A Mermaid's Ransom (12 page)

Her outer body he could control, but she had other muscles. She tightened on him inside, the ancient ways of the female body surpassing her limited experience, knowing how to tease and seduce what she wanted from him, even if he tried to control all else. She rippled along his length, and heard his breath suck in, a rattling growl.

Stop that.

No.
She did it again, and again. She started to jerk again, because his own grip was easing as he began to move instinctively against her, thrusting into her body with the coaxing movements of her slick muscles. She'd kept her face turned into the side of his, but now, obeying some compulsion or instinct of her own, she turned her attention outward, stared at this garden he'd made.

It had taken years to scavenge and hide for it, until his power was enough to create and then protect it from the others. He'd shared it with her, an offering Hades might have given to Persephone, hoping a creature of light and life would see something worth staying in darkness and death with him, give him what he longed to have but was forever outside of his reach. He would keep her there against her will, too desperately alone to do otherwise, always hoping she would at last stay willingly, learn to love the Beast.

The mythology and fairy tale whirling together in her head, becoming her own unique story, Alexis turned her face back to his jaw, to the pulse pounding high in his throat. As a sensuous groan broke from his lips, heralding his own unwilling release, the surge of triumph in her own female power roared over her, taking her with it. She climaxed with him, biting into his throat again, swallowing beneath the too-tight grip of his hand. She didn't understand the truth, but she could feel it, and it was too frightening to face. She chose oblivion instead.

Ten

COMING back was even more difficult this time. She drifted in a hazy world, her heart pumping slow, erratic. She felt him there, in her mind, in her soul perhaps. He was worried. He was stroking her hair, her lips with his clever fingers.

She was on the bundle of rags again, back in his protected chamber, because her nose recognized the blood stench. Goddess, she wished she was home. What would it be like to turn over in her own bed, run her fingers over his chest, down to his groin and find the thick length of him? Maybe even take her mouth down, down, while he slept. Close over him, suck deep and feel him wake in her mouth as he woke above, tangling his fingers in her hair.

Were these her thoughts or his? She'd never been wantonly sexual or adventurous, even in her imaginings, probably because she'd barely held out hope for a decently passionate kiss. Tingles of sexual awareness had been pushed away, locked down in some part of herself. Behind that closed door, her mind had obviously been quite busy, because now her fantasies were in full bloom in the midst of a nightmare. Leave it to her to embrace sexual consciousness in the midst of a hostage crisis.

Shame swept her. What must be going on in the world she'd left? Her mother and father. Oh, Goddess, Jonah. His wrath would be terrible. She hoped Lucifer was with him, and Mina.
Please, Goddess, if you hear me, if there's any way to let them know, please tell them I'm okay.

But Dante said the Goddess was not in this world. Did that mean She was deaf to prayers from it? She said them anyway.

"It would be a lie, telling them you are okay."

She cracked open eyes that flinched from any light, the pounding in her head increasing. Fortunately, the chamber was dim. No sunlight in the Dark One world, and he'd put out all his torches, so the only light came from the window, that surreal block of flame and gray wasteland. Shadows hid most of his features from her, but the magnetism of his presence was strong enough. He squatted next to the bed.

As she met his gaze, embers in that darkness, she knew. "I'm dying, aren't I?"

He nodded. "But you will be . . . okay. You will regain your strength in your own world. The witch sent me word they are preparing to open the rift. We will go through soon."

There was no triumph in his flat tone, no indication of his thoughts. His feelings were once again too tangled for her to unravel. She groped across the blanket, but he'd withdrawn his touch, moved out of reach. "I thought that was what you wanted."

"It is. But it will not be so easy. The doorway she has allows one through at a time. It has not been used in a long time, and even it suffered some damage during the Mountain Battle."

"So you'll go first, to be sure they let you through, and then I'll come behind you." She shied from the idea of being left alone in this world, even for a second. What if the portal didn't hold? As terrible as this place was, without Dante . . . of course, if that happened, she wouldn't live much longer, would she? But if the Goddess wasn't here, how could her soul find its way home? Would she be trapped here anyway?

He spoke, cutting across her panic. "There will be some trickery. They want you back, but they do not want me there. Her communication left me time for a response. I told them I would be putting a binding on you here that only I can release, and I will do so only after I am safely outside of their influence. Then you will come through."

"Did they promise you safe passage?"

"What is a promise?"

Alexis put effort into the reach this time. She needed to touch him. A lump grew in her throat when he deliberately moved beyond her grasp. Something cold and frightening was inside him, waiting. The predator in him knew he was facing death or battle, and he would not be distracted.

She'd already seen he was far more powerful than Mina likely suspected. The people she loved would be on the other side of that portal, waiting. Her mother. Oh, Goddess, please let Jonah have forbidden her mother to be there. Gentle Anna, almost as defenseless against power like this as Alexis, and her father couldn't survive both of their losses. Everyone knew it.

Dante's fiery gaze flickered like wicked candlelight, telling her he heard her thoughts, but he offered no comfort. The male who'd been inside her body was gone. Instead she was facing the creature who'd survived here for Goddess knew how many decades. Perhaps even centuries, though she suspected it was decades. Something about him seemed younger than the angels she knew who'd reached their first century mark.

She was going to die. This was it, she knew it. So the question was, how would she spend those last minutes? In fear and cowardice, or embracing the destiny the Goddess had given her? She could hate him right now for being willing to sacrifice her for his own freedom, but she'd seen too much here, felt too much from him, even now. While she'd had so much, so many wonderful things, love as vast and deep as the oceans nurturing her, Dante had had none of that.

The male that had been inside her body wasn't gone. He might not be physically within her reach, but his emotions, his desires, they were all still there, only gone dormant behind the formidable weapons he'd use to gain what he wanted, what he'd sought to have all these years. And these might be his last moments as well.

Though tears gathered in her eyes, she swallowed, made her voice steady. "Dante, I do want you to have your freedom. If I die . . . I want you to know that."

"You will not die."

She continued, though she was certain her heart was going to crack open. She struggled between what she needed to say, and the jumble of thoughts rolling through her head.
Clara. I wanted to see Clara meet someone and get married. To watch her truly fall in love for the first time. I would have loved to put Pyel's first grandchild in his arms, let him know he'd never be without us, even to the end of time.

"The first thing you should do is go to The Butchart Gardens, near the Todd Inlet, in Canada. You'll see things there you never imagined. In fact"--that ache grew jagged teeth as she thought of how many more times
she
would have liked to go there--"you'll need to sit down on one of the benches, because it will be overwhelming. It's all going to be overwhelming."

She stopped, wheezing for breath, and the crimson glow disappeared, as if he'd closed his eyes in the dim light, though his voice came through the darkness strongly enough. "Stop talking. Think in your head if you must, but don't use your breath."

She ignored him, because speaking was the only way to keep her thoughts for herself separate from the words she meant for him. "We have lots of sun. I don't know if it's true or not, but supposedly vampires can't be out in the sunlight. So don't go out in full sunlight until you're sure whether it will burn you or not. Maybe the Dark One blood will protect you. If so, you should go to a beach, watch people play volleyball, or just watch the water. Sometimes you'll see dolphins. With your eyesight, you'll probably see merpeople playing under the waves."

A wave of coughing took her then, and a new terror gripped her as her vision grayed, threatening her with unconsciousness. Gritting her teeth, she dragged herself upright. Despite the ringing in her head, her nausea, the fatal weakness she could feel claiming her, she pulled herself across the covers, the rough fabric snagging her scales painfully. She'd follow him across the chamber if she had to.

"Stop this," he ordered. "You weaken yourself unnecessarily."

"No, you do. I want your hand. Stop avoiding my touch."

She wasn't the commanding sort, not by a long shot, and definitely not with him. But she had to have this one thing. He might be heartless enough to withhold it from her, but she was determined to have enough heart for both of them.

Muttering a curse, he erupted into motion, scooping her up and taking her to her back on the bedding. He lay half over her, pressing his bare chest down upon her breasts, his hair falling forward over his shoulder and brushing her lips, her cheek. "There. I am touching you. What is it you want?"

She lifted a hand, spread her fingers out like a starfish. "Your hand," she repeated.

He stared at her, then lifted his hand from beside her head, met her palm to palm. Linking her fingers with his, she noted the slimness of hers next to his callused, strong ones. While he watched, his mouth a hard slash, she felt a tremor in his body.

"You are
not
going to die," he said. "I will not allow it."

She could feel it in her bones, a creeping tide that couldn't be held back. She didn't know how long she'd been here, but perhaps the things they'd done had weakened her. Perhaps because of her unique mixing of angel and mermaid blood, she had a more fragile constitution than he'd expected. But death was close. She wished she could send one more message to her parents, because if she gave it to Dante, they would never hear it. They wouldn't listen to the male they'd rightly see as her murderer. But with all her many gifts, she knew one thing for certain. He was more than that.

"What is a promise?" he said, and now his other hand was cradling her cheek, the lines of his perfect, handsome face tense, strained.

"It's an oath. When you tell someone you're going to do something, and it's a point of personal honor that you do it. If you don't, it takes something away from yourself." She'd never realized how difficult it was to explain something that didn't exist in the environment of the person asking the question. "Like why you've done all this. You made a promise to yourself, to do everything necessary to win your freedom. You are honoring that promise to yourself."

As he remained silent, she sensed he was examining her thoughts inside, even as he listened to her words outside. "No," he said at length. "A promise is more than that. As is honor. I sense it. Otherwise it wouldn't be so important. Tell me more. In your thoughts."

Shaking her head, she swallowed, realizing how dry she'd become, scales, throat and skin. But it didn't seem to matter. Staying conscious long enough to speak to him was most important. And to nurture the last thoughts of her life and friends instead of her fear of what would happen to her soul in this place.

"To my father, a promise and honor are things you offer to protect others. You make the world a better place when you honor a promise, not just your own circumstances."

"You seek to talk me out of my goal."

She found she had moisture after all, because tears were leaking out of her eyes again. "What you're doing is wrong, but I don't know if I would have done it differently, if I'd experienced what you've been through. So no matter what happens, Dante, I understand. I also believe that once you're free, you'll understand honor and promises much better. I feel your heart." Freeing her hand, she laid it on his chest. "While there's so much darkness in you, probably more than I've ever felt in anyone, there's a light in there so strong, just waiting. Embrace it, and I promise I won't . . ." A sob caught in her throat, her fingertips spasming on his skin, "I will miss my life, but I won't hate you. I
promise
." Goddess, even her lips were tired, but they still managed to twist in a wistful smile. "And thanks for my first time. It wasn't exactly how I'd planned, but it was as earth shattering as I heard it could be."

His expression darkened, his fingers curling into her hair, hard enough that the strands tugged painfully at her scalp. "Alexis, I forbid you to die. Do you understand me? Look at me."

The sharpness of his command had her returning her focus to his face, despite the hammer of pain building in her temples. He locked her into his gaze. Oddly, something there did make her entire body, deep down into her bones, respond to the command in his voice, hold on to that tenuous thread connecting her to life. To him.

"You will obey me. You will not die."

"I don't want to die," she managed. "I really, really don't."

He caught her tears on his thumbs, dampening the soft hair at her temples as he stroked her there.

An energy shift made her cry out, for it was like an electric shock snapping through the chamber. Her fingers clung to his arms, an anchor against the pain. He stiffened, his head lifting as if he were listening to something else. "She is calling. The portal is ready."

In a swift movement that had Alexis gasping in pain, he had her up off the bed and was carrying her back to the hated pool of blood. New things had been laid out there. A sharp knife, a spellbook and a second circle next to the original blood basin. This one was marked with a pungent concoction looking like tangled entrails. It made her feel a need to retch, though she was glad it came from the insides of something she'd mercifully not had to see.

"Please don't put me in the blood again," she said. She didn't want to die there.

"I must." He put her down into it, despite the sob that escaped her, the shameful clutch of her hands he had to loosen, though he was not unkind about it. She cringed as the blood seeped into her scales again. "It will only be a moment. I will stand there"--he indicated the other circle--"and I will go through first."

Alexis yelped as something large landed against the tower door, followed by a shriek of rage. Many shrieks of rage. She gasped as two Dark Ones flew past the open window, their burning gaze landing on her, fangs bared.

"They sense a rift opening," Dante said. "I haven't summoned one of them to go through at the lower level of the tower, where I have an opening just for them, so they know something is amiss. The window and that door are shielded, for now. The circle will protect you for a time from their attack if they burst through. As soon as I am clear, I will release the hold of the circle, and the rift will pull you through after me."

If everything went as it should. But she remembered that feeling of horrible despair as they'd poured in before, the way it had drained her, even inside the circle. She didn't have enough strength left. It would finish her. She would die in this terrible world, in the blood of a terrified woman and who knew how many other sacrifices, surrounded by those soulless creatures.