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Excerpt
The Young and the Restless
A Mermalicious Tail
by
Alexis Ke
Chapter One
“Did I not tell you to be quiet?”
Neptune’s voice vibrated through the lyceum.
Many times before when he’d been
this angry, he’d stomped and caused earthquakes that sent tsunamis
across the land.
“But—”
“Silence!”
A wave pushed Zion down into a bow.
“You were warned not once, but
twice. Why do you defy me?” Neptune’s voice carried sorrow, grief
and anger.
Zion opened his mouth, closed it and
lowered his head when Neptune raised his trident.
“I will only tell you this once
more.” Neptune’s tail waved, and the water parted before him. “We do
not belong on the land. It is not that we can’t go there but that it
has been done with proportional disasters. Your place is here, among
your own people. Do not, and I mean do not, question my authority
again. You will not like my wrath.”
Zion lowered his head in seeming
submission, turned and swam to the far side of the sea to brood. No
one understood him. No one cared about the future. Only Zion had the
vision of walking among the land lovers. Only Zion dreamed of
finding the secrets his people had hidden from them for so many
years. And, by golly, he was going to find them.
“Wrath indeed. How dare that pompous
old fool tell me what I can and can’t do?” The words were out of his
mouth before he could stop them.
Immediately, his head began to spin.
The pressure became almost unbearable. It was like the time he swam
to the shore and watched the others as they played on the beach.
He’d stayed topside too long and become water hungry. But why was it
happening now? He was nowhere near the white sandy beach he longed
to walk on. Water surrounded him. The dizziness flooded his
sensations, alarming him.
“I must get help.” His words were
garbled, even to him. Muffled. His vision went black and his eyes
fluttered then closed before he could summon help.
* * * *
“Give him some room!”
“Where’s the oxygen? Is he
breathing?”
“Does anyone know CPR?”
Voices floated around his head. Zion
tried to turn over and felt a sharp pain shoot through his body. The
loud groan that pierced the air came from his throat. His head hurt,
and he couldn’t distill the strange sounds wafting in and out of his
mind. Sirens? Yes, sirens.
“Give him some room,” a voice said
again. “What happened, man?”
Zion forced his eyes open, blinked
away the grit and salty water and stared out into the faces of the
people pooling around him.
“What happened?” he coughed out.
“Where—” He didn’t recognize his own voice. The strange syllables
and sounds he understood but didn’t know why. Was it not his native
tongue?
“Get these people out of my way.” A
woman’s voice rang out over the crowd.
People began to move back, opening a
wide berth around Zion as he lay on the beach. “Get something to
throw over him—a blanket, anything.”
Zion glanced down at his body. He
was nude. He moved his gaze up to the woman who started shouting
orders that everyone obeyed without question.
“What’s going on?” His throat hurt.
His voice sounded harsh and dry.
“You tell me.” She kneeled down
beside him. Her gaze traveled down and back up the length of him.
“Anyone ever tell you this is not a nude beach?” She glanced at the
lifeguards and laughed. “Shucks, this whole country is no-nudity in
public. A shame too.” She glanced back at his body, trailed her gaze
up his muscled legs and expertly sculptured hips, stopping briefly
at the junction of his thighs and continuing to his face.
The people burst into loud laughter.
“What’s your name?”
Zion stared into her eyes, blinked
and shook his head.
“You deaf? I said, what’s your
name?” She spoke in a slow and deliberate manner. “I’m Detective
Tatyana Selbie.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the lifeguard.
“Where did you say you found him?”
The lifeguard pointed to the edge of
the water near the rocks that jutted out from the beach.
“He say anything?”
The lifeguard shook his head. “Naw,
he’s just now coming around. Might be hurt. He moaned when he tried
to sit up.”
She glanced back at Zion. “Are you
hurt?”
Zion nodded a slow movement of the
head. Confusion swept over him. His chest began to tighten, and the
same dizziness as before swam through his head and blanketed his
body. He opened his mouth, took a deep breath and let it out in one
harsh rush. He took another. “Where am I?”
“Ah, he speaks.” Detective Selbie
glanced over her shoulder. “What’s your name?”
Again, Zion stared up into her eyes.
They were the most comforting things he could find at the moment.
Soft, warm, dark and mysterious. He closed his eyes, waited a beat
and reopened them. Fear washed over him, but when he saw her eyes,
it oozed away drip by drip. Anyone with eyes like that couldn’t be
bad. “I don’t know.” His voice shook. He brought his hand up and
rubbed his forehead.
“Huh?” She glanced at the lifeguard.
“Did he hit his head?”
“Maybe. He was out when we found
him.”
“Okay, fella. We’re going to get you
to the hospital. Get you checked out.”
“What’s a hos—hospital?”
“Oh, now this is just great.” She
stood up and waved the ambulance attendant over. “Let’s get him
checked out.”
Detective Tatyana Selbie stood back
and watched the medics and lifeguards lift the man onto the
stretcher and then into the back of the ambulance. Her gaze traveled
the length of him, stopping briefly to meet his eyes.
She
shook her head. “Why is it whenever there is a fine specimen of a
man lying about he’s either gay or crazy?”
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www.alexiske.com
 Also by Alexis Ke from
www.midnightshowcase.com 
Melange
Digest – An Itsy Bitsy Spider Tale
Breaking her rules of not getting involved with non-brothas,
Nicole Baylor finds out passion and
love have rules all of their own.
Undersea
Delights – Maiden of the Mist
Lia
refuses to believe merfolk have but one true love. One mate. If that
were true then she wouldn't have had a man fall to her from the sky.
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