Wolves and Sharks

ROSE

Freya towered before me, a hulking mass of bone, barnacle, weeds, and decay.

The woman who had once resembled a siren revealed herself to be a monster. She was not only a sea witch…

No, she was a breed much worse.

She had given herself to a magic so dark that she had become one with the decay of the abyss…

A place where no light ever reached.

And she had done the unthinkable. She had taken the young, searching, bright souls of Holly and Bambi…

All so she could have two more pearls on her cursed necklace. Two more voices in her haunted choir…

But I would not sit idly by as she amassed her dark collection.

If it was the last thing I did with my already expired life, I would protect these two young women, who were like daughters to me.

Because if I let them down the way I had my own children…

I would send my own soul back down through the ranks of purgatory to the hottest torment of hell.

The greatest regret of my life was abandoning Devina and Matthias, handing them over to the darkness…

And by saving Holly and Bambi, I would prove that the irreversible could be reversed.

That darkness could come back to light…

And two innocent lives could be spared.

With this resolve in my heart, I glared down the monster who towered over the young women’s soulless bodies.

Freya clicked her skeletal jaw as she chanted her incantation, circling her long, rotten fingers around a growing ball of magic.

The luxurious facade of the sunken ship had disappeared completely, and in its place were hideous remains.

But I hardly saw it now.

The magic within me swirled from the depths of my own tortured soul. The forgotten time in the afterlife returned…

And the great loneliness of the beyond fueled the hellfire in my heart.

As I raised my hands slowly into the air, I, too, was conjuring a massive magical force.

I knew I would only have one chance. This duel was a shootout, and only one of us could walk away from it.

Only one would rise to the surface of the ocean. The other would drop forever to the depths.

~“Regret is lost love’s truest form…”~

The final lines of the spell burbled from the pit of my stomach. My voice grew deeper even than my old woman rasp.

~“…We arrive on earth, dead when born.”~

With that, I released the magic from my heart, which traveled through my veins and out my fingertips.

At the same moment, Freya opened her exposed jaw wide and the dark shadow within her sprang forth.

The spell took the form of a jellyfish: black, with long fluffy strands to electrify the soul of any weaker witch.

But the force that sprang from my hands tore through the primordial beast—It was a blast so bright that it could blind.

The brightness and heat of the sun condensed into one beam, blasting where the sun never shines…

With the awful, agonized scream of a person whose very spirit is burning to a crisp, Freya’s black soul left her skeletal frame.

She collapsed to the rotting floor, but before she landed atop Holly and Bambi’s discarded bodies, her bones disintegrated to foul-smelling powder.

I struggled to regain my breath, buckling over and clutching my stomach. Though my body was young, my soul was not…

And that curse had required every bit of strength and skill left in my old, battered heart.

“Mom.”

I turned to see Ekon, shifted from his wolf. His fists were clenched, still ready for battle.

The air was still tinted with the blood of the feral sharks he had slaughtered.

Their corpses were floating—lifeless—around us, carved open by Ekon’s claws.

I was stunned into silence, watching him as he swam across the rotten room and lifted Bambi’s body.

He gazed longingly into her beautiful, lifeless face before lifting up Holly with his other arm.

“Let’s get their souls back,” he said.

My son, effortlessly bearing the weight of two women, extended his hand to me. I took it and squeezed.

~Rose…~

I recognized the voice. It was Holly’s…from beyond the world of the living…

Her soul was nearby.

I rushed through the open door of the empty ruined sea vessel into its dark hallway.

~Rose…stay away…as the sailors say…stay—~

With that, I tore open a vaulted door. I looked up to see the round, corporeal white heads of Freya’s stolen souls floating against the ceiling.

Quieting the disgust that roiled in the pit of my stomach, I focused on the great beyond…

All the souls who could finally leave this life behind, and Bambi and Holly, who could reenter their bodies…

I snapped my fingers.

I opened my eyes as Holly and Bambi, both cradled in Ekon’s arms, came back to life at the same moment.

***

Back in the manor, we stood in the living room, still dripping sea water and chilled to the bone.

Ekon made a fire while Bambi sat on the couch, pensive and silent, staring into the darkness.

I went to the kitchen to make tea; I could hear Holly behind me.

“Rose.”

Before I could respond, she wrapped her arms around me, burying her head in my chest and weeping with desperation.

“Thank you for saving me,” she cried.

“Of course,” I replied, stroking her wet hair.

“I’m so fucking sorry! I can’t believe…”

As we pulled away, her eyes were sunken. Her skin was wrinkled from her time in the water.

“She’s gone now,” I told her. “She’s gone, and we move on…”

I was exhausted. I only needed to warm my bones before I could finally rest.

“She had to be destroyed. A soul that black is destined for hell. All they can do is bring others down with them.”

Holly nodded solemnly.

As she collapsed into my arms once more, my own words rang in my ears.

~A soul that black is destined for hell…~

Freya was too far gone. She was capable only of destruction.

I was talking about Freya, but I was thinking of my daughter.

Maybe it was time that I accepted the same fate was true of Devina…

BAMBI

When I heard Rose and Holly’s footsteps entering the room once more, I could no longer contain the guilt inside me.

“I’m so sorry!” I burst out, my voice breaking into a sob. My head fell into my hands, and I rushed to say my piece. “I was so ~selfish~ to risk all of your lives just to be able to see again!”

I could feel Ekon’s arms wrap around me and pull me even closer to the couch. Holly was touching my shoulder—everyone was comforting me—but I kept going.

“This should be easier for me,” I cried. “Blindness shouldn’t be so hard…but…I’m struggling.”

When I was done talking, the room was silent.

“Bambi,” Ekon said. I felt as defenseless as a child, but as always, I knew I was safe in his arms.

“It’s ~not~ easy. I spent years to get to where I did,” he whispered. “And even then I struggled without my sight.”

I felt him kiss my head.

“Please never be sorry for that. If I knew how to take this away, if I could trade places with you, I would do it in an instant.”

I nodded, relaxing completely into his arms. I felt his fingers holding my chin, and I turned up to him.

Not a second later, I felt his lips on mine.

MAX

Four heavy knocks rang through our shared bedchamber before Barnaby Smit burst through.

He wore tall combat boots and his signature look: scowling with arms crossed over his chest.

His stern expression hardly faltered as he realized I was dressed only in boxer shorts.

“I expect you and your colleagues downstairs for training in five minutes,” he boomed.

It was no question. It was clear that our schedule was not our own. We weren’t the special forces of the US military.

We were the fuckin’ grunts.

“Sure thing,” I replied, leaving the “commander” title off the end.

I didn’t rush to clothe myself, and Barnaby was growing increasingly uncomfortable and confused.

He lingered a moment longer, trying to make sense of the situation.

I put my hands on my hips and smiled…

And at that very moment, Kalindi dropped from the chandelier above Barnaby’s head, bringing her steel-toe boot in a roundhouse kick to his temple.

Easy as that, the man was out.

“Fuck yeah!” Ela cried, emerging from behind the curtain.

I swiftly pulled on my work pants and shirt as Hades strode from the bathroom.

“Let’s blow this goddamn popsicle stand,” he shouted.

We raced from the room and down the back stairs. President Nelson was in a meeting, and the human soldiers had already begun their drills.

It was the perfect moment to escape.

We just had to make it to President Nelson’s private jet in the nearby hangar, and we could be on our way to Alaska.

We hurried down the stairs as quickly as we could without making a racket.

We ran through the kitchen while the chefs shouted at us, but it couldn’t deter us.

We burst through the back door until finally we were outside. Our mission was nearly complete.

Taking off toward the woods, I could feel my comrades at my side.

When I glanced to my right, Kalindi smiled at me.

“We did it,” she said.

I kept watching her, even as she broke eye contact, and I saw how her face fell before she stopped dead in her tracks.

I turned to the woods and froze.

Because we were in over our heads, deeper than I ever could have imagined.

King Dmitri’s severed wolf head was speared on a pike, his crown balanced atop it.

His mouth gaped open, and his neck dripped fresh blood.

“My king,” Hades moaned, falling to his knees in the snow. “I failed you…”

There were no words I could say to him in that moment. I knew Hades had fought beside King Dimitri in the Great War, and the king’s death was even more painful for him.

But there was no time to mourn.

I placed my hand on Hades’ shoulder. He took a moment to contain his emotions before he stood once more.

When he looked to me, there were tears in his eyes.

“You’re right, Alpha,” he whispered. “If we are to avoid our king’s grisly fate, we have to move…fast.”