Night Tide

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Okay boys, let’s go get some slices at CC Pizza after this. Last one back pays.”

  She dove into the water. Her pale skin flashed iridescent before disappearing beneath a black wave.

  Landon stood, looking into the water. “Man, I’m in love with her.”

  “I know.” Grayson felt like he’d been kicked in the gut.

  The grin on Landon’s face was sweet and so goofy that Grayson could only laugh. “Go get her then, man.”

  Landon’s grin widened as he jumped off the rock. “Cannonball!”

  Before Landon surfaced, a shimmer caught Grayson’s eye.

  A shark fin stuck three or four inches out of the water. It cut beneath the wave. It had a distinguished black tip, so it was only a reef shark. Luckily, the underwater rock barrier kept all big predators out of the cove. But it was still a shark and a bite was a bite.

  The fin had been moving north across the cove and if it kept to its course, it would directly cut across Abby and Landon’s paths.

  But that didn’t mean they were in danger. Shark attacks happened so rarely. In Castle Cove, they’d never had someone even bitten by sharks, let alone killed by one. It was vampires, werewolves and other land creatures one had to look out for.

  And he had the blade.

  He stood, stretched his arms overhead and readied to take the plunge.

  That’s when he saw the real danger.

  Three shimmering forms darted around Heart’s Rock. They glimmered and twirled beneath the water. The three bioluminescent forms swam in tight formation toward Abby and Landon. Then they split. Two followed Landon, one rushed toward Abby who was more than halfway to shore.

  She might make it before it reached her. Or not.

  Landon definitely wouldn’t make it.

  Sirens. Inside the territory line. Inside the cove. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  And what was Grayson supposed to do? Stay on the rock and wait for a better moment to swim to shore? Or jump into the water and try to reach Landon before the sirens did?

  Grayson Choice 1

  Stay on rock

  Jump in and swim for Landon (ES)

  Reese: Swim south toward the drop off

  Reese decided to stick with her original plan. She longed to patrol the moonlit waters along the drop.

  So she swam south through the reef. She swam in a hypnotic rhythm as she slid along the ocean floor. Her body enjoyed the slow steady drag of the water over her skin. She felt weightless, becoming one with the currents.

  The tips of her fins registered the moment the reef dropped away and only an expanse of ocean stretched out before her. She hooked right around the reef, tracing the outline of its slumbering form. Ethereal moonlight cut through the surface, ghostly beams illuminating the coral. Nighttime feeders darted into available nooks and crannies as she passed. No one wanted to be the evening meal for a reef shark.

  She might be a predator in these waters, but reef sharks were small, comparatively. She was a little large for a reef shark, reaching six feet. But that was nothing for a tiger or bull shark that might come toward shore.

  Castle Cove waters had the usual flora and fauna of a shallow reef ecosystem—and then also creatures that did not exist in other parts of the world. Apart from the shapeshifting sirens they also had a resident Bake-kujira, a skeletal ghost whale. Reese felt it in her electromagnetic field and could hear its long, mournful song. But she had not seen it with her own eyes. It was far out in the deep blue sea. Reese wasn’t interested in becoming someone’s meal just to satisfy her curiosity.

  Apart from sirens and Bake-kujira, there were also undines who swam these waters. Undines were tricky little water demons. Playfully luring a human into a riptide, causing them to drown, was their idea of a good time.

  But the ocean was quiet tonight. Reese saw nothing out of the ordinary as she swam the reef.

  Until magic rippled across the water, and her sensors shifted into high alert.

  A massive burst of magic ejected from somewhere overhead. She darted west, tracing the reef until it opened up, giving her a path to the shore.

  Thunder rolled across the sky, intensifying the strange electric feelings cascading over Reese’s skin. The pressure in the ocean changed.

  As inconspicuously as possible, she transformed from shark to human in the warm shallows.

  Slowly, she stood up in the water, dripping. There, crouched beside a large boulder, was a dark-haired woman. Reese kept low, using another boulder to hide her position as she inspected the scene. Despite the heat, she wore black gloves, boots, and equestrian pants. She looked ready to ride a horse, not go for a swim.

  Open on the sand in front of her was an enormous book. Something glinted, sparking with reflected moonlight.

  A knife, Reese thought.

  The storm raged stronger. A bolt of lightning tore across the sky, illuminating the woman’s pale face and black eyes. She was whispering something to the dark, waiting.

  Except nothing happened.

  The woman cursed and threw the blade into the sand.

  She stood and kicked the earth, sending a spray of sand arcing into the water. She gathered up her book, shook the sand from it and started to march away.

  After a few feet, she returned and grudgingly picked up the knife again. Obviously displeased with its performance. She looked ready to throw it into the ocean.

  Performance, she repeated in her mind. Maybe it wasn’t a knife then, but an athame, a ceremonial tool for magic. Reese could certainly feel the magic still dancing along her skin, though now it seemed to be dissipating. The storm overhead was quieting, too. The wind eased its assault on her hair and ears. The woman was halfway up the dune, sand shifting under her boots. Had she caused the storm? The surge in magic? What the hell had just happened?

  What was Reese going to do about it?

  Reese Choice 2

  Follow strange woman

  Go home

  Reese: Swim east toward kids

  Swimming in deep water, especially the waters surrounding Castle Cove, wasn’t the safest bet. But Reese’s mind kept replaying the conversation she’d overheard in the bar. A guy died...if sirens are killing people, I’d want to know.

  On one hand, she had it all wrong. The kids would prove to be safe, and then she’d retreat to warmer waters. If not, if there was something to the story she’d overheard, she’d regret not being there when they needed her.

  So she swam east. Her body enjoyed the slow steady drag of the water over her skin. She felt weightless. No, powerful—as she patrolled the deep slowly, her senses wide open to any disturbances in the water.

  She felt it through her entire core the moment the reef dropped away and only cold, deep water spread out around her.

  Still, she kept her course, gliding toward Heart’s Rock, at the outermost edge of the cove.

  The humans thought Heart’s Rock was a single, solitary boulder in the middle of the sea. But in truth, which Reese could see fine with her shark eyes, a wall of rock rose from the ocean floor. This impenetrable stone wall obstructed most of the cove, cutting it off from the open sea. Only a small gap, on each side of Heart’s Rock, would allow something from the open sea into the cove.

  In the distance, far off from her right side, she sensed something in the water. Out at sea, something very large moved through the deep. But it was quite far away. A larger shark maybe, but she didn’t think so. There was no gentle rhythm to its movement, which Reese knew well.

  And knowing Castle Cove as she did, there could be anything out there, moving through the depths.

  Something was wrong with the ocean. Reese couldn’t be sure, but it felt like a storm was brewing overhead, changing the pressure and ferocity of the waters churning around her. Electricity sparked along her skin, making her fins itch.

  Was that magic? If so, it was an enormous flare of power.

  But where was it coming from? If she had to guess she would have said west, further alo
ng the shore. Something out there pulled on her spirit the way a tide might pull at one’s legs.

  Before she could puzzle out the mystery, a second starburst of magic seized her mind. It made the end of her nose and the tips of her fins tingle. Then she saw the momentary flash of bioluminescence as three sirens squeezed through the gap surrounding Heart’s Rock.

  With the flash, three forms were illuminated in the black waters. The fishlike sirens transformed themselves into something more human. Reese thought more human because their telepathic glamours wouldn’t fool her in her shark form. She saw the webbing between their paddle-like hands. She saw the strange fins protruding from each side of the face and the hexagonal scales shimmering where skin should be.

  Then her nose detected three more bodies in the water. The electromagnetic fields around their forms pulsed, giving her a clear sense of their location in the cove. All three were human. All three were swimming for shore. She could tell by their scent and as well as the clumsy way they splashed in the surf.

  The sirens were moving in on them.

  Despite the fact that sirens had never—to Reese’s knowledge—crossed the Heart’s Rock barrier—now they surged forward as if swimming from the gates of Hell. They would reach the kids in moments.

  Two of the sirens were female, and unsurprisingly, they seemed bent on reaching the male swimmers. The third siren, and the one farthest from Reese, was male. It must be targeting a female. The male siren would rape her, if he reached her before she found the surf. Not just rape her, but likely drown her in the process. Male sirens were very aggressive and had little concern for a human’s need to breathe.

  Without a second to lose, Reese used all her power and strength to torpedo her body forward. Her head and tail worked together to cut the water at incredible speed. It took her only seconds to cross the cove and slip herself between the siren and the girl.

  The siren collided with the side of Reese’s body. The impact stopped them both in their tracks, rippling the water around them. Her body absorbed the impact painfully. Reese felt her fin rise above the surface. The night air licked her dorsal, cooling it.

  The siren steadied itself.

  Reese almost wished the glamour did work on her kind. Sirens were far from pretty. Their fish faces were hideous. It was their oversized, liquid black eyes, flat and unblinking.

  The scales were luminescent with collected moonlight as it circled her once.

  Bioluminescence flashed and its legs congealed with one another again, into a single powerful fin that made it look much more like the mermaids Reese knew from legend.

  He wants the tail for speed, she thought. So he can catch up to the girl.

  The thought was barely out of her mind when he shot forward, trying to pass Reese.

  Reese darted out, blocking his path again.

  The siren moved back, hissing its fury. The screech skittered along Reese’s body, prickling her sensors.

  He came in again, his hands bent in claws as if he wanted to tear Reese apart. Maybe he did. But Reese had the advantage of being the more dynamic of the two. She outmaneuvered the siren easily, leaving him to grasp only dark ocean water.

  Something was coming up fast behind her, its bioelectric field striking Reese before the actual creature did. She dove toward the ocean floor, and the female siren cut overhead a second later, blue bubbles rippling in her wake.

  Great, she thought. Two on one.

  But the siren didn’t seem to notice her. She was swimming for Heart’s Rock as if her life depended on it.

  Then she smelled it. Blood. It bloomed like overripe fruit in the water. The scent was sweet, intoxicating.

  It took considerable will and the clarity of her human mind to bring Reese back to herself.

  Blood in the water meant trouble. One of the kids must be hurt.

  As exciting as the blood was to her, it was equally terrifying to the sirens. They fled the cove. She spotted the third siren squeezing around Heart’s Rock before disappearing into the open waters beyond.

  Maybe it’s not the blood, she thought. Maybe something else was in the water.

  She made her way toward shore. When her belly scraped the sand, her fin cutting the night air, she transformed. She stood, water beading on her skin.

  With a soaked hand, she pushed her hair back from her face, coughing.

  A girl was screaming. Naked on her hands and knees in the sand, she howled at the rolling surf.

  Then Reese saw it. The dead kid.

  His shredded body was rolling in the white frothy waves.

  “Christ.” She bent and grabbed the dead boy and hauled him onto the sand. It wasn’t easy. His slick limbs were difficult to grab a hold of and his body was heavier than wet sand. Yet Reese managed it.

  “Who the—” the other boy began. But another wail from the girl swallowed his words. He bent and wrapped his arms around her.

  “Do either of you have a phone?” Reese asked. The water was beginning to chill on her skin. “We need to call someone.”

  “It’s in my clothes.” The boy pointed toward the smoldering bonfire.

  Reese found a cell phone in the pocket of a grey dust jacket. She called the police. As she listened to the first ring, a glint caught her eye.

  On the upper ridge, not far from where she’d parked her car, something shiny caught the light. A piece of jewelry maybe? If Reese squinted, she thought she saw a woman, marching up the dune toward the road.

  “Castle Cove 911. What is your emergency?”

  Reese retrieved her clothes and stayed with the kids until the police arrived. It seemed like a long time before Reese saw the red-blue flash of police lights from above. She stayed and answered every question that the police had. She went over her story no less than four times before she was finally allowed to leave.

  Her legs were wet, aching noodles as she climbed the dune for her red pickup. By the time she reached the door, she all but collapsed into her truck.

  For a long time she just sat there with her head on the steering wheel. She hadn’t even made it back into town before she’d begun crying.

  “At least it wasn’t all three of them,” she said, but it didn’t abate the guilt. One kid had died. She’d been there, and hadn’t been able to save him. It was her fault.

  Don’t take on responsibility that isn’t yours, she heard her aunt say. We have enough to be getting on with.

  But no matter how many times she said this to herself, she felt no better by the time she rolled up outside her house.

  Reese parked her red pickup outside the Georgian three-story home in Cliffside. Across the street, she could see the light on at Cole’s place and knew the demon and his vampire husband were no doubt awake despite the late hour. Normally she would go say hi, if the light was on like that. But after the night she had, she just wanted a hot shower and her bed.

  She could smell the blood in her hair.

  Reese unlocked the front door and stepped into the gorgeous foyer. A high ceiling and bright crystalline chandelier greeted her. The space was sparsely furnished in impeccable whites and ocean blues.

  This gorgeous home belonged to her aunt Constance. Constance was an oceanographer, currently on a research expedition. The scientist was studying the degradation of coral in the Indian Ocean. The fact that Constance was a shark shifter no doubt helped that search and the fact that her crew were all supernaturals meant she didn’t have to hide what she was or her purpose in trying to salvage what was left of the ocean.

  It’s our home, Aunt Constance often said. Where our souls live. If it’s lost, that will be the end of us.

  Reese went straight to the first floor bath, afraid to drip blood and heaven knew what on any other surface in the house.

  Fortunately, the first-floor bath was just past the living room on the right. All the towels, soap and necessities were present and accounted for. Reese had only to strip out of her sea-soaked clothes and into the hot water.

  She washed her
hair twice before adding conditioner. Her tired mind wandered. Would Aunt Constance have any information on the sirens? It seemed like a topic the woman would be well-versed in. She could call her, but it would be early evening on the Indian Ocean. Her aunt would be out to sea. Perhaps she could call her tomorrow and get her insights on what went so horribly wrong that a kid died.

  Clean, Reese stepped out of the shower and collected her clothes from the floor. She was tidy by nature, a habit instilled in her by her orderly aunt as well as a sense that this wasn’t her house. Not really. The clothes went in the hamper. The water she’d tracked in was cleaned up with a mop.

  Once every trace of her entrance had been removed, Reese changed for bed.

  Out of habit, she knocked on her aunt’s study door before pushing it open. The woman wasn’t home and there were no ghosts in their Cliffside address—as far as she knew—but it seemed respectful somehow.

  “It’s just me,” she announced, creeping into the room.

  She shut the study door behind her. Crossing to the bookshelf, she gazed lovingly at the smattering of spines. Some books were ancient, nearly falling apart. Others looked as if they’d been made yesterday, their bindings never broken. Knowing it would take too long to go shelf to shelf, Reese crossed to the wooden card catalogue adjacent the large picture window.

  She pulled out the drawer labeled S. A few flicks of her fingers found the word Siren. “Left case, Fourth shelf, box eight,” she read aloud. She crossed the enormous bookcase, repeating the location over and over in her head until she found it. There were four books related to sirens tucked there. Reese plucked them all from their spots on the shelves and carried them to the desk.

  She read until the sun rose in orange, pink, and red over the ocean horizon behind her. All eastern facing houses in Cliffside were afforded this beautiful horizon view. Reese loved it, had loved it since she came to live with her aunt as a child over twenty years ago.

  A phone was ringing somewhere in the house. Reese, her neck and shoulders stiff, rose, groaning. She placed a hand on the back of her neck and hissed. She knew better than to fall asleep on the desk with only books for a pillow. It hadn’t felt great when she did it as a child. It was even worse now that she was in her twenties. Her neck would kill her all day.