Too Deep

Without Oscar

The dark-haired man now stood crouched over him. Checking around his neck and along his torso.

Ashley swept up the nearest thing she could find. The blanket. Climbing out the window and dragging it across the grass with her. Tears were already pouring down her face.

"No. No!" Her hands were shaking. One clutching the blanket against her heart. The other hovering around Oscar's limp face.

As she shot the dark-haired giant, helpless glances. "He...He..."

Malius looked up at her. "He protected you."

"He was just asking me to-to..."

"To go back with us."

"Yes." She said tearfully.

"You can still go." He sighed. Eyeing her sorrowfully. "For whatever consolation that may be."

It only made her cry harder. Running her hands down her face in distress.

"What was that? How could this happen?"

"He's a hunter. When we rise, they come. Man's curse upon us, to keep us from their sons and daughters." He cast Ashley a pointed look.

"He is to keep you away from our kind?"

"Yes."

"It was pure evil!"

Malius nodded. Looking down forlornly at his friend. "He defended you well. You should be proud of your mate."

"He stood between it and me." She said in wonder. Stroking the matted hair around his face and watching him as though she hoped he'd suddenly sit up and gasp for air.

"He cut it." Malius nodded to his fist. "With that."

Her eyes followed Malius' gaze to what was still bloodied and clenched in Oscar's fist. What appeared to be a curved, dull, white stick.

It didn't look like it would cut much. But she'd seen him drive it in with such force, it had certainly pierced the animal anyway.

"What is that?"

Malius reached beneath him, where he straddled Oscar's torso, peeling open one of the scratches to reveal the remaining fragment, of a newly broken rib.

It took Ashley's numbed brain a long moment to take it in. She stumbled backward. Sobbing as she crawled back toward her window. "That's impossible."

"Not impossible." Malius said. "We're strong enough to do it, if we can stand the pain."

He stared down at his friend sadly. "He did it."

People down the road were now spilling on the lawn to peer at the corpse there.

Malius was looking unblinkingly at Ashley as he finished his sentence anyway. "For you."

She crawled back through the window. Tearing the blanket, and eventually losing it in the process. Cutting her arm and stomach and moving on anyway. Intent on getting into the sanctuary of her house, to hide.

Malius ordered someone to get help for her. Stating to a man near him that Oscar was still alive, though he clearly wasn't, and that he'd take him to help. Malius ordered everyone back and lifted Oscar. Well-aware he lifted a corpse, but knowing he couldn't leave it to the humans to dissect and bury him.

It would reveal too much.

So Malius had to take him far out and return him to the water from whence they'd come.

The scent of Mer blood in the water had an immediate effect. Resulting in slick gray bodies coasting the water. Their elongated, ribbed fins just broke the surface, as they weaved closer.