Chapter 19
The world went numb, and disorientation dragged Bel to the bottom of the pool.
Through the haze and pain, she watched her blood muddy the water, and her panic warred with the pull toward unconsciousness.
She could barely move, her skull ringing and sight blurry, but before her brain registered the terror of her predicament, a broad hand gripped the back of her shirt and yanked her to the surface.
She prayed it was Eamon coming to save her. She knew it wasn’t.
The hand reached for her sidearm, but if her attacker got a hold of her Glock, she and the mermaids were dead. So, in her haze, she fumbled with the holster, dropping the gun to the pool floor a second before the stranger dragged her out of the water.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Detective,” the familiar voice threatened as she coughed the water from her lungs.
“My daughter is dead. I have nothing to lose now. I’ll kill you and these girls and disappear before your friends ever find me.
” A lock clicked behind her as he secured his mermaids back inside their cage, and Bel’s muddled brain screamed at her to stand up, to not let him kill her lying down.
She wiped the blood from her eyes as she tried to push herself to her knees.
Her body swayed. Her vision blurred. There were two of everything.
Two cages. Two Ondines. Two Tritons stalking toward her.
“Detective!” Ondine screamed, and a second later, something metal crashed to the floor outside the cage.
Bel stared at the object, forcing herself to focus on the black shape the girl had thrown.
Ondine thought she’d dropped it by accident.
She was trying to help, but she’d tipped the odds against them.
Bel’s brain was all fog, her muscles like solidifying concrete, and before she could order her hand to reach for her gun, Triton lunged for it.
Fear flooded her unsteady limbs as his massive palms closed around the grip, but as suddenly as he’d appeared, he was gone, Eamon standing in his place.
“Bend your knees, Detective,” his memory said. “Better center of gravity.”
Bel bent her legs, ignoring the blood dripping into her eyes.
“Your body language gives your intentions away,” Eamon continued. “Even if I were human, I would’ve seen that punch coming.”
“He won’t see it coming,” she whispered to his phantom, and then she launched herself at him.
His massive image faded away, Mr. Triton taking his place, and unlike her beast, this murderer was human.
He wasn’t as fast. He wasn’t as strong. He wasn’t prepared, and Bel collided with his larger size before he could aim the gun.
“Good job,” Eamon’s memory praised in her mind. “That was fast, and fast is good.”
Bel forced herself to ignore the pain, and she faked right before punching left.
Triton was a big man, but he wasn’t used to fighting for his life.
Not like she was, and her elbow connected with his temple.
He stumbled sideways, but Bel did not yield.
She hit again and again and again. Faster, harder, stronger, Eamon guiding her every move.
She wasn’t attacking a human serial killer.
In her mind, she was battling an ancient monster who couldn’t be killed, and Triton’s size stood no chance.
He was accustomed to drunk college girls who couldn’t retaliate.
Bel was a whole different breed of woman.
One raised by the chief of police and refined by the Impaler himself.
Triton’s grip on her gun faltered, and Bel ripped it from his grasp and lunged backward.
“Hands in the air, Triton!” She aimed, but the dripping blood obscured her vision.
She wiped the crimson from her eyes, but the pause gave him an out.
He bolted for the industrial catwalks surrounding the enclosure and grabbed a control switch before her finger found the trigger.
“It’s time for me to move on anyway,” he said as he lifted it to show Bel the buttons. She didn’t know what they did, but the triumph in his eyes told her they were dangerous.
“I came to Bajka after Ariella was born,” he continued. “I have a dark past, but I loved my little girl. I wanted to be better for her. I wanted to change. I really did.”
“But the mermaid performer triggered your suppressed nature,” Bel finished for him.
“I couldn’t stop myself,” Triton said. “I’d taken Ariella to the aquarium.
It was supposed to be a fun father/daughter day.
She’d gone to the bathroom before the show, so I waited by the tank to watch them set up.
My daughter missed the tragedy, but I didn’t.
The blood in the water. Her drowning. The way her hair and tail reflected the light as she sank.
She was a brunette, like my mermaids… like you.
You floating bloody through the water just now…
I wish I had the time. I’d add you to my final collection, but this will have to be quick and messy.
You three will be my last kills in Bajka. ”
“People are coming for me.” Bel had to keep him talking. She had to give Olivia and Eamon time to get there. “Killing me will only waste time. It’ll get you caught. And can you really kill without the lake? Will your obsession let you forget our bodies here?”
“There were places before the lake, and there will be places after it. I learned about the lake’s restricted area years ago, and I taught myself to tattoo in private.
No one looks at the maintenance men. It’s why I got the job here.
All that downtime where people never looked at me.
It allowed me to slip below the surface.
I was a family man with a mediocre job. No one cared what I did.
Not even my wife realized that the company I worked for was all smoke and mirrors to hide the aquarium.
I could’ve hidden here forever if it weren’t for you, but there’s no use suppressing who I am anymore.
My only reason for hiding my nature is long gone, so I’ll use another one of my IDs and vanish. You’ll never find me.”
“Neal Flounders. He passed background checks. Your next identity will too. I know only one person who could create such convincing alter egos. He’s the same man whose magic created embalming fluid powerful enough to preserve human flesh indefinitely.”
“You’re familiar with Charles Blaubart.” He smirked. “He failed to kill you. I won’t.”
“You forget I’m the one with the gun, and I’m a good shot.”
“But you don’t like it when young girls die.
” He lifted the button. “I press this, and that cage lowers.” He pointed to the metal that Bel hadn’t seen hanging over the enclosure.
Its bars crisscrossed to create a giant lid of sorts, the gaps between their weldings too small for a human to slip through.
The structure was attached to the ceiling by a system of gears and chains that were obviously not part of this building’s original structure, and Bel could tell by its size that, when lowered, it would fit perfectly within the pool’s borders, creating a trap atop any swimmer until they couldn’t escape.
That was how he’d drowned his mermaids without leaving marks on their bodies.
He lowered a cage, trapping the women below the water’s surface.
“If you’re going to kill us, then why should I listen to you?”
“Because I can make it quick, or I can make them suffer.” Triton nodded at Ondine and her companion. “They’re so young. So innocent, and I’ll make you watch everything I do to them before I do the same to you. You won’t die well. None of you will.”
“My partner is on her way,” Bel didn’t mention that a man who couldn’t be killed was also hard on her heels. It didn’t matter that Triton had the upper hand. The minute Eamon got here, he was dead. She just had to stall long enough to let him reach her.
“No, she isn’t. I saw a car drive in this direction, and I knew it was you.
I also knew that blonde wouldn’t be far behind, so I set up an intervention.
Then, when you opened the false wall, my alarm sounded, and I realized I’d been found out.
The legendary Detective Isobel Emerson. She always catches her man.
Your partner won’t be here in time to stop me from taking you and those two mermaids and doing whatever I want for days on end.
But if you surrender now, it’ll be quick.
I won’t have to take you. I won’t even hurt you that badly. It’ll be over fast, like my Ariella.”
“Your Ariella?” Bel repeated, a repulsive sickness roiling through her stomach. “You killed your own daughter?”
“She made me do it!” Triton screamed as he jabbed an accusatory finger at Ondine. “I meant to take her that night.”
“You killed your own daughter?” Unquenchable rage flooded Bel.
The girl’s own father killed her? He’d looked her in the eyes as he choked her to death before leaving her unceremoniously in the dirt.
The man who was biologically created to love and protect her murdered her. “How could you do something so vile?”
“Bel!” Olivia’s voice broke the tension with her alarm, and for a second, Bel thought she was imagining her partner. She wasn’t coming. Triton had seen to that. “Eamon told me you hit the panic button! He told me to find you at all costs.”
Both Bel and Triton jerked at Gold’s sudden appearance.
Bel was trained, though. She stopped her finger from twitching against the trigger.
Triton wasn’t. His finger depressed the button, and the cage over the enclosure started lowering.
Ondine shrieked as she tried to escape the pool, but Triton held the controls over his head.
“Get in the water!” he shouted at the second young woman hiding in the cave.
“Never!” the tattooed girl screamed.
“Don’t make me release it!” he shouted. “You saw what the toxin did to Mary. I left her body in there with you so you would all remember.”