“Who is this?” Tameka demanded.
Her voice had taken on a rusty, throaty quality. She was in character now. Magda. She hoped Vincent didn’t think she was racist because she thought all trolls spoke like they’d smoked twenty a day for sixty years.
There was quiet on the line before, “Who is this? Where’s Vincent?”
“I’m Vincent’s friend, and Vincent is dead.”
“Explain. Now.”
Tameka walked away for a little privacy, hoping Red and Vincent wouldn’t intervene. She talked a bit longer, haranguing back and forth with the digitized voice on the other end, before hanging up. She thought it had gone quite well. She found she was quite efficient at negotiating with kidnappers.
“What the hell are you doing?” Red shouted. “You could have gotten Vincent’s family killed!”
“I’ve just saved her family,” she explained coldly. “I told them you killed Vincent.”
Red opened his mouth in shock. “What?”
“And then you killed the assassins and flew away. I’m Magda, by the way. I’m a troll friend of Vincent who’s helping her with the transition process. She confided in me about her blackmail because we’re second cousins, almost sisters. I’m her children’s godmother too; and I like to make vases, though I’m not very good at it.” Tameka smiled. “I used to have a tiny crush on Vincent. I never told him.” Tameka handed Vincent back his mobile, shaking off her new persona like an old blanket. “The deal is with me, now.”
Vincent looked confused. “You mean you have to kill people now?”
She looked back at the bodies, feeling a little nauseous. Maybe they had deserved it, though that didn’t alter the fact that seeing their viscera explode like water balloons wasn’t a traumatic experience.
“I’ve bought us some time,” she explained, staring down at the assassin, twitching in his unconscious state. “You think you can get this piece of dirt to tell us what we need to know?”
“I’ve never tortured anyone before,” Red admitted.
She stalked past him, heading into the house. She couldn’t look at him right now. All she saw when she closed her eyes was his dragon form, tossing that man around like a bear with a fish. It wasn’t the Red she’d come to know. This was something different, something…monstrous.
11
The first thing they noticed when the assassin woke up, tied to a chair in the basement of Vincent’s surprisingly tidy house, was that he had no tongue.
“How did we not notice this before?” Tameka asked them.
“It was the other one who spoke,” said Red.
Vincent shrugged. “He was too busy trying to kill us.”
She couldn’t help but notice all the odds and ends in the basement. Christmas tree decorations box; washing machine; old bicycles; a freezer; piles of old magazine; an orange tree growing out of the cement floor. Aside from the orange tree it was all so normal, so human.
Do I really want to know about the orange tree?
“He can nod and blink,” said Red. “That’s good enough.”
The assassin opened one eye, using it to give them a very potent death glare. He didn’t struggle, just stared.
“Where are Vincent’s family?” Red asked him.
The assassin shook his head.
“Do you want to be bitten in two, chewed up and spat out?” Red threatened. “I can do that. I’d enjoy it.”
The assassin smiled.
“I could give you a quick death, but I’d much rather give you a lingering one. Dragons like to savor the end of their enemies. I’m sure you know that.”
Tameka watched as the assassin’s eyes widened in fear. Normally she would’ve been wary too, especially after seeing the ferocity of the dragon, but she didn’t buy it. The human Red wasn’t nearly as intimidating and, truth be told, she knew his heart wasn’t in it. Red could never torture this person, and that meant this was for nothing.
She walked away to inspect the orange tree as Red continued to threaten their prisoner. She could smell the citrus. It was so inviting and potent it made her mouth water.
“Do you want to know the history of the orange tree?” Vincent asked her.
“Is it something religious?” said Tameka, fascinated.
As shocked as she was by this new paranormal world unfolding around her she was intrigued too. There was so much more history and culture to the world than she ever knew.
Vincent laughed. “Trolls don’t have religion. The orange tree was planted by my oldest son. Troll feces is a remarkably potent fertilizer. The magical qualities in it help vegetation grow much more quickly.” Vincent smiled proudly, reaching out to pluck an orange. “He loved plants.”
“He loves plants,” Tameka corrected, ignoring her revulsion over the use of troll shit. “Don’t speak about him in the past tense. We will get your family back.”
“Maybe I don’t deserve them after what I’ve done. I’m ashamed. They’ll be ashamed.”
Tameka thought of what to say. The truth was the troll had done some despicable things, yet Vincent wasn’t a bad person. She could get past this if only for the sake of her family.
“Save them, stop more killings, and help us find out who’s behind this,” said Tameka. “That will make up for what you’ve done. Your family will forgive you.”
Vincent nodded. “Thank you. You don’t have to be so kind.”
“Kind is my middle name.”
She turned to find Red slapping the assassin across the face. It was a hard slap, though the prisoner didn’t seem to think so. He just laughed.
Tameka sighed.
“You’re not going to get any information out of him if you treat him like a princess,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You have to hurt him. Can you try and be a little monstrous, like when you’re a dragon?”
He turned to her. “You thought I was monstrous?”
Shit. He looks like a kicked puppy.
“I don’t know anything about you,” she admitted. “Not really. All this was kind of sprung on me at the last minute.”
Red stared down at the prisoner again for a few moments before saying, “Come upstairs. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
Vincent watched the dragon shifter and the human exit upstairs, leaving her alone with the prisoner. She’d never been a violent troll before, always a pacifist. She had abhorred violence and the violent nature of most of her species. This assassin’s employers had forced her to become what she hated.
You reap what you sow.
“If Red can’t get you to talk then I’m sure I can,” she whispered.
She punched the assassin in the face. It felt really good.
“Two nods for yes, one nod for no,” Vincent commanded. She grinned. “Do you know where my family is?”
The assassin ignored her. She punched him again.
Tameka perched herself on the end of a perfectly fashionable chestnut brown sofa. It was very comfortable. Who knew a troll could have such good, though dull, taste in furniture? The interior of the house was nothing like she’d expected, which, she had to be honest, was rooms of garbage.
She stared at a mass of framed photographs on the wall depicting Vincent and her happy troll family. She was male in them all, though there seemed little difference apart from the fact that the new female Vincent had huge, pendulum like breasts. It wasn’t something you could miss really. The only reason she hadn’t noticed them while Vincent was trying to kill her before was because she was wearing ratty clothes that hid her body type.
They look so happy and content.
Tameka felt angry for them. Their life had been turned upside down and Vincent had been forced to commit acts of evil to protect her family. She couldn’t wait to find the person responsible for destroying this family. They would suffer – and then she would gladly allow Red to chew their head off.
“Nothing magical is born on this Earth,” Red explained, interrupting Tameka’s musings of vengeance. He seem
ed to be in his element. “We’re all refugees.”
He’s so fucking hot when he talks about something he’s passionate about.
“Refugees?” she asked, banishing her wicked thoughts. “From where?”
“The world we’re from suffered a terrible war.” He looked away, as if reliving the events of this war. The guilt and terror in his eyes spoke volumes. The war must have been horrific. “When events appeared as if our races were doomed we fled here. Other races escaped to other dimensions. The exodus was massive. We knew we were cowards, and we feared for those we left behind, but our races had to prosper. We had to survive.”
“What happened with the war?”
“It went badly. My old world is still prospering, but it’s not nearly as magical as it once was.”
She understood. “I’m sorry. It must have been hard to leave everything you knew behind.”
“I miss my world every day.”
She couldn’t imagine a world where paranormal species lived and thrived out in the open. It sounded magical.
“So there are dragons, mermaids and trolls currently inhabiting this world in secret,” she said, changing the subject. Talking about his old home seemed to be making him melancholic. “Anything else I should know about?”
“There might have been the odd witch or two,” he said. “Maybe some vampires.”
“Maybe some vampires…”
So there were vampires too. This was a revelation. She’d played a vampire once in a failed TV pilot just before Tammy’s World. The vampires in that show were bloodthirsty monsters who reveled in death. She hoped the real ones weren’t as bad.
“It’s actually pretty easy to traverse dimensions, and it has been thousands of years since our three races emigrated here,” said Red. “I honestly don’t know what’s come through since.”
Had all the legends of vampires around the world been based on true stories, the same as those about mermaids and dragons and who knew what else? The thought that her neighbor could be a vampire, secretly waiting to pounce and drink her blood, made her shiver. She’d always suspected the producer on Tammy’s World was a bit strange. Maybe he’d been a vampire all along.
“Don’t worry about it,” Red advised her.
“I’m not worried about it,” she snapped, a little worried. “I’m worried about the fact that my boss is a dragon and my sister is a mermaid and new friend is a troll. It’s messed up. I thought my life was skewed as it was. It just keeps getting worse. The next thing you know I’ll be riding a bus with a vampire and ordering take-out from a werewolf.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that image. Either that or cry.
“You can’t trust her,” Red stated.
Tameka knew exactly who he was talking about. “And I can trust you? You’ve been lying to me for years.”
“You really expected me to just walk up to you and tell you that I’m a dragon?” He shook his head. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“It would’ve been a start - and to make things perfectly clear I would’ve believed you.”
They both knew that was a lie the moment the words came out of her mouth. The fact was she probably would’ve slapped him across the face and avoided him like an internet vlogger for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t have given him the chance to prove to her what he really was.
“Mermaids are not to be trusted,” said Red. “You have no idea what they’re capable of.”
“Mermaids are peaceful creatures that sing, right?” she asked.
Do I sound naïve or what?
Red’s depressed sigh actually stung a little; he thought she was naïve too. “They are emotionless beings that view everything else as beneath them. They see humans particularly as little more than insects.”
“Asha was acting a little odd.”
Tameka had convinced herself that Asha had been nervous at meeting her sister for the first time, but this new information derailed that. Her sister had acted like she showed no emotion, robotic, talking in a monotone.
Like a Vulcan from Star Trek.
Red continued, “That woman is not your sister any more.”
“I don’t get it. How can she be my sister?” she asked. “She’s a mermaid. It’s not technically and biologically possible, is it?”
“That’s how mermaids breed. They’re naturally infertile and can’t procreate normally. They take other races and magically transform them in a cocoon into one of them. The process takes away who that person was and they become a mermaid. Biologically and socially she doesn’t think or feel like a human being any more. She thinks like a mermaid, and mermaids are the most dangerous, duplicitous creatures in existence.”
There was a past history there that he wasn’t telling her. He’d obviously had dealing with mermaids that hadn’t gone well, souring his opinion of them. Not all mermaids were bound to be alike. Her sister had to be different.
Tameka asked, “How can she have memories of me?”
“Most likely she was taken when she was older and your own memories of your time with her were wiped. Mermaid sorcerers have powerful magic when it comes to altering flesh and memories.”
The thought of some creature messing with her brain made her feel sick. “No…”
He reached across to take her hand but she pulled away. She was too sickened by his story to even want his fingers touching her.
Besides, I want his fingers to touch me in more intimate places.
Oh Tameka, you filthy, filthy girl.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s likely you knew your sister very well but her memory was taken from you.”
She shook her head, hoping he was wrong. “But my adopted parents don’t remember her and we met on the cruise ship in which my mother died. There’s no record of her anywhere. I know, I’ve looked.”
“Mermaids are methodical. There may be the odd clue left here and there, but when they want the world to forget someone existed they can do a pretty good job of erasing them.”
The one thing the mermaids had missed was her name. At school she remembered being set an assignment to research the meaning of your name. She found out Tameka meant twin, which only really made sense now.
I was named Tameka because I was a twin!
“I know this is a shock for you,” said Red.
Tameka’s fury was a red hot poker, but more than that she was sad. Not only had they abducted her sister and warped her flesh but they’d stolen away any memory she had of Asha. Had her and Asha been close?
Of course we were close! We’re twins.
We’ve missed out on so much.
Fucking mermaids and their razor scales and evil ways.
“They took my sister,” said Tameka, seething. “They took my fucking sister.”
She wanted to break something, but she didn’t want to make a mess of Vincent’s beautiful home. The last thing the troll needed was a hysterical human smashing her house to bits.
She punched Red in the arm. He gave a silent scream that made her grin.
“Getting angry will do no good,” he said, obviously still in pain.
She glared at him like a pissed off lion. “I’m angry with them and I’m angry with you. Everything is a lie. You’re a liar.”
“Tameka…”
“You’ve told me all about the mermaids, taking us off our original topic. Now tell me about the dragons. Why are you pretending to be a police officer in Blue City?”
His affronted expression was comic gold. “I am a police officer in Blue City. I went through the training and everything. I worked hard to get where I am.”
“So there are dragons everywhere, hiding in plain sight, doing stupid jobs like garbage collector or working as pole dancers? Give me a break.”
Tameka imagined a dragon working at the DMV. That made sense.
“It’s complicated,” he said, sounding tired. “My life is complicated.”
“So you are up to something. You’re not here just because you wanted to be a c
op.”
“I wanted to be a cop. That much is true. It’s just…I was sent to this particular station to watch you.”
Tameka didn’t know how to reply. She hit him in the arm again.
12
Red eyed her warningly. “Do not hit me again.”
“Why were you sent to watch me?” she demanded. She seemed confused. “I’ve only been working with you for nearly two years. You were there long before I turned up to solve all your crimes for you.”
“Hmm.”
She shuffled closer to him on the sofa, batting her eyelids. He started to go red in the face. She grabbed him by the balls, hard. His face started to turn an even brighter shade of crimson.
“I always thought I’d get my hands on your balls in a lot sexier ways than this, but you’re really pissing me off now.” She dug her fingernails into the material of his pants. His eyes almost popped out of his head. “Speak up or you may never father children.”
“I already have children,” Red blurted out.
Tameka digested that juicy titbit before saying, “Speak up, Detective. I can’t hear you over the sound of your testicles rupturing.”
“I’m not the original Deacon Redmond.”
She let go, figuring he’d suffered enough. So had she. She didn’t want to hear another word that came out of his mouth.
This house is suffocating me. I have to get out.
“Don’t leave like this,” Red protested.
She turned to him, spittle flying from her mouth in her rage. “I don’t want to know how you killed the real Red and took his place. I just want to find my sister.”
“You can’t trust her.”
“And you’re about as trustworthy as a trapdoor spider.”
He stood up, looking awkward and pathetic and a far cry from the sexy, positive cop she’d come to know. Or did she? Did she really know who he was?
“Who are you?” asked Tameka.
“My name is Redley, and I’m the last surviving member of the dragon royal family.”
Sirens and Scales Page 327
