by RJ Blain
Death was too good of a fate for Terrance the Grumpy. “Terrance,” I grumbled.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
I pointed at the cute doctor. “No titles are permitted at this hospital.”
“There’ll also be no bodyguards terrorizing my patients,” my doctor helpfully contributed.
Despite his refusal to give me a lollipop, I decided I liked the American. “You should listen to him, Terrance.” Preparing myself for the inevitable, I shot a glare at the door. “Is she here?”
“No, Your—”
Shifting my glare back the head of my mother’s security, I crossed my arms over my chest, the hospital gown rustling, proving it wasn’t actually made of fabric despite its best efforts to disguise itself. “What do you mean she isn’t here?”
“Her Royal Majesty is at home discussing with His Royal Majesty about securing a less troublesome replacement.”
Okay, I had missed a very important memo. “His Royal Majesty?”
It drove the entire mer kingdom to utter distraction my mother didn’t have a His Royal Majesty.
“Your father, of course. Much to the eternal disappointment of princes around the world, I’m sure.” Terrance dipped a bow to me, smirked, and turned to the doctor. “My apologies, sir. I’m Terrance Marianas. Her Royal Majesty sent me to deal with any matters regarding her daughter.” With a flick of his wrist, Terrance produced a small envelope sealed with the Flandersmythe royal seal, an albatross battling an osprey.
Most in the family favored the osprey for its tendency to crack open bones to get to the tasty marrow within, where I much preferred the albatross for its ability to fly without tiring. Then again, I was probably the only one in my family who longed to grow wings and fly.
Instead, I donned scales and slithered, not that my queen mother—or anyone—knew my little secret. There was an entire ten-page chapter in the Modern Guide to Being a Princess discussing why members of a royal family didn’t indulge in weird magic. Destructive magic was one thing. A princess was encouraged to destroy invading armies with a sweep of her perfect, manicured hand.
Transforming into a serpent crossed a line, similar to the one firmly wedged between shrieking and pants pissing.
“Dr. Hausten.” The doctor took the note, cracked the seal, and clucked his tongue a few times. “Very well, Mr. Marianas. These arrangements can be made. I can give you this room in the meantime. I’ll ask one of the nurses to see to Miss Flandersmythe’s clothing. While I’m afraid they’re stained, they’ll be clean.”
Oh, nice. I marked the Minnesota hospital as my favorite of the American hospitals I’d been to. None of the other ones had bothered trying to clean the blood out of my clothes.
“Just give her a lollipop,” Terrance replied, a smile ghosting across his lips. “That should keep her occupied for at least ten minutes. Should the lollipop be, ah, tainted per the American way, accidents do happen. I’m a very understanding gentleman.”
Terrance? Understanding? A gentleman?
The head of my mother’s security had been the first to show me how men died, although it’d been an accidental lesson thanks to the scheming of a greedy human hoping to capitalize on my existence. As my mother’s sole child, she wasn’t the only one who saw some odd value to my life.
Damned royal blood, always complicating matters for me.
“Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to lie, Terrance?” I smacked my palms to the paper-covered examination table and drummed my fingers. “Apparently, the doc here only gives lollipops to good patients and children.”
“Of which you’re neither. I suppose you’ll just have to suffer without your American lollipop.”
“Heartless, that’s what you are.”
Dr. Hausten didn’t seem amused. “Should I be concerned about addiction, Mr. Marianas?”
My mother’s head of security frowned, glancing in the doctor’s direction. “Oh, no. Of course not. Pixies don’t live where we’re from, so Her Highness finds their dust and America’s reliance on it fascinating, doctor.”
“I see.”
“I apologize for the inconvenience, but until the investigation is completed, I insist either myself or someone from my team remain with Her Highness.”
My day went from bad to worse. While I longed to indulge in several good sighs, I kept quiet. All sighing would do was ensure Grumpy Head of Security stuck around even longer. At least I wouldn’t have to try to hide a murder. Hiding a murder with Terrance around ranked as my least favorite activity ever.
Was there anything worse than mermen, always getting underfoot and making nuisances of themselves? No wonder my mother hadn’t married despite having fulfilled her obligations to my father. I frowned, and comprehension struck me like a hammer right between the eyes. “Terrance? Did you say my mother was talking to my father?”
Since when did my parents speak? I didn’t even know my father’s name. My mother refused to talk about him, so I’d always assumed he was a rat bastard—or, well, a gorgon.
I’d never actually met a gorgon before.
Terrance checked his watch. “Indeed. The last I heard, she had offered him an American dollar if he’d take you off her hands. I think he’s in progress of paying for you. When I was evicted and ordered to come to America, she’d moved on to negotiating for a replacement heir, one who won’t continually insist on giving her gray hairs.”
While my mother, Her Most Royal Majesty, had threatened to sell me to a circus a few times, I hadn’t believed she’d actually do it. “Seriously? One dollar? That’s it?”
“Her starting offer was a penny.”
Maybe my name was Tulip Daisy Lilac Petunia Flandersmythe, but even I had some pride. Okay, I had a lot of pride, and I teetered on the edge of murderous fury and despair. “A penny!”
“She also thanks you for investing in your own medical insurance so she won’t have to pay even more for you,” Terrance the Grumpy announced.
The first thing I’d do the instant I got out of the hospital would be to find a copy of the Modern Guide to Being a Princess and burn the damned thing. In the next ten minutes, I planned on breaking every rule in the fucking handbook, and I’d start on page one. A princess didn’t run from her security or put her life at risk. Making a break for the door at a sprint counted, especially since the slap of my bare feet on the shiny white tiles drove spikes through my head.
I ran for the hills.
Chapter Two
I collided with Mr. Dreamy halfway down the hallway, my breath leaving me in a rush. Whether by design or accident, we went down in a heap, and he took the brunt of our fall. The clap of Terrance’s shoes on the floor promised hell in about ten seconds.
Damn it, I really couldn’t catch a break, could I?
Since I was out to trash every rule in the book anyway, I did the first thing I could think of guaranteed to buy me a few seconds. I smacked both my hands to Mr. Dreamy’s cheeks, planted a kiss on his lips using just enough tongue to make it indecent, and launched off him to implement the next phase of my escape.
American cops had nice mouths. He had big hands, too, which landed right on my ass in his attempt to catch me so I couldn’t continue my mad dash for freedom. I wouldn’t begrudge him copping a feel, and I’d send the hospital a note later thanking them for their slippery hospital gowns, as I slid right through his fingers.
“Princess Tulip!” Terrance barked.
“Princess?”
I wanted to enjoy Mr. Dreamy’s stunned expression, which was surely a match for his tone, but a smart princess didn’t make an opportunity and waste it admiring the fine American scenery. Bolting down the hall, I rounded the first corner, dodged a gurney, and beelined straight for a closing elevator, sliding through the gap in the doors and pressing the up and down buttons so I’d be able to continue my mad dash no matter which way the damned thing went.
The elevator’s occupants gaped at me.
“Nothing to see here,” I chirped, flashing my best smile.
The elevator went up a floor, dinged, and swooshed open. I took off at a jog, following the signs for the nearest stairwell. If my head was going to hurt anyway, I’d give it a reason to pound as I dove down the steps two or three at a time and practiced my rail-sliding skills. Rail sliding made escaping down convenient stairwells so much easier.
I’d be pissed if the hospital lacked good rails in their staircases.
I burst through the door, huffed my satisfaction at the lovely inner rail, and took a ride down to the next landing, bounced off the wall, and plunged down the staircase towards freedom.
A good serial killer with a preference for other serial killers always found a way out of a bad situation. Who needed a floor plan? The instant I found an emergency exit, I’d be a free woman. Of course, Terrance wouldn’t quit until he found me, trussed me up, and carted me off wherever he wanted me to go. It’d be great fun for one of us. If I lasted a week, I’d call myself the victor.
The last time I’d given him the slip, I’d gotten away with it for a record two days. Usually, he pinned me down within half an hour. Actually, I considered it an accomplishment I’d made it to the stairwell.
Terrance made a good adversary despite being just like every other merman on the planet, loyal to a fault, vicious only towards their dinner and threats, and uninterested in anything other than his duty to Her Royal Majesty. Once every few decades, the entire species took leave of its senses and headed for shore to mass reproduce, resulting in three years of mermaids and mermen eagerly awaiting the hatching of the next generation.
Only the insane approached a mer colony waiting for a hatching.
Maybe once I gave Terrance the slip, I’d sit down with my mother and have a talk with her. Instead of spawning a proper heir with a merman prince, Her Royal Majesty had picked a gorgon, spent ten months on shore to have me, and came to the disturbing discovery I’d be stuck on land for the rest of my life, resulting in her conquering a small island so I’d have somewhere to live within the heart of her kingdom. If love could be rated by one’s willingness to conquer landmasses, my mother adored me. Personally, I thought she just liked conquering small islands, as she’d bequeathed me with three of the damned things, one off the coast of Europe, one near Africa, and one skirting China’s southernmost shores.
I slid my way to the lowest floor only to discover I wasn’t alone. Instead of bouncing off the wall as I’d done the other eight stories, I smacked face first into a man’s chest. Damn it, I really needed to stop running into men, especially since my latest victim was about as hard as a rock. This time, however, I hit the floor without the benefit of someone breaking my fall.
My victim had really shiny shoes, one of which was an inch from my face.
“Nice oxfords,” I mumbled.
“Thank you.”
I sighed and got to my hands and knees. “If you could pretend this never happened, that’d be great.”
“If you’re trying to get out of the hospital, you’ll be disappointed to learn the ways out are guarded to prevent a certain patient from escaping.”
How nice. I’d collided with someone helpful, telling me things I already knew. “That does make things more entertaining.”
“They even have alarms when patients run for it, alarms which have already been triggered. That’s going to ruin your plan, I’m sorry to say.”
Maybe I should have stayed with Mr. Dreamy, assaulting him for a bit longer. I could’ve gone for historically indecent rather than just mildly indecent. Terrance would’ve captured me right away, but at least I would’ve been able to enjoy a few more moments of a hot American’s mouth. Instead, I got Mr. Shiny Shoes, who had a fetish for stating the obvious. “How nice.”
It took me three tries to get to my feet, and when I did, I came nose to scale with a dozen or so black mambas. I recognized the damned things for one reason alone: I had a mirror and knew how to use it.
My good look into their black-lined mouths helped with their identification, too.
It was one thing to admire my scaly self in my reflection and another to have a bunch of them hissing in my face. I launched halfway into orbit with a shriek, landed on the bottom step, and bailed, scrambling for the first-floor landing. I hit the door at full throttle, plowed over someone in a white doctor’s coat, and ran down the hallway, ducking into the first empty room I found, slamming the door behind me.
A crammed utility closet made the ultimate location to hide. I didn’t bother stripping. I hit my knees, muttered a few curses, and broke several of my mother’s precious little rules in one fell swoop, embracing my scaly side with a preference for warm, sunny places and enough venom to kill a horse.
The first time I’d shifted, I’d been alone on my island, thirteen, bored out of my mind, and contemplating swimming for the coast fifty miles away. The desire to go anywhere and be anyone else had triggered it, I supposed, and I’d spent the three days waiting for the vacationing staff to return poking my scaly nose places it didn’t belong.
A mirror and the terror of being declared a freak had shunted me back to my human form, and a good thing, too. Mers hated snakes. I still wasn’t sure how I’d been born in the first place. The last time a sea serpent had been foolish enough to cross Her Royal Majesty, it’d been torn to teeny tiny bits as an example—with her bare hands.
Then again, the damned thing had just bitten five-year-old me in the foot, landing me in the hospital for the first time in my memory. If I had come from a normal family, I would’ve used it, along with the conquering of several islands, as evidence my mother actually loved me.
The shifting process didn’t take very long, giving me plenty of time to slither out of my crappy little hospital gown. I snagged it in my fangs and dragged it beneath one of the metal cabinets, my scales rasping on the tiles. It took me longer than I liked to stuff the damned thing behind a bucket, poking it into place with my nose. With a bit of fussing, I could probably turn it into a rather cozy nest for myself.
The only problem with my plan was my lack of a plan. A face full of black mambas meant one thing alone: Mr. Shiny Shoes was a gorgon, not that I’d gotten a look at his face around his snakes. What other species had a bunch of snakes attached to their heads and wore shoes? I couldn’t think of one.
Maybe my mother really had sold me to a gorgon for a dollar. Would a gorgon put in a whole lot of effort to find me if I bailed? Considering I knew absolutely nothing about my father, I—
Oh shit.
Most gorgons had harmless serpents for hair. I’d figured that much out when I’d gotten bored and checked on the internet. The more dangerous a gorgon’s snakes, the higher up the totem pole they were, and black mambas were as close to the top as it got. There were more venomous snakes in the world, and a lot of them, but the more venomous ones couldn’t deliver their toxins with the ready ease of a black mamba.
How many gorgons with black mambas existed in the world? Unfortunately, I had no idea and no way to find out. I did, however, understand one important thing. Under normal circumstances, gorgons didn’t just show up at places like a hospital, not without a reason. There was only one gorgon I could think of who might even consider taking the necessary precautions to go out in public, and he’d purchased me from my mother for one whole dollar.
I slithered every inch of my fourteen slender feet into the corner behind the bucket, coiling so I took up as little space as possible. At least I did being a black mamba well; I probably broke records with my length, dwarfing the natural ones by six feet.
If I ran with the assumption gorgons with black mambas for hair came few and far between, my father had nice, shiny shoes.
For once in my life, I did exactly what the Modern Guide to Being a Princess suggested. When shit hit the fan, a wise princess found a place to hide until it was safe to come out.
It didn’t take long for someone to check the utility closet. The first time, they turned on the light, sighed, turned it back off, and left, closing the
door behind them. The second time, they turned the light on, left it on, and the tap of something on the floor betrayed their plan to record any activity in the closet.
To everyone who thought they knew me, patience wasn’t a virtue I possessed.
Those same people had no idea about my side job and the lengths I’d go to ensure the brutal death of a serial killer. Most of the time, I did it on the house, finding pleasure in the hunt while ensuring the safety of those my prey would’ve victimized. Every now and then, I picked up a legitimate bounty, gave myself a new call name, and demanded payment in the form of disposable credit cards. A few hours and several Swiss bank accounts later, the money disappeared, which I did just to fuck with Interpol, the FBI, and other crime fighting organizations who wanted a piece of me. There were a few, which never failed to amuse me.
I had no problem with coiling up and waiting for someone to come fetch their recording device, eager to savor their disappointment. My moment came much later, after a satisfying nap. Terrance didn’t curse often, and I enjoyed every one he muttered. Footsteps entered the room, and from my hiding spot, I caught a glimpse of someone bending down to retrieve the device on the floor.
Patience was a virtue, but assumptions led me straight into trouble. It took a lot of effort to slither without my scales rasping, involving the slowest movements I’d ever made in my life. I wanted to hiss my agitation, but I remained silent, peeking under the cabinet.
Terrance had left me a new present, a camera most called a fish eye for its round shape and ability to record in all directions. Judging from its golf ball size, it was a fairly basic model, likely lacking motion detection. I glared at it.
It stayed still on the floor, as cameras tended to do when left unattended. In the staring contest department, it won without question, and I resented that enough I contemplated slithering out of my shadowy spot and eating the damned thing to teach it a lesson.
Since choking to death wasn’t on my list of things to do, I waited, kept still, and watched the camera. Unlike watching paint dry, which did have visual changes over time, the camera did exactly nothing. Who was, if anyone, watching the recording? Did I care? If I didn’t eat it, could I cover it up the hospital gown and drag it into the corner with me?