Shark Bait (4 page)

Dr. Donald Friedson scanned his inventory sheets, wishing desperately his mere supplier still delivered. Unfortunately, the
Dendric Two
currently fished near Capetown and the Dendric One was no longer in operation.

Pink clouds bruised the purple sky beyond his wide, low window. Thick green foliage encroached from outside. His fingers danced along the staff’s requests for subjects and their various research proposals. He needed more sharks, and fast.

He nestled the phone against his ear, hitting three on speed-dial. The line began ringing in a tinny, faraway sound as he connected to the satellite phone Rhoaver Sharazzor carried on his yacht. It rang about twenty times, finally going to voicemail, but Friedson dialed again. The young heir slept at odd hours and often took ages to answer.

After another fifteen rings a lazy drawl answered the phone. “You have reached the number for Wang’s Special Massage. For happy endings, press one, for rub and tug, press two…”

Friedman cleared his throat to cut off the trust-fund prince’s attempt at humor. “Hello, Rhoaver. It’s Donald, Donald Friedman, you know, from…the Panama facility.” He scoffed at his care at not mentioning his company by name. Dendric brass knew perfectly well that their staff got subjects off the black market, hence DORC’s twenty million dollar per year discretionary budget.

“Freddy! I missed ya, buddy! How’ve you been?”

Donald detected a slur but forged ahead, hoping that one of Rhoaver’s underlings at least would remember their conversation. “I need another shipment. Twenty at least.”

He listened as the young shark-shifter shouted at someone in the background, and then he heard the sound of a television turning on over the line.

“Can you deliver that quantity within, say, a month?”

He hoped the new procedure they were developing would work. They’d lost too many subjects to side effects of the last one. And with another scientist on staff…Price wasn’t the issue with Rhoaver. The young shark might be spoiled, but he reveled in the power he held over Dendric’s operations.

“Hmm, let me think.”

Friedman listened to the unmistakable sound of Rhoaver sucking air through a water-pipe.
The shark replied, his voice thick from holding his breath, “I can do that.” A long exhalation followed.
“I’ll wire the funds to the appropriate location.” Donald prepared to hang up, but a thread of hope steadied him. “Have you had any luck finding what we talked about?”
When Rhoaver didn’t answer, Friedson assumed the shark was thinking, but another loud, bubbling drag through the bong carried over the phone line. “Let me explain a little biology to you.” A series of coughs followed a long exhale. “When shark-shifters and mere do the nasty, they produce little baby mere. Same thing when dragons fuck mere. Those damn fish are like the cows of the ocean- plentiful, tasty, and easy to farm.”
Friedson rubbed at his temples. “But I’ve heard…”
In an uncharacteristically sharp moment, Rhoaver cut him off. “There is no such thing as a part-mere shark. If I found one, you know I’d deliver. Prices you’re offering? But that shit doesn’t exist.”

* * * *

Raider could tell she tried not to, but every few minutes, the dragoness’s face would turn his way, as if she had a tick or something. He could tell she was just itching to talk. He hated the talkative ones.

“My name is Sophia, by the way,” she called over to where he sat on his pallet. “My parents are Russell and Alexandra Aleahar. Dragons don’t use last names much…so it gets confusing to follow family lines. Underwater City is as big and densely populated as the island of Manhattan in the US, but the nobility is a small community, so everyone pretty much knows everyone—well, everyone important that is.”

She babbled. Good, that was the first step to breaking down completely. Crayz always hovered on the edge while a newly-caught prisoner stayed sane.

The dragoness’s words continued to pour out. “Some call me Sophia the Honest, but I hate that one.”
He couldn’t stop himself from stemming the verbal onslaught. “Why?”
She stared at him, confused, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Why what? Why do they call me that, or why do I dislike it?”
Damn, this female returned his every word with fifteen of her own. “Either.”
She took a deep breath, and he could tell she was about to launch again. “Well, I suppose it’s complicated.”
I bet.
“As to why they call me that…Well, I tend to see the truth about things, even when others don’t. Like—I can usually tell when someone’s lying. I tend to know when one of the Council’s campaigns will be successful or not. And I’m not so great at keeping my mouth shut about it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then how did you get caught?’
She rolled back her shoulders and sighed. “I don’t see the future, just…well, the truth of things.”
“Seems useful.”
She scooted her butt across her cell to get closer. He tensed his muscles to stop himself from leaning forward to smell her hair. Maybe Crayz would let him bathe her, if she stayed long enough.
“You’d think it would be useful—that people would want to know the honest answer. But really, most of the time they don’t.”
Sophia pressed against the bars of the cell now, as close as she could get to him, like they were friends of something. Her thin arm twined around the metal and her coffee-colored fingers wrapped around one long pole. She placed her face against it and sighed. With a furtive hand, he adjusted the angle of his erection to appear less erect.
Sophia didn’t miss the movement. Her eyes went wide. He thought she’d scuttle back to the other end of her cell, but instead she blushed and smiled.
Oh, fuck me.
“So what’s the truth about me?” He said it to get her mind off his pants, but then realized that perhaps she was right. He didn’t want to know.
“I know you’re better than this.” She said it with raised eyebrows, daring him to challenge her.
He took in the storage hold that had been his home for over ten years. Rats feasted on moldy crusts of bread in the corners. Blood, mostly his, coated some walls and several of the cage’s bars. He laughed bitterly. “I certainly hope so, sweetheart.”
She scrunched up her face in a sarcastic snarl at his response. “Yeah, pretty much every living creature is better than this.” She swept her arm to signify the room. “But you’re…I dunno. I think you’re going to do something important one day, something that will change everything.”
He moved as if electrocuted, pressing back with his legs until he reached the farthest corner of the hold. His mother had always said this same thing, until his father had swept through their habitat, burning every building to the ground in search of his mutant son.
His voice shook, but he needed to deflect her attention. “And you? What all are you destined to do?”
Sophia stood, walked back to her pallet of hay, and lay across her blanket. She spoke softly enough to only carry as a whisper. “If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that
no one
sees the truth about themselves.”
His eyes traveled to her neck and shoulders where they tucked under her dress. Deep indentations ducked at her collarbone. She needed more food.
He stretched his neck from side to side and then shifted to stretch lower muscle groups. “I’m going to go get some more bread and some cheese.”
Her eyebrows drew together, her face kind of cute in its confusion. “You can do that?”
“Long as no one finds out.” He gripped his manacle in one hand, and remembering himself, turned to Sophia. “I’d rather if you didn’t scream this time.” With a sharp tug, he crushed his ankle as he tore his foot free.
He heard her gasp behind closed lips. Damn, it made his cock jump when she did that. He hopped up onto his one good leg and waited for the other to heal. “I’ll be right back.”

* * * *

Warm ocean licked at his skin. David dove for the sandy bottom, and skimmed wisps of sea grass, running his fingers over shells and smooth rocks. A strong hand reached out and grabbed his. David panicked, and his head whipped around to his attacker. His eyes met a deep turquoise blue. The merman’s gaze screamed with equal parts anger and want.

That firm grip pulled him in until David’s body pressed flush along the merman’s. A solid, bare chest met David’s scratchier one. His erection nudged the rubber of the merman’s tail. Up close, David realized the creature was long and broad with a torso that went for miles.

He turned away from the beautiful vision, embarrassed by his nudity, his arousal, maybe even his humanity. But the merman gripped David’s shoulders and kissed him once, hard and fast, and then reached down to enclose David’s dick as if in a velvet vice. David groaned and bubbles rose from his lips.

Lack of air burned his lungs. He looked upward at the water’s surface far above. The merman tugged him hard. A deep ache formed at the base of David’s body, but suffocation threatened, and he pushed the merman away. David kicked, his eyes trained on the sun beyond the water’s membrane. Suddenly a dress shirt, slacks, and shoes covered his body.

The fabrics held water, and the shoes dragged him down. The merman appeared, again tearing at David’s clothes. At first David helped, eager to shed what held him back, but the merman thrust his arms under David’s open shirt and dragged him into another embrace.

David’s lungs screamed for air, and he struggled in the merman’s arms. The movement rubbed his aching arousal against the creature and drained the last of the oxygen from his thirsty blood. Wrenching himself free, he thrashed wildly toward the sky.

* * * *

The alarm’s high-pitched beep launched David upright. Sweaty and twisted sheets wrapped around his flailing limbs. He gasped for air. In the corner, a windowsill air conditioner was losing its battle against the suffocating heat. He took a steadying breath.

He showered and dressed for work, but hours later, David still couldn’t shake the dream from his mind. His brain kept skimming to the merman’s face and remembering the feel of that firm, smooth body. In his office, sounds of the lab buzzed quietly in the background, tempting him back to the tanks.

His computer blinked on, and he entered his several levels of passwords. Then he opened his Outlook folders and reassessed his color-coding system. He logged onto his Kanban dashboard and organized his priorities, the first being to continue his study of the mountain information on Ocean Shifter species provided by Dr. Friedson.

His stomach rumbled, reminding David that he’d skipped breakfast. A branch off the main hallways led to the small kitchen and dining area that Friedson had shown him the day before. The route passed those double doors leading to the tanks, and David strained to hear through the door, wanting some contact with the beings inside.

Loud screams carried through, followed by a burst of dolphin call. David’s hand rushed to feed his card through the reader, and he pushed through the door. The merman knocked against the sides of his tank. A heavy barbed wire covering fastened to the top of his tank, and trails of blood floated from his hands.

David’s eyes followed the creature’s gaze to one of the smaller labs. Another screech cracked through the air. It sounded female and young. He swung open the door to the small room, expecting to find some lab assistant in trouble, but instead his eyes met a little girl, maybe five years old, with brown skin and spiky black hair tied prone to an exam table.

Without thinking, he reached to release her restraints, but a hand grabbed his wrist.
“What are you doing? I have five more samples to take.”
David scanned Friedson’s face. The older doctor looked bored, maybe mildly irritated, but didn’t not seem at all uncomfortable that there was a little girl, shaking as she cried, fastened with broad straps to a metal gurney.
“The younger specimens can hold human form for longer, so we use them for all bone marrow sampling.” He plunged a wide needle into the little girl’s hip.
She screamed, “Mommy! Mommy!”
David’s stomach lurched into his throat. He swallowed against the small amount of vomit that filled his mouth. Sweat, thick and cloying coated his body under his clothes. His hands clenched to wrestle his boss to the floor, but no, he couldn’t do that. He’d worked his whole life for this job.
Maybe if he could improve how the animals were treated, he could stomach this. Trying to hide the shaking in his voice, he asked, “Why is the subject not sedated?”
Friedson plunged another needle into the same hip again. He shouted over the subject’s renewed cries, “It’s not cost or time effective to sedate them for most of what we do. Anyhow, they recover quickly enough.”
He yanked the sample from the girl’s hip, and though the wound healed almost instantly, the girl continued to sob and shake. David watched as her vertebrae became more pronounced and her skin started to pucker in spots.
“Gosh darn it, she’s dehydrating already! Weber, give me a hand here. I need three more samples before I toss her back in the tank.”

* * * *

Sophia watched out the small porthole as best she could. The tiny window was at the other end of the hold, and so scuffed that it looked white during the day and black during the night. Like her jailer, she slept at odd intervals. They had been alone for five days now. A rough-looking female arrived each day to empty her chamber pot and serve her and the jailor a tray of cold food. She’d learned that a toilet existed through one of the doors off the hold, and the same woman gave her use of that room once a day.

Her guard was asleep. She watched his body rise and fall on the stack of cardboard that served as his bed. He’d re-shackled himself to the wall since he’d been to the kitchens, and he didn’t move much from his position. It was as if he’d been there so long he didn’t bother. Every morning at dawn he did 120 push-ups. That was the highlight of each day.

The shark shifter leader descended the railing. He jumped the last four rungs, landing with a deafening thump in the bare fiberglass floor. The sound didn’t even wake her jailor.

“Looks like your parents didn’t send the money like we asked, little dragon.” He didn’t look as put out as she would have imagined. “Sometimes the ’rents need a little more encouragement.” His cronies descended right after him, clomping around the room. The leader kicked her jailor hard in the gut. “Wake up, you lazy shit!”