Authors: Kimberly Frost
The stone-faced looks of the ES guards made him smile.
“I’ve got my own way home,” Merrick said, tucking his weapons away as he disappeared down the alley.
He waited until she was safely on the other side to make his way south toward the creek. He paused periodically to be sure he wasn’t followed. Near the water, he stripped down to the superfine neoprene he’d worn under his suit. There was a slice through the fabric where Tamberi’s knife had cut him. She was becoming as much of a problem as Cato.
He wiped down the weapons and then dropped them and his suit into a Dumpster. An expensive loss, but there was no help for it. If he went home to drop them there, he’d risk being picked up by the police for questioning, or by the syndicate for a brutal interrogation and probably worse. He had other plans for his night.
He ran a hand over the chest of his wet suit, feeling the packet that was sealed against his skin. It was critical to his plan. He hoped the amulet’s magic wouldn’t be affected by extreme temperatures.
He climbed through the trees growing up from the bank, and his bare feet sank in the damp ground. He stretched his muscles and lowered himself into the cold water. As a half-vampire, he could tolerate the cold better than humans. He knew from experience he could still concentrate and function when his body temperature dropped as low as twenty-six degrees centigrade. Extreme heat was a different story. The hot springs had nearly boiled the flesh from his bones the last time he’d tried to cross this way.
He took several deep breaths and submerged. He swam down to the barrier between the Etherlin and the Varden. He’d cut through two iron rods on his trial run. Now he slid through the opening without a problem. He swam more than a mile without surfacing. If he’d come up for air sooner, the sensors monitoring the water’s surface would’ve triggered a security alert that meant visible and ultraviolet lights turning on, security camera activation, and a team of Etherlin Security being dispatched to hunt for him.
If this had been a short trip, as when he’d come in for the demon, he could’ve blown a hole in the wall, gone over it, or used any number of other methods for gaining entry. Getting in wasn’t that hard. Getting in without anyone knowing he was in: that was very difficult.
His muscles burned, and his heart rate increased. Merrick dove deeper. The water got warmer, then hot. He felt for the rock opening but couldn’t find it.
He dragged his hands over the surface, cutting one of his palms. He was in the right place and should’ve felt it.
The ache in his muscles worsened as his temperature rose. His skin burned and stung. He realized that rocks had fallen and covered the mouth of the underwater cave.
He worked quickly to shift them, his body hungry for air. His pulse throbbed in his throat. He made an opening and rammed his body against it, pulling himself forward. His shoulders wedged between the rocks, and he couldn’t move.
He kicked hard with his legs. Even ventala couldn’t go without air forever.
Desperate for oxygen, his body took an involuntary breath and water gushed into his lungs.
Once she’d closed and locked her front door, Alissa walked into the family room with its bamboo floors and butter-colored silk drapes and pillows. She sank down onto the eco-friendly oatmeal-colored couch, trembling with adrenaline and a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. Plagued by regret over the Handyrock’s incident, excited by the drive and the kiss with Merrick, and concerned about the encounter with
Etherlin Security, she folded her hands on her lap but couldn’t remain still. She rose and paced the floor.
When she reached the edge of the room and turned for the third time, she was startled to find her father standing in the doorway. He’d showered, shaved, and slicked back his wet hair, which she took as a good sign. He wore hunter green flannel pajama bottoms and a Peter Max Earth Day T-shirt under his worn navy blue bathrobe. His pockets bulged with pens and Post-it notes and scraps of paper.
“Hi, Dad. Have you been writing?”
“Still am. And you? Are you working?”
She smiled. Her dad was one of the few people she knew who understood that staring out windows and thinking could be serious work.
“Would you like to write here for a little while? I’d enjoy the company.”
He took out a pen, slid it behind an ear, and sat in front of the recycled-wood table. From his pockets, he extracted sticky notes and bits of paper, uncrumpling and arranging them. She sank down on the couch and curled into the cushions.
She looked at the various colors of her dad’s notes, watching him move the Jadar River note to the beginning as he mumbled bits of the story of a young soldier who would try to secretly shield his lover’s brother from being killed during the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. And of the aftermath…the emotional devastation of not succeeding, of having his lover find out that he’d participated in the genocide of the lover’s people.
Her father rearranged the scenes of moments of normal life interspersed with events like digging up the mass graves to redistribute the bodies. She closed her eyes as her dad narrated, his prose as fluid and devastating as ever. He would take his readers on an amazing and raw emotional journey if he could shake his madness and stay an author long enough to complete it.
She rose and retrieved a netbook from the corner table. She powered it on, created a file, and typed as he dictated. At moments, he paused, and she whispered magic-laced encouragement and suggestions.
Forbidden love was fragile enough, but when the truth of the soldier’s hand in the brother’s death broke over them, the lovers screamed recriminations at each other, their hearts shattering into too many pieces to ever be fully mended.
All the precious loves that Alissa had been unable to hold on to came rushing to memory. Her mom hanging, Cerise’s back as she rushed out of the dance studio, her father fleeing unseen ghosts down empty hallways while Alissa called after him. And then there was Merrick, whom she wanted but could never really have except in dreams and letters.
The tragedy at Handyrock’s rose in her mind, too. Just as in her father’s story, in the coming days, families would bury their young sons. Tears spilled, and her throat contracted. She wished she’d never gone to the Sliver. She closed the netbook and set it on the table.
“Stop. Please stop,” she said.
Awakened from the fever of creation, her father, slightly misty-eyed himself, blinked and looked at her.
“What’s wrong? Not good?”
“No, it’s amazing. Too good. I’m feeling sad, and the story…it’s too much tonight.”
He sighed and nodded. “Nature’s first green is gold. It’s especially hard to lose the young. I mourn them—the ones I sacrifice for the story’s sake.”
“Tell me an old story, Dad. Tell me ‘The Poison Cupcake.’ ”
“Ah,” he said softly. “A different type of story, that.” He rubbed her ankles, cleared his throat, and began. The voices of her favorite childhood characters from the stories she and her dad had written together filled the air.
The stories featured an exiled princess named Briselle who lived in a mobile home with her affectionate aunt, uncle, and cousin. In each story, Briselle was drawn into some drama. In Ohio, Briselle rescued children who’d been kidnapped using a magical merry-go-round. In Texas, she thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up a football stadium. In New York, she foiled an assassination plot while staying at the Waldorf Astoria.
Alissa’s favorite adventure had been when Briselle
discovered a magic park swing. When she jumped off the swing, she landed on the wisteria-draped Japanese footbridge in Monet’s garden in Giverny. As soon as Briselle landed in France, her father lapsed into French, explaining how Briselle captured the thieves who stole Monet’s canvases from the Musee de l’Orangerie by an elaborate scheme that included a small dog, cupcakes with sleeping pills baked inside, and a mannequin’s dummy in a French police uniform.
Alissa and her dad laughed together through all the outrageous and ridiculous parts and were almost to the story’s satisfying conclusion when the doorbell rang and they both fell silent.
Her father’s brows drew together, his body still like a deer in headlights. Then he jerked into action, his fingers moving in a frenzy to recollect his Post-it notes. He stuffed them in his pockets, saying, “With Pandora’s jar spilled on my pages, they might have sent someone to take them. Words aren’t safe here. Not for many years.”
Her mother’s missing diary sprang to mind. “Who takes them?”
“Lost gardeners and intelligence operatives disguised as water sprites.” He smashed the notes against the bottoms of his robe’s pockets. “Spare keys are a mistake. They’re never returned.” He looked around to be sure he’d collected everything. “Let’s go. I’ll barricade us in the library. Hades’ thieves have stolen their last book from this house,” he announced.
She squeezed his hand and walked with him to the stairs as someone got impatient with the bell not being answered and began knocking loudly.
“It’s late. You go up to your room and rest. I’ll send whoever it is away.”
“I’m not sure it’s safe for you here.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, giving him a gentle push toward the stairs. “You don’t want to come back down here tonight,” she said, infusing suggestive power into her voice. His lids drifted down, and he turned and climbed the stairs slowly. “You’ll dream about your new book and tomorrow the story will pour out of you onto the page.”
She waited until he was out of sight before going to the
door. Outside, three formidable men waited. Dimitri, president of the Etherlin Council, Grant Easton, head of Etherlin Security, and Troy Rella, tasked with preserving and promoting the Etherlin’s pristine image. They were not disguised as whimsical water sprites, and their expressions were grim. A part of her, recognizing the danger, wished she’d agreed to let herself be barricaded in the library with a lifetime of books.
Merrick jerked his body until the rocks loosened. He dragged himself through the narrow passage, tearing a deeper wound in his shoulder, and stretched his head above the surface, choking and retching up water. He wrapped his arms around a jutting rock and locked his hands together so the loop of his grip held his sagging body in place. Eyes bulging, throat burning, muscles screaming, he breathed through the pain.
A few moments later, he’d recovered and pulled himself onto a rock. He looked around. The climb was three stories, with the last part being nearly vertical, which meant when he reached the top, he’d have no leverage to dig or push his way through. If there were rocks covering the opening, he didn’t have a prayer of getting out of the cave’s peak.
He stretched his body and found the handholds he needed to get him started. He climbed quickly. It had taken him three hours to find the right set of handholds the last time he’d tried the climb. Twice he’d fallen off the wall, breaking two ribs and dislocating a bone in his wrist. That wouldn’t happen tonight.
Lysander called it muscle memory. People taught themselves how to move so they could balance on a snowboard, hit a tennis ball into a square, or run and leap while catching a football. For them, it required hours of practice and repetition. Lysander’s body only needed to do something once to achieve mastery. Merrick needed more practice than Lysander,
but not as much as ordinary people. So having made the climb before, Merrick trusted his body to make it again, despite the wound.
The constant movement refused to let the ache in his shoulder die, but long experience with bearing pain allowed his mind to accept it. He fixed his focus on the goal.
Alissa.
As Merrick pulled himself through the top of the cavern, the inky darkness of the cave was replaced by a faint smattering of stars. He immediately moved deeper into the wooded mountainside.
He paused for a few seconds to let his body rest, then he started the hike. Since there was no trail, it would take him at least eighty minutes. The difference in the temperatures of his hands made him stop again. The water running off his left hand was warmer. Mixed with blood, he realized. The shoulder wound had gaped open as he climbed, but he hadn’t realized the bleeding was so brisk.
He unzipped the wet suit to retrieve a Swiss Army knife that he’d secured inside. Using the knife, he cut a slip of cloth from the suit and created a makeshift tie around his shoulder. The wound location was awkward to bandage. He used his teeth to help him secure it. Afterward, he moved the arm and shoulder slowly. No bleeding, but the tight wrap would probably have to be adjusted and secured again periodically. And moving the arm carefully would definitely slow him down and affect his timeline, which was dangerous. He had to reach the house before dawn.
He picked his way through the trees. The shoulder was going to be a problem during the final swim. After hiking through the woods, he’d end up on the side of a cliff. He’d dive off into the lake and swim across, coming out of the water at the back of Alissa’s property. That was a long time to have his shoulder in an arm-numbing tourniquet or alternatively to have it bleeding steadily from not being bandaged. He wished Tamberi Jacobi a slow and painful recovery.
Calculating time and distance, he couldn’t be sure that he’d reach her place before sunrise. He’d never actually crossed the lake. The risk of being caught was too high to attempt it twice. He contemplated turning back, but the taste of Alissa’s
blood on his tongue during that kiss and the sounds of her whispers echoed in his head. Someone in the Etherlin wanted to destroy her. Would he leave them to it?
No
.
Of course, he’d be no good to anyone if he ended up dead or in ES custody. He needed to make it in time.
In time,
he thought. That phrase brought to mind the fact that he’d almost arrived at Handyrock’s too late. Alissa had been minutes away from being dragged out of the club or killed by the Jacobis. It was like a punch to the gut to think of Alissa falling into syndicate hands again, of Jacobi’s mouth on her, of them using her or hurting her until she broke. Merrick’s blood ran cold, and his legs pumped hard as he ran through the trees. He was driven to reach her, driven in a way that surprised him.