4

Jack Fenton groaned, dizzier than when his wife accidentally bashed his head with a piece of equipment they were working on. Pain shot through every nerve of his eyes and as he reached up to rub at a tender spot on the side of his forehead, he could feel the large bump that formed there. He winced when his fingers brushed over it but did his best to clear his vision and look around.

The first thing he noticed was he was on a rock, and above the crash of the waves, he could hear a strange humming noise. It was almost a pleasant noise, it would probably be more pleasant if his head wasn't pounding at the moment.

What had happened?

He and his son were on a boat, they were fishing, minding their own business, and then...

His eyes widened, searching around through blurred vision, "Danny?" where was his son?

Movement caught his eye, he looked over to where his son was leaning over the edge of their island. Suddenly his vision cleared and his heart stopped when he caught sight of one of those things that had attacked them. "Danny, no!" he scrambled to get up off his butt and rush over to Danny as fast as he could, but it was too late. The creature with white hair had dragged his son so far down that Jack couldn't even see him anymore.

Without even bothering to think as pure unadulterated fear bled into his chest, Jack dove into the water, sure that if he was quick enough he could grab Danny from the monster before it was too late.

But the water was too thick, he couldn't see a thing, he didn't even know which direction he came from. He desperately searched around the water, but he couldn't see anything but water and sand let alone his raven-haired son.

Soon he had no choice but to go up for air, but as soon as he caught his breath he went back down to search again. Repeating that over and over until his arms and legs were tired from swimming through the murky water and started to feel like jelly.

He climbed back up on the island panting for breath, his body feeling heavier than ever before. His son was gone, his pride and joy. He would never see him again, ever. He knew what those things would do to him, he knew the torture they would put his son threw as they ripped him apart while he was still alive.

Jack fell from his hands and knees, rolling onto his back and covered his face with his eyes. His son was probably being eaten alive at that very moment and he couldn't do anything about it but lay there, and wait for the tide to come in.

This was all his fault.

...

Phantom's eyes broke the surface, landing on the fat man lying back on the rock with an arm over his eyes. Phantom could read him just as clear as he could read the younger boy trapped below them.

The man was wallowing in self-hatred and blame, waiting for death to come and put him out of his misery.

Phantom hummed seeing that the tide had picked up a lot, the island that the man rested on was barely above the surface anymore.

The man looked fat enough to feed the mermaids for a couple days, a delicious meal that would be savory and satisfying.

Phantom dove down, purposely creating a splash, and watched as the man sat up in suspicion at the sound. Fear could be felt making its way into the older humans being as he stood up and looked around him at the seemingly innocent waters.

Jack couldn't see Phantom where he sat watching him in the deeper part of the cove through the murkiness of the water, but Phantom could see the man clearly as if the only barrier between them was a dusty piece of glass. He smirked, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. The older man was nearly unsuspecting, he didn't know what was going to happen.

Phantom wanted to play.

He got up from his spot and swam quickly up to the surface, making sure he was just barely out of the human's line of sight. He jumped out and dove back in, loving the sight of the human whipping around to watch as the water rippled from Phantom's teasing. The spike in the human's nerves from his actions was intoxicating. The human had no idea where Phantom even was, he would have been safer with a great white shark circling him.

Phantom swam against the surface, making sure the human caught sight of him before diving down.

He wanted the human to be afraid, wanted him to feel trapped. He wanted the human to know that he was completely at Phantom's mercy, that Phantom was in control.

Sadly his game had to come to an end, he knew the mermaids were all hungry and would be there soon.

Pitty, he was having so much fun with this pathetic humans panic.

"Oh well," he thought as he made a U-turn underwater and swam full speed towards the surface.

Jack Fenton watched in horror as the creature burst out of the water, arms outreached for him, and tackled him off the rock.

Water rushed up his nose and into his mouth as he was pulled under the salt water. They were moving faster than Jack could even measure, it had to be around 100 miles per hour, the pressure from the water rushing at him from behind was painful.

Where were they going? He knew already that he wasn't being dragged downward, there wasn't enough water pressure on his skull and they couldn't be more than a few feet deep.

He was still fighting to get the salt water out of his nose when he was suddenly thrown from the arms of the creature that had been digging his claws into his sides.

His head came above the water and after a coughing fit, he was able to clear the water from his eyes and look around. The burn from the sea water made him have to blink a few times before he was actually able to see.

He was sitting only a few feet deep into the water, the beach only ten feet behind him. He gasped in surprise and looked back towards the sea where the cove he was just in sat innocently those 200 meters away.

The merman that had attacked him and taken his son was floating a few inches away from his body, watching him with those blistering neon green eyes. The look in the creature was giving him chilled him to the bone.

"Don't come back." It said out loud, it's voice masculine but childish.

It disappeared a second later, and Jack stood up, only knee deep in the water. "WHERE IS MY SON!?" he screamed out desperately, but he didn't receive an answer.

He backed up, confused to why the merman saved him. He didn't care what the reason was however, his son had to be alive and he wasn't going to waste even a minute to search for him.

He ran the rest of the way out of the water and to his car.

He would find his son no matter what it took.

...

"Who let them escape?"  Spectra, an angry green eyed mermaid with red hair hissed at the sight of the empty island barely peaking above the surface.

Dozens of heads peaked above the water, while more looked for a drowned carcass below and around the cove. Their meal hadn't drowned, so it had to have gotten away.

Ember regarded the empty island with irritation, "didn't anyone stay behind to watch it?"

"I thought that was Kitty's job," Desire said, the wish mermaid turned her angry only visible red eye on the green mermaid with the dreds.

"What?!" The mermaid with poisonous black lips screeched, "I thought you said you would keep watch!"

"Nevermind! Both if you." Spectra said, "let's just talk to Phantom, he took the gay one while we were gone. Maybe he will share what's left."

"Ha! That's rich." Samantha, the mermaid who controls vegetation said, her green pupilless eyes snarled at the rest of the group from where she sat a couple feet up out of the water. Seaweed covered her breasts and her raven hair was straight and short. "Phantom is more selfish than any of us, you all know that. You might as well be asking him to give up his powers for the rest of eternity."

"She's a little right," Danielle, the youngest out of all of them and by far the sweetest said. She was practically the spitting image of Phantom, only younger, female, and less powerful. Most of the mermaids often questioned if they were related somehow, though the two denied it with a passion. "Phantom's never done anything nice for us, other than telling us when it's time to immigrate."

"What are we supposed to do then?" Ember asked.

"Same as we've always done," Samantha said quietly, eyes hooded and avoiding eye contact with everyone as usual for her. "We wait for the right prey to step up to our door."

The rest of the mermaids were angry, they knew that this was all they could do now. They wouldn't dare try to hunt out of the safety of the cove, and it wasn't as if they were going to starve to death by waiting a few days for someone to come. They could live up to a year without human flesh, it sucked majorly to do so, however, because they would feel the hunger pains before the first two weeks were even over.

It had already been three since their last meal, and they were starting to really squirm. It didn't matter, they were patient. They could hold for a little longer.

It wasn't as if they had a choice.

...

Danny hated the dark,  especially when all he could hear was the hum of the blood rushing through his head. He couldn't see anything, and he kept thinking he was about to feel something grab him from behind or bite into him. He hated that he couldn't see what was going on around him. For all he knew, there could be a dozen curious meat-eating fish swimming around him and he wouldn't know. He could almost say he liked it better when his capture was there, at least then he could see what was going on, and expect what was going to happen, but right now he was walking a tight rope blindfolded.

His wish was granted when a glow of light shined in through the entrance of this particular cave he was in. Danny looked up to watch as the white-haired merman swam through the small hole and down to him, his fins flapping beautifully as he moved through the water.

The merman really was the embodiment of what Danny thought beauty really was.

If only he wasn't so evil.

Phantom smirked as his natural light hit his human, now able to see the color in his features instead if the black and white if his night vision. The boy's eyes had gotten used to the salt from the water and weren't bright red from burning anymore. He was so pale, and the red bite marks that he left littered across the porcelain and otherwise flawless skin were a beautiful contrast to his creamy and slightly tanned body.

The jewelry he had dressed him in was initially there just because Phantom thought they would look good on him, the blue jewels brought out the blue in the boy's eyes. He also liked eating off something that looked fit for a king.

Now the merman just wanted to stare at him and admire both the kid's natural beauty and his own handiwork. The kid was his now, he belonged to Phantom, and he would allow him to heal up until the next time he gets hungry. In the meantime, he was just a priceless jewel that held his interest for more than a few minutes.

Danny regarded the staring the merman was giving him, unsure what it was thinking about. Lately, it was like the merman could hear everything he was thinking about if his telepathic responses were anything to go by. He wondered if he was listening to his thoughts now.

"Yes." He heard clearly in his head, the merman's smirk increasing.

Good, at least he knew how to communicate.

"Why haven't you killed me?" He thought, hoping the thought would receive an answer. So this is how merpeople communicated under water? It was strange, knowing that the merman had heard and would hear his every thought.

The only answer he got was an off-handed and careless shrug.

"Where is my father?"

Phantom just shrugged again, much to Danny's irritation. He hoped the merman could feel just how much he wanted to strangle him.

"I don't need to breathe." The merman started to swim small circles around his human, taking in everything about the mortal. Lucky for the human, those little threats that he throws at the merman didn't faze or anger him even the slightest, in fact, if anything Phantom just thought it was funny.

So, Danny thought, he's picking and choosing what questions to answer, huh? How childish.

The merman's tail fin brushed under his nose as a house cat would do to its mate. It tickled, and if Danny didn't hate the creature with a burning passion he would be able to enjoy how soft it was on his face. The translucent white fins blended into black tips and contrasted against the black tail beautifully. The dorsal and secondary dorsal fins matched the tail ones in both translucence and blend. It was entrapping and manipulative- how pretty the merman actually was. Danny would have loved to sit and stare at it for hours under different circumstances, but at the moment while his hands were tied and his ankle was chained, all he wanted was to get as far away from this 'myth' as possible.

Phantom came up from behind him and peaked his head over the human's shoulder. He pinched Danny's cheek like a great aunt would when they see their nephew for the first time in ten years. "I'll take your hatred, human."

Danny growled underwater, his name wasn't human, it was fucking Danny Fenton.

"How long are you planning on keeping me here?" Danny made sure to throw the thought at the merman, wanting it to know how miffed he was at his situation.

"Until I get bored of you."

"Is my father trapped here somewhere too?"

The merman didn't answer, and the fact that he wasn't giving any sort of information on the status of his father was really pissing him off in the most helpless sort of way. He needed to know that his father was okay, that he wasn't trapped down here somewhere like cattle, that he hadn't been eaten alive viciously by man-eating mermaids.

Phantom wasn't about to tell the boy anything; if he told the kid then the mermaids would be able to read his mind, and then they would all come after him for not only allowing their meal to escape but actually helping the human to do so. Phantom didn't feel like going through the drama of having to protect his human from their spiteful fit of hungry rage. He knew that the human wouldn't be worth the energy to fight them off, and he sort of wanted to keep him for as long as he could.

He didn't know why he even bothered saving the kids father, he had no idea what he had to gain from it. He was a very selfish being, and he was male enough to admit it, but he had no reason to steal away from the entire coves food.

Perhaps his only reason was simply that he felt like it. As baffling as it was, he felt like abiding by the human's wishes. Perhaps the human had spiked his interest just enough to persuade him to save his father.

Lucky him.

He shrugged it off, the mermaids were strong, and nowhere near starving to death. If they wanted food, then they would get it themselves.

Danny's stomach growled irritatingly loud, and Phantom looked down at the boy's stomach. He was painfully aware of the differences between his own kind and this fragile human being. While Phantom himself was already thousands of years old and would live for the next millennia assuming he wasn't killed, he knew the human's life span was barely below a hundred years. Phantom could go a year without devouring a human, while the boy could only go a few short weeks before he would die of starvation. Merpeople didn't need hydration as long as they stayed in the water, while the smallest about of the liquid meant the difference between life and death for humans.

Lucky for Danny, humans absorbed water through their skin the longer they stayed in it because Phantom wouldn't have cared enough to deal with getting the human fresh clean water to drink.

This kid really was just a lucky son of a bitch.

...

It was nearly 7 in the evening when Jack Fenton finally made it home. He was still soaking wet and full of the grime from the sea water. Most of it collected around his thighs and his ankles after dripping for a couple hours on the drive home from the beach. His wife wasn't expecting him back until tomorrow, but he didn't have time to call on his way home. Well more like he didn't have the patience to call in the middle of honking and screaming his way through traffic all through the drive.

Jack flew through the driver door and fumbled with the keys to the house. After a few attempts in getting the right key into the lock, he successfully got himself into the house.

"Maddie!" Jack yelled as loud as he could, expecting to hear his wife scream back or at least show herself, but all he got was a few thumps in the ceiling above his head.

At least he knew where she was and could run up to talk to her, he didn't have time to wait for her to come down, so he ran up the stairs to their shared bedroom and opened the door.

The last thing he was ever expecting to see was his wife half naked attempting to help Vlad, his college friend of twenty years, out the window.

"What the blazes is going on here?!" He shouted, his son momentarily forgotten as he ran up to the window to wrap his hands around Vlad's neck and break it. Unfortunately, Vlad jumped before he could get his hands on him.

The amount of rage and pain that companies the fear for his son was crippling in such a way that he wasn't sure if he wanted to let it escalate into a blind frenzy of physical anger, or crawl into a hole and die.

He swallowed his pain down and turned towards his adulteress of a wife, for the first time ever the tears in her eyes did nothing to soften the man's anger.

This was a conversation they could have later, their son was on the line right now.

"Jack, it's not what it-"

"Save your excuses for later Maddie, we have bigger things to worry about." He walked passed her to the door, unable to look at her anymore. "The merpeople kidnapped our boy, we need to ready the Fenton submarine and find him." With that, he made his way back downstairs to the Fenton lab.

Maddie was stuck where her husband left her. What did he say? Her boy, her baby, was kidnapped by those creatures? As if a pile of flashcards was dropped in front of her face, dozens of facts about merpeople and how evil and sadistic they could be to their prey flashed across her brain.

The fear and the desperation she felt to find her son outweighed the shock from her husband finding her and Vlad together, and she quickly put her pants and her discarded blue tank on and followed her husband down to the lab.

They couldn't waste another minute.