Dark Depths

Chapter One: Blood and Water

**Exciting news! DARK DEPTHS is finally finished and will be published June 20, 2017 in ebook and print formats on Amazon!**

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Text Copyright Lani Lenore 2007-2014

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Lastly, enjoy.

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Prologue

The moon cast light onto the surface of the sea, and like every other night, the sea repelled the glow, refusing to be penetrated by her lover.

Their romance was enjoyed from a distance, the intensity varying with the size of the lustful moon's eye. The sea wore her glittering dress and the moon pulled at it, urging up the tides but never managing to uncover her. The velvety thickness of the night made a perfect blanket for their liaison; it went on continually.

Within their love, their children thrived.

Beneath Father's watchful gaze and wrapped in Mother's cold embrace, the children rose up into the night from the belly of the deep. The volatile wind touched their ash-colored flesh, chilling them, tossing their tangled hair. Their eyes glowed like tiny fireflies drifting over the water, and only a trained eye might see them for what they truly were. The jutting rocks hid the children from view, and they distanced themselves over the area that would be their hunting ground.

Thunder rumbled—an approaching storm, which brought its own sadistic desire. The sea's violent anger, lashed as she was by a whip of lightning, would aid the children on this night. Past their small white teeth, like pearls fresh from the oyster, they began to salivate.

As silent as a ghost, a ship approached, steady andpeaceful in the night. The children laid in wait.

Chapter One:

Blood and Water

1

What is freedom? This was Nathan's thought as he sat in the dark of the night, rocked to and fro by the waves beneath the ship.

The boards groaned with the persuasion of the sea and thunder rolled softly in the distance, but all else was silent now. Beneath a flag which lapped in the wind—bearing no nation's colors—Nathaniel Thomas stared at the blood on his hands.

He'd wiped the haunting substance off on his clothes, but in the light of the full moon, he saw that they were still stained. His captain's ship, the Blood-Red Siren, had been drifting for hours on the open sea after leaving Port Lennings. The flames had finally faded from view behind the ship—the smell of smoke and blood with them. Now, once again, Nathan asked himself: What is freedom?

Was freedom in this blood on his hands? He'd done what he'd been prompted, according to his captain's orders. He'd looted and murdered, wreaked general havoc and protected his own, but he'd done it his own way. There were no rules, after all. But was it freedom? Did this behavior release him from the expectations of society—of what it was to be reserved and controlled by a standard? Or had his actions made him more of a prisoner?