Master of the Deep

by Cleo Peitsche

  To the inlet.

  A cold feeling swept over her, like she’d walked through a spray of freezing water. She wanted a time-out, to stop Koenraad. A moment to prepare herself…

  Her mind raced, the thoughts jumbled, piled atop each other, yet everything that happened outside of her head seemed to be in slow motion. She didn’t know much about shifters, but Koenraad had just made it crystal clear that there was something wrong with his son, that it was a sore subject, and now she knew what she was going to see in that water.

  He stopped at the edge of the waterline. Soft waves licked the shore. “Brady,” he called out. “I want you to meet someone.”

  “I met him,” she said quietly. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  “You haven’t met him properly.” He squinted into the darkness, then he peeled off his clothes, and Monroe wasn’t even thinking about what it would take to seduce him into bed as quickly as possible. Instead, she wanted to pull him into her arms and cradle him.

  “He prefers being a shark, then,” she said. “You can’t force him to change back?”

  “I wish I could. He’s stuck.” He strode into the water, and when it reached his knees, he launched himself into the rocking surface.

  “Stuck?” Monroe whispered. Nothing Koenraad had said up until now had given her the impression that shifters didn’t have control over when they changed. So maybe that was the reason so many preferred to stay in one shape: change back to the other shape and you might get stuck that way.

  There was splashing in the water, and then Koenraad’s head appeared. “He’s being shy. He’s probably worried it’s a trick, that I’m angry with him for revealing himself yesterday.”

  And that was weirdest of all. “He’s supposed to stay hidden?”

  Koenraad looked down and to the side, then he swam toward her with confident strokes. What he did was less like a human swimming and more like the water forming and reforming around him. His grace was astounding.

  He continued until he was able to stand, but stopped there. “He’s a good kid,” Koenraad said. “I hate that he’s in limbo, out here, living like this, but I have to keep him safe.”

  What was safe in the ocean if not a shark? But Monroe wasn’t going to argue. She didn’t know the first thing about parenting humans, let alone shifters. “But he used to be able to go back and forth?” she asked, uncertain.

  “No. He spent most of his life only in human form. It was for his own safety. Getting stuck happens sometimes with shifters, usually when they’re sick or very old. Or if there’s a congenital problem. For young shifters, like with Brady, there are warning signs. We tried—well, I tried—to keep him away from the ocean so as not to trigger…” He twisted to the side. “Come on, Brady. She saw you yesterday.”

  He turned to look at her. “I know he understands me, but he can’t talk to me, so I have to guess at what he’s thinking. It’s not always easy to read his moods, but I think he’s been a bit dejected lately.”

  A triangular fin slowly emerged from the water, then circled away. Monroe’s heart jumped into her mouth. Even knowing that it wasn’t some hungry predator, the sight was almost enough to make her knees give out.

  And then the shark was there, in the shallows. The night obscured so much that she sensed rather than saw the shadowy mass of his body. She was very happy not to be in the water.

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight.” Koenraad cleared his throat and looked at her. He seemed nervous as he went a few steps deeper, then fell to his knees, the water now coming up to his chest. “I’ve never done this before, but here goes nothing. Brady, this is my friend Monroe. She lives in New York, and she’s visiting for a few days.”

  The animal—no, not animal. Monroe instinctively knew that was wrong. But he wasn’t a boy. Was he? And she had a hard time thinking that a shark that size could be young. He wasn’t a child and he wasn’t just a shark. A shifter, then? But he couldn’t shift. Well, whatever he was, he was poking his nose out of the water, pointing it in her direction.

  Smelling her? Or just watching? She barely repressed a full-body shudder.

  “Monroe, this is Brady. He’s the best swimmer I’ve ever met. It’s like he’s got the ability to make himself invisible, and when we figure out a way to help him shift back, he’s going to show his old man how he does it. He’s also brilliant with model ships. A rare talent, and a good kid.”

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Brady,” she said, taking a tentative step forward. Koenraad was still on his knees, now touching the young shark. Stroking him.

  “I’m sure he’s pleased to meet you,” Koenraad said. “I do what I can for him, but it gets lonely out here. He’s tired of seeing me, and he can’t go far.”

  Monroe’s gaze darted to the gate at the inlet’s mouth. Even though the gate was open, unease wound through her. But this wasn’t any of her business, of course; she didn’t understand the situation.

  “Did you do the model ship in the library, Brady?” she asked. Her voice was too high, trying too hard like people did when presented with kids they didn’t know.

  Koenraad nodded.

  She took another step forward. “I was admiring it yesterday. It’s spectacular. I kept expecting little people to start walking around the deck.”

  The shark flipped around and swam away, churning the water and splashing Koenraad, who didn’t seem put out, didn’t seem to even notice.

  “Brady’s excited,” he said as he pushed his wet hair out of his face. “Meeting you, hearing about the model ship… it’s a lot for him. The shark thing aside… he always had communication problems.” He shook his head. “Listen to me trying to downplay it. Brady can’t talk even in human form.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. In a way, it prepared me for this. I’d already had years of experience finding ways to communicate with him. He’s smart, and he’s so sweet, Monroe. I guess you see him and… you see that shark fin, and you see teeth.”

  Monroe made a sound of disagreement, but Koenraad said, “It’s fine. You don’t know him. Lately, even for me, it’s been getting harder to communicate at all. He gets so frustrated, then he goes off and sulks for days at a time. A few weeks ago I brought a ship kit out here, one without too many small pieces. Put it on an inflatable raft.” He extended his arm as if launching an invisible raft into the inlet’s gentle waves. “I thought he might enjoy seeing one, thought we’d find a way to build it together.” He sucked in a quick breath. “It didn’t quite work out like I’d planned.”

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Six months here, but he’s been a shark for two years.”

  Monroe’s head snapped up, and she stared at Koenraad in disbelief. “What’s the treatment?” she asked quickly before he could suspect just how shocked she was. “Keep him safe and wait for him to outgrow it?”

  She couldn’t see Koenraad’s face clearly, but the sudden rigidity of his shoulders said a whole lot. Two years, and he still had hope. He was either the most optimistic or the most desperate man she’d ever met. Koenraad didn’t strike her as someone with many blind spots, especially one this large. Desperation, then.

  “Do they ever outgrow it?” she asked.

  “The lab… I’m working on a cure,” Koenraad said. “Something similar happens to much older shifters, and we think there might be a connection. There are some experimental drugs being developed, but I want to push them along so that we can help Brady sooner rather than later.”

  Watching him stare into the water broke Monroe’s heart. She felt the heat of tears building behind her eyes. Seeing anyone in so much pain was difficult.

  She took a step toward Koenraad. The water was cold on her legs, but she barely felt it. She couldn’t let him suffer through this alone. It was clear that for whatever reason, he’d been bearing this on his own.

  Yes, she saw that life had changed him, forced him to bend, to adapt. But it hadn’t broken him.

/>   Brady’s fin appeared, and he approached cautiously, giving Monroe déjà vu of their encounter the day before. The young shark held himself apart by not facing them.

  There was so much pain here, so much helplessness. Koenraad had every advantage in the world, but he couldn’t fix this.

  She stumbled the last few feet that separated her from Koenraad, pulled by her need to comfort and soothe. She tripped, nearly fell, but she reached him. On his knees, he was just the right height for her to run her fingers through his wet hair, which was drying quickly in the cool night.

  But he needed more than a cautious touch. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  She heard the splashing and Koenraad’s hoarse cry at almost the exact moment that burning pain ripped through her stomach.

  Her eyes flew open even as she hit the water, and there wasn’t time to suck in breath.

  Air.

  She needed it.

  Fight for it. Fight!

  She struggled against the water, tried to pull herself up. Nothing was biting her now, but it still felt like teeth were digging into her side.

  Koenraad had his arms around her. She was safe. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  Everything went gray, then almost black. Koenraad was carrying her. There was warm stickiness all over her, but she couldn’t even say where it was coming from. And something felt… wrong.

  Where was she?

  The pool. He was walking by the pool.

  Then she was falling for what felt like forever, but she saw Koenraad silhouetted against the night sky. White moonlight gleamed on his skin, on his light hair, giving him an otherworldly appearance. His hands were clenched in fists.

  He looked furious, and she knew she should be worried about that, but then she hit water.

  And Koenraad just stood there, watching, his chest heaving, his dark eyes reflecting the moonlight.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter 12

  The alluring scent of blood in the air was making him dizzy. Coppery, irony, tangy and sweet, oh so sweet. His mouth didn’t just water; it flooded. He had to keep swallowing, and there was an ache in his jaws, in his teeth.

  There was so much of it. Not just blood. A wound created other scents as well, and he was easily able to detect them while in human form.

  It was distracting. And what was going to follow wouldn’t be any easier, when his senses would be so much more acute.

  Monroe was semi-unconscious, and her movements were slowing. He needed her to be still, to stop flailing, stop disturbing the water like prey. But when she did fall motionless, his own heart almost stopped.

  The window of opportunity here was narrow. Too narrow.

  He carefully lowered himself into the pool, not wanting to disturb the water. Nor did he want to inadvertently trigger his shark instinct by making sudden movements toward a wounded person.

  So much blood, so much damaged tissue.

  He shifted, becoming over twenty feet of great white shark in a pool barely wide enough to turn around in.

  Instantly, he fought for control of himself. This was why he’d taken those precious few moments. If only he’d had minutes to acclimate, to stave off the sensory overload… But Monroe didn’t have minutes.

  Focus, idiot.

  He swam toward Monroe, and the vibrations and electrical impulses that he picked up told him the same thing his eyes had when he’d seen the size and location of the wound.

  She was dying. It might not be possible to save her no matter what he did.

  He twisted, jaws wide, and bit into his back, just near the tail. He let go, tried again, his lacerating bite cutting deep, then he pulled until his own flesh broke free with a bolt of agony.

  More blood rushed around him, this time his own, gushing, throbbing in time with the pain in his back.

  Pain could be ignored. It was something sharks did very well, and anyway, he would heal.

  He moved closer to Monroe, allowed his blood to mingle with hers, to move over her wound. He felt her blood clotting, felt the gash trying to knit closed.

  Still, her vital signs were weakening. It wasn’t enough to stanch the bleeding because she’d hemorrhaged too much. She needed a transfusion.

  The hospital was on the other side of the island, and even his fastest car wouldn’t get her there in time.

  He had blood, though. Plenty of it. Healing blood. Forbidden blood.

  When he’d thrown her into the pool, he’d been prepared to do whatever it took, at whatever price, even if that meant breaking Council law.

  Yet he hesitated for one simple reason: what he would have to do to save her went against everything he believed in. Monroe was unconscious. She hadn’t agreed to this. She didn’t even know this was something he could do, and he regretted that.

  He swam closer, but it wasn’t easy. Not with so much of the area leading to his tail now torn away.

  Bathing her wound in his blood had been straightforward, but he couldn’t get it into her mouth while in his current form.

  He needed to shift human. And he had to do it now.

  Closing his eyes, he shifted again. The pain slashed through his back and legs, and he screamed, swallowing water.

  Cloudy crimson pools swirled around him. He managed to get vertical, more or less, but standing was impossible even though the pool was shallow enough. It was too difficult to balance. He knew he hadn’t severed his spinal cord, obviously hadn’t, but in his fervor, he’d bitten far too deep.

  He struggled toward Monroe, and for the first time in his life, the water was heavy, combative.

  Inch by painful inch, each bit of progress fought for, he reached her side.

  She was still breathing, her heart still beating, but so faintly that he doubted it could be picked up even with a stethoscope.

  Now or never, and if she hated him, well, at least she’d be alive to hate him. He bit his tongue, hard, then bent over her slack mouth and fitted his lips over hers. He massaged her throat. Willed her to swallow.

  When she did, he gave her more. It wasn’t good enough. She was too far gone.

  He picked up her delicate wrist. All his life, he’d been so careful, never allowing himself the pleasure of oral sex with a non-shifter. And now he was contemplating moving beyond that gray but acceptable area and directly into what was expressly forbidden by law. And not just law. It went against shark shifter standards of decency. If he did this, and if he was found out, there would be consequences for him and the human both.

  But she wasn’t just any human. This was Monroe. His woman. He would do whatever it took to save her.

  Carefully, he bit into her arm. The taste of her blood, her flesh, filled his mouth.

  He bit his tongue again, then wrapped his mouth over her wrist and forced his blood into her veins, timing the pushes with the dying pulsing of her heart.

  He was putting his blood into a human’s veins. It was taboo, but it was her only hope.

  Minute after long minute, he repeatedly bit himself, and he had to keep biting her, too, because his blood kept mending her arm. He’d hoped this would work, but he hadn’t expected his blood to work with her cells so quickly.

  And he felt life stirring in her veins, felt her heart beating stronger. She was far from regaining consciousness, but she might live.

  That didn’t mean he could stop. He would be her heart until her survival was assured.

  As he lost blood, the pain of the self-inflicted bite in his back pushed to the forefront of his awareness. The muscles were locking up. They relented only to spasm, then seized up tighter than before.

  He had no resources left. If he hadn’t lost so much blood… there it was in the water. Useless. Stupid. He’d left himself no reserves.

  He needed to shift back. He might heal a little faster, but more importantly, he probably wouldn’t pass out. Because how things were right now, he could lose c
onsciousness any second now, spelling certain death for Monroe.

  But he pushed harder, and even though all this was happing much faster than he’d expected, he willed her body to repair itself faster still. He bit her wrist once more, and the wound healed almost immediately.

  Couldn’t bite her again. Didn’t have the strength.

  As he fell backward, he shifted, but even in shark form, he wasn’t much better off.

  If only he had the stamina to get her safely out of the water. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about her drowning while she was still unconscious.

  With every bit of willpower he possessed, he forced himself to stay awake. Every movement hurt, but he used the top of his body to bump her toward the pool return jets, then swam under her, positioning himself so that her head would stay above water and the current could send water across his gills.

  Now at least he wouldn’t suffocate if he fell asleep.

  Nothing to do but wait.

  In the long hours that followed, he had time to berate himself for his lapse of judgement. Brady had done this. Brady. His sweet, gentle boy.

  Anguish at the realization nearly drove him out of his mind. He had clung to hope for two years, had truly believed relief was coming for six months. That was all gone now, destroyed in a split second. In its stead, a black, gaping hole was filling with grief and regret.

  Had he been deluding himself all along, thinking that Brady was still in there? If the shark was stronger than the human—and clearly it was—then Koenraad had lost him.

  A shifter who attacked a human was a menace to them all, and was dealt with as such. In some places of the world, where the shifters never turned human, never interacted with humans or had anything resembling civilization, attacks on the rare humans who ventured into shark territory were tolerated, at least in theory.

  But that wouldn’t work in areas where humans and sharks lived together. A shark attack was too risky for the shifter population. Humans would hunt sharks and shifters alike, and innocents would die.

  When there was an attack, the shark or shifter in question—here was one of the few situations in Council law where it didn’t matter which—was killed and delivered to the authorities as soon as possible.