A Mermaid s Kiss (Daughters of Arianne 1)

me.

Sometimes a soldier couldn't fight for the world anymore. But he could fight for the one he loved. Countless mighty armies had fallen before people who, driven to the wall, with no larger principles, had won by fighting for the things that mattered most to them. Home and family.

Her voice strengthened as she made her way slowly to her feet, all the way this time, praying she wouldn't pass out. The music healed her ears so she could hear again. The vortex of wind strengthened once again as well, beginning to sing with her, a rushing backdrop, and it was just the two of them. Even if it all passed away, as everything must, it had existed, those joyous things she had shared with him. The amazing things he had seen and known. Some of them would exist forever. Other things would be replaced by new wonders, the gift of the ebb and flow of time.

It was no easy thing, processing all that when mired in a nightmare world of fear and doubt, but she kept turning the wheel in her head desperately as he reached for her again, knowing her time was running out. It wasn't only one wheel; it was many wheels, many spokes, many details. All of them made a calliope so brilliant, a tapestry of threads that kept weaving on the looms of Fate, ever forward, backward, ever the same place. Hate and evil and death . . . Farewells would always exist because love, joy, pleasure, wishes would forever exist as well, unable to be destroyed.

Love could fall short and disappoint, but it would come back stronger for the lesson.

She put up her hands to try to stop him, but of course she couldn't. He hit her in the face again, and she only managed to duck it enough to save him from knocking her unconscious. When she fell this time, he kicked her, hard enough that he almost sent her over again, but she caught hold of the rock, pulled herself back onto the ledge, faced him from her back.

"I'm not afraid, Jonah. Neither were Ronin and all the rest. We love you. We will always love you, and you love us. That's what the Goddess is, the very essence of Her. Don't you understand, and remember? We aren't separate. Her compassion and justice are our compassion and justice. Love, and how we love each other, we're the heart, lungs, soul of Her, how we weave together, and only if we unravel, let that die, will all the good die."

Energy had started gathering around him. She remembered how it felt with Lucifer, how it had made her dizzy. This was going beyond that, into a pounding in her head, and the flame was growing in his eyes, the din of the Dark Ones exploding. It was no longer a simmering anger, but a surge of fiery triumph. The light in his eyes was their light. They had full control of him.

She wasn't ready to give up, even at the evidence of her failure. If it was her last act, whether it did any good or not, it was the one thing she wanted, needed, to do. And it was for herself as much as for any noble hope to save the world. She therefore asked forgiveness for her selfishness before she forced her failing body back to its feet.

She straightened, paying no attention to the blood that was now leaking from her nose, from her ears, making her hair itch on her neck. Tears were squeezing from her eyes from the huge pressure building around her, as if she'd sunk far down into the ocean, where a human could be crushed.

Ignoring the shuddering in her limbs, the throb of her broken arm, the fact that she could hear her organs pumping, desperately working as the weight grew upon them, she moved forward a step. Then another, struggling against that building energy, tears of effort mixing with the hemorrhaging to hold his gaze.

Oh, Goddess, it hurts. Help me. Help me reach him. Touch him just once more.

His fingers tightened on the blade, the angel fire surging blue and strong along it, though laced with that terrible blackness. But then she was there before him, looking up into his face, so temptingly close. That firm, sensuous mouth and sloping cheekbones, the hair like silk fluttering around his face. Her arms felt too heavy to lift, but she lifted the unbroken one anyway.

Perhaps the world around them had burst into flame, for now, this close to him, she seemed to be surrounded by conflagration. There were no details beyond the two of them, two beings trapped in a cyclone of Hell. When she touched his skin, it was like poison, black death rushing through her skin and into her veins, making her jerk, her fingers clutch.

"You are death and destruction," she said fiercely. "In order to bring mercy. To those who know only evil, you bring them oblivion. You keep things safe so that good can survive, so that evil can never fully take over. You protect me, and everyone like me.

"Put your hope and faith inside of my heart, and I'll make sure it's always there for you. After every fight it will be here, inside me, even if it's just inside the memory of me."

"No . . . heart. Not again."

She knew so little of him and yet so much. She knew he was in there, somewhere. "Just feel. Stop thinking and just feel . . ."

A flicker in his gaze and then she lifted onto her toes, leaned full against the sword barricading his body from her. The blade that was sharp enough to cleave hair cut into her just below her rib cage as she strained upward, brought herself to his mouth and kissed him, crying out as the fire invaded her body, the poison of the Dark Ones rushing down the blade and into the wound, coupling her to him, to the seething mass behind him.

She'd feared being among them again, but now she let it invade, let it do its worst, because all they could take was her body, her mind . . . perhaps even her soul, just as she had thought. You may take me, and yet you will get nothing. I belong to an angel.

She loved him more than anything else she'd ever been given in her life. She was no hopeless statue on a desolate shore, no mother choosing to end her life before she ever got to experience her daughter's. But she wasn't any more brave or special than anyone else, and that was the miracle of it. She simply chose to believe in her love for Jonah above everything else.

And there it went. At the end of a terrible journey that was minutes but seemed like hours, where she moaned in agony against his lips, the pain was dying away. Leaving just a spiral of thoughts now that seemed to come from the deepest part of her, the culmination of every experience, conscious or not. Her life. And she gave it all to him, mind to mind.

It all comes down to that still moment in time. It's all about that moment. If darkness completely takes over, those moments won't exist. Protect me. Protect all of us.

She kept her mouth on his, tangling the fingers of her unbroken arm into his hair. His body stood rigid, unresponsive, like a fortress of barely trembling stone, as she teased his lips, slowly pressed herself closer, closer, the blade biting into her stomach, into her flesh, into the vital organs behind. She wanted to be as close as she could to him.

"I love you, Jonah. My lord. Take my gift. Take it." She breathed into his mouth, finding the Joining energy, gathering it one last time, only this time she put something more into it, taking a page out of Mina's book from so long ago when she stood over an infant born under a curse. A gift freely given, an offering of a life to save a soul.

Her blood was running down the sword blade. It had now reached his hand, where he supported the wicked edge to hold the weapon between them.

Her hand dropped down from his neck to cover his fingers. With the last strength she possessed, she squeezed, so the blade cut into his flesh and her blood mixed with his, running into his wound.

Light and darkness, a spiraling circle of it, one chasing the tail of the other, a spinning yin and yang. The speck of darkness and light in each were like eyes, whimsy meeting the secrets of the universe. The sky crackled with fierce energy, so fierce night became day briefly. She thought she saw faces up there, all different versions of divinity. Angels and demons, birds and clouds, perhaps even a whale or two soaring across the expanse of sky as everything turned upside down, the sea and sky coming together the way a mermaid and angel might, in the most unlikely of situations.

Jonah shuddered and the blade dropped to the ground between them. Anna fell to her knees as he staggered back. An explosion of light came from the ledge behind them. The heart detonated, the exploding sha

rds of blue light spinning out like shrapnel. Jonah cried out, thrown to the ground, and she reached, straining until she could cover his hand with her own.

She tightened her fingers over his as the world erupted in chaos over them. Dark Ones surged off the ledge only to be met by a wall of angels who leaped forward, moving so fast across the sky they collided over the two of them in a deadly arc, engaging the battle.

Through the roar, Anna held on, and then cried out in tearful relief as she felt Jonah's fingers move . . . to interlace with hers. Through a haze of pain and weakness, the triumphant battle cries from the Dark Ones could only move her to pity. For she knew they'd just lost.

JONAH struggled to one knee, pulling her weak body up, cradling her in his arms. When Anna put her hand on his chest, a wave of relief, of peace, crossed her face as she apparently registered a thumping, sure and strong.

"Anna," he said, his voice thick and throaty to his own ears. But his voice, nonetheless.

"Good-bye, Jonah," she said. "I wish . . . I want to touch your face once more . . . but I can't feel my fingers."

He closed his hand over hers, brought it to his jaw and found her fingers ice-cold. "No. No."

Her body was shifting in his arms, sluggishly returning to its mermaid form, all vestiges of energy for shapeshifter magic fading away, leaving just what she'd always been. A young mermaid.

"No . . . statues. No stone."

"Only flesh and blood," he said, and his voice broke.

"Go and protect me. All of us. Like . . . being wrapped in your wings." Her face turned, pressing her mouth to his feathers, now silver white again. "No place safer for me to sleep, just as you said."

Then, as inevitable and graceful as an ebbing shoreline, the life faded from her eyes. Her body went limp in his arms, the blood from the wound in her abdomen slowing as the heart that was pumping out her life fluids came to a halt.

He couldn't heal a self-inflicted wound. Nor one where the blood had been spilled for magical purpose. It was even beyond Raphael's powers.

Jonah stared into her face, his hand on her hair, thumb tracing her lips. He was aware of what was around him, of the dangerous pulse of energy all about, but for this second, he could not move.