Warrior’s Kiss- Mountain Mermaids Read online

  Warrior’s Kiss: Mountain Mermaids (Sapphire Lake)

  Victoria Flynn

  Copyright © 2019 by Victoria Flynn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Agent X Graphics

  Contents

  1. Makenna

  2. Ivar

  3. Makenna

  4. Ivar

  5. Makenna

  6. Ivar

  7. Makenna

  8. Ivar

  9. Makenna

  10. Makenna

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  More from Victoria Flynn

  1

  Makenna

  The air was hot and dry, like the sand under my boots. Loud pops of gunfire filled my ears, the pinging of bullets ricocheted off the truck I was hunkered down behind. The M-4 in my hands was heavy, but I was used to it. Proficient and well trained, I had to be as a soldier.

  Barrett, my captain and commanding officer, was beside me toward the rear of the truck. The rapid firing wouldn’t cease, and we were just waiting for an opening, praying we didn’t begin to take fire from another angle. It was too dusty to see where the bullets were flying from, my unit returning fire whenever there was a short break. We’d called for an evac, but it would still be a while before anyone could get to us.

  “Rooftop! Ten o’clock!” Barrett hollered over the loud pops.

  Peeking over the hood of the truck, I saw the roof and barely made out their forms. Ducking back down, I took a deep breath and popped back up over the hood, firing at the insurgents before ducking back down and taking cover.

  “I got seven!” Percy, my first sergeant and closest friend, screamed from twenty yards away where he was reloading behind our second truck.

  An earsplitting roar filled my ears, drowning out the gunfire. Instantly, I knew the sound, but it was too late. I ducked, covering my head as the rocket struck the truck parked ahead of ours. The explosion jolted me all the way to my bones.

  Bolting upright in bed, I scrambled to grab ahold of anything to anchor me in the moment. My skin was slick with a sheen of cold sweat. It was dark, and it took a few moments to realize I was in my room and not back in Syria. The haunting screams of Jackson Percy filled my painful memories of that fateful day…the day when everything changed.

  I’d been a United States Army combat medic for six years when it all went to shit.

  Scooting to the edge of the bed, I buried my face in my hands and tried to scrub the images from my eyes. It was useless though. They were always there, not far from the forefront of my thoughts, a silent reminder of my failings. Our unit had been hit by a missile. The truck ahead of ours took the brunt of the impact, shielding me and my captain and two others from the blast. Despite my training, I watched most of those men die that day. My men. My friends. They’d died because I hadn’t done my job and kept them alive until we got out of there. I knew it wasn’t that simple. My VA counselor back in Maine reminded me frequently I’d done everything within my power. Their deaths weren’t because of me. The blame was owned solely by the insurgents who’d ambushed us.

  Not that it made me feel any better. Or sleep any better.

  Sleep would continuously evade me until I exhausted myself and after many attempts, I found running was the only solution. It had become my nightly routine since I’d come home after I’d been discharged. That was how frequently the dreams came…every. Single. Night.

  Getting to my feet, I tugged off my shirt and slipped into my sports bra, pulling my tank top back on over it. Stuffing my feet into my running shoes, I grabbed my phone and headphones before heading out the door. I stopped to snap the lock, double checking twice it was steadfast as my paranoia got the better of me.

  The moon was full and high in the sky, casting a bright glow on the dark town. It was just after midnight and the town was sleeping peacefully, barely a soul around and that’s the way I liked it. I didn’t need anyone to see me looking like the mess I truly was.

  I’d grown up in Portland, Maine, yet when I’d come home after being discharged from the military, I found I no longer fit. It wasn’t that the town had changed, but I had. It was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, it just wouldn’t work. The things that used to make me happy, I found I just couldn’t relate to anymore. I’d done the counseling and jumped through the hoops I needed to. When none of that worked, my counselor suggested I take a month to reset and mentioned she’d grown up in a small town in Canada- Newfoundland. More specifically, Aurora Falls, and it was the perfect place to get away from everything and find what I really needed. Marissa, my counselor, had said she thought I was searching for something and maybe I was…perhaps it was just an end to the damn nightmares.

  I’d been here three weeks already. So far, there hadn’t been a change. It was beautiful and peaceful, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t too likely I would find what I was looking for. Trying not to think about what would come after another inevitable failure, I turned on my Bad Wolves playlist I reserved just for these special occasions when it was just the moon and me.

  Aurora Falls was small, bordering the massive Sapphire Lake. Every night I ended up in the same place, down by the waterfront watching the waves roll in. When there was only the soft lapping of waves, I didn’t hear the gun fire and the explosions of Afghanistan. I could just be.

  My feet pounded against the pavement and the music was so loud I couldn’t think, but that was the way I liked it. It was a calm night, there was barely even a breeze. The cool, damp air chilled my sweat-slickened skin. The dim street lights guided my way, bringing me to the lake. My heart was pounding, yet my breathing was even and measured, just as I’d been trained. The moon was full overhead, casting its illuminating glow down over the town.

  The ballad blaring in my ears began to wind down and the sound faded into nothing. I tugged the ear buds from my ears and slowed to a walk. The dim buzzing of the powerlines overhead and the rhythmic lapping of water against the shoreline were all I heard above my own breathing. Turning the music off, I wrapped the cord around my phone and strode toward the dock. It was a beautiful, peaceful night and the moon was so large I could see halfway across the lake. Looking down the rocky beach, I longed to let my toes soak in the water, but I’d have to wait for the sun to rise to take the chance. I hadn’t thought Aurora Falls was particularly polluted or covered with litter, in fact, it was quite the opposite, but fishing lines and hooks, those seemed to turn up everywhere. A tetanus shot from stepping on a rusty discarded hook didn’t sound overly appealing. Instead, I leaned against the railing where the end of the dock widened out into a fishing platform.

  The summer night was cool, and I wondered how cold the water was. As far north as we were, I knew it would still be bone-chilling cold. Leaning over the rail, I gazed out over the beach, trying to make out anything remarkable about the landscape as I hadn’t checked out the beach yet during the day.

  A loud splash came from my left. Whatever it was sounded big and sounded close, but as soon as I looked, whatever it was had disappeared. I made a mental note to look into getting a fishing license with a monster fish like that swimming around. Quickly glancing around, I made sure no one was out or about and climbed up the wooden railing to sit on the ledge and let my legs dangle over the water.

  Breathing in the crisp, fresh air, I focused on the silence and started listing off the things I had to look forward to. My counselor repeatedly
told me I needed to find something to look forward to, something to work toward. There were little things, like seeing my mom back in Maine, or getting new pictures of my God daughter from her mother where they were living in Georgia, but those things were like putting a piece of tape over a leak in a pipe. It doesn’t hold for long, so I’d come here and tried to find that special something to hold onto. It was supposed to help the survivor’s guilt, but I couldn’t say it had yet. I was far from okay, but at least I was trying. I wouldn’t give up that easily, I’d fight it until the end if I had to.

  In the distance, there was another loud splash, but this time it came from a region of shore which wasn’t illuminated by the street lights or the moon. Something big was definitely lurking in Sapphire Lake. Gazing out over the calm surface, I tried to look for breaks in the glassy water. It gave me something easier to focus on than the happenings of the previous day.

  It had been a shit show of epic proportions. When I’d come up north to Aurora Falls, I’d found a counseling group for veterans. For the most part it was a lot of stories about good times with comrades during deployment, but it never failed, the sessions always ventured into uncomfortable territory. Some didn’t have as firm a grip on their mind as I did, though I still questioned mine daily. I wanted to get better, I wanted to find hope and purpose again, not feel the all-consuming guilt and self-loathing I’d felt since the day of the attack. Why had I lived when so many good men with wives and families hadn’t? It had been my job to keep those men alive until we were out of danger. I’d failed them. I’d failed them all.

  However, my woes weren’t the focal point of the day’s session. Another vet in my group had been spiraling out of control for a while. I had my suspicions there was a touch of underlying mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, contributing to his breakdown. I’d seen him whispering to himself in the corner, but he’d stop any time he noticed he was being watched. Joe’s rantings had gotten increasingly erratic and heated, but he ignored all pleas to seek a doctor’s help. Without having a solid reason, there was nothing we could do if he wouldn’t address the problem himself.

  As I was deep in my thoughts, I scanned the surface still, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. I’d been told strange stories of the lake while I’d been in town, even heard talk of a sea monster living in its depths, not that I believed any of that nonsense. Sapphire Lake did seem to have an aura of mystery around it though. Something about it made me uneasy.

  There was another splash to my right and I leaned to look closer, but when I did something in the water caught my attention. As I inspected the rippled water near the shore, a flash of color under the water in my periphery pulled my gaze. It was fast, there one second and gone the next. Gripping the edge of the railing I was perched on, I leaned forward to get a better look.

  It was gone. Again.

  Staring hard into the inky black water, I didn’t know what I was hoping to see. It was too dark to see more than a few inches into the lake, so unless the fish surfaced right below me, I wouldn’t have had a chance of seeing it. However, it seemed like my lucky day because just as soon as I’d started to sit back up, a flash of bright green scales reflected the moonlight right under my dangling feet. I was no more than four feet above the surface of the water and judging by the size of the scales, I wasn’t comfortable it would be enough to keep me from becoming lunch. What the hell was it? A goliath grouper? No, that was only in the oceans…but what kind of fish could get that large in an inland lake? My curiosity got the better of me and unfortunately, my balance didn’t keep up.

  2

  Ivar

  Staring up at the moon through the crystal-clear water, I knew it was my time to once again rise from the deep and trade my scale-covered tail for the legs I’d once taken for granted. Three days were my loophole, granted by the God’s and my only escape from the witch’s curse.

  Once a month, I could leave Sapphire Lake behind and venture on land for a chance to meet my true love and lift the curse which trapped us all within the watery prison. It was the ultimate joke, giving us the hope one day, we’d be free from the curse. Yet, that day would never come. It couldn’t. The requirement was for us all to find our true loves, which had been precisely what I lost on that fateful day so long ago.

  The years had robbed me of their faces, but my heart refused to forget them. My sweet Ingrid had long since returned to the earth as had our pride and joy, Siri. The bitterness of their loss still left a bad taste in my mouth…a taste that could only be quashed by the numbing bliss of a drink. It was my ritual, return to the land and drink until the pain disappeared. Now that it seemed everyone was finding their mates and leaving the lake, it was more important than ever. It had always been this way, people leaving in waves as the generations came and went in the town. It had hit me particularly hard when I came to realize both of my comrades were gone, off to live their life on land…to have families like the one I’d lost. Jaxxen and Kris deserved mates and I was happy for them, but my jealousy and loneliness were beginning to make me bitter. My brothers, the ones I’d come to this land with, had long since left the lake. Often, I’d wondered if the curse was truly my burden, my penance for leaving my family behind to destroy another’s.

  I was a warrior, trained killer, and strong enough that should our mission have succeeded like it was supposed to, my family would have never wanted for anything again. My greed had sowed this curse and for these long years, nearly a millennium, I’d paid for my trespasses. The curse was a joke, a trick to give hope to people who didn’t deserve it. There would never be someone waiting to break my curse, my heart and soul had died on far off shores hundreds of years back. My child had grown, lived, and died a life I knew nothing about. Even Valhalla’s splendor was ripped from my grasp. My honor had been the only thing keeping me alive for far longer than I’d care to admit, the hope of one day seeing Valhalla’s gates befitting a warrior like me was my saving grace. With each passing decade, that hope had begun to dim.

  My mood had turned grim with the acceptance of my situation and my tail flicked through the water agitatedly, carrying me toward the surface. The water gliding over my skin grew warmer as I neared the topside, holding the remnants of the day’s heat. It was the middle of the night and no one should be around, but I’d made a habit of checking just to make sure. I hated the idea of having to drag anyone down to feed to the sea dragon. Approaching the surface, I bobbed the top of my head above water scanning the beach for any humans. Once in a while, kids would come down and have fires near the water, hoping to spy one of us, but that wasn’t what I found this night. Ducking back under the surface, I sank deeper into the water, so I could get a closer look without being seen. I swam a little nearer.

  Instead of partying kids, I was met with a woman standing on the fishing pier. She was leaning on the railing, staring at the water like it would answer all her questions about the world. Even through the distortion of the moving surface, I could see she was striking. Her cheekbones were high and angular, and she had eyes so dark they looked like they were made of obsidian. They looked haunted and there were dark circles from exhaustion.

  For a few moments, I stayed there watching her, examining the curious woman further. She didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. While, I couldn’t help the stirring of curiosity I felt toward the woman, I knew nothing would ever become of it. Turning, I swam to the floor, and grabbed a rock before heading back up. Moving quickly, I chucked the rock toward the pier, making sure it would cause a stir near her and hopefully send her packing. I wanted my legs and a bed, damn it.

  Staying below the water’s surface and out of sight, I watched, hoping she’d scamper off back toward town but she didn’t. Instead, it seemed I’d only served to garner her intrigue. Well, shit. I’d just have to wait her out. My powerful tail propelled me through the water as I swam a large looping pass along the beach edge and headed back out to the middle of the lake before returning. The cabins near the less populated s
ide of the lake were starting to look more alluring all the time. At least over there I wouldn’t have to deal with the humans hanging around on a full moon because they all knew better. Not this one though.

  The woman was leaning down, peering into the water. I rolled my eyes; didn’t she know the difference between the sound of a rock plopping through the water and one of the finned folk? For a brief moment it occurred to me she might not be a local. If that was the case, it wouldn’t hurt to give her a little glimpse just to keep the legends alive. Swimming closer, I stayed deep enough so she wouldn’t be able to see me until I wanted her to. Diving deep, I flipped and soared toward the surface, turning at the last minute before I breached the surface, allowing my tail to flash in the moonlight.

  The move caught her attention and I turned just in time to see her lean a little too far, throwing her off balance. She fell from a weird angle, too close to the pier. When she went over, her head collided with the wooden planks of the pier as she toppled into the lake like a limp ragdoll.

  Fuck my life.

  This wasn’t what I had in mind. Peeking over my shoulder, I hoped the sea dragon hadn’t realized the girl was outside of the swimming zone yet. Being eaten didn’t rank very high on my priority list. Watching through the dark waters, I realized the girl hadn’t moved, she hadn’t kicked or flailed as one should when they tried to kick their way to the air. Instead, she sank down. I felt a push of current behind me and I glanced back just in time to see the sea dragon poke his massive green head out of his cave.

  I guess I had to be the fucking hero…yippee.