Deepwater

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Look for these titles from J. C. Owens

Title Page

Copyright Warning

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by J. C. Owens

More M/M Romance

Excerpt from A King's Vow by Xander Tracy

Look for these titles from J. C. Owens

Now Available

Wishes

The Ice Prince

Betrayal

The Falling

Soulseeker

The Chosen

Dragon Forge

Farfall

The Emperor’s Wolf

Deepwater

Atone

The Siren’s Call Series

Siren’s Call (Book One)

King’s Bane (Book Two)

The Gaven Series

Gaven (Book One)

Gaven: The Bonding (Book Two)

Draconian Measures (Book Three)

Parting Truth (Book Four)

The Anrodnes Chronicles

Dark Rain (Book One)

Night of Rain (Book Two)

Drums in the Rain (Book Three)

Rainfall (Book Four)

The Taken Series

Taken (Book One)

Out of the Darkness (Book Two)

The Wings Series

Wings (Book One)

Wings 2: Dominion of the Eth (Book Two)

The Tarsus Series

Tarsus (Book One)

Fire and Ice (Book Two)

The Poplar Ridge Ranch Series

Away in a Manger (Book One)

Stormborn

DEEPWATER

J. C. OWENS

Copyright Warning

EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Published By

Wolf Hill Publishing

1643 Warwick Ave., #124

Warwick, RI 02889

Deepwater

Copyright © 2020 by J. C. Owens

ISBN: 978-1-949719-49-9

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Etopia Press electronic publication: March 2020

CHAPTER ONE

It was a damned poor day to die.

The fact that Azai was going to die because of an evil deed that he had not precipitated, one that he had tried to stop, only made his coming demise all the more bitter. His death would lead to even more suffering, and he was powerless to stop it.

The water was beyond cold, the bite of it making him gasp with effort, ensuring that he inhaled salty brine. His strength was failing, even as he desperately swam toward one of the doomed ship’s broken masts. He inhaled water, and the resulting coughing took what little strength he retained. He knew with a sort of hopeless fatalism that he was going to drown if the mer didn’t kill him first. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, and he was going to die here.

The screams and cries of the other men resounded in his ears, occasionally muffled as he sank deep enough for the water to block his hearing. He swam harder, his eyes fixed on his goal. The broken mast floated such a short distance before him, so near and yet so impossibly far.

Something brushed by his leg and he flinched, closing his eyes and muttering a brief prayer to any deity that was listening. The screams he heard from the others were not from drowning. The revenge of the denizens of the sea was brutal and, in many cases, drawn out. Blood drifted in the swirling waters.

His desperate movements began to falter. He dipped beneath the waves, eyes wide with terror as he managed to struggle to the surface a last time. Wet clothes slowed him, dragged him down.

Azai’s strength finally failed him. His gasping and panting ended in silent gurgles as he sank for the final time, one hand still reaching for the light of the world above.

Something bumped his body, lightly, then harder. He waited for the death it promised. Whatever the creature, it would hold no love for those who had sailed aboard the Sally Anne, those who had murdered one of its own.

The bump turned into teeth settling into his arm. He jerked in pain, a silent scream making him inhale water. The biting teeth swiftly released his arm to sink into his shirt sleeve, then he was towed forward at tremendous speed, helpless in the grip of something that felt so much larger than him. It was a dark shape, and he thought he caught a flash of red, but perhaps it was only blood in the water.

His senses began to fade, his surroundings growing dark, then the creature surfaced, bringing him with it.

He barely had sense enough to choke and gasp, struggling for precious air, before he was pushed up against something hard. His hand flailed—and he felt wood beneath his fingertips.

His eyes flew open in disbelief. He was floating against the very mast he had sought with such fervor mere moments ago before his strength had failed.

Accident surely, but the teeth left his shirt. He had barely a glimpse of red scales before his attacker—or was it savior?—flashed away back into the depths.

Azai was not fool enough to wonder or linger. He tried to haul himself up onto his salvation, but his own exhaustion rendered him weak as a child, and his bitten arm throbbed unmercifully. He was bleeding, but the wound wouldn’t kill him. The cold water might. Or the mer might decide it liked the taste of him. He had to get out of the water.

He tried again to pull himself out of the frigid water and onto the mast and failed.

A sob of frustration left his lips, and he floated there, one arm over the bulk of the mast, searching for a way…

Several feet away, one of the smaller sails still stretched between the mast and spar, billowing in the water. If he could just use the sail as a raft or even as a starting point to get up onto the mast itself…

He floated awkwardly down along the mast, expecting at any moment to be snatched from below, to meet the same fate as his fellows. He became increasingly aware that the screams were fading, the bloodbath ending. Surely they would come for him soon.

A sob of relief left his lips as he managed to half float, half pull himself onto the partially submerged sail. Trembling, he lay there, feeling a false sense of safety now that open water did not yawn beneath him. He was not foolish enough to believe his own thoughts but managed to edge up onto the mast itself, lying down on his stomach and stretching his length upon the solid, welcoming bulk.

He could not stop shivering from shock and the time spent in the frigid water. He was still going to die today. Only exposure would take longer than drowning.

But for now, he clutched desperately at life. Each minute. Every second. He was stubborn. People were counting on him. His countrymen from his own country of Nargina and those from Hathlinden, the enemy, as they hovered on the edge of war.

Laying his aching head down upon his crossed arms, he closed his eyes, trying to shut out the horror of his position and the likelihood that he would soon be snatched from his perch. Those that had destroyed an entire ship would hardly find it difficult to pick off one exhausted and wounded man floating so close to their realm.

His panicked breathing slowly began to die down into something resembling normal, though he could not cease shivering, his whole body vibrating.

The sudden, deep silence weighed upon his nerves. The scene of such destruction should not now be so tranquil. The sound of the waves lapping against the wood seemed almost benevolent.

Yet, there was nothing benevolent beneath the ocean on this horrible day. Mer, more than he had ever imagined existed, had begun swimming along the Sally Anne faster than dolphins. Then as the mer began to sing, a gigantic sea monster bearing powerful tentacles had burst from the ocean as though the mer had summoned it. The huge monster ripped the ship apart with unimaginable strength. The mer had found anyone who had survived the initial attack and had torn them apart without mercy. The creature they’d summoned had descended back into the deep with most of the ship in its tentacles.

The sailors of the Sally Anne had brought this upon themselves, but Azai’s gentle heart could not stop regretting the manner of their deaths.

Still, it was justice, brutal and in kind.

At the dawn of this cursed day, the sailors had netted a young mer, fascinated with their catch. If things had stopped there, if they had returned the boy to the sea, it all would have ended so differently. But they had brutalized the boy, cut him open to see how he was made, and then eaten him as though he had been but a fish.

Azai, the sole passenger upon the vessel carrying him back to the king, fresh from his vital diplomatic mission, had tried desperately to save the mer child. He had fought against the sailors with the desperation of conviction in the wrongness of it all. But he was outnumbered. He was unarmed and unable to stop the sailors who defied his commands and scoffed at his threats.

When it was all over, the men released Azai with jeering laughter. He had stumbled to the prow of the ship and wept, beating his fists against the railing until he drew his own blood.

Both tears and blood had dripped down into the foaming waters that passed under the ship’s hull. He had whispered a fervent apology to the children of the sea, the merpeople that sailors referred to as the mer. He was shamed by his own kind, by their heedless conviction of their own superiority. By their uncaring brutality. Haunted by the young mer’s cries of fear and pain…

Now, only hours later, it had come to this.

He heaved out a shaky sigh, raising his head slightly and scanning the waters.

There was little to show what had happened, no sign of bodies, no blood slick upon the surface, only the occasional ragged piece of the shattered ship. It was as though the ocean had cleansed itself already of the tragedy, and Azai and his little raft were one of the few remnants left.

A trill made him freeze in place, his fearful eyes taking note of several heads bobbing above the waves, watching him, their strange, large eyes with enormous vertical pupils staring at him. Their faces were human-like but also not. They were hairless, with delicate fins along their heads, and skin of colors he had never seen upon any human. Some were pure white, others black, some red, blue and even a singular purple could be seen. Large gills were prominent upon their necks, nixing any thought of humanity.

Mer. Creatures of legend. Of story and song. There were whispers among sailors that they were very real, very present in different regions of the ocean, but he, personally, had never seen one.

There were so many…

Dear gods.

He shivered harder, feeling helpless. His fingers tightened upon the wood under his touch. He swallowed with difficulty, keenly knowing his position as prey. This was the mer’s world, and he was the intruder here.

Another trill sounded, then another, the sounds both haunting and terrifying to Azai’s shocked mind.

Then a deeper sound, more powerful, that seemed to echo through the water, vibrating against the mast.

Azai whimpered, imagining it had to be one of the creatures that had crushed the ship, the huge tentacled monster that had done the will of the merpeople.

A large form slowly slid to the surface, mere feet away from Azai’s perch. He stared, his terror almost overcome by awe.

He had never realized that mer would be this size. So much larger than Azai. Red scales flashed in the sun, and the large crimson eyes were fixed on Azai with frightening intensity.

He could only shiver, unable to tear his gaze from the apparition.

The merman came higher out of the water, his massive chest coming into view, the sleek musculature evident in the sun’s light. The dark, almost black skin of the torso contrasted sharply with the red scales that started at his waist and down his arms, which lazily sculled in the water, keeping him still. His face was faintly human-like, but sharp in its lines, with the dark skin dominating there. Any resemblance to a human ended though with the frills that lay alongside his face, red with black tracery and a hint of orange and yellow in the delicate-looking skin.

Azai took it all in, wondering when the strike would come, or was the creature just playing with him, taunting him?

Its bass voice rumbled again. Azai shivered at the force of it, primal fear gauging the power behind such a sound.

He froze as the large form surged forward, coming right up to the mast, a