One Soul To Share (3 page)

They had been at sea for two weeks, depending
on the sea hag’s magic to direct the current and lead them to
her.

Sarina had given the main cabin of the yacht
to the human, Nolan. She slept on deck or in the water, her hand
pressed against the boat’s side so she didn’t lose it in her
slumber.

The sun was fully overhead now, and she was
alone. Nolan, she’d soon learned, preferred night to day,
disappearing into the cabin at dawn and not appearing back above
deck until dusk.

He had other habits too that didn’t fit with
what she knew of humans. While he slept each day, she would swim
and catch fish for their dinner, but he had yet to eat anything, at
least in front of her. He drank wine, and once she had seen him
sipping something from a flask he’d pulled from one of his bags,
but he had declined all offers of food.

She had quit asking, preferring to eat her
fish alone in the sea anyway.

His habits, she realized, suited her, gave
her privacy to be in her natural state in the sea. And, since
mermaids didn’t require the same amount of sleep as humans, staying
awake through the night was no issue.

She was able to do what she wished in the
day, even sunbathing in her mermaid form on the deck, and watch the
human at night.

But still—she slapped her fin lightly against
the deck—Nolan’s habits added to her certainty that he wasn’t what
he appeared, that he wasn’t human at all but some other creature
she hadn’t encountered before.

A gull squawked overhead, pulling her back to
the present and reminding her that they were approaching land, a
small string of islands, uninhabited by humans, but the first
visible sign that they were moving closer to the sea hag’s
home.

There would be a test soon.

Sarina had no idea in what form it would come
or when, but she knew it would come.

She only hoped that whatever kept Nolan
hidden in the cabin by day wouldn’t prove to be their downfall.

o0o

Nolan’s body rolled off the bed and slammed
into a wall. His eyes flew open, and his nails scraped over the
cherry boards that lined the cabin walls. He fell back onto the
bed, only to be flung sideways again as the boat was catapulted in
the opposite direction by some unknown force.

With a curse, he leapt to his feet and clawed
at the walls to keep from tumbling again.

His head throbbed, telling him night had yet
to fall. Since his turn, he had avoided the hours between dawn and
dusk. He’d never been caught in the daylight to know if the
horror-flick images of vampires erupting into Roman candles of
flames were true; the general groggy feeling and aches he
experienced when the sun was in the sky had been enough on their
own to keep him inside.

The boat listed violently to the side again.
Only Nolan’s hands pressed on the walls of the tiny hall by the
cabin’s door kept him from slamming into the wood.

He could, he realized, stay here, become
bruised and perhaps waterlogged, or go out and hazard the sun.

Water or flames?

He chose flames.

o0o

As the boat continued to tilt side to side,
Nolan struggled his way through the bedroom door and into the
kitchen and living part of the cabin.

Sarina was nowhere to be seen, which meant
the mermaid was above deck facing whatever threatened them alone,
or she had already left—swam off to safety.

Grim but determined, Nolan flung open the
main cabin door. Sun blasted into the room, hitting him in the eyes
like a giant laser. Wincing, he stepped back, out of the light.

His eyes burning, he groped around the room,
looking for the small desk and a pair of sunglasses he’d seen
tucked into a basket.

Glasses in place, he opened the door
again.

o0o

Sarina clung to the boat’s railing and stared
up, resigned to the nightmare that had descended upon them.

A sea wyrm, the sea hag’s pet.

Steam rolled from the water dragon’s nose,
and its tongue danced over her face, smelling her. She held still,
knowing any movement on her part would only anger the creature.

It snorted, spewing hot water over her. She
shook her head, freeing the droplets from her hair, and held up
both hands, revealing she held no weapon. “I’m here by Melusine’s
invitation.”

It was the right thing to say, although most
likely unnecessary. If the dragon had thought the yacht and its
occupants were trespassing, it would have sunk the boat long before
this. Still, though, the wyrm’s job was to guard the outer
perimeter of Melusine’s territory, and it apparently took its job
seriously.

The dragon’s wormlike body curved up on both
sides of the ship.

The yacht was trapped now, sandwiched.

“If you are going to sink us, get on with
it.” To show the creature his threat was wasted on her, Sarina
lifted her head to meet his gaze and allowed her body to shift. In
seconds, her human legs were replaced by her tail, and only the
strength of her arms holding on to the railing kept her
upright.

The dragon moved its body again, sending the
boat popping upward and out of the water before landing back down
with a bone-jarring jolt.

Sarina lost her grip on the railing and went
flying. With a roar, the dragon moved in and caught her on the
bridge of its wide nose.

Stranded like a beached animal, she could do
nothing but stare into the creature’s oversize amber eyes.

Holding her gaze, it pulled its tail from the
water and slapped it hard against the surface of the water.

A wave washed over the yacht and the dragon,
sending the boat and Sarina airborne. She closed her eyes and
prepared to hit the water, but the welcome feel of the ocean
embracing her never came. Instead, she was grabbed again, this time
by the dragon’s tail.

With a roar, he held her overhead, like a
human dangling a mouse by its tail.

o0o

On deck, Nolan blinked—not from the sun, but
what was blocking it.

A huge gold-and-green dragon with fins
jutting from the sides of its face and a tongue that danced out of
its mouth like an excited snake’s rose from the sea next to the
yacht.

At Nolan’s arrival, it opened its lips and
roared. Hot steam coated Nolan, clouding his glasses.

He had wanted fire. It appeared the dragon
might soon give him his wish.

He glanced over the deck, searching for
Sarina, but the mermaid was nowhere in sight.

Free, then.
Swum away, leaving Nolan
to face this beast on his own. Not that Nolan could blame her. He
couldn’t imagine a mermaid had much defense against a creature this
large—no more than a lone vampire might.

But then Nolan couldn’t swim, at least not
like the mermaid.

Which left him with one choice—fight.

While he thought, the dragon turned the boat,
using a part of its body submerged beneath the water, Nolan
guessed.

Nolan stood still as it analyzed him and his
apparently hopeless situation.

“If you are going to sink me, do it now,” he
muttered as much to himself as the beast.

The dragon paused and, for a moment, leaned
closer. Its tongue darted out, touching Nolan’s face, chest, and
legs.

The boat rose, and the dragon turned, another
bigger section of its body appearing from beneath the waves—its
tail, Nolan realized, but something more too.

Wrapped tight in the creature’s tail was
Sarina, her face pale and her eyes closed.

She hadn’t swum away.

One simple thought, but it was enough.

The beast Nolan worked so hard to keep hidden
behind a human face burst free. His fangs extended, and his muscles
clenched. His thick vampire blood pounded through his heart, and
the pulse at his neck jumped.

He hadn’t fed in two weeks, not from a living
creature. And while the blood of this oversize snake was far from
what he craved, it would more than do for now.

He ran forward, leaping as he did.

His arms wrapped around the dragon’s body,
not far below its head and his fangs sank into its flesh.

Its scales were soft and easy to pierce, but
in an anger-fueled rush, Nolan had taken no time to assess his
target. His bite sank into flesh but missed any veins the creature
might have.

If it had veins.

The dragon jerked and tossed its head trying,
it seemed, to dislodge the vampire attached to its throat, but,
determined, Nolan hung on. The creature roared, and steam rolled
from its throat.

Nolan’s clothing stuck to his skin, and his
hair clung to his face. He was sticky, and his arms ached with the
effort of holding the twisting, angry beast, but none of that
mattered; nothing mattered but getting it to loosen its hold on the
mermaid.

His lifted his face and yelled, “Drop
her.”

The dragon sank under the sea, beneath the
boat and lower. Arms and legs wrapped around the creature now,
Nolan closed his eyes and willed his mind to slow.

He was accomplishing nothing holding the
creature like this. Would accomplish nothing. He was to the dragon
what a mosquito might be to a bear. Annoying but little more.

Deeper they went until sun no longer filtered
through the water, until only Nolan’s vampire ability allowed him
to see at all. Suddenly, with no apparent reason, the dragon slowed
until he seemed to barely be moving.

Nolan pulled the sunglasses from his face and
shoved them into a pocket. Then, thinking this would be his chance
to let go and escape back to the surface, he looked around but
quickly realized he had no idea which was up and which way was
down.

He could as easily swim deeper into the sea
as swim to the surface.

As he pondered his choice, something slipped
under his waist and curled tightly around him. Then, with no other
warning, he was jerked from the dragon’s throat and dropped. He
floated for a moment, stunned and unsure of what had happened.

With no sound and no backward look, the
dragon slithered away. The creature had done as he’d ordered. He
had dropped Sarina, and Nolan too.

Unfortunately, wherever he had left the
mermaid was nowhere near here.

Deciding his only choice was to take a chance
and hope he swam the right direction, Nolan swept his arms through
the water, pushing his body upward… or what he hoped was
upward.

He had moved maybe three feet before his body
jerked to a stop. Confused, he looked down.

A long, green tendril of some plant was
wrapped around his leg. Curving his body down, he tried to loosen
the strands with his fingers. The plant held tight. In fact, if
Nolan hadn’t known better—that plants were incapable of action of
their own volition—he would have sworn the vine actually tightened
in protest to his pulls.

Tired of messing with the thing, he bent
lower and tried to saw through the tendril with his teeth. After
what felt like minutes of scraping his fangs over the plant, he
pulled back again.

The plant was completely unscathed, not even
a scratch to show where Nolan’s fangs had touched it.

The dragon’s unexpected release of him might
not have been unexpected at all.

He had been trapped.

Sarina floated to the surface and gasped in
air. The dragon had held her too tightly, too long. The air she’d
held in her lungs had been squeezed out. She’d been close to
passing out when the beast had dropped her and left her floating
like debris in the deep water.

Mermaids didn’t die easily, though, and she’d
managed, despite a shooting pain in her chest, to make her way back
to the surface.

She had also, however, lost sight of both the
dragon and Nolan.

An image of the human flying toward the
dragon shot through her mind. She’d been weak then, desperate, and
the human had seemed to notice… had seemed to care.

An impossible thought, of course. Humans
didn’t care, not about mermaids as beings like themselves. They
cared about what they thought mermaids could bring them.

But the light in Nolan’s eyes; the way his
face had twisted…

It had reminded Sarina of her mother,
fighting the pirate who, three hundred years earlier, had thought
to steal Sarina and her sister away. Rage so pure and intense, no
creature could face it and think they would win against it.

Her mother had won, at least what she fought
for. Sarina and Allera had slipped out of the pirates’ net.

But Sarina and her sister had lost.

Allera had lost her soul, and their mother
hadn’t survived. She’d died in that net, speared by a sailor when
she tried to follow her daughters through the opening she’d created
with the slashing of her tail.

Her mother’s tears and blood had coated them.
Sarina could still feel and smell both. She’d stared at her sister
and known Allera, younger and more vulnerable, was her
responsibility now, and she’d sworn she would find a way to get her
sister’s soul back.

Sarina’s hand wrapped around the vial that
hung from her neck.

Which brought her back to Nolan. Whether he’d
attacked the dragon out of rage for Sarina as a being or Sarina as
the mermaid who could get him to the sea hag didn’t matter.

Sarina needed him.

In the distance, she could see their yacht,
still afloat. She spun in place, scanning for the human and the
dragon. There was no sign of either.

If the dragon had left, his assignment must
have been completed. The boat seemed stable, and Sarina, though
hurt, was alive.

Which only left Nolan. Sarina couldn’t
imagine the sea hag would have ordered a possible mate killed, but
tested? Yes.

And how would Melusine test a mate?

She’d do the same thing Sarina had done.
She’d see if he could last underwater.

Ribs aching, Sarina dove deep into the
sea.

o0o