by Starla Night
“You’re the one who got impatient. You blew that poison vial, didn’t you? I could have gotten you that blossom.”
“I gave you weeks. You were betraying us. Don’t deny it.”
“The Life Tree doesn’t blossom like a cherry tree. The last one was heavily guarded. And if you were thinking of synthesizing it into a cure, your premise was a mistake. Blue Ring is incurable precisely because it can’t be cured by the Life Tree.”
“That’s what makes it so good,” Herc corrected, sounding excited like a greedy collector. “Mermen can’t fight it. But I digress. You have little time now. It’s a shame we’ll never meet.”
“Yes, about that—”
“Hercules,” General Giru interrupted. “As negotiated, I have brought you another test subject. Rebel Balim was infected with a fresh strain of the disease. We ascended directly. You may now test the progress on a living merman.”
“Thanks, General Giru. As you can see, we’re suffering from an unforeseen staffing shortage.”
“I do not understand.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Tell you what. Leave his body in the dissection lab. Someone will return to dissect his corpse.”
“What about his female? She will not remain here.”
“Lock her in the bridge.”
“How?”
“The ship operates on electronic locks. Close the door and press the middle button on the keypad.”
This was bad. She appealed to General Giru. “It’s a trap.”
The general dragged Balim through the door and closed the heavy metal, sealing it.
“He’s lying!” She jiggled the locked handle and banged on the small strip of glass. “Don’t do this. These people are your enemy. They want to kill you.”
“Nonsense.” Herc chuckled. “We want to kill you. And working together in a harmonious partnership, we will. Same goals.”
“General.” She tried to make him hold her gaze. “Your race is dying. I’m a bride. I could be pregnant with a young fry.”
“You will be safe on your human ship. Hercules will release you after he returns.” General Giru gathered up Balim and exited.
“He’s not returning!” She smacked the glass. “You can’t do this! This is crazy! The Sons of Hercules are our enemy! We’re on the same side!”
“Bella Taylor.” Herc tsked in that weird computer-muffled voice. “Don’t you know better than to reason with an innocently childlike, easily manipulated monster?”
She let her hand drop and searched the bridge for an exit.
The seats were bolted to the floor. Heavy metal objects were bolted to the wall. There was a fire extinguisher. She yanked it out of its clip and banged it against one window.
It bounced off, leaving the metal extinguisher dented.
How thick were the windows? Feet?
“I could still get you a Life Tree blossom,” she negotiated, stalking around the bridge and testing another window. Thud-bounce. “I can’t do that if I’m dead.”
“We’re abandoning the project. Only a few hundred are infected, and it’s not worth the money to develop a cure.”
“You released a plague in New York City and it’s not worth developing a cure?!”
“The CDC will handle it.”
“That’s so irresponsible.”
“It’s all your fault.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You threatened to smear the reputations of my heroic sons. I had to act. We’re heroes, Bella Taylor. We vanquish the monsters that spread their horrifying fish diseases across our pristine shoreline.”
“It wasn’t enough to focus on the mer ‘stealing’ women who would never become your girlfriend.”
“Women are whores.”
“That bullet point must delight the Ladies’ Society.”
“They don’t even notice because they know, Bella Taylor. They fear the ‘other.’ The other skin color, the other country of origin, the other neighborhood, the other class. Hatred is a great unifier. It brings together very different people who have so much fear and so much hatred of each other and concentrates it on the ultimate other: the subhuman merman.”
“There are greater unifiers than hatred.”
“Yes, certainly. But as a marketer, you well know that adding in fear is effective. My messages of fear and hatred have even convinced a monster to do my bidding.”
She crouched on her hands and knees and searched beneath the consoles for tools while Herc congratulated himself.
“Preying upon doubts and catering to our worst impulses led my little experiment from a weekend hobby to sparking a movement across college campuses and now the world. Political figures consult me on the sly. Companies have lined up to throw money into my pockets, and they don’t care if my work never passes an audit. Truly, it has been a success beyond my wildest dreams.”
“And then you kidnapped my son.”
His tone flattened. “I give him better care than a middle-class income such as yours could ever provide.”
Her heart thudded. Jonah was still alive.
“And besides, any expanding company experiences setbacks. Less successful products fizzle while more exciting products come on the line.”
“So the plague is a ‘less successful product’?”
He grew more animated again. “Do you know an exciting illness? Ebola. Three days of brain hemorrhages and bleeding from your eyeballs. Nobody forgets that. Do you know an unexciting illness? Heart disease. Over half a million Americans die of it every year. One in four deaths. And yet do people exercise and eat right? No. Two Americans died in the last Ebola outbreak. Who fears Ebola? Everyone.”
“Too bad for you Blue Ring doesn’t make people bleed from their eyeballs.”
“It takes far too long to kill them,” he agreed. “And then one researcher tests positive for the disease when it’s not clear how he got infected and the whole project has to abandon ship. He probably handled the dagger with a paper cut. They’re supposed to be honing the ultimate weapon to fight back against a race that regrows limbs and survives bullets to the heart. I expect a man of science to show more grit.”
“You know, you could have spent those resources figuring out how to regrow limbs for humans and let everyone survive bullets to the heart.”
“Mmm. Benefit from the mermen? Not ‘on message,’ Bella Taylor. You can’t unite the groups I have with positive thinking and miracles. We’re talking Ku Klux Klan working side by side with ISIS.”
“What a humanitarian.”
“I’m a great unifier. You’ll see when I’m accepting my Nobel Prize for annihilating mermen and safeguarding the sanctity of human life.”
“Conveniently ignoring the biological weapon unleashed in a major US city and, apparently, on this ship.”
“It will be dealt with. When your mortgage is underwater, there’s only one thing to do, you know.”
“Talk to the bank?”
“Burn the mansion and collect the insurance.”
Nothing in this bridge would break her out. Bella pushed to her feet again. “That’s dark.”
“I’m a realist. And now, I’m signing off. I prefer to remember you like this, thinking you’re so clever as you’re debating, rather than screaming as you fruitlessly try to evade the fighter jets.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. When the bombs hit, you shouldn’t feel a thing.”
“What about my son?” she demanded.
“He shouldn’t feel a thing either.”
“But where is he, Herc?”
“Closer than you might imagine.” Click.
A screen embedded in the wall by the speakers lit.
It showed a blank part of the ship. Then, images rotated. Her in the bridge staring at the screen. An empty hallway. Her son, still alive, sleeping on a bunk in a locked room.
Jonah was here! On an infected ship about to be bombed by fighter pilots! She had to rescue him, find Balim—
The scre
en flashed again to show Balim stumbling back from General Giru. The general held a bloody dagger.
Balim clutched his belly. He’d been stabbed. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Balim stumbled back and collapsed on the hard metal floor.
He barely felt his body. It seemed so far away. Even the new pain in his gut where General Giru had stabbed him fell away.
He was back in Undine, a trainee, gravely injured. His prince clasped his shoulders. Blood soaked the water, and dark pain circled his eyes. “You will survive this attack, little healer. Undine cannot go on without you. Your father will heal you swiftly. I will ensure he heals you first.”
“No…”
His moan snapped him back to the present. He was lying half on his side on a human boat. General Giru stood over him.
Balim had been stabbed. He was bleeding.
He clenched the wound. Blood spilled over his fingers.
But somehow, he barely felt it. His infected chest pained him much more.
“Balim.” His father’s grateful, worried expression was the first thing Balim observed upon waking. Every thread of dark wood and heartblood red in his irises focused on Balim with sharp relief. His features, his steady soul light, his patterns of tattoos were bright and clear. Balim’s wounds pained him, but they were neatly sewn and bandaged, and he tried hard to be brave in front of his father. “I will never let you out of our safe castle again.”
“Nghgh…”
General Giru advanced, orienting him once more in the present. Sympathy softened his harsh expression.
The memories pushed against his mind, forcing him to reenter them, pressuring him like a suppressed sneeze.
But Balim held them off. He couldn’t get distracted. Not now. “You…stabbed…me…”
“I will again.” He knelt beside Balim and wiped the blade on an abandoned human fabric. Cleaning it before dirtying it again with Balim’s blood. “It is better to die swiftly than live with the pain of Blue Ring.”
A commotion at the edge of the Life Tree dais drew his father’s gaze away from Balim. The king’s cry echoed. “My son!”
Balim moaned.
“Yes, I have suffered with this illness for many human months. It forces me to relive the same moments over and over.” General Giru settled beside Balim. “Great Healer Dalus warned me that I would commit suicide. No! I was not so weak. But this memory torture is more excruciating than any physical pain. Only his draughts give me relief.”
“Where is the healer? Why has he let my son, the city’s prince, slip away?”
Balim’s life leaked out between his fingers. “Bella…”
Her beautiful face turned to him in memory. Light shone from her chest. Her red hair floated like a cloud, and her green eyes glimmered with happiness.
Oh, that was good. Concentrating on her name pushed the terrible swirling blackness away. His belly hurt. He applied greater pressure to slow the bleeding.
“I too think of my soul mate.” General Giru tipped his head back and regarded the ceiling. “We touched lips on the surface. She transformed for me and came into my castle. But then we could not progress.” His chest heaved. “I, the most honorable warrior of Djullanar, destined to fight in the All-Council armies of the most elite warriors, could not sire a young fry with my sacred bride.”
“Bella…”
“I secretly consulted with the only warrior I trusted. My then-closest friend, my second lieutenant. You can imagine my horror when he resonated with my sacred bride instead.”
He tapped the blade against his chest and then set it aside and removed his coverings.
“I considered killing him. Revealing the truth would cause his and my deaths. Djullanar, like the All-Council, does not tolerate deviations from the proper order.”
He set the chest plate aside and unwrapped his blades and the concealing cloths. The bruises and telltale blue rings emerged in the shadows of his atrophied muscles. His original strength had wasted away.
“I endured their secret trysts. Pretended his virility was mine. After that treacherous bride resurfaced, I thought we had reconciled as we jointly raised his outstanding young fry. I continued on to the All-Council and he took my place as a respected adviser to the king. But Blue Ring has forced me to realize that I have not moved past this betrayal.”
He twisted the blade in the air before his emotion-clenched face.
“The moment I held my dagger to his throat—to his throat, the male who saved my life uncountable times, who sacrificed his own father so I could live, who followed me without a moment’s cloud of doubt—and I was so blinded by jealousy over an unworthy surface female, I threatened his life…”
His face blanked, lost in the tide of memories that sucked him under.
Balim oriented once more on Bella to keep from losing his own life. If he lost concentration now, he’d bleed out.
General Giru’s words sparked a realization. He chased it. It was the key to curing Blue Ring.
Balim had thought his most painful memory was poisoning his king, but the memory that Blue Ring kept circling was when his father had healed Balim first. The king had cried in agony. “Is not my son’s warrior life worth a thousand of your weak healer’s?”
Yes. The prince was a greater warrior and a worthier male. If his father had healed the prince first, they would both be alive. Balim’s life wasn’t worth their loss.
Jonah was Bella’s prince. She couldn’t love her son and Balim equally. She had to love Jonah more.
But perhaps he underestimated Bella.
She said that she loved them both.
He focused on her memory. His life depended on it.
Her soul light connected with his, even separated by metal doors and glass, and the strength of the Life Tree flowed into him.
He was aware of himself. His sickness spreading from his chest and now his belly acids poisoning his blood. But he also held the answer. The cure.
The Life Tree could not heal Blue Ring sickness because there was more than one component. Dark memories clouded his soul and forced him to relive his worst moments repeatedly, killing his mind and weakening his body. Not even the freshest breeze could blow that sickness away. Nothing could shelter him from the onslaught of his past shame.
But Bella’s love could.
The realization filled him with relief and then faded. Thinking of her was not enough. Her thought kept the memories back but did not cure him.
“Ah.” General Giru jolted. His face blackened with shame, and then he steadied himself and focused on Balim. He lifted the dagger once more. “You will thank me before you pass into the blacknight sea.”
“No. I will not.”
“You say that now. But is not your supposed soul mate a mother of another male’s human child? You know my pain even if you do not admit it.”
He weighed the knife.
Balim was not strong enough to stop him. “There is a cure for Blue Ring.”
General Giru hesitated. “You lie.”
“There is.”
“It is an incurable disease. Even the Life Tree does not cure it.” He gestured at his injuries. “It will rot your body as it decomposes your mind. You will prefer this mercy killing.”
“I will show you the cure.”
General Giru lowered the dagger. Hope warred with disbelief. “Then show me.”
“Bring me Bella.”
“No.” The warrior raised his dagger once more. “You have lied too many times. Now you will die.”
Bella screamed and threw the fire extinguisher at the screen. It cracked—useless—but still projected the same images she was helpless to control.
Jonah on the ship. Alive. Sleeping.
Balim stabbed, lying on the floor, and the general kneeling over him to administer the fatal blow.
Jonah was in danger of being infected. Someone contracted the disease that shouldn’t have, Herc had said. Jonah’s
compromised immune system was vulnerable.
They were all vulnerable to the bombs.
“Bella?” Starr’s quiet voice sounded muffled with allergies coming from the loudspeakers. “Are you still there?”
“Starr!” She jumped. “Were you listening the whole time?”
“And recording. The cell phone you called is on the ship’s Wi-Fi. There were hardly any protections. It’s like I’m inside with you.”
“Rescue Jonah!”
“You’re a little, uh, closer than me, Bella.”
“But I’m locked in!”
The cursor on the screen moved on its own. “There, I just popped the lock on your door. Jonah’s locked in too.” On screen, a light above his door turned green and his door swung inward. “Oh, not anymore.”
Bella raced to the bridge door and twisted the handle. It moved easily, but the door didn’t budge. “It’s not opening! I’m pushing with all my might!”
“Did you try pulling?”
The door flew open with her tug, and she stumbled onto her bare butt. Laughter bubbled. “You’re the real hero, Starr.”
“I’m eleven thousand miles away and I haven’t left this computer screen since Jonah disappeared. You should really get him before the fighter jets.”
Bella leaped to her feet. “I’ll see you in New York.”
“You better.”
Bella ran out of the bridge as fast as she could. Where was Balim? They’d wandered all over the boat. She crossed the open deck and ducked into the science lab on pure adrenaline.
She had no weapons, and she was no match for a warrior on land or on sea.
But Jonah was alive and so was Balim. For now.
She had to save them.
Bella raced into the hall just as the general stabbed Balim for the second time.
She screamed.
Bella’s scream jolted Balim back from the brink of fuzzy memories. A sharp burning pierced his gut.
General Giru had embedded his dagger in Balim’s belly. Again.
“No!” Bella pushed General Giru aside.
The general’s grip closed on the knife, and he pulled it free, leaving Balim with a terrible seeping belly wound.
