A Mermaid's Ransom (Daughters of Arianne 3)

She found she had moisture after all, because tears were leaking out of her eyes again. "What you're doing is wrong, but I don't know if I would have done it differently, if I'd experienced what you've been through. So no matter what happens, Dante, I understand. I also believe that once you're free, you'll understand honor and promises much better. I feel your heart." Freeing her hand, she laid it on his chest. "While there's so much darkness in you, probably more than I've ever felt in anyone, there's a light in there so strong, just waiting. Embrace it, and I promise I won't . . ." A sob caught in her throat, her fingertips spasming on his skin, "I will miss my life, but I won't hate you. I promise." Goddess, even her lips were tired, but they still managed to twist in a wistful smile. "And thanks for my first time. It wasn't exactly how I'd planned, but it was as earth shattering as I heard it could be."

His expression darkened, his fingers curling into her hair, hard enough that the strands tugged painfully at her scalp. "Alexis, I forbid you to die. Do you understand me? Look at me."

The sharpness of his command had her returning her focus to his face, despite the hammer of pain building in her temples. He locked her into his gaze. Oddly, something there did make her entire body, deep down into her bones, respond to the command in his voice, hold on to that tenuous thread connecting her to life. To him.

"You will obey me. You will not die."

"I don't want to die," she managed. "I really, really don't."

He caught her tears on his thumbs, dampening the soft hair at her temples as he stroked her there.

An energy shift made her cry out, for it was like an electric shock snapping through the chamber. Her fingers clung to his arms, an anchor against the pain. He stiffened, his head lifting as if he were listening to something else. "She is calling. The portal is ready."

In a swift movement that had Alexis gasping in pain, he had her up off the bed and was carrying her back to the hated pool of blood. New things had been laid out there. A sharp knife, a spellbook and a second circle next to the original blood basin. This one was marked with a pungent concoction looking like tangled entrails. It made her feel a need to retch, though she was glad it came from the insides of something she'd mercifully not had to see.

"Please don't put me in the blood again," she said. She didn't want to die there.

"I must." He put her down into it, despite the sob that escaped her, the shameful clutch of her hands he had to loosen, though he was not unkind about it. She cringed as the blood seeped into her scales again. "It will only be a moment. I will stand there"--he indicated the other circle--"and I will go through first."

Alexis yelped as something large landed against the tower door, followed by a shriek of rage. Many shrieks of rage. She gasped as two Dark Ones flew past the open window, their burning gaze landing on her, fangs bared.

"They sense a rift opening," Dante said. "I haven't summoned one of them to go through at the lower level of the tower, where I have an opening just for them, so they know something is amiss. The window and that door are shielded, for now. The circle will protect you for a time from their attack if they burst through. As soon as I am clear, I will release the hold of the circle, and the rift will pull you through after me."

If everything went as it should. But she remembered that feeling of horrible despair as they'd poured in before, the way it had drained her, even inside the circle. She didn't have enough strength left. It would finish her. She would die in this terrible world, in the blood of a terrified woman and who knew how many other sacrifices, surrounded by those soulless creatures.

"Dante," she cried out, terrified anew.

But he was already standing in his circle, and when she tried to move toward him, the circle's shielding had returned, keeping her where she was. As he turned his back on her, energy began to shimmer throughout the room again. He was chanting, setting up his passage and perhaps hers, words she didn't know but she was sure Mina would. She'd wanted to learn more about magic, but there'd been many things she'd wanted to do.

Dante's magic had an innate energy to it. She felt it wrapped amid his emotions, an inextricable part of him. The Dark Ones may have taught him rudimentary preparations to save them gruntwork, and Dante may have read all the grimoires they left behind, but a great deal of the magical energy pressing in on this room was his own, a natural sorcerer's. Did he know it?

Dante, don't leave me here. I'm so afraid. Dizziness closed in, her arms barely holding her up. No. Please let me lose consciousness before my face falls into the blood.

He was tracing symbols that shimmered in flame and then seared themselves into the air so she could see their outline. Power sizzled, burning her lungs, her eyes. Flame shot up around them, and still she yearned toward him, hoping, even though hope didn't exist here. Mercy didn't exist here. She felt nothing from him now, just a pure, focused intent to get the hell out of this place.

But Jonah would sacrifice all he was to hunt him down and claim vengeance for his daughter. Her mother's heart would break, her spirit shattered. It all rolled into the pain of loss, an end Lex had never imagined for any of them. She couldn't bear it.

Please, Dante . . . If he did it this way, he wouldn't find what he sought. He couldn't. She knew it. And that was as heartbreaking as all the rest.

It was too late. The flames shot higher, and now she saw the rift outline, a spiral of starlight, flame and darkness within its boundaries that would take him into her world. Into destruction, of far more than just himself.

While she would be alone and terrified. It was demeaning for that to leap to the forefront now, ahead of everything else. His back flexed, that beautiful body moving forward. Would he even look back at her, or had he already forgotten her existence? Her soul cringed at that final betrayal, so irrationally deep she wobbled, afraid the breath she rasped before he stepped through would be her last.

His form shimmered, and she drew in a cry, a painful denial. It was all the strength she had left. As if her arm muscles had turned to water, she fell forward, so hard her face hit the stone at the bottom of the shallow basin. Blood, its wetness and smell, invaded her nose and mouth, forcing her eyes shut. She always kept her eyes open underwater, but this was cold, slimy and brought none of the reassurance the sea did.

Terror spiked through her sluggish body as the banging on the door became thunder, wood splintering and stone crumbling. She was going to die, chained forever to their hopelessness.

She screamed as she was grabbed. Adrenaline kicked in enough for her to strike out feebly. Her Dark One attacker pulled her out of the bloody circle, turning her over so fast in its grasp, it was as if the world tilted, upending her onto the cool stone so he and his fellows could rape her flesh, strip it from her bones while there was life left in it.

"No," she wailed, wishing she could be brave, wishing she was anywhere else, wanting her father or mother . . . or Dante.

Hands cradled her face, the thumbs swiping over her eyes, taking away the blood. She let her gaze spring open, and saw Dante's hard face above her.

"You will go first," he said. "You will not die."

She felt the terrible knowledge in him, what he held at bay like a finger in the dike of his emotions. The larger part of himself was howling, demanding that he sacrif

ice anything he must to get free, to do what he'd dedicated his life to doing. It was like watching one lone man battle all the forces of hell erupting from his soul, and it was a terrible energy, pouring over her, telling her how close he was to changing his mind. But he thrust her down in his circle, straightened and shouted out the proper words, defiant, angry, his shoulders back. His crimson eyes were as fierce as the flames rising around them, stifling her with their heat.

She was so weak, she could only watch. She wanted to tell him they would help him get back through, they would honor their agreement . . .

Only they hadn't really had one, had they? They'd agreed to open the portal for him under duress, in exchange for her life. If they had her, they would close it. Nothing he'd done would merit their consideration, because they were not seeing him right now. Only she understood the cost, and even she couldn't completely comprehend it, because she'd only experienced two days of it.

Her arms started to shimmer as the portal transfer took a grip on her body, a hard, painful suctionlike pull.

Emitting a piercing snarl that her mother would have recognized in the echo of her father's battle cry, Alexis used a reserve of strength she didn't really have. By force of will alone, her wings and tail muscles shoved her upright, toppling her toward him. In automatic reaction, he grabbed her, because, bless the Goddess, he hadn't shielded this circle to hold her inside it as he had hers.

Wrapping her arms around his waist, Lex pressed her cheek against his abdomen and flipped over, making him stumble the necessary couple of steps into the circle. Holding on as if the universe was at stake, she closed her eyes. With an ominous scream of wind and energy, or perhaps those were the shrieking voices of those being left behind, the portal pulled them both in.

Eleven

HE'D said the portal could only take one at a time. She knew enough about magic to know it was idiotic to go against its rules. While it had been pure impulse, she realized she might have killed them both, because she felt like she'd been shut up in a dryer, blasted with searing heat as she was pummeled, turning and spinning.