Pulling as hard as she could, Gemma managed to throw Lexi off balance. She stumbled backward, flapping her arms and wings like mad and sending papers billowing around the room, until she finally fell backward.
Gemma scrambled to her knees and crawled over to her. Remembering the picture that Lydia had given her, Gemma climbed onto Lexi. She sat on her bare stomach, straddling Lexi.
As soon as she did, Lexi reached out and grabbed Gemma. Her long fingers wrapped tightly around Gemma’s throat, cutting off her air supply. Gemma balled up her hand and punched Lexi as hard as she could in the stomach, hoping her fist could break through Lexi’s soft flesh.
Lexi squawked and threw Gemma off her, causing Gemma to crash painfully against the fireplace.
Gemma coughed and gasped for breath, and she knew she had to come up with a better plan. There was no way she could stop Lexi with her bare hands. She needed to find a weapon, unless she turned into the monster.
Unfortunately, Gemma didn’t have time to do either before Lexi was on her. Lexi reached out for her, and Gemma narrowly slid underneath her grasp. The golden wings were outstretched behind her, and Gemma grabbed one, yanking on it as hard as she could.
But Lexi was stronger. She flapped her wings and sent Gemma flying back on the floor. Lexi ran back over to her, running as quickly as her long bird legs could carry her, and when she reached Gemma, she kicked out at her.
Her clawed foot connected with Gemma’s stomach, tearing into the tender flesh, but that wasn’t the worst part. Lexi kicked her so hard that when Gemma flew backward and collided with the wall, everything went black for a moment.
She had no idea how long she was out, but when she opened her eyes, her head throbbing painfully and her vision blurred, she saw Lexi standing over her, cackling at her pain. Gemma tried to move, but she wasn’t getting up so easy this time.
“I’m going to go outside and finish Daniel off,” Lexi said as she stepped back. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back for you in a few seconds, after I eat his heart.”
THIRTY-NINE
Massacre
Daniel had landed facedown in the mud among shards of broken glass. He rolled over onto his back—slowly, because he had a feeling that Lexi had cracked one of his ribs. The rain was pouring down on him so hard, it felt like needles stabbing his skin.
He squinted up and saw Lexi climbing out the window. She had to fold her wings against her back to make it through.
Daniel tried pushing himself up, but flying through a glass window had knocked a lot out of him.
Lexi walked over to him, her legs taking long, rather elegant strides. When she stood over him, her outstretched wings worked as a partial umbrella. She cocked her head, staring down at him.
“I cannot wait to eat your heart,” Lexi said, and flicked out an odd, serpentine tongue.
“Well, you’re gonna have to.”
Daniel rolled back and pulled his legs up to his chest, then he pushed them out as hard as he could, kicking her in the chest with both his feet. Lexi stumbled backward, barely managing to keep her balance in the mud, and she flapped her wings to steady herself.
He got to his feet just as Gemma came out the back door. She stumbled a bit as she walked, and one arm cradled her stomach, where he could see the blood seeping through her shirt. Gemma stood in between Daniel and Lexi, glaring up at her.
“That’s enough, Lexi!” Gemma shouted.
Daniel was standing behind Gemma, but he saw it start to happen. Her fingers were stretching out, and her nails were shifting into long black talons. Her mouth began to twitch, and he knew it was going to become filled with those awful teeth.
But before Gemma completed the transformation, Lexi flapped her wings. She leaned forward, deliberately hitting Gemma with her wing, and sent her flying over the edge of the cliff.
“Gemma!” Daniel yelled, and he ran after her. He barely stopped in time to keep from sliding off the edge himself, and one of the toes of his shoes actually did hang over.
He was too late to do anything other than watch as Gemma crashed into the rocks below. The waves were beating against the cliff face, turning a frothy white, and Gemma was lost instantly in them.
“You’ll be joining her soon,” Lexi said. “But first your heart is mine.”
She was taller than him, so it made for a strange angle, and he had to jump up to be able to punch her. But his fist connected, landing squarely in her temple.
As the bird-monster, her torso had elongated, and her ribs protruded grotesquely. Underneath that, the soft tissue of her belly was completely exposed, and Daniel punched it as hard as he could.
She squawked and stumbled back, so he stepped forward, punching her again with his other fist. Her wings flapped to keep her balance, and the powerful gusts of air from that motion nearly made him fall back, but he kept his footing.
His mistake came when he tried to punch her in the head again. She was leaning forward, trying to correct her stance so she wouldn’t fall back, and the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. So he threw a right hook, hoping to connect with her jaw, but instead her head snapped to the side and she clamped her teeth right on his forearm.
Daniel cried out in agony. Lexi’s mouth was filled with hundreds of narrow teeth, sticking out haphazardly like needles in a pincushion. He could actually feel some of them going all the way through his arm and coming out the other side.
When she let go, Daniel collapsed to the ground on his knees. The rain was pounding against his arm, mixing with the blood and running down into the mud.
“Not so tough now, are you?” Lexi asked.
He tried to get back on his feet, but Lexi kicked him in the chest. It was even harder than she’d kicked him before, and the blow sent him flying. He landed on his back and skidded a few feet in the mud.
Lexi had knocked the wind out of him, and it was several painful seconds before he was able to take a breath again. He coughed hard, his lungs screaming as he gasped for air.
He tried to sit up, but then he felt Lexi’s foot on his stomach, pinning him to the ground. The claws from her toes pierced the fabric of his shirt and drove into his skin. He grabbed her ankle, her skin feeling reptilian under his hands, and tried to push her off him, but she wouldn’t budge.
“It’s over, Daniel,” she assured him. “I’m going to kill you now.”
Lexi bent down, reaching her long fingers out toward his chest. He steeled himself for the inevitable, and the biggest regret he had was that he’d let Harper down. He promised her that he wouldn’t let anything happen to Gemma, and he had failed.
He stared up at Lexi, unwilling to look anywhere else but her eyes. If she was going to kill him, he wanted to make her see it. Her wings were sheltering him from the rain, so he could look up at her without squinting.
Then suddenly Lexi pulled her head back and let out a tortured squawk. Her wings moved, and icy rain splashed into his face. He closed his eyes against it, and then he felt something warm mixed in, dripping on his skin.
The foot disappeared from his stomach, and Daniel lifted his arm, shielding himself from the rain as he sat up.
Lexi had taken several steps back from him, and one of her wings was flapping wildly. The other one … wasn’t there. Blood was spilling out from her shoulder as she wailed.
Penn stood in front of him, looking completely human, except for her arms. She had the same arms as Lexi, complete with the clawed fingers. In one of her hands she held Lexi’s golden wing, but she tossed it aside like it was an old piece of garbage.
“What’s your problem, Penn?” Lexi screamed at her. “I was only playing around!”
“I warned you to leave him alone,” Penn said. She stepped toward her, and Lexi took another step back, edging toward the cliff. “I said don’t hurt him or those stupid Fisher girls. And what did you do?”
“I was just fooling around, Penn!” Lexi insisted, but Penn didn’t seem convinced.
Lexi kept trying to back up, a
nd her feet slipped in the mud. She fell back to the ground, her head hanging over the cliff edge while her body remained safely on land. Her one wing flailed horribly, but Penn was on top of her, pinning her down.
Penn sat on Lexi’s stomach, straddling her, and she wrapped one hand around Lexi’s throat. Lexi made a gurgling sound and began clawing at Penn’s hand. Lexi’s legs kicked aimlessly, unable to reach Penn.
With her free hand, Penn tore into Lexi’s stomach, going up underneath the rib cage to get to her heart. Lexi screamed louder and flailed even more, but it was to no avail. Penn pulled it out, holding up the small, black heart in front of Lexi, showing it to her.
Lexi gnashed her teeth and tried to push Penn off, so Penn tightened her grip around her throat. Lexi’s yellow eyes looked like they were going to bug out of her skull, and finally Penn tore through the flesh and bone. She ripped off Lexi’s head and let it fall, crashing down into the ocean below.
FORTY
Liability
Gemma had hit the rocks first, snapping her back. The waves had crashed over, pulling her underneath before she had a chance to scream.
On land, she’d been giving in and was letting herself shift into the monster, and that became a problem once she hit the water. Her fingers had lengthened, and her feet had morphed into three-toed avian feet.
Not only did this make for horrible swimming, but the beginnings of transformation seemed to make it harder for her to change into a mermaid. She was frozen midshift, unable to become fish or fowl.
Her body wasn’t healing, either. Pain tore through her back, and she couldn’t feel her feet. But that wasn’t even the worst of her troubles. She couldn’t breathe, and the waves were pulling her out. She was drowning.
After she’d frantically clawed her way toward the surface, the salt water began to affect her. The flutter ran over her legs, and her clawed feet shifted into fins. Her lungs burned, but the pain in her back subsided. Her body was healing itself.
When Gemma was about to lose consciousness, air finally flooded her lungs as she could breathe underwater. Her tail pumped frantically behind her, and she burst through the surface of the water, breathing in deeply.
The waves had taken her a little ways from the cliff, and she swam toward it. When she reached the rocks that jutted out of the water, she found a large one and crawled onto it.
That was easier said than done. The rock was slick and wet, and the waves and rain kept beating against her, trying to push her down. Not to mention that her mermaid tail was like dead weight as she clawed her way up.
Gasping for breath, she sat perched until her tail shifted back into legs. She thanked her lucky stars that she’d worn a dress today, but she still had bigger problems.
It would take her too long to climb up the face of the cliff. Daniel was in trouble, and if she didn’t get up there fast, Lexi would have him for dinner. She closed her eyes and tried to will the transformation.
The problem was that any other time she had started to change, it had been because her life was threatened. It was something that happened by instinct. And while she cared about Daniel and wanted to save him, her body didn’t have quite the same reaction.
“Come on, just do it,” she whispered to herself, her hands balled into fists on her lap. “Just change, dammit.”
Then finally she began to feel something. Not in her eyes or fingers, which were usually the first things to alter. Her shoulders were itching, and then she felt a sharp sting. Unlike all her other changes, this was painful. The wings broke through her skin, and it actually felt as if bone and feather were tearing through her flesh. She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
Two massive copper wings spread out behind her. She turned her head from side to side and watched them beating in the rain. The rest of her transformation seemed to halt, and while she would’ve preferred becoming the full monster so it would be easier to fight Lexi, she’d settle for this.
Flying seemed to come naturally, like swimming with her fish’s tail or ripping out Jason’s heart. With a little concentration on her part, the wings were flapping and lifting her up off the rock.
As she was flying up toward the top, a bloody head came falling down past her. Based on the stringy blond hair attached to it, Gemma guessed it was Lexi’s, and she flew even faster.
When Gemma made it up to the top, Daniel was half sitting up and appeared conscious and mostly okay. Gemma hovered in the air, surveying the scene before deciding whether to land or grab him and take off.
Penn was climbing off what was left of Lexi, both her hands covered in blood up to her elbows. Thea was inside the house, watching through the broken window.
“I told you we shouldn’t have let Lexi stay behind today,” Thea was saying. “I knew something was up with her.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re always right.” Penn licked some of the blood off her hands, then held them out so the rain would wash away the rest of it. “Thea, come out here and drag this body in the house before we lose all the blood. We’ll need it to make another siren.”
Thea groaned, but came outside to collect Lexi’s body anyway.
Gemma landed gently on the ground next to Daniel, and he looked up at her. A cut on his forehead left blood streaming into one eye. He smiled crookedly when he saw her, appearing both relieved and rather dazed.
“Thank God,” he said. “You’re not dead.”
“No, I’m not. How are you holding up?” Gemma asked as she looked him over.
“And you’ve got that whole thing.” He motioned up to her copper wings and ignored her question.
She crouched down next to him and spread her wings out wide, shielding both of them from the rain. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine, no thanks to you,” Penn said. She walked over to them while Thea was dragging Lexi into the house through the back door. “What the hell were you doing? How did you let it get this far?”
“I was trying to fight back,” Gemma said. “But she threw me off the cliff, and I have no idea how to control this monster thing.”
“You should’ve just let it take over,” Penn said. “Then you could’ve killed her.” She waved it off, then turned her attention to Daniel. “Are you okay?”
“I have a few scrapes and bruises.” He held up his arm, which was covered in holes from Lexi’s teeth. “But I should live.”
“Do you think you’ll be well enough for tomorrow?” Penn asked.
“What’s tomorrow?” Gemma asked, bewildered.
Daniel kept his eyes fixed on Penn, and ignored Gemma. “I said I would be.”
“I want you at your best,” Penn said.
Gemma looked from one of them to the other. “What are you talking about?”
“You owe me,” Penn said, and at first it seemed like she was only talking to Daniel, but then she pointed to Gemma. “Both of you owe me. And I will collect.”
With that, Penn turned and stalked back into the house, leaving Gemma outside to deal with Daniel.
“What was that about?” Gemma asked him.
“Nothing.” He shook his head and wouldn’t look at her.
“Holy shit!” Marcy shouted from inside the house, apparently conscious and moving around again. “What the hell is that?” Presumably, she’d just encountered Lexi’s decapitated, eviscerated bird-monster corpse.
“We should grab her and get out of here,” Gemma said.
“Yeah,” Daniel agreed.
He started to stand up and winced, so Gemma reached out and put her arm around his waist to help him up. He carefully put his arm around her shoulders, mindful of her wings, and leaned on her for support.
As they walked toward the house to collect Marcy, Gemma said, “We’ll have to tell Harper about this, but when we do, we really need to play down how much danger there was.”
“Oh, yeah. She would lose it if she knew what really happened.” Daniel looked up, admiring Gemma’s wings. “Those are pretty awesome.”
; “Yeah, they are.” She sighed. “Now I just need to figure out how to put them away.”
FORTY-ONE
Revelations
“It really wasn’t that bad,” Daniel insisted for the hundredth time, playing down his injury.
“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t make me believe you any more,” Harper said.
He leaned against the counter in her kitchen, his arm held out in front of him while Harper cleaned up his bite marks from Lexi. The cut above his eyebrow was already taken care of, covered with a couple Band-Aids.
Harper had almost reached Capri when Gemma called to let her know that everything was okay, but she’d been scant on details. Harper had arrived home just as Marcy was dropping off Gemma and Daniel, so she’d seen exactly the state they’d made it back in.
While Gemma had appeared fine, her dress was covered in blood in the back, and the fabric was torn up around her shoulders. Daniel lacked Gemma’s healing powers, so he looked like hell.
They’d both given Harper an abbreviated story about what had happened with the sirens, and she knew they were trying to downplay how perilous things had gotten. When they’d finished, Gemma went upstairs to shower off the blood and dirt and change into dry clothes.
Daniel didn’t have anything to change into at her house, so he settled for letting Harper dress his wounds. When she poured alcohol over the holes in his arms, he winced.
“Sorry, but I have to clean it out,” Harper said. “You have no idea where Lexi’s mouth has been.”
“I know. The alcohol just stung a little.”
“Most of these holes go straight through.” She tilted his arm to get a better look. “You really should go to the doctor.”
“I’ll be okay.”
She gave him a stern look. “Daniel.”
He tried to match her seriousness but smirked a little. “Harper.”
She rolled her eyes and went back to washing off his arm with an alcohol-soaked paper towel. “You’re covered in drying mud, and your clothes are wet. You really should shower and get into something dry.”
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