Chapter 11
Eleven
Angie checked her phone two days later, waiting at the spot that she and Luke had agreed to meet, in front of the employee break house.
He was nowhere to be found, and no text or call from him, either. They were supposed to meet fifteen minutes ago.
The coffee and egg and cheese bagels were getting cold.
She texted him, but no response.
This wasn’t like him. She and Bàba hadn’t known him long, but in the short time he was here, he was always punctual. It was a trait that Bàba praised.
Something wasn’t right, and she walked away from the break house, keeping her eyes and ears open for him.
She stepped onto the gangway, the coffee and bagel bags feeling heavier and heavier in her hand.
Overhead, smoky clouds loomed against an ashy backdrop and grazed the sea line, creating a gloomy, somber setting.
An amorphous lump lay on the gangway’s end, and when she reached it, she froze momentarily, her knees weak.
The bags slipped from her hand, and the drink carrier and disposable cups tumbled out, creating a coffee puddle around her feet. The bagels followed, one rolling off the gangway’s edge, tumbling into the sea below.
Her hunger dissipated, and food was the last thing she cared about now.
Luke lay before her on the gangway’s end, a jagged-tipped spear through his chest, pierced through with deadly accuracy.
“Luke? No, no, no! Oh, tiān.”
Angie stood over his body, numb and fighting back tears.
His arms and legs sprawled out, his face serene and pale. Bright red blood pooled on his chest around the spear protruding from his heart.
It sickened her to see him lying murdered and exposed. A bitter tang coated the inside of her mouth.
A low vibration of pain thrummed while she called Bàba, who was still at home, and told him what happened. After a strangled noise, he hung up the phone. He’d be heading there now.
She dialed the Creston Police Department to report the murder. Once they confirmed her location and that they were sending an officer, she put her phone away.
“Luke, what happened?” she whispered, kneeling beside his body.
“I asked you not to go near the water. You promised.” She wiped tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and rose to her feet, bowing her head.
“Why did you come all the way out here? Did you see something? You were supposed to have met me at the break house.”
So many questions, none of which she could venture an answer for.
Regret squeezed her chest. If she had told Luke about the danger of mer instead of dancing around the issue, he might have taken her warning more seriously. She berated herself for not being more forthcoming.
Now she’d never know if that would have saved him. Her stomach knotted.
A flicker entered her peripheral, capturing her attention. In the distance, a maroon tail rested around mossy rocks protruding from the sea. She couldn’t see the mer’s body, but she already knew.
Kaden.
Her heart weighing heavy, she retrieved a spare blanket from storage and laid it over the teenager, and waited for the police officer to arrive, keeping Kaden in her peripheral vision.
A stocky, mustached officer came after twenty agonizing minutes, and after a short chat of what she found and when, he thanked her.
Thoughts of the boy gripped her mind while she trekked to the merman.
Possibly, Kaden was the one who killed him. Fueled by the notion, she pressed her lips together and quickened her pace, hands balled into tight fists.
Their gazes locked when she approached.
He pushed himself up on his palms, facing her. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you out of the corner of my eye. Didn’t seem like you were making much of an effort to stay hidden.
Thought we could have a little chat, you and I.
” Angie widened her stance and folded her arms across her chest, holding him in a challenging stare.
His eyes shifted back and forth, as if caught off guard.
“Okay, I suppose I can oblige. You patched me up, after all.” He pushed off his tail and hands so he landed back in the water. He swam to and climbed atop a lower rock closer to the seaboard. Closer to Angie and out of the gangway’s view.
She stepped back.
“You ‘suppose you can oblige?’ I suppose I should be flattered. I’m not. Did you kill that boy back there? Put a spear through his chest?” Her voice emerged rough and demanding, anger seeping from her throat.
“What? No! I haven’t killed any of your disgusting kind!” He drew his shoulders closer to his ears, adopting a defensive posture.
“It’s too much of a coincidence that I happened to find his body and then see you right after.
You seem to be the only mer hanging around the surface lately.
I can’t decide if you’re brave or stupid.
” Angie thought again of Luke. A gust of fury swept through her, quickly followed by heartache at his untimely loss.
“It’s none of your concern why I ‘hang around the surface,’ as you say. And I swear on the Sea Goddess’ watery embrace that I haven’t killed anyone. There were patrols in the area recently. Looking for the humans that killed four of ours.”
She studied his face. Somehow, the earnestness in his tone, the softness in his gaze, and his body language reflected hints of remorse, asking her to believe him. For now.
Kaden’s shoulders relaxed in tune with this tail, which he kept wrapped around the rock in a loose hug. “Two of the dead were royal sentinels. A male and a female, a joined pair.”
The fine hairs on Angie’s arms stood on end, a chill shooting through her veins. “Did they have markings on their bodies?”
“Yes. The royal guard wear paintings on their bodies and faces to mark them as such. How did you know?” Kaden’s eyes narrowed.
Angie pressed her lips flat, shoulders sagging. “They were captured and brought back as trophies. The divers were celebrated for outsmarting and killing them. The first mer I ever saw that close.”
“Humans gloating about catching unsuspecting prey. Typical,” Kaden sneered.
Just when she thought they might be getting along, he had to make a jab. Angie’s jaw and facial muscles tensed.
“And just how the Hells would you know what’s ‘typical’ of us?” Her body was a hodgepodge of emotions. Fury and irritation at Kaden. Lingering horror and sadness, a dizziness in her head that wouldn’t go away from seeing Luke. “What are you, some kind of expert on humans? A spy?”
“Do you think I’m the only one who comes to the surface? You don’t think any other mer have had that curiosity and sated it? Caught sunlight, get a change of scenery? Observed your two-legged kind and shared stories? We just make sure you don’t see us.”
“Until I did.” Angie tapped her foot on the ground and checked her phone. No word from Baba yet, but it had only been forty minutes since she called him. He wouldn’t get here so fast.
“I was careless.”
“Believe me, I don’t always agree with the way people act.” She locked in his hard stare with one of her own. “But if you didn’t hold the fish hostage, then maybe nobody would have died.”
“You started this. Don’t be upset that we’re finishing it.” Kaden’s words bit at her.
“The seas are practically empty of life. The more of us you kill, the more we retaliate.” Angie swept her arms out to her sides in a gesture of frustration.
Typical male, who didn’t listen to anything she said.
Seemed like that was one similarity both their species had.
“You want to stop this? Release the fish, wherever you’re hiding them.
Or are the mer so ravenous that you’re eating them all? ”
“Why?” His voice raised to a thunderous roar, jaw set and eyes blazing.
She refused to back down under his death stare. “You would know if you had heard a word I said. Or is your hearing not so good on land?”
“I heard everything you said. I asked why you want the sea life back. Tell me, what do humans do with them? You take much more than you need, trap them in tiny tanks, content to let them suffer until the day they’re cooked and eaten.
The smarter animals are imprisoned for your entertainment.
” He paused, a wave crashing onto the rocks and splattering it.
Seafoam coated his caudal fins, curled downward and held stiff, though his upper body looked relaxed. Angie recoiled as if he had hit her.
What the Hells was he going on about? Surely, if he knew anything about human life, like he claimed he did, he would have seen that not everyone was as terrible as he thought.
He continued his rant before she had a chance to rebuff him.
“Your kind overfishes and destroys entire ecosystems, affecting those who call the sea their home. You pollute the oceans with plastic and waste and trash, and your loud, obnoxious watercraft disturb and kill all who dare to swim at the surface. Entire species of sea life are becoming extinct. Apex predators are over-hunted and prey species are overrunning the seas, destroying swaths of plant life and coral.”
The sarcastic response Angie had prepared withered away and died.
He didn’t give her time to reply, even if she wanted to.
“Nothing to say? Good.” He spat out his words.
“We’ve seen people kill haituns by the pods and capture the most docile ones for entertainment.
Hujings are caught for the same purpose, dooming them to a life of misery and loneliness in plastic prisons no bigger than them.
Longxia are boiled alive, an atrocious way to kill someone.
Never has there been a species so cruel as yours.
And you believe you are entitled to these precious animals?
You do not deserve them.” His death glare turned into a fireball searing a hole through her body.