Face pale, Jake looked at her through eyes as wide as saucers. “You could have blown my fucking head off,” he spat, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead.
Tessa tossed her head. “I wasn’t even aiming at you, idiot.” She slipped the weapon off her arm, rewrapping it, and tucked it back into its hiding place.
Jake’s lips twisted with anger. “Bullshit! I saw the look on your face . . .” For once words seemed to fail him.
Addison groaned. “Hey, I wanted to try it out.”
Gwen frowned and shook her head. “No way am I letting you play with that, Addie. Knowing you, you’d find a way to blow the moon out of space.”
Addison’s face lit up. “Oh, man, that would be fucking fantastic, wouldn’t it?”
Tessa snuck a glance toward Kenneth, wondering what he’d thought of this little display of Mer-magic. He seemed to be the only one not caught up in the drama. He was a watcher, an observer, taking everything in its stride.
Hanging on the periphery of the group, he walked over to the wall, examining the damage. Scorched pieces of plaster crumbled into dust when he brushed curious fingers against the deep hole. “Going to take a lot of filler to repair this” was his only comment.
Tessa struggled to tamp down her smirk. Jake was definitely freaked-out, no doubt about it. Good. Let him wonder just what else she had up her sleeve. There was no way she’d ever admit her use of the Ri’kah was more luck than skill. She’d only just figured out what the thing was, and had yet to make it do more than sputter and spark.
Alarm spiked across Gwen’s face. “How long have you been messing with this stuff?”
A shiver crawled down Tessa’s spine. Inside she felt as if someone had turned up her body’s temperature to blazing hot. On the outside, though, her skin felt strangely chilled. Her heart beat hollowly in her chest. Black spots still danced in front of her eyes, part of the aftereffect of focusing her psi-energies.
“I’ve been dabbling with it off and on for years,” she finally admitted. “Mom always promised she’d teach us to use it, control it.”
Addison’s face lit up. “There’s so much we could do if we knew how.”
Dismay flashed across Gwen’s face. “It’s something best left alone.”
Shivering harder, Tessa pressed her fingers against the pulse beating in her temple. Though the pressure was beginning to lessen behind her eyes, she could feel a new, sharper ache building. Her stomach clenched, bowels going liquid. She’d drawn out the energy too quickly and was going to pay the price.
She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard to keep the nausea at bay. “It’s time we stop denying what we are, Gwen. Our magic is part of our heritage. If we deny it, we deny ourselves. And as long as we keep denying ourselves, we’ll never be whole.”
Listening to the conversation taking place behind him, Kenneth leaned closer to the damage. The hole Tessa had blasted into the wall was about the size of a fifty-cent piece. The edges were blackened, scorched.
When she’d slid on the arm piece, he’d physically felt her gathering energy, as if sucking it out of the bodies around her and pulling it into her own. The fine hairs on the back of his neck had risen and his skin had gone chilly with goose bumps. Tessa was definitely a phenomenon and he’d experienced the power behind her will.
Curious, he poked his index finger into the blackened cavity. His hand didn’t stop until he’d reached the knuckle. Even then he couldn’t feel anything under the tip. Though the moment had passed, energy still swirled around the affected area, snapping and crackling. Narrowing his eyes, he could almost catch a glimpse of the tiny charged particles.
Holy cow. If that thing had hit flesh, it would have burned right through it.
At first he’d been worried about the idea of a woman living alone in a deserted place. No need for that. It looked like Tessa Lonike was more than capable of taking care of herself. With her fiery red hair and weapon at the ready, she had the appearance of a warrior goddess: fierce, determined, and ready to go to battle again her foes.
In short, she was awesome. Fucking awesome.
And the men better look out.
Leaving the damage behind, he looked toward Tessa. He felt his heart skip a beat. She was still kneeling beside the alcove she’d uncovered. Arms wrapped across her chest, she rubbed her hands vigorously up and down over her skin.
Sensing her distress, Kenneth walked over to her. Bending down beside her, he settled a hand on her back. A strange vibration emanated from her, driven with so much pressure that he felt the force of untapped energy surging through her veins. She was literally trembling to keep it all contained inside.
Resisting the urge to pull his hand away, Kenneth held his palm in place. “Are you okay?”
Mouth tightening, Tessa cast an uneasy stare his way. Her eyes were huge as saucers, her face pale as wax. She looked a little dazed. “I just need to back it down.” She blinked hard and drew a deep breath. “Put the leash back on the black dog.”
He kept his hand in place. “The black dog?”
“It’s what we call the darker side of our power,” Gwen said quietly. “When you have a force, a presence living inside you, you have to be careful to keep it under control.”
Kenneth looked at Gwen. Arms locked across her chest, her stance was tense, tight. She clearly didn’t like talking about the Mer or their capabilities. “What do you mean, a presence living inside you?”
Jake glanced at the girls sharply. By the look on his face, his mind was working furiously. “You’re not talking about some sort of symbiote, are you?”
Gwen nodded. “It happens in the womb, I think. Something in our genetic structure destroys the traits of our human fathers and reshapes us into Mer.” One of her hands lifted to the crystal around her neck. “It may seem ghoulish, but Mer are born inanimate. It’s at birth we receive the
breofe
, or the breath of life and our crystals.”
A cold chill washed over Kenneth. “You mean Mer are born dead?” He didn’t like the idea of dead babies. It creeped him out.
Reining in her inner energies, Tessa’s skin began to return to a normal temperature. She lifted her chin. “Not dead,” she corrected. “Just inert.” She thrust out her arms, showing the pattern on her bare skin. “That’s how you know something’s inside you. It grows, from the inside out.”
The other two girls showed their markings.
“When we’re born, our skin is clear. But by the time a Mer turns eleven or twelve, her symbiote begins to emerge,” Addison explained. “When human girls are getting their menstrual cycles, we’re beginning to see our symbiote mature. It’s about that time we begin to learn to control the energies necessary for the shift.”
“And it’s about that time you learn you’d better be careful with what you think,” Gwen added through a deep frown. “It isn’t funny when a stray thought manifests into something physical.”
Jake nodded. “That’s entirely feasible. Such paranormal activity has been noted in some adolescent girls. I can’t help but wonder if those girls have a bit of diluted Mer in their bloodlines.”
“A mermaid who isn’t given her soul-stone at birth never fully develops,” Gwen said. “The symbiote inside just shrivels up and dies because it hasn’t got any energy to feed on. It could be part of the reason we’ve become so endangered. It seems like, over the years, most Mers wanted their daughters to be plain old humans.”
“Nobody wants to be plain old human,” Jake grumbled. “It’s boring. You have such a gift, yet you choose not to use it.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed with anger. “It’s a not a gift if people treat you like a freak, Jake. Don’t forget how good you humans are at destroying anything you find frightening or different.”
Addison nodded her agreement. “Yeah. Don’t forget, they were still burning witches until the nineteenth century. Just because we’re in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean people are more civilized. It just means they have more ways to exploit us.”
“Kind of like you, Jake,” Tessa pointed out. “Admit it. You’d love to bask in the glow of revealing a lost species to the world.”
Kenneth inwardly winced. He didn’t want to imagine where that sort of revelation would put Tessa and her sisters if their kind were exposed. One only had to turn on the nightly news or open a scandal sheet to see how the media ran any subject it deemed newsworthy straight into the ground. The press was relentless, ferocious in their pursuit of anything that would drive ratings and revenue higher. Like jackals scenting blood, they ran their prey to exhaustion before devouring all—blood, flesh, and bone.
The girls wouldn’t have a chance.
“Maybe it would be better if this stuff stays at the bottom of the ocean,” he suggested.
Jake immediately shook his head. “Whether the girls like it or not, this stuff is starting to come up. It won’t stay hidden forever. There are a lot of treasure hunters on the high seas, and as the technology for deep-sea exploration improves, more will be found.”
Pressing a hand to her forehead, Tessa closed her eyes. “He’s right, damn it. If Ishaldi is there, it’s going to be found.”
Gwen shrugged. “So what? It’s not like they can point at us and say there’s a Mer just because they drag a few mermaid statues and coins out of the water.”
Tessa let her hand drop. Face drawn, her green eyes snapped with raw will. “You’re not getting it, Gwen. I’m tired of hiding and I’m tired of worrying if we’re the last few Mer on the face of the earth. Maybe if we came out, others would, too. Who knows how many more Mer may be out there?”
Gwen threw up her hands in horror. “We are most certainly not going to do anything like that.”
Frustration rolling through him, Kenneth stepped between the bickering sisters. “What about a compromise, then,” he suggested. “Nobody has to know you as Mer. But they can know you as the discoverers of a lost world.”
Jake rocked back on his heels. “That’s something to consider,” he allowed. “Both Tessa and Addison have worked with me on archaeological surveys of the state’s underwater maritime resources. Bringing them back onto my team might be just what I need to reestablish my legitimacy with the state’s sea grant program.”
“Why would you need the state’s involvement for something in the Mediterranean Sea?” Kenneth asked. “If I remember correctly, you work with a salvage and rescue outfit.”
A slight look of embarrassment skittered across Jake’s face. “Worked.” He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, all operations have recently ceased due to a little mismanagement.”
Though he might know nothing about the Mer, Kenneth understood the hard realities of business. The one thing he’d learned as a business owner was that you didn’t spend more than you earned and you didn’t overextend your line of credit. “How much mismanagement?”
Silence filled the basement.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jake’s golden brows furrowed. “We’ve run out of money to continue our excavation of the site,” he admitted after a long pause. “Between getting the equipment, paying the crew, and fighting off the bill collectors, we’ve flat run out of funds.”
Kenneth nodded. “I see. But aren’t there are always investors in this sort of thing?”
One expensive leather boot scuffing the bare floor, Jake snorted. “Try getting investors when your reputation among your colleagues is shot to hell. No one takes me at my word because no one believes Ishaldi or the Mer ever existed. It’s like Atlantis, Shangri- la, El Dorado, or even the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. There’re lots of stories, but everyone thinks they’re myths. And with today’s economy hitting rock bottom, people want a solid investment for their money.”
“So what were you planning to do?” Kenneth asked.
Jake fidgeted, rocking his weight from foot to foot. “I’m trying to arrange for a museum to purchase the artifacts. The immensity of the find is staggering, so I’m hoping such an organization would grant the necessary funds to return to the location before another outfit moves into the area.”
Gwen looked at Jake sharply. “What other outfit?”
Jake shrugged. “We’ve got competition. EU Explorations, a Spanish outfit, is also working the area. Unfortunately we didn’t get all the artifacts the fishermen brought in from the initial haul. Word’s out there’s gold, and a lot of it. Though they haven’t got the actual location yet, they’ve got the money and equipment to stay out on the water until they do find it.”
Tessa blew out a breath. “Shit. As always, you’re a day late and a dollar short, Jake.”
The archaeologist threw up his hands. “Tell me about it. The thing is, I’m in it for the find, for the preservation of a lost civilization. They’re in it for the haul, the loot. If the EU Explorations divers get in there first, they’ll strip it and market it the way looters used to plunder Egyptian tombs before it became illegal. None of it will hit the museums and the cultural revelations will most likely be lost.”
“So it’s an all-you-can-locate buffet,” Addison said. “Finders keepers, right?”
Jake grimaced. “Twenty-one modern states have a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea, but Ishaldi’s location lies outside the coastal regions of most. Whichever country gets there first is probably the one that’s going to try to declare it theirs. As a research vessel, we’d be under the authority of the United States.”
Tessa nibbled her lower lip. “We wouldn’t want someone else to steal this out from under our noses.” By the look on her face, the gears in her head were turning full speed ahead. Of the sisters, Tessa seemed to be the one who wanted to seek an actual connection with her lost heritage.
“If anything came out of it, we would want control,” Addison added.
Kenneth nodded. What he’d heard so far made a lot of sense. “So what happens to a find of that magnitude? Where exactly would its artifacts end up?”
Jake beamed, enjoying his role as the resident expert. “Barring that you haven’t already got a significant university or museum attached, you start your own. Though some archaeologists are of the mind not to disturb a significant find, others think it’s fair to remove the artifacts to spare them further damage and deterioration.”