***
There was a small parking lot next to my condo, reserved for the people that lived in the building, although as far as I know, no one ever checked to see who was actually using the lot.
I pulled the Del Sol into the lot and hopped out, pausing just long enough to order the water inside the Count’s body to remain frozen. The last thing I needed was for him to thaw out before I had a chance to show him Davy Jones locker.
“You going to stick around?” I said, as I pulled the Count out of the trunk and stood him up behind the car. “Help me bring Gladrielle back from the dark side?”
“I’ve got to get home, before I’m missed.”
“Have you told the council about what happened to Gladrielle?”
“Not yet. Thought I’d put it off for awhile.”
“How long is awhile?” I peeled off my tee shirt and tossed it in the trunk. Before heading to O Positive, I donned a bikini underneath my clothes, just in case Elrod wasn’t able to make the Count human again. I didn’t have a problem with going topless in public, but the human authorities didn’t like it, hence the bikini.
“I won't say a thing until somebody asks where Claire is.” He watched me remove my jeans and slip my sneakers back on. “You’re really going to do this? You’re really going to kill him?”
“Like I said, if you got another way to bring Gladrielle back from the dark side, I’m willing to listen.”
“I wish I did,” Elrod said.
I hoisted the Count over my shoulder, dressed in nothing more than a bikini and sneakers, I suspect I looked like a surfer with a vampire shaped surfboard, getting ready to catch some midnight waves.
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
“I didn’t really do anything,” Elrod said.
“You kept Gladrielle tied up while I neutralized the Count.”
“I hope you succeed in bringing Claire back from the dark side, but you’ll understand if I don’t hold my breath.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
Elrod turned and headed for his truck. I turned and headed for the beach. I was almost there when a patrol car, a brand new Dodge Charger, pulled alongside of me. John Simkins, the older of the two policemen lowered the passenger’s window. “Mind if I ask what you’ve got on your shoulder?”
Doug Wert, his handsome young partner was driving. Which was unusual, since Simkins was normally behind the wheel.
“How come you’re driving?” I said, ignoring Simkins and focusing on Doug.
Savanna and I had stayed at Doug’s place for awhile, when we were hiding out from assassins. When the assassins were no longer a problem, I moved back to my place. Since Savanna didn’t have a place of her own, she was still staying at Doug’s. I don’t know if they were sleeping together, but I suspect they were.
“John’s not allowed to drive at night,” a smirking Doug said. “Bad eyesight.”
“Is it night?” I said, pretending to glance around. “I really hadn’t noticed, but then I’m a mermaid and like most mermaids, I don’t suffer from bad eyesight. Day, night. They look the same to me.”
“Very funny,” Simkins said. “Now what do you got on your shoulder?”
I set the still frozen Count on the sidewalk, so he was facing the patrol car. His head was still canted sideways, his mouth was still open, and his fangs were still protruding.
“As you can clearly see, this is a vampire. Oh, wait a minute, that’s right, you probably can’t see, not in this light.” I turned my attention to Doug. “As you can clearly see, this is a vampire.”
Was I making fun of Simkins, hell, yeah. When I first joined the force, he was constantly making fun of me, leaving dead fish in my locker, replacing the gun in my holster with a dead fish. Asking me if I avoided sushi bars because I didn’t want to eat a relative. That kind of crap.
“What do you plan on doing with that vampire?” Simkins asked me.
“Normally, I wouldn’t do much of anything with him. But this is no ordinary vamp, this just happens to be the Count.”
“That’s the world’s oldest vamp?” a surprised Doug said.
“You’ve heard of him?”
“They mentioned he was in town in our briefing, told us to keep our eyes open for increased activity in the vamp community.”
“Actually, when he shows up, most of the other vamps go into hiding.”
“Why is that?” Simkins asked.
“Because he uses the other vamps for his food.”
“Sounds like we should be giving him a good citizen award,” Simkins said. “I assume you froze the water inside his body.”
“I did.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he killed someone I was hired to protect.”
And you’re going to take your revenge on him by what, using him as a surfboard?”
“I’m going to take him to what submariners call crush depth.”
“What’s that?” Doug asked.
“That’s the depth a submarine can’t go below, otherwise the water pressure will become so great, it will crush the sub’s steel hull like a tin can.”
“You can go that deep?”
I flashed Doug a teasing smile, mostly because what I was about to say sounded really dirty. “I’m a mermaid. I can go as deep as I want.”
Simkins looked at the Count. “Can he hear what we’re saying?”
“I don’t know, but then I’ve never bothered to ask any of the vamps that I’ve froze what it was like.”
“Who was he trying to bite when you froze him?”
“The local elf king.”
“There are elves in this city?” a surprised Doug said.
“There’s one in the city. The rest live in small towns, usually near a lake or a stream or a forest.” I ordered the water inside the Count’s body to remain frozen, then I picked him up and hoisted him over my shoulder. “Now if you boys will excuse me, I’ve got a vampire to kill.”
“Knock yourself out,” Simkins said.
He put his window up the the Charger roared off.
It was against the law for supernaturals to kill humans but it wasn’t against the law for supernaturals to kill other supernaturals. The law treated it as an act of self-defense. But then the laws were made by humans and written to protect humans. They didn’t really care what supernaturals did to each other. Supernatural A kills supernatural B, the humans have one less supernatural to keep an eye on, one less supernatural to worry about. Maybe that’s why the humans liked me so much, when it came to cleaning out the supernatural world, I was a one mermaid wrecking crew.
I reached the beach without running into anybody else. It was deserted except for a group of young people sitting around a campfire, drinking beer and smoking a joint.
“Rad surfboard,” one of the guys said as I passed them.
“It’s one of a kind,” I shot back.
“Where’d you find it?”
“Found it at a place called Wormby’s Pawnshop.”
No harm in throwing a little business Wormby’s way, although these people were so wasted, I doubted if they would remember much of what happened come morning.
I kicked my sneakers off and left them on the sand, then I waded out into the ocean. I stopped when I was in waist deep water and set the Count down, he floated like a vampire shaped iceberg.
I peeled my bikini bottom off and wrapped it around my wrist. Just because I could change form didn’t mean my clothes could. Once my bikini bottom was out of the way, I changed form.
In a matter of seconds, my legs transformed into my beautiful green tail. All I have to do is think about changing form and it happens. And just for the record, it isn’t painful. All I feel is a mild tingle, kind of like when your hand or foot falls asleep and then wakes up.
A mermaid’s tail always matches the color of her eyes. I have green eyes, so my tail’s green. Savanna has blue eyes so her tail is blue. I can’t tell you why it’s that way. Genetics, I guess.
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I grabbed a fist full of the Count’s shirt and headed south. I was moving at a good clip, around fifty miles an hour. I could go faster, but I couldn’t maintain that pace for several hours. This was a pace I could maintain, although when I got back to shore, I would need to eat. A lot.
I took the Count to a part of the ocean called the Cedros Trench, just off the coast of Baja California. It’s not the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, but it was deep enough for what I needed to do.
Once there, I took a deep breath and closed the membranes inside my nose. Like all mermaids, I can open and close them at will. That way, when I’m underwater, I don’t have to worry about getting any water into my lungs, not as long as I remember to keep my big mouth shut.
Fortified with enough air to last for several hours, I grabbed the still frozen Count and headed straight down, into the briny deep, as the pirates used to say.
Just before I reached crush depth. Well, crush depth for a vampire. I reached out with my mind, to the water inside the Count’s body. Then I ordered the water in his body, in his blood, in his cells, to thaw out.
No way was I going to let the Count die peacefully. I wanted him to be awake when he died. I wanted him to know what was happening to him. I wanted him to know who was putting an end to his unnaturally long life.
It took a couple of minutes, but the Count eventually came back to life. The first thing he did after coming back to life was close his mouth, if for no other reason than to stop himself from swallowing sea water.
Then he looked around, to see where he was and who had brought him there. When he saw me, I smiled and waved. He glared at me for a second, he might have been trying to compel me. Not that it did any good. He couldn’t compel me when we were on land, no way was he going to be able to compel me when we were in the ocean. He might have been a count, but I was a queen of the sea. And this was my kingdom.
When the Count realized that he couldn’t compel me, he looked up and then swam for the surface. Before he could get very far, I grabbed his ankle and headed down, straight down, pulling the Count down with me.
He tried to kick me in the head, but missed. I responded by slapping him in the face with my tail. I didn’t miss.
You can’t drowned a vampire. They’re already dead. They don’t need air to survive anymore than they need food. All they need is blood. It supplies their bodies with everything they need to remain active. That meant the Count could stay down here longer than I could. He just couldn’t go as deep as I could.
The Count fought me as I pulled him down, fought me hard, trying everything he could to free his ankle from my grip.
He failed. We were both strong, ridiculously strong. But while the water fortified my strength, it robbed him of some of his. This was my domain and even the world’s oldest vampire couldn’t compete with me down here.
As we neared the bottom of the trench, his struggling stopped. I turned around to face him but he wasn’t there. There was no body attached to the foot I was still holding. There was nothing but blood and chum, chunks of meat if you prefer. Not counting the Hawaiian shirt, board shorts, and Maui Jim sunglasses, which were floating back to the surface.
The ocean had done its job. The Count was dead, which meant the title of the world’s oldest vampire would pass to someone else. It just wouldn’t pass to Titus Hawthorn. He was gone, because I had failed to do my job.