“Not at all,” Bythos assured him. “You’re Ian’s friend. If you are in any sort of danger, I’d much prefer you remain at the cove than take a hotel room in Olympic Beach. I assure you, no one can get to you here.”
“Told you,” Ian said, coming in and sitting next to Bythos. “This really is the safest place for you.” He grinned. “Besides, if Barnard did lose his mind and come after you, you could always whack him over the head with your big stick.”
Bythos’s eyebrows went up politely. “I’m not sure if you’re being scatological or literal, love,” he said.
Nick groaned. “He’s being an asshole. I found an interesting walking stick at an antique store this morning. The stick was carved to look like the rod of Asclepius. That’s—”
“The physician’s symbol, I know,” Bythos said. “Where did you find it?”
“The Lady’s Touch,” Ian offered. “Heather called and said my Ne—my bracelet was ready for pickup. Nick came with me, and he found the stick in the shop.”
“Really?” Bythos leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees. “I don’t suppose I could see it, could I?”
“Yeah, sure.” Nick got up to fetch his purchase, pausing when he stepped inside the guest room. He’d left the staff propped up in the corner next to the bathroom door, but now it was leaning against the bedroom window.
Did I move it when I was changing? I must have. Grabbing it, he took it into the living room. “Et voilà.”
Bythos’s eyes went wide. He leaned forward even more, staring at the carved snake wound around the staff. “That’s … quite a find,” he said, sounding slightly choked. “And Heather just sold it to you?”
“Well, she didn’t want to at first, but when I told her I was a doctor she changed her mind. Why?”
Bythos tried to smile. “Heather has a … let’s call it a gift, for finding interesting items. Your staff definitely counts as one of those.”
Ian, who had been studying the staff with lowered brows, suddenly jerked. “Whoa! It’s—”
“Very realistic,” Bythos said, putting his arm around Ian’s shoulder. Nick could see long fingers squeezing gently. “You could almost imagine the snake moving, couldn’t you, love?”
“I—uh, yeah.” Ian stared at the staff again, then shook his head. “Wow. Uh, Nick, why don’t you go put that in your closet?”
Nick held up the staff, frowning at it. “Is something wrong with it?”
“No, no. I thought I saw the snake move, that’s all,” Ian said quickly. “It was a hell of an optical illusion.”
“Uh huh.” Cautious, Nick tapped a finger on the green-gold body. It felt rigid. “No, definitely wood. Maybe you better lay off the beer for the rest of the night, buddy.”
“Yeah, maybe. Just … put it away, okay?”
“Okay.” He headed back into his room and put the staff in the closet. When he came back out, all three of his hosts were present. As one, they turned to him with wide, bright smiles.
He sighed. “Guys, this might be a good time to point out that people lie to me all the time in my day job, so I’m really good at telling when someone is trying to bullshit me,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”
Ian flushed. “I know this is gonna sound stupid, but that staff just gave me the creeps,” he said apologetically. “I mean, it really looked like the snake moved. And I’m not a huge fan of snakes to begin with.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Well, don’t worry, Indy. I put the big bad snake aw—”
Actinic light lit all the windows, blinding them as a shattering peal of thunder boomed through the house. The immense sound vibrated through Nick’s long bones, atavistically jump-starting his flight or flight reflex.
He swallowed hard as the echoes died away. “Damn. That was close.”
“Yeah, that was,” Ian said, concerned. “I better go upstairs, make sure—” He broke off, look at his boyfriends. “Guys, what’s wrong?”
Both twins had gone rigid, heads up as if listening to something far off. Bythos broke the stasis first, jumping up and sprinting for the kitchen. Aphros followed on his heels, both of them stripping off their shirts as they ran. “Stay here!” the blue-eyed twin threw over his shoulder.
Ian ignored the order and followed them, Nick in his wake. They both reached the kitchen in time to see a now-naked By and Aph dashing out the back door, clothes strewn across the floor.
Nick went to the window, staring at the storm outside. He could just make out two pale shapes heading for the beach. “Where are they going?”
“I’m not sure. Dammit, I should go with them.”
He turned in time to see Ian yanking off his own shirt. "What? Dude, you cannot go out there,” he yelped. “They shouldn’t be out there, for God’s sake.” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Oh, Jesus. Tell me they’re not going in the water.”
Ian grimaced. “It’s a long story, and I don’t have time to explain it right now. I'm going after them.”
“The hell you are,” Nick snapped, moving to the back door and blocking it. “It’s storming out there, plus it’s nighttime. I don’t know what they think they're doing, but I know damn well you’re not trained to swim in that kind of weather.”
The smaller man squared his shoulders. “Get out of my way, Nick.”
“Make me.”
“All right.” Hands suddenly clamped onto his upper arms in an iron grip, and his forearms went numb as he was lifted into the air, spun and deposited away from the door.
“Stay here,” Ian ordered, as if he hadn’t just lifted someone five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier and moved him like a sack of groceries. “If we aren’t back by morning, call the sheriff’s department, ask for Jimmy Connors. Tell him I’m missing and you need help. He’ll know what to do.”
He yanked open the back door, just in time to reveal a naked, dripping Aphros. “Move,” the redhead said breathlessly, pushing past him. An equally wet and naked Bythos came through the door next, carrying—
Nick felt his eyes bug. “Oh, my God.”
“Demigod, actually,” Bythos panted, glancing down at the unconscious merman in his arms.
Chapter Three
Nick stared at the creature Bythos carried. “That’s—”
“A mer. Yes, I know,” Bythos huffed, carrying the merman to the couch. He laid the creature down, making sure to drape the tail smoothly over the couch arm. “He’s also injured.”
Nick automatically scanned the merman for visible wounds. From the waist up, the creature looked like a fair-skinned human male, leanly muscled like an Olympic swimmer, with a knotted thong neckband around his throat.
From the waist down, however, it was a different story. Instead of a human pelvis and legs, there was a large fishtail covered in scales that shone blue-green in the overhead light. The tail ended in a sweeping dark blue fin that almost trailed on the floor.
Nick dragged his gaze back up to the merman’s face. Dripping, tangled hair covered part of it, but he could see a straight nose and full lips underneath the wet strands.
The merman moaned softly, a webbed hand reaching to what would have been the outer thigh on a human. Nick spotted the short, slender rod protruding there, trailing a ragged metallic line. Dark red blood crusted around the puncture, a few streaks oozing slowly across the merman’s scales.
“Some fool shot him with a speargun,” Bythos snarled. “The spear had a buoy attached, and he’s been dragging it all day. I had to tear the damned thing loose.” He turned to Nick. “You need to take out the spear.”
Nick gaped. “What? Why me?”
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
“For humans, yeah. If the wound was above his waist I’d know what I was doing, but I don’t know what the spear hit—”
The merman moaned again, a soft, exhausted sound. Cursing under his breath, Nick crouched down next to the couch, still studying its occupant. “Jesus. Okay, I need to see if it’s a through-and-through,” he said. “Can you li
ft his, uh, his bottom half a little?”
Bythos leaned over, carefully sliding his hands under the merman’s ass and lifting him. Nick crouched lower, peering at the underside of the thigh area. “Yeah, I can see the arrowhead here. I’m guessing there’s no chance in hell we can haul him into an ER?”
“No,” Bythos said shortly. “You’ll have to take the spear out yourself.”
“Dammit. Ian, I’m going to need any towels you don’t mind getting bloody and the brown leather bag in my room.” He examined the spear again. “Do you have a set of bolt cutters here?”
“I’ll get them,” Aphros said, darting out.
“Towels and bag.” Ian headed in the opposite direction.
Bythos had moved to the side of the couch now, resting a hand on the merman’s forehead and talking softly to him in a foreign language. The merman opened huge eyes that looked apple green in the living room light, blinking them slowly.
“I’ve explained that you’re a healer and here to help him,” Bythos told Nick. “He won’t hurt you.”
“Good to know,” Nick muttered. The entry wound looked clean enough, and the metal of the spear was aluminum so there was no chance of rust getting sucked into the wound. The relatively small amount of blood oozing from the wound suggested that it hadn’t hit a major artery; if it had, the merman would be dead already. He desperately wished he could have a Radiology department take x-rays—or better yet, a CAT scan—to see what he was dealing with. “You realize I have no clue about the anatomy here, right?”
“I know that, but we don’t have much of a choice,” Bythos said impatiently. “If you won’t pull it out, I will.”
“No, you won’t,” Nick snapped. “I’m the doctor here. I’ll do it.”
“Towels,” Ian said, jogging into the room with an armful of terrycloth. “And your bag.”
“Thanks.” He took a thick beach towel and slid it under the merman, then opened his bag and fished out a pair of nitrile gloves. “I think our best bet is to cut off the trailing end of the spear as close to his scales as possible, then pull it out from the arrow end. The shaft shouldn’t be barbed, but I don’t want to take any chances.” Because if it is, there’s a damned good chance I’ll rip open an artery in the process. “Do either of you puke when you see blood?”
“No,” Bythos rumbled.
“I’m good,” Ian said.
“Okay.” He spread out a hand towel and laid out packages of sterile gauze, a suture kit, scissors and tape just as Aphros appeared with a heavy duty bolt cutter.
Wordlessly, Aphros handed over the cutter. “By, lean over and hold him down. He needs to stay still,” Nick said, looking into the merman’s eyes and trying to communicate confidence. “Tell him I’m sorry, but this is probably going to hurt.”
The grey-eyed twin spoke in that swirling language again and the merman nodded, setting his teeth. Carefully, Nick managed to slot the bolt cutter’s head a few millimeters over the merman’s scales, then squeezed the handles together. The merman made a guttural noise as the cutter blades sliced through the aluminum shaft.
Nick caught the severed shaft and tossed it to the side. “Okay, this is the hard part,” he said grimly. “I need him to roll onto his good hip.”
With the twins’ help, the merman rolled towards the back of the couch. The move exposed the spearhead, a sharp, bloodied aluminum triangle protruding from the merman’s scales. “By, Aph, you need to hold him still. This is going to hurt like hell, and I don’t have anything that’ll knock him out.”
The merman said something, and Bythos nodded. “He said he understands. Just do it.”
“All right, here we go.” Nick braced his left hand on the merman’s lower back, sliding his right middle and index fingers around the spear shaft and under the head so that he could cup it in his hand. “On three. One, two—"
He pulled the spear out in a smooth motion, blood streaking the metal. The merman’s body went rigid and he screamed, one webbed hand clutching the back of the couch. Nick let the spear drop to the carpet and reached for the gauze, stuffing it into the bleeding wound. “Roll him back. I need to pack the entry wound.”
By and Aph moved the merman onto his back again, Nick pushing gauze against the other wound. “Ian, tear up some of those towels and fold them into pads.”
“On it.” Ian dropped to his knees, ripping towels apart.
“I need to keep pressure on the wounds. If we—" The merman’s tail wriggled strangely under his hands. “By, tell him to stay still, he’s still bleed—shit!”
Nick jerked back as the merman’s scales quivered and sank under his fingers, smoothing out as they merged into each other. Their marine color faded at the same time, paling through seafoam, then flushing to peach. A groove formed down the length of the tail, deepening and splitting it. Twin rounded indentations formed about halfway down, twitching a bit as they became joints. The large fluke at the end split along with the tail, each half shortening and thickening into the shape of a human foot.
Stunned, Nick watched the tail finish its transmutation into a pair of sleekly muscled human legs. Normal anatomical structure, no body hair on legs or groin, genitalia appear to be human, the clinical part of his brain observed, trying to drown out the frantic screaming from the other parts. Puncture wound—
He focused his attention on the gauze pad stuck to the outside of the merman’s right thigh. The thick trickles of blood had stopped. Carefully, he lifted the gauze. The wound was newly scabbed over.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
Bythos leaned over his shoulder. “Merfolk have accelerated healing abilities, especially when they shift,” he said, peering at the wound. “Yes, that looks about right.” He broke into the other language again. The merman said something back in a strained tone, lifting a hand and waggling it. “He says the pain is a seven, give or take.”
Very slowly, Nick turned and looked up at Bythos. “Would someone like to tell me what the everlasting fuck is going on here?”
A hand covered his. He turned back to see the merman grinning wearily at him.
“Thanks, doc,” the mer said in hoarse but understandable English.
****
A half hour later, Nick sat at the kitchen table, an empty Sam Adams bottle in front of him and a half-full one in his hand. He took a deep swig of the beer, grimacing a bit as the welcome sourness scoured his throat. “Okay, let me get this straight,” he said once he’d swallowed. “By and Aph are demigods who can change into sea centaurs.”
“Yes,” Ian said, sitting on the other side of the table. The twins—twin sea gods, Nick reminded himself—were busy getting the merman settled in the guest bedroom. “And they’re essentially my husbands. Which is a miniseries in itself, believe me.”
“Jesus Christ. And mermaids—mers—are real.”
“You just treated one,” Ian pointed out. “Yes, they’re real. So are tritons, Nereids, and a bunch of other sea creatures humans thought were mythological.”
Nick didn’t like the way he said humans. “And the Greek gods—they’re real, too?”
Ian shrugged. “I’ve only met Poseidon and Amphitrite so far, but I’m guessing that the rest of the pantheon exists, too.”
“Oh, man.” Nick raised the bottle, pressing the sweating side to his forehead. “I was not expecting to walk into Narnia when I came down here.”
“It’s not Narnia,” Ian said, taking a drink of his own beer. “More like the Iliad.”
“Oh, even better. A ten-year war, just what we all need.”
“I’m hoping it won’t take ten years.”
Before Nick could ask what the hell he meant, Bythos came back into the kitchen. The demigod, he’s a demigod looked tired. “Aidan’s resting peacefully enough,” he said, heading to the refrigerator and pulling out a beer. “Are you sure you want him in your room, Nick? He said he’d be happy to sleep on the couch.”
His name’s Aidan? “He probably lost a fair amount of bl
ood, and he’s exhausted. I want him to get some rest,” Nick said. “He can survive for a while on land, right?”
“For a couple of days, yes,” Bythos said, taking the seat next to Ian. “But it would be best if he could get into the water tomorrow. It’ll help the wound heal faster.”
“Fine. I wanted to go swimming anyway.”
Auburn eyebrows rose at that. “You’re going to swim with him?”
“Well, I’m not letting him go in by himself. Even if he heals quickly he’s still going to have some muscle weakness in that leg—" Nick waved a hand. “Tail side, whatever. I want to make sure he doesn’t cramp up or drown.” He winced. “Shit. Okay, that was stupid.”
“No, it was very thoughtful,” Bythos said. “I know this all takes a bit of getting used to.”
“That’s an understatement,” Nick muttered. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to prove the god thing.”
Bythos reached a hand out. From nowhere, a huge, beautifully worked silver trident appeared in his grip. “I could go down to the water and shape shift, if you like,” he said, “but it’s still pouring out there and I don’t think you want to get soaked right now.”
“Uh, no,” Nick said faintly, staring at the trident. “No, that’s good enough.”
Aphros joined them, wiping his hands on a towel. He frowned at the trident. “Showing off, brother mine?”
“Just proving a point. Our physician here wanted to see a demonstration.”
“He already did. Where do you think those bolt cutters came from?”
Nick boggled at the other twin. “I thought you got them from the garage.”
Aphros shook his head. “I got them from a manufacturer’s warehouse. It’s much easier to fetch existing things than it is to make them from whole cloth, so to speak.”
“Wait, you can bring things to you? Without anyone knowing about it?”
“Easily. Why?”
“I can’t carry drugs on me for malpractice reasons. But I’d really like to put—Aidan?” Nick waited for Bythos’s nod. “Aidan on a saline IV to replace fluids, plus give him a tetanus and antibiotics shot, and maybe some morphine. If I tell you what to look for, can you get them from a hospital?”
Olympic Cove 2-Breaker Zone Page 5
