Deep Water (14 page)

Medusa threw her head back hard and cried
out, her thighs straining against Amphitrite’s wrist. Amphitrite quickly slid a
finger into the handmaiden’s vagina, skirting the low edge of her maidenhead
and massaging the front wall. She was rewarded when Medusa came hard, those
strong little muscles rippling hard along her finger.

Sobbing for breath, the handmaiden sagged
back against the soft blanket with boneless abandon. “Oh. Gaia above, that was
glorious,” she panted. “Thank you,
Ammie
.”

Amphitrite withdrew her hand, petting the
soft curls between Medusa’s thighs before snuggling up along the handmaiden’s
side. “You’re quite welcome, my love,” she murmured, kissing Medusa’s shoulder.
“It was a privilege to give you such pleasure.”

Medusa turned her head and kissed
Amphitrite. “It was wonderful.” Her blissful gaze changed, turning ever so
slightly wicked. “Now, I think it’s your turn.”

They spent the afternoon exploring each
other’s bodies, fingers and mouths finding all the secret places that provided
such thrilling pleasure. And when the formerly shy handmaiden settled between
Medusa’s legs and bent to kiss and lick at her clit, Amphitrite was thrilled at
the exquisite sensation, clutching at the blanket as she squirmed and came on
Medusa’s eager tongue.

As the sun began to sink over the
mountains Amphitrite finally had to beg Medusa to stop. The handmaiden curled
up in her arms with a happy sigh.

“That was wonderful,” she said.

“Yes.” A smiling Amphitrite closed her
eyes and relaxed into the comfort of the blanket. “Yes, it was.”

Medusa was quiet for a moment. Then, “
Ammie
?”

“Yes?”

“Will it be like this with Poseidon? If I
become his lover?”

Amphitrite stroked Medusa’s dark brown
curls. “It will be a bit different. He’ll lie with you as men do with women,
and losing your maidenhead can hurt a bit the first time. But I promise you,
he’s most skilled in bringing a woman pleasure. And I’ll be there with you, of
course.”

Medusa nodded against her shoulder, then
stilled. “My lady won’t like it.”

Amphitrite sighed. “No, she won’t. But
Athena loves you like a daughter. I may be able to talk her into an arrangement
that will allow you to continue serving her.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“I don’t. But I’ll do anything in my power
for you to continue with your vocation.”

Another nod. “Now that we’ve made love,”
Medusa said in a small voice, “do I have to offer myself to Poseidon, too?”

Amphitrite hesitated. By rights she should
have told Poseidon immediately about Medusa after meeting the girl. He was her
agapetos
just as Amphitrite was, and she
knew he would love Medusa just as much as she did. The three of them would be
wonderfully happy once they were together.

But a tiny voice at the back of her mind
had spoken up, reminding her of Poseidon’s assorted paramours over the
centuries, including her own brother Nerites. Was it so wrong that she wanted
Medusa to herself, at least for a little while?

It won’t hurt
Poseidon to wait.
She kissed the girl’s brow, breathing in the scent of her hair. “No. You don’t
have to do anything until you’re ready.”

Medusa let out a long, soft sigh. “If he’s
as wonderful to lie with as you say, I think I’ll enjoy it. I just need a bit more
time.”

The Nereid pulled her closer.
“Take all the time you need, my love,”
she said softly.

****

Amphitrite stared at the barrier islands
off the coast of Olympic Beach, wine forgotten.
Should I have asked her to meet him that night? If I had, would
everything have been different?

She had been wrestling with her guilt for
millennia, second-guessing her actions. Even if she had brought Medusa home,
would she have been able to persuade a randy Poseidon to keep his hands off
their
agapetos
until Medusa was ready
to accept him? Was it concern for Medusa that had held her tongue, or
selfishness? Or a combination of both?

In the end, it hadn’t mattered.

She turned and the wineglass slipped from
her hand, shattering on the floor of the balcony. Glancing down at the mess,
Amphitrite prodded a shard with her big toe. It pierced her skin for a
microsecond before her ichor rushed to the wound and healed it without
so
much as a scar.

She wished she could heal the ache in her
heart as easily.

Chapter Six

After a restless night in the palace,
Poseidon harnessed Skylla and Sthenios the next morning and headed to Olympic
Cove. On the way he kept scanning the waters for any sign of ilkothelloi or any
others of Thetis’s minions. Either they had been warned to give him a wide
berth or Aphros and his tritons were doing a thorough job of killing the foul
beasts.

He parked the chariot next to Bythos’s
coral grove before swimming to shore. Pausing in the shadow of the small pier
to dry off and change into a polo shirt, linen slacks and loafers, he headed to
Griffin’s cottage. A knock on the back door summoned a bleary human.

Poseidon took in the grey tint of
Griffin’s skin and the redness in his eyes. “I take it this isn’t a good time?”

A faint smile appeared. “Had a bad night.
Don’t think I’m up for sailing today, sorry.”

“Quite all right.” The mortal’s aura was
almost leached grey, chilling him. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

Griffin went blank for a long moment. “Um,
no,” he finally said. “That’s probably stupid of me, yeah? Considering I can
eat any bloody thing I want for brekkie now.” He scratched his silvery stubble.
“I think I have oatmeal. And maybe some toast.”

Poseidon recognized the mortal
foods—bland, but tolerable for an ill person. “Would I be overreaching myself
if I offered to cook?”

Griffin blinked at that. “No, that’s fine.
I’m more than a bit shaky this morning—probably burn down the place if I tried
to make anything.”

Poseidon followed the mortal into the
kitchen, worried by the boniness of Griffin’s shoulders. The room was quite
clean, but he suspected that was because Griffin hadn’t been cooking in there.
Or eating. “Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll see what I can find,” he said.

Griffin nodded as if it hurt his head to
move and dropped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I think I’d be
happy with some toast.”

Toast. It’s simply
browning slices of bread, yes?

As it turned out, toast was somewhat more
difficult than Poseidon had anticipated. It took Griffin pointing out something
called a breadbox before he realized the long, vaguely rectangular and
ridiculously soft loaves inside were bread. He’d thought they were some kind of
cake.

At least they were already sliced, which
was helpful. But the meager cutlery drawer offered nothing of the right size
and length for impaling the slices in order to hold them over a fire. Also,
there was the issue of creating a fire in the first place. Poseidon narrowed
his eyes at the stovetop, trying to remember how Aphros had generated flames on
the blasted thing.

“You don’t cook much, do you?” Griffin said,
sounding amused now.

“No,” he said, still studying the
stovetop.

“Yeah, well, it scares me how you’re
looking at the hob. Why don’t you try putting those slices in the toaster?”

As it turned out, modern technology had
solved the toast issue by creating a device into which one could slot two
pieces of bread. It would then heat both sides of the bread evenly, even
popping them up when done.

“How simple,” Poseidon said, plucking the
toast from the device and depositing them on a plate, then bringing it to the
table with a flourish. “There. Toast.”

Griffin was biting his lips, a pale bloom
of color chasing away the grey tinge in his cheeks. “
Er
,
yeah. That is most definitely toast,” he said. “But maybe we could have some
butter on it?”

“Oh.” Poseidon turned and stared at the
kitchen.
Butter. The yellow fatty salty
stuff. Rather tasty, I suppose, but it’s not a patch on good olive oil. Where
does Aphros keep it, anyway?

“In the refrigerator. That big rectangular
box in the corner,” Griffin said with a laughing snort.

Poseidon gave him an austere look. “I knew
that.”

“Of course. And I’m sure you always look
at a kitchen like you’re trying to defuse a nuclear bomb.”

The god turned up the heat in his glare.
“If you’d rather I leave—”

“Oh, no, not at all. This is the funniest
thing I’ve seen in months,” Griffin said, waving at him. “I can’t wait to watch
you mash the tea. I bet we can use it for deck stain.”

Poseidon swallowed. He hadn’t thought that
far. “Ah. Yes.
Er
…”

Still laughing, Griffin levered himself to
his feet. “That’s what I thought. Right. Stand aside and watch the master at
work.”

Five minutes later two mugs of perfectly
brewed tea were on the kitchen table, along with more toast, butter, jam, and a
bowl of raspberries that Griffin was popping into his mouth one by one. “God, I
love raspberries,” he said after he’d swallowed. “Forgot I had them. Best
damned fruit on the planet.”

“Bah,” Poseidon said amiably. “Figs. Now
that’s a proper fruit.”

“Figs? Maybe if you’re corked up and need
something to help you shit,” Griffin retorted. “Whereas raspberries are
obviously God’s own fruit. They’re perfectly balanced between sweet and tart,
they have that lovely pop between your teeth when you bite into them, and you
can eat them off a woman’s nipples. Try doing that with a bloody fig.”

“Oh, there are much more interesting place
to put figs, I assure you,” Poseidon said.

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

The sea god tamped down the urge to offer
a live demonstration. “We’ll simply have to agree to disagree, then,” he said,
taking a sip of his tea.

“Yeah.” Griffin chewed thoughtfully on a
piece of toast. “So, now that we have the comedy portion out of the way, are we
going to talk about what happened yesterday?”

For a panicked moment Poseidon thought
that Griffin was talking about his attempted kiss. “What do you mean?”

“That thing you speared?” Griffin
prompted. “The one that looked like a zombie mated with a shark? Did you ever
call the sheriff about it?”

Poseidon considered lying and saying that
he’d talked to Sheriff Connors about the ilkothella. But Griffin was just
bullheaded enough to call and check on his story. “No, I didn’t?”

“Didn’t think so.” Griffin gave him a penetrating
look. “Do I need to call the Coast Guard, Dunn?”

Poseidon focused on tearing a piece of
toast into shreds. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t. I don’t think they’d
believe you, especially as you don’t have any proof. Plus it would implicate
me, and I don’t wish to be hauled up on charges of murder.”

“Murder.” The mortal leaned back in his
chair, rubbing his upper lip. “That charge only applies to killing people,
Dunn, not animals. Which makes me think you know more than you’re saying right
now.” He sighed. “Look, will you just please tell me what’s going on?”

Perhaps it was time to do that, at least
in part. “First, you need to understand that my company performs a variety of
specialized marine actions,” Poseidon said. “Remediation of polluted areas,
reclamation of sunken property, underwater search and rescue. We can go where
officials can’t, or won’t.”

Griffin’s eyebrows rose slowly. “Black ops
type of stuff?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’ll be quite
honest with you—I’m exceedingly rich. I don’t know how to cook because I have
da
—people to do that for me. My wealth
gives me the great luxury of doing what I choose to do. And I choose to protect
the ocean as best I can against the degradation of mankind.”

“Oh, great.” The mortal shook his head. “You’re
Batman.”

Poseidon recognized the reference. “It’s a
fair analogy. Although my majordomo doesn’t look anything like Alfred.”

“Fine. So what do you know about that
thing that attacked us?”

“We call them
ilkothelloi
—it’s Greek for storm wolves. They’re mutated creatures
that are both quite feral and surprisingly fragile, which is why they dissolve
when killed. They’ve emerged from the Gulf of Mexico over the last three years
and have been sighted as far east as the Bahamas. My son Aphros is in charge of
a team that hunts them down.”

“Yeah, but what
are
they?”

Poseidon considered how his mate would
react to the truth. The worst case scenario had Griffin running to the mortal
authorities with a story about an unknown marine remediation company that
hunted down zombie-like creatures. The likelihood of anyone believing him was …
low.

And in a best case scenario Griffin would
soon learn about his past and his future with Poseidon, as well as the dangers
that came along with it. He decided it was worth the risk.

Rubbing his hands free of toast crumbs,
Poseidon stood. “Have you ever seen a mermaid?” he asked. “A real one?”

****

Griffin wondered if Dunn expected him to
laugh at the question, or ask him if he’d been indulging in recreational herbs
and spices.

Keeping his expression neutral, he said, “As
a matter of fact, I have.”

As he suspected, the other man’s eyebrows
went up at that. “You have?”

“Yeah, once. Never told anyone because I
didn’t have proof and didn’t want to be chucked into the loony bin.”

Now a faint smile crossed Dunn’s face, and
he leaned closer. “Where was this, if I may ask?”

“On a dive off the coast of
Penzance
about a year ago.” Griffin could still recall the
encounter clear as day. “We were doing a survey of the local marine
environment, taking samples of algae and microorganisms. The other divers and I
were fairly well spread out along the zone, so I was by myself when this
dolphin swam up to me. It had a fishing line wrapped around its body that was
cutting into the right flipper and it obviously needed help. I figured if I
could get it to stay still long enough I could cut the line and get it
unwrapped.

“So I pulled out my knife to start cutting
the line. Suddenly I’m knocked sideways by something small but heavy as hell.
At first I thought it was a dolphin calf trying to protect its mother, until I
got a good look at it. I almost bit through my respirator. It was a little—” He
frowned. “I guess you could call her a little girl mermaid. A
mergirl
? Anyway, she looked like maybe she was five or six
from the waist up, with long hair and big pale eyes. I remember those because
she had her arms around the dolphin’s neck and was glaring at me like she
wanted to kill me. But from the waist down she was all fish, with scales and a
pretty little fluke at the end. It couldn’t have been a fake tail, either—she
was flexing it in ways you can’t do with a pair of human legs.”

Griffin smiled at the memory. “The dolphin
nudged her away, just like you’d see a sheepdog do with a sheep, and came back
to me. Luckily I’d hung onto the knife, so I started cutting the line as fast
as I could, hoping like hell that she wouldn’t go after me again because I
didn’t want to cut the dolphin accidentally. Once I’d pulled everything free
the dolphin squeaked something, flipped over and swam off with the kid in tow.
I didn’t have a camera or anything so I didn’t have any proof, and frankly I
wasn’t absolutely sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. I’d already started having
the headaches, and a week later I was diagnosed with the tumor. At the time, I
thought it explained what I’d seen.”

He felt a certain sense of relief when
Dunn nodded. “But deep down, you knew the truth,” the other man said.

“Yeah. I’d seen a real-life mermaid. And
until this moment I thought I was going to take it to my grave.” The exhaustion
he’d felt since he woke up that morning receded in the wake of his vindication.
“These ilkothelloi, you’re saying they’re mermaids?”

Dunn’s expression turned grim. “Monstrous
ones, yes. They’ve been poisoned, turned into feral versions of themselves. My
sons and I are trying to track down the source of the poison and eradicate it
before more mermaids fall prey to it.”

“Jesus.” Griffin had a horrible image of
his little
mergirl’s
skin rotting, mouth stretched to
hold gnashing shark’s teeth. “How did you find out about them, anyway?”

The other man hesitated for a moment.
“That is a very long and complicated story, and will require something stronger
than tea in the telling. Why don’t we have dinner tonight and I’ll tell it to you
then?”

Griffin felt a sudden urge to throttle the
big man. “You expect me to wait until tonight? For fuck’s sake, Dunn, you can’t
leave me hanging like that!”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Dunn glanced
out the kitchen windows. “Do you think you have enough energy to walk down to
the shore?”

“If I have to. Why?”

Dunn’s eyes twinkled. “Would you like to
see another mermaid?”

****

“I don’t believe this is happening,”
Griffin said, sounding slightly dazed as they made their way across the sand.
“This isn’t some practical joke or anything, right? I’m not going to have a
camera crew jumping out of the water at me?”

“No camera crew, and I promise you it’s no
joke.” Poseidon slowed his pace to his mate’s unsteady footsteps, ready to grab
Griffin if he started to fall. They stopped on the damp curve of the shore.
“Just wait here and I’ll call her.”