*****
Mandy
"Mandy, wake up. Please wake up, baby. Come on."
Strong arms cradled her. She was frozen, her body ice, her muscles shivering, but someone warm held her. Mandy nuzzled the intersection of a muscular neck and shoulder, enjoying the familiar smell of Greg. Abruptly, she sat up, jerking her head away from him.
But he refused to let her go.
"No, no," he soothed. "Stay with me. We've got to get you warm."
"I'm fine," she said, but her teeth wouldn't stop chattering, and she couldn't understand why Greg was in her bedroom. Although the place looked so strange. Why was the room lit by only one dim, bluish witch light? And when had she changed the soft lavender of her walls for gray rocks and kelp?
"You're not fine. You're suffering from hypothermia. Hell, you don't weigh more than ninety-five pounds soaking wet, which you are right now, by the way. The water of the sound is only about thirty-four degrees. Baby, you're a witch-cicle."
As he spoke, he pulled his shirt closer around her, and she realized that she was sitting his lap wearing nothing but her panties. All the clothes they had were wrapped around the two of them, which left her skin-to-skin with Greg.
"She doesn't look so good," Sennusi said, her glamour back in place and breathing air once again. "Are you sure she's going to live?"
"Yes," Mandy answered her, "she is going to live."
Fish girl had no business talking about her as if she weren't there. Furthermore, she hated being so close to Greg. She did hate it, didn't she?
As Greg's body heat warmed her and the trickle of his magic restored her, Mandy realized that she wasn't in her bedroom. They were in some sort of cave, probably underwater judging by the air pressure and the pervasive chill and dampness. She didn't see any entrance, but there was a large, round pool of water at one end of the gravelly floor. Beyond the water, the cave disappeared into thick, black shadows. Had they been brought here through that pool? Or was there another entrance somewhere in the darkness? She shivered in the damp air that smelled like salt water and rotting seaweed.
Belatedly, she noticed that they had company. Raising her head from the warmth of Greg's chest, Mandy looked around and saw that there were at least six other people in the cave. Counting, she saw another witch, probably the person who'd made the bluish witch light that provided their only illumination; two wares, the mermaid, and two—two something she didn't recognize. She'd found the missing magical persons.
"What's going on here?" she asked. She pulled her shirt out of the miscellany of clothes covering her and Greg. Where were her pants? Where were Greg's pants? Quickly, she dressed. Her loafers were somewhere under Pier 54, but at least she was decent.
"It's Dorrie's big spell," Sennusi said. This time, she'd glamoured blonde curls, blue eyes, and a sexy black jumpsuit with thigh high, black, calfskin boots. Mandy had to remind herself that the outfit was only magic, worn by a girl who, in her natural form, looked more like a fish than a movie star. Still, it irked her that there was no way she could come up with enough magic or enough cash to have an outfit like that.
"What big spell?" Mandy demanded, as she shivered in her clammy, damp clothes. She watched as Greg pulled on his own shirt and pants. Maybe it would be a good idea to sit close to him for a little longer, just until she was warm again.
"Dorrie wants to open the well and let out all the water." The glamour wavered a little, and Mandy glimpsed pointed teeth. Sennusi was seriously worried.
"What the girl means," said the elderly witch who sat on an outcropping of rock to Mandy's left, "is that this idiot prince wants to release the Waters of Chaos."
"That's bad?"
"The Waters of Chaos, child," the witch said. "The last time they were released was during the great flood." The old woman moved around, trying to find a more comfortable seat on the rock. She looked to be in her late seventies and was dressed in what had been an elegant white blouse and taupe linen pantsuit, both now a tattered and muddy gray. "The animals?" she said to Mandy. "Two by two into the ark?"
Abruptly, Mandy realized what she was talking about. "But that's impossible! Prince Dormolon would have to open the Well of Deeps to release those waters, and there's a dragon guarding that well."
"Dragons can be bought," the old woman said.
True, dragons loved wealth, and they loved power, but according to the briefing Mandy had received this morning, Dormolon had little of either. He was a minor prince of a small, relatively poor realm. Dormolon had nothing to offer a dragon, especially the Guardian of the Well. The Guardian was old, even for dragonkind, wealthy beyond even a great mer queen, and known to eat the occasional intruder.
But the older witch was speaking again. "Since we seem to be caught in Dormolon's trap together, I think introductions are in order," she said. She nodded toward the wares. "Laynan and Lobo. Sennusi, you've met already. Manreal and Vandel, our wildfae, and I'm Abigail West. And you are?"
"Amanda West, Mandy."
Abigail was family, she realized, although Mandy had never met her. But she had heard plenty about the older witch. Abigail was a woman with a reputation for going her own way.
"You must be my Granny Claire's youngest sister," Mandy said. "She talks about you sometimes."
Abigail smiled, and Mandy realized the older witch must have been a beauty in her youth. Even now, she was still an attractive woman.
"Does she still call me 'that blasted Abby'? Or has she mellowed?"
Despite their rotten situation, Mandy had to return the warm smile.
"Um, let's just say she seems to have strong feelings about you."
"I'll bet she does."
The wares, a young man and woman, were in human form, although they had the green eyes and short, reddish-brown hair of foxes. She wasn't sure exactly what the wildfae were. They were roughly humanoid, about six feet tall, with large faceted eyes, and long, fine hair that moved constantly, even though there was no breeze in the cave. The one Abigail had called Manreal had pale green skin, emerald eyes, and white hair. Vandel was a uniform golden color all over. They were both nude, but their smooth, sexless bodies offered no clue to whether they were male, female, or neither. The weirdly beautiful pair watched her with an unnerving concentration.
Greg took Mandy's hand. Once again, the tingle of his magic washed over her, and her eyes closed like a cat whose fur had just been stroked.
"I didn't know you two were related," Greg said to Abigail.
"I'm the black sheep of the family," Abigail told him. "I'm not very good at doing what I'm told."
"Well," Greg said, "it sounds like you and Mandy have a lot in common then."
Mandy's face burned as she realized he meant her refusal to accept their arranged marriage. If refusing to submerge herself in his magic made her a black sheep, so be it.
"How did you wind up here?" Mandy asked. She could guess, but she wanted to turn the conversation away from herself and Greg.
"We got too close to the water," Abigail answered. "And the squids snatched us. Nobody was expecting any trouble, so I suppose it was easy for them."
"It's still easy," Mandy said. "The PAB has no idea that Prince Dormolon is behind the disappearances. He hasn't been seen much lately, and we actually thought he might be one of the victims."
"No, as Sennusi said, he wants to open the Well of Deeps and flood the land."
"But how can he expect to pay the Guardian enough to let him have his way? Dormolon is a minor prince. He doesn't have enough money to bribe his way out of a parking ticket."
"He plans to pay with magic," Abigail said. "He wants to sacrifice us, all of us in a ceremony that will strip the magic from our dying souls so that he can use it to pay the Guardian."
"But that's not possible!" Mandy said. "He'd need a hundred sacrifices to collect enough magic to do the job." Not to mention that just thinking about such a spell filled her with horrified revulsion.
"Or," Greg put in, "a
dozen or so magical beings and one member of the House of Merlin."
"Oh."
Yeah. Greg was the key, the catalyst. The House of Merlin had the most potent magical blood in existence. It was why she and Greg been betrothed at birth. Mandy was the most versatile witch of the West family, commoners all, but with unusual powers. Queen Boudicca believed that combining their magics would turn Greg into a kind of super wizard. Mandy believed it would leave her a cripple, unable to function without Greg's permission. That wasn't going to happen. Greg's grandmother might be queen of the witches, but she hadn't been able to force Mandy to accept a bond with her grandson.
"But why unleash the Waters of Chaos?" Mandy asked. "What does he gain?"
"Territory," Sennusi told her. "Even if Dorrie could marry a powerful mer queen, he'd still be only a consort. But if he opens the well, all that icky dry land will be flooded, and there will be plenty of room for Dorrie to found his own realm. And I'll be his queen." She paused as if reality were catching up to her. "Or, at least, that's what he promised."
Again, Mandy saw that worried flash of pointed teeth in the mermaid's pretty, glamoured face.
"Looks like he's not keeping that promise," Greg observed. He slipped his arm around Mandy's shoulders and drew her closer to him, as if he would protect her from Dormolon's disaster.
"So," Abigail said briskly, "our best chance to thwart the silly twit's plan is to get out of here before he can do a deal with the Guardian. I'm assuming that he knows who Greg is and what he can do."
"Oh, he knows," Greg said. "He's been after me for weeks, although he just said he wanted to talk about a way to release my magic. That's why we were meeting."
"Greg!"
Mandy stepped away from him and glared up into his face.
Angry blue eyes stared down at her. "What? It's not as if you want it. Do you have any idea what it's like to have magic boiling inside you with no way to let it out?"
No, she didn't. Truth to tell, she'd been so concerned with preserving her own identity that she hadn't given Greg's side of the problem much thought. Since the moment she'd found out who Greg really was, she'd done her best to pretend he didn't exist, and she didn't see any reason to change that now.
"You lied to me," she accused. "You tricked me. If the magic hurts you, it's your problem. I'm not your handy dandy magical overload outlet."
"Meeting you on my own was your mother's idea," Greg informed her. "She knew you were opposed to joining with me, but she thought that if we could just get to know each other—"
But whatever else he had to say was cut off as four squids and Prince Dormolon emerged from the entrance pool with a ripple that sent water splashing over the stones of the cavern. One of the squids dragged the limp body of a selkie. The captive was still breathing. Since he was in seal form, Mandy couldn't be sure, but she thought it looked like the same selkie she'd seen at Ivar's.
"And that makes eight, plus LeFay," Prince Dormolon observed. "Just what I need to make certain everything goes as it should."
"Hello?" Mandy said. "Earth to Dormolon. We can hear you, and we don't like what you're saying."
Apparently, she was irritating enough actually to catch his attention. He turned fishy yellow eyes to her and lifted his lip over a mouthful of pointy teeth in a parody of a smile. Obviously, the prisoners didn't rate more than the minimum glamour necessary to let the mer breathe air.
"You, I'm going to enjoy sacrificing," he snarled.
"I take it that this is all part of your stupid plan to flood the dry land?" Mandy asked.
Greg put a protective arm around her shoulders again as Dormolon stepped closer, but she shrugged him off. The squids hovered close to their prince. Mandy couldn't reach Dormolon, but she didn't have to touch him to do damage. Her wand was history, doubtless drifting somewhere on the bottom of the sound, but at this range she didn't need it.
She raised her right arm. Her hand shook and her heart thundered in her chest. She'd never used her magic to do harm before, but she had to stop Dormolon. She visualized the inside of the prince's body, hoping that mers were built enough like witches for her plan to work. She was going to remove a small piece of the major blood vessel that ran through Dormolon's brain. At the very least, it would incapacitate him, and it might well kill him. If Dormolon died, she'd live with it. It was better than allowing the megalomaniac prince to drown the entire world.
But she'd forgotten the Humboldt squid's extraordinary tentacles, which could reach three times the length of the its other arms. From twenty feet away, one of those tentacles flashed toward her.
"No!" she heard Greg yell.
And he was there first, blocking the blow with his body. They were both knocked to the floor, and Greg collapsed on top of her. She heard him groan and felt the warm wash of blood pouring from his chest. Not a few drops, she realized, not a trickle, it was a stream. The squid had seriously wounded Greg. She felt the magic pouring out with his blood in a hot, powerful flow, and to her horror, she felt her secret, inner-self drink it in. Flushed with power, Mandy sat up, cradling Greg in her arms. He seemed light, easy to move. But his eyes were closed, and his normally tan face was greenish pale.
"Greg! Greg!"
His eyelids fluttered, but his eyes didn't open. She found a wound in his chest that made horrible sucking noises with every breath he took. Oh, Goddess no, the squid had punctured his lung. He was dying, dying in her arms, and still she drank in his magic. Greg's magic was in his blood, but without the proper ceremony to bind them together, it was spilling out of him and all over her in an uncontrolled stream of scarlet and power.
Mandy found herself trying to cover the hole in Greg's chest with her hands as chaos erupted all around them.
"Idiot!" the prince hissed. There was a flash of green light, and the squid was suddenly just an animal again, one that lay gasping as it suffocated in the damp air of the cave. She saw Dormolon revert to totally to mer form as he dove back into the pool. Sennusi wrestled with one of the remaining squids, while the weres, now in fox form, nipped at a second squid while Abigail fired bolts of lightning at it. The two wildfae fought, too. Golden Vandel's touch left burned flesh behind, while green Manreal froze reaching tentacles.
What could she do? What should she do? Dormolon was out of reach. Even if they defeated the squids, they were still trapped in an underwater prison, and Greg was dying in her arms. As she watched, the squids dove into the pool after Dormolon. Sennusi followed them, teeth flashing. But the rest of the prisoners were left in the cave.
Abigail dropped to her knees beside Mandy and Greg.
"How badly is he hurt?"
Mandy looked at her through eyes swimming with tears. "I think he's dying."
She looked at Abigail and around at the weres and the wildfae. "Can any of you help? Do any of you have healing magic?"
"My skill is with things electrical," Abigail told her. "I could fix a broken computer but not this young man."
The weres had transformed back into human form, and Lobo answered her sadly, "We can't help either. When we're hurt, either we get well or we die. We don't know anything about how to heal someone."
Manreal and Vandel looked at her from their beautiful, alien eyes, but didn't speak. Mandy wasn't sure that they even understood what she was asking. The selkie was still unconscious, an inert lump of brown seal fur.
"You can move things," Abigail said. "Can you get us out of here?"
"Just small things," Mandy said. "I don't have enough power to do more than that."
"Child, you're awash in power right now. I can see the glow on you. You're covered in the blood of the House of Merlin. Use it. If you can't move all of us, then take this young man to a place where you can get him some help."
"I don't think—"
"Then do think. Dormolon will be back soon. But without this young witch to sacrifice, he won't have enough power to buy what he wants from the Guardian. You've got to get him out of here. He may sti
ll die if you move him; but it will be even worse if he stays."
Abigail was right. And she could feel Greg's power filling her. Would it be enough for her to move both of them? She'd never attempted to move so much mass before. But staying here would be certain death and not only for all of them, it would be death for the whole world. She had to make the effort.
"I'll try," she said. "I can get farther if I go with him, but I don't know how far I'll be able to move the two of us. We may wind up at the bottom of the sound."
Abigail reached out and squeezed Mandy's hand. "Awful as that would be, it's better than staying here. Come back for us if you can. If you can't, we'll make sure that Dormolon pays dearly for our magic. Now, go. Goddess be with you."
"With you also," Mandy whispered.
Still holding Greg in her arms, she closed her eyes and concentrated. Greg's magic burned over her as she focused on the safest place she knew. The safest place for Greg, at least.
She felt a blurring, twisting sensation. The light took on a blue shimmer—the color of raw magic. She clung tightly to Greg, willing them both toward safety, toward a healer. Abigail and the others faded to ghosts. She felt a sudden, bone deep chill, and a wave slapped her in the mouth. Coughing, dragging Greg's limp form through the water, Mandy staggered forward and onto a gravel beach. It was dark, not even moonlight to show her where they were. Stumbling over rough stones and through blackberry brambles that scratched her legs, she fell to her knees on the gravel.
Light suddenly glared in her eyes, blinding her.
"This is private property," a man's voice said.
Waters of Chaos Page 2
