Seduced by the Sea Lord

Chapter 29

How long since Torun's enemy had disappeared with Lucy?

Hours?

Torun paced in the glass cell. He stopped and put his palms against the glass. Burst! By the almighty power of the Life Tree, shatter into a million fragments. Melt or bend and free me.

It was not enough.

He paced again. Sweat poured off his swollen, trembling limbs.

He was a male, exhausted by two hard swims, without the powers of a female, and weaker in the air.

On the television screen, a young mer warrior appeared over and over. By his honor markings, he was a warm-water youth from Duyung. Bruises and cuts marred his body, and he swam off-kilter. A human hand grabbed his right fin and exposed his flat, scoop-like anomaly. He kicked free and disappeared in deeper water.

Many humans commented on this story. The images replayed over and over.

New images replaced the Duyung mer. Blurry images in black-and-white and sepia hinted at city shapes. More serious humans sat at desks and talked. Diagrams of the ocean meshed over drawings of human lungs and fish gills.

Then, finally, a picture of Lucy.

Torun stopped fighting the glass and watched the screen. Sad humans tossed flowers into the ocean. An older woman hugged a tearful man. Lucy's parents? A still picture showed her again.

She was below the sea. With that Blake.

He screamed and pounded the glass.

The videos changed to show Torun on the deck of her boat and in Cancun.

He quieted.

Her friend Mel spoke on the TV. Her eyes and nose were red. The family Torun had met in the restaurant ranged around her.

He held his breath. Mel's words barely penetrated the glass.

"Now that we know mermen actually exist, I think we're going to find her." She sniffed. "Lucy's coming home."

The newsroom anchors cut in with a sudden announcement.

"New videos have just been posted to the Facebook page of the missing, presumed-dead diver, Lucy Shaw. They are dated from two weeks ago, the date of her disappearance. I repeat, these videos have just been posted."

The videos were black. Perhaps there was muted audio? The news replayed them with different filters, and finally, the cave interior emerged from the gloom. At the sacred pool, underlit by her flashlight, Lucy cupped the diluted elixir and drank. A second video showed her kneeling beside the lip of the cave and fumbling with the phone, so it focused on the ceiling. The video skipped, and then feet walked past.

The anchors froze the end of the video, blew it up, and lightened it.

They were his feet.

And they transformed into fins as he pushed off the floor and leaped into the water.

"This brings up all-new questions about the final moments of Lucy Shaw," the news anchor announced. "We go now to an evolutionary biologist who will attempt to answer how, exactly, feet could be made to do what we've just seen."

The evolutionary biologist began to speak.

Torun slid down the glass wall and thumped on the ground.

The mer had been exposed.

Lucy's videos played over and over. Torun's still feet-to-fins transition was interlaced with the injured young mer.

There. It was done. They were exposed.