Fire and Fantasy: a Limited Edition Collection of Epic and Urban Fantasy Read online

  Once I hit that rock, I’ll head back home and try sleeping again, I told myself.

  As I neared the tall rock in front of me, though, a new figure took shape. I’d been to this beach enough times that I knew every single rock. A kid could pick up a stone and I’d know if it was out of place. So, what was that lump on shore that wasn’t supposed to be there?

  Maybe something washed ashore from the storm, I thought to myself. My mind raced through the possibilities as I approached it. A clump of sea weed? A treasure chest? A dolphin? Maybe someone left their stuff here on accident. There’s only one way to find out.

  I stalked toward the shape carefully. The lump of…whatever it was…appeared to be a bit bigger than me. It was longer than it was tall, which almost made it look like a sunbather lying on their back. Actually, the bumps and curves made it look like the shape had a head…and a nose…OH MY GOD!

  I rushed the last several yards to the figure and dropped to my knees near his chest. A person! It’s a person! I frantically searched for signs of life by pressing my ear to his chest. My relief came out sounding like a small shriek of excitement.

  Only when I confirmed the man was alive did I pull away to inspect his features. In the moonlight, I saw that he had long blond hair and a matching beard. His strong features made him look a lot like Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

  My gaze trailed down to his shirtless torso. Man! Was this guy muscular or what? His defined abs nearly took my breath away.

  Who was this guy, though? And how did he get here? I knew everyone in Sea Haven, maybe not by name, but by face. I was born and raised here; it’s not like anyone came and went from our town, not when we had secrets to keep from the rest of the world.

  I ran through the possibilities in my mind. Maybe he was a sailor who got caught in the storm or something. When my gaze traveled toward his legs, I nearly toppled over in surprise.

  I inhaled an audible breath. “No. Fricking. Way.”

  The legs I was searching for weren’t there. In their place was a fish-like tail with green scales that reflected the moonlight. How hadn’t I noticed these beautiful scales from a distance? His tail extended longer than I would have expected. The end split in two directions and lay motionless in the sand while the waves licked the bottom few inches.

  I didn’t know how long it took me to finally breathe again. Mermaids weren’t real, at least not anymore. Could this be real, or was I dreaming? I involuntarily reached out and ran my fingers along the merman’s scales. They left a layer of slime on my fingertips, but I was too shocked to care. I inspected the area where his scales met his skin as if I expected to find a seam that would tell me his tail was fake. But his tail and torso blended together so perfectly that there was no mistaking it.

  If this was real, if it wasn’t some twisted dream or sick joke, then how was it that Sea Haven residents had been led to believe for so long that our ancestors were extinct? I’d always thought we were all that was left of them.

  There’s no way the city council knows about this, I thought. If they did, they would have told us. I have to tell my dad. Maybe he can help him. This guy was out cold, and it’s not like I had any medical training. What could I possibly do? Give him CPR? Would it even matter if he had water in his lungs? My only choice was to run home and get my father out here.

  Before I could finish that thought, the man lying still in front of me twitched. I froze just long enough to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

  This can’t be real, I told myself for another time. Only, there was no denying it. A real live merman was lying on Sea Haven Beach.

  His hand twitched again in my direction, and without thinking, I grabbed onto it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked desperately.

  His eyes opened just a sliver, just enough to see I was there. His right hand, the one I wasn’t holding, lifted. It shook slightly as if he was using all his strength to reach out and touch me. I remained frozen as his cold fingers lightly grazed my cheek. The man forced his eyes open wider. They focused on mine as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, like he wasn’t sure I was actually there.

  Those blue-green eyes left me speechless. Somehow, in the moonlight, they shone brighter than they should. It was as if the magic behind them defined their color, their brightness. They were the color of the ocean, and staring into them felt like home.

  I wasn’t sure how much time passed as I looked into his eyes and held his hand. Eventually, my left hand came up to meet his right, which still touched my face. His fingers were icy cold, and for some reason I felt obligated to warm them for him.

  “What’s your name?” I whispered.

  He spoke in a deep, raspy voice so hoarse I could barely understand him. “Tristan.”

  “Tristan? I’m Bree.”

  The corners of his lips twitched as he attempted a smile. I was about to ask him if he was hurt, but before I could, his eyes rolled back into his head, and his hands went limp in mine.

  Another string of curse words escaped my lips. I couldn’t waste any more time. I needed to get help. I sprang to my feet and took off running down the shore. I didn’t think I’d ever sprinted so fast in my life. I was in such a hurry that when I flung open the glass door and hurried across the kitchen floor, my wet feet slipped out from under me. My elbow cracked against the tile, but I didn’t have time to process the pain or assess the damage. I hopped right back up and ran toward my parents’ room.

  “Dad!” I heaved in his doorway.

  No response.

  It took three wide steps to make it to his bedside, where I shook him awake. “Dad!”

  He blinked a few times and gazed up at me in confusion.

  “I need your help. Now.”

  Noticing my urgency, he sprung up in bed, scooped up his phone from his nightstand, and followed after me. He didn’t ask any questions. He just raced barefoot out the door with me.

  I attempted to fill him in as we hurried back down the shore, but I doubted I was making any sense. I managed to get in a few fragments of the story. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk. Merman. Dad, they’re real! Needs help. Didn’t know what else to do. The council has to know about this.”

  I didn’t slow as I approached Tristan. I only stopped when I slid onto my knees next to him, a maneuver any pro baseball player would be proud of. He remained unresponsive, and that made my already racing pulse speed up. Was I too late?

  “Tristan.” I shook his shoulders. “Tristan, I brought help.” My voice cracked out of desperation. I jumped when my father placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “Bree,” my dad said gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

  The sound of my father’s voice eased my anxiety just enough that I followed the guide of his hands on my shoulders and inched away from Tristan. My father took my spot in the sand next to him to inspect for injuries.

  “Dad, is he going to be okay?”

  After confirming that Tristan was still breathing, my father turned to me. “Bree, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention, but this is no longer a concern of yours. I want you to go home and forget this ever happened. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? Not even your mother.”

  “But Dad—” I started.

  “He’s going to be okay,” he promised, resting a hand on my shoulder for reassurance.

  I trusted my father wholeheartedly. So when he promised that Tristan would be all right, I believed him. But as I walked away and headed for home as he instructed, his words echoed in my mind. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? Not even your mother. Those didn’t sound like promising words. They sounded like a warning.

  My father’s voice grew distant, carried away by the light breeze. When I glanced back at him, I could just barely make out his outline illuminated by the moonlight. He held his phone to his face and talked into it. I couldn’t make out his words, but there was no way in hell I was going to walk away from this.

  I snuck behind a rock and watched. I watched
as Carson Ray, head of the city council, parked his black sedan next to the beach. I watched as he crossed the sand and knelt next to Tristan and exchanged words with my father, though I couldn’t hear what he said. I watched as another vehicle—a van—drove up a few minutes later. I watched as two other men stepped out of it and met my father and Carson next to Tristan. I watched as all four of them hoisted Tristan up and placed him in the back of the dark van. And then I watched my father slide into the passenger seat of Carson’s vehicle, in nothing but his pajamas, and I watched them drive away, disappearing into the night.

  I had no choice but to head home. If I wasn’t home by the time my father arrived, I’d be entering deep waters.

  Somehow, I knew I was already in deep. My father wasn’t shocked when he saw Tristan lying there in the sand. Carson and the two men didn’t seem surprised, either. It was like they had a system for this sort of thing, like they knew all along that our ancestors were still out there. And this whole time they’d been lying to us about it.

  Two

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” my best friend Liana insisted the next day.

  “I’m dead serious.” My eyes widened from where I sat on her bed.

  “Christina did not say Sam was hotter than Dean.” Liana turned back toward her mirror, where she was brushing out her long blond hair.

  I held several strands of my own dark hair out in front of my face to the point where my eyes began to cross. I absentmindedly picked at the split ends. You’d think with magic running through my veins, I’d be able to mend a few split ends, but as our magic diluted throughout the ages, we were now pretty much limited to breathing under water and mildly controlling the element.

  I wonder what Tristan can do, I thought. I’d heard the stories of our ancestors, about how they could control the oceans and all that jazz, but after they came out of the water and settled in Sea Haven, their magic grew weaker and weaker with every generation. That’s why they encouraged us to stay put. No one came in. No one came out.

  Okay, that wasn’t completely true. I mean, we had suppliers and contractors who came and went, but we tried our best to remain as self-sustaining as possible. That’s why there was a small university in town with a select few graduate programs so that some of us could actually learn to become doctors and stuff instead of having to reveal the secret of our magic.

  And it’s not like no one ever left. I mean, there was a guy a grade ahead of me, Noah Starr, who left for school outside of Sea Haven last year. It’s not like we can’t leave. We just don’t want to. Keeping to ourselves and not welcoming outsiders was what was going to preserve the last bits of magic we had left.

  “Bree,” Liana called, “are you even listening to me?”

  “Huh?” I raised my brows and let my split ends fall back to my chest. “Yeah, I’m listening. Dean is hotter, hands down. But I mean, come on. You can’t say Sam isn’t hot.”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, they’re brothers. They share the same DNA.”

  I widened my eyes at her. “You do know they’re actors, right? We may be freaks of nature, but Supernatural is fiction, Li.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned to me, leaning her arm up against the back of her chair. “You know what I meant. But we’re agreed, then? Dean is the hottest guy we know?”

  I sighed. Tristan sure could give Dean a run for his money.

  Tristan.

  The thought echoed through my mind. I’d only met him last night, but already, the whole thing was starting to feel like a dream. Only, since I’d lain awake the entire rest of the night, I knew I hadn’t dreamt it.

  I wanted to tell Liana about him. I’d already almost blurted it out a couple of times. But my dad had warned me not to mention anything, and honestly, I was a little scared of what would happen if I did. Would that somehow put Liana in danger? Was I in danger?

  I’d wanted to ask my dad about it this morning, but when I finally pulled myself out of bed after struggling for hours for a lick of sleep, I found him pouring himself a bowl of cereal like nothing had happened. When he looked up from his bowl and asked me how I’d slept, it was a clear message to pretend like nothing happened.

  And so I did.

  But all I could do was pretend. That didn’t keep the reality of the situation from burrowing itself into my mind, taking up a home in every thought of mine. Our ancestors were out there. Our ancestors were out there!

  “Bree,” Liana complained again, pulling me out of my wandering thoughts for the umpteenth time.

  “Yes,” I insisted through gritted teeth. “Dean is the hottest guy we know. Though technically we don’t really know him.”

  In one swift move, Liana leapt from her chair and pulled the pillow I’d been leaning against out from under me. She aimed an attack straight at my face, but I dodged it, nearly toppling off her bed.

  “Don’t you ever say he’s just a fictional character!” she shouted in jest. “You’re ruining all the fun.” She took another swat at me, but I quickly sank off the edge of the bed and onto the floor.

  “You’re going to have to be faster than that if you’re going to catch this girl,” I giggled.

  She jumped onto the bed and aimed the pillow at my face. I tucked my knees into my chest and rolled across the carpet just as the pillow made contact with the floor right where my head lay a split second ago.

  “You’re as slow as a sea horse,” I teased.

  “Gah!” She shrieked and grabbed the pillow again to take another shot at me. “Stop calling me a sea horse.”

  She gritted her teeth, and I smiled in triumph as I dodged yet another one of her blows. I raced to the other side of the room, but she now had two pillows in her hands, which meant she was twice as likely to hit me. Though at her current success rate, that probably didn’t mean much.

  I glanced around in search of my own weapon, but as soon as my gaze fell upon the ocean outside her window, the fight we were having suddenly didn’t matter anymore. I froze in front of the window, staring out at the waves. My memories flickered back to the previous night, first to Tristan’s green scales, then to the blue-green of his eyes, and then to my father telling me to go back home. To not tell anyone what I saw.

  Something hard smacked into the right side of my face. It was so unexpected that I tumbled to the ground. I caught myself with the palms of my hands. When I looked back up to see what had happened, I found Liana standing above me, both pillows still in her hands, with a shocked expression on her face.

  “I am so sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. Are you okay?” She dropped the pillows at her feet and offered her hand to help me up.

  I grumbled for show but took her hand anyway. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “What were you looking at?” She narrowed her eyes out the window, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

  I shrugged. “Just the ocean.”

  She sighed softly. “It looks so peaceful out there.” Her tone quickly became more upbeat. “Hey, want to go for a swim?”

  “I’m kind of tired,” I admitted. The lack of sleep was really starting to get to me.

  “Come on. A good swim will wake you up.”

  I turned to her with a smile. “You’re right. I’d love to go for a swim.”

  Liana slipped into her swimming suit and had her beach bag packed within minutes. We made the short walk down the sand to my house, where I dressed in my own swimsuit and packed up my towel.

  Liana inhaled a deep breath for show as we stepped out my back door. “It’s such a nice day today.” She spread her arms wide as if that would help her soak up the sun.

  “It’s just been a nice summer,” I pointed out when we hit the sand.

  And lucky for us that it was. It was the summer after high school, probably the one summer we’d remember forever. I’ll remember it for different reasons, though, I thought to myself.

  Liana squinted toward the crowded beach ahead. “Except last night. Did that big crack of
thunder wake you up?”

  “That big crack of thunder?” I repeated. “You mean the two-hundred cracks of thunder?” I thought back to Tristan, how I’d walked this same path last night only to find him on the beach in front of me. It almost didn’t seem like the same place. Last night, it was so quiet, so secluded. Now you could hardly see the sand through the crowd, and you could hear the laughter all the way from my house. It almost had me questioning if it all had been real. Almost.

  Liana shrugged. “Whatever. I’m kind of looking forward to the summer being over. I just mean, I’m excited about college. Living with you in the dorms will be fun, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but I’m nervous for classes to start next week. I’m so not ready for the summer to be over.”

  “Well.” She dragged out the word while wiggling her eyebrows at me. “We still have a week left. Let’s make the most of it. Race you!” Before I could fully process her challenge, she had already taken off sprinting toward the beach.

  “Not fair!” I called after her, racing just fast enough that she maintained a fair distance ahead. After calling her a sea horse earlier, I supposed I could spare her a win in the speed department.

  Liana hit the swimming area first. She dropped her beach bag to the sand and raced toward the water, not wasting a second to dive into it. I followed right behind, tossing my bag next to hers and hitting the water in the same place she did. I splashed her as soon as she stood.

  “Hey.” She retaliated.

  The cold salt water felt refreshing on my skin.

  Without saying another word, Liana disappeared under the water. I followed. Under water, it was like an entirely new world. Everyone was off for summer vacation, which meant that children, teens, and young adults of all ages were swimming today. Since Sea Haven Beach was the best spot in the area for a swim, you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing a swarm of people. Right, left. Up, down. It didn’t matter.