“Is it even safe to swim here?” she asked.
“Probably not.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her down through the blackness.
They sank unnaturally fast, the temperature cooling drastically as they fell, and when they reached the silt, Eamon shoved her through the curtain of seaweed. Jagged rocks rising through the water like mountains framed their view, the shadows playing tricks with her vision, so she didn’t see them at first. They were merely shapes floating in graceful waves, nature yet unseen by the human eye, but then the seaweed drifted apart, allowing a sliver of the July sun to slip beneath the surface, and a flash of reflected light slapped Bel in the face.
“Oh g—!” The scream was barely past her lips when Eamon clamped his palm over her mouth to stop the contaminated water from rushing down her throat, but it did nothing to silence her. The bones wired around Laura’s calf had warned that evil dwelled below the surface, but the sight before her was the last thing she’d expected to find. She’d seen humans built into furniture. She’d seen women carved apart until they looked identical, and perhaps it was the eerie lighting at the lake’s bottom, but the haunted scene displayed beautifully before her was a nightmare unmatched.
Bel thrashed against Eamon’s hold, the air in her lungs suddenly white hot. Bubbles foamed around them as she fought against his impossible strength, and then they were at the surface, the sunlight welcoming them back to the land of the living as sharp pains speared her chest with every cough.
“What was that?” she choked as Eamon steadied her panic. “Tell me we didn’t just see that.”
“I wish I could.” Eamon’s voice was too somber for the cheery holiday.
“No.” Bel shoved him away from her, treading water in the hopes that movement would wake her from this nightmare. “No… it can’t… It’s not real.”
“Isobel…”
“It’s not real!” she spat.
“You saw the skeleton on the boat.” Eamon folded her back into his embrace. “You know it is.”
“Dear God.” She cupped a hand over her mouth to keep the nausea from spilling into the water. “How many are down there?”
“I didn’t count.” Was that shock in the Impaler’s voice?
“We should count.” She fell forward until her forehead kissed his, his strength seeping into her through their connection. “I need to go back down.”
“You don’t want to call it in?”
“No. I want to see it for myself, uninterrupted by the world as its creator meant it to be… I need to confirm if Ariella is one of them.”
Eamon nodded as he tightened his hold on her waist. “You ready?”
“No.” She clamped her hand over her mouth and nose. “But I’ll do it anyway.”
Together they sank to the lake floor, the peaceful waters a stark contrast to her pounding heart, and with slowly burning lungs, Bel opened her eyes. The sight before her was almost beautiful, a fantasy so ethereal that it made the horror worse, especially when juxtaposed with the rotten corpses bound in ancient chicken wire.
Mermaids.
The dead girls forgotten in this lake were graceful mermaids, swimming eternally below the surface where no human could lay their eyes on their majesty. Each dead girl floated above the lake’s silt, metal chains anchoring them to the bottom so thatthey wouldn’t float away. Some were mere skeletons wrapped in chicken wire, like the forearm that had captured poor Laura’s leg, and Bel noticed a single snapped chain jutting up from the ground. It seemed one body had broken free, and she suspected the remains had gotten caught between the boat and the rocks, which is where Laura encountered it. Chicken wire had been molded around the skeletons to form the outline of a mermaid, complete with a curved tail. Time had eroded any grandeur they once possessed, but the images remained. Someone had painstakingly bent and twisted wire around these corpses until they resembled the mythological sirens. But it wasn’t the wire-bound girls that had ripped the air from Bel’s lungs. It was the girls in the glass, perfectly preserved to appear as beautiful as they’d been the day they died. A swarm of young women encased in human-sized mermaid sculptures floated between the jagged rocks as if they were swimming. The glass was beautifully detailed, the carved scales and shapely bodies almost too real because of the women they held. The life-sized glass outlines were expertly blown, impeccably shaped to portray the mythical creatures, and the women trapped eternally inside them had been designed to match. Their hair hung loose over their shoulders, and scales coated their legs. The vibrant teals, pinks, purples, and blues reflecting off the glass created all too convincing mermaids, and while their killer had taken great care to design their lower extremities and encase them in exquisite sculptures, he’d left their torsos bare. The thin waists and gently curved breasts warned that these mermaids had been young when evil entombed them, and Bel surged forward despite her aching lungs. Ariella Triton had unmistakable red hair, but a frantic search confirmed the missing teen wasn’t among the dead. Bel’s closer inspection did confirm a horrifying realization about the mermaid’s tails, though, and with an urgent gesture heavenward, she begged Eamon to deliver her to breathable air.
“Tattoos,” she blurted as soon as they broke the surface. “Their scales. I thought it was makeup, but it’s not. The colors were tattooed onto those girls.”
“I noticed that. Their style is identical too. The same artist inked every one.”
“And someone would’ve noticed if over a dozen women had gone missing after visiting the same artist for matching tattoos. I don’t think these were voluntary. I worry the killer forced the scales on them.”
Eamon pulled her to a protruding rock and hoisted her out of the polluted water. “I’ve done horrible things,” he said as he climbed beside her. “I’ve mounted living men on stakes. I almost bled you dry. I’ve killed people in the most unimaginable ways possible, but to force tattoos on young women just to kill them afterward? To cover every inch of their lower half in painful scales. That isn’t a quick task. If the killer forced the designs on his victims, he would’ve had them in his care for weeks. They would’ve watched him mutilate their bodies before he murdered them.” Eamon fell silent as the horror of those beautiful mermaids sank in. “You’ve made me weak,” he finally whispered. “I no longer have the stomach for such depravity.”
“I’ve made you human.” Bel slid her fingers over his cool chest until she felt his pounding heart thrashing as if it might break through his ribs to burrow into her palm. “You are half of hell and half of earth. Your father created a devil in his image, but I remind you that you’re human.”
“It’s easier when I forget that half of me, though. Before you, dead girls would’ve barely caught my eye. Now all I can think about is how they must have cried when he dug those needles into their skins… how you cried when I hurt you.” His gaze dipped to her scars, his black eyes uncomfortably human in his sorrow.
“I don’t think Laura’s skeleton belongs to Ariella Triton,” Bel whispered, because what could she say to ease his disturbance? She’d been a cop for years, and death still haunted her.
“Why not?”
“The killer has been doing this a long time,” she explained. “The skeletons in the chicken wire were first. He tattooed them and then sculpted the metal around their bodies, but a corpse can disintegrate in only two weeks when submerged, especially if there are animals and fish present. I think he grew frustrated with their decay, which is why he eventually discovered the glass mermaid sculptures, but Ariella only just went missing. If she were one of his victims, he would’ve encased her in glass, but she wasn’t down there.”
