“There will be a ton of kids there,” Rafe said.
“I know,” Sylvia replied. “We’ll do everything we can to keep them safe.”
“I would die before I let a child get harmed,” Coby said. “I’ve done a lot of shitty things, but I’ve never hurt a kid.”
“Something about this doesn’t feel right,” Rafe said. “It’s too easy. If what I’ve heard about Evelyn is true, she’s too smart to bank it all on us not being in the water.”
“Maybe we should split in half,” Sylvia recommended. “Half of us in the water and half on land to make sure we can see the water from topside.”
“Good idea,” Coby agreed.
“It’s something,” Rafe said.
So their plan was set and now, with the festival at full swing, they were all in their predetermined positions. Rickshaw had stayed back at the island to keep watch over Penny, Ruby, and the kids. Rafe and Kalina were somewhere on the beach watching from dry land. Sylvia, Coby, Thane, Kino, Faith, Jagger, Hailey, Oliver, Paisley, and the three new sharks were there beyond the swimmers and partygoers, pacing back and forth underwater.
New sharks. As if I’ve been around the block a time or two.
She may have been new herself, but she didn’t feel that way. She had an old soul, and that soul seemed so at ease with the shark way of life. If these people enjoying the festival knew how close they were to an entire group of tiger sharks and great whites, they’d be screaming and swimming for their lives. It was interesting to Sylvia how she no longer thought of herself as one of them. She was one of us now. Us being her new family. The trivial things of the past no longer mattered. The struggle of paying bills and late night grocery shopping and trying to navigate the dating scene. Those were all difficulties of the past. Now, all she needed to do was go with the flow, open her mouth to eat fish, and fuck her man. Well, all those things plus babysit tourists trying to “party for life.”
Chapter 26 – Rafe
So many people were on the beach and in every nook and cranny that led to it from parking lots and hotels. Bars and restaurants were filled to maximum capacity. Tents had been constructed to house local artists. Some did live work while others had brought stuff from their studios. Stages had been erected for local bands to showcase their talent. Cops strolled the beach in droves, and Kane had brought officers from other nearby Fishery departments to assist with patrolling the water by boat.
Kids played with beach toys like shovels and plastic molds of crabs and castles. Young men and women walked up and down the coast sucking on e-cigarettes and trying not to spill their clear plastic cups full of beer. College kids hung out in bunches and more mature adults sat in lawn chairs under umbrellas.
On the water, it was a typical day at any Aussie beach festival. Music blared, bass boomed, voices laughed and shouted and sang to the tunes. The sun beat down hard on the beachgoers. With Kalina’s fingers interlaced with his, Rafe should have been the happiest man alive. Instead, he was filled with dread. One woman screamed as her boyfriend doused her with icy water, and Rafe thought he was going to have a heart attack. Then someone on the water cried out because a friend had grabbed her leg and yanked her under the water. Once, a guy even jokingly screamed, “Shark!” Innocent fun was driving Rafe crazy. Every shriek and yelp made him fear the worst.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Rafe said. “My nerves are shot.”
“It’ll be okay,” Kalina told him. “We’ve got the water covered. I don’t think she’s going to attack. Not like this. Maybe she was bluffing.”
“You didn’t see her that day in our office,” Rafe said. “She wasn’t bluffing. If it’s not here, today, then it’s somewhere else soon. Or maybe here tomorrow or the next day.”
That was the thing. Evelyn could keep them doing this every single day of the festival until they were so tired of baking in the sun and swimming back and forth all day that they’d all grow bored and lackadaisical in their duties. That would be the best time to strike. When they were all so sure she wouldn’t.
“Rafe, where you at?” Kane’s voice barked over the radio attached to his hip.
Rafe was all business today. He’d even donned his work polo. He knew he’d command more respect dressed in official attire, not that the polo made him look any more respectable than the khaki colored cargo shorts he was wearing. However, he knew it could come in handy if he needed to get through the crowd quickly.
“Over near Bugles,” he said, mentioning the name of the nearest bar.
Within minutes, Kane was pulling up next to him in an all-terrain golf cart with massive tires.
“Anything?” he asked as he hopped out.
“We’re all over the water,” Kalina said, “but nobody’s sensing anything. It’s weird.”
“She won’t attack today,” Kane said. “Not on the first Saturday. It’s too obvious. She’d want to surprise us, don’t you think?”
“She’d know that we’d think that,” Kalina replied, “which means showing up today would be the surprise.”
“Damn, this bitch is crafty,” Rafe said. “She’s so sly everything she’d do would be unexpected…because we’d totally expect it.”
Kalina laughed.
“That made no sense,” she said.
“Which is exactly what Evelyn would want you to think,” he joked.
She slapped his arm.
“Get your head in the game,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“I feel like the father of two idiot children around you two,” Kane barked.
“Damn, dude,” Rafe said.
“That was really rude,” Kalina agreed.
Kane laughed.
The moment they’d let their guard down – that split second, they’d taken to crack jokes and ease some of the tension in the air—that was all the time it took for madness to set in. The earth shook beneath their feet as an explosion rocked the ground. Smoke and fire and screams sounded off from far down the beach where people had wandered in search of a calmer area to celebrate away from the hectic crowd. It wasn’t near the main festivities, but close enough.
“It could be a diversion,” Rafe said. “It’s too far from the thick crowd for it to be Evelyn’s primary target.”
The cops weren’t aware of Evelyn’s evil ways and had immediately raced down the beach on foot, in cars, and in other wheeled vehicles, leaving the main area way too vulnerable.
“If she were going to attack by water, now would be the time,” Kane said. “I wonder if Thane has sent the sharks toward the explosion.”
Rafe wondered the same and wished he could speak telepathically on dry land. At close distances, it was possible, but not from where they stood. The sharks would be far enough out in the ocean that they wouldn’t accidentally scare any tourists, which would put them way beyond Rafe’s telepathic range.
Moments later, the real threat arrived. It came in the form of a gunshot followed by a scream. Then another shot and more screaming. Within seconds, everyone on the beach was scattering. Men wearing black pants, vests, and bandanas walked through the crowd with shotguns and pistols pointed in every direction. A few of the guys held only knives or axes or baseball bats. Everywhere was chaos as the hammerheads marched forward, taking out humans twenty at a time…and they were doing it on foot. On dry land.
Fucking brilliant.
A college boy ran for his life and then flew through the air as a shotgun blast smashed into his shoulder, spinning him around and sending him face first into the sand.
A teenage girl ran from one of the knife-wielding sharks.
A baseball bat flew through the air and hit a grown man in the back of the head.
A SWAT team of death was making its way down the beach and Rafe could do nothing to stop them. He froze in place. Kane’s voice sounded off beside him, but he couldn’t make out the words. His trance-like state lasted only a second. In that brief moment, he couldn’t figure out what to
do. If he ran at the guys in human form, they’d mow him down and he’d die right there on the beach. The sharks were useless out there in the water while the hammerheads had full reign on the sand. Evelyn’s plan was genius. She’d kill humans where humans played. On the beach instead of in the water. Where sharks had no business and could do nothing to stop her. But where was she? Had she only sent these guys to do her bidding?
One guy scooped up his little girl and ran toward the hotel, but a bullet caught his leg and he fell to the ground. His daughter bounced off the sand and screamed for her father. That was the moment Rafe snapped out of it. Kalina screamed behind him, telling him to stay back, but it was all reactionary at that point. The little girl, perhaps only five years old, was trying to pull her dad’s arm. He was alive and trying to get to his feet but was struggling. Rafe picked her up and ran to put her behind the bar at Bugle’s.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Daddy!” she screamed as tears streamed down her face.
A bottle shattered overhead, and glass rained down onto him and the child. Wet liquor ran down his forehead. The hiding place wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.
“I’ll get your dad,” he said. “but you have to promise you’ll stay here.”
She nodded and kept crying, but she remained where he’d placed her, sitting on the floor with her knees tucked under her chin.
“And be careful with all this glass. Don’t move at all.”
She nodded.
Rafe ran back out to get the dad. The hammerhead who’d shot him was closer and was about to point his rifle at him when Rafe slammed into him from the side, tackling him onto the beach.
“Rafe!” Kalina screamed.
He was aware that she was behind him, but he couldn’t look back without giving up his advantage. Shots continued to ring out. It was a blood bath. Rafe slammed the hammerhead’s face into the ground and then dropped an elbow at the back of the man’s neck. He flipped him around quickly and with all the power he could muster, he smashed an elbow into the man’s windpipe, feeling it crush beneath him. The shark in human form fought for his breath, clutching at his throat, but it was too late. He was going to die.
Energy blasted through Rafe’s body. He knew it was the blue mist that had snaked its way through him in that tent. He was powerful, and he was pissed. Kalina grabbed his arm.
“We have to get out of here!” she yelled. “We have to get to the water!”
“And then what?” he asked.
One of the other sharks came at him wielding a butcher knife. Rafe leapt backward and the blade missed him by no more than an inch. The guy swinging the knife was fast and was already coming at him again, but this time he brought the knife down in an overhead downward swing. Rafe threw his arm up and hit his forearm, blocking the blade before it could do any damage. Rafe lifted his own elbow in a fast, upward arch and smashed the guy in the chin. As he stumbled backward, Rafe grabbed hold of the man’s knife wielding right hand and pushed it toward him. The blade sank into the man’s chest. He wouldn’t die, not with his supernatural healing abilities, but he’d suffer for a while.
Rafe remembered the father of the little girl, the guy he’d been distracted from saving. A trail of blood led toward the bar where Rafe had hidden the man’s daughter. It seemed the guy had gathered enough strength to make it back to his child without his help. He didn’t have much time to dwell on it, but he hoped they’d be all right.
Behind him, Kane pulled out a rifle and hid behind the golf cart as he fired off a round at one of the hammerheads, hitting him square in the chest. A cop or two who must have stayed behind after the blast, finally got involved. Or had they been involved all along? There had been so many gunshots and so much yelling it was hard to tell.
Farther down the beach, Rafe saw people running. He heard the screams.
Then he heard the roars of his new brothers and sisters racing out of the water. To any humans watching from afar, it must have been an absurd sight. Naked men and women sloshing out of the water and running onto the beach to fight armed murderers. The cops stopped shooting and stood with their guns still raised but completely awestruck.
People continued to scream as they ran away. The hammerheads, in all reality, could have pointed their weapons at the approaching sharks and ripped them apart in a shower of bullets, but that would have been the dishonorable thing to do. To gun down one of their own kind was too much like the human way of things. At least that’s what Rafe figured their reasoning must have been when they threw down their weapons and ran at Thane and the others.
For a moment, Rafe unwittingly paused and took in the scene. Thane picked one of the hammerhead guys up and slammed him onto the sand where he punched the guy repeatedly in the face. Kino attacked one of the guys, but as he ripped his teeth into the man’s neck, one of his buddies grabbed Kino by the hair and pulled him off by his throat, choking him from behind. Hailey kicked a guy in the balls as hard as she could before leaping onto him and raining fists at his face. Cobalt, like the beast he was, threw hammerheads around like ragdolls. All of the sharks were on the beach, even Sylvia whose bronze skin shone in the sunlight and looked to be almost shimmering in her naked perfection. Beanie, Hightail, and Squid were the last ones out of the water, but Rafe knew his friends, and he wasn’t concerned at all about their ability to hold their own. He’d seen them fight so many times he’d lost count. None of the fights had been to the death, but many of them had been pretty brutal.
Rafe and Kalina were about to run into the fight themselves when Rafe noticed that Cobalt had spotted Kane behind him. The big, giant of a man pointed a finger in Kane’s direction, and then made the universal cut throat motion of bringing his thumb across his own neck signifying that Kane was as good as dead.
“Seriously?” Kalina said. “Right now?”
“I killed his brother,” Kane said. “This is never going to stop until one of us is dead.”
“Can’t you wait until later to solve this dispute?” Rafe asked. “I mean we’re kind of in the middle of something.”
“I’d wait,” Kane said, “but I don’t think he’s willing.”
Cobalt walked toward them with heavy steps, like a bull on a rampage.
“If you’re going to calm him down,” Kane said to Kalina, “now would be the time.”
“Cobalt,” Kalina said as she walked toward him, putting herself in the way. “Not now. Please. We have more important things going on.”
“None of these people mean anything to me,” Cobalt said. “The kids are safe. The hammerheads are focused on us now.”
“But we’re your people,” Kalina said. “Don’t do this now.”
“You are not my people,” he replied. “I have only one person and she is there fighting on the beach.”
He’d pointed toward Sylvia. In any other situation, Rafe might have seen the romance in his last remark, but he wanted to kill Kalina’s brother, and that shattered the romantic gesture.
“Cobalt,” Rafe said. “Come on, brother.”
Shit. Poor choice of words. Could there be any poorer?
“You are not my brother,” he replied in exactly the way Rafe should have guessed he would. “He killed my brother.”
“I guess there’s no stopping this,” Kane said from behind Rafe. “You got lucky the other night, punk. I don’t see any lifeguard stands behind me now.”
Cobalt ran at Rafe and swatted him away like a football linebacker getting rid of a pesky pulling guard. Rafe spun in place and nearly fell over. He turned in time to see Cobalt try the same move he’d successfully completed on the beach, the tackle and carry, but this time Kane was prepared. He stepped to the side gracefully and pushed Cobalt’s back, helping him run head first into the brick wall behind where Kane had been standing a moment before. Cobalt stumbled and fell to a knee, blood running down from where his forehead had collided with the exterior of Bugle’s bar.
As much as Rafe wanted to concentrate on the beach
side brawl going on behind him, the battle near the water was more important. These pieces of shit had killed several humans and had maimed so many others. Evelyn’s plan had worked. She’d caught them off guard. Now, they had to clean up her mess. Kalina was too concerned with her brother’s fight to aid in the bigger mess in front of them, so Rafe left her and joined the fray. He couldn’t leave his three surfer buddies to fight on their own. Not that they needed his help. When he made his way over to them, Squid had one guy in an arm bar submission move and was bending his arm back so far it had begun to crack. The guy howled in pain. Beanie was kicking a guy who was down on the ground, and Hightail was slapping a man’s cheek lightly saying, “You still with us? Or are you like completely out, brah?” It was comical at a time when nothing should have been funny.
Cops shouted orders from far back on the beach, too afraid to come any closer, but they were ignored for the most part. They must have figured out what the supernatural beings were and had stayed as far back as possible. Humans knew about shifters, and most knew they had strengths and abilities. If the cops were smart, they would stay out of it while the two paranormal gangs wiped each other out.
Some of the hammerheads had given up the fight and had leapt into the water while others were still going strong. One of them circled around Rafe with his fists raised in a fighter’s stance. He was a southpaw and Rafe hated fighting lefties. The only time he’d ever gotten his ass handed to him was by a lefty well versed in martial arts. The guy had been incredibly quick, and that left hand had been his power hand. He’d shattered Rafe’s jaw with it.
This time, he was prepared, and the first few right handed jabs didn’t trick him. When the power left shot out, Rafe slipped inside really quick and slapped the arm away before slamming a closed fist up and into the man’s chin. This guy was no martial artist. He flew backward and landed on the beach before carefully climbing back to his feet and stumbling toward the ocean. He transformed in water that was much too shallow and nearly got himself stranded. Rafe couldn’t help imagining them all pulling together to help this jackass shark make its way back into the water.
Bite Me Harder (a paranormal shifter novel) (Guardians of the Deep Book 2) Page 26
