A Mermaid's Ransom (Daughters of Arianne 3)

"Are you okay?"

His gaze roved over her face, her mouth, as if he was learning her all over again. She realized he wasn't wearing his sunglasses, and wondered what the old lady feeding the birds had thought.

"I don't think she could see very well. It does not matter, anyhow. As you said, humans will explain away anything they don't understand. Since most of them forgot the Mountain Battle, my eyes are a small thing."

She shifted to her hip and he surprised her when he lifted an arm and laid it around her shoulders, scooting her in closer against the morning chill.

"I don't want to go back," he said at last. "But that place they kept me while you were unconscious, it was like the Dark One world, but different. I fit there."

Hell. Lex wanted to deny it, insist he belonged in a world of light with her, but she remained silent, let him speak his peace.

"In the shower, I was thinking of everything that has happened. Not just the dangerous things, like the woods or the being that Reba saw while we were in the tank. I have been thinking of the things you have tried to show me, teach me. I thought as you did, that it was only a matter of time, but this is not the world I knew, where adaptation is about surviving, fighting. Here it is about living. Trusting." He met her eyes. "You have said that to me, several times. There are many things that I don't understand, that I'm not ready to accept. I was in an entirely different world for decades, as you said."

He gave her a bleak look, for him an almost vulnerable expression, one that shocked her. "In Hell, I will pose less of a danger. Make a more gradual introduction to your world. This will be less difficult for you."

"You aren't difficult," she said immediately, but he shook his head, squeezed her hands to bid her silent again.

"I have no wish to be your burden, Alexis. You say you are mine, my mate, my lover. To be that, I need to become something in this world. I have asked you several times why you helped me, do you remember?"

When she nodded, he glanced back at the birds. "Even at the beginning, when it was clear I was the one who'd kidnapped you, the first thing you did in the Dark One world was beg me for help. You see a part of me that is closed to my own eyes. This morning, watching you sleep, I finally realized that you have been telling me the truth about why you helped me. I just don't know enough to understand that part of you, and I could hurt you very badly in the process of trying to understand."

"You won't."

"Yes, Alexis, I would." He gave her a level glance. "For so many years, I just wanted away from one place, more than I cared about belonging anywhere else. And now I find that this is supposed to be my home, my mother's world, and it is a home that may not want me. I could carve myself a place here with blood and fear, but that is what I left. I want to know something different, but I do not yet know how to be different. You've shown me what is possible, but I must learn that road. What I want seems to be within my grasp, but it's a puzzle I cannot comprehend. So though I hold it in my hand"--his fingers tightened on hers--"I'm not sure I will obtain it."

She studied him, sitting so still, his back against a tree. He was a shadow in the night, something that most would miss, or when discovered, would strike terror into the heart of an unwitting pedestrian or early jogger. "Dante," she said quietly. "I've asked you before. We all have, but I'm asking you to tell me. What do you want?"

She wasn't sure if he'd answer, but then she was stunned to feel a door opening inside him that wasn't anger, but something far stronger. Something even her empathic senses hadn't felt because of how tightly it had been locked within him. It could implode if not handled gingerly, a nuclear bomb that would cause his cells to devour one another rather than reveal the secret they kept.

"Just this," he said at last. His tortured voice brought tears to her eyes. "I want this, Alexis. The ability to sit beneath a tree, smell grass, hear birds. Go to sleep and not have to stay on the edge of waking, prepared to fight for my life. I want to see and do the things you've done all your life and taken for granted because they were always there. Gifts you never think of as gifts because you've always had them, like the ability to breathe.

"I have done everything your father accused me of. And I would do it all again, just to have this," he gestured. "The ability to sit under a tree without fear. Without the stench of sulfur and blood in my nose." He stared back out at the night. "If they weren't going to let me have that, I was prepared to fight them, destroy whoever I had to destroy, but I'd turn this world into the one I left." His gaze shifted to hers. "I don't want your world to become that, even if I'm not allowed to be a part of it. The angel and witch want to send me back to the Dark One world. Before I found out about our marks, I would have preferred death to that."

"No." She gripped his arm. "You can't--"

"Would you want to live in that world, Lex? Would you want anyone you care about to be imprisoned in that world?"

"I wouldn't want an enemy in that world," she admitted. He nodded.

"I should go back to Hell, stay there for a while. If I cannot prove myself, then they can imprison me there if they feel they must. Because of our bond, I think they will agree to that. Then I will be in your world, the world of my mother, even if they never trust me enough to release me."

"Dante." Alexis firmed her chin. "It's way too early for this talk, you know? You really--"

A shadow crossed his face, a real one, at the same moment that odd feeling returned, strong enough to make her gasp. "Dante--"

Jerking her to her feet, he shoved her away from him, making her stumble over the tree's roots and fall to her knees. Before she could cry out in surprise, a net had fallen over him. Silver and gold strands, an enchantment. Alexis scrambled up and lunged forward, trying to yank it off him. As Dante fought it, she smelled singed skin, saw his fingers burn from the contact.

It didn't cause her harm, though. She threw herself at it, frantically seeking a way to lift it. Pyel, help! Marcellus, David, please help us.

She was grabbed from behind and flung back. Dante roared as she hit the ground hard. As she rolled, she came back to her feet and caught a glimpse of three creatures. Leather wings, long golden white hair, sharp eyes, long noses and a flash of pale skin were brief impressions as she launched herself at them, snatching up a rock. "Let him go."

Alexis, don't.

But she didn't heed Dante. The nearest creature turned, catching her wrist and snapping the rock out of her hand with one effortless move. "You are not part of the evil," it said in a voice like the music of wind and stream, of deep earth. She felt only calm impassivity, nothing else. "You are unwise to help him."

"Let him go." Struggling, she settled for a sharp kick that earned a grunt. A backhand sent her spinning through the air. Landing hard on the ground, she skidded several feet. She had time to think that she'd been sent flying through the air way too many times this week before the second creature was upon her. While he held her down, the net tightened into a ball, drawing Dante into a painful fetal position, rendering him even more helpless.

He'd been in this place before. His mind was shredding itself, trying to get around it, and she screamed at the torment of it. It shattered her filters, took her down into the madness of his mind. I'd rather die than go back to that.

"Who are you?" she wailed.

"We are the protectors of the Fen," the winged creature holding her said, studying her with ruthless detachment. "You are not part of this. Evil will answer for murder."

"Wait. You can't. He's--"

"It's irrelevant," the being said. "Good-bye."

A flash of light flooded the glade. Straining through that conflagration of Dante's rage and emotions and her own aching body, Alexis saw a silver-white portal open, felt the wild spiraling wind of it lash out and drive her back to her knees, even as she struggled to go forward. Dante's gaze met hers. The look in his eyes tore her heart from her. His fear and rage were soul deep. He couldn't be bound and made helpless again. He couldn't. He'd destroy everyth

ing around him if he had to. The collar would burn through his throat, taking his head long before he would ever stop fighting.

I'll find you. I promise, I'll find you.

Gripped by the sheer chaos of his mind, she was frozen by the sound of his voice, calm and dangerously impassive, devoid of emotion. Let me go, Alexis. You have done enough. Thank you. If they kill me . . . I'm sorry for binding you to me.

"I'm not," she shouted over that wind. But she wasn't sure if he'd heard her, because he was gone. She stumbled forward into the energy chasm left behind, a dead space that spread through the glade and dropped her to her knees.