THE PINK CORAL-COVERED BUILDING WHERE THE SEA MONSTER
was holding his son morphed from fairy-tale charming to dungeonesque the closer they swam and as Logan sur¬veyed the lay of the… land?… around it.
Other than the terraced coral garden in front, only aquamarine water surrounded them—and comparing the color of the water in this hellish place to Angel’s eyes would be an abomination.
“We need to find somewhere to lie low so we can scout the area, Angel. That… molehill, crab heap— whatever—back there isn’t going to cut it.”
“There’s no reason to.” Angel stopped swimming when he did. “And no way, either. All of Ceto’s pal¬aces are set up with open space around them. There are guards in every tower monitoring arrivals. She already knows we’re here.”
Son-of-a-bitch. “So your plan is to go straight in. Meet her face to face. In a position of power.” Bluffing.
“Unless you’ve got a better idea?” She started swim-ming again.
Well, hell. He was a decent poker player—and it wasn’t as if they had many choices.
Or did they?
He tugged one of her purple flippers. “We both don’t have to go, Angel.”
“Yes we do, Logan. You don’t know Ceto.” She
turned somber eyes on him. Eyes that had lost that spar-kle she’d had since he’d met her—which was as much a tragedy as Michael being inside.
No. No it wasn’t. Michael was the focus of this expe-dition, and Angel’s eyes be damned.
“Ceto knows we’re here. This is her territory. She knew the moment you stepped aboard your boat in the harbor, the minute The Council Guards showed up. Nothing goes on in these waters that she doesn’t know. We can’t sneak up on her, so it’s better to go in under our own power and deal with her in an even swimming pool than have her send out her henchfish to round us up and herd us in.”
He didn’t like it, but obviously he had no choice. At least he’d brought the hook. And the knife. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
When they were twenty yards from the palace, the massive doors opened. Silently, slowly, the swirling water sucked everything in the immediate vicinity in-ward. Effective. Ominous. Deceptively innocuous.
Unlike the battalion that awaited them.
Logan clamped his jaw shut as he saw the army of horror treading just inside. Barracuda lined up in forma-tion with a row of morays behind them, and a sawfish swam beneath the contingent like a colonel inspecting his ranks. Logan had the uncomfortable feeling that that was exactly what the fish was doing.
This was where his son was being held?
“Princesa.” One of the barracuda broke rank and swam to Angel, a little more in her face than Logan was comfortable with, but Angel held her own.
“Mato, please tell Ceto we’re here to see her.”
“You think she doesn’t know?” The fish writhed back and forth so much like a giddy two-year-old that he was either happy, high, or hooked.
Logan wanted it to be the latter. He gripped the gaff tighter.
“And you.” The barracuda swam over to him, his eyes narrowing as he got too damn close for Logan’s liking. “Get rid of the weapon. It won’t do any good around Ceto anyway.”
Logan had figured that, but he wouldn’t hand it over until Angel nodded. He didn’t like feeling naked and vulnerable. Good thing he still had the knife. Did fish know enough about clothing to check pockets? He hoped to hell not.
Luck was with him—if he could call any of this luck—and he made it in without a pat-down, though the fish had asked him about Michael’s hat, smirking when he saw what it was.
“Yeah, you can keep that. It’s not as if you’re going to drown the goddess with it.”
Goddess? Talk about delusions of grandeur.
They followed the deadly fish down a long corridor, unusual chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, an ancient hall of horrors that, somewhere, housed his son.
Logan steeled himself against the pain. Michael was in here. Beneath the water, probably scared and won-dering where he was. Logan wanted to kill something, starting with the barracuda and working his way through every last moray before moving on to the sea monster.
He didn’t want to imagine what Michael was going through. The terror, the abandonment… First, his mother dropped him on the doorstep of a father he’d never
known; now a shark had brought him to this watery pit. Logan exhaled a long stream of water—something he didn’t want to dwell on. He’d get Michael out. Then he’d take him back on land and give him the most nor-mal childhood he could—find his son a two-legged stepmother, buy a dog, build a picket fence around his
yard. No more of this mermaid shit.
Hell, he’d move inland. Kansas even. Somewhere away from the ocean and the memories. Away from the possibility of any of this ever happening again.
Angel swam around the ninety-degree turn at the corridor’s dead end after the barracuda as if she knew exactly where she was going. As if they were invited guests. Not like they were here on a rescue mission that could get ugly.
Or become a battle to the death.
But how ironic was it that Angel, a mermaid, a mythi-cal creature said to lure men to their deaths, was on a mission to save his child?
No.
He couldn’t think like that.
They were in this predicament because of her, and he was not about to romanticize it. There was no future with a woman who was half fish.
Although she hadn’t been last night…
Logan shook off the thought. Last night was over.
Today, the future, were what counted.
He followed her around the bend, taking note of each turn they made, identifying marks in the similarly deco-rated corridors, the view from the windows, and gearing up his internal compass to keep track of where they were and how they’d gotten there.
Lobsters lined the next corridor, antennae angled as if they were cadets offering a military salute—or making sure he and Angel stayed in line.
“Logan, whatever you do, get Michael out of here, okay?” Angel whispered when the barracuda rounded another corner.
“Of course I will. What are you talking about?”
She glanced around the corner, then back at him, ten-sion etched onto her face. “Just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
“Let’s move it, Princesa.” The barracuda’s toothy snout preceded the rest of his deadly body back around the corner. “You know how she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Yeah, well, Logan didn’t like having his son kidnapped, but then, you didn’t always get what you wanted.
But he was about to. He fingered the knife in his pocket.
The sea monster was going to get what was coming to her.