A - Immortal Sea

result of a one-night stand.

She raised her chin. “It was never enough.”

His eyes blazed. His mouth curled mockingly. “You have changed your tune. You sang a different song when you were

open and under me.”

She sucked in her breath. But before she could respond, he tugged on the door. The night swirled in, and he was gone.

The moon breasting the clouds left a wake of broken silver. The fog flowed, a cool current from the sea.

Morgan welcomed the chill in the air, for he had a burn in his blood that would not be satisfied this night.

His own fault, he acknowledged.

He had miscalculated Elizabeth‟s resistance. But then, he had not expected resistance. He had never had a female reject

him before. Never known a woman who demanded more than her pleasure as her due.

“I need trust and tenderness and companionship and commitment. Can you offer me all those things? Or any of those

things?”

Of course he could not. Would not.

He was not bloody human.

But he should have worked harder to gain her trust, he realized now.

A hunter must think like his prey. He had managed well enough with the boy, observing from a distance, anticipating his

moves. But with Elizabeth, Morgan had blundered badly. He had allowed his hunger to compromise his skill. Betrayed by

appetite, he had struck too soon.

Something to think about when his blood was cooler.

He left the road, plunging down a slope thick with huckleberries, beach roses, and tall weeds.

The scent of the sea, cod and kelp, birth and decay, rose like the mist to fill his lungs and head. The heavy surface shone,

opaque in the cloudy light. The tide sighed and murmured over the rocks, leaving behind bowls of rich water brimming with

life.

He rolled his shoulders, the tension leaching from his muscles. Head erect, he strode over the deserted strand, shedding the

things that constrained him in human form: shoes, sweater, pants, worry, conscience. The finfolk were powerful shifters, and

he was their lord. He could transform even his outer garments. But tonight he wanted nothing between him and his element.

He splashed through pockets and pools of water, his world revealing itself in stages, blue-green algae clinging like shadows

to the rocks, small, complex fortresses of periwinkles and barnacles, rubbery mats of sea wrack and Irish moss.

The water seized his ankles like cold manacles in the dark. His balls tightened. He grinned fiercely and waded forward, the

warden‟s medallion at his throat shining like a second moon.

The ocean surged to receive him, rustling around his knees, lapping at his thighs. He shook back his hair and dived, holding

his breath against the shock of cold, the painful ecstasy, into the clear salt dark, into the pulse and surge and curl of the water,

letting the joy take him, letting the water take him, one with the joy and the water.

Home.

Free.

His boundaries blurred and dissolved. His bones melted, stretched, fused. The pulse of the waves became his pulse, the

heart of the ocean, his beating heart. He felt the Change rip through him like another pain, another ecstasy, tearing, convulsive,

consuming as climax.

He retained just enough of his human mind to shape the Change as the hand of a potter shapes the clay. He was speed, size,

strength, he was death in the water. He was the wolf of the ocean, Orcinus , seal killer, whale killer, killer whale. Scent

disappeared. Sound enveloped him, vibrating through his bones, echoing in his head.

He plunged and breached, his breath a cloud, exhalation and exultation. He rocketed through the rushing dark, out-racing

human thought and the oily taint of humans in the water, propelled by cold and energy.

Home.

Free.

The lash of heat flicked like a whip across his belly. He reared, rolled, fearless and confused. He was predator, not prey.

Yet even in orca form he recognized ENEMY.

Human? No.

He reached out with questing thoughts and rapid clicks, received them back as echoes in the dark. He felt the heat rising

like a plume, like a stain, like blood from the broken breast of earth. A sea vent, he realized, on the ocean floor, seeping heat

and malice.

“ I feel your frustration, finfolk lord, even in the depths of Hell. Why do you not take what you need? ”

Gau. He recognized the source of heat, the voice in his head. The demon lord Gau, Hell‟s emissary to Sanctuary, an old

acquaintance and sometimes adversary who served the prince of Hell as Morgan served the prince of the sea. They knew each

other well, fellow elementals equal in age and power, pride and position. They understood each other.

Perhaps too well, Morgan acknowledged. For in the demon lord, Morgan recognized his own lust for survival, his own

personal ambition.

He bent his thoughts downward to the vent. “ Gau. I thought we buried you. ”

The demon‟s amusement curled upward like smoke. “I am immortal. Remarkably hard to snuff. Didn’t I see you go down

with the wall on Sanctuary?”

The previous winter, the children of fire had attacked the merfolk‟s island. Morgan had stood with Conn on the walls of

Sanctuary when an eruption of the earth‟s crust had turned the sea itself against them, sending a great wave down like a

hammer on the castle.

“ I am finfolk, ” he returned blandly. “ Remarkably hard to drown. ”

“Ah, yes, I remember. You saved your lord that day and got small thanks for it.”

Surprising the resentment that stirred. Or not so surprising, Morgan reflected, trying to shield his thoughts. Gau was very

good at his work.

“Better thanks, I am sure, than you received from your lord for your defeat.”

A hiss of fire, another flash of heat.

“ Your lord is weak, ” Gau spat. “He allies himself with weakness to the detriment of all your kind.”

“We make no alliances. The children of the sea are neutral in Hell’s war on Heaven and humankind.”

“Not so neutral when your prince is fucking one.”

Morgan had thought the same. But despite her human heritage, he respected the prince‟s consort Lucy, targair inghean ,

promised daughter of the merfolk. He gave a mental shrug. “Neutral enough until you moved against us.”

“We seek only to restore the balance of power to what it was. To what it should be.”

“Enough games,” Morgan snapped. “What do you want?”

“Only your welfare and ours. Your people are dying.” Gau‟s voice grated like sandpaper in his skull. “Beset by humankind

and neglected by the selkie pretender. Ally with us and you will survive. We can have primacy again.”

Temptation struck, sharp and shining as a hook.

He dived deep, fighting the pull of Gau‟s voice. “Water and fire make poor allies.”

“Are we not both elementals? Our interests are the same. Our quarrel is with Conn, not with you.”

“I am the prince’s warden.”

“He does not deserve your loyalty. Why do you think he put you to work hauling stone? Because you are expendable to

him. He would not care if you and all your people vanish beneath the wave.”