Mari was more than positive that they were going to die.
The big, bad, ugly guys were going to kill Ambrose and then tear her apart and she would never be able to strangle Ray with her bare hands
“Is this who I think it is?” one of the men growled. He had one eye and a scar that dragged down the side of his face. Almost all of the left side of his body was tattooed. His tail was black as night, completely opposite of hers and Ambrose’s.
“It can’t be,” another one muttered. She couldn’t see who had spoken, but as she looked around the room, she took a small moment to take in their surroundings. Just like the outside of the building, moss was gathering in the far corners of the room. The lighting—however the hell they managed to get it was beyond her—was dim and the room had a hazy look to it, like there was a smoker in the group. Except, smoking wasn’t possible underwater and to bring electricity into the equation…Her head hurt from trying to work it out.
Several feet away from them was the group of men, soggy wooden tables lined the wall with rusted steel chairs circling them. To the left of the main entrance was the traditional bar set-up. A high-top wrap-around counter with a lonely, thin bartender was there, several clear bottles of…something…in them sitting in front of him. Her face twisted with disgust as she struggled to identify whatever was in them. Some had green goo, others had black goo, and others had brown goo. Mari tore her eyes away from the nasty bottles and looked at the men again.
“He looks a little older…more ugly than before.”
Mari was so close to Ambrose that she could feel every reaction he had. So when his shoulders bunched up, tensing like an arrow ready to fly, she grabbed his fisted hand and tried to soothe him into calming down—until she realized what the ugly asshole—tailhole?—had said.
She frowned. “You aren’t ugly,” she whispered fiercely, poking his elbow. “Don’t listen to them.”
“I’m not,” he replied back softly. She tried to peer around his shoulder to get a look at his face, but he faced forward, not breaking his concentration.
“Are you sure—“
“Oh, and look at what we have here.” The same man who was missing an eye leered over her protector’s shoulder.
Mari tensed, her hand instantly wrapping around Ambrose’s arm, taking comfort in the bulging muscle that flexed under her palm. Hunky fish men weren’t such a bad thing, she told herself. Except if one was faced with twenty of them.
Now, that was a problem. Her heart rate kicked up another notch as the silence stretched on. Ambrose didn’t move from his spot in front of her, even though the eyeless man had made it clear that he wanted all the attention on her—she was hiding like a scared tuna from a fishing net behind Ambrose.
“A woman?” a foreign voice asked, sounding a little dumb. When he spoke, the vowels drooped, like he could barely talk. She peeked through Ambrose’s elbow, seeing who had spoken, and the whole scene in front of her.
Instantly, her heart tried to climb its way up her throat. Okay. So this really wasn’t good.
All of the mermen that she could see had out some sort of weapon. From a small dagger, to a full-blown spear, to some sort of arrow thing… and every single one was pointed at them.
“Ambrose,” she whispered, pressing flush against his back as the guy behind her moved in a little closer, enough that his tail brushed against her elbow. “I don’t want to die yet…”
“Will you look at that! She speaks!” The room burst into laughter—it sent a chill down her back. “So the Exiled One brings us a boon for staying here, is that it? A dumb little chit who foolishly followed you and has enough brain to form words.”
Luckily, the attention was focused on Ambrose. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was only getting angrier—his back was as rigid as a rock and the arm under her hand was unmoving.
“I have brought you something, but not the woman.” His voice was as steady as she’d ever heard it before, with a hint of something more, something…dangerous. She closed her eyes, wishing that they could be anywhere other than there. In a warm bed, with popcorn and a movie, grading papers and laughing at the students who had obviously cheated their way through the homework and tests… That was where she wanted to be.
Instead, she was there, in some sort of run down fish hotel. About to die. Lovely.
“Well now, that’s just too bad,” one of the men sneered, slinking his way up to Ambrose, daring to get close enough to peer behind him, at Mari.
Her stomach heaved. He was missing half an arm, the skin stretching over the broken off bone like thin paper. The guy was twice the size of Ambrose, and that was saying something.
“We won’t accept nuthin’ but the girl,” he said, a perverted gleam entering his eyes as they trailed over her scale-covered breasts and hips, then finally her tail—right before it left just as quickly. His face drained of color and he stumbled away from them.
“A God?” he asked faintly, shock lining every inch of his face. The room began to rumble with deep voices. “You bring a god to this place?”
Mari frowned. Were they talking about her?
“A god?”
“The Exiled One and a god?”
“Here?”
“No..!”
Around her, the voices of all the men rose, overlapping each other. She stood there with her arm twined with Ambrose’s, confusion coursing through her. They thought she was a god? And Ambrose hadn’t corrected them?
“Hey,” she whispered, pressing closer against him as the voices got louder. They were all debating with each other over something, and the roar was turning into a full-blown argument. “Maybe we should sneak out while they’re distracted. Why do they think I’m a god?”
Ambrose turned his head and looked down at her. His eyes were worried, but his face was set in hard lines. “Just…stay quiet Mari. If you let them think you’re a god, we can avoid a fight and hopefully have a place to stay. These men might even give their loyalty to you.”
“But I’m not a god!” she said, throwing her hands up. “And I really don’t want the loyalty of these…hooligans.”
A smile quirked his lips. “You’re starting to sound like me,” he murmured back, covering her hand with his. The action caused a shot of warmth to travel down her arm, leaving her almost breathless.
Funny. She didn’t feel so worried anymore.
“Don’t worry, Mari. Men have a tendency to worship those with a higher status, especially these ones. They may be rough, and they may cavort with Octopians on rare occasions, but they help those they admire.”
“Not a single one of those men admire me,” she replied, even as a blush tinged her cheeks. The way Ambrose had said that almost made it sound like he was one of those men.
“Oh, but they will. Just stay quiet and let me take care of this.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Won’t they wonder why the big, bad goddess isn’t taking a stand for herself?”
“No. They will think of you as cunning for watching the scene and not saying anything.” This time, he flashed her a full-blown smile and began to extract her from him.
“What scene…” The rest of what she said fell on deaf ears. Ambrose was too busy surging forward and grabbing the man closest to her by the arm, digging his hand into an open flesh wound.
A scream ripped the air, startling everyone into silence.
“Talk like that in front of her again, and you’ll wish you had never grown that tail,” Ambrose growled, causing shivers to run down her back. He wasn’t really going to start a fight on purpose, was he?
No. That would be dumb. Ambrose wasn’t dumb. He wouldn’t…
“Oy! You wanna take this somewhere else?” A man standing only several feet away from her snarled like a wild animal before the metallic ring of metal sliced through the air. After that, several other weapons were unsheathed, and the man without an eye came forward.
With a steely, narrow gaze, he ran his eye over Ambrose before looking at Mari.
“We’ll challenge you for ‘er.”
Mari started. “What?”
“Just be quiet,” Ambrose growled. He seemed to assess the man standing in front of him before releasing the grasp he’d had on the merman. The guy fell back, panting, face as red as a tomato.
Mari barely noticed, and really didn’t care. Ambrose had said so himself that he wasn’t strong enough to handle a fight, so why the hell was he doing this right now?
“If we win, we get to keep ‘er. If you win, ye’ get to stay here and we won’t lay a finger on her.” The man traced her body with his eye. She shivered, reaching for Ambrose again. She wouldn’t say anything, she really wouldn’t say anything—
“That’s fucking nasty.”
“Mari!” Ambrose exclaimed, grabbing her outstretched hand.
“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!” She covered her face with her hands as Ambrose wrapped an arm around her shoulder in a tight grip, silencing her.
Mari could feel the eyeless man looking at her. “Mayhap she is much more valuable than we thought…” He didn’t have a chance to finish.
Everything happened at once. Ambrose dropped her like a rock, shoving her back with his tail as the akrina wrapped its nasty-ass hand around her arm and the eyeless man, with two others, lunged at Ambrose.
The next moments were a blur. The men around her began to shout, urging on their guys, while Ambrose struggled under their weight. Panic spread through her like a wildfire. He wasn’t getting up or moving, but letting them beat on him like a punching bag.
It went on for minutes. She screamed and kicked, tried to get the damn akrina to let go of her, even went as far as crying, but it was to no avail. Her heart hammered in her chest, pain for Ambrose coursing through every vein in her body. Tears fell down her cheeks, or would have had they not joined the rest of the water around them.
“Ambrose, get the hell up! God damnit, just…get up,” she screamed, fighting against the hold that the akrina had on her. Her breath caught on a sob, the sound of punches and kicks and slicing flesh making her flinch as they fell into her ears with an unending resonance.
“Ambrose…” God, if she could only get away from the akrina. Her hands itched to kill something, to strangle the men that were hurting Ambrose. He shouldn’t have done this so soon; he’d said so himself that he didn’t have the strength.
Had he known this was going to happen?
Mari looked away sharply as one of the guys drove his fist into Ambrose’s temple. Oh my god…
The akrina took the hint, covering her eyes for her, blacking out everything completely. Whether it was because Ambrose had willed it to do that, or because akrina knew she couldn’t bear it, she didn’t know and didn’t care.
Seconds later, she felt the shift in the room.
Someone grunted—and not Ambrose.
Then the screaming started. Blood curdling, skin-raising screams that would haunt Mari for the rest of her life.
And it wasn’t from just three men. No, it was from everyone that was in the room except Mari. The screams surrounded her from every single point, the sounds of pain so loud her eardrums started to hammer.
Ambrose. He was doing this. She could sense it, feel it, hear it. He was showing them who was dominant like some wolf in a pack, and she was the deciding factor. He’d accepted the pain for her, made them feel like they were winning, and then rounded on them with a ferociousness she’d known he’d possessed.
Her eyes welled with tears just as the screams died down.
She waited for the moment when the akrina would release her. The blackness slowly receded and the akrina let her go completely. She instantly spotted Ambrose, standing in the center of a dozen or more limp bodies, with pieces of flesh slowly orbiting the room and blood following in their wake.
Mari almost started crying right then and there—but not because of the groaning men or the carnage that were laying on the floor at Ambrose’s fin.
She shot forward, throwing herself against his body. Mari was never going to forget the image of all those men on Ambrose, beating the holy hell out of him. Not ever in a million years would she forgive herself for starting this, either.
“Ambrose, I’m so sorry… I’m so, so sorry…” She felt her eyes start to sting and she tightened her arms around his neck, not even noticing the way he was trying to pry her off of him while gasping for water. “I can’t believe… I’ll never not listen to you again—I’m so sorry…”
“Mari, stop it. I can’t breathe—” She immediately loosened her grip on him, but not completely. She had to make sure he was okay after what had happened, and he clearly wasn’t.
There was a cut going from his temple to his jaw and it was seeping blood, a black eye was already forming, and his lip was busted. She didn’t even want to see the state of his shoulders. Sobbing, she demanded, “Why would you let something like that happen?”
“It had to be done—Oh, sweet Atlantis. Not with the crying—“
“Why would you let them beat you fishless?”
“Mari, please don’t cry like that, I’m really not hurt and now we have a place to sleep tonight—“
“These bastards tried to kill you!”
Ungodly rage flared within her and she looked for the nearest thing to her—and thwacked it with her tail as hard as she could. It groaned, pleasing her. “You rat—fish bastard! If my brothers were here, they’d be cutting you into small pieces and sprinkling you over some noodles with Alfredo sauce, and where would you be now, huh? Cut up and in my god damn stomach! How about that?” She slammed her tail against another body near her, not even caring that she was probably making an army of enemies.
She paused, breathing heavily. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
It whimpered.
Pleased, she pushed her hair behind her ear and met Ambrose’s eyes, then blinked when she actually saw the rush of relief leave his body.
“Thank the gods that you aren’t crying anymore,” he mumbled, looking around the bodies. Not a single merman had been left standing. The tables were thrown against the wall, stools floating around them, and glass cups were wavering in the water like they didn’t know what to do with themselves.
“But…Why are you not crying over this? Aren’t women supposed to cry when something like this happens, and not…I don’t know, make it worse?
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re just like all the other men, aren’t you? Just because I’m a feminine fish, I can’t be happy about a little bit of much-needed carnage that doesn’t involve you dead at my feet! Well, let me tell you, my dear fishy Ambrose—I like violence!” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “And I like that you’re still alive enough for me to give you a good piece of my mind— If you ever pull a stunt like that again—” she growled. “I can guarantee you will have wanted to be among the bodies dead on the floor.”
He held up a hand, frowning. “None of them are dead, Mari.”
“I can fix that.”
He stared at her, then shook his head.
“So…for sure, you aren’t upset about this? Not scared of me?”
Mari snorted. “If anything, I think you should be scared of me, because the second I get you up in that bedroom—” I’m going to find out how long it takes to get shit-faced horny with a pair of legs to wrap around your waist.
“You’re going to what?” he asked, brows lowering over his eyes.
Bad Mari. Bad. Terribly bad. Horribly bad.
Still, the thought of actually carrying out with that image in her head…
God damnit. What the hell had gotten into her? Lusting after a merman after hours of meeting him? She had gone from horrified, to terrified, to crying, to angry, and to horny within the span of seconds. This wasn't like her at all—but the emotions were too strong for her to deny or fight. All she could do was go with what was happening.
The only reason she wasn’t about to admit herself into a mental ward was because the whole entire day has been totally FUBAR’d. First her boyfriend, the cruise, the goddess, turning into a fish, and then this? Too much for one girl to handle, way too much.
Which was why, right as alarm flashed over Ambrose’s face, she passed.
The hell.
Out.