It threw itself up on the wet sand, tail thrashing, and its mouth opened wide enough that I could’ve stuck my entire head in it. “Holy shit!” I sprang to my feet and yanked my gun free.

“Wait.” Niko grabbed my wrist. “That’s our client.”

“You’re shitting me, right? Tell me you’re kidding.” I looked at the polished black eyes and the gnashing mouth. “What the hell is it?”

“A mermaid.” He frowned. “Merman? I think Mer is correct. Either way, this is the client Promise passed our way. Now, help me pull him farther up. I imagine whatever is chasing him will be right behind him.”

“A mermaid? Jesus, Disney was way off the mark there, weren’t they?” I holstered the gun, seized one slippery, thick arm and helped Nik drag the heavy body farther up into the sand. “What the hell is after it?” . . . that could possibly be worse than this, I silently finished.

Most of the time I went into a job with at least a sketchy knowledge of what we were after, and sometimes sketchy is all we had. But this time I hadn’t asked, my mind still on the Auphe, and Niko, always the teacher, had let me get away with it . . . for a reason. Learn your lesson the hard way and you’ll always remember it. And this was the result of that lesson—being more than mildly freaked out by our own client, and wishing like hell I’d worn some gloves. I wiped the slime on my jeans as I waited for Nik’s answer.

“Promise wasn’t sure. It seems no one speaks their language very well.” The immediate whistling shriek from the Little Mermaid proved that, as Niko continued, “It was all the go-between could do to figure out it wanted help, that something was attacking the local school of Mers.”

As swimmers rarely disappeared here, I guessed the Mer weren’t eating people, though they certainly looked capable of it. I supposed that made them if not the good guys at least not the bad ones. But, damn, what the hell was it they couldn’t handle? And a whole school of them to boot. I wasn’t shy about asking that either as I pulled my gun again.

“They’re a peaceful people, apparently.” He actually said that with a straight face, like he hadn’t seen those teeth. “And my best guess is this one was working as bait to lead their attacker or attackers to us, so be ready.”

I was. When one third of it slid out of the water onto the sand under the pier, I was as ready as I was going to be—which turned out to be not very.

It was the length of three SUVs, I was guessing, end to end and as big around as a Volkswagen. Part of it was hidden in the crashing waves. Dead black, it had scarlet eyes with pupils as big as my fist. It also had a spray of teeth exploding at an outward angle from barracuda jaws that looked perfectly capable of snapping a boat in half while Spielberg pissed his pants.

“We’re going to need a bigger beach,” Niko murmured.

“Funny. Real funny.” I hadn’t brought the explosive rounds. I rarely needed them and they made a lot of noise. Attracted a lot of unwanted attention out in the open like this. Not as unwanted as the kind that was trained on us now, though.

I backed up as the jaws opened and slammed shut. “What the hell is that thing?”

“I think it’s a Jinshin-uwo. In Japanese mythology, it’s an eel that . . .” Niko’s usual pre-battle lecture was cut short when the massive head heaved up and forward before coming down on the ground with a force that would’ve crushed anything beneath it to jelly.

Like our client.

“Oh, shit.” It wasn’t much of a eulogy for the poor guy, but at that moment I was more concerned that the same wasn’t going to happen to me. Although seeing those two-feet-long teeth designed to do nothing but tear flesh, crushed might be the better way to go.

As the head turned, the jaws clamped around the dead Mer, ripped it in half, and ate both pieces. Two bites, snap, snap—gone. I, along with Nik, backed farther under the pier. “The eyes?” I said.

“The eyes,” he confirmed.

Confronted with something this big, short of crawling into its stomach and stabbing it before you were digested, the eyes were pretty much the only way to go. And while it was fast, it didn’t seem to be as quick as many of the things we’d faced. The eyes were doable. I aimed my Glock at one grapefruit-sized eye and that . . . well, that was pretty much all I remembered until I woke up facedown in the sand.

It was hard to breathe. Why? Why was it so damn hard? Where was the air?

I sucked in a breath and something soft and powdery spilled into my mouth. Coughing and choking, I got an arm under me and struggled to turn over. I wavered on my side for a second and then dropped onto my back. Still coughing, I could see the sky above me. Purple. Good color, purple. I was a fan of purple. Grape soda and twilight skies . . . good stuff.

Good . . . wait. Wasn’t there something I should be doing?

Christ. Nik.

I got my elbows under me as I finally pulled some air into my lungs and blinked at what I saw. I was at least forty feet from the darkness under the pier and if the pain slowly blooming across my back was any indication, I was lucky my spine wasn’t broken. I also saw the reason I’d ended up facedown. The giant eel had moved farther under the pier, its midsection still in the water, but its tail was out and whipping with violent fury. It was safe to say it had gotten me but good. I must’ve hurtled through the air like a crashing plane. Down in flames.

“Cal!”

I couldn’t see Niko, but I could hear him, and that was enough to snap me back to full alertness. I staggered halfway up, fell back down, then got back up again . . . all the way this time. My gun was still clenched tightly in my hand and as I lurched across the sand I fired. There were five muffled pops from the silencer and, just as I’d thought, not a single reaction from the eel. The rubbery flesh was too thick. The bullets probably felt like a fly bite to it, if it felt anything at all. I could’ve left the gun at home and brought a goddamn sushi chef for all the luck I was having with this giant unagi roll. I stumbled on through the shifting sand, gaining momentum and steadiness with every step.

Closer, I could see Niko’s sword flashing, reflecting the stray beams of the streetlamps from the boardwalk. The eel’s head was moving back and forth just as fast. A lot faster than I’d anticipated. Apparently, it had figured out its eyes were its weak point, the same as we had. Or maybe that’s a knowledge that big bad-ass eels are born with. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. What I cared about was that Nik was taking on that thing alone. I ran faster, then dove to the ground as the tail headed my way. It passed over my head with only inches to spare. I smelled the dank salt water that sprayed over me. I turned my head to one side and flattened myself as much as possible as the tail swung back. This time I felt the skim of flesh against my ear. It was ice cold and unnaturally smooth, like a leech. I gritted my teeth, refused to shudder at the sensation, got up, and moved. And I mean moved. I kicked off my shoes and tore ass up the length of the monster, and when it turned its head away from Nik’s sword, I put eleven silenced rounds right in its bloodred eye.

That it noticed.

It didn’t die. It didn’t thrash about in agony. It just noticed.

But that was enough to put its attention squarely on me. Its right eye turned to jelly, it opened its mouth—the teeth cutting through the air like the maiming snap of a bear trap. I could smell the Mer on its breath. The blood, the flesh. I could smell other flesh, too, caught in its teeth. Decaying. Rotting for days, weeks. I gagged at the reek of it as I desperately dived to one side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Niko go for the other eye. But the thing wasn’t surprised from behind this time. It knew where Nik was, knew that danger well. It snapped its head back. Niko was hit by the snout and flung across the beach, narrowly missing one of the pier columns. That would’ve broken him . . . shattered every bone to pieces no one could put back together again.