Chapter 16
Paramedics took Doug and Simkins to the hospital. Neither man’s life was in danger but both had second degree burns on their chest. Okay, Doug had second degree burns on his chest. Simkins had second degree burns on his giant belly.
Since John brought me there, and had left, I had to walk home. On my way back, I called him.
“It’s me,” I said when he answered.
There were a lot of cars and trucks roaring up and down the street, making a lot of noise, which would make it hard for Gladrielle to overhear my conversation, even with those big pointy ears of hers. That was assuming she was following me and listening, which she might have been.
“You okay?” John asked me.
“Fine.”
“And the elf?”
“Threatening to destroy everything and everyone I care about.”
“And you’re calling to tell me that you think we shouldn’t see each other for awhile.”
“And to tell you to watch your back. She knows what you look like, what you smell like, she can probably track you down anytime she wants.”
“One of my advanced classes is scheduled to take a three day cruise aboard a ship called the Marine Explorer. Perhaps I should join them.”
“When does the ship leave port?”
“Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.”
“I think your going on that cruise is an excellent idea.”
“Then I’ll see you when I get back.”
“You can count on it.”
“And you watch your back,” John said. “After all, you’re the one she’s mad at.”
There were two cops waiting for me when I got back to my condo. Stringbean and Frat Boy. The two suits that told the Count to mind his p’s and q’s while he was in town. The two that were part of the department’s newly formed supernatural division.
“What’s up?” I said, slipping my phone back in my pocket. They were sitting on the hood of their car, an unmarked, black Dodge Charger.
“We’ve been told there’s a rogue elf on the loose,” Stringbean said. “And that she’s already assaulted a pair of police officers.”
“And that’s where you get involved.”
Stringbean nodded. “We’re supposed to investigate, decided how big a threat she is to humanity.”
“I’m not sure she’s a threat to humanity,” I said. “She’s just trying to ruin my life, which means she’s going to go after anybody and everybody that she thinks I care about.”
“Why does she want to ruin your life?” Frat Boy asked me.
“I sort of killed her boyfriend.”
“Sort of?” Stringbean said with a smirk.
“I took him for a swim, a deep swim, when we got deep enough, the water pressure crushed him.”
“I’m assuming her boyfriend was a supernatural.”
“Her boyfriend was the Count.”
“You killed the Count?” Frat Boy said, sounding more than a bit surprised.
“The Pacific Ocean killed the Count, I just introduced them.”
“But he was the world’s oldest vampire, the world’s most powerful vampire.”
“Your point being?”
“You're just a mermaid.”
Stringbean chuckled. “I thought you were supposed to be the expert on supernaturals.”
“I never said I was an expert,” Frat Boy said. “I was hired because I majored in supernatural studies. It’s everyone else that keeps calling me an expert.”
“And yet you know nothing about mermaids.” Stringbean pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster. “Well here’s your first lesson.”
Before I could protest, before Frat Boy could protest, Stringbean shot me in the stomach. At point blank range. It wasn’t a small gun either, it was a police issue thirty-eight.
“Sonofabitch!” I said, recoiling from the force of the blow.
I looked down, there was a hole in my tee shirt, just above the bellybutton. I pulled my shirt out of my pants and lifted it up. The head of the bullet was embedded in my stomach, the back half was sticking out.
I licked my thumb and index finger, so I wouldn’t burn them, then I grabbed the still hot bullet and pulled it out of my stomach. The skin was burned where the bullet hit me, and a single drop of blood trickled down to my bellybutton, but other than that I was fine. Not counting the fact that getting shot at point blank range hurt like hell.
“Lesson number one,” Stringbean said as he holstered his gun. “Mermaids have the densest muscle tissue in the world, which means their entire body is like a bulletproof vest.”
“Lesson number two,” I said, grabbing Stringbean by his scrawny neck and lifting him high into the air, not an easy thing to do considering his height. “That dense muscle tissue makes us extremely strong.” I looked up at Stringbean. “Next time you do that, I’m going to take you for a swim. You got that?”
Stringbean nodded as best he could. I lowered him to his feet. He took a moment to rub his neck and adjust his tie.
“The point being,” Stringbean said, sitting back down on the Charger’s hood. “Mermaids are a lot tougher than their reputation. If one of them tells you she killed a vampire, you had best believe her.”
“Vamps aren’t nearly as tough as their reputation” I said. “In the supernatural world, they rank somewhere in the middle in terms of how dangerous they are. There are a lot of beings out there that are way more dangerous than vampires.”
“Like a deranged elf,” Stringbean said.
“She’s not deranged,” I said. “She’s just working through some . . . issues.”
“Sounds like she’s turned into a dark elf,” Frat Boy said.
Stringbean looked at Frat Boy. “What’s a dark elf?”
Frat Boy looked at me, checking to see if I wanted to answer the question.
“You’re the expert,” I said. He scowled, clearly not likely the title ‘expert’, which I suspect was Savanna’s fault. “I’m sorry, supernatural studies major.”
“Elves are nonviolent,” Frat Boy said. “But they are powerful.”
“Not to mention immortal,” I added.
Frat Boy nodded and continued his recitation. “If an elf is forced to take another life, they suffer a mental breakdown and become what’s known as a dark elf.”
“And the difference between a regular elf and a dark elf is what?” Stringbean said.
“Regular elves are highly moral beings,” Frat Boy said. “Dark elves have no morals. They don’t care who they hurt or kill.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “I think there’s still good inside Gladrielle. And I think I can bring her back from the dark side.”
“Gladrielle?” Stringbean said. “That’s the elf that attacked Simkins and Wert?”
“That’s what I call her.”
“We’ve been ordered to track her down.”
“And?” I said, realizing there was more.
“And if we decide that she’s a threat to humanity, we’ve been given permission to execute her. No judge. No jury. No trial. But then you know how it works.”
I nodded. “I know how it works.”
“Can you tell us where she is?” Frat Boy asked me.
“No. And even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why is that?” Stringbean said.
“I already told you. I think I can bring her back from the dark side.”
“That’s not what I was taught,” Frat Boy said. “I learned that once an elf goes dark they never come back.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I said.
Stringbean slid off the Charger and stood up. “I’ll make this simple. You find her first, maybe you can turn her back, maybe you can’t. We find her first, maybe we put her down, no judge, no jury, no trial.”
“That always was your favorite line,” I said.
“Still is.”
Stringbean circled around the Charger and opened the driver’s d
oor. “You want to save this elf, Low, you better find her before we do.”
He climbed in the car. Frat Boy slid off the hood and moved toward the passenger’s door. As he passed me, he glanced at the hole in my tee shirt, the one made by Stringbean’s gun.
“Can I . . . .” his voice trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase the question.
I sighed.
This wasn’t the first time I had been shot, nor was it the first time someone wanted to see the wound. I grabbed the hem of my tee shirt and pulled it up, showing Frat Boy the spot where Stringbean shot me. It was still red, still sore, would be for another day, but it had already stopped bleeding.
While Frat Boy stared at the wound in disbelief, I thought about pulling my tee shirt up higher, teasing him by flashing my breasts. I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. I had a boyfriend now, which meant I had to learn to suppress my natural inclinations.
Well, maybe I didn’t have to suppress them all the time. Besides, I was wearing a very nice, very expensive, black lace bra. What was the point of buying something like that if you couldn’t show it off. It’s not like I needed it for support, my dense muscle tissue took care of that.
Frat Boy’s eyes followed the hem of my tee shirt up, all the way to my chin, a move which prompted Stringbean to climb out of the car and lean on the roof. “Leave the kid alone, Low.”
“Sorry,” I said, yanking the hem of my tee shirt back down. “Old habits are hard to break.”
“Get in the car,” Stringbean said to Frat Boy.
Frat Boy scrambled into the car.
“You want to save that elf,” Stringbean said to me. “You better find her before we do.”
He climbed in the car, started it up, and drove off. As soon as their car disappeared around the corner, Gladrielle appeared. She looked the same as when she walked into the restaurant.
She still had the black orbs for eyes. She was still dressed in the long black negligee. Her long black hair still had that wild untamed look, and she was still barefoot.
Apparently, she had hid and then followed me when I left the restaurant. No big surprise. If her goal was to ruin my life then she had to stick close to me. At least until she figured out who I did and didn’t care about.
“I trust you heard what they said. You attacked two cops, two human cops, if they find you, they could execute you. No judge, no jury, no trial.”
“You think I care?”
“I think part of you cares. I think part of you wants my help.”
Gladrielle cackled, another maniacal laugh. I was beginning to think that maybe Elrod and Frat Boy were right, once an elf crossed over, became a dark elf, there was no going back.
“The humans want to kill me,” Gladrielle said. “Let them. Now that Eradu is gone, I’ve got no reason to live.”
“What about your bed and breakfast, and your ferns, and the flower garden? What about all your friends back home? You went five thousand years without having the Count in your life, I suspect you can go another five.”
“Even if I wanted to go back, which I don’t. They wouldn’t take me.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because I’m a dark elf now and they would never take a dark elf back.”
“They might not take you if they knew you were a dark elf, but they don’t know. And Elrod has no intention of telling them what’s happened to you. Not if he can avoid it.”
That bit of news caught Gladrielle by surprise. I knew it caught her by surprise because her voice changed, from the deep sultry voice she had been using to her regular voice, the one she had used on our drive into the city.
It confirmed what I already suspected, that there was a war going on inside Gladrielle, a war between the dark side that emerged after she killed Titus, and other side, the side that ran the bed and breakfast and watered the ferns and tended to the flowers in her garden.
“They really don’t know what’s happened to me?”
“They really don’t know. And if you let me take you home, right now, they’ll never know.”
For a brief second, Gladrielle’s eyes changed color. The whites reappeared. The dark blue irises reappeared. Then they disappeared, so fast that if I had blinked, I would’ve missed the change.
Not that it mattered. It confirmed what I suspected. The woman that I drove to the city was still in there, still fighting for control.
That was why I couldn’t give up on her. If I didn’t help her, no one would. Not Elrod. Not the other elves. Certainly not the police. They just wanted to put her down, like a rabid dog.
“I know mermaids like water,” Gladrielle said, her voice changing to a high pitched cackle. “But I’m curious to see if you can stand the heat.”
She held her hand out, palm up. A fireball appeared above it. A big yellow fireball that looked like a miniature sun. It was bigger than the fireballs she threw at Doug and Simkins. Those were about the size of softballs. This one was the size of a beach ball. It was so hot that I could feel the heat a good twenty feet away.
I’m not sure why the heat didn’t affect Gladrielle, maybe her immortal body was immune to fire. But then I didn’t know a whole lot about elves.
“You really don’t want to throw that at me,” I said.
Even as I spoke I began to back up, moving toward the beach, which was only two blocks away. Literally a stone’s throw, well, a stone’s throw if you’ve got the strength of a mermaid.
“And why is that?” Gladrielle said.
“Because I’m the only friend you’ve got. Elrod has given up on you. The police want to execute you, and no one else in this city knows or cares about you.”
“What’s that old saying? With friends like you . . . .”
Gladrielle never finished the sentence. Instead, she pulled her arm back and heaved the fireball at me.
I responded by kissing the concrete, literally falling onto my stomach.
The fireball passed overhead. It struck the trunk of one of the palm trees that lined the street and set it on fire.
As the fire roared up the tree trunk, I scrambled to my feet and sprinted toward the beach.
I’m not as fast out of water as I am in it, but I’m not slow either. I reached the beach before Gladrielle could heave another fireball at me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach the ocean. Just as I thought I might make it, a fireball struck me in the back, knocking me off my feet.
As I tumbled to the sand, my tee shirt in flames, I could hear Gladrielle cackle. “It’s time for a fish fry.”