A Mermaid s Kiss (Daughters of Arianne 1)

Her scream ricocheted over the water, startling a moored flock of pelicans. It wrenched something inside David. But how many times had Jonah, Luc and other veterans told him? You're young; you still feel compassion for Dark Ones.

But she wasn't a Dark One. Dark Ones didn't have the tail or fins of a mermaid, though hers wasn't a typical tail. More like a cross between the powerful, sensitive tentacles of an octopus and the whip style of a sea serpent.

"If you bite me, you'll be sorry," he promised. Still, he cupped her face warily, using pressure to turn her toward him, to verify the remarkable thing he'd seen below the water. One half of her face was destroyed, as if the flesh had been gnawed away and never healed. The other . . . He'd never seen anything, short of the Goddess Herself, so beautiful. It was heartbreaking. Long black hair, a blue eye with dark, sooty lashes, the iris as vibrant as a jewel. She wore an earring. A pretty bauble fixed in the unscarred ear, something a young girl would wear. A little silver dolphin with a turquoise stone, likely found in the same wreck where she found the pipe that would have broken a mortal's jaw.

"You're Dark Spawn, aren't you?" They were a terrible and rare thing, something he'd never seen. For one thing, females of any species raped by Dark Ones didn't typically live. And if they survived, the children were either born as evil as their sires and angels dispatched them in the same manner they did Dark Ones, or the hapless creatures were so mutated coming out of the womb they couldn't survive.

He plucked at her hair and earned a hiss, a swipe of those sharp teeth. It was a near thing, but he sensed the energy a blink before it detonated. Throwing himself over her, he pressed down on her struggling body and snapped the counterspell. The explosion that would have flung him from her became scraps of electrified air, drifting around them like confetti. The other tentacle whipped up, struck his back with the fierce fire of a scourge. She howled as he spun out another dagger and pinned that tentacle as well. Christ, he hated this.

"Enough, witch." He snarled the Inert command, which should neutralize anything she could throw at him, and watched her brow furrow and her desperation increase as she realized he'd rendered her helpless. Her tentacles were bleeding from where his blades pierced them. She was trembling with pain, and her fear of him.

Steeling himself against that, he raised the feather. "Where did you get this, Dark Spawn? You know you can't lie to me, so don't try."

He would detect a lie, but he couldn't necessarily wrest the truth from her, unless he wanted to resort to greater torture. He'd forced Dark Ones to reveal information before, and in similar circumstances, he'd have reached down and twisted the dagger. But this wasn't normal. She wasn't . . . He didn't know what he was dealing with. Dark Ones were not young, not mermaid-looking . . . not girls.

This time he swept her hair from her in one decisive moment and looked upon her form fully, trying to school his face to impassivity and ignore how her trembling increased.

But the scarring ran so deep and wide down her left side that she didn't have a left breast. She was missing two fingers on the left hand, and the rib cage on that side was marked, like the side of her face, as if she'd been dragged over oysters. In contrast, the right breast was perfectly formed, the curve heavy enough to attract his eye. Elegant fingers, slim hand and arm, a beautiful arch of rib cage and flare of hip.

While the mermaids he'd seen had the typical tail, she had a split at the juncture of her sex like humans, only instead of legs she had those two dangerous tentacles, each one nearly six feet long and very capable--as supple and as flexible as hands. Perhaps more so.

There were tight black and blue scales over her hips, matching the one blue eye. The scales themselves had a silken gloss like sleek skin. The undersides of the tentacles were coated with feelers, which he knew explained her ability to find her way around in such a dark place as the caves she must inhabit.

"I won't tell you where he is," Mina spat. "You may destroy me if you wish, my lord. He's in good hands and seems in no hurry to leave their embrace."

David's gaze shifted back to her face. "You think you are protecting him."

"I don't know you or your intentions."

"But he is being hunted . . ."

"He is beyond where the Dark Ones can find him. For a short time at least."

David straightened, though he kept a close eye on her as he passed the back of his hand over his mouth and came back with blood on his fingers. She wasn't lying--he could tell that. Jonah was in no danger from her.

"I'm going to remove the Inert command and pull the daggers out now," he said. "If you can find it in you to trust me that far, I will heal the wounds so they will trouble you no further."

She watched him with that disconcerting dual-colored gaze. "Why would you bother?"

"Child of a Dark One." His gaze drifted down. "Daughter of a mermaid. I sense no pure evil in you. Dark Spawn are rare. Those without pure evil even rarer."

"Not as rare as you think," she said enigmatically. "Just set me free. I'll tend to myself."

"Sit still until I tell you otherwise," he said shortly. "I've proven I'm faster and stronger, and you cannot use your magic against me. Don't try my patience with another attempt."

She sat sullenly while he removed the spell and then the first dagger. He did it with quick precision, knowing it was better to do that than to make it slow. She made a quiet noise, but her jaw was clenched. When he laid his hand over the wound, the wet blood seeping between his fingers, she tensed. Damn it, he wanted to remove them both to ease her pain, but she'd bolt.

"Do you know why he doesn't want us to find him?" He asked it in a low voice as he concentrated, reaching for a sense of her physiology before he activated the healing. He didn't really expect an answer unless it was a taunt, but she was the closest link to Jonah he'd yet found. He had to try.

"No. And yes. I know the symptoms, not the cure, angel. And the answer is the cure."

The wound wasn't responding as it should. Taking up the dagger, he slit his palm for a fresh, free flow of blood and squeezed it over the wound, pleased at last when he saw the edges begin to come together, to knit.

When she cried out, writhed, his gaze snapped up. She'd laid a hand on her face. The left side showed a patch of healed skin where scarring had been just a moment before.

An angel as young as himself could heal only fresh wounds. Someone like Jonah could heal ones still festering after a month or more. Only Raphael and his legion could cure afflictions years old like this.

"No. No!" She snatched the other dagger out herself, at an angle that tore the flesh and caused another, even more desolate cry.

When she dove at him, only his quickness saved him from having the metal tip plunged into his throat, but in hindsight he wondered if she'd just wanted him out of her way. She scuttled away from him, her breath laboring, the cry still bubbling in her throat, making her sound like a rasping crow. He'd taken her up on the sand to a point where she had to drag herself down to the water. She thrust the knife away to help her increase her painstaking speed along the sand, leaving a trail of blood.

David rose and watched her. He should kill her. The darkness obviously had a tight grip on her, and for that reason Dark Spawn were usually treated no differently than Dark Ones themselves. But watching her determination to get away from him . . . for healing her, he couldn't. He didn't understand what she'd said about Jonah; he didn't understand her. But he knew he needed to understand before he acted.

He caught up with her in several strides, bent and lifted her. He held on, reestablishing the Inert command since her draping tentacles could wrap around him like a python. The ferocity of her inventive curses impressed him, though. "Sshh," he ordered. "I'm taking you back to the water. Be still. What's your name?"

Fire burned in the depths of her unsettling eyes. So did fear, and a rage strong enough to consume her, he expected. She was a strange mixture of both the nightmarish monster waiting in the closet and the child shivering in the b

ed, knowing it was only a matter of time before it emerged.

"You already know. I am Dark Spawn."

"I asked your name."

"Mina." The answer was slow in coming, but as he stopped a few feet from the water, waiting as she gazed at it longingly, it came at last.

"Good." He took another step closer. "Pretty. Mina, I've given you my blood. If you call to me at any time, anywhere, and focus on it as I'm sure you know how to do as a magic user, I will hear you. Use it if harm threatens him. Will you do that?"

"How do I know you would trust me if I said yes?"

"I likely won't. Unless you call me if he is indeed in need." He set her down at the water's edge but kept a firm hand on her arm, cupping her chin to make her look at him fully, both eyes, which seemed as difficult for her as looking directly into the sun. "If you don't, you will be very sorry."

She stared at him. "You reveal too much to one you shouldn't trust."

"Perhaps. I'm told I'm young and foolish. But it is no secret angels look after each other." He also knew the shared blood would let him locate her if he or Luc wanted to question her again. He released her from the Inert command, more reluctantly than he'd expected. Impulsively, he brushed his fingers over the meeting point of scarred and fair skin, skimming his fingers down her nose, almost in benediction. She stilled in shock, her eyes widening.