A Mermaid's Ransom (36 page)

She knew Mina was right. Her angel blood had supported and strengthened her gift, eventually helped her learn which souls were beyond her gift, condemned to the consequences of their actions, nothing else capable of changing their dark course. Her gaze turned unwillingly to Dante.

He wasn't speaking. While he knew she was there, he'd immolated himself in his rage. Feeling its breadth and scope, she now feared she'd only seen it on a small scale.

She'd never had to stretch her gift as she had with Dante, reach past his actions and thought to find what was redeemable in his soul. But justice and redemption were closely linked, she knew. Her father's closest friend was the Lord of Hell, after all.

Dante had walked his dark path in isolation for decades, and he'd gone farther down it than anyone she'd ever encountered. Her father and the others wanted her to believe the spark she sensed in him was the effect of her own light wrapping around the weak flicker of his. But in the Dark One world, surrounded by hopeless desolation, violence and fear, he'd protected her in the end.

Not just because she was his key to escape. Not just because he considered her a possession, and in his world every possession required violence to keep, though in his mind he would likely think of it that way. He didn't yet have the internal lens to see anything different about himself. That was why he had her. She had seen and felt something different from him, in the very first dream they'd shared.

No, the angels were not often wrong. Looking at Mina, she remembered many of the angels had once felt she should be destroyed for her Dark One blood. Later, Mina herself had said they weren't entirely wrong, for the Dark One blood had been very strong in her, and all that held her from a decision to embrace it was her own will. A choice, made against all other forces in the world, and there'd been a point where it could easily have gone the other way. If it hadn't been for David's belief in her.

She didn't know that part because Mina had told her. She knew it because she felt it, in the binding that was so strong its unbreakable energy coursed through her now, a conduit, as David and Mina stood on either side of her.

Alexis lifted her head, let the power of that thought ripple through her wings, giving her an additional lift from the ground so she stood taller before them, on an even level with the angels around her. She met Seneth's gaze and said the terrible words.

"He sacrificed most of them to build power for a blood ritual," she said quietly. "It was to escape his world and gain entry into ours. He also used some of them to bind me in his world and slow the fatal effects on my body there."

"And how were they killed? What did they suffer?"

Alexis met the Bentigo's eyes after flicking her gaze over the Fen. "It serves no purpose to hurt them this way."

"This hearing is to determine if his crime matches his punishment. You will answer."

Swallowing, refusing to look toward Jonah, she briefly sketched the details of how the one Fen she'd seen had been treated, the efficient sacrifice after the Dark Ones were allowed to torment her for what she estimated was a couple hours.

"Why did he not just come into our world, if he sought escape from his own?" Seneth's voice remained even, though she rocked at the wave of emotional response from the Fen. Thankfully, Mina answered, giving her a pause to sort through it.

"He couldn't come to your world. That's why the Dark Ones who served him came in his stead. He was bound into his world by a magic that said he couldn't leave until someone spoke his true name outside of it. But he was never named."

Never named.
Alexis looked toward Dante again. His body was quivering, from rage or pain, or some combination of both, she didn't know. He was all reaction now, every sense honed for an opportunity. If she was the one to loosen his bindings, he would as likely kill her to get free as anyone else. Or would he?

"Circumstances do not excuse a crime of this magnitude," Seneth returned.

"No, they don't. But they do help to determine what the proper consequences are." Straightening her spine, Alexis moved forward until she stood beside her father, facing Seneth. Jonah tensed, yet allowed it, perhaps because he trusted Seneth. It still surprised her though, because she knew he wouldn't like her in this less defensible position, even with an honorable adversary.

Pivoting now, she looked toward the Fen. "I can feel your grief and pain. Your anger." She addressed the leader directly, meeting his eyes. She'd never been more glad for the angel-inherited boon of not only being able to understand all languages, but of being understood in them. "I have a mother. A best friend I consider a sister in all ways. If anything happened to them . . . If someone took my mother against her will, frightened her, tormented her, killed her, I would have the same grief and rage in my heart as you have in yours." The words were difficult to push out, because they weren't empty. She felt every one of them, as well as the reaction around her to the place her thoughts were taking all of them, including her father. "But I have a magic. My gift is to feel what another feels, understand the root of all of his emotions. I know your feelings and his both. They are two points on a web, a connection where destroying the one doesn't bring balance to the other. A life for a life doesn't change anything. It does not mend the broken strands. In some cases, it breaks more."

She paused, because her courage tried to fail her. Turning her gaze to Dante, she focused on the man behind the creature of hatred and flame, whose fury was hammering against her filters, wanting to douse her in the same killing fire. Alexis firmed her chin, turned her attention to Seneth. "Mina, the seawitch, has a way to kill him without killing me. If you permit her to perform the magic, then our fates are no longer linked. I am no longer a consideration."

Shock hit her from all sides, particularly from Jonah. There was sharpened curiosity from the Bentigo, vague comprehension from the Fen. Their heightened anticipation was a taste like bitter blood on her tongue.

"Yes. If she performs the magic, I won't die. Not physically. But I have a hope inside of me, a belief that it's possible to save the darkest soul. Destroy him, and I lose that hope. Hope is what fuels the gift given to me by the Goddess. Destroying the gift of a Goddess has far greater consequences than this moment."

She turned back to Jonah then. Though Dante's pain was tangible, tearing at her heart, she said the words, knowing that, like the web she'd just referenced, her words were a tapestry. One dropped thread would make it all unravel. She could feel the power of it spinning out with every word, a spell without manipulative intent, a spell with truth as its magic. She just had to hope they were receptive to it.

Jonah's dark gaze was riveted on her face, ancient wisdom reflected in the lines of his handsome countenance. He understood truth above all things, even when it was difficult to face. She prayed he had that courage now, though she'd never known him to lack it.

"Pyel, when I was little, you were right to try and protect me from those who carried evil in their hearts. I was a child, and I had no way of protecting myself, no awareness of how they could hurt me. But it's not right any longer. Dante is the gateway to the destiny I was meant to serve."

So many things those filters had blocked when she was growing up, things that had been too difficult for a child to process. His desire to protect her, the depth of his love, so deep, vast, incomprehensible. Unconditional. Even as those memories overwhelmed her heart, Alexis knew she had to speak not as his daughter, but as a woman who knew her path. He stood unmoving, his wings and the hem of his tunic ruffling a little in a breeze coming up the knoll. A late afternoon sun gleamed on the pommel of the short sword handle visible over his left shoulder.

"Everyone had a vision of what my gift would become, how much it would expand, how powerful it would be. But I don't think any of you realized that what I kept trying to do as a child was fulfill its purpose before I was mature enough to handle it. This gift isn't meant to shine light on those who have a moment's pain, those who aren't lost. Things that anyone with exceptional intuition could figure out. It was meant to take me as deep into the darkness of a terribly lost soul as I need to go and give him a way out, a hand to hold. One of the first things you taught me, Pyel, was that I didn't need to be afraid of the dark."

She steadied the tremor that had gripped her voice, because she couldn't block the reaction from his heart. Without thought, she reached out, placed her palm on his chest, felt it beat there and raised her gaze back to his face. "Dante is one of those. His potential is limitless, I can
feel
that. You've already seen his capabilities. What he will become if he can find that path will far eclipse whatever I do to help him find it."

"And yet," Mina murmured, "without her guidance, none of that is possible."

Alexis glanced at the witch, but Mina wasn't looking at her. She was looking at David.

"This is who I am," Alexis continued, putting her resolve in her voice. "What I'm meant to be. I know it every time I look at him."

Turning back to Seneth, she looked into the inscrutable face. "I would like to show you what I mean. Will you release him for one moment, if I promise he will not cause you or the Fen harm? I've no intention of taking him without your permission."

Seneth met her father's gaze over her head. Whatever he received there caused a flex to his jaw, a rustle of his leathery wings. "One violent move, and we will take him down," he said. "If you are caught in the middle, that will not be our concern."

"Allow me to cast a protective circle, then," Mina spoke.

"We already have a magical binding in place," one of Seneth's males responded.

"I'm certain you do," David said smoothly, before Mina's caustic look and tongue could slice out whatever remark her expression indicated she intended. "But Mina shares the same blood as your captive. The casting will therefore be that much more impenetrable. No chance of harm to the Fen outside of it."

No.
As she met Mina's look, Lex knew what kind of circle Mina was casting. It would have two purposes, and one of them was unthinkable. Before she could protest, the witch's mind cut into hers like a knife blade in truth, causing her to wince.
I understand what you are trying to accomplish, but if he does not have a few minutes to orient himself, your chance of success goes from slim to none. This gives him time to calm down, unless he kills you.

Alexis pressed her lips together hard. He would not hurt her. She knew it. Somewhere in the storm of his mind, Dante was there.

Seneth nodded. "We will permit the witch to do this."

As Mina moved forward, Jonah touched Alexis's arm. She looked up into his face. "I need to do this, Pyel."

Jonah's mouth tightened. "It is my hope that one day your children will teach you how it feels to
allow
them to place themselves in harm's way."

"I don't need to be taught, Pyel. I feel it." Alexis lifted her hands, tangling her fingers in his feathers as she had when he'd whirled her through the sky, only a few short days ago.

JONAH closed his hands over her wrists. As he held her, he saw the brief flash of anguish in her eyes. She did understand the pain she caused him. She always had. Children had to be immune to their parents' feelings in certain areas to become self-reliant. He knew that, as well as he knew that Alexis had never been anything other than a loving, devoted daughter. She'd known how difficult it was for him and Anna to let her have more freedom, find her own way, particularly when the battle to have their only child had been so hard. There was no way they could have felt or done anything differently, because they never could have stopped loving her. He loved her now.

"You did good, Pyel," she whispered, a smile curving that beautiful mouth. It looked the same as it had to him the first time she'd smiled as an infant. "I love you. Don't worry. He won't hurt me. But the next few minutes may be a little scary. You might not want to look."

Thirty

WHEN Jonah at last withdrew, Alexis noted David shifted to the left of his commander's shoulder, Marcellus to the right. Mina stood off to the side, her focus on the circle she'd cast. The aura of power emitting from it with the smell of sulfur and burning flesh caused an uneasy ripple from the Fen, a narrowing of Seneth's gaze. "How do I release him?" Alexis asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.

Instead, Seneth nodded to two of his men and they approached the
X
. Seneth began to chant, an Undoing Spell, as they loosened the wires and then swiftly removed themselves from the circle's enclosure. Alexis gave a brief beat of her wings, taking her into its perimeter as the green light of the Bentigo's binding power on the
X
shimmered and then died. Closing her eyes, she shut herself off from everything but Dante, and reached out to his mind.

This time she moved fully into it, no hesitation. There was a sense of darkness, a brief stillness as she transitioned through her reality into the core of his emotions, then all Hell broke loose. Literally.

It was the Dark One world again, but worse, for there was no sense of up and down. She was in a sphere of pain and burning that rolled over and over, no ability to orient herself inside of it, or escape the lick of that torment. Helpless. She was helpless again, and she couldn't stop whatever they might do to her. She would become beaten down again, mindless, scurrying across the ground like the lowest scavenger. Mocked, beaten, sodomized. She'd be the sole toy of cruel children with no other diversions.

With no point of reference, she grasped at the first thing that came to her mind that belonged to her alone. The rapid rolling, the fiery descent. Minus blue sky, white clouds and pulsing waves of rage, it was the first time her father had dropped her out of the sky.

You have to find yourself, your center, to right yourself.

These feelings of helplessness and pain were not her thoughts, they were Dante's. He was here. No. This was his soul, eaten up by hellfire and rage. That was why she couldn't find his physical manifestation. She was
inside
of him.

Dante, I'm here. It's all right. They've released you from your bonds. You need to come to me. Don't fight.

Fire roared over her, disrupting her mind again, spinning it loose into terror and fear. Mental agony now had a physical component. Something had struck her, sent her spinning and slamming to the ground, trampled her. She used her wings to twist back up into the air, though her tail didn't quite clear the ground, the fronds scraping the grass. She sought him again, using her voice as well this time.

"Dante, please stop. Come to me. Calm, be calm. I'm here."

Come to you?
His voice was savage, the hiss of a serpent, raking across her nerves.
I come to no one. I will destroy all of them.

No, you won't. You don't want that. That's not what you want, remember? You want to sit in a park, under a tree. Watch birds fly, the wind move through the trees.

She cried out as fire slashed over her back, and she rolled again, this time to put out the flames in her wings. Opening her conscious mind briefly, she saw her father pressing forward with Seneth. They would have charged the boundary, but they ran into a wall that knocked them both back. The power at the circle's edge shuddered. Mina, her blue and red eye gleaming, focused on balancing it. She wasn't going to permit anyone through, even as Jonah turned on her. David assumed a protective stance in front of her and unsheathed two daggers. His face was resolute, dangerous, though the conflict was tearing inside him, trying to serve his commander and protect his mate at once.

That was not her fight. This was. And it couldn't be a fight. She returned her full focus to her goal.
Dante.

This is another prison. I am trapped here.

No. It's just to protect them until you calm down. You aren't yourself.

"I am Dante." The ground below her shuddered. The smell of burning flesh increased. The thunder of his words tore out of his throat, reverberating through the circle and beyond, a howl that echoed throughout the Fen world. "This is what I am. Utter destruction to those who would try and stop me."

The energy blast bent the circle outward, she was sure of it, like an explosion inside of a metal box. She hit the ground again, instinctively covering her head as the earth erupted around her. Trees with limbs overhanging the circle snapped and speared the ground. Lightning forked, but all of it from the sky above the circle, so the shards of it struck near her, the electrical force blasting her upward so she slammed against the circle's edge.

Holy Goddess, this was raw Dark One power, pulled together with his vampire immortality to underscore his point. He would obliterate them. They would never get that wire on him again. Except Mina knew how to draw this circle around him, isolate and then incinerate him. Though she was inside of it now, Alexis had no doubt the witch could simply lift the sphere above her when it was needed, leaving her bereft on the ground like this. She'd have failed him. And herself.

Alexis tightened her chin and rolled back up onto her hip. Getting back into the air took some awkward movements, thanks to the shudder of electric current still sloshing back and forth in the circle like water in a jostled fish tank. She did it, though, her feathers standing on end from the static.

She focused her physical vision, keeping her psychic senses wide open, despite the strain of doing both. Perching on the top of that wooden
X
like a vulture, he gripped the wood with his bare toes. He'd shed the hood and gag, of course, but he was still stained with black blood and sweat, his hair hanging in his face so all she saw were the glowing eyes. Likely because of the adrenaline coursing through him, he was also fully, impressively erect, his cock brushing his bloody abdomen. He looked like a virile demon from a sensual nightmare, where mayhem and utter surrender were a double-edged sword.

A double-edged sword.
Focusing on that, shoving away the weariness trying to close over her, she moved forward, forcing her wings to engage and pull her to the center of the circle. When this was over, she was giving herself the mother of all naps. Telling herself she might not move out of a bed for a month, she stilled the quivering that was threatening to take over her whole body.

He was watching her approach with that eerie, unapproachable stillness, but she could feel all the things pouring from him. Most were frightening, dark, an impenetrable tunnel surrounded by that fire, but she stepped into that tunnel again, reached out a hand.

Please, Dante. Come to me. Come kneel here at my feet so they understand what you wish to be. What you want.

Like a starving, groveling beast.
His lip curled back. His claws scraped the wood.
Surrender like a slave.

"No," she said quietly. As she moved forward, she realized one of her wings was no longer working properly. Swiping at hair in her face, she realized it wasn't hair at all, but blood trickling from her brow. "That's the surrender you've always known. This is different from submitting to hatred and fear. This is surrendering to love."

A sharp pain dropped her to the ground, telling her the wing she'd broken in his world had snapped again. She didn't have the resilience a full angel had, her hollow bones far more like a bird's brittle extremities. But she managed to pull herself up on her arms, move a few more feet, though the grass slicing under scales was painful. She met his gaze and despaired at the loathing she saw there, the need for violence.

Please, Dante. Please. Surrender to me. To who you really want to be. So you can be under that tree again. Think of everything we've shared together. Every thought you've had while you were with me.

How much time passed? She wasn't sure. The heat inside the circle was stifling, and flames continued to crackle on the edges, shooting high along the wall of the binding and curving inward, telling her the circle of power Mina had cast was a sphere for Dante's death, just as she'd suspected.

His gaze met hers and coldness grabbed her vitals as she remembered his ability to read her mind, not just hear the thoughts she directed to him.
No, Dante. It doesn't have to be your death. Not if you come to me. Please. Mina and Pyel wanted to protect me, that's all. My fate matters to you, too. Remember?

The fire spread, eating away the interior of the circle, boxing her in. She pushed that awareness away and centered on him alone. His malevolence and darkness seemed absolute, but she kept her focus on that spark, fanning it with every thought and feeling she could. It was a spark far different from all the flames leaping around her and starting to scorch her flesh. Exhaustion closed in with the fire and smoke. That fatigue she'd been unable to shake ever since she'd returned from the Dark One world was dogging her again, because there hadn't been enough time for long naps and proper meals. Hadn't been enough time for anything.

Desperate, she gave him her images of what they'd shared to help him remember his own. If she'd had more time, she could have made more of a difference. Oh, Goddess, if she lost him, she would lose everything, and not just because her words to Seneth and the Fen about her destiny had been truth. It was more personal than that.

Dante would tear her soul in half if he was lost to her. He'd come to her in his dreams, and yet she thought maybe he'd always been there, the shadowy form of what she knew was hers. Nothing easy or the answer to a girl's romantic dreams, but a real, overwhelming devotion and love, something that would consume and elevate at once, always be a roller-coaster ride of challenge.

Dante, don't let me lose you. I believe in you.

She couldn't breathe anymore. Her vision was getting gray because of the effort, or perhaps because Dante's power had been an explosion of Dark One poison so much like what was in his world. She hadn't really gotten over her last bout with it.

But if this was the cost, she'd take it. Distantly aware of angry discord going on outside the circle, she hoped Mina understood and didn't take the choice away from her.

Dante, I love you. I would die for you, but I'd really rather not. And I don't want you to die. Please trust me. Come to me. Surrender to me.

Her arms were trembling. In another moment her cheek would be pressed to the hot ground, the ground that was even now burning her scales as if she were lying on heated tin. She'd give anything for that terrible stench to go away, the smell of death and hopelessness, decay and things best forgotten. As her arms gave out, she let out a cry.

She stopped just short of that heated surface. Dante's hands were on her upper arms, bringing her upright again. Her tail curved in a shimmering red and gold arc between his feet. Though his palms were almost as hot as the ground, and slick with sweat and blood, they could have been engulfed in flames and she would have welcomed the brand of their touch. Lifting her weary head to look at him, she gave him a tear-streaked smile. He stared at her, so many things struggling in his confused, tormented soul, more than she could understand, as always. She'd always had trouble reading him, because so much was there. But she would decipher every feeling, offer something to each one. Comfort to his sadness, companionship to his loneliness, love to a heart that had received so little of it.
Please, Goddess, give us the time. We both surrender to Your Will. Please help us.

She held her breath. As his head slowly bowed, tears spilled out of her eyes. Since she couldn't stand, and he was already kneeling, he had to go lower. Curling up on his side, his wary gaze never losing its intent lock on her face, he laid his head on her lap.

Her hand fell to his shoulder, then over his bare hip, stroking him, soothing him. It took a while, long enough that she was shivering with pain, but then the flames withdrew, retreating to the outer edge of the circle, dying away until it was just her curved over Dante on a tiny, circular patch of hot but unscorched earth.

Taking a deep breath, she laid her hand on the silver band at his throat. On an impulse, she fingered the latch, and it sprang free at her touch. She'd collared him, she could release him. High emotions running through her, she slid the band out from under his throat. He remained motionless, though she felt a quiver run through him. Laying it aside, she put her hands on him again.

Blinking, she looked up and met Seneth's gaze. Surprise, speculation, but nothing else. Of course, the Bentigo were the judge, not the jury. Changing her probe, she directed it toward the Fen.

Her heart fell, stabbed by cold fear.

They were afraid of the magic they'd just seen, overwhelmed by it. But there was no alteration in their feelings. The anger was still there, the grief. Over it all was resentment at what she'd shown them. They weren't interested in healing his soul, or her destiny. What they wanted was blood and vengeance.

No, that was surface. Pushing aside her despair and pulling on a deeper well, she found the under layer. What they wanted was an easing of their pain and loss, and only time could bring them that. After Dante's execution.

Like the angels of her world, the Bentigo apparently knew the minds and desires of those they protected. Seneth spoke. "It appears you stand alone, angel's daughter."

She swallowed over a throat aching with tears and smoke. Dante's fingers tightened on her thighs. The bestial rage of the violent sorcerer had receded, leaving something far more heartbreaking. He was glad to be free of the bindings. They had hurt. He was glad for the softness of her thighs, her touch, however brief it might be. He was weary, so weary he wasn't sure any of it mattered anymore.

No
, she demanded, as more of her tears spilled. Dropping onto his face and shoulder, they left a trail in the ash and soot.

"Alexis." It was her father speaking. She raised her face toward him, even though she didn't want to do so. Her feelings, her sense of failure, overwhelmed everything else, so she couldn't interpret his state of mind, but she knew his impassive expression. It was the way he looked when he was facing the most difficult of choices, or when he was concealing great emotion. "Come here, Alexis. Come stand beside me."