Sacrificed to the Sea - Cari Silverwood Page 0,45

asked, preferring to not know. Preferring to think maybe his lover had let them go.

He knew though. He knew. No excuses. What was the likelihood of Merrick doing that? Zero?

Funny how this paralleled what he’d done, except he had actually let Raffaela go.

No excuses.

None.

He’d been as bad as Merrick. Though he used to leave for work and come back to find them gone, he’d also seen where the garden had been touched on those days.

Digging them up, deciding who was who from the clothes and hair color, from what was left of them, burying them again, then making a notation on the map of his property, yes, it was difficult.

By the end of the day, he was done. Completely done.

After showering until the hot water ran out, he headed for the fridge. Something cold and very alcoholic was desired…

Sitting on the sofa with a glass of red this time, he leaned hands on his knees, cupping the glass.

Map done.

Names on it. Probable dates of… taking them. Check to all of it.

Where they’d been found by Merrick in the first place, he left blank for all but one that Merrick had let slip. The rest, he didn’t know.

He went into the study, laid out the map and took a pic, then attached it to the pre-written email.

One more deep breath. His mind felt blank of anything, full of nothing. This was it.

After this he would go.

If the cops read it straight away, he’d have the sirens and the knock at the door in a few hours, tops. A swarm of them, then him handcuffed, taken to the station, interrogated.

None of that was happening.

He pressed the send button.

After picking up the book, he went out the door that led to the beach. He stripped until he was naked, though he kept the memoir in one hand as if it were a bible. In the shallows where the water tickled over his feet and ankles, he stopped and breathed deep, smelling everything, seeing the seagulls whirling above him, the light fluffy clouds.

It was the waves that had been calling him.

They had reminded him of his vow.

Come, the waves said again. Come to us.

He raised the book, the memoir he had so painstakingly written. He drew back his arm, and he hurled it toward the deep. Then he walked in and kept walking until he floated.

And found out drowning himself wasn’t so simple. His mind somehow thought he shouldn’t inhale water. He began to tread water.

A hand grabbed his ankle, and yanked.

He’d been lured.

Lack of oxygen made everything blur as he was towed, molested, made love to, and he connected the dots as he drowned. This was a Ravening.

But he saw a face he recognized.

The light spread, fired up his mind. Brought him out of the darkness.

Water tinkled past his ears. Fish and tails. A gooey circle of light above, radiating down. That was the sun. The distant flowing shadow of a school of small fish, or of large ones? His eyes could not tell. His brain was not functioning as it should.

Underwater. Yes. And I’m breathing.

Wolfgang looked down the length of his body and saw a tail, and it was his.

The sex had been violent, bloody, and likely cataclysmic as well as amnesia inducing, but he was almost certain the pretty lips on his had been hers.

Then he had blanked.

Could it have been Raffaela?

Nothing had happened for a very, long time. Or at least, when he finally came into being and regained consciousness, eons seemed to have passed.

Was he alone? Slowly he spun, turning, turning.

Maybe he had been dreaming?

Either way he was here, and the future was full of grand possibilities. What more could a marine biologist wish for than a chance to see the world of the sea, like this, with the love of his life by his side?

He would find her.

He was a merman – somehow he’d converted – and if he had to search the seas for a year he would find her and make her his again.

A swirl and flick of long fair hair caught his eye and he spun again.

There.

CHAPTER 14

Raffaela zoomed in before Wolfgang could have seen her properly, swinging around his waist, his now very muscular waist. The transformation to merman required the growth of stronger-than-human muscle else they would never be able to swim.

She half-clawed, half-kissed her way up his naked torso all the way to his delicious mouth,

By then Wolfgang had recovered and he took her face in his hands to tongue-kiss her properly.