Lords of the Deep (33 page)

If she had to give up and admit defeat, she’d still be in King Hadrian’s territory and no doubt she’d be able to find help of some kind—even if it was just somebody to haul her back.

She discovered when she emerged at the end of the egress tunnel that it was the one nearest Miles’ home. She stood for a little while, staring at the lights in the distance, wondering what he was doing, feeling the hollowness inside her grow and finally firmly dismissed it.

Straight up, she wondered? Or should she strike off in the most likely direction?

She would have to surface slowly, give herself plenty of time to adjust to the difference in pressure. If she shot toward the surface, she’d die from the bends. She struck off in the direction she thought most likely the way Damien had brought her, taking a tangent to the floor of the ocean. She could go a little higher and wait until she equalized and then a little higher.

Assuming, of course, she could maintain her depth when she stopped to rest, she thought wryly when she finally slowed and then stopped, treading water and glancing back toward the city to see how far she’d gone.

Glancing from the city dome toward Miles’ she saw that she’d put more distance between her and his place than she’d realized. She glanced at the city again and adjusted her course slightly.

The entire situation sucked, really, she decided when she thought she’d been swimming at least an hour. She was already tired.

And sleepy.

She couldn’t surface and try to sleep floating on the surface, and if she descended to sleep … well that wasn’t going to work. She had to be able to see the sky to use the sun, or the moon, to help determine her direction. There was no hope for it, really. She was going to have to go back down at some point and find some place to sleep.

She stopped after a while to rest and look up to see if she was close enough to the surface to see anything. It was daylight. She could see the glint of the sun on the water, but the water diffused the light so much she wasn’t sure she’d be able to see it clearly enough to help her navigate and it seemed even less likely that she’d be able to see the moon.

She was going to have to try to adjust her sleeping pattern, she realized. She hadn’t even realized until that moment that she’d
changed
her sleeping habits.

Then again, she’d left when Millicent had gone to bed. Maybe it was already morning and she’d traveled all night? In some ways, it seemed possible, and it was still hard to believe she’d traveled all night.

Abruptly, she realized the food and water were going to be a problem for her, too, if she couldn’t surface.

Damn it!

Millicent was right! She’d been too desperate to flee to think everything through!

That
situation hadn’t changed, though, and she still thought that she’d assessed it as calmly and rationally as anyone in her position could be expected to. She just hadn’t thought past escaping, hadn’t consider all of the things she never would’ve had to consider if she’d been in her own element.

Ignoring the urge to sleep, she kept moving, though she didn’t even try to swim as fast as she could. She tried to pace herself, pausing whenever she thought an hour had passed and looking up to see if she could determine the path of the sun. She needed to head south east. After a few hours, she spied a rock formation in the distance, a mountain range, and a sense of relief surged through her. A place to perch and
really
rest!

Her excitement of the discovery chased the sleepiness from her mind and the fatigue from her muscles. She’d begun to think she would never reach it before she actually did, though, begun to wonder if it was just a mirage or the water had magnified it so that something a hundred miles away actually only looked about ten.

She was so tired by the time she finally reached it she was almost too exhausted to keep going long enough to find a spot where she could perch for a short while to rest. She decided, though, to swim up to the peak before she stopped. That way, she wouldn’t have it to scale when she started off again. Then, too, she would have the chance to look things over while she was resting. She should be able to see a good distance from the top and also have a fairly good view of the sun.

It was a good plan. It was really unfortunate that she didn’t get to execute it.

Chapter Fifteen

When she’d finally found a fairly even place to sit, Angie unfastened the belt holding her pouch on and set it down beside her, staring a little longingly at the waterproof bag that had food and water in it.

She supposed, if she got desperate enough, she could try eating anyway, but she decided she wasn’t hungry enough yet. Moving the pack behind her, she leaned against it and stared up at the water’s surface.

If she actually
was
a mermaid, she could go up there and come down again without any problem—as long as there wasn’t anybody up there to shoot her or try to catch her—but she’d be
able
to.

Realizing after a few moments that she could tell the sun had moved a good bit since the last time she’d checked, she sat up and studied it in relation to her current position and decided she’d been heading more due south than southeast.

Not that it mattered that much. She doubted she’d covered enough miles to make that much difference, but she didn’t want to get too far off. She was tired already. She couldn’t afford to spend days and days exhausting herself only to discover she’d moved further from the damned island!

Deciding the mountain range seemed to be running roughly north and south, she turned around to see if she could still see the city.

She didn’t, but she could see something moving in her direction—dark, large.

Frowning, she studied it, trying to decide from the size and shape what it might be. A shark? It seemed a little big to be a shark. Whale? Not that big.

As it slowly came closer, though, she discovered it wasn’t one thing. It was several things.

They fanned out.

Oh my fucking god! Mermen!

Shoving upright abruptly, she grabbed her pack, debated for a moment, and finally decided she couldn’t afford to leave it even if it did slow her down. She took a flying leap off the opposite side of the mountain peak, struggling to swim with the pack clutched in one hand. After battering herself with it several times, she realized she was either going to have to stop long enough to fasten it around her waist again or drop it.

She was still struggling to fasten the damned thing when she glanced up and saw the mermen clear the peak she’d just leapt off of.

She didn’t stop to gape in awe and wonder at their speed, strength, agility and the beauty of her graceful bodies cleaving the water. She uttered a gargling scream, dropped the fucking pack, and began swimming for all she was worth, searching the rocks below her frantically for some small crevice that she might be able to squeeze into that they couldn’t.

Something grabbed her ankle.

Letting out another gurgling squawk, she jerked on her foot, trying to pull it free and finally twisted around to beat at the man with her hands.

Basil met her gaze with one that made her blood run cold. She gaped at him for a long moment and then glanced around at the others hovering menacingly around her, their faces stony with fury.

How lovely! Her court had decided to join her. As far as she could see, the gang was all here!

Jerking her toward him by her ankle, Basil grabbed her around the waist and shot back toward the mountain peak. She didn’t try to fight him. What was the point? She wasn’t crazy enough to think she could elude a half dozen thoroughly pissed off and determined mermen.

It took roughly a quarter of the time to return than what it had taken her to get as far as she had.

At least she didn’t have to swim it again, she thought dully, too tired and too depressed to feel much beyond tired and depressed. Instead of heading back to the city, they went directly to Miles’ place. She studied her feet while they waited for the water to drain from the airlock. Clamping a hand around her arm as soon as the inner door opened, Basil marched her down the corridor behind Damien and Miles, turning toward his lab.

Angie began to have a bad feeling before they reached the lab.

She had a really bad feeling when Basil headed for the cell where Miles and Damien had kept her when they’d first taken her. She dug her heels in, which only helped Basil. Her feet were still wet enough that she ‘skied’ across the slick floor and into the cell. He slammed the door behind her.

Angie stared at the door in disbelief for several moments, but anger began to boil inside of her fairly quickly. Whirling away from the door, she discover that all of the men were standing at the viewing window, most of them glaring at her, although Miles, Damien, and Basil seemed to be engaged in some sort of discussion. Stomping toward the window, she slammed her fist against it and screamed every cuss word she’d ever heard at them.

It didn’t help her feelings a great deal and she discovered that pounding on the window didn’t make her hand feel good either. Pretending it hadn’t hurt, she folded her arms and stalked to the far side of the cell, standing at the porthole for several moments before she finally sat down and braced her back against the wall.

“Angie!”

She heard the voice, dulled though it was through the glass. She couldn’t tell who’d spoken, and she didn’t care. She lifted a three finger salute at them without turning to look. “Fuck off!”

Someone struck the window hard enough she looked up automatically. Damien, she saw, was glaring at her, touching the translator he was wearing.

“I didn’t the need the damned translator where I was going!” she yelled at him. “They speak
my
language there!”

That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but he didn’t know that and it gave her a strange sort of satisfaction to point out that there were plenty of people she would’ve been able to talk to without a damned translator.

If she’d succeeded.

She didn’t look his way again. She sat huddled in a ball until she was just too tired to sulk anymore and finally lay down on the floor and pillowed her head with her hands—turning her ass to them.

She didn’t particularly want to, but then she was still too mad to look at them.

“Gods damn it!” Damien snarled, resisting the urge to slam his palm against the window again. “How long did you say it would take to adjust the pressure?”

“We should leave her in there several hours anyway,” Miles said tightly. “I don’t know exactly, damn it!”

“You’re going to fucking guess?” Basil demanded furiously.

Miles clenched and unclenched his hands a few times, struggling with the urge to plant his fist in Basil’s face. “I’m going to guess,” he growled, “based on what little I fucking know about it!”

Striding across the lab, he sat down on his stool, drumming his fingers on his desk top while he considered it. “She wasn’t gone long and she wasn’t high enough to have experienced much change in pressure. She might be alright if we didn’t put her in there at all, but I’d rather not chance it. I’ve set it at the pressure level where we found her and set it to slowly increase over the next three hours. That’s as close as I can
guess
.”

“She’s going to freeze in there on the damned floor,” Galen muttered.

Uttering an expletive, Damien crossed to the thermostat and adjusted the temperature until the air circulating in the cell was warm enough, he thought, to make her more comfortable.

He stood at the window and watched her until she finally stopped shivering and then left the lab and went into Miles’ sitting room where Justin, Rasmus, and Cole had retreated to wait for word of her condition. Basil, Miles, and Galen joined them after a few minutes.

“Well?” Justin demanded as soon as Galen and Miles came in.

Galen sent him an irritated look. “I’m not psychic Justin!” he said tightly. “We aren’t going to know anything for sure until we run a scan on her. There’s no sign of any injury, though. I don’t think she was gone long enough to have problems with exposure. I think she’s going to be fine. I’m just glad we managed to find her so quickly.”

Justin nodded, glancing at Damien. “The dolphins did a good job of tracking her. I doubt we would’ve found her without them—certainly not as quickly as we did. The last report I got from the watch had her heading south east. I guess she just did that to throw off anybody that might be following her.”

“Or she got lost,” Damien said dryly.

Justin grinned abruptly. “Or she got lost. Either way ….”

“Either way it’s a damned miracle she didn’t get herself killed,” Basil said tightly. “I’ve never met a more … willful, stubborn catkin in my life.”

“Guess that means you haven’t actually met many catkins,” Justin said wryly.

“He doesn’t hang around them long enough to find out more than the fit of their little cat,” Cole said sardonically.

Basil sent his half brother a glare but didn’t bother to dispute it. Instead, he turned to pace the room restlessly.

“What did your … the king say to her?” Damien asked tightly after watching Basil pace for a while.

“Nothing to explain her tearing out of here with a couple of bottles of water and a damned carving knife!”