Sara’s chest squeezed the breath right out of her as panic set in. Xanthus lowered her and her chair down to the sand. He stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the lapping water. It was a testament to how terrified she was that she didn’t give his amazing body a thought as she sucked in air and tried to wheel through the thick sand, attempting to escape.
The water began to churn and bubble. “You might want to close your eyes. You don’t want to see this.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard what he said, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. She was too busy trying to get away. All she could think about was the thundering sound of the surf and the giant, threatening waves. Sara started to sob as her chair refused to budge. In desperation, her eyes locked onto Xanthus as she sat, petrified.
Xanthus bent forward, groaning in agony, and squeezed his arms around his chest. His growl increased in volume and then turned into a shriek as the skin on his legs ripped open, peeling back to expose slick, red muscles and white tendons.
Sara gasped in horror at the grotesque sight, the ocean waves suddenly forgotten. Each of Xanthus’s muscles pulsed and throbbed as they grew and morphed. Muscles and tendons snaked around Xanthus’s exposed legs, wrapping them from front to back as if they were tying his legs together.
Gray skin rippled down from his waist, covering the exposed flesh all the way to his ankles. Below his ankles, the white bones of his feet had torn through his skin and stretched like skeletal branches. The bones were soon connected with white elongating tendons and then covered by the advancing grey skin forming a great fin.
When the transformation was complete, Xanthus’s head flew back as he shouted in triumphant. Shock-driven adrenaline jolted Sara’s body. Xanthus looked magnificent and ferocious. It was like coming face to face with a vicious shark.
Sara opened her mouth to scream but the scream choked off when the recognition hit her. She sat frozen, her mouth agape. Xanthus’s fin was much like her own deformed legs—the same shape, the same form. The only difference was that hers was flesh colored and his was grey. He must be… a merman? And if that were true, was she really a mermaid?
Sara sat stunned.
She’d never known a merman could look so deadly. Sara’s eyes rose to his face. Xanthus looked apprehensive, as if he sensed her alarm. When she saw his trepidation, her fear melted away. This was Xanthus, the man who had been watching over and protecting her since the moment they’d met. He might look lethal, but he would never hurt her.
Sara shut her mouth and swallowed. Her eyes, burning with curiosity, brushed over his body in a careful examination. Xanthus was amazing. The skin on his upper body was tanned, muscled, smooth, and hairless. His lower body was dark grey, almost black. His fin looked long and muscular. It fanned out darkly in the sandy surf. He was wearing a wide, gold belt at the waist that matched the gold armbands around his biceps. However incredible his form may have been, what was even more amazing was the fact that he was suspended in the air.
This merman could fly.
“Are you a…?” Sara licked her parched lips.
“Dagonian. We’re both Dagonians. Well, you’re half. But you’re the perfect image of one, except for your blue eyes. Dagonians only have dark brown eyes.”
“So I’m not a mermaid?”
“No, you’re not. The children of Triton are extinct—killed off two thousand years ago at the command of Poseidon, Triton’s own father and King of the Greek sea gods. You’re a descendant of the unlikely union of the gods Dagon and Calypso. Dagon is a sea god in the Sumerian pantheon. Calypso is a sea goddess of the Greek pantheon.”
