Chapter 8

 

Thane had left her early in the morning, long before she had any intention of becoming fully awake and rising to her feet. He had exhausted her last night, but he seemed to pop out of bed with so much energy. He didn’t say where he was going, but she knew he was headed for the water. She could have asked. She could have at least let him know she was awake. Lying in bed, with her face hidden partially in the blanket, she’d watched him stand at the side of the bed, completely naked and carefree. As he reached for the ceiling, stretching himself out, she admired his body. He was so toned, so smooth, so magnificent.

Her eyelashes hid her squinted eyes as she pretended to be asleep, loving the view, and when he finally looked down at her and smiled, she felt like the most wanted woman in the world. As far as he knew, she was fast asleep, so the tenderness in his eyes was real. He wasn’t trying to impress her. He already had her and it was clear he was content with her lying in his bed. Then he turned and left so quickly she might have thought he’d disappeared if she hadn’t heard the squeak of the door on his way out.

Last night, as they both lay in bed physically exhausted, they’d talked a little bit about how he spent his mornings. He was usually up before the dawn, swimming laps as he called it. Apparently, even sharks needed to stay in shape. She wished she had the energy to join him. It seemed so long ago since she’d been able to go for a jog down the beach. Back then, she hadn’t taken advantage of that gift. She hadn’t been too lazy, but she’d never been a real physical person. She would take the stairs instead of the elevator if it meant only climbing a few floors, and she’d never been concerned about parking too close to mall entrances, but she wasn’t out running laps around her apartment building every morning.

Now, she knew that she would if given the chance. She would go to the park and run with a dog like so many other women her age. She didn’t even own a dog, but she would. She would go get one and take it jogging every day. She would swing on swings and ride bikes and do cannonballs into the pool and make love every chance she could…if she only had the energy. If she physically exerted herself too much, she would fall. She would faint. It happened to her a lot. She was lucky she didn’t pass out that day in the ocean when the shark attacked her.

Dear God, I don’t know that I’ve ever spoken to you seriously. I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you for anything that wasn’t material. I probably asked for my apartment and for my car and for a lot of other stupid shit. Shit, can I say shit? I’m sorry if that’s bad. Anyway, I’m wasting your time. I want to say thank you for giving me the life I’ve had so far, and if you can think of any way to…you know…make me healthy again…I’d love to give life a try one more time. I promise I’ll do it right.

There, so comfortable under the blanket, Penny prayed she’d live long enough to feel more of Thane’s love. She wondered if she should tell him about her condition. It seemed only fair, but at the same time, she was afraid he might reject her or send her back to the hospital. Or he would think she was only interested in him because of the rumors about shifters and their healing abilities. She didn’t believe in that, really. It was stupid. If shifters could heal people, then doctors would be harvesting their blood in giant labs. No shifter on earth would be safe. Yet, he’d healed her leg. When she’d asked him about that, he simply shrugged and said his saliva was good for all sorts of things, but usually only flesh wounds.

“We can ease the pain and can usually fix the injury,” he’d said, “but scars always remain. They remind us we’re not invincible.”

As if I need a reminder that I’m not invincible.

A gentle humming from outside caught Penny’s attention. It was a song she was familiar with, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but it was that more upbeat, Hawaiian sounding version. It was a woman’s voice, so peaceful and soothing. Wrapped in a sheet, she slid out of bed and made her way to the cabin window. There, sitting on the front steps of her cabin…

Wait, am I considering this my cabin now? Yes, as a matter of fact I am.

…was Kalina, in all her blonde beauty, clutching a big red beach bag. She wore sunglasses and her head rested against a wooden railing. Her back was to Penny, but even from behind the woman was gorgeous.

Are we going to have this conversation this early? I’m so not ready for this.

She still had no guarantee that Thane and the woman had been together, but her womanly instincts told her to tread carefully around this one. Penny opened the front door and as soon as she did Kalina sprung to her feet and turned around. The woman smiled, but then when she saw that Penny only wore a bedsheet, her lips went tight. She wasn’t happy, and Penny knew she should have only pulled the door open a crack instead of swinging it open all the way.

“Hi,” Penny said. “Kalina, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “I hope I didn’t wake you. We all get up so early here and I was kind of excited to stop by and chat.”

She was so sweet it nearly made Penny wince. Kind of like she’d bitten into one of those chewy Sweet Tart candies. Her sweetness made the spot beneath Penny’s ears ache.

“Do you want to come in?” Penny asked.

Kalina looked like she was thinking about it. Her mouth turned downward in a bit of a frown and she shook her head. It was the look of sadness.

“No,” she said. “Maybe we can talk out here?”

“I don’t have any clothes,” Penny said. “That’s why I’m wearing a sheet.”

Both women laughed.

“Oh,” Kalina said. “I got you, girl. Here.”

She held out the big red beach bag. Penny accepted it and held it open to peer inside. It was stuffed with clothes. Shirts, jeans, dresses, and even a pair of sandals.

“Really?” Penny said. “For me?”

“For you,” Kalina said. “All for you. I figure we’re about the same size and well, I’m sure Thane told you about us…”

She let the word “us” hang for a bit, and at first Penny thought she was confirming that she and Thane had been in a relationship.

“About our…way of life,” Kalina added, waiting for Penny to confirm that she was aware of their abilities.

“Sharks,” Penny said, instantly relieved. “Yes!”

“Tiger sharks,” Kalina reminded her. “So many sharks in the sea, you know? It’s kind of like calling all Americans New Yorkers or Marylandians, whatever you call people from Maryland.”

“Tiger sharks,” Penny said.

“Yeah, so…we uh…we go through a lot of clothes,” Kalina said. “I try my best to go in the water naked, so I don’t rip anything, but in a rush…shit happens.”

Kalina had a way of pausing a lot as she spoke. Penny thought it seemed as if she was always carefully considering what she was about to say, either not to offend or not to sound stupid. Penny decided she liked her. She would need to be careful with her, but she liked her, and she needed a friend on the island.

As they stood on the porch talking, a man yelled somewhere out in the woods. A few seconds later, Hailey ran past the cabin, laughing hysterically.

“What did you do now?” Kalina asked.

“He is so pissed!” Hailey yelled.

“Hailey!” Kalina yelled. “What did you do?”

“Jagger was taking a shit,” she said as she stopped and bent over to catch her breath.

“And?” Kalina asked.

Hailey looked up at them both and smiled wide, her pearly white teeth on full display. She was so proud of whatever she’d accomplished.

“And I snuck up behind him and dropped a bee hive on his head,” Hailey said.

“That is fucking it!” Jagger yelled, his voice getting closer.

“Gotta go!” Hailey yelled as she dashed off toward the water.

“Where is she?” Jagger asked as he appeared in front of the cabin, his chest pocked with red dots.

The bees had stung the shit out of him. Penny had never liked bees. They gave her the creeps and seeing him sent a shudder through her body. If this was how they joked on the island, she would have to be extra careful.

Through tears of laughter, Kalina pointed toward the ocean. Penny looked that way and didn’t see Hailey at all. Jagger growled and sprinted after her. When he reached the spot where the ocean met the sand, he leapt into the air and dove into the water. He never returned to the surface.

“Did he just…” Penny started.

“…shift?” Kalina asked, finishing her question for her. “Yep. We can’t touch the ocean water at all without doing it.”

“Wow,” Penny said.

She hadn’t seen him turn into a shark but knowing that he had done it so quickly was astonishing.

“I should get dressed,” Penny said. “I’ll be right out.”

Inside the cabin, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the bed and surveyed her new threads. Kalina had style, that was for sure. Penny picked out a soft, teal cotton dress with peach-colored flowers. She still had no underwear, but she figured women on the island probably didn’t wear any. What would be the point? They were always changing back and forth, shredding their clothing. Underwear would only be something else to remove.

When she stepped out, Kalina was waiting for her. She tilted her sunglasses down and let out a teasing whistle.

“You look great,” she said. “Whoever gave you those clothes knows her shit.”

“I know, right?” Penny said. “I’ll let my stylist know you said so.”

“Come on,” Kalina said, taking her by the hand and pulling her away from the cabin. “Let’s go see Ruby.”

Penny’s new sandals slapped down the steps and into sand. Sunlight hit her face and she loved it. The weakness in her limbs subsided under the heat and she wished she could feel this way, basking in its warmth forever. If Thane were by her side, it would be perfect. Kalina skipped ahead of her a few steps, always so lively. Penny thought Kalina might be living the life she’d prayed to God about earlier. This was a woman who had it all. She had the face, she had the body, she had the voice, and she had the infectious energy. Yet, she didn’t have Thane.

How could he possibly choose me over this?

Her eyes were on Kalina’s perfect ass when she emphasized the word “this” in her mind. They’d only walked a few cabins away when Kalina suddenly stopped and faced her. She closed her eyes and nodded her head slightly forward a couple of times as if counting to herself. It looked like some sort of stress relief technique.

“Are you okay?” Penny asked.

“I need a second to…” Kalina said and then stopped the way she so often did. “…there! I can say it now. I’m not going to hesitate anymore. We’re grown women. Look, I’m not gonna lie. Thane…well…he’s important to me. He always has been, and he always will be. He sees something in you that he feels drawn to. With our people…with our kind…that’s important. It’s rare. I hoped he’d find that in me.”

She put her head down and stared at her bare feet. Even her toes were lovely.

“How long has it been since you were together?” Penny asked.

“Two…three years maybe,” she replied.

Oh, thank God. Not a day or two, not a week, not even a month. Two or three years. I can handle that.

“And you’re still in love with him?” Penny asked.

Kalina chewed the side of her mouth, showing she was uncomfortable.

“I’m intoxicated by him,” she said. “Absorbed by him. It’s more like a state of being than any feeling of emotion I can describe.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Penny said. “Do you love Thane?”

“It’s more than that is what I’m saying,” she replied. “And that’s why I struggle some, but I believe ultimately that’s what helps me through it. Love can quickly turn to hate. What I feel…it never goes away. But more than anything, I want to see him happy. He looked happy with you last night.”

“I’m sorry,” Penny said as she leaned forward and hugged her new friend.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Kalina said. “Come on. You need to learn more about us if you’re thinking about sticking around.”

Ruby sat on her front porch, in a wooden rocking chair. Swaying back and forth next to her lay Poet in a hammock. As with the night before, he held a notebook and was busy jotting something down in it. He smiled at Penny as they stepped onto the porch.

“Poet,” Penny said.

Always a man of few words, Poet only nodded in her direction.

“I see you got some clothes,” Ruby said. “Here, this is for you too.”

She handed Penny a plastic laundry basket full of random clutter. A pack of feminine hygiene pads, a box of condoms, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste…all the necessities.

“Hailey said you were pretty loud last night,” Ruby said with a smirk.

Penny winced, not only with embarrassment, but out of worry that Kalina might feel bad hearing about her sexual escapade with Thane.

“Oh, stop it,” Ruby said. “Don’t be all shy and shit. We’re very open people. No jealousy or anger allowed on Shamrock Island. We all know you’re going to look at our men, especially when they walk out of the water with their cocks hanging. We’ll look at Thane too.”

She laughed out loud and Kalina did too. Poet snickered from inside his hammock.

“Oh, now you wanna talk, you silent motherfucker,” Ruby said. “I’ve been trying to get this guy to talk to me all morning. All he does is keep his nose in that book.”

“I did talk to you,” Poet argued. “You always have so little to say. Or at least you say things of little significance.”

Ruby snatched a pillow off the empty rocking chair next to her and launched it at Poet. He laughed and blocked it with his notebook.

“When is the baby due?” Penny asked.

She hadn’t had many pregnant friends but that seemed the polite thing to ask.

“Soon,” Ruby said. “But not soon enough. I can’t wait to get back in the water.”

“You can’t swim while pregnant?” she asked. “I thought it was good for you.”

“It’s good for you,” Ruby said, letting her forehead drop in Penny’s direction, pointing at her with the crown of her head instead of simply wagging a finger. “Me? Not so much.”

It must have been obvious that Penny was confused because Kalina jumped in to explain.

“For us, the salt water makes us shift,” she said. “We can do it at will too, anytime we want. So…like jumping off a bridge into water, we can shift in midair. But we don’t have to if we don’t want to. We can control it.”

“But with salt water, we can’t,” Ruby said. “Our bodies react to it. I can’t dip a pinky finger into that water over there without going into full beast mode. And that…that would rip this baby apart.”

The mental image was too much. Penny could practically see the baby being torn apart as Ruby’s body morphed into a shark. She figured it made sense. How could an unborn child handle something like that?

“So…” Penny said, thinking of how to ask the question she’d been dying to ask. “How do you get pregnant?”

Ruby looked at Penny as if she’d been asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard.

“How do you get pregnant?” Ruby asked.

Penny rolled her eyes.

“Same with us,” Ruby added.

“So, it never happens when you’re in shark form? I mean sharks have sex too. What if you have sex as a shark?” Penny asked.

Kalina laughed. Poet did too. Ruby only stared at her.

“We don’t do that,” Ruby said matter-of-factly.

She was as serious as could be.

“Never?” Penny asked. “What if a regular shark fucks you?”

“It’s happened,” Poet said, shrugging his shoulders to suggest it was a good, legitimate question.

“Okay,” Ruby said. “Yes, that has happened. But it’s rare. And as a woman, you would never want that to happen. Here’s why. Just like I can’t shift while I’m pregnant, it works the other way around too. And you think having twins or triplets is bad? Did you know a tiger shark can have up to ninety babies? So, imagine you get fucked as a shark, then you shift, how in the hell is your human body going to handle ninety babies inside it? You’d have babies falling out all over the fucking place.”

“That’s gross,” Kalina said.

“That is pretty disgusting,” Penny agreed.

“And that’s why, if any shark tries to fuck us in shark form, he better be one fast motherfucker,” Ruby said, laughing the entire time, “because these bitches can swim, and we will be swimming our asses off in that case.”

“I would swim, and dodge, and leap through the air like a fucking dolphin,” Kalina said.

“What’s this?” Ruby asked, suddenly standing up from her chair and putting an end to their laugher.

A boat cruised close to the shore and was steadily growing nearer. Even from so far away, Penny could tell that it had some sort of official emblem on its side. When the boat finally beached, Ruby, Kalina, and Poet approached it.

“Stay in the cabin, kids!” Ruby called out over her shoulder.

Penny followed closely behind them as they made their way to the beach. A man hopped out of the boat in a pair of cream colored cargo shorts and an official Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol polo. He held a shotgun in his hand and approached them with it leaned back over one shoulder.

“Mr. Kane,” Ruby said.

“Have we met?” the handsome officer asked.

“Not officially, no,” she replied. “But your reputation precedes you.”

“Does it now?” he asked. “Great. Then I don’t need to beat around the bush. I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about sharks in this area. Tiger sharks mostly. Even a great white from time to time. Seen anything like that?”

“Nothing like that,” Ruby said.

“Hmm,” he said.

Penny thought he seemed suspicious. Was he really cruising up to every individual island to ask if people had seen sharks? It was possible, but she doubted that was the case. He was up to something. It was the same odd feeling she had on the yacht when the blond guy had walked up to her and began flirting. If she’d trusted her gut, she might not have gotten knocked into the ocean where she became fish food.

“And you, beautiful?” he asked, shifting his gaze from Ruby to Kalina.

Before she could answer, he spotted Penny and wrinkled his brow.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Ain’t you the girl I met at the hospital the other day?”

“Yes,” was all she could think to say.

“And they let you out of the hospital so soon?” he asked. “And wha…what happened to your bandages and your bites?”

He seemed totally perplexed by the fact that her leg was healed. She hadn’t thought to cover it up, and of course, he would notice it right away.

“It wasn’t very deep at all it turns out,” she said. “And the salt water works in mysterious ways.”

He wasn’t buying it. He fixed his stare on her and cocked his head to the side. She’d become a strange logic problem he was trying to decipher in his head. She felt a chilly breeze that seemed to be kicked up by his presence. She only hoped Thane wouldn’t suddenly come walking out of the water.

“It sure does,” Keelan agreed, his voice sounding distant, as if still stuck in deep thought. “Well, you keep your eyes and ears open. If you see any sharks, you let me know, alright?”

He handed Penny a business card with his name and phone number on it.

“What will you do with the sharks when you find them?” Ruby asked.

He pulled his shotgun from his shoulder and slapped the barrel against his left palm.

“I’m gonna shoot them in the fucking head,” he said. “Every last one of the damn things.”

An awkward silence passed between them all, and then Keelan’s mouth switched into a wicked smile, and he said, “Well, you all have a wonderful day. Stay safe.”

“We will,” Ruby said, curtly. “You try to do the same.”

“You too,” Kalina added with a wave, bringing some warmth back into the goodbye.

Keelan walked back to the boat, hopped in, and took off.

“This isn’t good,” Ruby said.

“Fucking Evelyn,” Kalina added. “Thane warned her about this.”

“She doesn’t care,” Ruby said. “This is what she wants.”

“How did he know where you lived?” Penny asked.

“I don’t think he knows anything about us,” Ruby said. “I think he was patrolling and happened to see us.”

“No,” Penny said. “Something wasn’t right. It felt like he was surveying the camp. He was looking around too much. He knows something.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Ruby said. “Because if you’re right, things are going to get really fucking bad.”