by Ann Gimpel
Her comment about age was too good a lead-in to bypass, so Recco stared her down and asked, “How old are you?”
“And here I thought you Latin men were more mannerly than to ask a woman her age.” She sniffed audibly. “What you want to know is how long Shifters live. We’re not like Vampires, but we can hang on for a few centuries if nothing interrupts the connection to our power.”
“What kinds of things might do that?”
She made shooing motions. “Daide and I need to finish this. Come back in a quarter hour.”
The door closed in his face. At least she didn’t slam it.
Recco had never been fond of downtime, and he didn’t have bridge duty until tomorrow. He’d checked the roster on his way out. The schedule actually worked out nicely. They were an even twenty-four, so each of them had drawn a two-hour slot every other day. He glanced at Daide’s cabin right across the hall. Karin had pronounced it clear, but he bet it hadn’t been cleaned up. Might be a good way to kill the few minutes stretching before him.
A distinctive antiseptic scent met him when he opened the door, but the pervasive wrong feeling was totally gone. Beyond that, the small space was a mess. Cut off from whatever magic powered them, the piles of feathered, furred, and scaled bodies had transformed into a gooey mass. He traipsed down the corridor to a closet with janitorial supplies and grabbed a broom, dustpan, garbage bags, and a bucket. Back in Daide’s room, he swept, scraped, and tossed debris into plastic bags that he hefted into a nearby rubbish chute. Once the floor was cleared of fallout from the confrontation, he ran water into the bucket and went to find a mop.
The floor was almost clean when Daide poked his head around the corner. “Christ, amigo. You didn’t have to do all this.”
Recco eyed him. “Gracias will do. You never did like to clean.”
“Muchas gracias. And you’re right about my housework allergy. Only got motivated when I couldn’t find shit.”
“Hang on a moment.” Recco scrubbed the last square foot of linoleum, rinsed the mop in the shower, and returned everything to the supply closet.
When he got back, Daide was sitting in the room’s only chair, so Recco perched on a bunk and scanned him from head to toe. “Not looking much worse for the wear, buddy.”
A crooked smile split Daide’s face. “Karin’s magic is powerful juju. I went from feeling like warmed-over penguin crap to better than I’ve been in a long time.”
“Did you, um, rather are you...?” Recco hunted for supportive words.
“You want to know what happened.” Daide steepled his fingers together in front of him.
“Of course I do,” Recco sputtered. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes and no.” A thoughtful expression creased Daide’s forehead into a mass of tiny lines. “One of my problems was I was convinced if I didn’t stay on top of every single detail, things would get away from me. I must have been a dick to live with, and I apologize.”
Recco started to object, say apologies weren’t necessary, except they were, and he appreciated them. “Thanks. You weren’t always awful. Just sometimes. Besides, your obsessiveness meant we ran a successful business.”
Daide rested his chin on his fingertips. “The clinic is a long way behind us. I’m done hiding my less-than-stellar beginnings. Establishing détente with my shame should lessen my neurotic need to control everything. If I fall off the wagon, feel free to punch me. My coyote and I found common ground, and we’ve started over. Hopefully with more faith on both sides this time.”
Recco slumped against the wall as relief washed through him, and he exhaled in a whoosh. “Better news than I expected. I’m happy for you.”
“Hell, it’s far better than I expected too. I owe Zoe a huge apology, and I’ll let her know how sorry I am for being an asshole. I didn’t realize how close her coyote and mine are. Hers was frantic once it discovered how despondent mine had become.”
“Close as in?” Once again, Recco was reminded how little he knew about Shifters despite the string of lessons he’d received.
“Blood kin. Cousins or something. Maybe second or third since my bondmate is far younger than hers.”
“What does younger translate to? Decades? Centuries?”
Daide chuckled. “Damn, I miss sourcebooks and the Internet. Best I can tell, mine might be somewhere in its second century. Zoe’s could be as much as a thousand years old. They never die.”
Curiosity burned a path through Recco. “Cousins suggests the animals reproduce. Do you know anything about that?”
“’Fraid not. Karin mentioned young Shifters spend untold hours learning about their heritage—and their magic. By my count, it will take us a long time to catch up.”
“Yeah. Years. In the meantime, trouble’s brewing.”
“What else is new?” Daide rolled his dark, expressive eyes. “The worst part about both the sea dragon and the incident a few hours ago is how close I came to dragging everyone else down with me. Karin didn’t stop hammering me until I let her know I not only understood, but I felt like shit about it.”
The ship pitched to starboard, and Recco made a grab for a book that was about to turn into a projectile. “We’re all rotating through bridge duty. You and I are up starting tomorrow morning. I drew the ten to noon slot; you’re noon to fourteen hundred. Vik and Juan will be there all the time. The purpose of adding another person is to spell them so they can catnap.”
“How long does Juan believe this storm will last?”
“He didn’t say. The women are of the opinion it’s not a natural storm, but one driven by evil.”
Daide whistled long and low. “Which means it could dog us all the way to Siberia.”
“Yup. Feel up to joining them down in the auditorium? Karin invited us.”
“Sure.” Daide pushed to his feet. An uncomfortable expression distorted the pleasant mask he usually wore. “No easy way to say this. I wish you all the best with Zoe. She’s a beautiful woman, and she has mettle. I saw it when her bond animal raked mine over the coals.”
Recco stood too. “It sounds like you really mean it.”
“I do. I admit to engaging in passive crap with your other women. I liked our life exactly the way it was. A wife—on either side—would have altered the status quo, and my grasp on making it from day to day was too brittle to let that happen.” Daide looked away. “When you grow up the way I did, anything anyone else got meant less for you. I was afraid if you hooked up with a woman, there’d be nothing left for me. My fear wasn’t rational, but it drove the way I acted, and I’m not proud of any of it.”
“It wasn’t only you.” Recco squared his shoulders. “I could have pushed back way harder than I did. Truth was I could have moved out and seen you during work hours. The life we carved out was a comfort zone for me too. So if we were broken, we were broken in complementary ways.”
Daide screwed his face into a grimace. “You were so easygoing, though. I took advantage of your good nature.”
Recco sliced one hand through the air in front of him. “When we walk out of here, this conversation is over. So is ruminating about it. This isn’t a matter of who was more at fault. We each made decisions and acted on them. Now we have an opportunity to restructure our friendship. Not many people get a chance for do-overs.”
“Thanks.”
“De nada. Andale.” Recco tugged the door open and walked into a sharply tipping corridor.
“Damn. Way more noticeable out here.” Daide followed him to a set of stairs. “Gives you a whole new appreciation for the men who left Europe in those rickety, wooden ships.”
“Doesn’t it, though.” The ship pitched, rolled, and yawed as they stumbled down two floors. The motion eased somewhat the lower they went. “Must be an absolute bitch on the bridge,” Recco muttered.
“No shit. Vik mentioned he lashed himself into his bunk when the water was rough. I was in his cabin one day for something or other, saw lengths of leather attached to the wall near the
bed, and made a bondage joke. He laughed and said BDSM would be way more fun than how he used those straps.”
They reached the auditorium doors. Recco pulled one open just far enough for them to slip inside. A heated conversation was in progress, and he listened, trying to pick up the gist of it without adding fuel to a volatile mix by asking questions.
Daide tilted his chin at seats toward the back. Recco followed him and sat on a small couch with one leg shorter than the others. It rocked along with the motion of the ship.
“No way of determining if ’twill do aught except court disaster.” Zoe was on her feet, holding onto the back of the chair in front of her. Judging from how thick her brogue was, she was upset, but not willing to back down.
“Let me walk through this since I arrived late.” Karin sat at the front of the room next to Ketha.
Magic pulsed in blue-white sheets from the old, black book lying open on Ketha’s lap. Either it approved of Karin’s idea, or it was ready to smite her to a pile of cinders. Karin flapped a hand at the tome, and the flow ceased abruptly.
“Without adding extraneous details”—Karin blew out a long, hissing breath—“your plan is to approach the sea people for help.”
“Why not?” Ketha furled her dark brows. “There have always been Shifters who lived in the sea. At least there were before the Cataclysm.”
“Aye, ’tis exactly my point.” Zoe was still on her feet. “One of them, anyway. Aside from the fact there’s never been any love lost betwixt us and our sea-dwelling kin, how can ye know the Cataclysm didn’t imbue the Nereids and mermaids and whale Shifters with evil?”
“I don’t.” Ketha’s tone was terse. “But we’re worse than fools if we ignore a potential group of allies because we’re frozen by fear.”
“I am not frozen by fear,” Karin retorted. “Given everything we’ve run into, though, it’s wise to err on the side of caution.”
Aura got to her feet. Determination burned in her green eyes and stick-straight posture. “Something started nagging me when Ketha floated her idea about the sea people. While it’s not a precise match, the first unfinished prophecy addresses a similar situation.”
Karin raked a hand through hair that had totally abandoned her attempt to contain it. “Are you going to tell it to us, or let us guess?”
“Extra commentary isn’t necessary,” Aura said stiffly.
“Probably not.” The sarcasm fled from Karin’s tone. “I don’t have the prophecies memorized. Not anymore.”
“The fourth unfinished prophecy helped us a lot,” Moira spoke up. “It wasn’t a precise replica of what we faced, either, but it offered direction.”
Aura cleared her throat. She clasped her hands in front of her. When the ship lurched hard to port, she grabbed the seat nearest her again. “The first unfinished prophecy deals with the end of days. It says a great darkness will descend on Earth, sowing destruction. That the darkness will last for half a score of years, which fits, but efforts to eradicate it are doomed to fail.”
Recco leaned forward, not liking the sound of things at all. Of course, the fourth prophecy had included two Archangels, and they’d only had one, so maybe he shouldn’t take her recitation too literally.
Aura continued speaking in a sing-songy voice, likely regurgitating something she’d memorized long ago. “Keep in mind, these prophecies are unique to Shifter social order. The first unfinished prophecy points historians to the fourth, which leads me to believe they’re linked. It picks up after that point and states the world is still in grave danger of sinking beneath the yoke of evil.”
“Do ye have the exact verbiage?” Zoe asked.
Aura nodded. “Wickedness poured in through a rent between worlds. The sea rose up and smote any who dared darken its surface. Old allies came to the fore, but neither easily nor willingly.”
“Does it detail who those old allies are?” Karin spoke up.
Aura shook her head. “We do have history with Poseidon and Amphitrite. And the Nereids and whale Shifters.”
“The whale Shifters have never been our friends,” Zoe muttered. “Nor the dolphins. Mayhap ’tis what the part about neither easily nor willingly means.”
“Why haven’t they been your friends?” Recco asked.
Eleven pairs of eyes swiveled to fixate on him, and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“’Tis a decent question, and one I doona know the answer to,” Zoe said.
“Nor do I,” Ketha murmured.
“My grandmother would have known.” Aura frowned. “All she told me was it was a distant branch of Shifters, and we’d had a falling out millennia ago.”
“It’s a long time to hold a grudge—unless they blame us for what happened,” Karin said.
“They might.” Ketha nodded. “I blame us, so it’s hardly a quantum leap.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The worst thing to happen is they say no,” Daide said.
Karin leveled her copper gaze his way. “Would that it were so simple. They’re plenty capable of sinking the ship. A pod of whales swimming beneath it could tip us without breathing hard.”
“Our best bet”—Zoe scanned the room—“if we go that route and raise them, is to accept full responsibility for the Cataclysm and make it clear we’re doing everything in our power to set things right.”
Aura tossed her head back. “While I’m certain they know how the Cataclysm came to be, they may not know we’re who made inroads into its chokehold on the oceans. Goddess only knows where they were hiding out for ten years, but they’re able to move about now. Assuming they didn’t all die out.”
“What makes you so certain you’ll be able to communicate with them?” Recco asked, still sorting how Shifter magic worked.
“We’ll go through the animals,” Ketha replied.
“Does their world have oceans?” Daide asked.
“’Tis a magical world. It has whatever is needed,” Zoe replied. “The laws of physics don’t apply there.”
“What about the people who are bonded to the whales?” Recco turned his hands palms up. “I hate to keep asking questions, but I need to know how this works.”
“Before you answer him,” Daide chimed in. “Are whales and dolphins the only ocean life to form Shifter bonds?”
“No. Whale Shifters always kept to themselves, though,” Aura answered. “Insofar as I know, their human bondmates never set foot in North America, but I could be dead wrong. They never took part in our council meetings or any of our joint events.”
“If they were so invisible, how’d you know they existed?” Recco asked.
“Anecdotal evidence,” Ketha mumbled. “We read about them. No reason to assume they weren’t real.”
“From what I recall, the only type of sea life to form shifter bonds were cetaceans. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises,” Karin added.
“Interesting. Their closest land relatives are hippos,” Daide said, followed by, “Never mind. Not relevant.”
“Focus, people.” Ketha tapped on a table in front of her. “Either we do this, or we don’t. If we don’t, I’m flat out of Plan Bs.”
“Does the prophecy say anything further?” Tessa directed her words at Aura.
“Not really. It’s one of the unfinished ones, remember?”
“I did, but I’d hoped for more in the way of direction.”
“Yeah. They don’t often cooperate with what we hope for.” Aura chewed on her lower lip. “My best guess is we go with it, though, and let the chips fall where they will. Lot of ocean between us and Siberia. If we can’t even make New Zealand without courting disaster, the odds of traveling ten times the distance don’t look good.”
Recco didn’t bother pointing out her ten times estimate was short by thousands of nautical miles. Instead, he said, “Viktor and Juan need to weigh in before we do anything to maybe jeopardize the ship.”
“We’re not there yet.” Ketha’s golden-hued gaze traveled through the room. “Have we talked en
ough to vote?”
“Not sure. Does anyone have anything pertinent to add that hasn’t been said yet?” Karin asked.
“Does this have to be an all-or-none approach?” Recco spoke up.
“What do you mean?” Zoe turned to stare at him.
“Ketha indicated you’d communicate through your bond animals. Is it possible for them to feel out the whales? Float a what-if scenario?”
Zoe shook her head. “They’d see through it quick enough, and chalk us up as sneaky. Nay, if we do this, we must go hat in hand. The only thing to see us through is humility and acceptance of whatever shit they want to heap on our heads.”
“We’re not the ones who came up with the half-brained scheme to rid the world of Vamps by turning them into Shifters,” Daide protested.
“True enough, but Zoe’s correct. We’ll be tarred with the same brush,” Ketha said, and then added, “What’s your pleasure, people. Do we do this, or not?”
As if she’d asked the book still open across her lap, colored lights flared around it in a mesmerizing corona.
“I vote yes,” Ketha said. “I need to hear twelve more votes.”
Daide elbowed him and whispered, “Guess we get a voice too.”
A chorus of yesses ran through the room, followed by an aye from Zoe after a long pause.
Ketha slapped the book shut and stood. “I’ll talk with Vik and Juan. Stay tuned. If we’re going to do this, we need to move fast.”
A staunch roll to the right underscored her words.
Zoe made her way toward where Recco and Daide sat. “You’re looking better,” she told Daide.
“I am better. Words won’t excuse my actions, but I’m very sorry for barging into your cabin and the subsequent harangue. It won’t happen again.”
The solemn look left her face, replaced by a smile. She extended a hand, and Daide shook it. After he let go, he stood. “I’ll leave you two alone. Maybe I can do some good in the galley. It must be time for a meal. Even if it’s not, I’m starving.”
“You would be,” Zoe said. “Battling evil is a huge power hog. Burns calories like nobody’s business.”