It takes us a few hours hard-going at mermaid and crocodilian-wolf speed, plus a breaking-and-entering pitstop to steal a new scuba tank from a seaside dive shop that Dorian knows in Ensenada off the Baja California Norte coast before we're wading, exhausted, onto a remote beach further south. We lie together on the soft, moonlit sand as the last of the night wanes, and eventually I doze.
When I wake, it's to find myself sheltered in the warm shade of a rocky overhang further up the beach and out of the water's reach. Nearby, Dorian and Sean sit, talking softly, one on either side of a tiny driftwood fire they have going. Naturally, and because they're Weres, they're both naked, even though Sean did have clothes before we left the beach off Demons Tangle.
Not that I know where they'd find new clothes. Where we've landed is among the more barren and desolate places I've been in my life.
