Page 16

No. It didn’t, did it? It looked like Syrus was legitimately wounded, whether he looked human or…other. Luke ran over the events of the morning quickly in his mind. Syrus had been in distress at the beach, hadn’t he? Not drowning, maybe, but…exhausted to the point of collapse. Hungry and tired and hurt. That hadn’t been false, even if his appearance had been deceiving.

Luke rubbed a hand over his face, his new stubble prickling at his skin. “Can you change back?”

“Not without help.” Syrus gave a demure little wince, as if in apology, although it was hard to tell if it was sincere. “I didn’t get enough blood, you know.”

What the hell did that mean?

But Luke already knew, didn’t he? That strange moment when Syrus had licked his palm, back when Luke had thought that Syrus was delirious from exhaustion. Luke glanced down at his hand. It was bandaged now, but there had been blood. He’d sliced it hard enough on those rocks.

Luke’s stomach roiled. There wasn’t a ringing in his ears anymore, but there was…fuzz. Like his head was stuffed with cotton and he couldn’t get it out. He looked to the bedside table, where Syrus’s steak lay, only a few nibbles taken out. Like he hadn’t cared for the taste after all.

Too well done.

“What do you eat?” Luke found himself asking, the question escaping through the growing fog clouding his brain.

Syrus blinked large, guileless eyes at him. “I told you. Meat. Raw meat.”

And then he smiled—a full, cheery grin—and Luke noticed what he’d failed to catch sight of before. Namely, that Syrus’s teeth in this form were very, very sharp.

The fuzzy-headed feeling grew worse, the fog whiting out the edges of Luke’s vision. Luke’s knees stopped doing their job, buckling under him without warning.

Ah, shit.

Luke barely had time to see Syrus’s toothy grin fall before he hit the ground and was out.

Luke woke with a gasp.

The carpet was rough against his cheek, his gaze fixed on the gap between the bottom of the guest bed and the floor. There were tatters of clothing there, presumably the same clothes Luke had dressed Syrus in before he’d transformed.

Luke should vacuum in here more often. He’d definitely been neglecting the carpet under the bed; there were dust bunnies everywhere.

“Are you awake yet? Luke? Luke. Answer me.”

For a guest, Luke’s merman was pretty bossy, wasn’t he? Luke had been chalking it up to cultural differences from the beginning, but he hadn’t quite realized how vast those cultural differences might really be.

“I’m awake. Thanks for the help.” Luke dragged himself to seated with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. He was obviously being sarcastic about the help, but he probably should have listened to Syrus when he’d suggested Luke sit down. It would have saved Luke from an embarrassing fainting episode, which he could only hope would never, ever be mentioned again in his life.

Syrus’s torso was twisted, his upper body almost falling off the bed so he could keep sight of Luke on the floor. He had the gall to look aggravated by Luke’s dig. “I’m not very mobile at the moment.” He narrowed his eyes. “If I could have just a small bit of blood.”

“What?” Luke reared back, wincing when the back of his head hit the wall. “No.”

Syrus clucked his tongue, as if Luke was being unreasonable not opening up a vein right then and there. Luke rubbed a hand over his face, and once again felt the prickle of his new stubble. Jesus. He’d primped for a merman. A merman who was asking for his blood like someone else might ask for a hand up off the floor.

“I want you to start from the beginning.”

Syrus huffed at him. “That would take ages.”

“Then start with how you ended up at the beach.”

Syrus was silent for a long moment, peering at Luke with a shrewd, calculating gaze. If he was uncomfortable in his odd, contorted position, he made no sign of it. It was like he couldn’t risk letting Luke out of his sights.

Maybe seeing his only ticket out of here drop to the ground had unnerved him.

“Very well.”

And then Syrus proceeded to tell Luke a weird story somewhere between horror fic and fairy tale. Of swimming close to the town’s shores, scoping out the landscape for something he called “his pod,” only to be caught, captured, and dragged to a small tank in the middle of nowhere. Of being poked and prodded and medicated, hurt over and over again over the course of several days by men in white lab coats. Of escaping his capture during a power outage and making it back to Luke’s beach. Of trying to survive for over a week in the water, alone and hobbled and in pain.

Basically, he managed to answer a few of Luke’s questions while raising about ten thousand more. Such as, Where the hell had he come from in the first place? How had he escaped while in merman form? What in the fucking hell was he?