Read Online [Anita Blake Collection] - Strange Candy by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

struggled into the diving gear while Roy talked above the roar of the engine. “Priscilla’s in the water with Irving. She swims like a fish. She’s keeping him at the surface. Jordan’s got our two drunks on the shore.”
    â€œHow bad is it?” I asked.
    â€œBad, Mike, real bad.”
    Susan looked at me. I could see her jaw tighten by starlight. I felt the first warm flush of anger gliding up from my stomach to tighten my throat. Moonlight lay in a shining silver line across the lake. It was all so damn beautiful, so peaceful.
    As the boat got close to the barricade, Jordan yelled, “He’s sinking. Priscilla can’t hold him!”
    â€œCut the motor, Roy. We’ll go in over the barricade,” I said.
    The boat drifted against the netting with a soft bump. Susan and I pushed regulators into our mouths and grabbed for the barricade. Climbing netting while wearing fins is nearly impossible, but Susan spilled over the top first, using just her arms. I followed, plunging into the night-black water.
    I couldn’t see Susan’s flashlight. I couldn’t see anything, then I heard it, an echoing tap. The sound repeated, and I began to work my way toward it. Susan was tapping her air tank with the flashlight, guiding me to her.
    Irving’s body loomed out of the darkness first. She’d found him. I stroked my hand on his side and felt him shiver. My hand found a gash in his side. His dorsal fin had been half cut away, and I realized that part of what was making the water dark was blood. I swallowed hard around my regulator and swam toward Irving’s head.
    Susan was cradling his great head, and Irving leaned against her. She was rubbing his eye ridge. The whole left side of his face had been rippedopen. The left eye was gone in a mass of meat and exposed bone. I swam up so Irving could see me out of his good eye. He nuzzled his nose against my chest and blew a thin stream of bubbles. There was a backwash of air and blood from his exposed jaw and underneath his body. I swam down to find a rip just in back of his head. His spine gleamed pale and unreal in the beam of my light. There was another rip in back of it. His stomach was half hanging into the water. At least, I thought it was his stomach.
    There was no way the boat could have just hit him once. The first blow had to have been the head, stunned him, but the rest…They had to have driven back and forth over him, slicing him over and over.
    I started to swim back to Susan when the stomach twitched. I shone my light on it and found a tiny lake monster moving inside a membranous sack. Irving was about to give birth!
    The sack split and spilled about four feet of baby lake monster into the water. I cradled the little monster to my chest and swam for the surface. Irving was an air breather; it meant the baby probably was too. We were almost to the surface when I realized I had no idea how far down we’d been. Did I need a decompression stop? The little monster began to thrash in my arms. I let it go, and it popped to the surface. Decompression or not, it was too late. I said a silent prayer and surfaced.
    The little monster made a loud happy snort as it gasped in air. It blinked at me; tiny bristling horns covered a dragonlike head. It was a perfect replica of Irving. Susan surfaced near me and just stared for a minute.
    I wasn’t in any pain, no tightness of chest, no muscle cramping; no decompression sickness, lungs okay. We couldn’t have been down more than forty feet for a few minutes. Maybe I worry too much.
    I rubbed my hand along the baby’s back, like wet silk. I reached up to scratch a miniature eye ridge. The monster bit me, sinking needle teeth to the bone. I screamed around the regulator that was still in my mouth. The baby vanished into the water, gone.
    Susan stared at the spot where it had been, then said, “Irving’s dead. His body started to float down. How the hell did he get