Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Read online

  Falling in Deep Collection

  Pauline Creeden

  Melanie Karsak

  A. R. Draeger

  J. M. Miller

  Carrie L. Wells

  Ella Malone

  Erin Hayes

  Poppy Lawless

  Blaire Edens

  Eli Constant

  B. Brumley

  Katie Hayoz

  Margo Bond Collins

  Anna Albergucci

  Join the authors of the Falling in Deep Collection

  Clockpunk Press

  Falling in Deep Collection

  Copyright © 2015 Clockpunk Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this anthology may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher and/or author(s).

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed are fictional. Any resemblances to the living or the dead are purely coincidental.

  Published by Clockpunk Press

  PO Box 560367

  Rockledge, FL 32956-0367

  Clockpunk Press

  Cover art by Quirky Bird

  Summary of Books

  SCALES BY PAULINE CREEDEN

  Verona is a bottom feeder. She is the one mer in her clan who is considered the ugliest and least intelligent. Growing up with the constant bullying and abuse wasn’t the worst of what her kind had in store for her. At seventeen years old, she must now endure “The Reckoning.”

  The scales will measure her worth to her clan. Will she endure thirty days as a land-walker to gather information and knowledge to appease her clan and return a valued member? Will she wait three years, until she is twenty, and find a mer of her kind to accept her and marry her? Or will she suffer exile for the rest of her life?

  INK: A MERMAID ROMANCE BY MELANIE KARSAK

  A mermaid princess destined to wed a handsome king…

  It sounds like a fairy tale, but the reality is far murkier.

  Ink, Princess of the Florida Atlantic mers, is slated to wed the ancient enemy of her tribe, the King of the Gulfs. After years of war that led to countless mer deaths, as well as the genocide of aquatic shapeshifters and the freshwater mers of Florida, Ink’s marriage will bring lasting peace.

  Or so it seems.

  Mere hours before she’s supposed to leave the ocean for her customary year as a drywalker, Ink meets Hal, an alligator shifter who warns her that a storm is brewing. There is malicious intent behind Ink’s marriage—and worse, meeting Hal has also caused a storm to rage in Ink’s heart. Nevertheless, loyal to her tribe, Ink will put aside her feelings and journey to Miami to marry the decadent King Manx.

  Ink soon learns that her only hope of surviving the crashing force swelling around her is to tap into a power deep inside—a forbidden power that might destroy them all.

  OF OCEAN AND ASH BY A. R. DRAEGER

  Of Ocean…

  Cast into the sea at birth, human-born Ia found her adoptive family among the merfolk. While her underwater upbringing was peaceful, Ia’s blood-heritage and the strict societal rules of the merpeople lead her to wonder of the world above the waves.

  And Ash…

  When a storm lands Ia ashore, she discovers her body has transformed into the human she would have been. Taken in as property by a callous plantation owner, Ia works alongside the slaves until she can make her way back to the water. There is nothing Ia wants more than to go home, that is, until she meets a handsome, troubled man named Matthias, who has a touch that can be as kind as his tongue is harsh.

  Torn between two very different lives, Ia must choose – stay in his world and risk her life for a love untested, or return to the familiar arms of the underwater world that raised her and risk losing what may be the greatest love she will ever know.

  Will Ia’s choice lead to her happiness or her destruction?

  DEEP BREATH BY J. M. MILLER

  Before disappearing at sea, Marissa Pruitt’s father—a once revered marine archaeologist—walked the line of insanity, claiming to have seen a mermaid during an ordinary dive in the Gulf of Mexico. He abandoned his life and career, completely obsessed with chasing the truth.

  It’s been years since his death, and Marissa is still tormented by countless unanswered questions. When she finds dive coordinates and a stone pendant hidden in her father’s things, she asks for help from his old protégé and sets out to give her father one last goodbye and maybe find closure for her troubled heart. Instead, she finds the truth he’d been searching for all along, with a life and love she never could have imagined. But there’s a price to see it all, one set by betrayal and paid with an anchor at her feet and salt water in her lungs.

  AT THE HEART OF THE DEEP BY CARRIE L. WELLS

  Oceanographer Luke McAllister races to figure out why the ocean depth is changing off Florida’s Treasure Coast. But before he and his crew discover what’s transforming the deep, he stumbles upon an even greater mystery. Leagues below the waves, he swear he sees…a mermaid?

  Anya isn’t allowed to get close to humans. But when a golden-haired researcher gets too close to her island, she can’t afford to stay away.

  Together, this unlikely pair will seek to discover what’s causing shifts in ocean floor. While their new alliance is forbidden, Anya will risk everything to save her beloved ocean. The only problem is, she’s not sure what’s really luring her in, her love of the sea or the tempest Luke has stirred in her heart. Either way, Anya knows that the dangers facing the sea are nothing compared to what will happen to her when her father learns she’s broken the merfolks’ most sacred law.

  Can Anya and Luke discover what lurks at the heart of the deep before it’s too late?

  THE MERMAID’S DEN BY ELLA MALONE

  Laura and Tom Flynn married after she fell for him hook, line, and sinker — literally. Finding Laura in his fishing net had been a shock for Tom, but one he came to embrace as they quickly fell in love. For fifteen years, they have lived and worked by the sea, and Laura hasn’t thought once of what she left behind when she chose to marry Tom. She doesn’t regret giving up her mermaid form. It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was a good decision, and one she made to survive.

  Now, with Tom missing at sea, Laura faces a decision she swore she’d never consider. In order to search for Tom and his crew, she must become a mermaid again and face the demons of the deep that she eagerly dodged when trading in her tail. Or she can stay on land and continue her life, but without Tom.

  Does she enjoy her future alone, without the man she loves, or face her fears and her past in the ocean? Either way, nothing will be the same for her again.

  HOW TO BE A MERMAID BY ERIN HAYES

  All Tara ever wanted was to be a mermaid.

  So she takes a year off between high school and college to don a fake tail and tour aquariums across the country in a professional mermaid troupe.

  Everything’s great until she meets a gorgeous real-life merman named Finn. Suddenly, what she thought was a dream turns out to be a nightmare — she’s turning into a mermaid herself. For real.

  Yet when she returns to the sea to seek out Finn and reverse her transformation, she finds herself in the middle of an impending war between the land and sea. Tara may have always wanted to be a mermaid, but now it’s sink or swim. In order to survive, she has to learn how to be one, too.

  THE GLASS MERMAID BY POPPY LAWLESS

  Kate

  I’m the last mermaid.

  I’m back on shores of Lake Erie, but the cold waters are silent. There is nothing here for me but ghosts and the beach glass that litters the rocky shore. Long ago, I lived below the waves. Now, I am the sole survivor, and at long last, my mermaid glamour is leaving me.

>   Every day, I walk the beach. Every day, I wonder what happened to my people. The little pieces of colored glass that wash ashore give me simple pleasure. They are gifts from the lake, reminders of home. I fashion them into trinkets: necklaces, earrings, bracelets. They are beautiful things. The humans seem love them.

  Every day, I walk the beach. Nothing ever changes, until the day he says hello.

  Cooper

  I’m dying.

  It’s not a question, it’s a fact. The cancer is eating me alive. They told me I have six months to live, maybe less. I came home, back to Chancellor on Lake Erie, to die. The sunsets are vivid there, and I will relish every one.

  I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than a Lake Erie sunset until I see her.

  All life is as fragile as glass.

  What would you sacrifice to save the one you love?

  AN OFFICE AND A MERMAID BY BLAIRE EDENS

  When a slave uprising threatens the life of Syreena, the daughter of an eighteenth century plantation owner, a servant uses voodoo to transform her into a mermaid. The spell will be only broken when she returns to the beach where it was cast. After three hundred years of swimming, she’s ready to trade fins for legs. The only problem is she can’t find her way home.

  Dylan, a twenty-first century Coast Guard Officer, has sworn off love for the sea. When a wave throws him overboard, Syreena uses her amulet to ward off the sharks and save his life.

  With Syreena and Dylan stranded on a remote cay in the Caribbean, Dylan has the know-how to build a raft and navigate but his near-drowning has made him terrified of the water. Syrenna will use every charm she has to convince Dylan to take her home.

  Even if it means falling in love…

  THE WATER IS SWEETER BY ELI CONSTANT

  When the land becomes a desert, the water will quench your soul

  Orphan Lena McMillan used to think that what she shared with Truman Kent was real. Now she sees their relationship for what it really is- controlling and abusive.

  She has to choose to die slowly from ‘love’ or say goodbye to the family she’s always desired. Leaving scares her though, so much so that dying seems like her only option.

  But fate won’t let her quit life and Truman won’t let her quit his love. Not without a fight.

  Under the layers of a lonely childhood and an adulthood romance gone wrong, a starfish holds the key to Lena’s parentage and the answer to the mesmeric ocean dreams that haunt her.

  If she can find the strength to leave the only life she knows, Lena will discover the truth. And she will find a new world, one that will cleanse her of the memories of false love and abuse.

  One that will finally lead her home.

  COLD WATER BRIDEGROOM BY B. BRUMLEY

  Having grown up in San Francisco, Calder Brumen is drawn to the ocean, and he’s spent his life trying to capture the beauty of the Pacific on canvas. Over time, he has become obsessed with painting the image of a dark haired mermaid named Gaire, and Calder struggles to explain his devotion to these portraits to his best friend. When Calder finds sandy footprints leading to the edge of his bed, he suspects that the haunting siren is real.

  Pursuing the truth, Calder is dragged into a murderous, underwater plot that could destroy them all. And he must choose – is the possibility of a lifetime with Gaire worth risking death for himself and everyone he loves?

  IMMERSED BY KATIE HAYOZ

  Forget petticoats and demure female behavior. Melusine Doré prefers armored corsets and knives and slays evil creatures for a living. The grim and gruesome don’t frighten her; she’ll take on a cyclops or a dragon and not even break a sweat. But when her rival, the charismatic Levi Cannon, comes to town, all her buried fears begin to surface. Melusine realizes she is in danger of something much more horrifying than facing blood-thirsty beasts – she’s in danger of falling in love. Because love alone has the power to reveal a secret terrible enough to completely shatter her world.

  Set in the muddy streets of 1850s steampunk Chicago, Immersed by Katie Hayoz is a dark yet romantic fantastical romp. It is a stand-alone novella, the first in a series of adventures that follow Melusine on her quest to rid the world of monsters…and her struggle to come to terms with every monstrous facet of herself.

  SIREN’S KISS BY MARGO BOND COLLINS

  Her kiss might save the world …

  Unless his kiss kills her first.

  It’s been almost two thousand years since the mer-shifter Skyla walked the streets of Athens—not since her heart was broken by a human man and she exchanged the land and sky for the ocean depths. Ever since, she has lived in the underwater ruins of Atlantis, studying with the priestesses of the goddess Amphitrite, refining her mermaid powers and ignoring her human half.

  But her studies are interrupted when she is called upon by the god Poseidon himself to investigate rumors that the world above is being polluted by the magic of creatures from another realm—and worse, that the ocean kingdom of the mer-people might be next.

  When her inquiries in modern-day Greece lead her to an American detective asking similar questions, Skyla realizes that the magical problem she’s been sent to research is bigger than she anticipated—and that one human’s kisses might be more dangerous to her, and her world, than she ever could have imagined.

  TO EACH HIS OWN BY ANNA ALBERGUCCI

  Douglass McGrail is a Scottish water horse—his clan the deadliest in the British Isle. When the shifter chooses to save—rather than eat—a young lassie, he never expects her innocent face to mark his memory so strongly.

  Months later, he stumbles onto a perceived attack in progress and plays the hero once more. He’s shocked to find the victim is the same lass who haunts his dreams.

  Jinny Fairchild is an English miss who’s come to the Highlands to live with her last remaining family. She is pursued by her handsome older cousin, Lachlan Brockhouse, but he has a dark side that lands her in the path of the mighty Douglass McGrail.

  Douglass wants Jinny for himself, yet discovers she is connected to the attacker she denies knowing. He’s determined to find the truth.

  Jinny loves Lachlan, even with his dark side. And she loves Douglass, even with his dark secret. Her heart is torn, but one thing is certain—no matter which of these men she chooses, she will be choosing a monster.

  Table of Contents

  Falling in Deep Collection

  Clockpunk Press

  Summary of Books

  Table of Contents

  Scales by Pauline Creeden

  Ink: A Mermaid Romance by Melanie Karsak

  Of Ocean and Ash by A. R. Draeger

  Deep Breath by J. M. Miller

  At the Heart of the Deep by Carrie L. Wells

  The Mermaid’s Den by Ella Malone

  How to be a Mermaid by Erin Hayes

  The Glass Mermaid by Poppy Lawless

  An Office and a Mermaid by Blaire Edens

  The Water is Sweeter by Eli Constant

  Cold Water Bridegroom by B. Brumley

  Immersed by Katie Hayoz

  Siren’s Kiss by Margo Bond Collins

  To Each His Own by Anna Albergucci

  Thank you

  Scales by Pauline Creeden

  Verona is a bottom feeder. She is the one Mer in her clan who is considered the ugliest and least intelligent. Growing up with the constant bullying and abuse wasn’t the worst of what her kind had in store for her. At seventeen years old, she must now endure “The Reckoning.”

  The scales will measure her worth to her clan. Will she endure thirty days as a land-walker to gather information and knowledge to appease her clan and return a valued member? Will she wait three years, until she is twenty, and find a Mer of her kind to accept her and marry her? Or will she suffer exile for the rest of her life?

  CHAPTER ONE

  TO KEEP FROM SCREAMING, I bite hard on my lip. The copper mixture of blood and saltwater mingles on my tongue. Mer claws rake against my back. The barnacles on the post to
which I’m tied stab me in the chest. Pain sets my body on fire. Everything burns. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and keep my silence.

  “Ugly.”

  “Repugnant.”

  “Unsightly.”

  “Ignorant.”

  “Bottom Feeder.”

  Each word cuts as deep in my flesh as the physical wounds my clan inflicts. It can’t last long. I can endure this. As soon as the sharks catch scent of my blood they will come, and the Mer will scatter.

  The world spins around me like a whirlpool. My breaths come quick and shallow, my heart pounds faster in my ears. Each second is an eternity, until I realize fresh wounds are not adding to the burning in my skin.

  The elder’s sharp tongue whispers in my ear. “Now you will be measured.”

  My wrists fall free of the post as he cuts the ties.

  Exile. My Reckoning has begun.

  I open my eyes and rub my wrists. The ropes slide over my hands and sink to the sandy floor. My gaze darts about the clearing, but not one Mer remains in the crystal green sea only a hundred miles northeast of Bermuda.

  What should I do? Swim for the shore and live as a human or go for deeper waters and try my hand against the sharks?

  I swallow.

  Don’t do it, Verona. I hear my father’s voice in my mind as fear engulfs me. Nothing is worse than starving and suffering abuse at the hands of Land Walkers. Stay in the sea where danger wears no mask.

  My father almost died in his Reckoning. He had chosen his month on land and bore freckles—the mark of a Land Walker—for the rest of his life. Any Mer immersed by air in the light of the full moon remains human for a full lunar cycle. If I went on land, I’d have to await the night of the next full moon before I could return to the sea. If I survived.