“It’s fine.” She stopped to cough again. “Keep fuckin’ going. And hey, thanks.”
“No problem. Karma comes around, goes around.”
If this was love, if this was romance, it was a very effed-up romance.
It wasn’t quite the same, he discovered, catching a living and conscious person. Especially one who was coughing and bleeding all over your car.
By the time he reached the house she was almost done for, but not quite. Getting her into the trunk had been easier. She’d been mobile but weakening fast from shock. He drove fast.
When the garage door was shut, he popped the trunk to find she’d sprayed copious amounts of blood everywhere. He’d have to scrub his car for a year to get it all out. Her breathing was shallow, bubbly. And he needed her alive. He pulled her and the canvas out, took off her jacket, the shoes, the jeans, then he stopped. Her lips looked bluish, and she barely reacted to anything he did.
Such a pretty woman too. Crewcut black hair, black nails, studs in her ears, her nose, and probably her nipples from the bumps in her shirt. So many tattoos, so many gorgeous tattoos.
He shook himself out of the appraisal.
Throwing her in with the rest of her clothes on would have to do. If he tried to undress her, she might die before Raffaela reached her. Wolfgang bundled her into the wheelbarrow and took off down the side path, hauled her up the side steps.
Still alive. Still alive. She’d rolled her eyes toward him. Thank god.
Quickly, he donned his gear, and tossed her into the pool enclosure. Then did the usual slam-shut, lock, and run.
Different. This time was different. He heard dragging noises, a shriek, then splashing.
By the time he was inside the house and had run up to the pool wall, the woman was in the pool.
The water was decorated with intertwining spirals and puffs of blood. He didn’t shift from his spot. The kissing, the nakedness – as Raffaela slowly stripped off the rest of the clothes – the downright eroticism as the stranger died in ecstasy with his mermaid’s mouth on her below.
God.
Shaken, he stepped away and could not look at the very last of it.
That would be engraved on his brain.
Once he had gathered his wits, Wolfgang trailed back up the steps, boots splashing in the water spilling down them.
At the top, mouth agape, he observed that a small hurricane had hit the pool area. Water was everywhere, the white seat was overturned, as was the table. Feet balanced at the pool’s edge, he looked into the depths. Raff stared up at him from below, eyes wide and green. The water roiled with pinkish hues and the woman lolled about down there also, clearly dead, leaking only small amounts of deeper red. He fished out the clothes with the pole, left them in a sodden heap.
This could not go on.
He could not keep doing this – which was a shock to him, as he’d always thought himself practical.
Merrick would’ve aced this.
He shut that down.
No more fucking thinking about Merrick. His temples were aching from the loss he knew he must suffer.
“Come!” he croaked, beckoning, then said it louder, “Come!”
She swam underwater, body wavering from the refractions of light, and surfaced to lock her arms over the edge. Without saying more he walked to the ramp and she followed. Kneeling there brought her even closer, close enough to cup her face in his hand.
“I have to let you go, my mermaid. Do you understand? I cannot keep on doing this. Thought I could but… I can’t.”
She nodded in his hand, laid her face to the side and rubbed against him, her brow furrowed.
“Now. It has to be now while I am strong.”
He scooped her up, with difficulty. Her tail made balancing her weight awkward. Most of the times when he’d carried her, she’d been shifted.
He did not dare to make her shift. It would devastate him, he thought, to see her again as a woman, and he might stop dead and falter.
“It’s best for you.” He maneuvered down the side steps with his wet, heavy, very sad-looking girl. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s best for you too. I can see that. I remember human things. I’ve made you murder someone. Sort of?”
He grunted at that, refusing to follow her down that path, down into his past actions. Fuck today.
The sand sank under him, shells dug into the soles of his feet. The soft crunching made by his passage across the beach to where waves ebbed and flowed reminded him of far better days. He’d spent so much time here. So much wonderful time.
Today was overcast, grey and dismal, and appropriate for this ending.
He must let her go.
But what if.
What if he only…
All the possibilities railed at him, and none of them were both kind to her and right, or even good science. To hope to be made into her species, a merman, and what an odd word merman was, it was his best dream. Such a strange hope.
To be lost in the ocean with her, forever, exploring the deep trenches, chasing fish, seeing things no human could ever quite see in the same way… It would be glorious. And yet, one thousand or more men she had drowned. None had become merfolk. A vital ingredient was missing. Why her? Why had she changed?
There should be an answer.
He did not know it and had no one to question. So, this was what he must do.
“You must never return, Raffaela. Never. I would keep you forever if I could. I would not ever let you go again. It’s who I am. Weak, if
