Page 91 of Crashing Tides

Jordan’s answering laugh is garbled. He struggles, but Duncan barely seems to notice. Without his knife and his hook, Jordan is just as useless as I am. “My fucking parents.”

“What the fuck?” Duncan says. Even with that growly new voice, he sounds so much like his regular self that I could laugh. All I manage is a wheeze.

“You’re so privileged. What, you didn’t think anyone could hurt you? You’ve forgotten what some of us do for a living,” Jordan sneers.

“It’s illegal,” says Duncan. I want to roll my eyes. Like that matters. “And why go through all this? Why drag him here?”

“You’d better hope you never understand,” says Jordan. “If you understand, it’s already too late.” He coughs. “And do you know what mer go for these days? I’d be stupid to pass up the opportunity.”

A snarl echoes through the room. Jordan thrashes, but Duncan bares his teeth, snaps his jaws, shoves him into the tiles with clawed hands.

“OK, OK,” Jordan cries, finally going still. “I’m just saying!”

The pool of blood around me expands. It’s all over my chest, seeping past the blade. My hand is scarlet. My throat is hot and wet. Every breath strings.

I need help.

“Duncan,” I whine. The same tone I use whenever I want him to stop studying and pay attention to me.

It works. He whips around to look at me, eyes widening as the gravity of the situation sinks in.

And then, horribly, unexpectedly, I shift back.

I am, for a moment, terrified that the knife will somehow fuse into my body. That everything will be so much worse. But it gets spat out somewhere in the transformation. My throat is raw from screaming and there’s a hole in my chest, but it’s not as deep as I thought it would be. When I manage to crawl onto my knees, a fully nude, half-wolf Felix Cervantes is standing with a massive hand on the shorter man’s chest.

Holy shit. Mild-mannered Felix is a shifter.

“—the hell do you want to do, Duncan? Do we kill them, or not?”

“There’s no fucking way out of this without killing them,” Duncan says. His gaze is locked on me. “They’ll tell everyone."

“No, no,” protests the short guy. “I won’t say a word. Right, Jordan?”

“Right,” Jordan insists. His voice is ragged, frantic. He starts kicking again, but nothing lands. “Not a fucking word.”

My pants are shredded. My junk is freezing. My shoes have disappeared. All I’ve got is a shirt that looks like it was chewed on by piranhas. I struggle out of it and press the scrap of fabric to my chest, hoping to staunch the bleeding.

“Right,” says Felix, glancing at me. Somehow, I can sense his worry even through his distorted appearance. “Close your eyes,” he says.

Once again, I obey.

It takes ages to navigate our way out of the tunnels.

Duncan and Felix stashed clothes somewhere in this labyrinth of hallways and corridors. Someone had the foresight to bring an extra pair of shoes and gym shorts with a draw string. I bleed all over them.

They shift back to their human forms. Sometimes, Duncan carries me on his back, other times I walk, staggering like a drunk pirate. Mostly, I don’t remember the journey. Just that I spotted some strange, round holes in the walls that weren’t exactly doorways, but might be massive pipes.

I wonder if this place used to be filled with water.

They ask me questions. I give babbling, incoherent answers and cry. I remember begging for forgiveness, but I’m not sure why.

“Where are we?” I ask during a moment of lucidity, and Felix answers.

“Underneath Halea.”

I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with this, so I don’t. I just press my face into Duncan’s neck and try really, really hard not to die. He talks to me, a low, soothing murmur that I can’t process through all the pain and confusion, but I’m glad he’s there, that he isn’t going to leave me alone in this place.

I remember the sea. The ocean air, the sunlight bright on rippling waves, the pale, puffy clouds in the sky. This is just another day for the rest of the world.