Free A Mermaid's Ransom by Joey W. Hill Page B

beings?" Lex's gaze went back to the circle. Of course, living beings, you idiot. Did that kiss scramble your mind? The blood didn't come from him. Despite her attempt not to go there in her mind, she remembered the blood streaked on his body, along with the barely leashed savagery she'd welcomed as a titillating part of her dream. But as an impassioned lover, not as a creature who'd come to her by ripping away the life of another. What was the matter with her?
    "That's hideous. Stop touching me." She drew as far away from him in the tub as possible, the trapped feeling of her weakened and transformed state returning. "Oh, Goddess, you don't get it, do you? Please tell me you don't, because I don't want you to be this hideous. I don't want to know that I enjoy kissing a complete monster."
    Dante frowned. "It needed to be done. It was the only way to become free of this place. The seawitch said--"
    "That's not what Mina meant," she shot back. "She meant you had to prove yourself worthy to leave this place. A good person. Good works."
    He gave her that look as if she were speaking a foreign language again. "I've fought to be the leader of all that are left here. I hold complete control, if I am ever vigilant. I have mastered what magical energies exist in this world and myself to bring you here. What else can I do?"
    He stared at her, a hopelessly beautiful man in ragged piecemeal trousers, his broad chest still stained with blood, black hair lying on his shoulders like a silken prince's mantle. Crimson eyes intelligent, piercing, but so uncomprehending. Despairing, so close to giving in to her own hysteria, Lex glanced toward the window, and saw the barren landscape again. Chilling images of fire and ice, those horrible, soulless creatures circling like flies searching out carrion, though flies had a nobler purpose, a part of Nature.
    She recalled again the Dark Ones who'd been allowed into the chamber, the overwhelming flood of desolation and death from them. She'd felt no compulsion to ease their suffering, because there was nothing to them but death and evil. It was the first time in her life she'd felt that way. So if they were the only species in this world, all he'd ever known, what could he have done to prove he was capable of living in that other world?
    "Why didn't you just ask for help?" she asked.
    When she turned her attention back to him, she could tell she'd surprised him. He was still squatting on his heels by his makeshift pond, his fingers curled on the lip, unaffected by the sharp metal edge. Swallowing her fears and following instinct, she made herself move back across the tub and laid her hand over his. Focusing hard on their hands and not the blood staining his body, she pressed her fingers into the spaces between his, moving his attention there so she wasn't pinned under the weight of that unsettling gaze. "When you were in my dreams, why didn't you just ask for my help?" she repeated. "I'm her goddaughter, after all."
    "Why would you help me? You have no reason to do that, nothing to gain." He raised a shoulder. "Once she'd known I was in your dreams, she would have sealed that avenue to me. It has taken me a very long time to build it. Ever since she came here."
    Over twenty years. Alexis couldn't wrap her mind around the idea of dedicating twenty years to anything, but then, what else was there to do here? Starbucks obviously hadn't set up a franchise in this place. Mentally she thanked Clara for helping her develop an involuntary sense of humor, to carry her through times completely devoid of it. Until now, she'd never realized how useful it might be in a crisis situation.
    Dante had risen, moving to a rack constructed of more black wood. It held assorted cloths of dubious cleanliness and textures, everything from wool to denim. He brought one back as a makeshift towel. "I am going to take you over there." He nodded to a bundle of rags in a wood frame, something between a nest and a bed. "Unless you'd