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  But this was a close second.

  Elanna, a huge smile on her face, popped to the surface of the water, hugging Chipper to her body, and wishing for another jump.

  Before she could request a repeat performance, a voice jerked her back to her surroundings.

  Chipper had played with her as he declared, but he had also listened to the elder members of his pod.

  Elanna rested on his back, hugging his body tightly to hers, at the base of a huge platform.

  And there, several white-coated scientists stood, mouths open in amazement as they watched the woman speak to the dolphin.

  “Uh, hi?” she offered, as a deep feeling of unease filled her.

  The white-coated humans, Chipper squeaked, and absently Elanna answered in small clicks and squeals of her own.

  “Yes, they are,” she said quietly as she watched them race for nets, phones, cameras, all with excited looks on their faces. “And I am wondering if I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Elanna sat in the corner of the large glass chamber, and shook helplessly as the horror of what happened to her overcame her once more.

  She had tried to run, tried to flee with the dolphins, recognizing the look in several of the doctors’ eyes. She was the new experiment to examine under a microscope.

  But a well-aimed dart from a rifle ended any hope of that!

  She remembered Chipper’s horrified squeal as she was tranq’ed, then nothing more.

  She awoke to find that she had only been out for half an hour, that she was strapped to a table, that a white-suited scientist was peering at her through a bio-hazard suit and painfully taking her blood from her arm.

  “Stop it,” she mumbled, weakly struggling against the thick black cuffs that restrained her arms and legs. “Leave me alone.”

  But the young looking man only started, and ran out of the room calling for his supervisor.

  Elanna groaned as her head began to pound and her throat went dry. She needed water and a bathroom in the worse way. She looked up to see a huge water-head hanging over her, cameras placed all around, and a wall filled with what she knew to be two-way mirrors. She was being stared at like a creature in a zoo.

  She was still attempting to voice her necessities from a parched throat when a man entered, sans the big white suit, but the glee on his face was just as frightening. Instead, he wore a wet suit and had a headpiece attached to one ear. He almost rubbed his hands together in delight as he observed her.

  “Hello, my dear,” he said as he eyed her naked body. “Can you understand me?”

  “Water!” she gasped as she struggled to keep her eyes focused on this man. It seemed important that she remember his face.

  “Water? On land too long,” he muttered to himself. “Shelby, we need water.”

  Immediately, the hanging water-head opened, sending gallons of seawater crashing over her.

  She gasped as the water filled her mouth and nose, choking her, pounding her muscles into a pain-filled mush.

  Her eyes opened wide in shock as the pressure on her chest built, bending her ribs and denying oxygen to her lungs.

  “Too hard, damn it, Shelby!” The doctor, protected in his wet suit, yelled into his earpiece over the roar of the water. “I don’t want to lose this find!”

  The pressure and the force of the water eased just as suddenly as it began and Elanna’s body shook, drawing massive gusts of air into her empty lungs, filling her painfully full of the air that it craved.

  Her loud, gasping breaths filled the sudden silence in the room and her eyes closed, unable to deal with the reality of what she now faced.

  A low whimper escaped her open mouth and tears filled her eyes.

  “Are you recording that?” the doctor yelled. “It may be another attempt at communication!”

  “Let me go,” Elanna gasped, hearing his words.

  “What?” The doctor moved in closer, straining to hear what she was saying. “Damn it, Shelby, you had better be recording this! This is my Nobel! I have captured the first real live Mermaid!”

  “Let me go,” Elanna gasped again, finding that her breathing was easing off. She opened her eyes and stared into the deep blue ones that examined her, noting the shock on his features.

  “You speak English?” he asked, as his eyes scanned her body again, making a note of each of her struggling breaths.

  “Let me go!” Elanna screamed, finally drawing in enough breath to demand her release.

  “Remarkable!” the doctor gasped, backing up a step. “Did you record that, Shelby? She is conscious of her surroundings.

  “How could I not be, you dingleberry!” Elanna screeched, giving in to her rising frustration and anger. “You have me strapped to a table like I’m some alley cat ready for dissection and you nearly drown me with sea water! Let me go!”

  “Idiom!” the doctor gasped. “She has a grasp of idiom and syntax! This is remarkable! She holds a great understanding of the English language.”

  “English, Latin, and Spanish, dillweed!” she screamed, ignoring the pain in her throat as she tried to get her message across to these two scientific boneheads. “My name is Dr. Elanna Richfield and I demand that you release me! Now!”

  The doctor jumped as if scalded, and peered closely at his find.

  “Elanna Richfield is dead,” he muttered. “You do have some passing resemblance to her, but you cannot be her. She was dumped…”

  “Into the ocean!” she growled, her eyes narrowing on her tormentor.

  “Yes,” he breathed. “The ocean.”

  “And now, I want you to remove these restraints and get me out of this room,” she growled.

  Silence.

  There was absolute silence broken only by the drip of water leaking from the large head above her, making her jerk as each drop splashed against her bare stomach.

  “Elanna is dead,” the doctor said again. “Maybe you found her body and took it over, maybe she told you what happened before she died, but no human can survive a drop from a puddle jumper going at that speed into the sea.”

  “I did!”

  She made her statement with austerity, but the doctor shook his head again.

  “No human has webbed toes and fingers, or gills on their lower back,” he said as he dared her to argue with his findings.

  “This one does,” she said just as confidently. “And this one needs a bathroom, a set of decent clothes, and a phone.”

  “Clever little creature,” he breathed as he stared into her eyes. “But not clever enough. I will release you to see to your needs, but you will remain in my care. You are too important to lose. And you cannot be Elanna Richfield.”

  “Dr. Richfield,” she corrected automatically, not noting that his eyebrow went up in surprise. “And why can’t I be?”

  “Because Elanna Richfield was a brilliant scientist and more machine than woman, but she could not speak to dolphins!”

  He left soon after that and Elanna got her first look at Shelby.

  He crept into the room, embarrassed and apologetic as he began to uncuff her ankles.

  “I am real sorry, ma’am,” he said, his deep brown almond-shaped eyes pleading with her for understanding. “But the doctor gives the orders around here.”

  He moved with a grace she had only seen in martial artists, and in Storm and his people.

  Storm!

  Her eyes grew moist at the thought of her beloved. She had made him a promise, and she would not, from the look of things, be able to keep it.

  “No! Don’t cry,” he said as he ran his hands through his long, silky black hair. “It won’t be that bad! I am here to take care of you.”

  Shelby had to be Asian, Elanna instantly classified as she absently regarded her new jailer—Asian and something else. But his voice was kind.

  “I want to go home,” she breathed as her hands were released.

  “Nothing funny,” he warned as he reached down to
help her sit up on the steel table. “And you can’t go home. Maybe they will release you later, but this is home now.”

  “This is not my home,” she cried as her breath began to catch in her throat. “This is not the home I remembered and these are not my people.”

  “Who are your people?” Shelby asked, pain squeezing his heart as he held the shaking Mermaid up.

  He didn’t trust her enough to get too close. Who knew what damage she could cause, but he did feel sorry for her. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “My people live under the sea,” she laughed, another play on one of her favorite Disney cartoons. “And I want to go back.”

  “Ma’am,” he began, his own heart breaking as he watched her small shoulders tremble with her tears.

  “Polynesian,” she panted, struggling to kill the waterworks before she dehydrated more than she already was.

  “What?”

  “You’re Polynesian. It shows in your build and in your features. I was wondering,” she breathed.

  “You are correct,” he whispered and felt the deep affinity with the sea his people held strain over what he had to do.

  “Well, Shelby,” she sighed as she forced her red-rimmed eyes up to meet his brown orbs, filled with pity and…shame? “My people welcomed a human who had been cast off. Not all of them were nice or kind, but they are extraordinary. I left my…soul behind and I need to get it back. I will not try anything with you—I have no hatred of a lackey who is forced to follow an idiot. But I will return to my home, under the sea.”

  Shelby’s eyes hardened as she voiced his very thoughts about himself and the whole affair, but he said nothing.

  He brought her water, which she drank from a thin paper cup, and left her to evacuate her bladder and bowels in the proper receptacles. It too, no doubt, would be taken and studied.

  Then he left her alone, sitting in a corner, trembling in the face of what her world had become.

  And all he could do was shake his head at his own sorry self, and envy the freedom she had lost.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Something is not right!” Amadala decided as she flowed fluidly from her chambers, her long pink hair trailing behind her. “We need to get to them!”

  She began to search frantically for Sting, sending out a call on his personal frequency as a last resort.

  “My lady! What troubles you?”

  Sting popped out in front of her, startling her as his one black eye gazed at her face.

  He had been expecting this call, but since his powers didn’t run to premonitions, he had waited and taken his time, preparing silently for war he felt might happen.

  “We have to get to them!” she urged, reaching out and grabbing his forearm, not even noticing the retracted spikes whose tips sliced into her fingers.

  “Lady! Have a care!”

  He pulled his arm back, not wanting to hurt her, taking her hand into his and examining her palm.

  “They need us!” There was some urgency in her voice, assurance that belied any disbelief that he may have harbored.

  “Where?”

  His one eye sparked as he released her and to absently reach up and adjust his eye patch.

  “Near the humans, Sting! Elanna and Storm are in terrible danger!”

  Without a word, Sting began to mentally transform himself.

  He locked down all emotions, becoming the hardened death machine that had so impressed the council. He began to calculate his plans, silently reviewing humans’ weak points.

  “What are we going to do?” Amadala interrupted his preparations. “I am worried, Sting! Storm is the most powerful of us…”

  “And the most unbalanced,” he said as he turned a cold eye to her. “Elanna is the only thing preventing him from turning his fury loose on the humans. If they have harmed her…”

  “Storm would never do that!’ Amadala argued, but Sting just lowered his eye past her full bare breasts, past her waist to her tail—now almost completely devoid of scales—without words reminding her how Storm had nearly killed her.

  “I’m going with you!”

  “No, you are not!”

  “Then I will follow!”

  “No, you will not!”

  “Who is ruler here?” she gritted out, pink eyes flashing with her anger and concern.

  “We both are!”

  “But are you crafty enough to overthrow a claim of co-rulership and set up a nice, painful execution while you are away?”

  Silence.

  Then, “You may come, but try not to get into trouble, and stay out of my way!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it!”

  * * * * *

  Storm raced towards the island, sure he would overtake Elanna and bring her home where she belonged! He didn’t care if she had discovered the secrets to eternal life; he was going to bring her home! It was what she wanted, what they both wanted.

  Inside he smiled, all the while picturing locking her in his cavern for a few weeks!

  But how had she made it this far, this fast? he wondered as he picked up no trace of her.

  Sending out a call, he waited for a response from her, any response at all! He knew that she could understand his language, but why did she not answer? The sound waves carried for miles! It just made no sense!

  He was really starting to get worried, when he heard the chatter of light happy voices, a complete opposite to what they were saying.

  Bad white-coats! one young-sounding dolphin spat. Bad, bad, bad! We never should have taken the kindred human there!

  To her own kind! an older, worried voice answered, unsure.

  In the sea! the young voice argued. She belongs to the sea!

  We tell kindred, another old voice responded. They need to know!

  “What? What do we need to know?”

  Storm recognized the voices of the dolphins, though this pod was small and unrecognized by him.

  Kindred, all three cried, then surrounded him, all the while sending out furious shrieks and clicks.

  “One at a time!” he demanded, feeling a sinking deep within his stomach.

  Air! the older two said as they swiftly rose to the surface, only to return within seconds.

  She wanted to tell the white-coats something! the young one chirped. But she was not human! She greeted the sun! She breathed Mother Sea and she spoke properly, not in grunts and moans!

  “What happened to her?”

  Storm was frozen in panic! It had to be Elanna they were speaking of! Something had happened to Elanna!

  While the young one went up for air, the older two carried on the conversation.

  She indeed greeted the sun, the eldest said. And we took her to the white-coats. But they shot her with something and dragged her off. Who was she?

  “She is joined to me!” Storm breathed, and felt his mind began to splinter as his rage began to take over. “She is still alive!”

  The humans shoot death, the eldest dolphin said sadly, his voice still sounding upbeat and cheerful. We have lost several in the past! Once shot, they do not return. I am sorry, brother kindred.

  She will return to me! Storm vowed, just as the youngest returned.

  I will take you to her! he chirped, excited and anxious at once. She greeted the sun well. She swam well.

  The white-coats, the eldest one reminded the youngest. They have taken the human kindred.

  They will not harm me! Chipper said with a sarcastic snort. As long as I scream at the box and spit on them they will be happy and pay no attention to me.

  “Then let us depart!” Storm said, quickly moving to follow the young dolphin.

  But turning to face the elders one last time, he made a request.

  “Will you take a message to my kingdom?” he asked. “ The Kingdom of Calis by the twin islands. Seek out Sting and Amadala of the Pink. You will know him by his eye patch and black hair. He is a Child of Triton and will understand my urgency. Tell them to come quick.
They may need to save the humans.”

  Your joined? the second oldest dolphin, the female, asked.

  “No,” he snarled, his eyes beginning to glow a pale blue. “The humans that took her!”

  Shark Hunter! Child of Triton! Storm! the elder breathed, then he and his mate were off, seeking out the people he mentioned.

  There was going to be a war, they decided. And they prayed that Storm would leave a few humans alive.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Amadala and Sting quickly made their way towards the island named Hawaii. They moved with a swiftness and stealth only possible for their kind. They were on a mission and nothing could stand in their way.

  “Did you contact the warriors?” Amadala asked as they sped along, dodging underwater mountains and large schools of colorful fish.

  “If we do not return within a certain amount of time, the warriors will gather and surround this island. Then, if my signal is not heard, they will attack.”

  “But dare we risk exposure?” Amadala shivered as she thought of hunting expeditions launched to eliminate all of her people.

  “Elanna is special to both of our peoples, Amadala. But Storm is irreplaceable. If they capture him, they will seek to discover the source of his powers, and that will kill him. Then they will hunt us anyway, out of curiosity or fear. You make the laws, Amadala. I will enforce them. That is the way we will share rule!”

  Amadala said nothing as she followed the black shadow of her co-ruler and associate. Maybe one day she would consider him a friend, but that would take time and healing.

  “If you are sure, Sting,” she sent out, “I will follow your decisions. But the Creator have mercy on all of us if we are too late or you are wrong.”

  “I am rarely wrong, Amadala,” he returned as he kept his face and concentration straight ahead. “And if I am, I remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

  * * * * *

  Storm swam beside his dolphin guide, all senses alert, watching for any sign of danger.

  Near here, the little one clicked as they came to the area where the platform was set up.

  “This is not the island,” Storm pointed out, but the dolphin gave him a strange look.