Diary of a Radical Mermaid (5 page)

The men dropped to the gray concrete.

“McEvers,” the executive said, muffled by pavement, “your sister’s body has been stolen by some . . . some extraordinarily violent and sadistic person, and twelve of my doctors are torn to pieces. I know you’re a trained killer, but there’s no place you can hide if you had anything to do with their murders.”

“I’m a retired navy officer who served Her Majesty, not a trained killer, and I had naught to do with whatever disaster happened aboard your ship. I only came for my sister’s body and some answers. I’ve got neither, and I don’t think I’ll be staying to hope for better.”

“McEvers, you’re under suspicion as an accessory. You can’t just disappear—”

“Oh? I think I’ll be dead, otherwise.”

A shot blasted the air, then another, both whizzing by my ears. Bits of concrete sprayed up. UniWorld Security was taking potshots at me from the ship’s upper decks. I pivoted and sprinted for the dock’s edge, raising the pistol I’d grabbed. I clipped the sideburns of three UniWorld snipers, and they ducked like schoolboys.

It was unbelievable, what he did, they’d tell their mates. Dropped a cadre of guards with his bare hands, cowed the chief and the division exec, and nearly pierced our ears while running full-out. What kind of man can manage all that?

No kind like yourselves, you Landers, take my word. And watch this.

I dropped the pistol and went over the dock’s edge in a ten-meter dive into the water. By the time I skimmed the bay’s rocky bottom they started shooting at me from above. By the time I was out of the ship’s shadow and well into the deep water of the bay I felt the distant vibration of engines. They were after me with small craft, waiting for me to pop my head up as a target.

I thought of Tara — gentle, smart, idealistic Tara, how she must have died being chased by these corporate jackals, down in the black waters beside one of their giant sterile cans of a ship, fumbling with a bit of explosive plastic goo and detonators, trying to blow a symbolic pinprick in a ship’s hide, all for the sake of a cause that should not be fought by a woman who had been lured into dangerous acts for the love of an insane and dangerous man who could not even let her body rest in peace. Orion. Goddamn him.

Get your nieces out of Scotland, I told myself. Before he finds them, too.

I shucked my clothes and shoes, then knifed through the cold Scottish waters far below the Uzis and speed boats, following the rugged coast northward for over an hour without ever surfacing to draw a new breath. Jordan called to me. I’ve sent a boat for you and the girls. Take care. See you at Sainte’s Point.

I’ll be there anon, Cousin.

Long after the UniWorld goons declared me shot and drowned I broke the surface of the waves off a rocky beach. Only a pod of whales and a small herd of sheep witnessed me walk ashore in that desolate place. I unfurled the trousers I’d tied around my waist, pulled them on, then jogged, barefoot, to the nearest road. Jogging is not something my kind does well, especially without shoes. Every centimeter of my webbing bled from the trip.

Within an hour I arrived at the isolated cottage where I’d hidden my nieces. By nightfall the four of us boarded a small sloop Jordan had arranged for us, sailing westward, leaving Tara’s body somewhere unknown in the care of the man or . . . creature . . . she’d loved so foolishly. Leaving home behind, all the McEvers’ wealth and lands, our ancient holdings on the great, deep lochs, the estates on windswept islands; headed like paupers into the great, deep channel between the continents, where no ordinary sailor would be suspected of venturing on such a perilous journey, most likely with a monster in pursuit.

Headed for the sanctuary of our American kin.

The Bonavendiers of Sainte’s Point Island, Georgia.

Back At The Island
Chapter
7

“Why, Ms. Poinfax, you look pale,” one of the pudgy little Tanglewoods said slyly as I stepped off the Delicious at Sainte’s Point. “Did Mr. Brighton spank you?”

I stared at the coy hobbit. Tanglewoods were scurrying little toadies of Great-Aunt Lilith’s. They knew everything. They spied on me gleefully. They snitched. “Get out of my way or I’ll spank you, you human hamster.”

I stomped onward.

The island’s small private harbor was packed with yachts bearing the names of a who’s who of international society. The Bonavendier mansion loomed on a knoll above the cove like a fantasy castle. In old paintings it had the look of a straight-faced European country house — no verandas and no turrets yet. Simon Bonavendier built it in the late 1700s, after George Washington awarded the island to him for his service in the Revolutionary War.

But, over the two centuries since then, the Bonavendiers expanded it and dolled it up; fortified it with new walls built of football-sized ballast stones salvaged from the holds of ships that wrecked off the Georgia coast, not to mention fine timbers and antiques that were conveniently lost by those ships. In general, the family had added verandas and turrets, et cetera. So now the mansion is both massive and delicate; solid on its dry knoll but shifting with the beach and tides and the sway of the sprawling maritime oaks around it. Neither land nor sea. Living between the worlds. Just like the Bonavendiers. Just like all Mers.

At the moment, the place crawled with caterers, waiters, decorators, and pre-wedding guests. An enormous white tent covered most of the side lawn, where the wedding would take place. Workers were hanging giant sprays of white roses and exotic orchids from the ceiling. A fantasy wedding. It would be magnificent. How could a murderous boogeyman be tracking Jordan’s cousin to this paradise?

I strode up a winding path of broad stone steps and into the house. Lilith’s sisters, my beautiful great-aunts Mara and Pearl, were engaged in feverish debate with an Italian decorator who was about to add strings of diamonds to the white roses in the wedding tent.

“These diamonds are perfection,” the decorator yelled in a heavy accent. Neapolitan Mers are so theatrical. They think life is a Fellini film.

“Yes, yes, we don’t dispute the quality,” my sweet Great-Aunt Pearl soothed, “They’re magnificent, Sophia, but not quite —”

“I’ve seen bigger grains of sand,” Great-Aunt Mara sneered. “I’m not going to let my half-sister be married under strands of diamonds that look like they came from a pawn shop in a flea market!”

The Italian decorator went berserk. “You insult my diamonds? Last month my diamonds were good enough for the bat mitzvah of the princess of Harynveitch!”

“Well, Sophia old girl, that doesn’t mean they’re good enough for a Bonavendier!”

Sophia began yelling in Italian and Mara began yelling back in English. Pearl clasped her heart and stepped between them, hesitating only long enough to smile and wave at me. Ordinarily I’d happily dive into a multilingual catfight over carats and royalty, but that day I zoomed past. I found Lilith in her lavish sunroom, dressed in a pale silk sheath and delicate pearls, perusing last-minute changes in menus and music lists. I slammed the sunroom doors. Amidst the clatter of heavy wood and thick glass, Lilith calmly raised her hypnotic eyes to me. “Back from Hilton Head so soon?”

“No disrespect intended, but—” my voice rose “—have you and Jordan gone crazy?”

Lilith rose with willowy grace, glided to the damasked wall across from her desk, and pulled a thick gold rope on a heavy curtain. I knew what was displayed behind that curtain, but under the circumstances the thought of seeing it made me shiver. An enormous oil portrait emerged, towering above us and taking up most of the high wall. An ethereal face looked down at me through eyes the color of the sea. Magnificent bare breasts seemed to glow in the room’s filtered sunlight. Green-gold scales glistened like fine jade. A gossamer tail fin — the end of the rainbow was no less amazing — trailed over one end of an eighteenth century divan.

Melasine. She was one of three founding mothers enshrined in Mer legend. The triple play of fantasies. The sacred trinity of fin-dom. The Old Ones.

If I believed Lilith’s stories, the portrait had been painted in this very room more than 200 years ago. If I believed Lilith’s stories, I and thousands of other Mers around the world were descended from this ancient, half-woman, half-not-woman, being. If I believed Lilith, this chick was still out there in the ocean.

“I believe in the Old Ones,” Lilith said, and gave the portrait a nod. “And so, yes, in answer to your unspoken question, I believe there are Mers who are descended more recently from the Old Ones than we, and that those Mers are very different from the majority of us. I believe that Swimmers are rare, but they do exist.”

I threw myself into a gilded French chair. “Look, I’m not exactly a fan of logic and science, you know. They’re so . . . scientific. I like a cute little fantasy as much as the next girl. But I’m sorry, Lilith. I can’t believe we’re descended from a flippered she-fish, and I can’t believe in Mer boogeymen.”

“Whether you believe it or not, the truth is the truth.” Lilith closed the heavy drape. Our mythological ancestress, Melasine the Mermaid, disappeared behind dark velvet. “Melasine and the other two Old Ones do exist. We are the children of that trinity’s consortation with Landers over the centuries. We Singers have the best of both worlds. We stand out, but we also fit in. We live among the Landers and they never suspect. But there are other castes — Mers who are more like the Old Ones than like us. Trapped between the ancient world and the modern one. Tragic loners. Only a few of them have ever allowed themselves to be seen by either Landers or Mers. Orion, poor soul, is one of those.”

“Poor soul? Jordan says this . . . Orion . . . seduced Tara McEvers and brainwashed her. He started lurking in the waters off the Scottish coast when she was a kid, and after she was grown she hooked up with him occasionally and, oh, what the hell, it’s so bizarre I can only think of it in Victorian terms — he had his way with her. She gave birth to three daughters by him but he never even agreed to meet them. Then he lured her into some scheme to blow up one of UniWorld Oil’s research ships, but when she got caught red-handed, he deserted her. He let her get killed. And now her brother, Rhymer, is afraid he’s going to kidnap her children. Or worse.”

“That sums up the known details, yes.”

“This Orion sounds like a very bad blind date.”

“I doubt we have all the facts about him. He wants it that way. He deals in mystery. He doesn’t want to be known. That’s a trait of the Old Ones, too. Very reclusive, unless extraordinarily compelled otherwise.” She nodded toward the curtained portrait. “Yet Melasine loved Simon Bonavendier enough to share his life. Perhaps Orion truly loved Tara.”

“Or maybe — no disrespect now, okay? — maybe he’s, hmmm, well, a murderous psychopath.”

She smiled thinly and inclined her head. “Maybe.”

“So if Rhymer’s bringing his sister’s kids here and Orion is tracking them, and Jordan is intent on helping Rhymer protect those kids, Jordan may be in danger of getting killed.” I thumped the air with a fist. “My Jordan could get killed by some kind of finned Freddy Kruger! How can you call Orion a ‘poor soul?’ Are you going to take up a donation for him? Light a candle in the window to welcome him? Try to get him to pose for a tape you can sell to Wackiest Mer-Monster Videos?”

Lilith suddenly loomed over me, her eyes blazing. “Change your tone. Immediately.”

She emitted a furious inner song that ricocheted off every bone in my body. I shrank back on the divan. “Sorry. No offense intended.”

Lilith stared at me until I was sufficiently shrunken, then relaxed and stepped back. “Apology accepted.”

I ventured in a more careful voice, “But . . . but if you really believe Swimmers exist, and you believe this Orion is sympathetic—”

“I didn’t say he was deserving of sympathy. But he may be. I know this much: He’s powerful. I feel him in the world; I sense him across the deepest waters. He’s angry. He’s grieving. He’s submerged in guilt. Whether that’s righteous guilt or criminal guilt, I can’t tell. Nor can I tell what he intends for his daughters, or if he can be trusted.”

“If he’s some kind of freak, why did Tara McEvers —”

“She loved him. It’s that simple. I sense her love like a beacon. Her brother doesn’t understand. Rhymer’s a hardened man; he can’t comprehend what drove her to devote herself to such a wayward soul as Orion. But love is never easy to comprehend; it simply exists. I have no doubt that Orion’s power to enthrall is as potent as his power to destroy.”

“Jordan ordered me to leave Sainte’s Point before Rhymer gets here with Orion’s daughters. But I’m not leaving. He can’t make me. And neither can you. Please.”

She looked down at me kindly. “I don’t expect you to desert the man you love.”

“I never said I loved Jordan—”

“In fact, I have important work for you to do here.”

I gaped at her. “Ah hah,” I said slowly. “You gave the go-ahead on my computer diary, but in return I have to grant you a favor. You planned it that way.”

She laughed. “Of course.”

I sighed. “All right. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me stay.”

“I’ll speak to Jordan. He’ll compromise. You’ll be safe enough.”

I leapt up. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Not so fast. I have a job for you to do. You can only stay if you do it well. Do it well, and the Council will clear your record. The Donald Trump incident will be erased.”

“Your wish is my command!”

“I’ve found a Floater I want to contact. She doesn’t know she’s a Mer yet. She needs to know, to be schooled. She’s perfect for Rhymer. Without her, Rhymer won’t stand a chance against Orion. He has the courage, and he has the strength, but he doesn’t have the faith in humanity. She does. If Orion’s innocent, she will keep Rhymer from killing him.” Lilith pointed a long, beautiful finger at me. “Her name’s Molly Revere. Your job, Juna Lee, is to get her here, keep her here, and bring her and Rhymer together.”

I smiled. I was the matchmaking queen of four continents. I’d hooked up more couples than U-Haul. “Is that it? That’s all you want? I have to drag some Floater babe here?” Floaters were Mers without the webbed feet, and most were either ignorant or in denial about their Mer heritage. “I have to clue her about her inner mermaid, then make sure Rhymer heads straight for her inner with his outie? That’s all I have to do? And in return you’ll clear my name with the Council and let me stay here to help Jordan battle Frankenfin?”