Siren's Secret

Yards away, the killer stared at Shelly with the eyes of an intense predator. With the light of a full moon, she made out the curly dark hair peeking out from under a baseball cap, a hookish beak of a nose, glittering dark eyes with gold flecks and a short, wiry body tensed in fury.

Her eyes burned as she strained to adjust her vision from water to air, the sudden beam of a flashlight blinding her for a moment. Judging from the way his mouth gaped open, Shelly knew he’d seen her inhuman pupils do their wild thing, shine with the bioluminescent glow of deep-sea marine life as the irises swirled like a miniature aurora borealis. Her muscles seized and locked, refusing her mind’s screaming command to flee.

Damn. Wait until he sees my tail.

The boat stopped next to her and the man’s face contorted with rage. He pointed at Shelly. “What the hell?” he screamed in a tight, shrill voice. He reached into his pants pocket and drew out something. Silver flashed as moonbeams reflected off a thin metallic surface.

A long-bladed stiletto knife.

The sight broke Shelly’s paralyzing stupor. She somersaulted, momentarily flipping her tail fin in the air before diving down to the ocean floor. Despite a mysterious, searing pain in her tail, Shelly swam to the bed of sand, knowing he couldn’t come after her this deep down.

The foreign odor of dead human wafted through the usual smell of marine life. As her eyes adjusted to the absence of light in the deep sea, Shelly located the body and swam over to it.

A few long strands of black hair escaped from the torn garbage bag. Shelly ran her fingers through her own honey-colored locks. She had never come so close to evil and death. It wasn’t right to leave the body this way. Too disrespectful. Unable to resist, she touched the victim’s forehead, noting the heart-shaped face and delicate, arched eyebrows above the gaping wounds.

I am so sorry this happened to you. So sorry.

She tucked the long black strands back into the plastic, trying to bestow some dignity and kindness on the dead woman. I’ll come back for you, she promised as she placed the body in a wedge between a large outcropping of limestone rocks.

The sharp pain from the tip of her tail fin broke through the shock and grief. She looked down and saw a small stream of blood oozing out in swirling, crimson eddies. The killer’s knife had stuck into her fin. Damn. In the split second her tail had been exposed, the killer had managed to stab her. She pulled out the knife and this time the pain was excruciating. Had this been what he used to kill his victims?

I have to stop him.

She forced herself back up through the black depths of water, gripping his weapon in her right hand. Nearing the surface, she found the rusty boat still rocking from her downward dive. Flat-bottomed and only fourteen feet long, the rusted aluminum boat was not the best choice for anything but the calmest of waters. Although the style was popular in the bayou for leisure fishing, and easily navigable in the winding backwaters threading along the bayou shoreline, the killer was out of his element so far from land and with the increased wave action of the sea.

His engine sputtered as the killer tried frantically to restart the old worn-down motor. He was on the scrawny side, but his biceps bulged as he yanked the pull cord over and over.

As the boat’s motor sprang to life, the waters churned and roared around her. Too late to knock him overboard now. The motored blades could slice her to pieces if she came too close.

Her fingers gripped the knife’s handle in frustration as the boat raced off.

She fought against the instinct to fling it away and leave it on the ocean floor. Maybe the killer’s identity could be traced through the weapon.

Certain he was gone, Shelly lifted her torso higher out of the ocean and spotted a dingy white baseball cap floating on the boat’s wake. She grabbed it and submerged undersea again.

Home. There she could think, form a plan. And get her cousins’ advice.

“Anybody out there?” Shelly pushed air out of her lungs, sent the vibration of her voice in a compressive wave motion, similar to the high-frequency elocution of dolphins but minus the clicking sound. “Lily? Jet?” If they were anywhere near, they’d pick up her message and respond. Underwater sound traveled twice as fast as on land and four times as far.

Shelly strained to hear an answer but only caught the snapping of crab claws and a few toadfish whistles.

She swam home, each flick of her fin sending shooting sparks of pain through her body. Please, no sharks. She focused on keeping an eye out for opportunistic predators attracted by bloody smell—a mermaid’s worst nightmare. She feared hungry sharks more than the killer returning. No way could that man get near her so many fathoms deep.

At last she swam through her home’s undersea cave portal with its narrow tunnel climbing upward, and broke surface. The tunnel led to land, the opening covered by a hurricane-proof steel structure shed erected after Hurricane Katrina. It replaced the dilapidated tin building that had stood in this exact spot ever since Shelly was a teenager visiting her cousins on summer vacation. Some such structure had stood for decades at this portal, providing cover for her ancestors as they came and went to the sea.

Dark, humid air rushed into her lungs and she paused at the portal’s slender opening, about the size of a city-street manhole. Arms clinging to the edge of its sandy surface, Shelly braced to raise her tail fin out of the water.

This was going to hurt like hell.

The transformation from tail fin to legs usually lasted about thirty seconds with only minor discomfort as oxygen bubbled through her veins. But tonight’s stab wound was a bitch. Already tired and in shock, it took all Shelly’s energy to pull her body out of the sea. When her breathing slowed a bit, Shelly stood on her left foot and cautiously put weight on the injured right one. It was bearable. She limped to the left wall of the shed and fumbled for the flashlight, kept for these late-night swims. Once she shifted from mermaid form, her night vision decreased to that of an average twenty-nine-year-old.

The halo of light revealed a deep puncture wound, but the bleeding wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. She hoped that was a good sign. She removed the sporran always belted to her waist during swims. It contained her knife, useful for cutting her way loose from fishing nets and as protection against dangerous predators.

Shelly had thought the human world a much safer place.

Until tonight.

The moonlight made her feel exposed and vulnerable as she hobbled to the house. Once inside, she quickly locked the door behind her and leaned against it. Home. It had never felt so good to be home.

The smell of grilled seafood and the musical babbling of her cousins in the kitchen hit her with such relief it made her knees wobble.

She meant to call for her cousins, Jet and Lily, but she was too spent for her voice to carry. She stumbled into the kitchen and leaned an arm against the table. Her long hair dripped, forming a puddle on the Spanish-style tiled floor.

Shelly drank in the domestic scene. Jet put down a platter of extremely rare grilled shrimp and crab claws while Lily rolled up chopped fish in seaweed for sushi rolls. From the back, Lily’s long blond hair, so similar to her own, fell in graceful swirls down to her hips. Jet noisily pulled out knives and forks to set the table. The colored glow from an antique Italian chandelier cast variegated prisms of light dancing across the walls.

“It’s not like Shelly to get home so late,” Jet said, running a hand over her cropped black bob. “And she’s the one who insisted on grilled shrimp tonight, too.”

“I’m here,” Shelly said weakly. Neither could hear her over the kitchen rattling and a small TV playing the evening news.

“It’s a full moon,” Lily said. “I’m sure the tug of the tide called her. I plan on a long swim myself after dinner. Care to join me?”

“I said I’m here,” Shelly managed, louder this time.

They turned as one to look at Shelly standing there, dripping and shivering from a combination of fear and cold. Jet strode over and shook her arm. “Shelly? Are you hurt?”

Shelly gazed at her injured foot and pointed a trembling finger.

Jet knelt down for a look. “Holy shit, girl. How’d you get this?”

“Kn-knife wound,” she stuttered.

Lily gasped and dropped a handful of the seaweed wrap. A glob of raw fish plopped against her pedicured toes.

“How’d you manage that?” Jet asked.

Lily hurried across the kitchen. Stepping over the dropped sushi, she grabbed a chair and set it behind Shelly.

She sank into it gratefully and stared at the worried faces of her cousins, the only family she had left in the world and the only ones who truly knew and understood her. Being mermaids, the trio pretty much kept to themselves and protected one another from outsiders.

The enormity of what she had just witnessed hit Shelly like a tsunami. If she was in danger, so were her cousins. So was every mermaid, few as they now were in the Gulf Coast. The toxic oil spills had chased away most of those lingering in the area.

“I saw a body being dumped about three miles out in the ocean, near the mussel beds.”

“You mean—a dead body?” Jet asked, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath and spoke again, the bottled words tumbling out. “I felt the pulse of the water change and when I looked to the surface I saw a tall object falling. And...and there was a boat, too, but it left.” Her mouth quivered violently and Shelly clamped her jaws, trying to still her chattering teeth.

Lily laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re okay now,” she murmured in a voice that held the echo of an ocean wave.