Inside the cabin, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the bed and surveyed her new threads. Kalina had style, that was for sure. Penny picked out a soft, teal cotton dress with peach-colored flowers. She still had no underwear, but she figured women on the island probably didn’t wear any. What would be the point? They were always changing back and forth, shredding their clothing. Underwear would only be something else to remove.
When she stepped out, Kalina was waiting for her. She tilted her sunglasses down and let out a teasing whistle.
“You look great,” she said. “Whoever gave you those clothes knows her shit.”
“I know, right?” Penny said. “I’ll let my stylist know you said so.”
“Come on,” Kalina said, taking her by the hand and pulling her away from the cabin. “Let’s go see Ruby.”
Penny’s new sandals slapped down the steps and into sand. Sunlight hit her face and she loved it. The weakness in her limbs subsided under the heat and she wished she could feel this way, basking in its warmth forever. If Thane were by her side, it would be perfect. Kalina skipped ahead of her a few steps, always so lively. Penny thought Kalina might be living the life she’d prayed to God about earlier. This was a woman who had it all. She had the face, she had the body, she had the voice, and she had the infectious energy. Yet, she didn’t have Thane.
How could he possibly choose me over this?
Her eyes were on Kalina’s perfect ass when she emphasized the word “this” in her mind. They’d only walked a few cabins away when Kalina suddenly stopped and faced her. She closed her eyes and nodded her head slightly forward a couple of times as if counting to herself. It looked like some sort of stress relief technique.
“Are you okay?” Penny asked.
“I need a second to…” Kalina said and then stopped the way she so often did. “…there! I can say it now. I’m not going to hesitate anymore. We’re grown women. Look, I’m not gonna lie. Thane…well…he’s important to me. He always has been, and he always will be. He sees something in you that he feels drawn to. With our people…with our kind…that’s important. It’s rare. I hoped he’d find that in me.”
She put her head down and stared at her bare feet. Even her toes were lovely.
“How long has it been since you were together?” Penny asked.
“Two…three years maybe,” she replied.
Oh, thank God. Not a day or two, not a week, not even a month. Two or three years. I can handle that.
“And you’re still in love with him?” Penny asked.
Kalina chewed the side of her mouth, showing she was uncomfortable.
“I’m intoxicated by him,” she said. “Absorbed by him. It’s more like a state of being than any feeling of emotion I can describe.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Penny said. “Do you love Thane?”
“It’s more than that is what I’m saying,” she replied. “And that’s why I struggle some, but I believe ultimately that’s what helps me through it. Love can quickly turn to hate. What I feel…it never goes away. But more than anything, I want to see him happy. He looked happy with you last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Penny said as she leaned forward and hugged her new friend.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Kalina said. “Come on. You need to learn more about us if you’re thinking about sticking around.”
Ruby sat on her front porch, in a wooden rocking chair. Swaying back and forth next to her lay Poet in a hammock. As with the night before, he held a notebook and was busy jotting something down in it. He smiled at Penny as they stepped onto the porch.
“Poet,” Penny said.
Always a man of few words, Poet only nodded in her direction.
“I see you got some clothes,” Ruby said. “Here, this is for you too.”
She handed Penny a plastic laundry basket full of random clutter. A pack of feminine hygiene pads, a box of condoms, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste…all the necessities.
“Hailey said you were pretty loud last night,” Ruby said with a smirk.
Penny winced, not only with embarrassment, but out of worry that Kalina might feel bad hearing about her sexual escapade with Thane.
“Oh, stop it,” Ruby said. “Don’t be all shy and shit. We’re very open people. No jealousy or anger allowed on Shamrock Island. We all know you’re going to look at our men, especially when they walk out of the water with their cocks hanging. We’ll look at Thane too.”
She laughed out loud and Kalina did too. Poet snickered from inside his hammock.
“Oh, now you wanna talk, you silent motherfucker,” Ruby said. “I’ve been trying to get this guy to talk to me all morning. All he does is keep his nose in that book.”
“I did talk to you,” Poet argued. “You always have so little to say. Or at least you say things of little significance.”
Ruby snatched a pillow off the empty rocking chair next to her and launched it at Poet. He laughed and blocked it with his notebook.
“When is the baby due?” Penny asked.
She hadn’t had many pregnant friends but that seemed the polite thing to ask.
“Soon,” Ruby said. “But not soon enough. I can’t wait to get back in the water.”
“You can’t swim while pregnant?” she asked. “I thought it was good for you.”
“It’s good for you,” Ruby said, letting her forehead drop in Penny’s direction, pointing at her with the crown of her head instead of simply wagging a finger. “Me? Not so much.”
It must have been obvious that Penny was confused because Kalina jumped in to explain.
“For us, the salt water makes us shift,” she said. “We can do it at will too, anytime we want. So…like jumping off a bridge into water, we can shift in midair. But we don’t have to if we don’t want to. We can control it.”
“But with salt water, we can’t,” Ruby said. “Our bodies react to it. I can’t dip a pinky finger into that water over there without going into full beast mode. And that…that would rip this baby apart.”
The mental image was too much. Penny could practically see the baby being torn apart as Ruby’s body morphed into a shark. She figured it made sense. How could an unborn child handle something like that?
“So…” Penny said, thinking of how to ask the question she’d been dying to ask. “How do you get pregnant?”
Ruby looked at Penny as if she’d been asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard.
“How do you get pregnant?” Ruby asked.
Penny rolled her eyes.
“Same with us,” Ruby added.
“So, it never happens when you’re in shark form? I mean sharks have sex too. What if you have sex as a shark?” Penny asked.
Kalina laughed. Poet did too. Ruby only stared at her.
“We don’t do that,” Ruby said matter-of-factly.
She was as serious as could be.
“Never?” Penny asked. “What if a regular shark fucks you?”
“It’s happened,” Poet said, shrugging his shoulders to suggest it was a good, legitimate question.
“Okay,” Ruby said. “Yes, that has happened. But it’s rare. And as a woman, you would never want that to happen. Here’s why. Just like I can’t shift while I’m pregnant, it works the other way around too. And you think having twins or triplets is bad? Did you know a tiger shark can have up to ninety babies? So, imagine you get fucked as a shark, then you shift, how in the hell is your human body going to handle ninety babies inside it? You’d have babies falling out all over the fucking place.”
“That’s gross,” Kalina said.
“That is pretty disgusting,” Penny agreed.
“And that’s why, if any shark tries to fuck us in shark form, he better be one fast motherfucker,” Ruby said, laughing the entire time, “because these bitches can swim, and we will be swimming our asses off in that case.”
“I would swim, and dodge, and leap through the air like a fucking dolphin,” K
alina said.
“What’s this?” Ruby asked, suddenly standing up from her chair and putting an end to their laugher.
A boat cruised close to the shore and was steadily growing nearer. Even from so far away, Penny could tell that it had some sort of official emblem on its side. When the boat finally beached, Ruby, Kalina, and Poet approached it.
“Stay in the cabin, kids!” Ruby called out over her shoulder.
Penny followed closely behind them as they made their way to the beach. A man hopped out of the boat in a pair of cream colored cargo shorts and an official Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol polo. He held a shotgun in his hand and approached them with it leaned back over one shoulder.
“Mr. Kane,” Ruby said.
“Have we met?” the handsome officer asked.
“Not officially, no,” she replied. “But your reputation precedes you.”
“Does it now?” he asked. “Great. Then I don’t need to beat around the bush. I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about sharks in this area. Tiger sharks mostly. Even a great white from time to time. Seen anything like that?”
“Nothing like that,” Ruby said.
“Hmm,” he said.
Penny thought he seemed suspicious. Was he really cruising up to every individual island to ask if people had seen sharks? It was possible, but she doubted that was the case. He was up to something. It was the same odd feeling she had on the yacht when the blond guy had walked up to her and began flirting. If she’d trusted her gut, she might not have gotten knocked into the ocean where she became fish food.
“And you, beautiful?” he asked, shifting his gaze from Ruby to Kalina.
Before she could answer, he spotted Penny and wrinkled his brow.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Ain’t you the girl I met at the hospital the other day?”
“Yes,” was all she could think to say.
“And they let you out of the hospital so soon?” he asked. “And wha…what happened to your bandages and your bites?”
He seemed totally perplexed by the fact that her leg was healed. She hadn’t thought to cover it up, and of course, he would notice it right away.
“It wasn’t very deep at all it turns out,” she said. “And the salt water works in mysterious ways.”
He wasn’t buying it. He fixed his stare on her and cocked his head to the side. She’d become a strange logic problem he was trying to decipher in his head. She felt a chilly breeze that seemed to be kicked up by his presence. She only hoped Thane wouldn’t suddenly come walking out of the water.
“It sure does,” Keelan agreed, his voice sounding distant, as if still stuck in deep thought. “Well, you keep your eyes and ears open. If you see any sharks, you let me know, alright?”
He handed Penny a business card with his name and phone number on it.
“What will you do with the sharks when you find them?” Ruby asked.
He pulled his shotgun from his shoulder and slapped the barrel against his left palm.
“I’m gonna shoot them in the fucking head,” he said. “Every last one of the damn things.”
An awkward silence passed between them all, and then Keelan’s mouth switched into a wicked smile, and he said, “Well, you all have a wonderful day. Stay safe.”
“We will,” Ruby said, curtly. “You try to do the same.”
“You too,” Kalina added with a wave, bringing some warmth back into the goodbye.
Keelan walked back to the boat, hopped in, and took off.
“This isn’t good,” Ruby said.
“Fucking Evelyn,” Kalina added. “Thane warned her about this.”
“She doesn’t care,” Ruby said. “This is what she wants.”
“How did he know where you lived?” Penny asked.
“I don’t think he knows anything about us,” Ruby said. “I think he was patrolling and happened to see us.”
“No,” Penny said. “Something wasn’t right. It felt like he was surveying the camp. He was looking around too much. He knows something.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Ruby said. “Because if you’re right, things are going to get really fucking bad.”
Chapter 9
Thane stayed gone the rest of the day. As Ruby put it, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her, it was simply his way of making sure she was safe from harm. In their school, or group, the males often did that. They would patrol the waters and protect their home. If Evelyn was on the loose, nobody was safe. Surfers, divers, and snorkelers were in danger any time she felt the need to hunt. Penny thought of all the people she’d met at the resort and realized any of them could go out on an ocean excursion at any time. Any of them could be Evelyn’s next victim.
Sitting next to a small campfire on the beach, Penny thought about Thane and what it must be like to run with him toward the ocean, dive in, transform, and then race beside him through the water. It sounded fantastic, but Thane always seemed to make his life sound far from glamorous. She needed to get the truth from the others.
“Do you like being shifters?” she asked.
Jagger, who’d been lying flat on his back looking up at the stars with Hailey’s head resting on his chest, lifted his head to look at her.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Most of the time. I didn’t like it at first.”
“At first?” Penny asked. “You mean when you were a kid?”
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t born a shifter like the others. Hailey wanted me all for herself and the only way to make sure I wouldn’t grow old so quickly and die was to change me.”
“Couldn’t have that handsome face and that rockin’ bod fall apart on me,” Hailey joked.
Penny had seen enough werewolf movies to know the Hollywood version of a wolf biting its prey and by the next full moon the victim was a full-blown shifter. She never knew how much truth was in those stories. If that were true, were sharks able to do the same thing? Could Thane change her? Jagger looked so used to it as if he’d been this way all his life. She could adapt too.
You’re all so chill. You’re like that gang of vampires in the movie “The Lost Boys.” But more care-free. Like those vampires mixed with the bank robbing surfers in “Point Break.”
“You don’t get older,” Penny said softly.
“Well, we do,” Ruby corrected her. “We do age, but we age much more slowly than your kind does. I’d say maybe we age one year for every five of yours.”
“The change. How does it happen?” she asked.
“You don’t want this life, baby girl,” Ruby said. “Trust me.”
“I like it,” Hailey said.
“It sucks,” Poet replied. “But you get used to it.”
“Ask me on a good day and I’ll say it’s great,” Paisley replied. “But on a bad day it’s the worst damn thing in the world. So, I have my ups and downs. Rickshaw loves it. He wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.”
“It’s a dangerous lifestyle,” Oliver said. “Yes, there are the good things and the bad, but in general, we spend a lot of time protecting ourselves from harm. From discovery from the humans and from other predators in the sea. Like those fucking whales. We can kick ass in most battles, but whales are fucking monsters.”
“And you?” Penny said, turning her attention to Kalina. “What do you think?”
“I think you have to do what you want to do,” she said, “but make sure you know what you’re getting into.”
“Like what?” Penny asked.
“Like it fucking hurts, to begin with,” Kalina said. “Imagine your entire body exploding on the inside, kind of like one of those crash test videos when the car hits the wall and the windshield shatters. That’s the inside of your body. Your bones completely reform. Nothing about it is normal, and you feel all of it. You feel every millisecond of that transformation.”
Yeah, I don’t know if I like the sound of that.
“And you get used to that?” Penny asked.
“Believe
it or not,” Ruby said. “You do…eventually. But you will cry like a baby the first twenty times or so.”
“The good thing,” Kalina added, “is it happens so quickly and it’s not something you can stop, so you deal with it and you learn to get used to it.”
Penny stared into the fire. She knew she wanted to stay with Thane, and she knew her body wouldn’t last much longer, but was this worth it? Would he even let her change? Of course, she’d seen all the movies and knew the guy would always try to talk the girl out of it. He’d say something about how this isn’t the kind of life she wants and how there’s no turning back once it’s done. He’d probably tell her that she can never see her family again. That part she could deal with. Her father was the only living relative she had, and he was a lousy drunk. The man drove eighteen-wheeler trucks and when he wasn’t out on the road, he was holed up somewhere drinking himself half to death. It was one of the reasons she’d moved to an entirely different city.
“So how does it happen?” Penny asked again, since they’d seemed to avoid answering the question the last time she’d asked.
“Here,” Kalina said, handing Penny a bottle of beer.
She accepted the beer and was about to say something about the avoidance of her question when Ruby finally spoke.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said, her motherly side obviously taking over. “It’s a combination of things. First, your consent. The psychological part of it is as important as the rest. Our kind can’t force this on someone. There’s no such thing as rape that turns you into a shark. However, you must know that the process is rough. Have you ever seen how sharks fuck?”
Penny hadn’t. She shook her head.
“Well, in the water, the male shark bites the female, really hard too, often tearing into her flesh and leaving a mark. Then, when he’s got her and he’s holding her still, he positions himself in a way that he can shove his…it’s not really called a cock in shark terms, but let’s go with cock. He shoves it in her and fucks her hard.”
“Sounds…kinky,” Penny said.
“So, in human form, it’s kind of the same thing. He will need to bite you on the shoulder, like this…”
Oh, Bite Me: Paranormal Dating Agency Page 9