5. Mouth Like Stones
Mouth Like Stones
Marlowe scraped her tongue against her palm, sucking a mouthful of rot and dead, putrid things, and spat at the shoreline. “You wanted me. I’m here! Couldn’t leave me the fuck alone,” she growled, pain cutting her words into blistering points.
The world spun in shades of gray and truck headlights. Tucked under her arm, a lobster raised rubber-banded claws. Marlowe dimly remembered plunging her arm in the tank, water glossing the dull supermarket floor. She didn’t think she’d paid.
Frogs slooped away from her, slick in the rancid shoreline.
Worms wriggled in the mud, and leeches sucked at the sides of her sandals.
Marlowe cut the claw bands away with her knife and nudged it in the direction of the water’s edge, bristle-spine claws digging into the flesh of her forearm.
The lobster slipped into the water with a soft plop.
Mist wreathed the lake and coiled in the headlights.
Itchy wool stabbed into her knees as Marlowe knelt on the cigarette-burn-and-plaid blanket pulled from the backseat of her truck. Her heart thumped against her ribs in a painful rhythm, almost knocking the oxygen out of her.
She wanted this to be over. Marlowe needed this…thing with Pike to be over, so she could focus, so she could do what she needed to leave this town forever.
In the middle a ripple curled to life, breaking the surface and surging toward shore.
There. Gone.
Mud clouded the empty space where the lobster had been.
Grimy bubbles spiraled to the surface—green, gray, brown—and shimmered with an oil-slick shine.
The back of Marlowe’s neck prickled. The lake stilled.
Stringy bulrushes creaked together near the windless shore.
Two golden eyes cracked open and locked on Marlowe with predatory focus.
Gray tendrils writhed among lanky strands.
Marlowe swallowed at the memory of their musky taste slipping across her tongue, of the lake-rot remnants she’d tasted in the palm of her hand.
Pike stared, unblinking. Their eyes glittered in the headlights.
“You must’ve liked the lobster.” Marlowe brushed her hand against her knife sheath for reassurance; even though she wouldn’t need it. This was progress, however small.
A severed claw thudded onto the blanket next to her. The carcass surfaced in front of Pike.
Uneaten.
Marlowe’s mouth slowly soured. “So…no lobster.”
Pike’s lips curled back in a thin, mocking snarl. Bulrushes parted in front of her and knobby, webbed fingers sank into the mudbank. Red-edged fins sprang up, cutting a jagged line down the corded muscle of her back.
Even in the cool night breeze, sweat beaded underneath Marlowe’s sweater.
Sludge spattered her face as Pike lunged.
Marlowe swore and swept her knife up to her chest, pivoting to the side as the sodden blanket caught around her legs.
Flesh met flesh instead of steel, and long fingers wrapped around her wrist, digging in.
Her knife sliced through mud and disappeared as Pike dragged her back, woolen blanket pricking at her, skin slick with lake water, spines and claws digging in.
Marlowe was done negotiating with the damn thing.
Clawing at the creature’s face with her other hand, Marlowe caught skin. Pike snapped at her left hand and needle teeth tore through layers of flesh and muscle. Marlowe hissed and fought for leverage, feet flailing against fish-gut muck, hand dribbling blood across Pike’s chin.
Marlowe bared her gritted teeth, eyes burning, stomach hot, cunt drenched even though, god, she was regretting coming back. “You’re a cunt just like her,” she spat.
Pike released her hand. Leaning in, the full length of her muscled torso stretched over her and the heavy weight of her tail pinned Marlowe’s legs to the bank. Mud crept up Marlowe’s legs and turned her thighs sticky.
Pike cocked her head, gray tendrils tracing her round jaw and feathering out to brush against her lips. Deep, rasping breaths forced from Marlowe’s lungs. Her bitten hand burned.
Her cunt throbbed.
Guttural vibrations hummed in Pike’s chest, pulsing deeper, heavy, louder until Marlowe’s body shook, heart stuttering. Pike’s tendrils laved along her jaw, trailing pondweed in a thick line across her throat. Seeking, they probed her bitten lips.
Marlowe yanked against her grip, teeth gritted. The muck sucked her in, as hungry as the creature holding her there, unblinking, tendrils prying at the side of her mouth.
Her limbs ached. Deadened. Her mark pulsed with heavy, slow warmth.
The heady rush of need from earlier had faded, and Marlowe was very aware when she finally let a tendril snake deep past her parted lips. She swallowed once, her throat working against the slick, fleshy strand.
Pike hummed, lowering her head and nudging against her cheek, tendrils delicately tracing her face.
Should’ve thrown the damn lobster and ran.
But pain melted into warmth, and her arms were so heavy, and each slide of Pike’s sinuous tail sent another jolt through Marlowe’s buzzing nerves.
She moved to pull against Pike’s grip again, wanting to touch her.
Nothing.
Cold pitted Marlowe’s stomach.
Focusing, shoving away the relaxed, cottony feeling weighing her down, she slightly bent the fingers of her right hand. Her unbitten, marked hand. Her left hand still welled with blood.
Marlowe strained her neck, willing herself to look, to move, to do anything but lie there frozen. The exertion forced a panicked hiss of air through her tight lungs.
She’d felt this aching, immovable pressure once before, in the boat when Pike’s teeth dragged a line across her lip. It had hardly been a scratch. Pike had left a ragged wound in her left hand this time.
Marlowe whimpered, her mouth heavy like rocks were wedged inside her jaw.
Pike cocked her head.
Marlowe viciously berated herself for thinking stolen lobster was sufficient, for even considering the fact that if Pike got her hands on her again, she might not let her go this time.
She steadied her breathing. Her throat still worked as she swallowed thickly. If she was lucky, if, by some good will the universe stored for her, Pike’s venom didn’t leave her gasping for air, she might have a chance.
But Pike hadn’t attacked.
Hadn’t hurt her aside from the bite, which—Marlowe grudgingly admitted—likely wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t brought a knife.
If the creature’s intention was to kill her, surely she would have drawn her into the lake already.
Her head cleared, slowly, and still Pike loomed over her.
Unblinking.
Waiting.
A trilling sound garbled from Pike’s throat.
Marlowe swallowed again, and the tightness in her chest loosened slightly. Words felt agonizingly out of reach. She curled her tongue in the back of her mouth, imitating Pike.
Pike’s lips peeled back.
A clumsy smile, just as disturbing plastered on the lake creature as it would be on a stumbling deer.
Marlowe’s heart thudded against her ribs a little less.
They were communicating.
Pike released her wrists and slid down her body, fleshy hands smoothing her ratty, acid-flecked shirt. Marlowe’s slight smile faded.
They were communicating, and Marlowe had just agreed to something.