~~~~~~
Padre Island was an endless stretch of sand dunes, sea grass and marsh. Human civilization here was like a chalk line waiting for an eraser. One good hurricane, and the wild things would take over once more. It was a drop dead gorgeous day, just on this side of chill. Blue sky trimmed by lacy clouds was reflected in every puddle.
Casey’s house was a two-bedroom-one-bath cabin a hundred feet from the water. Gray green sea grass obscured her driveway. The brown siding needed a new coat of paint, the flowerbeds needed a serious de-sanding and mulching.
There was an extra car in front of the house.
Casey felt a little disappointed. If he’d wanted to sneak up on her, Tony should have parked back up at the highway and crept through the grass. It was pretty obvious now someone else was here. Oh, God, that was silly. Being offended that her would-be-murderer had no style. She reached behind her back and touched her new toy. Marco had kept Lyrene distracted while Casey put it together.
"I asked my boyfriend to meet us here," Lyrene said. "I hope you won't mind."
"No." Casey's hands tightened on the academy bags. They were now full of trash and extras. She took a deep breath and let it out slow, but it didn’t do any good. She was shaking worse now than she had at the shooting.
Lyrene laughed. It was different from her sweet-tempered giggles. Deeper. More threatening. "God. Relax.” She leaned forward and caressed Casey's skin. "It'll be over fast, you know."
And Casey heard the distinctive click of a gun.
"Don’t move, Marcaius. This has steel in it. Tony's got the silver. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt any of us, but you took the wrong side. Sorry."
She sounded genuinely sad, too. Casey swallowed. A gun with steel-jacket bullets changed things. If Lyrene could turn Marco into Swiss cheese, what chance did Casey have?
Come on. Don’t give up. She looked into the rear-view mirror and tried to get a good look at that gun. Maybe it was small caliber, or…her pulse increased. She could have dropped dimes down the barrel, but that suddenly didn’t matter at all. The gun was an automatic. And that meant Lyrene knew absolutely nothing about guns.
That sound of a hammer cocking was good for movies. Click, and you knew a gun was in play. Back in the days of the flintlock or manual revolver the hammer had to be cocked before the trigger could be pulled. But an automatic did the work for you. Not only did it cock the gun before firing, it did it after the shot was fired, too. Cocking the gun before you used it, if it was an automatic, was a little like putting a hat on top of another hat.
There was a really good chance that everything Lyrene knew about guns came from the movies. It was too much to hope she’d be completely worthless, but if she were unfamiliar with guns, maybe they’d get lucky. If she missed Marco with her first shot, maybe he could take her before she made the second.
Casey nodded to Marco and got out of the car. The two Faerie folk followed.
“Ew,” Lyrene said. Her feet hit the sandy ground. “Why would anyone live like this? You should have a mansion or something.”
Okay, so the wrap around porch was sagging a little and the windows needed to be cleaned. It needed a paint job. Somebody needed to take a machete to the oleanders. It was still Casey’s house. A lot of good things had happened behind those weathered brown boards. Nobody, and she meant nobody, put down her house.
“You’re a writer, for God’s sake,” Lyrene continued, wobbling as her heels sank through the sand. “Take some pride in your appearance. There’s nothing wrong with you that a face-lift and a boob job couldn’t fix. Just saying.”
Casey suppressed a completely inappropriate burst of laughter. She’d die of the dialogue before Lyrene ever got around to shooting. Her shoulders shook. Nerves and bad humor always gave her the giggles.
“Oh, don’t cry. I think you’d have been fun to hang with…if you had a better house.” Pause. “Maybe bigger tits.”
Casey should have been shaking because she was terrified, but this was a little too much. Lyrene’s open dialogue was bad enough, but she’d just proved she was worse with a gun than Casey. She’d left the safety on.
Lyrene gestured with her heavy pointer. “Open the door for the ladies, Marco. And then you go in first.”
Marco did. Their happy little party trooped into Casey’s living room. Even she had to admit it looked a little sad. She’d kept up with the cleaning, but the rug was frayed and the sofa cushions—big cow-hide print monstrosities her ex had bought on a dare—were coming apart at the seams. The dining room table was more of a folding card thing than something humans were supposed to eat on. Okay. We survive this, new furniture. My gift to me. Her hands were shaking.
There was a squat Hispanic fireplug sitting on her couch, eating a bag of potato chips. She hated potato chips.
"Two of them?" Antonio said, irritated. “Damn it, Ly. I don’t want to do another dude.”
"He's a witness," Lyrene shrugged. “I’m doing him.”
“Bitch, I shoot the gun. You find the things to shoot at. That’s the deal.”
“Tony, the councelor said it’s only fair that I get to do some of the things in this relationship. Otherwise, it’s just not going to work.”
Marco looked at Casey. She bit her lower lip. Serial killers with a relationship councelor? Are you kidding me?
“You drive my car, chica. You drive my mother fucking ‘stang.”
“Oh, like driving a freaking Mustang is worth letting you have all the fun. My Daddy has a Veyron, and we—”
“I told you, I hear one more thing about your fucking Daddy I’m going to start—”
“Let’s just get this over with.” Marco said, to Casey.
Tony turned on him. “Okay, Legolas, lemme ‘splain you how this dig works, capache? I say the things, you do the things. I shoot the gun—”
“Oh, please.” Lyrene put her hands on her hips. “I saw you practicing this in the mirror last night, you little—”
Casey reached behind her back, pulled out her purchase, and pulled the trigger. Its soft cough didn’t sound like much, but it was the sound of a CO2 canister pushing a steel BB out of a replica Glock at four hundred eighty feet per second. Marco had melted the copper jacket off back in the store. Casey was still a lousy shot, but in the close confines of her living room she didn’t have to be dead eye Dick. The BB hit Tony’s chest and made a tiny hole in his shirt. Blood flowered on his shirt like roses.
The gun slid from his nerveless fingers.
Silence. Tony fell backwards against the couch.
“You said you can’t shoot.” Marco said.
“I was aiming for his hand.” Casey said. Tony coughed, and blood splattered his lips.
“You shot my boyfriend, you mortal bitch!“ Lyrene had the gun up, pointed at Casey’s head. Marco grabbed her hand and pulled it high just as the shot rang out. One of the windows exploded in a shower of glass, and Tony dove for his own gun.
Casey got there first. She spun it out the shattered window. Tony slammed into her like a linebacker, sending her down to the floor. She shot him again, this time with the barrel pressed tight against his chest. He staggered and began coughing like a six-pack-a-day-smoker. The blood sprayed Casey’s cheeks.
Lyrene twisted out of Marco’s grip and screamed. Her skin turned Caribbean blue, her fingers gained webbing and talons. Back arching dangerously, her bones became the spines of a venomous fin that rose up and down her back. Scales coated every inch of her skin, and her legs spun together into a singular mass of muscle. Her hair became matted as her skull deformed.
Merrow, Casey remembered, were Scottish mermaids. They weren’t fit for Disney.
Tony rolled on top of her. He pinned her legs between his, grabbed her shoulders and pushed her to the floor. “How you like it,” he wheezed. “How you like being under a real man, puta?”
“God!” Casey twisted beneath him. She shot him tw
ice, once in the shoulder, once more in the chest. “It’s not all about sex!” She shouted, and popped him again, this time in the armpit.
Light flashed through the room as Marco tried to strike Lyrene with magic. Her face was now noseless, her eyes shark-black. Thin lips spread over shark-like teeth. She laughed like air bubbling through the lips of a drowned corpse. “Fire? Lightening? I’m a sea daughter. Get done with her, Tony. We have an immortal to bleed!” She dropped around Marco, wrapping him tight with her snake-like coils. Two fins spread from her back like wings, and she raked her claws across Marco’s back.
“Shoot her, Casey!” Marco shouted. Then Lyrene got an arm around his throat.
Casey complied, two quick pops. But she’d been aiming for head and arm. Both BBs hit her low on the torso instead, just over the hip. Goddamn it! I’m no good with a gun!
Tony slammed into her a third time. He wasn’t moving fast now. Five holes in his chest oozed blood as he twisted her left arm. He was drowning on dry land, and Casey would have felt pity for him if he weren’t trying to kill her. He dropped on her and let his weight bear her down. No humiliating taunts this time. Blood and froth dribbled from his lips. He leaned forward as if going for a kiss. “I should have shot all of you last night, and Julio besides.”
Casey slammed her knee into his groin as a reply.
In a movie he would have rolled off her clutching his jewels. But Casey hadn’t factored his wounds into the equation, or the sudden burst of pain as her bad knee connected with his pelvis. She screamed. Tony’s eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed like a puppet with a cut string---right on top of her chest. Now she couldn’t breathe, either.
Marco tangled with Lyrene again, pulling her away from the humans wrestling on the floor. Lyrene screamed “Get her, Baby,” unaware that her boyfriend was passed out on the floor. Amber-colored blood dribbled out of the puncture wound. “I’m gonna make your little girlfriend pay for hurting me, Marciaus. And then I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna make you wish you were dead.”
“I hope it’s in that order.” Marco said, and shot magic at her side.
It was a globe of light, harmless under other circumstances. But magic was attracted to iron, like fillings to a magnet. Unlike a magnet, though, the transfer of energy heated the metal almost to the point of melting. Two small clumps of steel rested deep within Lyrene’s skin, right next to her hip-bones, and these two objects sucked the spell of light into themselves like vacuums taking in air. Lyrene screamed on high C, shattering glasses in Casey’s kitchen. The skin on her hip bubbled and began to peel.
“Shoot her more, Casey!” Marco shouted.
“Tony! Kill her!”
Casey tried to bring the gun up, but Tony’s limp arm lay over her own. She didn’t have the leverage to pull it free. The movement caught the Merrow’s attention. Lyrene’s cold fish eyes fixed on her collapsed boyfriend. Tony was out, possibly dead, and emotion flickered across her face. Loss, worry. Rage. She turned on Marco, snarled, and sank her fangs into his throat.
Momentum carried them across the floor. She hooked claws deep into his shoulders. Amber blood flowed as they came to a stop right next to Casey and Tony. Lyrene wrenched her head back and forth, back and forth. Each movement came with a ripping sound and a fountain of blood.
Her head kept bumping against the BB gun in Casey’s hand. She struggled to pull the barrel up. Her arm ached, her lungs burned. When the gun connected with Ly’s temple, Casey fired. The BB sank into her skin, then stopped against the skull.
The enraged Merrow dropped Marco and looked up, meeting Casey’s eyes. Her emerald green fish eyes glittered with hate. Then she looked directly down the barrel of the gun. Casey’s world slowed as the bloody fangs were bared.
These were the eyes that looked on two young men walking down a dark street. They fixed on Nicole Hartman jumping between the medians on Staples Street. They’d found Amaya Hernandez sheltering two small children through a merciless night. They’d looked at the faceless street women hooking for a dime, and had selected their own best friend.
But humans aren’t made to hurt other beings. Killing even an animal is hard. People have to be broken before they can kill, and believe it is the right choice to make. Lyrene wasn’t beautiful anymore, but she was just human enough. Casey’s arm relaxed. Her own life wasn’t worth it.
Marco whimpered. The Merrow looked away.
Casey pulled the trigger.
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