Chapter 5 #2
"You tried." She drifts closer. The stench of rot and deep water makes my stomach heave.
"You reached for power you couldn't control.
And when it didn't answer, when the sea took what it wanted, you gave up magic entirely.
Hid from your gift for all those years while I rotted in the dark.
" The dead eyes bore into mine. "But someone else found me and knew how to raise me from the dead and bind me to the deep.
" Water drips from her fingers. "I’ve waited for years, Moira, years of loneliness and grief became rage.
Years of cold and dark and screaming where no one could hear. "
Magic rises unbidden, drawing water from the pools, from the ocean beyond, gathering everything within reach. She watches with something that might be pity.
"Go ahead. Fight me. Use your magic." Elspeth spreads her arms, water streaming from every part of her.
"Every spell you cast feeds whoever's controlling me.
Every drop of power you spend makes them stronger.
Don't you understand? You can't win this, Moira.
You can either watch me kill everyone on this island, or you can join me in the deep. Those are your only choices."
The water I gathered slams into her. Passes through like smoke. Nothing solid to hit. Nothing physical to damage. She reforms instantly, closer now, reaching for me with hands that drip seawater and rot.
Fear whites out everything else. This is my sister. Was my sister. Whatever she is now, she died years ago, and someone pulled her back into something monstrous. And I'm alone on these rocks with no training, no preparation, no idea how to fight someone I once loved.
Ice spears launch from three pools at once, converge on the drowned thing wearing my sister's face. They pass through her like she's made of nothing. Shatter against rock. Useless.
She laughs. At my attempts. At the tears that won't stop streaming. At everything I am and can't fix.
"Don't cry, Moira." Her hand closes around my wrist.
Cold. Not cold like winter or snow or ice cubes in whiskey. Cold like the bottom of the ocean where sunlight has never reached, where fish swim blind and pressure crushes human bones to powder. My skin splits where she touches. Blisters rise. Ice crystals form on my flesh, spreading up my forearm.
The pain wipes out thought. She drags me. Pulls me toward the largest pool, and my boots scrape stone but find nothing to catch. Nothing to hold. Toward the water where I'll drown like she did, like the dock workers, like Jamie Fraser—
A roar splits the air.
A black mass explodes between us. Fur and muscle and teeth, four hundred pounds of apex predator slamming into Elspeth's corpse with enough force to tear her grip from my wrist. The cold vanishes. Leaves my arm shrieking, nerves misfiring, but free.
Rafe's panther form dwarfs any natural cat. Shoulders broad as a man's chest. Paws the size of dinner plates. Claws that extend three inches when he flexes them, digging into the necromantic binding that holds Elspeth's shape together.
"The shadow-walker." Elspeth's voice changes. Goes flat. Old. "You weren't supposed to interfere. She didn't account for you."
The panther's response vibrates through the rock beneath my knees. A growl so low, so threatening, that prey instinct screams at me to run despite knowing he's here to help.
He lunges.
Claws rake through the space where Elspeth's throat should be. Find purchase where my water magic passed through uselessly. His teeth close on the corruption binding her corpse, and he shakes his massive head like he's breaking a rabbit's neck.
The shriek that tears from her mouth makes blood run from my ears. Not my sister's voice. Something older. Furious. Ancient. Using her body like a puppet while it rages.
Tendrils of rotten seawater erupt from the pools. Wrap around the panther's legs. Try to drag him toward drowning. He roars again, tears free in a spray of salt and shadow. Circles. Tail lashing. Yellow eyes tracking her movements.
She strikes from three directions at once. Water from multiple pools converging on him. But he's faster. The panther's form blurs. Becomes something less solid. Smoke and darkness that the water passes through without finding flesh to drown.
He reforms behind her. Jaws snap closed on her neck—or what passes for a neck on a corpse held together by twisted magic. When he tears, she doesn't bleed blood. Black water pours from the wound. Hisses where it hits stone. Eats into rock like acid.
They crash together. Fur and shadow and corrupted ocean. His claws dig deep. Teeth tear deeper. A tendril catches his shoulder. Rips through muscle and leaves four parallel gashes that well dark blood. But he doesn't release. Just bites harder. Shakes. Tears.
Elspeth realizes she's losing. She shrieks again, the sound making my ears bleed worse. She dissolves in the panther's jaws, the binding breaking, retreating into the tidal pools like water down a drain.
"This isn't over, big sister." Her voice echoes from the water, young and terrible. "I'm coming home. And when I do, you'll finally understand what it's like to drown."
It vanishes into the deep water, leaving only the scent of rot and the echo of laughter.
The panther stands over the tidal pool. Sides heaving. Gaze locked on the darkness beneath the surface, tracking for movement. Waiting to see if it returns.
Minutes crawl past. Nothing emerges.
He turns to face me.
Silvery mist swirls around him, and in a heartbeat a man stands where the predator was. Naked. Scratched raw from the rocks. Blood still welling from the four parallel gashes across his shoulder.
"Are you hurt?" His voice comes out rough. Scraped raw.
"You followed me." Not an answer. An accusation.
His eyes flash yellow. Predator bleeding through.
"Damn right I followed you." He stalks toward a boulder where clothes lie folded—he planned this, knew he'd need to shift.
Pulls on jeans and a dark shirt with efficient movements, never taking his eyes off me for long.
"You think I'd let you walk into a ritual site alone?
After someone left blood on your doorstep? "
He crosses to where I still kneel in three strides. Hauls me to my feet. Not gently. "That thing knows your name. Knows what you are. It's been watching you, waiting for you to use your magic so it can feed on the power."
His hands grip my shoulders hard enough to bruise. The anger radiating off him feels like heat. "You could have died. Would have died if I hadn't been here."
"I can take care of—"
"No." The word comes out as a growl. "You can't. Not against that. Not alone." His grip tightens fractionally before he forces himself to ease up. "You're in whether you want to be or not. No more hiding. No more pretending you can stay out of this."
"She said—" The words stick. Won't come out. That my dead sister is being used as a weapon. That someone pulled her from the deep and twisted her into something I have to fight.
His hands move to my shoulders. Steady me. Ground me. "That thing, whoever's controlling it—they want you isolated. Terrified. Thinking you're helpless." His grip tightens. "But you're not. We stop whoever's doing this, we stop the ritual."
"How?"
"Together." His gaze locks on mine. Won't let me look away. "We find whoever is performing this ritual and we end them before the next body drops."
"And if I can't? If my magic really does feed that thing?"
His jaw sets. "Then we find another way. But you don't face this alone. Not anymore. Understand?"
The command in his voice—I should argue. Should bristle. Instead, the exhaustion and terror and the memory of those frozen fingers around my wrist make me nod. He's right. It's already hunting me. Already using my existence to strengthen its summoning. Hiding won't save me.
"What now?" My voice steadies slightly
"Now I get you somewhere safe." He releases my shoulders but doesn't step back. "You're staying with me until we figure this out. Your inn has wards, but they didn't stop that thing from leaving blood on your doorstep. My warehouse has protections that will."
"I can't just—"
"You can and you will." The growl returns, deeper this time.
"That thing knows where you live. Knows your name.
Knows how to get to you. I'm not leaving you alone to be its next target.
" His eyes flash yellow. "Grab what you need, lock up, and leave a note that the inn is temporarily closed until further notice.
You're staying with me for the time being"
Every shadow on the walk back makes me flinch. Each wave crashes too loud, too deliberate, like something testing the rhythm. Looking for patterns. Rafe stays within arm's reach, moving with that predator's efficiency. The grace that marked him dangerous long before I saw him shift.
Halfway back, my legs quit.
No warning. Just knees hitting dirt, palms catching myself on a boulder. The tremors start in my hands. Spread up my arms, into my chest, until my whole body shakes. The blistered skin on my wrist throbs. Ice crystals still cling to the wound despite the air swirling around us.
"Let me see." Rafe crouches beside me. Takes my arm with a gentleness that doesn't match the violence I just watched him capable of. He examines the damage. His jaw goes tight. "Frostbite from something that shouldn't exist. It'll heal, but slowly. Sea witch constitution should handle it."
"It was my sister." The words pour out. Can't stop them. "My sister who drowned years ago when she was eight. Another sea witch raised her. Pulled her from the deep and bound her to twisted magic. She knew me, Rafe. She remembered that day."
His fingers tighten fractionally on my arm. "Someone's using your dead to hurt you. That's personal. That's targeted."
"She said someone's been feeding on her fear and rage for years. Keeping her bound to the deep until now." My voice cracks. Breaks. "She's been down there all this time. Aware. Suffering. And I never knew."
The ocean surges below the path. Louder than it should be. The tide rises against the rocks. Spray reaches heights that defy physics—responding to the grief churning beneath my skin, wanting out, wanting to rage at whoever did this.
"Control it." Rafe's voice cuts through the roar. "Grief is powerful, but you can't let it control your magic. That's what they want. To provoke you into losing control so they can feed on the power."
Breathing. Focus on breathing. On closing the channels Gran taught me to open.
On pushing the magic back down where it belongs, where it can't feed anyone.
The ocean calms by degrees. Returns to its natural rhythm.
But the effort scrapes me hollow. Leaves nothing inside except exhaustion and the ache of old guilt reopened.
At the inn's back door, he doesn't leave. Instead, he follows me inside. The wards hum their recognition of him—he's been here before, enough times that Gran's protections accept his presence.
"Pack what you need," he says, watching me with those yellow-tinged eyes. "Clothes. Your grandmother's research on sea magic. Anything that might help us figure out who's doing this, why, and how to stop them."
The familiar scents of salt and whiskey and old wood surround me, but everything feels different now. Violated. Something bound my sister’s corpse to magic that shouldn't exist. Used my failure against me.
I move through the inn on autopilot. Grab a bag. Clothes. Gran's grimoire from the hidden compartment behind the bar. The knife she used for rituals. Salt and blessed water.
Gran's favorite whiskey sits behind the bar. I pour two glasses. Drink mine neat, let the burn cut through everything else, and pour myself another. Fear. Exhaustion. The bone-deep knowledge that I failed Elspeth once.
Rafe takes the second glass. Drinks it in one swallow.
"Ready?" he asks.
The whiskey in my abandoned glass swirls without me touching it. Ripples spreading from the center in perfect circles. My magic responding to emotions I can't suppress even as I try to push them down.
You should have saved us that day.
Elspeth's voice. Young and drowned and accusing. The truth I've carried for years finally given form. Given teeth.
"Ready," I lie.
Tomorrow we hunt the woman who turned my sister into a weapon. But tonight, the guilt sits heavier than it has since the day the ocean took her.