Sheriff Abel Turner was at a complete loss, unsure of what to make of the scene spread out before him. It was rare to have a murder in Marina Bay, let alone with four victims instead of only one. Watching the few team members he had move about the crime scene, carefully taking pictures and collecting evidence, he stood at the edge, his hat in his hand as he scratched the back of his head.

With a shake of the head and a heavy sigh, he made his way forward through the sand, stopping next to his deputy near the closest body.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Cameron Perez said tiredly.

Abel responded with a grunt and a nod, his eyes fixated on the victim at their feet. “Heard you found ‘em,” he said, squatting down to get a better look.

“Yeah,” Cam replied. “Scared Bonnie half to death, that’s for sure.” He glanced over at where his fiancee stood with the medical team, a blanket around her still shaking shoulders. “Especially when that boy started moving.”

“The sole survivor?”

“Mhm.” Cam flipped through his notes on his tablet screen, reviewing what information he’d gathered about the injured merman he’d sent off to Embers Medical less than an hour before. “He was in pretty bad shape, too. A hole blown through his back and stomach, deep gashes on his side, a chunk of meat damn near missing from his thigh. Not to mention the other cuts and abrasions he sustained turning the altercation.”

“Altercation?” Abel glanced up at him, one thick dark eyebrow raised. He gestured to the bodies around them. “You call this an altercation?”

Cam shrugged one shoulder. “What else would you call it?” He waved a finger around each body. “They all have similar injuries. Deep cuts, bruising, stabs, and evidence of burn marks everywhere. The boy was no different.”

“Except he survived.”

Cam nodded. Abel stood with a barely contained groan. 

“What do we know about these guys? Anything found to tell us who they are?”

Cameron shook his head. “Nothing. All we know is that this guy and the one over there are mermen, and those ones are human.”

“What about the boy?”

“Also a merman.”

Abel frowned. “Odd.”

Cameron furrowed his brow. “Sir?”

“It’s been more than thirty years since any of the merfolk have been up here, and now we have three. Two of which are dead. I wonder what could have driven them up here?”

“Hard to say. Aside from the weapons we found, the only thing the kid had on him was a small whale-skin pouch and a belt. He wasn’t even wearing any clothes.”

“He was naked?” Abel’s eyebrows rose.

“No, not really. He had on some skin tight shorts or something, but that was it. Well, that and his belt and the pouch.”

“They weren’t shorts,” one of the nearby techs, Aimee, said, squatting next to one of the dead mermen, taking pictures. She was a small, silver haired elf with hazel eyes, one who’d been with the Sheriff’s department for decades. “They were scalewear.”

“What’s scalewear?”

“Strategically placed scales meant to cover up the more personal assets of a merfolk,” she said, getting to her feet. She turned to them, dusting her hand off on her pants. “They form when their tails and fins shift into legs.”

“Ah, the beauty of modesty,” Cameron grinned, glancing over at Bonnie.

“It’s not about modesty, Deputy,” Aimee said, moving to the merman they were standing next to. “It’s about protection. Their entire bodies are still covered in a thin sheet of scales, practically invisible and really more of a second skin, but those that surround their more private areas are more solid and opaque.”

“Even so,” Cam said, nodding in the direction of his pregnant fiancee. “It’s good they know enough to protect what’s important from the eyes of those who don’t need to see it.”

She smiled, chuckling softly. “Fair enough.” She turned her gaze to Abel. “Deputy Perez was correct, there’s nothing on any of the bodies to identify who they are, not even the men.”

“Seriously?” Abel said, bewildered. “That seems a bit odd.”

She nodded once. “I thought so, too.” She knelt down next to the merman, gently moving his dark hair aside to reveal the deep gash in his neck. “Obviously I can’t confirm until the coroner gets here, but I believe they were all killed with the same weapon and the same force of energy. These guys weren’t after each other, I think they were after your boy.”

“Did he take their ID’s when he killed them?” Abel asked sardonically.

She gave him an unamused look. “Seriously, sir?”

He shrugged. “Just a question.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “They never had any identification on them to begin with. I would have noticed.”

Abel couldn’t argue that. The state of the clothes on the bodies indicated to Abel’s trained eye that no one had touched them before, during, or after their deaths. Their pockets weren’t turned out, their jackets weren’t flipped out or removed, and there were no personal effects strewn about the area. Whoever these people were, they didn’t want to be known, that was for damn sure.

“What about these guys?” Abel asked, jerking his head at the body at his feet. “What can you tell me about them?”

She stood, hands on hips as she gazed down at the merman’s corpse. “Not much,” she admitted. “This one died mid-shift, and the other not long after. He was submerged in the water long enough for his regular form to still be intact. Merfolk can’t shift after death.”

“Where did you find the boy?” Abel asked Cameron. The man pointed ahead of them. 

“About twenty or so feet that way.”

Abel followed the angle of the gesture, taking in the placement of the bodies as he did so. “Huh,” he said under his breath. He slowly moved through the scene, careful to avoid touching or disturbing anything. 

“First this one,” he muttered, pointing to the body they’d been next to. “Then this guy, and this one.” The two humans were practically on top of each other, though the amount of blood spilled at that spot indicated it hadn’t been an easy fight for any of them. Finally he arrived at the final merman, his broken spear inches from his fingertips, his long blue hair strewn over his battered face. His neck had also been slashed, but there was a knife still embedded in his chest, directly in his heart.

“He was last,” he said, stopping next to the final victim, folding his arms over his chest. “And he didn’t go down easy.” 

His gaze roamed over the disrupted sand, taking in the deep scuffs and divots that still remained just out of reach of the tide. There was blood spatter everywhere, leading slightly away from the merman until it pooled right where the boy had fallen. Right where he’d been found.

Four dead. 

One survivor.

Abel glanced back, his lips pursed in a frown. He was going to have a lot of questions for that young man when he woke up, that was for sure.

**