Deep Silver Read online

  DEEP SILVER

  by

  J.R. RAIN &

  MATTHEW S. COX

  The Alexis Silver Series

  #2

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Winter Wind

  Bound By Blood

  Silent Echo

  The Body Departed

  The Grail Quest

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

  The Lost Ark

  The Journey (with Piers Anthony)

  The Worm Returns (with Piers Anthony)

  Lavabull (with Piers Anthony)

  Jack and the Giants (with Piers Anthony)

  Dolfin Tayle (with Piers Anthony)

  Dragon Assassin (with Piers Anthony)

  Glimmer (with Eve Paludan)

  Lost Eden (with Elizabeth Basque)

  Judas Silver (with Elizabeth Basque)

  The Vampire Club (with Scott Nicholson)

  Cursed (with Scott Nicholson)

  The Black Fang Betrayal (with multiple authors)

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon (novella)

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  Midnight Moon

  Moon Angel

  Vampire Sire

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  Moon Bayou (with Rod Kierkegaard)

  Blood Moon (with Matthew S. Cox)

  SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS

  with Matthew S. Cox

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE EXTRAS

  Vampire Alley (poem)

  Moon Dance (Deluxe Edition)

  Moon Extras: Bonus Scenes

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SHORT STORIES

  Teeth

  Vampire Nights

  Vampire Blues

  Vampire Dreams

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Blue Moon

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Vampire Requiem

  Moon Love

  JIM KNIGHTHORSE SERIES

  Dark Horse

  The Mummy Case

  Hail Mary

  Clean Slate

  Easy Rider (short story)

  THE WITCHES SERIES

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witch and the Englishman

  The Witch and the Huntsman (with Rod Kierkegaard)

  THE PSI SERIES

  with A.K. Alexander

  Hear No Evil

  See No Evil

  Speak No Evil

  THE WATSON FILES

  with Chanel Smith

  Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Shakespeare

  Sherlock Holmes and the Lost Da Vinci

  Sherlock Holmes and the Werewolf of West End

  NICK CAINE SERIES

  with Aiden James

  Temple of the Jaguar

  Treasure of the Deep

  Pyramid of the Gods

  DEAD DETECTIVE SERIES

  with Rod Kierkegaard

  The Dead Detective

  Deadbeat Dad

  TEAM QUANTUM

  with Kris Carey

  The Accidental Superheroine

  My Big Fat Accidental Superheroine Wedding

  MADDY WIMSEY SERIES

  with Matthew S. Cox

  The Devil’s Eye

  The Drifting Gloom

  WINTER SOLTSICE SERIES

  with Matthew S. Cox

  Convergence

  Containment

  ICE WOLF SERIES

  with H.P. Mallory

  Ice Wolf

  MAJOR QUATERMAIN ADVENTURES

  with Randy Keys

  The Spear

  ALEXIS SILVER SERIES

  with Matthew S. Cox

  Silver Light

  THE SPINOZA TRILOGY

  The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

  The Vampire Who Played Dead

  The Vampire in the Iron Mask

  The Vampire on the Train (short story)

  THE ALADDIN TRILOGY

  with Piers Anthony

  Aladdin Relighted

  Aladdin Sins Bad

  Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

  THE WALKING PLAGUE TRILOGY

  with Elizabeth Basque

  Zombie Patrol

  Zombie Rage

  Zombie Mountain

  THE SPIDER TRILOGY

  with Scott Nicholson and H.T. Night

  Bad Blood

  Spider Web

  Spider Bite

  SHORT STORY SINGLES

  Vampire Road

  Skeleton Jim

  The Bleeder

  Vampire Rain

  The Santa Call

  COLLECTIONS

  Dark Rain: Stories

  Blood Rain: Stories

  Black Rain: Stories

  Chronology

  Primetime

  For Young Readers

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Emerald River

  The Angel and the Gift

  Forever Silent

  Spirit Mountain (with Alexandra Swan)

  YOUR CHOICE BOOKS

  Deep Sea Danger

  The Legend of Eagle Eye Mountain

  Playoff Pressure

  THE ROBOT TWINS

  The Mystery of the Walking Statue

  The Secret of Stonehead Island (with Randy Keys)

  KIDQUEST ADVENTURES

  The Secret of the Sphinx

  THE DISTANT WORLD TRILOGY

  Dare to Enter a Distant World

  TEAM LEGEND

  with Randy Keys

  The Enchantress

  Other Books by Matthew S. Cox

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Menagerie of Jenkins Bailey

  Axillon99

  Wayfarer: AV494

  Caller 107

  Operation Chimera (with Tony Healey)

  The Summer the World Ended

  Chiaroscuro: The Mouse and the Candle

  Nine Candles of Deepest Black

  The Eldritch Heart

  Citadel: The Concordant Sequence

  Out of Sight

  Sophie’s Light

  THE AWAKENED SERIES

  Prophet of the Badlands

  Archon’s Queen

  Grey Ronin

  Daughter of Ash

  Zero Rogue

  THE DIVISION ZERO SERIES

  Division Zero

  Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis

  Division Zero: Thrall

  Division Zero: Guardian

  TALES OF WIDOESWOOD SERIES

  Emma and the Banderwigh

  Emma and the Silk Thieves

  Emma and the Silverbell Faeries

  THE DAUGHTER OF MARS SERIES

  The Hand of Raziel

  Araphel

  Ghost Black

  TEMPORAL ARMISTICE SERIES

  Nascent Shadow

  The Shadow Collector

  THE ROADHOUSE CHRONICLES SERIES

  One More Run

  The Redeemed

  VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY SERIES

  Virtual Immortality

  The Harmony Paradox

  THE FADED SKIES SERIES

  Heir Ascendant

  Ascendant Revolution

  VAMPIRE INNOCENT

  A Nighttime of Forever

  A Beginner’s Guide to Fangs

  MADDY WIMSEY SERIES

  with J.R. Rain

  The Devil’s Eye

  The Drifting Gloom


  THE WINTER SOLSTICE SERIES

  with J.R. Rain

  Convergence

  Containment

  SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS

  with J.R. Rain

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  ALEXIS SILVER SERIES

  with J.R. Rain

  Silver Light

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Far Side of Promise

  The Divergent Fates Anthology

  Valcoria: Awakenings

  NON-FICTION

  The Dysfunctional Conspiracy

  Deep Silver

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2018 by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Reading Sample: Convergence

  About the Author: J.R. Rain

  About the Author: Matthew S. Cox

  Deep Silver

  The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.

  —Jules Verne

  Chapter One

  Day Cruise

  Accepting what happened to me that night in 1920 didn’t come easy.

  I mean, what sort of person could handle drowning in the ocean after a shipwreck and waking up as a mermaid without at least having some questions? The people I’d spent the day socializing with had settled to the seabed around me like so much gullyfluff, but there I remained, somehow awake, staring at dead people.

  Honestly, I thought I’d laid down my knife and fork, too, but as it turns out, I hadn’t completely died. No, if I’d completely died, I might’ve sat back up as, say, a vampire. I’d also have been immortal, which I’m not. Well, not exactly. So, I’m still alive and kicking—or flapping, as the case may be—and I don’t mean that in the sense of those short-skirted girls of the ’20s. As best as I (or Licinia) can guess, I’ve got somewhere around eight hundred years, give or take a decade, before my time’s up.

  Sounds like a good deal, right? Only, the price of admission’s a little steep: my eternal soul.

  See, Licinia is my Dark Master, a wandering soul who leapt into my dying body and turned me into a supernatural being—a mermaid. I’ve since learned that almost everything that has a scary story written about it (werewolves, vampires, mermaids, and so on) is the result of these entities inhabiting people during some strange circumstance. In my case, a lonely merman felt a compulsion to give me the breath before I finished drowning. And before you say, ‘hang on, luv, mermaids aren’t scary,’ I’m not the red-haired ingénue who sold her voice for a boy she’d met only hours before. I’m the sort of mermaid who sits on rocks waving her boobs in hopes that sailors will dive overboard so I can tear them apart and eat them whole.

  Well, not me personally. Other Mermaids, I mean.

  Truth is, I don’t really do the human flesh thing—I prefer seafood. Licinia likes to say there’s still too much humanity in me, but she doesn’t really mind. We’ve got a rather good relationship considering the nature of our coexistence. From what she tells me, a Dark Master/vessel symbiosis often takes on an antagonistic tone. But not ours. In the near century we’ve been together, we’ve come to fancy each other. She’s somewhere between mother and older sister to me.

  I’m not entirely sure how the conversion thing works for vampires, though I imagine there’s death and drinking blood involved. In my case, Barnaby pressed his lips to mine and filled my lungs with, well, magic, I suppose. That’s the moment Licinia hopped in and I ceased being a mortal human.

  However, in the time since that night, I’ve come to realize that this is exactly what I needed. I mean, my expulsion from the cycle of reincarnation is kind of a downer, but being a mermaid is groovy. Granted, it’s not like I’d be consciously aware of future lives in the same way I don’t remember past ones. So as far as I’m concerned, death is still going to feel the same. The ol’ lights out, so to speak.

  You have quite a bit of time left, my dear.

  I smile at Licinia’s voice in my head. As Dark Masters go, I pretty much wound up with the best possible scenario. A certain degree of unsavoriness is required to become one of those. However, sometimes the world backs a girl into a corner and leaves her no better option than to embrace diabolical blood magic. While I don’t have (and can’t have) kids, I completely sympathize with her. She did some dark shit to protect her family, but Licinia is a rather nice person—if you don’t hold using black rituals and killing a few thousand Romans against her. You know, little things.

  Her whispery laugh slides across the back of my consciousness.

  Growing up, I was the squeamish little girl who couldn’t stand the sight of bugs or mice. This kid, Billy Morgan, used to always try and toss frogs on me to make me scream, and no matter how many times he did it, I’d shriek. Then again, I’d grown up in a different age. People expected girls to be like that, not that I played a role or anything. I really was a little chicken. Not so much anymore. I kind of got over that in the forties. After tearing the hearts out of a couple Nazi soldiers with my clawed fingers and eating them, the sight of blood stopped bothering me. No, what bothered me more is that I kinda liked it, though human flesh isn’t my usual fare.

  Enough of the woman I used to be is still inside me that I find eating people mildly repugnant—unless I’m livid or desperate. Those two Germans fell into the first category, having been about to murder a bunch of women and children. What is it about war that can strip the humanity out of people? I’ve got three-inch, needle-like teeth, six-inch claws, and a huge fishy tail, but those soldiers were the true monsters.

  Anyway, I much prefer fresh fish. Merfolk come in two varieties. (Though I suppose I should say shifters come in two varieties, since a certain kind of dietary favoritism appears to hold true for werewolves as well.) Some of us prefer fresh meat while others find putrefying flesh irresistible. Barnaby had a fondness for the latter. He’d often let bodies sit a couple days before digging in. Ugh. The same utter disgust I feel toward the thought of eating flesh that’s decomposed to the point of being gelatinous, he feels about consuming still-warm, fresh meat.

  Ugh again. So gross.

  For me, the best part of food is going after it, because it often involves the ocean. Lately, I spend more of my time on land than in the sea—hey, there’s no Starbucks down there—but every time I’m in the water, it wraps me in solace. The feeling is difficult to truly put into words. About the best way I can describe it is imagine being twenty-ish and moving to a new town for a new job and getting overwhelmed, then pushing a button and shazam: back in my childhood bedroom as a little kid with no responsibilities and my mom there to worry about everything for me.

  That’s the sense of security I get from the ocean, absolute serenity.

  Except for that one spot in the Kola Bay near Polyarny in Russia—Leviathans are unsettling.

  I defy anyone—human, vampire, werewolf, or mermaid—to stay calm in the presence of a creature the size of a
n island. Fortunately, it happened to be asleep when I found myself swimming into his… not entirely sure what the body cavity was. Ear? Mouth? Nostril? I only know I didn’t want to be in it.

  Today, I’ve gone for a bit of a swim. Though, being able to swim around a hundred miles an hour underwater has its perks. It’s great for travel, not so great for bikini tops—they tend to rip right off. And speaking of ripping off, becoming a mermaid has made me rather appreciative of my modest bosom. I can’t imagine the hell the truly well-endowed mermaids must go through while swimming at high speed. That thought gets Licinia chuckling. I’m her second host. She had inhabited a woman who killed herself by leaping off a cliff, after her sailor husband had died at sea. After about six centuries, time ran out and Licinia returned to the void. She’s laughing in the back of my mind because that woman had quite a bit more up top than I do, enough to cause drag—and some rather humorous flapping at speeds exceeding 100 MPH.

  What started as me wanting lunch turned into me wanting to spend the better part of a day enjoying the ocean, and further mutated into following up on a silly little idea of mine. Some of my kind seldom leave the water, and I know just where to find them. At least those who live around here. While I have no real idea how many merfolk exist in general, there are about a dozen in the North Pacific region. Most of us tend to be loners or live in pairs if they find a lover. Rumor has it a society of merfolk exists in the most remote part of the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the US, about a thousand miles east of Papua, New Guinea… basically a point in the water that’s quite far from land in any direction.

  As luck would have it, I’ve never wound up with a mer lover, though I’ve had relationships with a werewolf and two vampires. While Barnaby may have been attracted to me, I didn’t share his feelings. We parted as amicably as possible given the circumstances, though I don’t think I’ll ever not be unsettled around him. That whole first few months as a mermaid still feels like he kidnapped me and held me against my will. Maybe that’s why I’ve avoided spending much time in the company of other merfolk, mermen in particular… it keeps reminding me of the eerie look in Barnaby’s silver eyes. I mean, the man was totally a hunk, but the way he looked at me was pure serial killer stuff.