Monster Gauntlet by Paul Emil

Instead, you want to throw them something to grab on to and pull them to the safety.
    With all of the thrashing, splashing, and yelling, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Marine didn’t look like he was trying to help Clea stay on him. In fact, it was the opposite. He was trying to shake her off. And Clea didn’t look terrified. In the flashes of action I saw between splashes, she almost looked happy ... wickedly happy.
    The two went down.
     The girl on the cross was screaming.
    “Marine!”
    I pointed my gun but didn’t have a target. The two disappeared beneath the dark water. Seconds passed painfully. Then the pair burst from the surface, still bonded, clinging, and thrashing like lovers. Marine gasped for air. Clea was not letting go, and she wasn’t just clinging to him. Her hair and skin seemed to be sticking to him.
    In a stroke of genius (or luck), Marine shuffled out of his jacket, breaking his bond with the woman-thing.
    He staggered to shore. When the water fell below waist-level, I could see he was bleeding. He lurched straight towards me.
    “Get out the way!” I yelled. I couldn’t get a shot off with him in the way. Seeing him reach for me, my priorities shifted. I stashed the gun and went to him.
    I reached Marine in knee-high water. He practically fell on me. Although he wasn’t a big guy, he almost knocked me over with his weight. Like soldiers on a battlefield, I half-carried him to shore. We only had to slosh a few meters, but I wouldn’t feel safe until we were far from the water.
    When we were on the rocky beach, I let him down (by the cross) and whipped around, expecting to see the creature right behind us, grabbing at my ankles.
     But she was gone. The surface of the water was calm, as if nothing had happened.
    Then I saw it. About ten meters out, something broke the surface of the loch. It popped out several centimeters and stayed still, looking almost like a rock. Only it wasn’t a rock. It was Clea. The top of her head and her eyes rose above the surface, while her nose, mouth, and the rest of her remained beneath. She had no need to come up for air. She stared at us with those vacant blue eyes. They had no emotional expression. As far as I could see, she hadn’t transformed into anything hideous. She was still a pale, dark-haired, blue-eyed woman ... who was naked, breathing underwater, and living in a cold, dark Scottish loch. There was something very, very wrong with that.
    I pointed my pistol with a shaky hand and fired at the thing. A small splash rippled the water near her head, but the she-creature didn’t move. Her eyes just blinked like those of an alligator peering over the surface.
    My mind kept conjuring new nightmares. Maybe she knew that I had little chance of hitting her at this distance. Or maybe the animal part of her brain had taken over and she didn’t know or care about the danger of guns. Or maybe she didn’t care because bullets couldn’t hurt her.
    Just as I was feeling the fatalistic, Marine, with a sudden surge of effort, managed to get to his feet and throw a rock. It splashed loudly, and was large enough to make the monster move slightly. The attack was a nice try. The rock landed close to the creature, but like with my wasted bullet, a near-miss was still a miss.
    Marine stumbled slightly, but somehow stayed on his feet. I looked at his face as he stared out at the lake. I saw his fear building and turned my head to look, somehow knowing what I would see. The water monster was moving closer.
    Suddenly, an explosion of water burst into the air like the hand of a sea god reaching for something in the sky. The force knocked Marine and me to the ground. The woman in the water was blasted in half, with the top of her body going in one direction and the bottom in another. Gore rained down on the lake, and the dark water consumed all. Like a willing accomplice, the loch covered up the evidence, remained quiet, and feigned innocence.
    I was stunned. I was out of