Fish Out of Water (14 page)

Forty-four

“You really thought I was going to help you. Didn’t you, Mekkam?”
Fred clutched the arm of her chair so hard, she felt it splinter beneath her fingers. Too late, she had it. The thing that was bugging her.
“Dammit!” She was staring at the hee-hawing Wennd. “You live in the Indian Ocean. And my father has a house in Perth. Which is on the Indian Ocean.” Aarrgghh! She was a fucking marine biologist, she knew her geography, which countries and cities bordered which oceans. They had both dumped a large clue in her lap, and she hadn’t suspected a thing.
Moron!
“Nice,” Thomas said, his mouth twisting in distaste. “You sent your girlfriend to spy on us.”
“Of course I did.”
“That ‘scared of surface dweller’ thing,” Jonas said. “Nice act.”
“Do not speak to me,” Wennd said by way of reply.
Artur was on his feet. “You will address my father as ‘my king’ or ‘Your Majesty.’ ”
“Actually, that’s how you’ll address me. If you were going to live through this. Which you won’t. Sit down.”
Slowly, looking astonished, Artur did so.
“Why do I feel like I came into the middle of the movie?” Jonas asked.
“Because you’re a worm,” her father replied. He wasn’t even mean about it. Perfectly casual, the way Fred would have said, “because you have blue eyes.”
“You won’t get away with this, Farrem. You didn’t before,” Fred said. “Also, not to be a nag or anything, but this really isn’t the way to win back the royal family’s trust.”
“Do not speak to me, you stupid girl. I’ve known anemones that had more intelligence.”
“That seems uncalled for,” Jonas said.
“I know. I think he needs a nap. He’s getting grumpy and he was up late last night, poor tyrannical baby.”
“Be
quiet
! To think, a child of mine who can’t read, who can’t speak our language, much less possess the rudimentary telepathy an
infant
is born with! I cannot believe your mother let you live.”
“Yeah, well, she’s full of flaws like that.”
“I’ve told Moon and told her,” Jonas said, “she just has to step up the baby-killing. But she never listens.”
“And by the way,
Dad
—”
“I ordered you not to speak to me.”
“—there’s more of us in this house than you. Why, exactly, are we not going to rip your treacherous heads off?”
He smirked. “I confess to shock; I thought the prince or the king might ask that. Not you. I wasn’t working this morning, stupid. Well, I was, but not the way you think. I stopped by Sanibel Station—very helpful, some of those surface worms—and made sure that Captain Pearson worm was going to leave with the file.”
“What?” Thomas asked, his voice dangerously low. “You got my dad involved in this?”
“Not at all. It was just a delicious coincidence that he was going to stop by to try to get information for you. I knew Mekkam would eventually notice something was wrong, and I knew my idiot daughter would have a worm friend somewhere that could help her.”
“Did he just call
moi
a worm friend?” Jonas asked.
“No,” Thomas said.
“Moi.”
Looking annoyed that the three of them weren’t more terrified, Farrem continued, “I made sure one of his worm friends had access to it.”
“So we’re supposed to believe you
wanted
us to have your super-secret file?” Jonas asked skeptically.
Fred, meanwhile, was wondering why Tennian, Artur, and Mekkam weren’t moving or speaking.
A megaphone in their heads. That’s why.
“Of course I did! Because I knew even if I
literally
handed you the plan, you’d be too dim to comprehend it. And I knew that what little you could figure out would inspire the stupid girl to suggest they ask for my help.”
“I have to admit,” Fred said, “that wasn’t one of my brightest ideas.”
“Like the time you tried to eat two packages of Mint Milanos with Baileys chasers,” Jonas agreed.
Farrem hissed through his teeth, appeared to recover his temper, then turned to Fred. “I so enjoyed our little talk by the pool, girl. I knew you were dim, but that conversation confirmed it, even before I realized you were mind blind. I certainly dropped enough hints.”
And so he had, Fred realized, cursing herself. When he called her stupid, he wasn’t so far off.
Perth.
So you did sort of get your own kingdom, after all.
Just because your father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather had been king, that didn’t mean that you should be king.
My gift and my curse.
Your mother’s blood is strong in you.
I naturally assumed one of my blood . . . You are your mother’s daughter.
Awww. She had disappointed her papa. Oh, the shame of it!
She couldn’t have been more thrilled. It was hard not to chortle.
Like a typical James Bond villain, her doorknob dad was still bragging about his clever plan. “So after thirty years, I was again face-to-face with my enemies. And they were kind enough to bring the royal cousin, too!”
Wennd smirked. “She was planning to swim down to La Habana today. But I kept her in the area.” Fred noticed that her normal voice was not a whisper. In fact, it was rather nasal and grating, like Madison when she had a head cold and had eaten too many Mentos.
“Too bad,” Fred said.
“What?” Wennd asked, seeming surprised that Fred was speaking to her.
“You’re not beautiful anymore,” she said simply, and Jonas and Thomas nodded in agreement.
“Your sire told you not to speak.”
“Yeah, well,
Dad
hasn’t been paying much attention this past week if he thinks that’ll shut me up. What’s the matter, Farrem? Is something not going according to plan?” Slowly, Fred stood.
Wennd actually took a step backward. “You said they wouldn’t be able to move, Farrem. You promised you could control—”
“Quiet,” he snapped.
“Tough luck about your daughter being the UF equivalent of retarded. Mind blind, isn’t that the phrase? Are you trying to telepathically control me right now, Pop? Because I couldn’t help but notice I can think and talk and move without any trouble at all. So I guess I’ll be kicking your ass starting right about now.”
“Even now,” Farrem said, “even now my people are starting to take over. They’re subduing any Undersea Folk they can find. None of them will be able to move or speak until I say so. It is through me that my people can control yours, Mekkam! My stupid daughter and her idiot worm friends couldn’t break the codes or decipher the charts.”
“Well, of course not. The thing was a thousand pages long. They only had it for a couple of hours,” Jonas said reasonably. “Way to play fair, ya big pussy.”
It really wasn’t the time or place, but Fred had to hide a smile. It was her and Jonas and Thomas against the super strong, super quick, super psychotic nutbag (and his super strong and quick henchwoman/girlfriend) who had boned her mother on a Cape Cod beach. And Jonas and Thomas were acting like it was lunch at McDonald’s. Nothing extraordinary going on here, no way, nuh-uh.
“If they’d had the sense to understand what I
handed
them,” Farrem ground out, “they would have understood my people weren’t getting enhanced, they were swimming about the world doing—isn’t this a funny phrase?—wet work.”
“What’s—” Jonas began.
“Assassinations,” Thomas said.
“Of course that’s what it means.” Jonas sighed. “And here I thought they were designing water parks.”
“Will you
stop talking
?” Farrem shrieked. They were clearly ruining his gloating supervillain moment by not being terrified. “I paid for my enhancement . . . for the drugs, and the treatments, the
years
of biopsies and operations and experiment after experiment—I paid Sanibel Station with my people. They did the work and I got enhanced. Enhanced enough to hide them from
you
, Mekkam, you pious whale. Enhanced so that you will not move or speak unless
I
wish it.”
“Truly inspiring leadership,” Thomas commented. “Making the team do the dirty work while you lie around on a Valium drip getting experimented on.”
Jonas laughed.
Farrem glared dead into Fred’s eyes. “I will kill them if you don’t shut them up.”
“Like you wouldn’t kill them anyway?”
“I’d kill us anyway,” Jonas said. “Thomas?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’d have quit babbling ten minutes ago and killed us, to be honest.”
“In fact,” Jonas added, “if you’re going to keep talking,
would
you please kill us? Right now?”
“Your worm friends think they’re funny. Shut them up if you value them in any way.”
Fred shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve been trying for years. But kill them if you can. Problem is, you fucked up, Farrem. Big-time.”
“You really are enormously stupid,” he marveled. “Even now, you cannot comprehend it is over. I am king. Very soon Mekkam and Artur will be dead. Don’t you understand? I can
make
them kill themselves! I won’t even have to lift a finger! And you! I can’t have you
breeding
.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to do it right this minute.”
“You’re disgusting and your deficiencies will die with you.”
She was fairly certain no one had ever looked at her with such loathing—not even that waiter at the Hancock Tower Legal Sea Foods.
“You’re a freak, a genetic joke. You’re not a worm and you’re not one of my people. You can’t be allowed to breathe for another minute.”
“Yeah, yeah, and you’re going to ground me and take away my car keys. Can you think of the part of that story you
shouldn’t
have told me?” she asked sweetly. She forced her fingers to loosen on the armrests.
She had to keep him on land. Had to. If they went in the water, he’d have the upper hand and it would be all over. And not just for her. She could never take on a full-blooded UF in the water. Certainly not a psychotic one.
And she had to get him out of the house, keep him away from Jonas and Thomas. No hostage-taking today, thank you.
She prayed Dr. Barb wouldn’t be back anytime soon, but kept her tone light and teasing.
“Daddy-o? Can you?”
Jonas was waving a hand in the air. “I know, I know! Pick me!”
“Yeah, you should pick him.” Thomas yawned. “He always gets picked last.”
“Shut
up
!” Farrem said.
“But it’s true,” Jonas said earnestly. “I do always get picked last.”
“The thing you shouldn’t have told me is the part about how you’re the enhanced one. Not your followers.”
Then Thomas produced his switchblade—from where, Fred had no idea. One minute his hand was empty, the next there was a snick of sound and Thomas was holding a knife, turning, throwing it.
Right into Wennd’s throat.

Forty-five

Farrem shrieked and clutched his head. He was powerful enough so that his grip on Artur’s and Mekkam’s and Tennian’s minds did not lessen, but hearing Wennd’s death screams in his head couldn’t have been too comfortable.
Fred dove across the table at him, her momentum carrying them both through the glass patio door. The sound was a thousand teacups breaking at once.
Good. Good. Get the fight away from Thomas and Jonas. And keep Farrem out of the water. If he ever got into his tail form, the fight was over.
And so was everything else.
His fist looped toward her face but she ducked, and then they were rolling across her lawn, Farrem choking and gagging on grass. When they stopped, Fred was on top and the pool was less than seven feet away.
“Your girlfriend’s having a real bad day, did you notice?” she asked, then brought her head down and broke her father’s nose with a muffled crunch. It hurt her forehead, but not as much as it hurt him, and that was just fine.
He howled and punched out at her, but he was distracted by the blood running down his throat and, she imagined, Wennd’s dying screams running through his big, stupid brain. She tried to follow up but he managed to buck her off. He scuttled like a crab, clawing through the grass in an attempt to get to the pool. She leapt forward and caught a handful of his thick green hair, so like hers.
She
hated
her hair. She yanked. Hard. Farrem yowled. A lot.
She dragged him away from the pool. Yep, he was stronger than she was, no doubt. Probably smarter, too, she’d give him that—it was a good plan. Everything had come about the way he predicted it would. It would have worked, if not for the Freak That Was Fred.
But she’d spent her life hiding her mermaid nature, blending with surface dwellers. She’d been raised by hippies, for God’s sake. She was a helluva lot more comfortable on land than he was. Banished or not, big houses or not, he still couldn’t stay out of the water for very long. And the longer he was out, the weaker he got.
She could stay out of it for weeks, and had.
She yanked harder, a thought
(am I actually enjoying this?)
there and gone before she could catch it. His hair (and some of his scalp) came off in her hand and then he was again getting to his feet, this time heading for the dock.
Too slow. Again. She leapt for him, landing on his back like dear old Dad was giving dumb Daughter a piggyback ride. She grabbed his chin in both hands. And wrenched to the left, hard.
The crack was undramatic, the sound a walnut makes when it’s crushed in the nutcracker. But Farrem dropped like a rock.
A big, green-haired, psychotic, dead rock.
She didn’t even have time to comprehend she had won—it had been so
fast
! He’d only revealed himself, what? Fifteen minutes ago? But there was no time to understand what had happened because someone from behind yanked her off his body.
She rolled, trying to scramble to her feet to face the new threat
(oh, man, which henchmen is this now?)
only to see Thomas standing over her father’s corpse. He brought a foot down on Farrem’s rib cage, hard.
“You were dead the minute you called her stupid, motherfucker! When you said her mother should have drowned her! Your girlfriend’s
dead
! You’re
dead
! You can’t touch her,
ever
! Get up, you piece of shit! Get up so I can feed you your balls!” Another crunch as the left ribs caved in.
“Thomas!” She grabbed him from behind, dodged (barely) the elbow he brought back, and carefully pulled him away from the corpse. “He’s dead, Thomas. He’s already dead. It’s pointless. The prick can’t feel a thing. Unfortunately,” she added.
“Put me down, please, Fred,” he said, perfectly calmly.
She did.
He turned, grabbed her face with both hands, and kissed her so hard she felt it in her knees.
Which, of course, was the moment Artur and Mekkam and Tennian came staggering out the broken patio door.
Thomas pointed to Artur. “And you can’t have her, either.”
“Holy shit!” Jonas said, peeking around Tennian. “What’d we miss?” Then, “I’m not cleaning any of this up.”