My eyes narrow, and I poke the enormous demon in the chest despite it being bare. “Don’t tease me about this or I’ll… I’ll….”
“You’ll what?” he asks with his brow raised and teeth glinting in the light.
A bolt of inspiration hits me, and I feel a very Grinch-like smirk curl my lips up. “I will call you ‘Daddy Shark’ and introduce the song with that in it to the entire caliphate—starting with Salem and Oriel.”
He snorts. “I highly doubt that, little demon. I don’t know this song, but you will not use that phrase in public. It will embarrass you far too much. I see things you do not think I see.”
Keep telling yourself that, Daddy Shark. I’m a petty bitch when I’ve been challenged.
Jaws
Slash
Idon’t understand why the little demon is so adamant about denying our age difference, but humans raise their children with extremely bizarre hang-ups.
Kit is over their legal age, and my brothers and I are well over Hell’s regulations; there’s nothing odd about our association. Of course, I don’t know that discussing Hell’s laws and rules with him will engender any better responses as they’re… lax, at best. But demons see things in ways that humans do not, and it is our nature to err on the side of darkness versus light. Kit hasn’t been here long enough to see the entire picture of this realm, but he won’t like a lot of it when he does.
I fear most demons cannot live up to the code he created for himself after his assault.
But at this moment, I’m too nervous to have a philosophical debate about what is good and what is bad, especially regarding things like age that cannot be changed. My sharkandmy demon are both eager to connect with him, to show themselves to this new person who has become a central figure in our lives. I stretch up on my toes, cracking my neck as I prepare for the shift when I hit the water, then I look down at my little demon.
“Are you ready?”
Kit nods, stepping back from where he was aggressively crowding me to make his point. “I think so. Is it weird that I have vagueideas in my head based on… like movies and stuff? And I don’t know how the real thing will compare?”
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s not weird, as I’m certain you have ideas about crows or pandas or cobras or peacocks, yes?”
He gives me a grateful smile as he sighs. “Yeah, and they were all very different. I mean, you guys can get way bigger, and there’s like the half-shift thing, and um…”
I arch a brow as I tease gently, “We can chat about it or I can do it. Which would you prefer?”
“Oh!” His eyes widen and he waves his hand. “No, go do it. Um, yeah. Let’s make it happen or whatever.”
Chuckling, I wink at him and then dive into the Hellspring, letting my half-shift happen as I swim through the rejuvenating waters. When I bust through the surface, my face has changed: my teeth are in sharp rows, and my mouth is wider while my features mirror that of my great white. Kit gulps as he looks up to see me—I’m much bigger in this form, and I’m not a small demon to begin with.
“Holy fish sticks, Sharkman,” the little demon says as he nervously shifts from foot to foot. “You’re so fucking enormous right now. It’s like… it’s hard to even imagine this. But I guess I could have… Jasper is pretty fucking big in half-dragon, too.”
The sound my laughter makes in this form is a raspy rustle that makes ripples across the surface of the pool as I submerge myself so I’m on his level. Only my head is sticking out of the water now, and that makes it much easier to breathe and control myself as Kit stares. “The others can get bigger than they’ve shown you. We are all being careful not to overload you, Kit. No one wants you tofeartheir animal or demon; in fact, that may be our worst nightmare. Being part of our caliphate means you must trust us, and if we frighten you, that will never happen.”
“I hate being so defective,” he grumbles as he scuffs his shoe on the ground. “Okay, let’s do this. Give me the full monte and don’t hold back. I have to see it to believe it, you know? I don’t want to be shocked into an attack if this happens in the Games.”
The little demon is far braver than he gives himself credit for.
“I will go under and return as the animal.” The moment I relay my intent, I duck under the tingling spring water and allow my shark to emerge for thefirst time in weeks. I have not had the time to come and swim with all the upheaval, and he iseagerto be free, especially with Kit here. Swimming toward the edge of the spring with my huge fin sticking out of the water, I wait for his reaction to bounce off the water so I can hear it.
“A bigger boat isn’t gonna do it,” Kit says, and when it gets to me, I have to hold back a laugh. “I’m gonna need lots of bigger things. But… courage isn’t the absence of fear, but triumph over it.”
I don’t know why he said that, but it sounds like a quote. Perhaps Zavida will tell me later, but for now, I swim even closer to where he is. Being three times larger than a normal shark has probably scared the shit out of him, and I’m going to feel the vibrations of him running for the hills and slamming the door soon. My assumption proves to be false when a yell of ‘Cowabunga!’ echoes off the spring water and a body comes flying into the pool nearby.
He’s getting in the fucking pool with me? Really?!
Stunned beyond belief, I keep swimming—that’s what sharks do—but I wait to see what is going to happen next. My animal weighs over eighty tons, and I maneuver very well in large open waters, but not so much in this pool. It’s large, but not large enough for me to be comfortable in for too long.
“Slash?” The water ripples as Kit swims closer, and my animal flicks our tail like an excited puppy as I sense him getting closer. Suddenly, there are arms draped over me and fingertips touching my skin lightly. “Damn, this is cool. I guess you don’t talk in this form cuz of the water, and since I don’t breathe under there like you, we’re limited. But, um… if you can hear me, this is so, so, so fucking cool. I mean, I’ve barely even been to the zoo at home, and I’m swimming with a shark as big as a fucking dinosaur!”
The relief that floods through me is immense, and it enables me to push back on the shark enough to return to my half-shifted form. Kit squeaks when he goes from holding on to the shark to me, and I let out the rusty chuckle again. “I wanted to talk, little demon.”
“Um… yeah. Yeah, that’s good. I mean, I get it.”
