SeaChange (22 page)

As his tempo increased, he gave up trying to speak but his
gaze never wandered from her beautiful face. She kept her eyes open too,
focused on him, filled with warmth and passion. Maybe even—love? Jake’s heart
swelled. He sure as hell didn’t deserve it and he wasn’t sure he had any right
to mess with her life any further than he already had. He just knew that when
he was with her like this, he felt as if he were home.

“Jake!” Heidi screamed his name as she convulsed around him.
Her rippling muscles gripped him hard, triggering his own release. He kept
moving through it, drawing out her orgasm, then he used his fingers to pinch
her clit, throwing her over the top yet again while he finished emptying
himself into her heat. As soon as both of them had finished, he rolled onto his
back, holding her sprawled on top of him.

“How do you do that?” she murmured drowsily a few moments
later. “How do you make every single time better than the one before?”

“That’s all on you, goddess,” he replied, smoothing the
tangled strands of damp hair down her back. “When it comes to that kind of
magic, I’ve never met anyone like you.”

She giggled. “You always know what to say too.”

So how come he was too big a coward to admit that he loved
her? Jake looked up at the stars. “I wish I did.”

* * * * *

The trip to the atoll took them just under forty-eight
hours. For almost two whole days, there was nothing to do but enjoy each other.

Heidi’s injuries were mending well, though Jake still
intended to ask his mother’s healer to finish the job. When they weren’t making
love, she spent a good bit of time on the internet, using his satellite
connection to look up everything she could about merfolk, Dionysus, and the
rest of the Greek pantheon.

“You’re smiling,” he said as he walked into the cabin to
find her grinning at her laptop screen. It was late evening and they were anchored
just off the island. He expected the merfolk to show up in the morning, though
an advance group could arrive at any time. There were a few of their people
with the ability to communicate telepathically over long distances, so a
message could have gone from the Catalina settlement to any of the folk who
were out in this part of the ocean.

“An email from Brad,” she said, glancing up at him with that
smoldering look in her eyes. “He’s doing much better—they’ve moved him to a
regular room, despite his parents’ protests. He even managed to get our
suspension revoked. So I went through our data. We have enough to write our
paper. So any commitment I had to the Westin Institute will be complete. Brad
can start the number crunching while he’s recovering—that’s his strong
suit—while I get going on the rough draft.”

“Which you can do here on the boat, right?” He hoped he didn’t
sound as if he was begging.

“Mostly, at least. Once we get going, I’ll need to get
together with Brad to hash things out. We sure don’t have to be on campus,
though. We’ll have a little freedom until we’re done, and we have to go job
hunting.”

“What if you two had your own research vessel?” he asked
idly. “Something bigger than this, where you could live full time and take on a
few students and assistants?”

“Brad’s wealthy, but not that wealthy.” She flashed him a
rueful grin. “We’d need to have some way to earn an income, and it’s hard to
get research grants without a connection to a university.”

Damn. So much for his brilliant idea. He didn’t have much of
a clue about the intricacies of the academic world. If he wanted to stay with
her, it looked as if he’d have to plan a life on land. He’d either have to get
a real investigator’s license or go back to day-trading and, given the current condition
of the market, he thought PI work was probably safer.

Heidi smiled and shut down her computer. “No sign of company
yet? No lights over on the island?”

“Nope, we’re still all alone.”

She licked her lips and stood, crooking her finger at him. “Then
I don’t think we should waste what time we have left.” With a wink, she
disappeared into the bedroom. Jake was right behind her.

* * * * *

“We’ll do the ritual at sunset,” Myrrine told Heidi as they
watched the merfolk create an altar out of a rock on the sandy shore of the
crescent-shaped atoll. There were military sheds standing vacant and decaying
on the hillside, but the shore itself was pristine, the docks having long since
rotted away.

Dozens of merfolk had arrived over the course of the day, most
in dolphin form, some tugging waterproof bundles behind them. One group had
arrived in human form in a high-speed powerboat loaded with supplies.

“One of our settlements is not far from here,” Jake’s mother
had said. “We try to keep our supplies dispersed so that we can draw from any
of the settlements at any time.”

That made good sense. According to what she’d learned, of
the fifteen hundred or so merfolk in the Pacific, about two to three hundred
resided in any one settlement at a time, minus the hundred or so who had gone
rogue with Myrrine’s brother Phaeton. No one knew where they were living.

Heidi helped Niko and Leta unload cases of wine, silver cups
and plates, along with crates of fruit and cheese. When she wondered why there
was so much, Leta had laughed. “If one begs a favor from the god of wine and
frivolity, one has to have wine and food available.”

That made sense. Folding tables were set up some distance
away from the altar and laden with the goodies, while other merfolk collected
fresh oysters and lobster to add to the buffet. Fortunately for her peace of
mind, the boat contained a supply of swimsuits, shorts, and toga-like garments
as well, so Heidi didn’t have to watch them work stark naked.

Halfway through the day, another group of dolphins arrived.
After they’d transformed and dressed, Jake came over and drew Heidi away from
her perch on a rock beside Leta. “Come. I want you to meet someone.”

“I’ve been meeting people all day,” she told him, taking his
hand. “But sure, why not?” She might never have an opportunity like this again,
to be surrounded by a whole tribe of mythological beings. Tonight she might
even see an actual god. Once she was home, she knew she could never tell anyone
about this, so she’d have to hoard the memories, just to replay them over and
over in her mind.

The woman Jake led her to was the oldest mermaid she’d met,
a silver-haired woman with crinkles surrounding her shining aquamarine eyes.
She sat in a folding chair one of the mermen had unloaded from the boat,
chatting with Myrrine, who sat beside her. Marcos stood behind the pair, his
dark eyes vigilant—ever the loyal bodyguard. Heidi wondered if Myrrine knew her
bodyguard had a thing for her. Not that it was any of Heidi’s business of
course, but she couldn’t help a twinge of sympathy for the commoner who was in
love with his boss.

“Aunt Aella, I’d like to introduce a friend of mine,” Jake
said. He patted Heidi’s hand where he’d tucked it into his elbow. “This is Dr.
Heidi Eriksen, a scientist who studies dolphins. Heidi, meet Aella. She isn’t
really my aunt, but I’ve called her that my whole life.”

“Pleased to meet you, young lady,” the older mermaid said
with a smile. “So you’re the one who managed to convince this rascal to come
talk to his family, eh?” She held out her hand and shook Heidi’s with a
relatively strong grip.

“I don’t think so,” Heidi replied with a grin. “But I’ll
take credit anyway. It’s been such a pleasure to meet all of you.”

“What happened to your arm, child?” Aella looked at the
scabbed-over bullet graze. It was healing well, though it still stung if she
banged it on something.

“Heidi was shot trying to rescue her friend,” Jake answered.
He dropped down onto the sand, crossing his legs to sit in front of his mother
and her friend. “She also has a head injury that isn’t fully healed. I was
hoping you could help her.”

Heidi sat down beside Jake and elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m
fine.” The headache was pretty minimal now, only bothering her if she was tired
or stressed. The last few days of sun and sex had gone a long way to helping
her recover.

“Give me your hand again,” Aella ordered.

Not wanting to appear rude, Heidi did.

“Not serious, but painful,” the older woman said
thoughtfully. She closed her eyes and after a long moment she popped them open
again. “Is your headache gone?”

Heidi though for a second, trying to find the nagging ache. “It
is,” she said. “How did you…”

“I told you we had healers among our people,” Jake reminded
her. “Look at your arm.”

Heidi did. Where the bullet wound had been, now there was
nothing but a pink line of healing scar tissue.
Holy shit!

“Thank you,” she whispered, staring down at her arm. “That’s…amazing.”

“No, thank you,” Aella replied. “Che means a great deal to
me—to all of us. Niko told me that when you were shot, you were defending this
young rascal.”

“The preparations are ready, Mother.” Leta came over and
rested a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “The priests and priestesses would like
the rest of us to leave the area so that they can consecrate it before sundown.”

Heidi was amazed that much time had slipped by, but when she
looked up, she realized that the western sky was beginning to take on a tinge
of pink.

“You must go around the point and wait,” Myrrine told them.
She stood and clapped her hands.

Immediately all eyes on the beach turned to her. “It is
time.”

A few of the merfolk, the ones clothed in purple togas,
gathered in front of the altar. The others, dressed in either bathing suits or
togas of other colors, moved toward the corner of the beach where Jake and
Heidi stood. Once they were all gathered, Marcos led them around the point of
the crescent to a rockier beach on the far side.

“It will only take a few minutes,” Leta said. She seemed to
have attached herself to Heidi for most of the day. Jake had tried to stay by
her side, but he’d gotten caught up in conversations with so many old friends
that Heidi would have been left on her own if not for his sister. “The
consecration ritual is a fairly simple one.”

“You people summon deities often?” Heidi whispered. She
still couldn’t quite wrestle her mind around that idea. Merfolk, werewolves and
wizards, she’d more or less gotten used to. But
gods
? The brains of her
Lutheran ancestors back in Minnesota would explode at the concept.

“Never before, at least in my lifetime,” Leta whispered. “The
gods can be capricious. We were lucky Poseidon only turned down our request
instead of becoming angry and killing us all.”

“Once in mine,” said Aella. She leaned on Niko’s arm. “And I
was one of the first merfolk to make the move from the Atlantic when the
Americas were being settled, along with your grandparents, Leta. When we
established our first colony here in the Pacific, we summoned Poseidon to
obtain his blessing, and to dedicate the colony to him. That was the last time
we attempted such a ritual.”

“And now twice in as many months,” Niko added gravely. “That
is how desperate we have become.”

“So what if Dionysus turns you down?” Heidi asked.

Aella shook her head. “We do not know. With modern
technology, and our own fading magic, it will not be long before we are
discovered. Most of our people would choose death before facing life as a
specimen in a laboratory.”

“Fading magic?” It was the first Heidi had heard of that.

“As our population dwindles, so does our collective power,”
Niko said. “The breach with Phaeton and his followers accelerated this, as has
the sagging morale of our people.”

“The spells that are fading include those that hide our
settlements from detection and provide for the extended lifespan of the human
residents,” Aella added.

No wonder they had all decided that something needed to be
done.

The sky was streaked with flames that faded to violet as
they waited. After maybe fifteen minutes, one of the younger priestesses,
dressed in the skimpiest possible toga, came to the point to beckon them back
around. With Jake and Heidi leading the way this time, they all returned to the
main beach, falling into a circle drawn in the sand around the altar, and lined
with shells and colorful stones.

At the head of the circle stood the oldest priest and
priestess, each with three younger ones alongside. On either side of them were
the merfolk, perhaps forty in all, and at the far end stood Myrrine, flanked by
her two children, with Niko on Leta’s other side and Heidi on Jake’s. The queen
was the only one in a white toga, falling to the ground around her feet.
Several gold chains draped around her neck and bangles gleamed at her wrists.
Her long hair was drawn up in an elaborate twist, bound by a golden crown.
Tonight she looked every inch a pagan queen. Heidi felt out of place in her
shorts and T-shirt, though Jake and several of the younger merfolk were dressed
in a similar fashion.

Heidi wasn’t, had never been, a religious person, but if she
had believed in anything, she supposed it would have been her parent’s vaguely
Lutheran faith she’d have claimed. Even though she knew a handful of Wiccans
who believed in multiple incarnations of the god and goddess, she’d never
really bought into it. Scientifically it just didn’t stack up. So look at her
now, here watching a ritual to summon the Greek god of wine. No way in hell
anyone back in Minnesota would believe this.

The eldest of the priestesses raised her hands to the sky
and began to chant. All the other merfolk stood silently, heads bowed. The
ritual was in Greek, which frustrated Heidi no end, as she wanted desperately
to know what was going on. Jake squeezed her hand and began to translate under
his breath.

“This next bit is praising the god,” he said. “For fruit of
the vine and the ambrosia it creates, we give thanks. For bountiful food and
for the joys of living, we thank you. For your creation of our brothers the
dolphins, we revere you…”