Deadly Little Mermaids
Deadly Little Mermaids
A Low Campbell Adventure
J.D. Rogers
***
Text copyright © 2017 by J.D. Rogers
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All characters are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 1
Being someone's girlfriend isn't easy, especially when you're a mermaid. Mermaids are natural flirts, natural teases. When a guy flirts with us, our first reaction is to flirt back, maybe even tease him a little. It doesn't matter if the guy is handsome or not.
Being someone's girlfriend means you have to suppress those urges. When a guy flirts with you, you're not suppose to flirt back. You're supposed to be polite but aloof. That's why I was ignoring the guy at the next table, the one smiling at me.
I'm thirty years old, which isn't that old for a mermaid. Our average life span is between two to three hundred years. So you shouldn't be surprised when I tell you that I just got my first boyfriend. As such, I'm still learning the rules, still learning what a girlfriend should and shouldn't do. Sometimes I make mistakes, or fall into old habits, but tonight was important to John, so I was doing my best not to screw up.
John had been a friend with benefits, one of many to be perfectly honest, then he got engaged to a siren named Crystal. I would've called her an evil siren, but that seems redundant. As far as I'm concerned, all sirens are evil.
I should probably mention that sirens and mermaids are natural rivals, so I might be a bit biased. Although she did fire John after they broke up, and then give his name to a bogeyman, who kidnapped him and put a gun to his head. That seems pretty evil to me.
It wasn't until I rescued John from the bogeyman that he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. Why did I agree? Like most mermaids, I'm naturally curious. I've always wondered what it would be like to be in love, what it would be like to have someone in love with me.
Most supernaturals aren't capable of loving someone else. We're driven by our baser instincts. Fear. Lust. Hunger. Greed. Compassion, empathy, love, are feelings we don't seem capable of experiencing. So it wasn't like I was going to fall in love with someone. To experience love, romantic love, I needed someone to fall in love with me. That's why I didn't want to screw up my relationship with John, and why I was on my best behavior.
Unfortunately, life, or God, or fate, or whatever you want to call it, likes to screw with me. This time that screwing came in the form of a supernatural I call Elvis vamp.
I was having dinner with John and a couple of his friends, a husband and wife named Mark and Rachel. Maybe friends isn't the right word. Mark was John's new boss. John holds a doctorate in marine biology and Mark was in charge of the marine biology department at one of the local colleges. The one that just hired John.
And no, Elvis Presley isn't a vampire. Elvis vamp is just some vamp that looks like a young Elvis, complete with the thick black hair and the matching sideburns. For all I know, he could've been an Elvis impersonator before he became a vampire, or he could've been turned into a vampire back in the fifties, when Elvis was a rising star.
I don't know what he did when he was human. Now that he's a vampire, he works as a bouncer at a club owned by an older, more powerful vampire named Titus Hawthorn. A club called O Positive.
“Titus wants to see you,” Elvis vamp said, stopping at our table. He was wearing his work clothes, black slacks and a black tee shirt with O Positive written across the front in red letters that dripped blood.
We were in a restaurant. An expensive restaurant. The kind of place that charges a lot of money and serves tiny portions on expensive plates. The kind of place I usually avoid. I didn't know how Elvis vamp managed to find me, nor did I care.
“I'm a little busy,” I said. “Tell Titus I'll stop by tomorrow night.”
I waved Elvis vamp away with my right hand, the hand with the emerald ring that I took from him. Won it in a bet to be precise. He bet me that I couldn't get by him. I bet him that I could. Then I froze the water inside his body, inside the blood coursing through his veins, inside the individual cells that made up his body. Doing that would've killed a human, even most supernaturals, but vamps aren't like most supernaturals.
You want to kill a vamp you got to boil the water inside their body. Of course, if I had killed Elvis vamp, I wouldn't be able to tease him by waving his ring under his nose. And truth be told, there are few things I enjoy more than teasing vampires.
“Titus said that this is important.”
“That would explain the twelve text messages he sent me today.”
Rachel leaned toward Mark, her eyes locked on Elvis vamp. “I've never seen a man that pale.”
“He's a vampire,” I said. She had been whispering, but like most supernaturals, I have very good hearing. “Probably hasn't fed in awhile.”
“I prefer my blood fresh, not to mention body temperature,” Elvis vamp said. “Nothing worse than having to drink cold blood from a plastic bag.”
“Yeah, life is tough.” I waved Elvis vamp away with the hand containing his ring. “Tell Titus that I'll see him tomorrow.”
“I can't,” Elvis vamp said. “Titus told me not to return unless you were with me.”
“You know what this is about?” Rachel asked John. She was still whispering, but I could still hear her, as could Elvis vamp.
“Low is a private detective,” John said. “Humans and supernaturals hire her for all kinds of things.”
“Does Titus want to hire me?” I asked Elvis vamp. “Or does he think I owe him a favor?”
“He says you owe him a lot of favors.”
“I owed him one favor, and I paid him back. I gave him a wisp.” The wisp was actually a professional assassin that had been hired to kill me. She was tall and thin, and looked like a model. She even sounded like a model, speaking in French.
“He let the wisp go. Said she was too annoying.”
“I don't care what he did with her. I gave. He accepted. That means we're even.”
“Tell him that. All I know is I'm not suppose to return without you.”
I decided to freeze Elvis vamp from the inside out. It would turn him into a statue for a good hour, which would give me time to finish my dinner. I nixed that idea when I looked at John and he shook his head, like he knew what I was thinking. Apparently, freezing the water inside a vampire's body was something a
normal girlfriend didn't do. At least not when she was dining out with her boyfriend and his boss.
“Looks like I'm going to have to take this meeting,” I said, smiling at Mark and Rachel.
“One of the disadvantages of being a private detective,” John added. “You never know when someone is going to need you.”
“Do you want us to wait for you?” Mark asked, when I pushed my chair back and stood up.
I looked at Elvis vamp, to see what this was about.
Elvis vamp shrugged his shoulders. “Don't look at me. I'm just the errand boy.”
“Better not,” I said. “These things can take awhile.”
John stood, wrapped an arm around my waist, and kissed me. It was a long passionate kiss that involved tongue. Maybe too passionate for a public place, but then that was John, when he fell for a girl, he fell hard. That was one of the reasons I agreed to become his girlfriend. He didn't just fall hard, he tended to fall for the wrong girls. Like Crystal. The evil siren.
I probably wasn't the right girl either, but at least I was up front about it. I warned him when he got engaged to Crystal that supernaturals aren't capable of falling in love. And if one tells you that she loves you, she's lying. Myself included.
“You two are such a cute couple,” a grinning Rachel said.
“We are, aren't we,” I said, flashing a grin of my own. Was that something a girlfriend would say? It sounded like something a girlfriend would say. Never having been someone's girlfriend, I wasn't sure. I was playing it by ear.
“Call me,” John said, as he sat back down.
I nodded and turned my attention to Elvis vamp. “Lead the way, King.”
Elvis vamp wrinkled his brow, probably trying to figure out why I called him, King. He gave up and headed toward the exit. I fell in behind him.