That wasn’t quite as nice as it sounds. The Panther Princess had no nipples, no navel and no pubic hair. She was lightly scaled between the legs and her wet skin shone like a shark’s. I imagined that if you stroked her, your palm would come away bloody. She was wearing neither the turban she’d affected earlier nor the dark wig of her pictures. Her head was completely bald, skull swelling unnaturally. She didn’t even have her eyebrows pencilled in.
“You evidently can’t take good advice.”
As mermaids go, she was scarier than cute. In the crook of her left arm, she held a bundle from which a white baby face peered with unblinking eyes. Franklin looked more like Janice Marsh than his parents.
“A pity, really,” said a tiny ventriloquist voice through Franklin’s mouth, “but there are always complications.”
Brunette gibbered with fear, chewing his beard and huddling against me.
Janice Marsh set Franklin down and he sat up, an adult struggling with a baby’s body.
“The Cap’n has come back,” she explained.
“Every generation must have a Cap’n,” said the thing in Franklin’s mind. Dribble got in the way and he wiped his angel-mouth with a fold of swaddle.
Janice Marsh clucked and pulled Laird away from me, stroking his face.
“Poor dear,” she said, flicking his chin with a long tongue. “He got out of his depth.”
She put her hands either side of Brunette’s head, pressing the butt of her gun into his cheek.
“He was talking about a Sister City,” I prompted.
She twisted the gambler’s head around and dropped him on the floor. His tongue poked out and his eyes showed only white.
“Of course,” the baby said. “The Cap’n founded two settlements. One beyond Devil Reef, off Massachusetts. And one here, under the sands of the Bay.”
We both had guns. I’d let her kill Brunette without trying to shoot her. It was the detective’s fatal flaw, curiosity. Besides, the Laird was dead inside his head long before Janice snapped his neck.
“You can still join us,” she said, hips working like a snake in time to the chanting. “There are raptures in the deeps.”
“Sister,” I said, “you’re not my type.”
Her nostrils flared in anger and slits opened in her neck, flashing liverish red lines in her white skin.
Her gun was pointed at me, safety off. Her long nails were lacquered green.
I thought I could shoot her before she shot me. But I didn’t. Something about a naked woman, no matter how strange, prevents you from killing them. Her whole body was moving with the music. I’d been wrong. Despite everything, she was beautiful.
I put my gun down and waited for her to murder me. It never happened.
I don’t really know the order things worked out. But first there was lightning, then, an instant later, thunder.
Light filled the passageway, hurting my eyes. Then, a rumble of noise which grew in a crescendo. The chanting was drowned.
Through the thunder cut a screech. It was a baby’s cry. Franklin’s eyes were screwed up and he was shrieking. I had a sense of the Cap’n drowning in the baby’s mind, his purchase on the purloined body relaxing as the child cried out.
The floor beneath me shook and buckled and I heard a great straining of abused metal. A belch of hot wind surrounded me. A hole appeared. Janice Marsh moved fast and I think she fired her gun, but whether at me on purpose or at random in reflex I couldn’t say. Her body sliced towards me and I ducked.
There was another explosion, not of thunder, and thick smoke billowed through a rupture in the floor. I was on the floor, hugging the tilting deck. Franklin slid towards me and bumped, screaming, into my head. A half-ton of water fell on us and I knew the ship was breached. My guess was that the Japs had just saved my life with a torpedo. I was waist deep in saltwater. Janice Marsh darted away in a sinuous fish motion.
Then there were heavy bodies around me, pushing me against a bulkhead. In the darkness, I was scraped by something heavy, cold-skinned and foul-smelling. There were barks and cries, some of which might have come from human throats.
Fires went out and hissed as the water rose. I had Franklin in my hands and tried to hold him above water. I remembered the peril of Jungle Jillian again and found my head floating against the hard ceiling.
The Cap’n cursed in vivid 18th Century language, Franklin’s little body squirming in my grasp. A toothless mouth tried to get a biter’s grip on my chin but slipped off. My feet slid and I was off-balance, pulling the baby briefly underwater. I saw his startled eyes through a wobbling film. When I pulled him out again, the Cap’n was gone and Franklin was screaming on his own. Taking a double gulp of air, I plunged under the water and struggled towards the nearest door, a hand closed over the baby’s face to keep water out of his mouth and nose.
The Montecito was going down fast enough to suggest there were plenty of holes in it. I had to make it a priority to find one. I jammed my knee at a door and it flew open. I was poured, along with several hundred gallons of water, into a large room full of stored gambling equipment. Red and white chips floated like confetti.
I got my footing and waded towards a ladder. Something large reared out of the water and shambled at me, screeching like a seabird. I didn’t get a good look at it. Which was a mercy. Heavy arms lashed me, flopping boneless against my face. With my free hand, I pushed back at the thing, fingers slipping against cold slime. Whatever it was was in a panic and squashed through the door.
There was another explosion and everything shook. Water splashed upwards and I fell over. I got upright and managed to get a one-handed grip on the ladder. Franklin was still struggling and bawling, which I took to be a good sign. Somewhere near, there was a lot of shouting.
I dragged us up rung by rung and slammed my head against a hatch. If it had been battened, I’d have smashed my skull and spilled my brains. It flipped upwards and a push of water from below shoved us through the hole like a ping-pong ball in a fountain.
The Monty was on fire and there were things in the water around it. I heard the drone of airplane engines and glimpsed nearby launches. Gunfire fought with the wind. It was a full-scale attack. I made it to the deck-rail and saw a boat fifty feet away. Men in yellow slickers angled tommy guns down and sprayed the water with bullets.
The gunfire whipped up the sea into a foam. Kicking things died in the water. Someone brought up his gun and fired at me. I pushed myself aside, arching my body over Franklin and bullets spanged against the deck.
My borrowed taxi must have been dragged under by the bulk of the ship.
There were definitely lights in the sea. And the sky. Over the city, in the distance, I saw firecracker bursts. Something exploded a hundred yards away and a tower of water rose, bursting like a puffball. A depth charge.
The deck was angled down and water was creeping up at us. I held on to a rope webbing, wondering whether the gambling ship still had any lifeboats. Franklin spluttered and bawled.
A white body slid by, heading for the water. I instinctively grabbed at it. Hands took hold of me and I was looking into Janice Marsh’s face. Her eyes blinked, membranes coming round from the sides, and she kissed me again. Her long tongue probed my mouth like an eel, then withdrew. She stood up, one leg bent so she was still vertical on the sloping deck. She drew air into her lungs—if she had lungs—and expelled it through her gills with a musical cry. She was slim and white in the darkness, water running off her body. Someone fired in her direction and she dived into the waves, knifing through the surface and disappearing towards the submarine lights. Bullets rippled the spot where she’d gone under.
I let go of the ropes and kicked at the deck, pushing myself away from the sinking ship. I held Franklin above the water and splashed with my legs and elbows. The Monty was dragging a lot of things under with it, and I fought against the pull so I wouldn’t be one of them. My shoulders ached and my clothes got in the way, but I kicked against the current.