Heart of Siren (Merworld Book 1) Read online

  All the glass compartments on the walls containing sea creatures were lit up with alarm lights. Those housed in this wing of the building were for the development of sea soldiers. They were the lowest ranked in brain power, but they were the toughest and most durable in combat. None of them had fully formed yet, but their shimmering eyes were open in their liquid tanks. Their brains had not been programmed, so if they escaped, it would be a disaster.

  She dared not think about the main subject. It would be insane to go into the secret compartment to check it out.

  Faye stood too close to a tank and was startled when a sea soldier slapped his hand against the glass wall and snarled at her.

  Kai charged into the lab.

  “What’s happening?” He held her shoulders, and it was then that she realized she was shaking.

  “I … I don’t know. There must be some strange frequency that triggered them. They’re all going crazy.”

  “I can see that. Tell me how to fix this, Faye.”

  “I think it might have been triggered by the main subject. Creatures from the outside wouldn’t be able to send signals into the lab.”

  “I’m going to check it out.”

  “No, Kai. You’re not authorized to go inside that compartment.”

  “You’re talking authority with me, Faye?” He turned and walked away.

  She rushed over and grabbed his elbow to stop him. “It’s dangerous. You’re not going in there. If these little ones are going insane, she might have broken out of her tank.”

  “If that’s the case, I really need to get in there.”

  “I don’t know what she’s capable of.”

  “You created her!”

  She looked into his blue eyes. “Do you really think I created this?” She gestured widely. Before Kai could say anything, she shrugged him off. She shouldn’t be telling him anything.

  “You need to get out of here, Kai. I need to work.”

  “The hell I will! I won’t leave you here. I’m not leaving you with these monsters.”

  “But we created them. They’re not monsters. They’re our future!” she said with a raised voice.

  He pointed at a husky creature in a tank who was glaring at him. “If they’re our future, I’m sorry, but I’m embarrassed!”

  Faye exited the lab via a side door. The door slid shut, locking Kai out. She strode along a secured tunnel then stood staring at a steel double door. She could do this. She could face it. It wasn’t her creation. But in the end, it would be. It would make all the difference in her world. And it would help her fulfill her promise to her long-lost family.

  She positioned her face in front of the security scan. The system recognized her, and the door slid open. Kai pushed in with her from behind.

  “Kai!”

  He showed her the broken keypad in his hand. Once more, he had punched his way into her life.

  The cold lab lit up with a dim light, as if the lights didn’t want to wake the creature inside. Faye let out a sigh of relief when she saw there was no sign of broken equipment. If one of the most dangerous creatures in this submarine dimension wasn’t lurking around waiting for her in a dark corner of the secret lab, she was fine.

  In the middle of the room, a fifteen-feet-tall glass tank peered down at her, intact. The magnificent creature inside was still and calm.

  Faye approached the tank. “You’re such a beautiful creature!”

  Inside the tank, a tiny sleeping mermaid floated. Her long dark hair twirled in the water. Despite the crazy world out there, she was peacefully asleep. Would Kai be embarrassed to know that she was his future as well?

  Faye placed her palm on the glass panel. Suddenly, the mermaid’s eyes flung open. Startled, Faye gasped and staggered back. She was off-balance and would have fallen on her backside if Kai hadn’t caught her from behind.

  “Hold on. Settle. She’s inside the tank. She’s not going to do anything to you,” he said.

  She shrugged him off. “You don’t know a fraction of what she’s capable of.”

  She expected Kai’s objection and his usual spiel about how he was one of the best hunters and had captured the most notorious sea creatures and what could this little mermaid possibly do to him?

  She strode halfway out of the lab and heard nothing, not even the sound of him following her out.

  She turned back and saw the mermaid smile at Kai.

  This wasn’t just a mermaid. It was the most powerful siren she could have captured. So powerful it had entranced the mind of her splendid hunter even before it started humming its magical songs.

  Kai was mesmerized. He didn’t respond to Faye’s call. She would have killed the siren right now if it was possible. But that wouldn’t help the situation. A few more seconds and she knew Kai would do whatever it told him to do.

  It wouldn’t do anything to her—it was created to control men.

  “Kai.” She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him out of the room, but he wouldn’t move an inch.

  She moved in front of him and slapped him hard across the face. Still no response.

  Then it seemed as if the siren communicated with his mind. Kai blinked, and he looked down at Faye. He grabbed her shoulders and slowly lifted her, letting her feet dangle in the air.

  “You’re stronger than this, Kai. It’s controlling you. Don’t let it. Look at me, Kai!”

  What Faye was saying to him didn’t seem to register. His eyes darkened, and he tightened his grip.

  Chapter 7

  Lavinia put them in a private carriage right outside the dome’s entrance close to the temple. She didn’t offer much explanation after the ambush, except for telling Tadgh and Jo they were wrong about what was going on in Nepolymbus.

  Tadgh couldn’t care less about their politics. He just wanted the information about the Key of Pisces, and then he wanted to take Jo the hell back to Eudaiz, or at least to an environment where they had an advantage—on land or in the air.

  Jo didn’t seem to mind the water at all. She followed along and said nothing further about the ambush. There was a piece of information Tadgh had wanted to ask her about, but they’d had no time. In the water, they couldn’t talk—and they’d been busy with water sports. Now, inside the transport, Lavinia was sharing the same compartment with them. There was no room for pillow talk.

  There was a loud bang from outside, and they could feel the impact of the hit. The four seahorses pulling the carriage were startled and scooted in different directions, causing the carriage to tilt to the side.

  “We should have taken a vehicle with real horsepower, not seahorse power,” Tadgh muttered. “Are we being attacked again?”

  “Let me check,” Lavinia said and stood. She had taken only two steps when the carriage rolled again.

  “Something is soccer-balling us. We need to get out,” Jo said.

  “Agreed,” Tadgh said. He didn’t like the water environment, but he disliked being trapped in a box to die even more. He looked at Jo and sighed. Both of them switched on their silver blood eudqi so that they could continue to breathe underwater. Tadgh held Jo’s hand, opened the door, and swam out. Lavinia followed.

  Outside the carriage, they saw bits and pieces of the seahorses that had pulled them and body parts of the guards that had escorted their carriage. The guards that were still alive formed a line in front of them.

  A group of weird sea creatures waited a short distance away.

  The ocean water was thick, dark, and deep, but he could see the shape of a dome in the distance. Wanting to know whether that was where they were heading, he looked at Lavinia. As if reading his mind, she nodded. That meant they just had to get past this bunch of sea animals, and then they could get to the dome of the headquarters and be safe.

  The sea creatures looked at them but said nothing. Tadgh wanted to make a remark, but because he couldn’t speak underwater, he let it go.

  Suddenly, one of the mermaids hissed loudly.

  You can’t be serious
. We don’t even have a chance to negotiate before you decide to fight? Tadgh thought as he pushed Jo and Lavinia behind him.

  The other creatures started hissing and shrieking. Tadgh looked down—he hadn’t grown a fish tail, he didn’t look like them at all, and he certainly didn’t look intimidating. So why were they shrieking?

  Jo looked calm. But when he turned around, Lavinia had gone pale. Her legs had morphed into a fish tail, and she flapped it frantically.

  The mer-people made more noise and came at them.

  Tadgh pushed both Jo and Lavinia between two large coral rocks and blocked the entrance with his body.

  The mer-people went ballistic. One of them turned into a sea python. Others started to fight and shoved at the guards. More mer-people broke out from the attacking group.

  Tadgh signaled a couple of guards as he tried to pull Jo and Lavinia toward the dome, away from the commotion.

  He led the remaining three guards to help him stop the mer-creatures from attacking. They charged head-on at each other. Some had killed the guards. Most of them had turned into sea creatures—seahorses, stingrays, and all sorts of fish—and some looked friendlier than others.

  The guards had trouble pulling Jo away as she was wriggling out of their grasp to swim back to Tadgh. He killed a few more creatures to try to get back to her. Then he saw Lavinia turning back.

  Oh great, someone else to protect, he said to himself.

  More bizarre fish and sea creatures charged toward him, coming out of the dark water. He pulled a small knife from his boot and slit the python in half as it swam past him. He tried to stop as many of the creatures as possible so that they wouldn’t head toward Lavinia and Jo.

  But he only had two hands.

  Shit! A monstrous octopus emerged from the dark water. He looked behind him, and saw Jo and Lavinia fighting creatures that had gotten past him and attacked them.

  Tadgh turned back to the octopus. As he expected, it had eight tentacles and only one head. He flexed his muscles and shot himself through the water like a bullet, aiming at its head. His knife stabbed deep into its eye, in a second, the octopus was dead, its tentacles flopping to the sea floor.

  Tadgh then turned to help Jo and Lavinia. He couldn’t see much of them over the gigantic body of the dead octopus, and before he could get close to them, a menacing stingray glared at him. He swore it grinned.

  When Tadgh had his silver blood on, he had a fatal weak point on his lower back—a spot he had to guard at all costs.

  But it might be too late.

  The stingray flapped its wings in front of him, and he couldn’t locate its tail at first. Then the tail curled up above the fish as it flipped and whirled to distract him, hanging over his head like a rope.

  The water slowed him down, but he managed to tilt his body to the side. Too late. He felt a puncture in his back, and then he heard what he thought was Jo screaming. But how could she scream? They couldn’t speak under water. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

  Jo’s voice and her image seemed to fade into the distance.

  In the darkness, he thought about how much he hated swimming. He thought about what he had intended to ask Jo before they got into the water to go to Nepolymbus. He needed to know her answer to that question.

  Then he heard and felt nothing else.

  Chapter 8

  Kai awoke to find himself chained to the wall. He vaguely recalled what had happened. He knew the siren in that secret compartment was controlling him. He still felt the helplessness as half of his brain screamed for his body to move, but the other half was paralyzed. He watched as Faye panicked. He wanted to calm her down, but his body wouldn’t obey him. Then his brain gradually gave in to the illusory voice in his head—the siren’s song.

  His consciousness faded quickly. But in the glimpse of the light in that secret compartment, before he lost control of his mind and body, he saw Faye swing the computer screen at his head. That move might have saved him from the siren’s influence.

  Kai yanked at the chain. He understood what she had done and why. He had underestimated the power of the siren. It was his mistake—and he wouldn’t let it happen again. But there was no need to tie him up. She should know that when he woke up, the siren’s influence would be gone.

  He knew where he was. Nothing was as humiliating for a hunter as being chained to a wall, especially in the Cave—a low-tech basement where they locked up primitive test subjects. It was the only low-tech section of the lab because Faye didn’t want technology to contaminate any of her tests.

  He concentrated and pulled hard. On his second attempt, he pulled the fastener holding the chain out of the wall. Wrapping the chain around his wrists, he approached the steel door.

  Through the small window, he saw a guard approaching. He rushed back to where he had been chained and lay flat on the floor. As he expected, the guard rushed in to check on him. When the guard was within arm’s reach, he opened his eyes, grabbed the guard, and knocked him unconscious.

  That was easy, Kai thought. He rushed to the door, but before he could get to the corridor, he saw the shadow of someone walking at the far end. He stepped back inside the cell and closed the door gently. He pulled the unconscious guard away from the view of the cell window. There was nothing he could do to cover the broken wall where he’d yanked the chain out, so he stood against the wall and hoped that this guard wouldn’t look inside.

  The footsteps came closer to his cell and then moved past. But before he could exhale in relief, the footsteps stopped and returned.

  “Damn it,” Kai cursed under his breath.

  Someone was standing in front of his cell. The door was pushed open. Kai knew he couldn’t take any chances, so he reached out, pulled the guard into the cell, and slammed the door shut. He threw the guard from one end of the cell to the other where he crashed into the wall and fell to the floor.

  Kai was about to charge at him before he realized the guard wasn’t wearing a uniform.

  “What the fuck!” he said and stood up, holding his shoulder, which looked dislocated. He turned to Kai.

  “Lex? What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass. But apparently it isn’t necessary.”

  “I thought you were another guard.” Kai pointed at Lex’s shoulder. “You want me to fix that?”

  Lex said nothing—he was shifting the upper half of his body into that of a reptile. He shook slightly and his skin glowed, and in a few seconds, he shifted back to his merman form.

  Kai rolled his eyes. “I should have known you wouldn’t need me to fix any of your broken bones.”

  Lex walked over to check on the guard lying on the floor. “Is he dead?”

  “No.” Kai walked toward the door. “We should leave—now.”

  “Agreed.” Lex grabbed the unconscious guard’s neck and twisted it.

  “Was that necessary?” Kai asked.

  “Maybe not at the moment, but he would be pressing the alarm button before you and I could get out of the dome.”

  “Get out of the dome?”

  Lex waved his arms in the air. “You think you’re down in the Cave and Central doesn’t know about it? Why do you think I’m here?”

  Alarm bells rang in Kai’s head. “What happened to Faye?”

  “Worry about yourself first.”

  “What happened to Faye?” He picked Lex up, leaving his feet dangling in midair. Then he put the merman down. “I’m sorry… can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Central got an alert that subjects in the lab were acting up. They summoned Faye. They got the lab scan, and I saw your name on the list of subjects locked in the Cave. So I came to get you out. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. I didn’t see any major problems upstairs.”

  Kai nodded. “Thank you. So… Faye is at Central?”

  Lex shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Who did they send to get her?”

  “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”


  “When you were upstairs, was it quiet because there was no action? Or because you didn’t see anyone?”

  Lex frowned. “Actually, I didn’t see anyone.”

  Kai nodded. “All right then.” He grabbed Lex again and threw him to the far end of the cell. Then he darted outside the cell and locked it.

  “Hey, I let you out!”

  “I would have gotten out myself, Lex.”

  “I’m your apprentice, not your subject.”

  “You’re absolutely right. You’re my apprentice. So you’ll stay here until it’s safe, and then I’ll let you out. Trust me, this is the only safe place for you right now.”

  “I don’t need your protection!”

  “You might not need my protection,” Kai said as he turned and walked away, “but I promised your mother just that. So you stay in there and keep quiet. You don’t want to disturb what’s in the secret compartment.”

  Chapter 9

  Lavinia held Tadgh from behind, around his chest, and kicked her legs through the dark water as hard as she could. She didn’t know what had gotten into her. She’d never thought she could be so strong. The man from the multiverse was obviously out of it, and he relied on her for survival. Even though she could move quickly through the water and had superior power, he was still large, and a dead weight in her arms.

  Her own ability didn’t surprise her much compared to what Jo had done. The tiny woman had fought against a group of sea creatures three times bigger than she. She moved so naturally in the water, and each blow she landed on a creature had a massive impact. And then, when Tadgh was attacked and injured by the stingray, somehow Jo had told her to remove him from the scene.

  Lavinia had no idea how she had received the message from Jo in the water, but she had followed Jo’s instructions without question. She knew Jo and Tadgh were higher commanders in Eudaiz, but Lavinia had royal connections, and she couldn’t believe she’d been shaken when confronted by the direct attack and when she took Jo’s order.