Sacrificed to the Sea: mermaids .. monsters .. men Read online

  The world was no longer the same, tenets and morals were twisted, hanging off hooks about to unscrew. Sounds had ominous pretensions. The tinkles, the half-heard sighs, the repetitive taps from elsewhere might herald the arrival of a kraken, a god, a being walking in from an alternate dimension. His internal organs might have rearranged themselves for all he knew. What mysteries might he behold next?

  A sonic screwdriver would be nice.

  The pink flush of arousal faded from her belly.

  As if an after-thought, her body shapeshifted, tail sloping, teeth popping up in a row of small knifepoints. Her tongue ran along the tops of the them, savoring the sharpness.

  “Next time.”

  Her way of warning him? For some reason that made him chuckle.

  He should have timed the change. For research more than anything.

  Wiping his nose, he fumbled forward into a one-kneed position, and smiled back at her. “You’ll be pleased to know, I decided not to fillet you. You’re coming home with me. To live in my pool.”

  That shut her up.

  More of a priority was deciding whether her tail needed sutures. Transformation seemed to have healed much of the hole left by the hook. The bleeding had ceased. He pushed himself off the floor and went to look more closely. Then stopped to check out her teeth, again. Her hands were still zip-tied behind her, but she might be able to arch upward.

  More cautiously, he fetched his knife then circled her to come at her tail from the back.

  “Stay still.”

  She grumbled at him, hissed threats.

  While he crouched there, pressing at the wound with his thumb, moving the now shallow laceration, deciding on the severity and what to do – antiseptic should be enough – a thought arrived.

  How long? How long could he keep a mermaid? Googling that one was not going to give him an answer.

  On the other hand, knowing the internet…

  CHAPTER 5

  Water spilled from the canvas as it flopped open on the flagstone edge of the pool. Carefully, Wolfgang clipped the wire at the back of her head to remove the improvised wire-and-steel gag, clipped the plastic ties on her wrists, then pushed and rolled her in. A gout of water splashed upward, and in seconds his mermaid was gliding deep then had arrived at the front wall of his pool.

  Fast and efficient, swift as a shark.

  He’d constructed his pool so it could be a showpiece and so he could house small sharks, if necessary.

  The underwater lights decorated the aqua walls and bottom in glowing, undulating scallops of water, and she peered up at him from the bottom.

  Startled by the appearance of what seemed likely a predator – and how right that assessment was – the other fish had rocketed to the wall beneath him.

  He dabbled his fingertips in the pool. Did she think she could escape him down there?

  Still in a squat, he reached backward and found a sun lounge, perched on it to watch her.

  Beyond the edge of the pool above her, past the slope of the beach, the sun was rising out to sea, broadcasting a path of glimmers. Small breakers rolled in edged by gold. The thinner sections of wave turned to fine, dark-green glass.

  The roof over the pool was fastened to the railing pillars and had been designed burglar-proof due to the isolation of his house. He’d double-checked it for strength. To reach the beach below, she’d have to bite through stainless-steel pillars and railings.

  He made a mental note to cover the beach-facing glass, so that tourists and fishermen passing the bay inlet didn’t see his catch swimming about.

  Wolfgang scanned the water.

  Still there.

  Still had a mermaid in his pool.

  Magic with benefits. The flick of her tail with the scales dancing in light, her areola stark as coins and reminding him of her taste and the way she bucked against his mouth when she came. Her beauty slew him, relentlessly, and he forgot to breathe.

  Animal, monster, human. Her DNA would tell him?

  If she were animal, he’d screwed a fish. He snorted at his thought. As if.

  A pretty, pretty fish … that made his dick so hard and big when she gave him a blowjob that he’d need new pants and a wheelbarrow for his cock and balls, if his ego had a say.

  He had tidied up the room at the research facility, hosed it down, put everything away. The van could go back later, when he would swap it for his SUV, he’d left parked there. Tissue and blood samples waited downstairs, in the fridge in his kitchen. He wasn’t going to leave them at work unless he was there too.

  What would those show? What she had told him said she was human, once, but he was no lie detector. She might tell him anything. The honesty of mermaids was not proclaimed in tales, only their shipwrecking and seduction skills.

  His house, he remembered, was a mess. Except for where he’d walked her, yesterday. The reason for that smacked home how crazy he was being. To dismiss his vengeance and end up with her in his tank was a rebound of enormous proportions.

  When Merrick died, grief had buried him.

  Once upon a time, they’d sat here together, drinking wine, laughing, eating pâte, cheese, and antipasto. But Merrick was gone, dead, killed by her or her ilk. And yet that bludgeoning ache of grief had dulled from an obliteration of his very self to this, to acceptance, in one night?

  His eyeballs felt raked, desiccated, and very tired. He’d not slept in how long? No idea. Perhaps he’d blown some sort of mental fuse. Denial, anger, grief, acceptance. Were those the stages? Vengeance didn’t get a mention.

  Between his legs, he drummed the rim of the sun lounge.

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to kill her. Wolfgang scrubbed at his chin with his fingers, staring down at her, but this?

  “What did you do to me?”

  Mermaids and sirens seduced men with song, but he had to admit the rest of her seduced him purely by being in front of him. If she had somehow done that, then she’d encouraged her own violation. Ironic, since he thought he was in command. Unless seduction was automatic and a mechanism she didn’t control?

  An interesting way to look at it. Generally speaking, he could resist a woman in a short skirt in a dark alley at night. How a woman dressed would turn him on but not compel him.

  But a mermaid had a supernatural essence.

  Had she made him do it despite her protestations?

  Or was that irrelevant due to his plans to dissect her? His head hurt.

  “Your honor, I fucked her because her siren beauty made me do it.” He tsked. Not sure that would work in court. A pity. Fatigue crept in and thumped him again, weighing down his body and making scratchy eyeballs even scratchier.

  “Ohhh god.” Groaning at the headache prying him apart, he rose to his feet. He would clean up his house and think on this. Crash into bed. Pray she didn’t get out and come and drown him, somehow, in his bed. Maybe by sitting on his face.

  Chuckling at his vile humor, he staggered toward the stairs that led down to the door, which then led past his main lounge room.

  Wait. What was he going to feed her?

  She must eat something more than people? A splash made him halt, and he turned. Raffaela had surfaced.

  “What do you eat?” Then he saw the wriggling fish in her hands, the chunk missing from its middle, and the blood staining the water. “Okay. Right. Now I know. Hungry, were you?”

  Narrow-eyed, she nodded then bit off more fish, chewed.

  His pool filters could handle the blood and debris.

  Blood smeared her lips.

  Something induced him to return to the pool. Easier to talk with less distance. If she lunged from the other side he had, ohhh, about three seconds to get away? Wolfgang took one step back. Make that four.

  “Was it you? Did you drown my lover, my Merrick?” Had to know. Had to. “He was—”

  “Yes, it was me,” she snapped. “I remember his name. I heard it when you called to him, as he slipped under the sea with me. I remember the feel o
f him inside me. His kisses.” Then she halted, expression faltering.

  She’d been taunting him. It had been working. He inhaled, stifled his need to hurt her. “Go on.”

  Her mouth twisted, and she lowered the dead fish beneath the water. She spoke again, her voice softened, “I did try to save him. He was haunting, he was different from the others. Something about him made me try to make him come alive, again, even after. You know? I’m sorry.”

  Water dripped.

  “So very sorry.”

  Not just because he’d aimed to knife her?

  He grunted, off balance, anger simmering but not quite erupting. Sorry. What did you do when your lover’s murderer said sorry?

  Spit on them? Scream? Knife them anyway? He was staring at her bobbing tits where they showed above the pool surface, with the stirred water sloshing over them. Fuck them hard, without remorse?

  Get vengeance on them some other way?

  His face would shatter if he stayed a second more, and so he turned away and jogged down the stairs. He spent the next hours cleaning the house, sorting things. He filled the trash can to overflowing, then put away the broom and vacuum, and went to Merrick’s room, which had become more of a storage and playroom when he moved into the main bedroom.

  He hadn’t been in here since the day the man had gone missing.

  The death certificate was still coming. They didn’t like issuing those without proof of death. Without a body.

  Wolfgang lay down on the bed and stayed there, still, hollow, staring at the walls, at the ceiling.

  The neat display of kink gear on the walls taunted him. The floggers and leather harnesses. The chains, clamps, dildos, arm restraints, shackles, and masks. An entire kink shop’s worth of BDSM accessories was going to waste.

  “I need you man. I so fucking need you. What would you do with her?”

  He’d probably say do anything you want to. Merrick had a wildness to him. That last night, the night before the day he vanish—

  Stop thinking about him. Stop. Thinking.

  No more memories. None.

  He made himself do math in his head, wonder what the weather was like, and decide who would win the next election. Also why people counted sheep.

  He fell into sleep at some point, a nightmarish running-away-from-everything, falling-off-a-cliff-into-a bottomless-sea sort of sleep.

  When he woke, he hadn’t moved on the bed, and every part of his body felt as stiff as if he’d been working in a labor camp building the pyramids, or something even bigger.

  Cursing, he dragged himself upright. At least he hadn’t been drowned by mermaid pussy.

  His cellphone had messages, and the time, date. Strangely it was still Sunday.

  Two in the afternoon? He could get into the lab and check her blood, package up the tissue to send it away for testing. They couldn’t do DNA properly at the Trantor Marine Institute.

  Except that when he opened the fridge and checked, the specimens had turned to water and some sort of black sludge. Extract of seaweed was actually a distinct possibility.

  Minuses – no DNA test could be performed. Pluses? He could kill her, dump her body in front of the cops, and nobody would ever find him guilty.

  Wolfgang hesitated at the thought of going to see her. He’d leave her be, for a while.

  Three days passed. Sitting on the sofa in the darkened living room, he drank beer, ate snacks, and watched her swim in his pool and consume all of his fish. The pool was brightly lit by sun in the daytime and the pool lights at night. She could not see him watching her.

  He considered jerking off but didn’t. Thoughts revolved and evolved. No images would stay of her on any devices, but he could make notes of any discoveries.

  Getting more living fish wasn’t easy. Or not that easy. As from tomorrow, he was on official leave for a month because of Merrick. Taking specimens from the facility would get him reprimanded, and he meant to return to work once he was done with mindfucking this mermaid. Something from the fishmonger would do.

  He thought about that, about her food, for two days before he did something.

  Found some ancient scotch whisky in his cellar, sat on the sofa, and then he eyed her through the glass of his tumbler, swirling it, kissing the cold side.

  Now she looked hungry.

  Raffaela wasn’t dumb. She had somehow figured out where he was located, and she swam up to the glass. She plastered her hands to it to either side, shadowing her eyes, and peered through.

  Their eyes seemed to connect. She showed her teeth, and he raised the scotch in the tumbler to her.

  A hungry mermaid might be more dangerous or more malleable.

  Malleable was his aim.

  Vengeance, another way. Yes. Wolfgang smiled. He was going to enjoy this.

  With that decision made, tamped down, cemented in, he felt as if he were finally honoring Merrick’s memory.

  He left her another two days to be sure she would be extra hungry then went to see her. In one hand, he carried a duffel bag containing a pistol, a new steel gag, rope, and handcuffs. In his other was a plastic bag with two fresh but dead fish. He opened the frosted-glass door and jogged up the stairs that led to the pool.

  CHAPTER 6

  Since he’d lowered a cover over the outside of the pool glass, Raffaela could no longer see the beach, the sand, or the waves, though she could hear the muted roar, smell the salt, hear the calls of the sea birds. Reflections of sunlight rippled through the white canvas cover and onto the sand beneath her. Plants familiar to her swayed below, green and healthy, a replica of life in the shallower parts of the sea. Rocks, sand, plants, and the hum of some machine that pushed clean water from holes in the walls.

  It was not enough. A longing to return to the ocean had become constant and had strengthened over the last few days. She did not wish to die. Not anymore. The ire of this vile man had enervated her. He’d tricked her, trapped her.

  At first, she had been sorry.

  Now she was angry at him for wanting to cut her up. He thought she was the monster?

  It was he.

  The ocean was her home. Her human past was centuries ago. She would have climbed out and torn her way to the sea if it were possible. Reach the beach, then she would roll and squirm back into the water.

  But she’d tried to get out and could not.

  Her teeth had made only the mildest of scratches on the bars surrounding the pool.

  Instead of escaping, she was resigned to swimming back and forth in the water allowed her. Nothing kept her company – not since she’d eaten the last of the fish. Nothing except for a few seagulls and sparrows that ventured inside to perch on the railings or furniture and look down at her.

  And him. And Wolfgang.

  She could tell when he watched. He stopped the lights working inside the house when he did so. It made the glass darken and reflect the light from out here… unless she swam up to it.

  And yet he did not feed her, even though he’d asked what she ate and must see there was nothing left. It made her wonder if he’d decided to let her starve to death.

  She was floating on her back, watching the latest sparrow do circuits above her, catching bugs perhaps, when…

  The door he’d last left through made a click. The mechanism sighed then it sounded as if the door had closed again. She’d wriggled over the tiles to look at that door a few times. She sat up, listened. Then she heard his feet coming up the steps. Bare feet, sticking to the floor.

  She slipped across to the front wall of the pool to be as far from him as possible.

  “Hello there! I’ve brought you food.” He raised what seemed a large bubble of water with fish stuck to the insides.

  A plastic bag they called those. She’d swum through enough in the sea, along with all the other garbage that came from humans.

  Dark gray pants on him today, and a form-fitting white shirt clung to the broad muscles of his chest. As he looked down at her the black curls of his hair hun
g before his dark eyes and darker eyebrows, and he’d walked up those stairs with the swagger of a confident man. She imagined sliding her arms down those big masculine thighs.

  The man was pretty, and she would lay a wager he knew it.

  Food. He’d said food.

  Her stomach protested, rumbling.

  While she stared, he deposited a large, long brown bag on a seat. It clinked and he unfastened an opening, then removed several objects. Shiny handcuffs emerged then rope, and she recognized another gag. Her mouth twinged as she remembered how the last one had felt. Her mouth had bled afterward. She clung to the pool wall, sinking, molding her back to it, revealing only her eyes above the water.

  And there was a gun. The form of it was as far removed from the look of the guns of her time as was a sailing ship from the vessels that plied the present oceans, but she knew it. A pistol.

  She feared his intent but summoned courage, surfaced higher so her mouth was above the surface.

  “Will you feed me or starve me? I will not submit to that again.” She nodded at the devices.

  Gun in hand, he sat in one of the long, white seats then casually rested the weapon on his knee.

  “I am taking precautions.”

  She angled an eyebrow.

  “You are more a danger to me, currently, than I am to you. Raffaela.”

  He recalled her name.

  “You said you would cut me up. I doubt your words.”

  “True. I did. And you know my reasons. I didn’t cut you. I have backtracked. I want to keep you. I said that too.”

  He had.

  “I cannot live forever in a small pool of water.” Or without enough food. She smelled the fish, and again her stomach cramped.

  “Perhaps. It would be boring, but one cannot die from boredom. Besides, I have ideas, surprises. Notions about you. What if you could walk about my house?”

  Startled, she blinked at him and sank to the bottom to think before she returned. “How?”

  “I would have to demonstrate and try things. As long as you admit it is sensible for me to restrain you to begin with? You have such sharp…” He indicated her. “Teeth. You could rip my head from my neck, and maybe my beating heart from my chest with those.”