The Mighty Hunter Read online

  Aidan nodded. Caderyn didn’t move. They were both staring at her as if they expected her to freak out on them at any moment. That moment was going to be right...about...now.

  “Is this a government project?” Bridget quirked a brow. “Is that what happened? The government was working on some kind of human-fish hybrid that got loose and attacked the ships. I knew that genetic research would someday get out of hand. Sure, they tell you they’re only growing a few stem cells or trying to replicate blood but then, bam! You’ve got yourself a bunch of mutant genetic mishaps that go crazy and can’t be contained.”

  Caderyn looked as if she’d slapped him. Nothing could be done for it. She wondered if this was somehow his pet project. Was he some sort of military scientist? It would explain the physique, if not the clothes.

  Bridget frowned, shaking her head. “You should be ashamed of yourselves, playing God like that. We are not gods. We are scientists. We study nature. We try to cure viruses. We try to make life better. We do not make our own creatures.”

  They didn’t move.

  Bridget backed away in horror, shaking her head. “Oh, no. It didn’t get loose, did it? You let it out. You made it attack the ships. You were testing it, weren’t you? And you brought back females. You’re not going to let us go, are you?” She grabbed her stomach, feeling sick. “You’re going to impregnate us with those things, aren’t you? Ugh, it is the perfect plan. No one knows where we are. But, what if I told you they did know. What if I said…? And you’re going to impregnate… Those half-fish…”

  Bridget continued to back away, wondering if she was already pregnant. She touched her stomach, pressing down on it hard. Aidan lifted a hand to her. He looked at her as if she were crazy. “You are drawing the wrong conclusion, my lady.”

  “Then, you saved us and you’re going to let us go?” Bridget asked. Caderyn’s jaw was tight, as he glared at her. “You’re going to help us?”

  “Well, there is no leaving this place,” Aidan told her. “Please, come sit down and let us lay it all out for you.”

  “We’ll sign whatever paperwork you require stating that we will not reveal anything we’ve seen here.” Bridget looked around. “No one would believe us anyway. Ancient Rome floating beneath the ocean? They’ll think we swallowed too much sea water. Just give us our clothes back and throw us on the nearest shore.”

  “My lady, please,” Caderyn said, his voice tight. “Sit.”

  “I want you to take me to Cassie,” Bridget said. At Caderyn’s blank look, she said, “Cassandra. Cassie. The redheaded woman I was with. I want you to take me to her now.”

  “She’s gone,” Caderyn said.

  “She’s dead?” Bridget whispered, her eyes tearing.

  “No, no,” Aidan assured her. “Lord Iason takes her to the country to his home there so that she may recover and not spread her illness to you.”

  Bridget’s head ached. She was so confused. Going to the couch, she finally sat. “I thought you said we were underwater. How can he take her to the country?”

  “I’ll start at the beginning,” Aidan said. “Well, my beginning. My name is Aidan Douglass. I was born in eighteen-ninety-three in a southern county of Scotland.”

  “Time travel?” Bridget whispered. As he said it, she heard only the faintest trace of a Scottish accent. She’d not picked up on it before.

  “No,” Aidan said.

  “I will leave you two to discuss this.” Caderyn didn’t look at her as he left. Bridget found she missed his silent presence, even if he was angry with her opinion.

  When they were alone, Aidan continued. “I was a scholar, a historian if you will, on my way to Africa to explore the great pyramids, to discover buried treasure, that sort of thing. Our boat, the Bella Donna, was attacked much the same way yours was. It sank. Since there were no women onboard, I was saved and brought here.”

  “How chivalrous,” Bridget chuckled softly, though she felt no real humor at the moment. “They save the women first.”

  “Yes, well, it is chivalrous if you’re a dame,” Aidan said.

  “Time travel?” Bridget bit her lip. Wait a minute. Did he just call her a dame?

  “No, time moves down here as it does in the surface world.”

  “That would make you over a hundred years old,” Bridget said, eyeing him.

  “Yes it would, wouldn’t it? Aidan chuckled. “I haven’t thought about age for quite some time now.”

  “How come you haven’t aged?” Bridget asked. She shivered, clasping her hands together. The wool gown was warm, but she still felt chilled.

  “It’s this place. Once your body acclimates to it, you never get sick and you never age.” Aidan leaned forward. “Would you like me to stop? We can discuss this more later if you’re feeling overwhelmed by this.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Bridget said dryly. “Please, continue.”

  “Ah,” Aidan said. “Forgive me. Ladies of my time were much more,” he shrugged, adding diplomatically, “delicate.”

  “Okay,” Bridget took a deep breath. It was time to start analyzing this man’s logic with deductive reasoning. “What is this place? Is it heaven? Hell?”

  “Neither really, at least not in the sense I knew it,” Aidan sat back, resting his arms over the back of the couch. “From what I gather, this society was the center of the ancient world. It ruled over much of the land—Greece, Italy, Egypt that was a vast empire at the time. Back then, they were known as the Atlantes.”

  “As in Atlantis? The lost city that fell beneath the waves in one day?” Bridget asked in disbelief. Every scientist who worked in the ocean knew the myth of Atlantis. Maybe these men had swallowed too much seawater.

  “Yes, the same.” Aidan nodded, seeming pleased that she knew of it. “The Atlantes’ land prospered with little effort. They were great warriors who were never defeated in battle. According to them, they were blessed by the god, Poseidon. If you’re not familiar with the name, he was the god of the sea.”

  “Greek myth.” It was all she could eke out.

  “Yes, exactly.” Aidan nodded enthusiastically, his face animated with excitement. “But, like all great civilizations, they grew arrogant with power. In those times the afterlife was a gloomy place, not like the heaven we think of—or at least the one I thought of.” Aidan sighed, becoming almost wistful. “I can’t wait to hear how the world has changed in the last hundred years. Did you Americans ever get your liquor back? Or is it still illegal? What about the automobile? Anything ever come of that or are you back to the horse and buggy? Oh, and what of the cinema? A friend of mine swore he would find a way to make the motion pictures talk.” Aidan laughed, shaking his head at the very idea. “What a live wire that one was. What was his name again? Henry? Harry? Well, I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere, but it’s been nearly ten years since I’ve opened the journals I kept on my arrival here.”

  “You were saying that the afterlife for the Atlantes was a grim place,” Bridget prompted, trying to keep Aidan on track.

  “Yes, yes. Terrible fate the afterlife was. All these people could enjoy was their mortal lives. So they stopped worshiping Poseidon and began to worship themselves as gods on earth. They became lazy, taking all they’d been given for granted. There were no more battles to fight, so they raided their neighbors, taking more than they needed. One day, King Lucius, after much feasting and drinking, proclaimed to his people that he would never die, for he never wished to leave their bountiful paradise upon the earth—land that was more beautiful than the kingdom of the gods.”

  “And Poseidon didn’t like this,” Bridget concluded.

  “Exactly. Poseidon cursed the city for its vanity and self-love. He gave them what they wanted. He granted their wish for immortality, forever condemned to walk on their earthly paradise and nowhere else. This land, he plunged into the water, trapping them so they could never set foot on mortal soil again. Here they have remained on the bottom of the ocean, their land drifting aimlessly with the cu
rrents.” Aidan sighed. “And now we are part of it, never able to leave.”

  “Assuming for a moment I believe this wild story of yours,” Bridget said, doing her best to reason in an unreasonable situation. She leaned forward, threading her fingers together. “We got here so that means we can go.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Aidan repeated.

  “All right. Then, how did they rescue me if they are forever trapped here.” Bridget smiled, feeling as if she were poking holes in his crazed logic.

  “I said they could never set foot on mortal soil again,” Aidan answered. He grinned, obviously enjoying the scholarly debate. “Or, incidentally, breathe mortal air. It’s one of the few things that can kill them—ah, us. Kill us.”

  “Ah, but they swam to the surface where they found me,” Bridget said. “What about the ocean floor? It’s soil.”

  “Fins,” Aidan whispered. “Your, ah, half-fish mutant genetic mishaps I believed you called them.”

  Bridget paled. If this was true, then no wonder Caderyn had become insulted by her words. She’d insulted him, not his work. “Caderyn? He’s a… a merman? A real live, swim through the water, merman?”

  Aidan nodded.

  “And Althea? She’d be a mermaid?”

  “They prefer to be called the Merr.”

  “Oh,” Bridget covered her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Aidan jumped to his feet. He looked around before grabbing the antique brass vase and thrusting it at her. “Here.”

  Bridget swallowed down her bile. “I can’t get sick in that. Look at how old it is!”

  “Right you are,” Aidan agreed, putting it back. “Excellent point.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bridget managed through her fingers. She took several deep breaths. “I can’t believe this. The gods thing I can handle. I’ve always believed there was something greater than us out there. But the lost city of Atlantis? It’s a myth, a legend. This cannot be Atlantis.”

  “Yes, up there it is a myth. Down here we call it Atlantes, which is the giant underwater dome and all it contains. Inside, the country is called Ataran. This city is Atlas and it really is on a slight hill, not the great mountain of legend.” Aidan smiled. He moved toward the door. “I’m going to leave you. We’ll talk again soon. I’m sure you’ll have many more questions for me.”

  Bridget made a faint noise, pulling her hand away from her mouth long enough to give him a weak wave. She was tired, too tired to deal with everything right now. She rubbed her temple and said nothing.

  “You are taking this rather well,” Aidan said from the doorway, sounding awed. “I was in tears for weeks.”

  “It’s early yet,” Bridget mumbled. “Give me time.”

  Chapter 8

  Caderyn paced the halls, her words echoing in his head.

  Human-fish hybrid. Mutant genetic mishaps. You’re going to impregnate us with those things.

  So much for wooing her to his bed. Her repulsion couldn’t have been made any clearer.

  Though, if he remembered correctly, that had been their first reaction too, when they touched salt water and saw what they had become. Perhaps after a hundred years had passed she would not think of the Merr in such a way. Maybe if he showed her how cultured they were, how far they’d come, she would begin to accept it and him. It wasn’t as if they were barbarians to begin with. They’d been civilized.

  Regardless, her words stung, even though he tried not to take it personally. Why did her opinion matter so much to him? It wasn’t like he knew her. He’d saved her life, sure, but he didn’t know her. She was just some human he’d saved from death. It was quite possible that she wasn’t fated to be his. Perhaps she’d been allowed to live so that she may belong to someone else. There was no sign saying whose wife she would be, or that she would be any Merr’s bride. They would all hope, but there was no way to know for sure.

  Looking around the palace walls, thinking of his long years, Caderyn knew that it was possibly much crueler to save her and bring her here than to let her die. But, laws were laws. How else were they going to redeem themselves to Poseidon? Though, none of them truly knew if such a thing was even possible. They had not seen the god since he’d cast them into the sea. No matter how much time passed, it was a day they would never forget.

  Seeing Aidan coming down the hall, he nodded.

  “She took it well,” Aidan assured him. “I think she’ll be fine in a few days after she has had time to adjust. We’re in luck too. She’s a scientist. I can’t wait to discover all that has changed up there. I’ll bet she can explain some of the stuff the scavengers have brought back from her world.”

  “Thank you for talking to her,” Caderyn said. At Aidan’s words, he realized that she might be here to help them as a people, and not as someone’s bride.

  Aidan nodded, smiling to himself as he walked off. There was always a buzz of excitement whenever something from the human world was brought back to analyze. Having three humans to tell them of the world was like striking gold.

  Deciding to give her a few days to adjust, Caderyn forced all questions from his mind. He went back to his home, finding her on the couch where he’d left her. She did look better after a night of rest.

  When she looked up at him, a stunned though mildly accepting look was on her pale face. Her gaze moved down over his body, staring for a long time at his bare legs. She bit her lip in worry.

  “You must be hungry,” he said. “Come, I’ll take you to the palace hall to dine. Don’t worry. It is early yet, and there won’t be too many people. Though, I must introduce you to King Lucius before we can eat.”

  “King?” Bridget glanced down over her wardrobe, feeling her hair. “I can’t meet royalty right now. I’m too … frazzled.”

  “You are fine,” Caderyn assured her. “They will not care what you look like. Tomorrow, after you have rested more, I’ll have the tailors measure you for more suitable clothes.”

  Bridget swallowed nervously, keeping her eyes on him. She stared at his clothes.

  “They will show you design plates, so you may pick what you like,” he offered.

  “I can’t pay,” Bridget said, her tone flat.

  “Pay?”

  “Trade, pay, whatever it is you give in return for something,” Bridget looked up at him, finally meeting his eyes. “Do you even have jobs for someone like me? What am I to do here? I’m not sure I even believe what Aidan said, but if it’s true, then what am I to do?”

  “You mustn’t worry about such things now,” Caderyn said. “You will be taken care of. A place will be found for you. Come, walk with me. You will feel better after you have had some food.”

  Caderyn was mildly surprised when she didn’t protest. He led her out of his home toward the palace hall. She took small steps but didn’t stop.

  “What do you want with me?” Her voice quivered.

  “I told you. Do not worry about it right now.” Caderyn said, wondering at her impatience. If anything, they had all the time in the world.

  “I need answers,” Bridget said. She grabbed his arm. The voluntary touch sent a shockwave through him. He stared at her pale fingers as they lay against his darker skin. “Please, Caderyn. Why am I here? Why me? What’s going to happen?”

  He lifted his hand to her face. His fingers shook as he lightly touched her. “First, you will meet the king. Then you will eat. Then you will rest.”

  “And then?”

  “Then, when you are recovered, our scholars would like to question you about your world,” Caderyn stroked her cheek, pleased that she didn’t pull away from him. Despite what she’d said, maybe she wasn’t repulsed by him, his kind. Perhaps she was only in shock. He tried to be patient with her. “We are always curious about how things have changed.”

  “Then?”

  “Can you read the future in your world so easily, Bridget? For we Merr cannot predict what will happen tomorrow.” Caderyn leaned closer, g
auging her every reaction to his nearness. As he moved, she gasped, drawing away as if she were coming out of a trance.

  “You’re a merman,” she said, shaking. She turned her eyes forward, refusing to look at him.

  Caderyn balled his hand into a fist and drew it away. Angrily, he said, “Aye, I am. So are most of the people here. Please remember that before you start calling us genetic mutant mishaps again.”

  Bridget gasped.

  Caderyn reined in his anger. His lips tight, he said, “Come. You must be hungry.”

  Bridget shivered as she walked down the hall next to Caderyn. She didn’t want to admit it, but she believed him. When he said he was a merman, that she was in an underwater world, she believed him. There were other, more logical explanations for what was happening, but she actually believed Caderyn’s illogical answer. And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.

  His tight words couldn’t have been clearer. Down here she was the mutant freak, not him. She wondered if the ‘scholars’ would poke and prod her like a science experiment, like a captured alien of some sort. Wasn’t that what humans did with new species? They studied them, tested them, dissected them.

  There was that, and then there was the fact that she found herself attracted to Caderyn on a very primitive level. Even though he looked like a man, he wasn’t one. He was Merr. They were a different species. Not only was she the freak in this world, she was destined to be alone in it.

  She thought about her world. If they had captured a merman, wouldn’t they have stuck it in a glass cage? They would have put it on display for the world to see—just like they did dolphins and whales. Caderyn in her world would be a theme park attraction.

  “Are you going to put me in a cage?” she asked.

  “A what?” Caderyn blinked, looking at her. He was irritated again.

  Bridget could see it in his eyes. She waited for him to smile like he did in Althea’s home. He didn’t. “Am I to be an amusement?”