Instead, I watched passively as the shark flicked its tail out of sight. Then, monitoring my dive watch with half my attention, I attempted to keep Stooge alert enough to hold the regulator in his own mouth without further assistance. Because I could swim for us both, but I couldn’t very well breathe in the place of my partner’s aching lungs.
Look at me, I demanded, pointing V’ed fingers at Stooge’s face then at my own in turn. His eyelids threatened to drift shut, but he maintained his focus once I pushed a little alpha compulsion into the silent directive.
The trick wasn’t supposed to work on anything other than werewolves, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the face. So I amped up the aggression and was rewarded by seeing a familiar spark return to my dive mate’s eyes.
A-S-S-H-O-L-E, he signed slowly and painstakingly.
I responded with a pleased smirk, glad Stooge had mustered a bit more alertness since I figured he was going to need every ounce of oomph he could come up with in the minutes that followed. The watch on my belt shifted yet another millisecond toward the safe zone and I felt time slow to a crawl as my friend’s lifeblood oozed away beneath the makeshift bandage covered by my left hand.
Now, my wolf demanded two seconds before the timer clicked down. It was close enough. So rather than restraining him, I merely spared a final glance around at our predator-free surroundings before once again methodically kicking toward the surface. Only one last stop to go before Stooge and I could turn our problems over to the rest of our team.
Chapter 8
The shark attacked out of nowhere. One minute we were gliding slowly upward. The next minute a sleek gray body was arrowing toward us out of the deep.
If I’d been a real human, we would’ve been goners. But my lupine senses kicked in just a hair before the beast’s arrival. Whisking Stooge around along with me, I spun to face the threat, slamming one heel into the shark’s massive shoulder as it surged past.
I might as well have kicked a brick wall. The animal neither flinched nor retreated. Instead, it flipped head over tail in balletic smoothness and curved back around to face me yet again.
My opponent’s rows of incisors were awe-inspiring...and very much visible as the animal gaped its mouth into a wide, toothy grin. “Sharks are curious critters,” I remembered one of my instructors telling us back in dive school. “They just want a little taste to see what strange being has landed in their swimming hole.”
Little taste, my ass. If that great white chomped down, we’d be history.
As if hurt by my snarky mental commentary, the massive shark retreated for the moment and gave me time to check Stooge over. My partner’s eyes were wide open and he was still sucking air from tank to lungs. But before I could assess him further, I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye as the shark reentered the fray.
This time, though, the predator didn’t aim towards me. Why should it when Stooge was already partway skinned and oozing an endless stream of delicious blood? No, the beast had circled around while my attention was elsewhere and now it dove directly toward my injured friend with jaws stretched wide.
I didn’t have time to think, just to react. So I didn’t consider the fact that jumping into a shark’s mouth while wearing sensitive diving equipment was a fool’s errand. I didn’t take the time to consider how Stooge would react if he was suddenly thrust into an oceanic battle assisted by a werewolf instead of by a human partner.
No, I just took a deep breath and shifted, feeling my human equipment sloughing off and sinking away beneath my feet. Then I thrust with awkward lupine legs so that I, rather than Stooge, ended up directly in the shark’s flight path.
The beast replied by chomping down in what felt like a living and breathing rendition of that torture device so lovingly dubbed an iron maiden. If my ribs hadn’t been aching and my lungs screaming too dramatically to allow any gratitude to seep out, I would have blessed the padding of my fur.
YOU’D THINK THAT BECOMING shark bait would have been a negative experience...but you would’ve thought wrong. Instead, the world grew sharper and my mind clearer as I battled for survival. My chest expanded with pleasure despite its current lack of oxygen, and my muscles tensed as if preparing to run a marathon.
It was brilliant.
The beast had chomped down in a glancing blow, my hindquarters sticking out between its teeth like the legs of a frog being swallowed by a snake. And just like its distant land relative, the shark knew there was only one solution to the ornery problem—spit me back out and line me up to go more directly down the gullet once again.
Unlike a frog, though, I knew what was coming. So as soon as the grinding pressure eased away from my body, I was already aiming for one of the few spots where a two-hundred-pound being can apply enough pressure to make a one-ton shark feel pain—the eyes, the gills, or the snout.
The shark twisted around for reentry and I spun in sympathetic resonance. Wolves aren’t really made for undersea explorations, though, so my movements weren’t quite as smooth and elegant as I would have liked. Instead, my opponent beat me to the punch...quite literally.
The ocean dimmed as tremendous jaws blocked out the sunlight above my head. Tiny apertures on my left and right allowed me to see through to the outside world, but everything above and below was filled with vast expanses of sharp, serrated teeth. The mouth was so gargantuan, in fact, that I braced myself to be swallowed whole just like Pinocchio’s father had been in my favorite fictional tale.
Yes, I braced myself...but I didn’t give up. Instead, I scrabbled vainly against the wall of teeth beneath my paws, doing everything in my power to escape before the trap slid the rest of the way shut around my lupine body.
I wasn’t going to be fast enough though. Not when my task involved pulling sodden fur through five feet of ocean water while the shark only had to clamp its mouth shut in order to eat me alive.
Not a bad way to go, all things considered. Dramatic. Memorable. A hero’s passing.
I was nearly gasping for air as I mentally penned my own eulogy. My vision dimmed, and not just because the shark’s jaws were blocking out the illumination that filtered down from the sun above.
But all I could think about was Stooge. Had my partner brushed off his rusty self-preservation instincts and begun swimming back toward the light as soon as the shark attacked? Or would he be the next one to slide down the gullet?
The correct answer, of course, was none of the above. Instead, a sudden jolt thrust me out of the shark’s abruptly opening mouth, half of the hairs on my back scraping away in the process.
Twisting around, I found my supposedly injured buddy whaling on that shark like a three-year-old whose brother had stolen his allowance. Booyah! Stooge appeared to be focusing his attention on the beast’s nostrils, so I dog paddled around to the closest eye to join in the frenzy using my sharp teeth and claws.
For a span of time that felt like eons but was actually roughly fifteen seconds, the pair of us attacked relentlessly. With every blow, the mighty beast twitched and thrashed, unable to evade our united front. Blood was once again turning the water cloudy—and this time it wasn’t Stooge’s—when my partner’s gaze met mine across the vast expanse of gray shark hide.
The skin covering Stooge’s cheekbone twitched as he recalled my current, four-legged form. But we were a team and had worked together for so long there wasn’t any need to speak in words...or to explain away small surprises like tails and fur. Instead, we shoved off in tandem, pushing ourselves away from the marine predator even as the shark arrowed away, down into the deeper waters from whence he’d come.
As my dive-school instructor had promised, our opponent wasn’t interested in difficult, hominid prey. Instead, nearly as quickly as it had arrived, the beast was gone.
Chapter 9
Our own problems were far from over, though. I’d fought the entire preceding battle on one lungful of air, and the shark’s teeth had squeezed half that volume out of
me before I was able to fully make use of my limited oxygen supply. Without two-inch-long teeth beckoning, in fact, lupine instinct begged me to open my mouth and let water fill cavernous lungs.
Stooge was in an even worse state. Blood gushed out of his wound in reaction to his over-exertion while my half-assed bandage had slid aside to reveal an arm that resembled nothing so much as tenderized meat.
Worse, Stooge was eying me with the same expression he’d used in the face of that attacking oceanic predator. Aggression and anger, but most of all fear.
We’re still us, my wolf brain retorted, but the inner voice was unusually tremulous and laden with repressed emotions. Because, much as we both hated to admit it, the evidence of our own eyes proved that he’d been wrong and I’d been right. When faced with a four-legged partner, my once-buddy was less than enthused about sharing the ocean with a wolf.
My lupine half wanted to force the issue, to find a way for Stooge to accept us just the way we were. But my rational human mind quickly convinced the beast that we were better off rejected rather than dead. So, together, we squeezed lupine eyes shut before opening human eyes back onto the world.
Saltwater cradled me, but my lungs burned even worse in my two-legged form. It’s just me, I tried to say with a quirk of my lips. Unfortunately, now that the heat of battle had passed, Stooge was reluctant to meet my eyes.
Meanwhile, without either fur or wetsuit, pelagic chill instantly seeped into my bones. And all I could think was air, air, air.
I hesitated to swim toward my partner, though. Because a Navy EOD tech was ten times more dangerous than an innocent shark. If Stooge decided I was a threat, then his dive knife in my gut would be a simple way to squash the perceived menace.
Wounded wolves bite. Wounded humans too. Stooge’s left cheek twitched in that subtle tell of a high-stress situation. It was the first, last, and only sign he generally displayed before taking an unsuspecting enemy down.
I wasn’t unsuspecting, though, and my partner was injured. In fact, he was weak and fading fast. The final dregs of shark-induced adrenaline left Stooge’s system even as his eyelids fought against iron willpower and attempted to sag shut.
The easy solution would have been to wait the sucker out. Assuming my lungs would allow it, my continued strength would eventually overcome Stooge’s edged weapon. At that point, I could force him to share the condensed gases that, here beneath the surface, were more precious than gold.
But I didn’t have to use such Machiavellian logic after all. Hunching his shoulders up around his ears as if warding off a blow, my wingman paddled in a circle until his back was facing my front. There, the aptly-named buddy bottle with its enticing hose and regulator dangled beside his own larger gas cylinder.
Barely believing my good fortune, I cupped my hands into make-shift fins and arrowed toward my partner. Then, finally, I breathed.
THE REST OF THE DAY was a piece of cake. Sure, my wolf was ominously quiet during the rest of the swim to the surface. And, once there, my team mates wanted to know how I ended up losing all of my equipment up to and including swim trunks. But the latter were far more interested in rushing Stooge to the hospital and debriefing me about the bomb threat than in deciphering unexpected nudity, while I was too exhausted to care about a strangely somnolent inner beast.
No, trouble didn’t begin brewing until twenty-four hours later. By that point, the shark scratches on my back were scabbing over and Stooge’s painkiller dosage had been reduced to the point where he was no longer babbling about Smurfs and Care Bears. That’s when he started shooting me sidelong glances and refusing to meet my eyes every time I entered his hospital room.
Given recent events, in fact, I half expected Stooge to refuse my offer to drive him home. The two of us had been sharing an apartment on base for over a year, but it wouldn’t have been any skin off his back to request a transfer. Probably easier than continuing to bunk with an undercover werewolf.
Still, Stooge hadn’t said anything to the contrary, and we were supposed to be best friends. So on the day of his discharge, I showed up at my wingman’s hospital-room door with a folding wheelchair meant to assist the transfer of my buddy from bed to car.
“Knock, knock,” I said with forced cheer as I rolled my burden through the open doorway. My partner had been sound asleep when I entered, but now the bitter scent of fear oozed into the air as he jolted alert. His eyes were wide and his breathing heavy, the sound filling what would otherwise have been an awkward silence.
Shit. I couldn’t do this. Stooge had dealt with enough over the last forty-eight hours without having to tell me to piss off and leave him alone. The least I could do was to give him an easy out.
So I did. “I’ll get someone else to drive you home,” I said, leaving the wheelchair as I turned toward the door. I was glad I hadn’t closed it behind myself—escape would be easier that way. “I can find a spot to crash tonight and then....”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Stooge said gruffly.
Turning, I found my friend busy leveraging himself out of the bed, broken arm strapped to a sling crossing his chest. His eyes remained averted from my questioning gaze, but he sounded more like his normal self when he spoke again. “We’re both going home...but I’m not riding out to the car in that sissy-mobile.”
As if the wheelchair was the sole reason he’d resembled a deer in the headlights when I first walked in. Still, if Stooge didn’t want to acknowledge my fur, then I wasn’t going to shove it into his face. We were both stereotypical American men, well aware that sometimes it was better not to talk about the elephant in the room.
Metaphorical pachyderm danger averted, Stooge and I slowly trooped down the hallway side by side. My hand hovered just behind his back, ready to prop up my partner if he faltered but unwilling to push my luck with an unwelcome touch. Together, we braved an eternal sixty seconds in the elevator while fear pheromones eddied through the confined space, then we tumbled into Stooge’s old beater of a car seconds apart.
I’d never bothered to track down a ride of my own in the past since I didn’t really have anywhere to go...and since my wingman had been so generous with his own set of wheels. In fact, Stooge was often to be found in the passenger seat anyway since I usually shouldered the role of designated driver after a night out on the town.
So it didn’t feel at all odd to be driving down the street with my wingman in the passenger seat. It didn’t feel odd to carry his shit and mind his back while he stumbled up the walk toward our cluttered apartment. And it didn’t feel odd to cook dinner for two then to disappear into my room for the night without another word exchanged between us.
What did feel odd were the dreams that dragged me under as soon as I closed my eyes. I relived the shark attack in minute detail, the exhilaration of the hunt engulfing me and overwhelming my senses. I smelled blood, tasted the saltiness of the other beast’s flesh as I ripped through its hide, and heard the thrashing of fins through water.
The fantasy wasn’t a nightmare. It was more of a waking daydream, pure wish fulfillment in an imaginary package.
In other words, I was hungry for another go at the great white. This time around, my inner wolf was confident we could take it down, size difference be damned.
Which was all well and good until I woke with a start, four-legged and naked despite the fact I’d fallen asleep in my familiar human form with boxers covering my ass. I woke far from my bed even though I’d taken the time to flick the lock with human fingers before turning in for the night.
Not that I thought Stooge would dredge up a cache of silver bullets and try to shoot me or anything. I just wanted one more layer of protection between my friend and my inner beast.
But there was no protection for my house mate. Not when my sleeping self had unlocked the door, slipped out of our clothing mid-transformation, then padded into my wingman’s messy bedroom.
Traitor, my inner beast whispered as we took in the view before our lupine eyes. Stooge wa
s sleeping like a baby, drool dripping out of his half-open mouth and saturating the edge of the pillow beneath his head.
And I was panting over his comatose form, jaws open and ready to bite.
Chapter 10
I bowed out of the Navy gracefully. I turned down what would have been my third set of sign-on papers. I held firm to the decision in the face of my commanding officer’s attempts to lure me back in with astronomical bonuses. And I requested all of my unused vacation days to be rolled over into terminal leave.
Within twelve hours, I was walking off base with a sea bag slung over one shoulder and with no one to answer to but myself. For the first time in recent memory, I was entirely at loose ends.
Yes, I was at loose ends...but I wasn’t without avenues to explore. After all, I’d been carrying a certain shifter’s business card around in my pocket for the better part of the last week, fingering the rounded corners like a good-luck charm. As a backup plan, Stormwinder’s proposed path didn’t seem like the world’s worst way to travel into the next phase of my life.
At least the avenue is worth exploring, I told my surly wolf. Unfortunately, he didn’t deign to answer. Ever since our close call the night before, he’d been unaccustomedly quiet beneath our currently furless skin.
I would have rather waited until both halves of my consciousness were on board for the step. But it was time to make a decision, any decision. So, I stopped on the street corner just beyond the base’s gates and input the strange shifter’s number into my cell phone.
The connection took a moment to go through, then it rang with truncated tones meant to suggest the other party was busy with a different call. Well, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, I thought, preparing to hit the “end” button.
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