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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.
