Silas bristles and hisses through clenched teeth, his fists balling at his side. "You asked to become a member of the pack. That requires—."
"Fourteen months ago, Silas." There's no disguising the bitterness and resentment in Dorian's smooth voice, so like Sean's, and suddenly I ache for his hurt. "I asked fourteen months ago. After proving my direct relationship to the Alpha of Desert and the Second of Candlewood."
He shrugs in frustration. "I didn't ask for any favors—no birthright or position, no special treatment. You've put me through every trial and test, investigated and reinvestigated my background and in general treated me like a leper among you and I'm still not 'pack'. I've never heard of a family treating each other so poorly."
Deliberately shouldering past Silas, Dorian marches across the sand towards the old lighthouse's foundation where I've watched this entire debacle among brothers in silence. He jerks his chin at me. "What do you want to know about the shoals?"
"I—I'm—I don't know for certain. I'll know it if I see it," I sputter and wish I had the composure that Darby has. Or the unrepentant haughtiness of Leo. Something—anything—besides the dim-witted, decidedly blonde thing I've presently got going on.
"All right. Come with me and I'll get you some dive gear. I'll—."
Darting after Dorian, Sean grabs his arm and forcefully turns him. "You'll stay away from her. Understand?"
"Or what?" Dorian snaps, then laughs. "You gonna fight me for her, huh? Can't say I'd be surprised if she didn't want to be with you. You treat her like some kind of object—bossing her around, telling her who she can and can't talk to. Keeping a hand on her like she's on a leash. Bet you even tell her how she can dress. Regular knight in shining armor, you are. And in case you're confused because, you know, you're kind of dense, I mean you're a Neanderthal."
With a soft groan, I cover my eyes with one hand. Any second now, this is going to devolve into fisticuffs between at least two, if not all three of these brothers, and I have no desire to see it. They're all acting like selfish toddlers.
"And what's your deal anyway? Whatever else Silas has going on, he's had over a year to get to the point of such dickishness. What's your excuse? You've never seen me. Never talked to me. And you sure as fⴎck can't say you know me."
"I don't have to know you," Sean bites back, his face set in a menacing snarl and his golden eyes blazing. "It's easy to recognize a gigantic ạsshοle from miles away."
"Yeah? Turns out apples don't fall far from the tree after all, brother," Dorian sneers. "Merely one more piece of proof that you'll all ignore—."
"Stop!" I shout, storming down the lighthouse foundation towards them. "Right now! This is asinine! You're acting like a bunch of—."
My words catch in my throat as abruptly I recognize the rapidly growing stench drifting on the sea breezes sweeping inland and my eyes go wide. I'd been so intent on their argument that I and everyone else here missed the sea receding from the shore. Ahead of me, the three brothers' faces screw up in disgust as the same smell hits them. Around us, the wolves begin to cough and gag.
"Silas! Call them back! We have to get everyone out of here right now!"
Galvanized to action by my voice, Sean and Dorian dash towards me. But they aren't the ones I'm apprehensive about. I see Silas' eyes glaze as he issues the order over the wolf link to the further ranging members of Desert pack and with sudden flash of Fae precognition, I see the next several seconds unfold in my mind's eye before it does.
In a horrifying déjà vu, the tides that had silently sucked back from the shore, rise upwards in a thick curtain of water, like a sheet hung on a clothesline to dry. Helpless to stop it, I let out a high-pitched, startled scream as before my eyes, that exact circumstance comes to pass.
Inside the wall of water now rushing towards the shore and backlit by the sinking sun, a humongous gray shadow looms. In the surrounding waters are hundreds of lesser shadows, a swarming horde of indistinct shapes swimming with all manner of strange appendages, flailing limbs and bobbing heads, alien and peculiar and instantly repulsive.
From various directions about the small-scale neighborhood, I hear the shouts and yips, snarls and vicious barks of wolves—both shifted and unshifted—as they converge on our location and the vehicles we came in that offer our one hope of escape. But I already know that even that option will be cut off abruptly.
As the wall of water collapses, flooding into the neighborhood again, the dark creatures—revealed now as varying colors, multi-limbed, either beady-eyed or fish-eyed and some with vicious mouthfuls of teeth like an anglerfish—drop to the shore. In the shallow water, they surge forward in a swarm, focused on the wolves from our two security units, even bypassing Silas who's engaged in his shift.
"Silas!" I scream and both Sean and Dorian stop their sprint and whirl.
Behind Silas still engaged in his shift, what was the hulking shadow hidden in the wall of water now looms, easily two stories tall and probably more. Its beady eyes are fixed on the half-shifted wolf before him, its wide pointed maw open and full of razor teeth. Above that, it has a pair of long boar-like tusks curling to either side of a long prehensile trunk like an elephant's. It raises the massive trunk to deliver a killing blow.
The beast's thick, wrinkly skin is a dark gray and reminds me of a seal's, but about midway down its back, it becomes scaly and armored. Much like a crocodile's, the scales run all the way down a thick, heavy tail, terminating in rear fins and dispensing with the crocodilian clawed feet at the front.
Makara.
The identification pops into my head unbidden. So, this is what happens when a Rényú hybrid gets gigantic growth. Around us, the Desert wolves rally towards their Alpha, but there's no way they'll reach him before the beast does.
Grabbing Sean's shirtfront, Dorian shouts, "That thing'll kill them all! Call them off! Take her and route them that way! There's a stone house there! It's warded! Get everyone inside! I'll get Silas!"
With that, he shoves hard at Sean, then bolts towards Silas as he said he would. I gasp watching as in a matter of seconds—no more than eight to ten strides—he's fully shifted into a wolf form easily as massive as Ian's—which seems impossible. What also seems impossible is that Dorian's wolf looks similar to what my magic does to shifted wolves when they step foot in the water with my water magic, precisely as Sean said.
Only it's unquestionably far more deadly, especially in this circumstance.
Unlike the tough scales that shifted wolves develop when exposed to my magic in the water, Dorian's entire body is covered in fitted oval scutes, essentially armoring him with the same bony, horn-overlaid external scales that make up the shell of a turtle.
Or the skin of crocodilians.
He's broader than the lanky shifted terrestrial wolves of the Desert pack—including both Sean and Silas—and not merely because he's so much larger. His clawed, webbed paws give him an unfailing traction and agility in the shifting sodden sand and rushing water and he accelerates swiftly and assuredly towards Silas at the water's edge using a unique combination of propulsion from his feet and thick, club-like tail to give him a burst of sudden, extreme speed. A speed comparable to that of our attackers.
But most of the wolves are already contesting with the smaller creatures and instantly being overwhelmed. As I watch, two of them are being dragged towards deeper water. Though Dorian crashing into Silas knocks them both safely out of the way of the gigantic beast's grab, it's clear we're all going to die here. There's simply no contest against their superior numbers and the assist from the Makara.
Which is the point when a writhing horde of the tinier creatures surges towards me.
"Sandy! Look out!" Sean's warning is agonized as he realizes the danger.
But he needn't have worried. Instantly, I shimmer into my Fae sylphide form—an airy, translucent image of me that the floundering amphibious brutes pass completely through without touching. "Oh no you didn't!" I rage, and as they continue to leap at me, I tap my talisman, summoning up my element.
Every nerve in my system bursts to tingling life as the very ocean responds to my call. Instantly, I'm drunk on the power.
Zipping out over the water, I send a powerful blast of magic into it, channeling the raw energy towards the humongous beast now slamming the ground violently with its massive trunk and trying to crush the agilely dodging Silas and Dorian. The water freezes, then tall fine blades of ice form, slicing upwards along and under the monster.
The gigantic creature roars in anguish and gushes of filthy, reeking seawater pour out of the wounds my penitentes make in its tender underbelly. Its pained howls draw the attention of the lesser monsters and they rush to its rescue, instead encountering more of the viciously cutting shards of ice. Amid their confusion, they stumble, severing and abandoning chunks of themselves and furthering the damage as they crash into one another.
Clean up time, I smile to myself, then arrow another powerful surge of magic into the ocean below me. The waves being to swirl, faster and faster, rising in an intense, destructive vortex over the body of water. Swiftly, it forms into a twisting waterspout, spinning in the mighty updraft.
Once inside it, my penitentes splinter into icy needle-fine daggers, slashing the drawn-in beasts and in some cases, impaling them. Even the monstrous creature is sucked in, thrashing wildly with its long trunk before it's cut to ribbons and hurled with others several miles out to sea and well beyond the shoals.
With the Rényú routed, the Desert wolves gather near the SUVs that we arrived in. Sean charges into the water, wading out to catch me against his chest as my magic recedes and I slump towards him. I cling to him pathetically, draped like a soggy towel hung out to dry over his shoulders as he hauls me out of the water and onto the old lighthouse's foundation.
"Sandy? Stay with me, little girl," Sean urges tenderly. Sinking to his knees, he cradles me against him, slapping my cheeks lightly to keep me awake.
My eyelids flutter and my head lolls against his muscular arm, then Silas and Dorian loom over us.
"Is she alright?" Silas demands, issuing a series of terse orders immediately afterwards.
"Alright!?" Dorian stares at him as if Silas has grown a second head. "Did you not see that!? She became translucent—like wind! She caused the water to freeze! And a damn waterspout that tossed about a million-ton weird-ass sea monster and its creepy minions out to sea! What the hell is she?"
Sean's answer comes to me through an enjoyable, hazy distance. "She's Fae."