Late last night, when she finally got the chance to talk to Cobalt, she’d explained everything to him. She’d told him about her childhood and about what had happened to her family. She’d told him about what that meant for her brother, Keelan. He’d lived his entire life trying to get vengeance for what had happened to her. Cobalt had listened intently, keeping his eyes out on the ocean as if afraid if he looked into hers, he might bend to her will or feel human in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. She hadn’t fought to make him look at her but instead continued speaking, knowing her words had to be at least seeping through his ears and into that stubborn head of his. After everything she said to him, she waited patiently for him to reply.
“Did he kill Poet?” he asked.
There was no point in lying. If he’d asked Kane himself, Kane would have admitted it. He practically did last night on the beach.
“Yes,” she said. “He did. But I don’t think it was personal. He has been on a warpath ever since he lost me. He sees a shark and he thinks it’s best to kill it. That way it’s one less shark that can hurt another little girl and it’s one step closer to getting the one who killed his sister.”
“But you’re not dead,” he said.
“He knows that now,” she replied. “So, I think he will calm down.”
“But he killed Poet,” he said. “So, he must die.”
“Are you the shark that tried to eat me when I fell off the boat as a kid?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of things in the past. Some not so nice. It is possible. But if it was me, I wouldn’t have eaten a child. I may have considered it, but if I got close and saw it was a child, I wouldn’t have struck.”
Cobalt was dangerous. He wasn’t opposed to attacking a boat with an innocent family on it. She knew that. But if it had been him circling around her as a child, he may have backed off when he saw how small she was. Kane wouldn’t have known that. He would have only seen a fin and then he would have seen that she’d disappeared when Thane’s father had rescued her.
“Please don’t fight Keelan Kane,” she’d begged Cobalt. “Nothing good can come from it. He had a reason to attack. You had a reason to attack. You both have your reasons.”
“I didn’t kill you,” Cobalt said. “But he killed my brother. Only I have a reason. You think he was on a warpath? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
That had been the end of their discussion. Looking around the office, she knew this wasn’t Cobalt’s kind of warpath.
“Evelyn is planning something dirty,” Kane said.
She looked at him and saw him so differently than she had before. She’d always hated his guts. She’d seen him as the enemy, as a poor excuse for a human, as a man whose mission had been to make her kind miserable. Now, she understood him and saw pain in his eyes. Pain mixed with hope as he looked at her and seemed to ask her for forgiveness without saying the words.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
Brother?
She thought it, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to be so familiar with him yet. It didn’t feel right. They were strangers. They were on opposing sides, or had been for so long, and she couldn’t bring herself to wrap her arms around him like she wanted to and kiss his cheek. She wanted to tell him that she was okay and that she forgave him and that all would be fine from now on. She didn’t say a word.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Evelyn said war is on its way and a lot of innocents will die,” Rafe told her. “We’re thinking it has to be the festival.”
“Makes perfect sense,” Kalina agreed.
“What kind of war?” the woman sitting on the floor asked. “Am I in danger, Rafe? I’m just a marine biologist. I don’t even go out on the boats.”
“Rafe, maybe you should get her home,” Kane said. “Can you take care of that while I talk to Kalina?”
He seemed a bit miffed that he would be sent on an errand while the two shark shifters talked behind his back, but Kalina hugged him and promised to tell him everything they spoke about when he returned. With that, Rafe led the trembling woman out of the building.
“Does she know what you are?” Kalina asked Kane.
“No,” he said. “Well, she didn’t. She might figure it out now. I kind of snapped. Tore into one of those guys like a feral animal. It was bad. She may think I’m a fucking Tasmanian devil shifter.”
Kalina laughed and it echoed too loudly in the empty room. The sound of joy seemed oddly out of place here. She took a seat next to Kane and put her hand on the desk. He reached out and placed his on top of hers. Her kneejerk reaction was to pull back, and it caused him to flinch and slide his hand away. When she placed hers back down, it was the signal for him to do the same. With his fingers on top of her knuckles, it was perhaps the most tender thing anyone had ever done to her. No passion. No wanting. It was brotherly love, something he’d probably wanted to express all his life. Now he was and even he seemed baffled by it.
“Cali,” he said.
“Kalina,” she corrected him.
“Ok,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You know what,” she said. “You can call me Cali. I didn’t mean to be cruel. It’s just strange hearing that name again after all this time.”
He smiled.
“Thank you,” he said.
Silence.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked.
“Small steps,” she said. “I suppose. We get to know each other again.”
“Do you remember anything?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “Bits and pieces but nothing significant. I’d like to learn about my parents. Sometimes I think I can see them, but their faces are blurry.”
Keelan’s face lit up and he clapped his hands together, rubbing them vigorously.
“Oh, you’re in for a surprise,” he announced. “I have photos. And a video with us both in it.”
His head lowered, and his smile faded.
“I’ve watched it a thousand time,” he whispered.
His pain was etched in each wrinkle of his face. He’d become such a tough, violent man, and she was the cause of it. Not by her doing, but still, she was ultimately the reason he’d become the man he was now. She had time to learn about her parents and about everything she’d missed. She could pick his brain now whenever the time was right, but with the office in total disarray and the floor covered in blood, it seemed now wasn’t that time. She did, however, want to know how he’d become a shifter.
“Tell me how you became…you know…one of us,” she said.
“One of you,” he said, again looking hurt as if she’d broken his heart by choosing the side opposite humanity to define her people. “The story’s not that interesting. Once you were gone, my life fell apart. You don’t need to hear all the shitty details about our parents, but let’s just say the light went out when you disappeared that day. Dad was bitter and drank himself into a nightly violent rage and mom fell so deep into depression that there was no way to pull her out. I was caught somewhere between them both. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and maybe I was a piece of rotten fruit that had fallen and gotten kicked far out into the yard. I got into a lot of trouble as I grew up. I never strayed far from the beach and I always kept my eye out for you. At first, I thought maybe you’d survived. But your body never washed up anywhere, so you must have gotten eaten. Once word got out about supernaturals with the ability to shift into animals and creatures, I figured there must be ones in the ocean too. It couldn’t only be wolves and panthers and shit.”
Kalina reached out and took his hand as he spoke.
“At some point, I fell in with some surfers. They were like me. Drifters with no sense of responsibility. I guess that’s why I like Rafe.”
Hearing him talk about Rafe like that worried her. What did he mean drifters with no responsibility? Was Rafe the kind of guy who’d grow bored with her or worry too much about all this press
ure and drama in her life and suddenly take off to travel the world with his beach bum buddies?
“Word got out about this woman who was…well, she was known to be a bit of a whore. A guy I knew who’d fucked her claimed that she was a mermaid. Everyone made fun of him, but he swore by it. He said they’d fucked on the beach one night, and as he drifted off, he heard her get up from the blanket they were lying on. She thought he was asleep. Then she ran toward the ocean, dove into the water, and disappeared. He waited for her to pop up and maybe call out for him to wake up and join her, but she never did. In fact, she never came back. It freaked him out. Nobody else believed him. But I did. Only I didn’t think she was a fucking mermaid. I mean that’s ridiculous. But what else could disappear into the water like that? A shark shifter. So, I found her. She worked at a surf shack, waxing the boards, running the cash register…you know. All that shit. So, I went in, flirted with her, fucked her a couple of times, and then told her I knew what she was. She didn’t even deny it. She admitted that she was a great white shifter. Hell, I’d expected her to say she was something smaller. Maybe a tiger shark.”
Kalina laughed.
“So…I begged her to make me one of her kind. And she did.”
“And what happened to her?” Kalina said. “I thought great whites never leave their mates?”
“I killed her,” he said coldly. “I waited until she was asleep next to me and then I cut off her head.”
“What the fuck?” Kalina said, jerking her hand back.
“I had to,” he said. “Don’t you get it? She could have been the one who killed you. I killed her like I planned to kill every other shark. And with the ability to change into a great white, I had the upper hand. I could hunt them on dry land and in the water. I could be the ultimate predator.”
She understood, but it was still sick. Her brother was basically a serial killer…of people and of sharks. He was killing routinely, taking out every possible beast that might have killed his little sister. As crazy as it was, it was also one of the sweetest things she’d ever heard.
“I’ve always loved you,” Keelan said and he cracked a smile. “And I’ve always felt responsible for what happened. Maybe now I can be free of that guilt. Not completely. You grew up so different from me, perhaps even better than I did, but you weren’t with your real family and that was my fault. If I’d watched you better, you wouldn’t have fallen off the boat.”
“I fell because I reached overboard,” she said. “It had nothing to do with you. You were a kid too. You were barely older than I was. If anyone was responsible, it was Mom and Dad. I’ve always believed that. I missed them, and I missed you…at first. But then I learned to forget and move on. I have a new family now. If you want to be a part of my life, you have to stop killing.”
“You forgot and moved on,” Keelan said.
Kalina wished she could peer inside his mind for a moment. The slow, contemplative way he’d said it made her wonder if she’d insulted him. She wished she’d been careful with her words. Obviously, for a man who’d spent his entire life remembering her, it must sting to hear she’d forgotten him altogether.
“I guess it was a blend of my fight or flight response. I fought to move on and adapt to my new life, and I ran from my past and the life, the people I thought had abandoned me. You were here with Mom and Dad. I was stranded in a strange place with half people half sharks. A fucking sea turtle shifter was my teacher, Keelan. I don’t remember any helicopters flying overhead or any search boats cruising the coast. To me, I’d been forgotten.”
Once again, he grabbed her hand. This time he squeezed it tight and pulled it to his forehead. He closed his eyes and whispered, “I’m so sorry you felt that way. I never abandoned you. And I never will again.”
“Then stop this foolishness with Cobalt. Leave him alone. Maybe if you stay away, he’ll do the same,” she begged.
“I promise you I won’t go looking for him anymore,” he said. “But if he comes at me, I will have to fight back, and he got lucky the other night.”
Kalina glanced at the bloody floor and knew he wasn’t kidding. If Cobalt didn’t leave well enough alone, this would be a gruesome battle. Kane wouldn’t back down. Add Evelyn and her sharks into the mix and this was going to be disastrous. She needed to warn Thane.
Chapter 22 – Sylvia
“Scream,” Coby told her through their mental connection.
He swam ahead of her, leading the way. He’d been reluctant to let her hit the water so soon, but Sylvia insisted on it. She’d known she’d made the right decision the first time she shifted into great white form. The pain had been bone splitting and mind shattering, yet once she’d finished the transformation, she felt incredibly free. All her fears of sharks and the open water had been replaced with a desire for vengeance. Coby had turned her into one of his kind, but it had been Evelyn who’d placed in her the seed of retribution. Sylvia had a lot to learn, in a short amount of time, but she was hell-bent on killing the evil bitch and her monstrous minions.
Swimming with fins had seemed to come naturally for Sylvia. Coby had been impressed. Telepathic communication had been a whole other story. With some sharks, as Coby had explained, it happens almost immediately without hardly trying. From what Penny had told her, she must have been one of those sharks. She’d been able to speak freely with her mind the moment she splashed into the water. Then again, she’d been thrust into the heat of battle and maybe her mind had simply figured it out as a result of not wanting to fucking die. For Sylvia, she was able to hear Coby with no problem at all, but she couldn’t send her thoughts to him.
“What do you mean scream?” she thought.
He didn’t respond, which meant she still wasn’t doing it right.
Fuck! What happens if someone attacks me back here behind him? What if Evelyn shows up or one of her hammerheads and I can’t even call for help?
“Scream,” Coby repeated in her head. “Haven’t you ever screamed with your mouth closed? In anger or maybe during sex when you struggled to hold in your pleasure?”
Yes, all the time with you.
This time she was glad he couldn’t read her thoughts, and that made her wonder if there was a way to turn it off once it got started. And did it work when they were in human form? She didn’t want him knowing her every thought. That could be embarrassing.
“Throw a temper tantrum in your mouth,” he said. “When you hold in that scream, you’re pushing that anger, that rage, that pleasure, whatever it is you’re feeling into your mouth. But it’s not escaping your body.”
Man, he talks a lot more in shark form than he does in human form.
“That’s the best way I can explain how we communicate. Scream inside your mouth.”
If she could have rolled her beady shark eyes, she would have. But she decided to give it a try. With all her might, she let out a scream, keeping it inside, not that she would have been able to scream on the outside anyway while speeding through the water as a big ass shark.
Big badass shark!
She was proud to be one of Coby’s kind.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
She couldn’t help laughing thinking about the old Geto Boys track.
“Why are you laughing?” Coby asked.
“Wait! You heard me?” she tried once again to talk to Coby.
Silence.
“Whatever you did…whatever you thought about that made you laugh, you did it. I heard that giggle of yours!” Coby shouted into her mind. “That beautiful, sexy fucking giggle of yours.”
Sylvia was excited. She’d done it, even if accidentally. This time, she screamed with all her might.
“Whoa!” he said. “I heard that too.”
Sylvia laughed.
This is awesome!
He didn’t hear that it seemed. So, she concentrated and yelled out on the inside, “I want you to fuck me so hard when we get out of the water!”
She didn’t expect it to work. It was t
he first time she’d tried “yell talking” as she’d begun to think of it.
“Deal!” he replied. “But how about this time, you show me how a savage great white woman fucks her man.”
“Oh, you are so going to regret you said that,” she said.
“I hope you keep your word,” he replied.
“I’m doing it! I can’t believe I’m doing it!”
“Yes, you’re definitely doing it, babe.”
Sylvia couldn’t wait to get back to the island. Now, she felt like she was finally getting the hang of this shark thing.
“All joking aside,” Coby said. “Listen to me. Evelyn and her sharks are planning something big. If they attacked your barge last time, imagine what they could have in mind this time. I need to teach you to fight, quickly.”
“Right now,” she replied.
Never in her life had she been the type of person to back down from a bully, and that was on two legs. Now, with razor-wire jaws, she was the baddest bitch in the ocean.
Bite Me Harder (a paranormal shifter novel) (Guardians of the Deep Book 2) Page 22