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40. Carol

40

Carol

The guards looped extra chains to her collar.

"You really don't want me to miss out on this blessing, huh?"

Adrian smiled vaguely at her. "I am so glad we understand one another."

There was no point pretending anymore. The whole "yes, Mr. Fairchild, of course I'm on your side, please take me to have my soul literally ripped out of me" schtick didn't survive her attacking him. Weird, right?

They took her up on deck.

"So, uh." Her feet didn't want to keep moving. It didn't matter. The guards dragged her anyway. "What is the plan here? How does it work?"

If she knew how it worked, she could plan against it. Right? She could still find a way out of here.

Everything would turn out okay, the same way it absolutely hadn't every other time in her life.

They reached the edge of the deck, where the railing had been taken down. For a moment, she was back on the yacht with Eloise and her other friends. She could almost feel the blunt end of the paddle against her chest. Was someone laughing?

"How are you going to get to the Soul-Eater from here?"

"We will call him to us." Fairchild's eyes glowed as he looked towards the horizon. Unease curled in Carol's stomach. Was it not all an act? Did he really believe the Soul-Eater was some sort of god?

Moss had called them gods, but the way he described them, they were just super-powerful shifters.

Like the kraken.

Fairchild was still talking and yep, shit, he actually sounded like he believed what he was saying. "We will call him, and he will rise again, knowing he is needed."

"You'll… call him?" Carol said weakly.

Fairchild nodded, his certainty ironclad.

"And he'll come. From his prison?"

He bestowed a look of kindly condescension on her. "He is not imprisoned. He waits, thinking we no longer need him. He waits for the call of his true believers."

Carol's heart slammed in her chest.

They've got it all wrong .

It made sense, the distant, logical part of her brain reasoned. Whatever stories they had of the Soul-Eater's existence would be ancient. Over the years, details would have been changed, or lost, or mis-translated.

They'd confused the legend of the kraken, waiting to be called, and the Soul-Eater, imprisoned in the ice. An easy mistake to make.

The less distant, less logical part of her brain was thinking oh fuck oh fuck I'm going to die.

These Soul-Eater worshipping dipshits were going to throw her in the water to drown because they'd mixed up their god with his enemy.

She was going to die by drowning. Not in open air, like she'd been afraid of since she'd been tasered. In the water. The traditional way.

She was a freaking shark shifter and she was going to drown in the ocean .

"Can we talk about this? I think. Um. I think your research may have led you in the wrong direction?"

Mr. Fairchild smiled beatifically. "This moment has been years in the making, Miss Zhang. Ever since I found out what my dear Eloise had been doing. What she'd turned people like you into."

He touched her face fondly, and she shivered.

"You know, for a short time after I found out what she'd been doing, I wondered if my daughter might have been the Bestower reborn? Silly, really. Dear Eloise wasn't gifting powers to anyone. She was simply using proven methods to bring out what was already there. Sometimes the presence of other shifters is enough to spark one's latent inner animal. Sometimes it takes a little… push. And sometimes it goes wrong."

"She almost drowned me!"

Fairchild tsked. "And I told you. You're here to undo her mistake."

"I'm not a mistake! And she should be locked up!"

"But she's a lioness. " He quirked an eyebrow at her. "The rules are different for us. You know that, working for that ridiculous man MacInnis. Trying to make us hold to human laws, as though the powerful should bow to the weak. But once He returns, that will all change. Those of us who deserve our power will keep it. Those whose presence weakens us—" He traced the line of Carol's lips, and she almost gagged. "Shifterhood is a blessing, Carol. And that blessing will shine all the brighter when it is only the deserving who possess it."

She should have been ready for this. It was part of the training MacInnis had insisted all his new hires complete. The training she'd been partway through when she was attacked and her life had become ruled by fear.

This is how I'm going to die, and I'm not ready . The thought skittered around her brain. I don't know how to die. I haven't done the reading.

There was meant to be a test, wasn't there? And a practical. A practice run of being about to be killed, so that when it actually happened, she didn't make an embarrassment of herself.

Because that was the big risk here. Being embarrassed.

She imagined her shark looming up inside her and rolling one dark eye. It didn't, of course, but it was easier to pretend she was talking to it than herself.

I know that isn't what I should be worried about. It's not about being embarrassed. It's… it's…

It was Lance MacInnis seeing through the nightmare of her face and giving her a job when no other shifter would, and her failing him.

It was Keeley trusting her to watch Maggie, and her failing at that, too.

It was every twisted-up not good enough and be careful, be small, don't scare anyone and memory of people flinching away from her all boiling together inside her. It wasn't that everything good in the world was taken away from her—it was that she took what was offered and ruined it.

And now…

No one was coming for her.

She didn't know how long she'd been Fairchild's captive—unconscious after he first caught her, then those uncountable hours trying to keep her face above water in the cells. She only knew it was long enough.

Long enough for Moss to find her, if he was looking. What was he waiting for?

Her heart twisted.

Moss was a good man. And she'd told him he wouldn't have to kill anyone.

If he came here, the kraken would murder everyone in its path.

She bit back a sob.

She was a shark shifter who looked like a monster, and she'd spent every minute since her shark first found her trying to be anything except what people expected of her.

What if she stopped worrying about what people thought and sank into her shark self like submerging herself in dark water? What if she let go of all her human complications and became sleek, fast teeth in the depths, a predator from a forgotten time, hunting and eating and not caring what became of the world she left in her wake?

If she'd cared less about Maggie, she would never have been caught.

If she'd cared less about the poor bastards Fairchild had tricked into being his holy army, she could have fought her way out.

If she let herself be the monster everyone thought she was…

She could call Moss now. Let him kill everyone and save her.

And afterwards? When he realized what he'd done?

Turning herself into a monster was one thing. She couldn't force him to be one, too.

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