“Oh yes.” He followed her gaze. “Those are just for hoisting specimens out of the van though. Still, it’s a taste of your future. This is a Sunday, and early. About, ohhh, six AM? I have a whole day to play with you.” He hauled on the end, pulled her out and let the canvas tube down onto a concrete floor. The canvas flattened, opened out.
When he kneeled beside her, she slapped her tail again, splashing him with the residual water.
Wolfgang wiped his face with one hand then grabbed her chin and dragged it around as he stared down at her. “Bitch. Was that you hating on me? I promise I do hate better than you ever could.”
She tightened her jaw as he traced around her lips and made a growling sound she’d never made before.
“You’re just a fucking animal. Just for you, I dug up this gag. Such sharp little teeth you have.” He stroked along in front of them at the gumline. “I’m going to love your screams.”
“Bashtud,” she managed past the gag, and tried to fasten her teeth onto his fingers but her mouth couldn’t open much more.
He pushed back on his knee and withdrew his hand, then chuckled and returned to push his fingers into her mouth and press them onto her tongue. There was a big hole in the metal rod, she realized as she choked and spluttered.
“Such a fun day ahead of us.”
Then he dragged her further into the building to where there were shiny steel tables and walls lined with tanks of fish. He turned on many lights above that blinded her.
Then, while she was recovering from that, still straining to open her eyes, he hooked something into her, near where her tail muscle ended and the fin began.
Searing pain erupted.
The fire.
Rippling fire.
She gasped, held it in, tensing.
And he began to pull on a chain. It clanked as it ran through an anchor point far above, and her tail began to be hauled upward.
Her weight fell on where she was hooked.
She screamed full-throated and writhing, as he hoisted her upward.
When he was done and she was off the floor, he left her there, swinging slightly, with her long, wet hair dragging the floor. Panting, she waited for the pain to subside a little, for the screeching feel of it running from tail to spine to her pounding head, to settle to something bearable.
Less pain, less pain…
Unscrunching her face from the grimace of agony, she heard the scrape of his boots and stared up at him. A curved knife hung point-down from one hand.
He raised it to waist-level and pursed his lips, then remained in place, stiff, uncompromising, apart from the turn of the knife as he shifted his fingers.
She couldn’t help flinching. Dying by a knife, with this maniac intent on hurting her, it was going to be terrifying.
As bad as what she had inflicted on others?
Worse. At least her lovers had suffered ecstasy as well as death. Her bites had been nothing compared to steel slicing into her flesh.
She imagined the first cut of that slim weapon, her guts spilling, and pinched her teeth onto the gag. When he took a step toward her, she whimpered.
His boots crunched again, twisting in a small arc on the spot, then Wolfgang lowered himself, crouching until they were level with each other, face to face.
The knife was in his hand, glinting as he turned his wrist. The man had the eyes of the Devil, she decided. Dark, unmoving in focus, as deadly and cold as one of the great ocean predators that lurked and hunted the bigger prey. The spectacles had gone.
She whimpered again as he came even closer, until his breath met hers, then he lifted his gaze and looked up the length of her.
Blood was trickling and dripping down her, she could feel it meandering over her belly.
His mouth tightened. “Why?” The word was distorted almost beyond recognition, as if the syllables were spiked and he’d torn his throat uttering it.
Raffaela could only shake her head, minutely, not wanting to attract his attention again, fearing the knife, not sure if he wanted an answer.
“Why!” His scream was as loud as hers had been, and she shook, for it ripped into her ears. It filled the room and accused her of a multitude of things, all in that one burst of sound. Things she could never deny. The loose end of the chain above jangled at her movement.
“Why?” he said, quietly, closing his eyes, jamming them shut. The skin around his eyes furrowed. “I loved him.” The sentence broke as he said it, pieces of it falling to the air as his throat again failed in its purpose.
Her shaking intensified. The chain kept rattling, signaling her fear to him. What did that matter?
This was her doing.
Even so, hate had been planted. How could it not? He hated her, and she may have detested what she had done but… the way he’d trapped her, his murderous intent, and the stench of his betrayal mingled with her fears. If she could rip out his throat, she would. Her jaw clenched, and she gnawed the rod, teeth clinging stickily to the metal.
CHAPTER 4
Wolfgang stood, inhaling wetly through his nose, snorting, swallowing the evidence. That was from the tears he refused to shed. His eyes would be shining with them. Roughly he dragged his arm across his face, pressing, dabbing, then he glared down at her.
Blood on her. Blood, knives, a hook through her, and that scream of hers that fair stuck a nail in his heart, ground in his worthlessness, woke him up to truth.
What was he doing?
Merrick would’ve laughed at Wolfgang. If he knew. If a dead man could know.
Torturing a fucking mermaid? His intent had failed at the first hurdle. This was not him.
He staggered back a small way, remembering the day Merrick was taken, and every night and day since then when he’d imagined Merrick rotting, eyeless, rolling in the waves and the currents, being picked clean by sharp-toothed fish. Fish like her. Like this hooked creature. By now, he’d be limbless and gutted.
A flesh-tattered skeleton.
All her doing. He raked her with his scrutiny again. Vengeance should have been sweet.
“What are you?”
And he wasn’t sure what he was truly asking with that.
Was she human? Couldn’t be.
Was she human enough to value her life as he would a human’s?
He rubbed his shut eyes with splayed finger and thumb.
If she was not… what was he doing anyway? Would he torture a dolphin?
How did he prove it? Did it fucking matter? He pressed his fingers harder onto his eyeballs.
After all, when had he ever thought it moral to dissect a living animal? Never. His colleagues had laughed at him when they visited a restaurant with live lobsters in tanks. He’d walked out when they threw one, still brandishing its limbs, in a pot of boiling water.
One of his weirdnesses.
Wolfgang dropped his hands, feeling the looseness in his arms and that roiling nausea as if he might throw up. His jaw muscles knotted.
He’d stuck that gag on her to keep her from biting him with those shark teeth, maybe killing him if she reached his neck, but it also meant she couldn’t talk back. What was he going to do with this lithe, beautiful, piece of death?
He kneeled again. Letting her go made him feel sick too.
Not an animal then. Too smart. A monster? So many human monsters in this world. His brain ticked over, offering up a gem of a thought for the first time in ages.
“Why do we not have fossil evidence of you, of your… people?” He jerked his wrist, pointing the knife at her, and his upside-down mermaid zeroed in on that with those big green eyes.