Chapter 12
After lunch, I went for a swim in the ocean. I'm a mermaid and there are things I have to do every day, otherwise the world just seems off. One of those things is to go for a nice long swim.
The other thing I try to do on a daily basis is go into my vault and stare at my treasures. My pearls, my diamonds, my rubies, my emeralds, my gold and silver. If a mermaid doesn't have a treasure to stare at, she can go into a deep depression. Don't ask me why, that's just the way we are.
I was just coming back from my swim when I ran into Savanna. Like me, she was dressed in a bikini with a silk scarf wrapped around her waist. I was wearing green. She was wearing blue.
“I just was on my way to see you,” she said, hooking up with me in front of my condo, a three story brick building that had once been an apartment building. “What happened with the Count?”
“I froze him. When Titus tried to kill to Count, Gladrielle threw a fireball at him and burned him to a crisp.”
“Titus is dead?” That news seemed to catch Savanna by surprise.
“She reduced him to a pile of ash.”
“Wasn't she supposed to help you protect him?”
“The Count and her have a history. A long history. Turns out she still has feelings for him.”
“So what's happening now?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Gladrielle started to turn into a dark elf. She told me that I should run, so I ran.”
“I take it a dark elf is bad.”
“So I've been told.”
“What happens to O Positive, not to mention Titus's other holdings?”
“I don't know. I guess they belong to the Count, or anybody that can take them from him.”
“How are you doing? Titus did hire you to protect him and you did sort of fail.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
Savanna gave me a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”
“Titus was around for a long time, hundreds of years, maybe a thousand. Odds were pretty good that somebody would take him out eventually.”
“That's a pragmatic way of looking at it.”
“Those are his words, not mine.”
“So what now?” Savanna said. “We live with the fact that the Count is now the big vampire in town?”
“Not exactly. I'm going to take the Count out.”
Savanna's eyebrows arched in surprise. “Why? Titus is gone. Getting rid of the Count won't bring him back.”
“True, but getting rid of the Count is the only chance I have of bringing Gladrielle back from the dark side.”
“And you want to do that because?”
“Because I'm the one that dragged her into this. If I hadn't asked the elves for help, Titus would still be alive and Gladrielle would still be home, tending her flower garden.”
“If you hadn't brought Gladrielle here, Titus would still be dead. Only it would've been the Count that killed him. What's more, I'd be dead too. This may sound selfish, but I'm glad you brought her here. Damn glad.”
“I'll concede that Titus's number might have been up no matter what I did, but I did bring Gladrielle here. Which means I have to help her, try to bring her back from the dark side.”
“Is that even possible?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I have no idea.”
“So how do you bring an elf back from the dark side?”
“The first thing I need to do is get rid of the Count.”
“How do you do that?”
“I'm going to freeze him from the inside out. Then I'm going to take him to the bottom of the ocean and watch the water pressure crush him like a stale peanut.”
“And you think that will bring Gladrielle back from the dark side?”
“He's the reason she came here. Not to mention the reason she killed Titus.”
“What exactly is the difference between a dark elf and a regular elf?”
“I'm not really sure. I didn't stick around long enough to find out.”
“Can you handle a dark elf and the Count by yourself?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess we'll find out.”
“I'd help you if I could,” Savanna said. “But I think I've already proved that I'm more of a liability than an asset. I just can't control water as well as you can.”
“You'll get there. I was still learning to control it when I was your age.” Savanna was twenty-one, nine years younger than me. Mermaids lived between two to three hundred years on average, so she was still a baby by mermaid standards. A tall, shapely baby, but a baby.
“You should get some help before you take on the Count and Gladrielle.”
“Like who? Wormby?”
“I was thinking maybe his sister, Ida. She's way more aggressive than Wormby.”
“She's also a gnome, which means she has an abnormal fear of vampires and won't do anything unless there's a profit in it, a big profit.”
“There must be somebody who can help you.”
“There is,” a male voice said.
I spun around to see Elrod climbing out of the cab of a blue Ford pickup. Printed on the truck’s doors were the words: Smith’s Nursery.
“I thought you said the council wouldn't let you help me?”
“They wouldn't,” Elrod said. He circled around his pickup and joined us on the sidewalk. “If I told them where I was going and what I was doing.”
He looked at Savanna so I introduced them. “Savanna Green, mermaid. Elrod, king of the elves.”
Elrod offered Savanna his hand. “Jim Smith. I own a nursery, but I'm also the mayor of a small town a couple hundred miles south of here. I'd tell you the name of the town, but I doubt if you've ever heard of it.”
“If your name's Jim, why does Low call you Elrod?”
“She says I look like an Elrod.”
“He does,” I said. “When he's not using glamor to hide his true appearance.”
Like he was now. His dark blue hair was a dull brown. His dark blue eyes were a matching brown. His pointed ears were rounded, making him look as human as everyone else on the street. Well, everyone except Savanna and myself.
Savanna's blond hair and sea blue eyes made her stand out from the crowd, just like my red hair and green eyes made me stand out from the crowd. Mermaid hair is different from human hair. First off, it repels water instead of absorbing it. Secondly, it sparkles. Especially in the sunlight. Then there are our eyes, which are bigger and brighter than human eyes. But unlike elves, we don't mind standing out from the crowd. We kind of live for it.
“Let's be honest,” I said to Elrod. “Jim Smith isn't your real name. It's a name you pulled out of a hat when you moved here. So until you tell me your real name, I'm going to call you Elrod because it sounds like the kind of name an elf king would have.”
“How'd you know where to find her?” Savanna asked.
“I asked around. Turns out there aren't that many mermaids in the city. Plus, you guys don't exactly keep a low profile. You can pretty much stop anyone on any street corner and ask them if they know where the mermaid lives.”
“And?” Savanna and I said in unison.
“And they all say the same thing, do you want the blond or the redhead?”
“We're kind of the exhibitionists of the supernatural world,” I said.
“Which is why we're more popular than everyone else,” Savanna added. “We don't try to hide who we are. Now if you two will excuse me, I'm going pearl diving.”
She had a plastic box strapped to her left wrist and a knife strapped to the same forearm, so I already knew that's where she was headed. She turned and headed for the beach then spun around and walked backwards. “I'm glad you got some help. If he's an elf king, he must be pretty powerful.”
I turned and looked at Elrod. “She raises a good point.”
“Which is?”
“Gladrielle can control electricity, as well as throw balls of fire. What kind of powers do you have?”
“I can restore dead things.
”
“That could come in handy, especially if Gladrielle or the Count kills me.”
“When I say dead things, I mean plants.”
“You can bring plants back to life?”
“Yeah.” Elrod puffed out his chest, proud of the fact that he could bring plants back to life.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what else can you do?”
“Well . . . nothing.” Elrod squared his shoulders. “But plants are important. They give us oxygen to breathe and food to eat.”
“Maybe, but even I can restore dying plants.”
Palm trees lined both sides of the street that we were on, their roots extending deep beneath the concrete and asphalt. I went to the nearest tree, which had a lot of brown leaves, and touched it with my hand. Then I reached out to the water deep beneath the ground and ordered it to flow into the tree's roots, which it did. Within seconds the tree's brown leaves became a bright green.
“Very nice,” Elrod said. “But I'm guessing that you just gave the tree a nice long drink.”
“So?”
“So, my power works a bit different. I repair the plant on a cellular level. What's more I don't need water to do it.”
“And that's going to help me defeat Gladrielle and the Count how?”
“My power might work on a person, I say might, because I'm not really sure.”
“You've never tried it?”
“No.”
“Never? Not in all the centuries you've been alive?”
Elrod gave me a sheepish grin. “I'm afraid not. But then we don't exactly associate with humans or supernaturals. You know that.”
“So if Gladrielle or the Count kills me, you might or might not be able to save me.”
“I was thinking that maybe I could use my power on the Count.”
“You want to save the Count? From me?”
“I was thinking that maybe I could restore him to what he once was.”
“I don't understand.”
“I might be able to make him human again.”
“But you're not sure.”
“I won't know until I try.”
“How close do you have to be to the Count to try it?”
“I'll need to touch him.”
I laughed. “The Count doesn't impress me as the kind of guy that lets people walk up to him and place their hands on him.”
“I was thinking that maybe you could freeze him. Like you did earlier.”
“If you turned him human while he was frozen, the ice inside his body would kill him.”
Elrod shook his head. “He should thaw out when he transforms. His cells will return to what they were when he was human.”
“Even if he does, there's still one small problem.”
“Which is?”
“Gladrielle will be there. And she's a dark elf. A dark elf that can throw fireballs.”
“So, freeze her too.”
“I'm not sure I can, not without killing her.”
Elrod wrinkled his brow. “Now I'm the one that doesn't understand.”
“I can freeze vamps without killing them because they're not living beings. The cells inside their bodies are already dead, not decaying just dead. But freezing the water inside a living being would kill him or her.”
Elrod nodded. “Because water expands when frozen.”
“And if that water is inside a cell, it punctures the cell's outer membrane, which ends up killing the cell. Unless your immortal bodies are immune to that kind of stuff.”
“We don't get sick or age, but our bodies aren't invulnerable. A knife can cut us. A bullet can kill us.”
“So freezing Gladrielle is out,” I said.
“Looks like it.” Elrod's face brightened. “But that doesn't mean we can't freeze the Count. I can distract Gladrielle while you freeze him, then you can distract her while I try to turn him back into a human.”
I laughed. “You do realize that she's going to be tossing fireballs at us. Big hot fireballs.”
“I didn't say it would be easy. But I still think it's worth a try. This way we can save both of them.”
“And that's important to you?”
Elrod shrugged his shoulders. “I'm an elf. Preserving and protecting life is what we do.”
“What if you can't turn him back into a human?”
“Then I guess we'll go with whatever you had planned.”
“I was going to freeze the Count and take him to the bottom of the ocean, to what submariners call crush depth.”
“How deep is that?”
“For your average submarine it's around five thousand feet, about a mile.”
“And for a vampire?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don't know. But I'm betting he can't go any deeper than a steel submarine without being crushed by the water pressure.”
“How deep can you go?”
“Mermaids don't have a crush depth.”
“Why not?”
“We've got extremely dense muscle tissue.”
Elrod looked me up and down. “Your muscles don't look that thick.”
“I didn't say thick. I said dense. There's a difference.”
“You're telling me that you're harder than steel?”
“Harder and more flexible,” I said, flashing the elf king a teasing smile.
“I don't believe you.”
Anytime somebody told me that, I always did the same thing. I placed my hands on my hips and told them to punch me in the stomach. Most guys wouldn't do it because they were taught to not hit girls. Elrod, for whatever reason, decided to take me up on the offer.
“You really don't mind if I do this?” he said, making a fist and pulling it back.
“It's your hand.”
He was about to throw a punch when an elderly woman saw what was happening, came up behind him, and whacked him on the back of the head with her purse.
“What's the matter with you?” she said, scolding Elrod. “Didn't your mother teach you that you don't hit girls?”
“I never had a mother,” Elrod said, rubbing the back of his head.
“It shows,” the woman said. She looked at me. “Dump him. You can do better.”
The woman headed off. Elrod watched her go then looked at me. “I think I'm going to pass on punching you in the stomach.”
“Everyone does,” I said, lowering my hands from my hips.
“So where are Claire and the Count at?”
“They were at Titus's club, O Positive. I imagine they're still there.”
“So we go there and what? You freeze the Count while I distract Claire, then you distract Claire while I try to turn the Count back into a human?”
“And if you can't turn the Count back into a human. We grab him and run.”
“Seems simple enough,” Elrod said.
I laughed. “Yeah it does, except in my world, things never go as planned.”