A body rushed at him through the coffee-colored water, long, pale green, clawed hands outstretched, a fish mouth on a human head gaping. A white light exploded in his head. The chain of will and restraint imposed by human part of him creaked, and he let himself off it. A knife was in his hand, and as she came at him, he locked his hand on the rough lip of that gaping toothed mouth and stabbed his knife into her side. He yanked the blade free and stabbed her again and again, driving the knife in with controlled frenzy. She clawed at him. He ignored the sharp flashes of pain and kept stabbing. Her side turned into raw butchered wound. She jerked now, trying desperately to break free, but there was no hiding from his knife or the white burning rage inside him.

Circles swam before his eyes. He realized his body was telling him it was running out of air. The creature floated limp, the right side of her chest a bloody hole. He thrust his hand into it, felt the deflated sack of the dead heart, and tore it out. Never leave things unfinished.

His chest hurt as if a red-hot band squeezed it. The first pangs of drowning panic scraped at his insides.

Darker shapes streaked toward him. Fish, he realized. Narrow and long, as long as his arm, with big mouths studded with teeth. They swarmed the body. He let go of the heart and kicked himself up.

He broke the surface and took a huge, lung-expanding breath. The air tasted so good.

Ten feet away, Julie spun like a dervish, her tomahawks slicing. She rammed the butt of her left axe under the third fish-woman’s chin. The blow snapped the woman’s chin up. Julie buried her right tomahawk in the creature’s exposed chest. Blood gushed.

He pulled himself out of the hole.

The fish woman swung at Julie. The girl leaned back. The claws raked the air inches from her nose. She chopped at the woman’s right side with her left tomahawk. Ribs cracked. The fish-creature dropped to her knees. Julie cleaved her neck. He heard the steel slice through the vertebrae. It sounded sweet.

The thin mist turned red again.

A shadow appeared behind Julie, rushing at her from the fog. He ran, picking up momentum, and leaped over Julie and the prone fish-woman. He rammed into the charging creature and tore into her. She broke like a rag doll in his hands, and he laughed. He snapped her arm, wrenching it out of the socket, her leg, her neck, her other arm, happy to finally release the rage he kept carefully pent up inside him.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I get that this was terribly exciting, but she is dead. We killed everybody.”

He snapped his teeth at her, playing, and broke the woman’s forearm with a dry snap.