Authors: Katherine Irons

Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fantasy, #Chick-Lit, #Mythology

Seaborne (29 page)

BOOK: Seaborne

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“Let us pass,” she said. “Please, Justin.”

“Where do you think you’re going with this gigolo? And you, Atlas. I told you to put her down. I won’t ask you again.”

“Good,” Morgan answered. “Because we’re leaving.”

“It’s all right,” Claire said, hanging on tightly to Morgan. “I want to go with him. I have to go. I’m sorry you had to come out here, but—” She flinched, gasping as Justin drew a gun from under his jacket. “Oh, my God! Justin, what are you doing?”

“Aim that someplace else,” Morgan said.

“Not until you put her down. Back up. That’s right,” Justin said as Morgan took several steps backwards. “Lower her to the bed.”

“This is a mistake,” Claire protested. “I want to go with him. Please, Justin. Don’t do this.”

Justin squeezed off a single shot, striking Morgan. Claire screamed as the force of the bullet tore through his chest. He staggered and dropped her onto the bed. Still screaming, she reached out to him.

“Morgan! Nooo!”

Justin fired a second time and Morgan went down grasping his belly. Blood poured through his fingers. One of the bullets must have passed through him and shattered her bedroom window. Sheets of rain poured through the empty frame and salt wind blew into the room.

“Why?” Claire screamed at Justin. “Why?” Morgan was dying. She hadn’t imagined that a man could lose so much blood. It spread around him, running across the hardwood floor in streams. She could smell his blood, acrid, sweet, and cloying. “No, you can’t. Morgan!”

He struggled to rise, and then fell back. He reached toward her with a bloody hand. “Claire …” He gasped and then collapsed and lay still.

Justin came to the side of her bed. “It’s your fault he’s dead. You told me that you were alone.”

“Why? Why would you shoot him?”

He removed a pair of medical gloves from his pocket and methodically put them on. “You should have agreed to marry me. I would have been happy with half. Now, I’ll have it all.”

“All what?” She stared at him. What was he doing? Why the gloves now?

Justin’s gaze met hers, his eyes as emotionless as a shark’s. “You see how it happened,” he said. “A robbery gone wrong. Too bad I arrived too late to save you.” He leaned over the bed, reaching for her throat with gloved hands.

“Get away from me! Don’t you touch me!” She struck out at him. “You’ve gone mad. You can’t murder me and get away with it!”

“Why not?” He smiled. “I killed Richard, and he’s three thousand miles away. No one will suspect me.”

“Richard? You murdered my father? You’re lying to me. He left a message on the answering machine today. I—”

“Guess you should have picked up, darling. Rotten of you not to, seeing as how it was your last opportunity to speak to each other. A pity.”

He knelt on the bed and wrapped his hands around her throat.

“No! Not Richard. You couldn’t.” Helpless from the waist down, she tried to beat him off, but he was so strong. His fingers tightened, biting into her flesh. Black spots danced behind her eyes. Her chest burned. Morgan dead. Richard dead. What did it matter anymore?

It mattered! It mattered if the bastard got away with it! She let go of his hands, balled a fist and hit him as hard as she could in the face.

Justin swore and pressed down harder.

I’m dying
, she thought.
This is what it feels like to die
.

Abruptly, Justin’s fingers were torn away. She gasped for air, choking and gagging. Justin screamed as Morgan threw him across the room and he smashed into the French doors.

“Claire? Are you—”

She nodded her head, weeping now, unable to utter more than a rasp through her battered throat. “He killed Richard. He killed my father.” She touched him. “Are you real?” she managed. “You’re not dead?”

In answer, he picked her up and started for the door. She could tell by the way he walked that his wounds had drained his strength. “I have to get to the sea,” he said.

“Go, save yourself,” she urged him. “Leave me.”

“Never again.”

Outside, the storm had grown worse. The wind was coming off the ocean and the force of it hit them in the face as they crossed the lawn. “Take the elevator to the beach,” she shouted in Morgan’s ear. “The stairs are too steep. You can never make it down carrying me.”

Ignoring her pleas, he passed the elevator platform and began the climb down the slippery stone steps to the sand. They were halfway to the bottom, and Morgan was clinging to the metal rail and attempting to catch his breath when another shot rang out. Blood and flesh exploded from Morgan’s shoulder and he grunted in pain.

“Morgan!”

Claire looked up and her heart kicked against her ribs as she made out Justin’s shadowy form at the top of the cliff. The muzzle of his gun spat fire.

CHAPTER 29

“H
urry,” Claire cried. “He’ll kill us.” She’d never regretted the loss of her legs so much as she did at that instant.

Lightning struck the beach, momentarily deafening her. The shock of the bolt nearly knocked them off the stairs, and illuminated the landscape with the full force of the noonday sun. The stench of sulfur filled her nose. Her mouth tasted of metal. Half-blinded, she looked up and caught a glimpse of Justin’s hate-filled face white against the dark cliff wall. He was coming down the stairs after them at a run.

The light faded into black, and Claire gripped Morgan’s neck with all her strength. He was running too, his breath coming in hard, quick gasps with each step. Her pulse raced. She wanted to scream, but her terror was too great.
God, help us
, she prayed.

They’d reached the final turn on the stairs when a second bolt struck the beach pavilion. Wood and flames shot up to be whirled high in a howling gust of wind and driving rain. And in the glow, she glanced up to see Justin’s feet slip on the wet stone. Frantically, he grabbed for the railing. His gun tumbled out of his hand, and then he was falling after it.

Justin’s terrified shriek tore through her, turning her blood to frost. Like a giant black bird, he turned over and over in the air as he plunged past them a hundred feet to smash on the jagged rocks below.

A dozen more steps and Morgan reached the concrete walk. He left the hard surface to cut across the wet sand toward the crashing surf. Without the lightning, it was so dark that Claire couldn’t see the water, but she could hear it. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the foam-churned waves rolling onto the beach. The sand would be littered with seaweed and shells.

The space between surf and beach would be a maelstrom, but beyond, in the deep, Claire could imagine the serenity of the ocean. She could taste the saltwater on her lips. “Keep going,” she whispered hoarsely. “You can do it. Only a little farther.”

Morgan wheezed with each step. Once, he fell, driving his knee hard into the sand. “Claire.” He groaned. “I love … love you.”

“Go on, damn it!” She yanked a fistful of his hair as hard as she could. “One more step.” And when he staggered up and lurched on, she added to her lie. “One more. Just one more.”

The roar of the waves was louder. Spray drenched their faces.

“Leave me!” she cried. “Go. Leave me.”

Another step … another. She felt something cold and wet against her feet. Churning sand scoured her legs. It wasn’t possible. But it wasn’t her imagination. She could feel it.

There was so much water in the air that she could hardly breathe. It stung her eyes and ran into her nose and mouth, and—seeking shelter—she buried her face against Morgan’s chest.

He gave a long sigh and went limp. His legs folded under him and they splashed into the shallows. A wave rolled over Claire’s head. She gasped and choked, then realized that Morgan was floating away. She grabbed at him, seizing his arm, instinctively knowing that she had to get him to deep water.

He was limp, unresponsive. “Morgan!” She shook him, but he was either unconscious or had passed beyond waking and was already dead.

“No! I won’t lose you.” She dug her heels into the sand and tugged at him. He was a big man, far taller and heavier than she was—or had been even before the accident—but she wouldn’t let the sea have him. He was hers, and she would save him, no matter the cost.

Oddly, the sensation of cold had faded, and the saltwater felt smooth and soft against her skin. She kept walking, digging in and holding her ground as each wave struck her, then using the force of the outgoing water to gain a few yards. As the water deepened, it became easier to pull him. She caught her second wind and threw her muscles into the task.

Once, she thought she’d felt Morgan tremble, and she clung to that hope. He was hurt, yes, hurt badly, and he’d lost a lot of blood. But if she could get him help, she could still save him. The insanity of dragging a dying man into the ocean to heal him didn’t matter. Deep inside, in some primitive part of her mind, she knew that this was exactly what she had to do.

The surf was the worst. The sand floor had given way to rock and shell and debris. The waves caught her in an iron grip and tumbled her over and over. Keeping Morgan from being ripped away from her took every ounce of her will, but when she’d been thrown back from the surf line a dozen times and was so weary that she barely had the strength to stand, something loomed from the blackness.

Something smooth and powerful …

Claire reached out and her hand brushed a large fin. Shark? If she’d had the strength, she would have laughed. What was it Richard loved to say? “There’s no situation so bad that it can’t get worse.”

I’ve gone into the ocean to drown in a storm, only to be eaten by sharks
, she thought
.
And then the thing bumped her ribs, hard, knocking the wind out of her, and she gasped once and let the sea wash her away.

She was dreaming again
.
And it was a good dream. Morgan was with her—Morgan whole and beautiful and strong—and he was kissing her with slow sweet kisses, kisses that conveyed such poignant tenderness that she was crying with joy.

Claire opened her eyes to discover that she was lying on a bed of kelp with Morgan sitting beside her and holding her hand. Blue-green water flowed above and around them, and hovering several yards above them was a large and handsome bottle-nosed dolphin. And, the dolphin was wearing what seemed to be a collar or harness.

“Am I dead?” she asked.

Morgan laughed. “No, not anywhere close to it.”

She closed her eyes. She felt as though she’d been hit by a truck … but everything worked. She wiggled her toes and fingers, then reached down and pinched her thigh. She could feel it. She could feel it! “It’s like before,” she said, opening her eyes and laughing. “When I’m here with you, I’m not paralyzed.”

“Never again,” he promised.

She stared at him. Something about him was very different. He was still her Morgan, yet … more… . It made no sense. She looked down at her arms and her breasts. Her body was perfect, her arms no longer scarred and deformed by the accident, and for an instant, she thought she could make out tiny golden scales. She blinked. Scales? She must be dreaming.

“If we’re not dead, explain this,” she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “A minute ago, we were both drowning in the surf. Actually, I was drowning. You were bleeding to death—if you weren’t already dead. Justin shot you at least three times.”

“He did. And you saved my ass. Again.” He kissed her. “You’re a handy woman to have around.”

She glanced around. Columns of kelp formed deep green draperies on two sides, but the ocean stretched out endlessly in the other directions: sandy bottom sprinkled with shells, water rich with sea life. “No sharks?” she ventured.

“Plenty of sharks, just not here.” He indicated the dolphin. “They tend to stay away from Echo.”

“Echo? Its name is Echo?”

Echo clicked and gave a high-pitched whistle.

“Not it,” Morgan corrected. “She’s female.
Her
name is Echo.”

“You have a dolphin buddy?” This had to be a dream. But then she remembered the manta rays. If he palled around with rays, why not dolphins?

“Actually, she’s isn’t my personal dolphin. She’s my daughter Danu’s.” He shrugged. “Danu sent her along to watch over me when I came for you. And, as it turned out, we needed Echo. Badly. She pulled us out of the surf and brought us here to this sanctuary.”

Claire sat up. “A daughter? You have a daughter? But you said you’d never been married? Is she the child of a—”

“Adopted daughter,” he supplied, cutting her off. “It’s a long story, but I hope you can come to love her too. She’s an adorable child who’s desperately in need of a mother.”

Claire swallowed. “How … how old?”

“I’m not really certain. Four … maybe five. I’m no expert on guessing the ages of human children.”

“Human? Wait … this is getting crazy. Where is she? This human child? Danu? You say her name is Danu?”

“It’s what we named her. Danu was a Celtic earth goddess. She had another name when she lived on the land, but now she belongs to the sea and she needed a name to fit her. She’s beautiful, Claire, sweet, and funny, and very smart.”

Claire choked up, too full of emotion to speak. It was all too much—dolphins, daughters, and being here beneath the ocean with Morgan again. She didn’t understand any of it and wasn’t sure she cared. She would grasp what happiness she could and hold on to it as she’d held on to Morgan in the surf. She’d let the waves take her where they would, so long as she was with him and he was alive and loved her.

Thoughts of a motherless little girl—Morgan’s little girl—dangled on the horizon of her hopes, but she wouldn’t ask too much. Not yet. If she could have a child of her own, it would fill an ache that had grown under her heart since she was young, but it was too soon to take that in.

“Promise me that I won’t wake up in my bedroom at Seaborne again,” she begged him.

“You won’t.” He leaned and brushed his lips against her forehead. “I can’t leave the sea again, not and live. I’ve used up my store of energy—for that, at least. You do remember that you promised to be my wife.” He caught her hand and lifted it for her to see.

On her ring finger, on her left hand, was a braid of seaweed with a glistening pink shell for a stone. “Oh, Morgan. I love it!”

He laughed. “I promised you a real betrothal ring, set with any precious stone you want. Ruby? Emerald? Diamond?”

“I’d rather have this one.”

He grinned at her. “We’ll see. I think I can provide an adequate substitution, but that will do until we reach Atlantis.”

She stared at him. “We’re going to Atlantis? It’s real?”

“As real as I am,” he said. “Remember when I promised to make you a princess? I really am a prince, Claire, crown prince of the ancient kingdom of Atlantis. Someday, you’ll be queen of it all.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “And Alex, is he real too?”

“All too real, I’m afraid. And Orion, and Poseidon, my father. I’ve a large family, Claire. Wait until you meet them. They’re going to be surprised.”

“That you’re marrying a human?”

He laughed again. “No, that I’ve found an Atlantean woman on land. You shouldn’t be able to breathe under the water without my assistance, but you can. You should have drowned in the surf, but you transformed, and you saved me as well.”

“Now, you’ve really lost me.” She slid her feet over the edge and stood. When she looked down, she saw that she was wearing a short tunic of leaf-green seaweed and that her bare feet had a fine web between her large toe and the next. “So, what you’re telling me is that I’ve always been a mermaid? Like the one in the Disney movie?”

He shook his head and pulled her into his arms. “This isn’t a fairy tale, Claire. Atlantis is a real place and, somehow, you carry Atlantean blood. You know Richard was your adoptive father, and you never knew who either of your birth parents were. At least one of them, probably your father, was an Atlantean.”

“So, you’re telling me that if I have a mermaid for a father, that would make me one too?”

Morgan chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “What I’m saying is that you carry the DNA of the sea people. It’s impossible for you to drown in the ocean. In saltwater, your body knows how to make the changes necessary to live underwater.” He pushed her back a step and tipped up her chin. “But you can’t return to land, not even for an hour. Your system is too fragile. But this is your element. You’re not an alien species. You’re one of us come back to your home.”

She shook her head. “I’m supposed to swallow all this? It sounds like a fishy tale to me. If I’m a mermaid, where’s my tail? The one with the scales and fin?”

“You aren’t a mermaid, and neither was your father. You’re an Atlantean. Even if it wasn’t a parent—if it was a grandparent—who carried our genes, that’s all it takes.”

“Then how could I have been a normal baby? How could I breathe air? It makes no sense,” she argued.

“How do you know what you were like as a baby? Do you remember? All you have to go on is what Richard told you. I can’t explain how or why. I’m only grateful that you don’t have to pass through a normal transformation. I can’t believe it didn’t happen before this… . It’s a wonder you didn’t transform to an Atlantean as a child, when you were swimming in the sea off Seaborne’s beach. You should have—”

“Richard wouldn’t let me in the ocean. He was deathly afraid of the water. At least, that’s what he told me.” Memories of her childhood were sketchy, even memories of her father. She had to stretch her mind to see his face … to remember the sound of his voice. Even her beloved Seaborne seemed like something from a dream.

“We need to return to the palace as soon as—”

Abruptly, the dolphin swooped over them. She gave a loud series of squeaks and a whistle.

BOOK: Seaborne

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