruises covered his entire body, and in the center of each bruise was a small dark spot. They splotched across his chest in a singular blue chain…
He jolted. Can it be? As if speaking aloud of his sin to Bella had summoned the cursed, incurable disease—
No. He forced himself to examine Pelan. This was not the incurable Blue Ring. It was a simple case of Crab-Cut Disease.
His stomach rolled with the memory of his fears.
Pelan floated in fresh water. Fresh, sterilized water steeped in Sea Opals. How could any disease penetrate?
That mystery would wait.
“Stop the drain.” Balim hurried to his office. “Call Hazel to arrange an emergency evacuation to Atlantis.”
Mitch put the phone to his ear and waited. “What’s going on?”
“Pelan has contracted a rare disease you call a ‘vibrio.’”
“Vibrio.” Mitch’s cheeks hollowed. “You mean flesh-eating bacteria?”
“Bella has told me human medicine is inadequate to fight this disease. After we evacuate, drain the water and bleach all surfaces.”
“What about the bride?” Mitch asked.
“She must evacuate also.”
“Evacuate where?” Pelan’s bride wandered barefoot and damp into the main room.
“Why did you abandon your warrior?” Balim demanded. “You hold his life in your hands, and yet you continue to risk damaging him.”
She held up her hands, irritation crossed with guilt. “I was just gone for ten minutes. Okay? I had this irresistible urge to sneeze, and I didn’t want to wake him up so, yeah, I climbed out.”
“Sneeze?” Mitch asked and then sneezed.
“Yeah, like that. But you can check the cameras or whatever. It was ten minutes.”
His bride looked fine.
How had a saltwater disease entered the sterile, fresh water tank and afflicted only Pelan?
“Check your security cameras,” she insisted. “And point them somewhere other than me. It’s so gross and creepy.”
“We do not have security cameras,” Balim said.
“Yes, you do.”
“He’s right,” Mitch affirmed, wiping his nose with the cloth. “What security cameras are you talking about?”
“The ones you guys had installed over the weekend and pointing straight in on naked me.” She pointed.
He and Mitch wandered over and stared up at the small boxy device directed at the tank.
“Roxanne did not speak of security cameras,” Balim said.
“I don’t think they’re a bad idea, but yeah, she said nothing about them.” Mitch sneezed again. “I’ll ask the night security.”
“Wait. You had an urge to sneeze?” Balim gave a bottle of elixir to Pelan’s bride. “This should heal your illness.”
“Oh, I feel fine now.”
“You have been exposed to Pelan’s illness. Crab-Cu
t Disease. Drink the elixir to avoid losing your arms and legs.”
She paled, swiped the elixir, and glugged it.
“Sneezing equals exposure?” Mitch looked at his bare hands. Dread filled his features. “What about me?”
“The disease enters through the blood. It does not affect healthy warriors, which is why Pelan’s bride is healthy while he suffers.”
Mitch sneezed again.
Balim stopped and faced him. “Perhaps you should visit a human hospital.”
Mitch waved him away. “It started after work last night. A little tickle in my throat. It’s allergies.”
“Drink the elixir,” Balim ordered.
Mitch moved toward the storage tanks.
“No! The ones inside my office. They should be secure.”
Balim consulted the security officers they’d hired. The day security officer’s nose and eyes were red and she too sniffled into a tissue. “Yes, Rick let in a crew to install the cameras you ordered.”
“I ordered no cameras.”
“Someone did. They had the paperwork.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“Well, I wasn’t here. I’ll leave a note for Rick. Oh, and there’s a woman here to see you.”
“Me?”
The security officer pointed.
Bella stood in the atrium in the small, spare, water-damaged lobby.
Balim’s heart stopped with shock and then thudded painfully. Curvy, beautiful, and tragic.
He strode to her with purpose.
Her soul light brightened, relieved, and then she darkened. “Balim, I—”
“Bella.” He grabbed her around the shoulders and forced her outside, into the bright air and sunshine. “We must go.”
“What’s wrong?” Then, she seemed to sink into him. “You know?”
“There’s been an outbreak.” He stopped in the parking lot, held his phone to his ear, and began his own call to the MerMatch car service. “A freshwater version of Crab-Cut Disease.”
“Outbreak?” She paled. “Oh, no. It’s worse than I imagined.”
He ordered the car and closed the phone. “You imagined this?”
“I’m sorry, Balim.” She faced him, reckless and yet determined, and the dark hollows beneath her eyes said she’d been up all night. “Someone broke into your hospital. I didn’t realize they would poison the tank.”
