Water Witch

by R. J. Blain

  That was when they shot me.

  The bang of gunfire deafened me, and the thump of impact on my arm heralded a flash of heat and pulsing agony. Tweedledee smirked, took aim, and fired again. The second round hit above the first and tore through my upper arm. The pain was so intense a scream built in my chest but stuck in my throat.

  Lifting his leg, Tweedledee braced his foot against my chest and shoved. My back struck the boat’s ledge, driving the air out of my lungs. His second kick toppled me into the ocean.

  Water closed over my head. I gasped at the cold, and instead of air, the ocean flooded into my lungs. I jerked, and agony lanced through my arm, stunning me with its intensity. The saltwater stung my eyes, and blood streamed from my arm.

  In the movies, sharks slid through the waters as dark shadows. In reality, I felt them before I saw them. They brushed against me, their skin sandpaper rough. I hung motionless, aware I needed to struggle, but I remained frozen in place, riveted by the curtains of blood streaming in the ocean, the tug of the sea at my clothes, and the sharks thrashing as they searched for their next meal.

  It didn’t take them long to find me.

  The first bumped its nose against me, and my stinging eyes focused on its many rows of jagged teeth. A dark, glassy eye stared into mine, and losing interest, it glided away.

  Its body was easily as long as the boat, and I had no doubt it could swallow me without stopping to chew.

  Fear came second to my need for air. My lungs burned, and my chest ached. Sunlight played over the surface above, but I couldn’t reach it. No matter how much I needed to get my head above the surface, my body refused to move. Panic surged through me. I felt my heartbeat stutter, intensifying the suffocating pressure of the water around me.

  Instead of tearing me into bite-sized pieces, the sharks circled, leaving me to drift in the ocean and drown. A large shark passed over me and blocked out the light.

  It rammed the boat, rocking it in the water. Following its lead, the others joined in, slamming their bodies against the vessel. They opened their maws, snapping their teeth as they breached the surface.

  A bump against my side captured my attention.

  I’d seen enough movies to recognize a great white shark when I saw one. Its triangular teeth were several inches long, set in a stark white mouth large enough I’d slide right into its stomach without it noticing. As though aware I gaped at it, it thrashed in the water, giving me a very close and personal look down its throat.

  Instead of eating me, it pushed me through the water. A second shark joined it, one that was even larger, with a darker hide covered in white spots. Unlike the great white, when it opened its mouth, I couldn’t spot any teeth at all. It rammed its snout into my stomach and forced the water out of me.

  I surfaced moments before I convulsively sucked in a breath. Coughs tore through me, and I choked and vomited water. Instead of sinking beneath the waves, thrashing bodies pinned me between them and held me up, their rough skin scraping against mine. Teeth and fins caught in my clothes, and my shirt tore under the abuse.

  My kidnappers’ boat bobbed in the water far out of reach while the ocean churned from the sheer number of sharks swarming around it. I spluttered, shaking my head to clear it. Another coughing fit seized me, and a shudder ripped through me.

  I made the mistake of looking down. A dark shape angled toward the boat, so large I couldn’t tell where it began and ended, let alone identify its species. Whatever it was, its size intimidated the other predators. They scattered, leaving the boat in a circle of still, shark-free waters.

  A dorsal fin bumped against my hand. My hand jerked and twitched, and I gasped from the pain lancing through my arm. I regained enough control of my body to throw my right arm across the gray-blue back, clutching at the slick fin.

  Maybe if I clung to its back, it wouldn’t twist around and tear me apart.

  A great white breached, surging out of the ocean and thrashing its massive body. Water sprayed in my face, and when the shark splashed back into the water, a wave crested over my head.

  The ocean stilled, and the shadowy behemoth lurking beneath the waves rose up, surfaced beneath my kidnappers’ boat, and shunted it aside. The vessel careened one way, leaning so far over the ocean poured into the hull before it lurched the other way and righted.

  While drenched, all three of my kidnappers remained on board. The massive beast sank beneath the water, and when it vanished from sight, the frenzied sharks converged on the boat once more.

  When their prey didn’t willingly leap into the water to be eaten, the sharks rammed the boat until it began to rock, snatched the three screaming men in their hungry jaws, and dragged them off the boat and into the depths.

  I didn’t realize I had passed out until I woke with my face encrusted with sand and water lapping at my shoulders and neck. For one blissful moment, confusion reigned.

  Then the pain hit me so hard it stole my breath, and when I recovered enough to breathe, I instinctively curled into a ball, which only made the throbbing in my arm worse.

  Bent Nose and his cohorts had shot me and thrown me to the sharks, that much I remembered. I knew just enough about gunshot wounds to recognize being shot twice was bad news. What I didn’t understand was why I was on a beach with the sun hard at work baking me into a shriveled mummy rather than in the stomach of a hungry shark being slowly digested.

  It had only taken a single bucket of chum to whip the sharks into a frenzy. My fresh blood should have ensured a quick trip into one’s mouth. Instead, I had somehow made it to shore.

  Moving hurt. My arm wanted nothing to do with anything, throbbing along with my heartbeat. Bracing myself for the worst, I stole a glance at the damage.

  Blood and sand caked my entire left arm, hiding the gunshot wounds. While I couldn’t spot any fresh blood, I also couldn’t tell how bad my injuries were.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know either. Some said knowledge was power, but it was a curse, too. It was one thing to understand death was a possibility, but another to know the specifics of what was in store for me.

  I’d hope for civilization and a phone so I could make the most embarrassing call to my parents I’d ever made in my life. Then again, surviving shark-infested waters was something to write home about. Without the gritty sand and the sun seeking to burn me to a crisp, I would’ve doubted everything, even my blood-caked arm.

  I couldn’t swim, so how had I survived? Groaning, I shook my head and expanded my world from beyond my immediate surroundings to the rest of the beach. Pristine white sand stretched to where the shore of the island curved out of sight, blocked by tall grasses. The sun rode high—too high—overhead.

  Not only had I survived shark-infested waters, I had also lost at least a day somewhere. Cradling my left arm to my chest, I lurched to my feet, swaying for several steps before finding my balance. My shirt was all but gone, and scratches covered every bit of bare skin.

  I hadn’t been the only thing to wash up. The white motorboat rested in the surf, its bow submerged while the rest of it stuck up in the air. Dents and gouges marred the paint, and there were dark brown stains caked on the side. I staggered to it, keeping my distance while looking it over.

  Something large had taken a bite out of the side of it, and I recognized the triangular shape of a shark’s tooth lodged in the wood. I pried it out. It was well over four inches long; I struggled to imagine the shark it had come from. Maybe there were gaps in my memory, but I remembered the great white’s tooth-filled mouth far too well, and none of its teeth had been nearly so big.

  Whatever had taken a chunk out of the boat was worthy of starring in a horror film, and I had somehow managed to survive. While I was scratched and bruised, there was no evidence of the sharks biting me. Lying in the sun had bronzed my skin, and I thanked the mix of Mom’s Italian and Dad’s African American heritage that I wasn’t burned to a crisp.

  Even tanned, I favored Mom more than Dad, something he ofte
n complained about. Maybe on the outside, I looked more like her than him, but I gave my arm a skeptical look and decided Dad’s contribution of genes had given me a fighting chance to live.

  I shook my head to clear it, climbed into the boat, and searched it for anything of use.

  My kidnappers hadn’t kept much on board, which annoyed me into cursing and kicking the trashed boat. The knife I found under one of the seats would come in useful, but I was otherwise screwed. I discovered how they had planned to torment Mom and Dad with my death; they had brought an internet-enabled satellite phone with them. By some miracle, it still worked—sort of.

  Unfortunately, it was low on battery, and it refused to do anything useful, like place calls. I couldn’t tell if its low-battery state had rendered it useless or if its antenna had been damaged.

  Before its battery died, I managed to check through the phone’s storage, grimacing at the pictures my kidnappers had sent to Dad’s cell number. Judging from the perspective, Bent Nose had captured a photo of Tweedledee kicking me overboard. In the background, shark-filled waters waited, and one of the great whites had photobombed the picture, showing off its many big teeth.

  Dad knew the ocean, and I had no doubt he believed I was dead, which put my chances of him coming to the rescue at approximately zero. However, my knowledge of Fenerec males gave me the hope he’d come hunting revenge, although I had no idea how he’d track down where my kidnappers had taken me.

  If I wanted to make it home alive, I’d have to make the best of a bad situation and find a way to rescue myself. The first thing I needed was fresh water. If I found water, I could figure out the rest. Maybe I wasn’t a werewolf like my father or a witch like my mother, but I wasn’t helpless.

  I glanced at my throbbing, blood-caked arm. One day, I’d learn to stop lying to myself.

  It didn’t take me long to make a full circuit of the island. It had a spring, and bracing for the worst, I tried a sip.

  Sweet, pure water washed over my tongue. My mouth was so parched the first swallow didn’t even make it to my throat. While water alone wouldn’t save me, it elevated my chance of survival. Shelter and food would be a problem. The island had some scrub, nothing I recognized as edible, and offered very little shade from the sun.

  My best and only option was to pillage the wrecked boat for supplies and do the best I could. Help would come or it wouldn’t.

  I crossed the island, glaring at the wooden vessel. With my left arm out of commission and no idea what to do about it, I lacked the strength needed to dismantle the thing. The seat cushions came off easily enough, and I tossed them onto the beach. I had no idea how they’d help, but something was better than nothing.

  Without tools and unwilling to take a chance and possibly break my knife, there wasn’t much I could do with the boat. I sighed, shook my head, and stared out over the ocean.

  Shark fins cut through the waters, circling and waiting. A shiver ran through me. One of them was far larger than the rest, and I scrambled away from where the surf washed over the sand.

  Only someone insane or desperate would enter the water with sharks, and I wondered how long it would be until I was classified as one, the other, or both.

  Two days after waking up on the beach, I braved the ocean, wading so I could wash the sand and blood off my arm. It throbbed, and I recognized the waves of heat and chills as fever setting in, something I could do nothing about. It wasn’t like I could trot myself down to the doctor, get a prescription, and hit the local pharmacy for antibiotics. With my luck, I probably had a bullet lodged in me as a grisly memento of my close brush with death.

  Bracing myself for the pain, I prodded my arm and located the entry and exit wounds. Once I confirmed both shots had gone through, I focused my efforts on removing the caked blood and sand from my undamaged skin first. If I reopened the wounds, I had no idea if I could stop it from bleeding. If the holes were infected, would exposing them to saltwater make them worse?

  In the future, I’d pay more attention to Dad’s ranting and raving about emergency medical care. While I wanted to be a lawyer or judge rather than a cop, paramedic, or anyone who needed a lot of medical skills, I liked living.

  Having no idea what to do about the two holes through my arm rained on my stay-alive parade. I was so absorbed in the task of cleaning my injured arm that I didn’t notice the shark until it bumped me with its nose.

  Humans couldn’t fly, but I made it halfway into orbit before I landed with a splash, somehow managing to stay on my feet. I had no idea what species it was, but it was too small to be a great white, although it had a lot of teeth, beat me in size, and looked hungry.

  Sharks always looked hungry.

  I scrambled backwards, tripped, and landed on my ass in the water.

  Instead of tearing into me, the shark used my lap as a pillow and stared at me with big, dark eyes. It beat at the surf with its tail and fins, and I got the disconcerting feeling it waited for something. Torn between horror, shock, and disbelief, I froze, aware of each and every one of the sharp teeth it displayed so predominantly.

  As though sensing my fear, it closed its mouth. It wormed its way closer, pressing its snout against my stomach. It continued to flap its fins and slap its tail at the water while it watched and waited.

  Life among Fenerec had taught me to go with the flow; werewolves reacted to life in unexpected ways, often flying off the handle at each other over nothing. I had survived a childhood surrounded by men and women who could transform into wolves.

  Maybe the shark would change its mind about eating me later, but for the moment, it seemed content. I considered my options. It weighed enough that I doubted I would be able to free myself until it got bored of me. Once it got bored, it’d probably eat me.

  Until then, I was stuck. With my left arm too injured to use, I didn’t have a lot to lose. If it took off my hand, I wouldn’t last long anyway. If, by some miracle, I did escape the island and find my way home, at least I could say I had petted a shark.

  The shark had friends, and they all wanted a turn on my lap. When one tired of my attention, it rolled away, made room for the next, and before I could get up, I had a new toothy predator to keep me company.

  Each and every one of them wanted their fair share of petting, leaving my right hand raw and stinging. The water helped numb my left arm, although I found it difficult at best to use my hand. Of the sharks who visited me, the smallest fit in my palm while the largest was at least ten to fifteen feet long. None of them were great whites, which relieved me; those were larger and kept to the deeper waters.

  However, I did recognize several of the sharks by their stripes. I’d heard nothing good about tiger sharks, and I had an entire quartet of them hanging out within biting range. At least three other species lurked nearby. To my relief, some of them lacked flesh-rending teeth.

  I liked those the best. My tolerance for things bigger than me with a preference for meat frayed the longer the sharks insisted on toying with me. By the time the sun set, my throat burned from thirst, I craved sleep, and my stomach gurgled its demand for food, something I couldn’t provide even though I wanted to.

  When the last of the sharks retreated, I staggered to my feet and slogged towards the shore. My jeans weighed me down and clung to my legs, hampering my ability to walk in a straight line.

  I had almost made it to the waterline when something slapped into the back of my head. I yelped, twisted around, and fell. A fish flopped into the surf. Instead of darting away, it thrashed.

  A ring of toothmarks circled its belly.

  I jerked my head up and stared at the dorsal fins slicing through the water.

  A flash of scales gave me a split-second warning before a fish smacked into my face. Like the first, holes marked where sharp teeth had pierced through its protective scales. A tiger shark breached, and when it disappeared beneath the surface, the rest of the sharks followed, leaving me alone.

  I grabbed the fish by their tails an
d tossed them onto the beach. Worst-case scenario, I’d have sushi and a debt to some of the ocean’s most dangerous predators.

  Like most of the island, sand blanketed the spring’s shore. The presence of scrub offered a little shade during the day and served as a windbreak, which made it the ideal place to sleep.

  The shelter, such as it was, couldn’t protect me from the strengthening waves of hot and cold radiating from my arm. Whenever I moved my arm, I had to choke back a scream. Maybe it made me a coward, but I refused to look at where I’d been shot.

  Seeing the infection I knew was there wouldn’t change anything.

  The fever drove me back to the ocean’s cool waters, and I waded in deep enough I could sit without the waves knocking me over. It didn’t take long for the first of the sharks to join me. Through the pained haze, I recognized the stripes of a tiger shark. I should’ve been alarmed at its massive size, but like its friends, it didn’t seem interested in eating me.

  It wanted to cuddle, but instead of using my lap as a pillow, it lounged beside me. At first, I hesitated, but when it waited patiently, I leaned against its side.

  I barely noticed the rough texture of its skin. When I spotted several baby sharks swimming nearby, I realized the tiger shark was probably their mother. I hadn’t thought tiger sharks had mothering instincts.

  I’d seen videos of female tiger sharks eating males who bothered them.

  Living with Dad had introduced me to the phenomenon of predators desiring affection. Whenever Mom got tired of his bullshit, he would hunt me down, seeking attention. His Second, Jeremiah, was his third target, followed by Jeremiah’s mate and wife, Lilith.

  No matter how many Fenerec denied it, they were all attention whores. All things considered, I could’ve used a hefty dose of my father’s affectionate protectiveness. His medical knowledge would’ve been welcome, too.