Page 20 of Panther in the Shadows
The residue forms patterns in the rock. Symbols carved so small most people would miss them, hidden in natural cracks and crevices. Blood magic. Ritualistic. Designed not just to kill but to open something. Draw something up from the deep.
Gran's stories surface from memory—the ones she told before I was old enough to understand. Things that sleep in the ocean trenches. Ancient entities that existed before shifters, before witches, before humans walked upright. Most stay sleeping, content in the darkness and pressure. But some can be called. Summoned. Lured to shallower waters with the right offering.
Blood and twisted magic make a powerful lure.
My fingers tremble as I trace the symbols, piecing together the ritual's purpose. The killer isn't just murdering people. They're feeding something. Building power. Each death strengthens what they're calling, brings it closer to the surface.
A pattern emerges the longer I study it, though the full shape eludes me. Blood magic. Necromancy. Raising something that should stay buried. The residue here is too fresh, too strong. This pool has tasted blood within the last few days, and the signature feels horribly, sickeningly familiar.
My hands go numb. All those people dead but simple murder doesn't leave residue like this. Their deaths are building something. Each one adding power to a summoning that needs three more sacrifices to complete.
More will die. The symbols form only partial patterns—the deaths are marked, but the ritual structure shows spaces for more. Someone is calling to the drowned, pulling at what sleeps beneath the waves. Each death brings them closer to answering.
I stumble back from the pool too fast. My vision swims. This is bigger than framing Rafe. Bigger than just the murders themselves. This is about waking something that should stay sleeping forever. Something ancient that's been waiting in the deep, growing stronger with each death.
The wind shifts. Carries a scent that doesn't belong to morning tide or seabirds. Rot and wrongness and the copper tang of old blood. Magic that makes my skin crawl and my power recoil.
I search the rocks and tide pools for the source. Nothing visible. But the scent strengthens. Grows closer. Pressure builds around me—then shatters my wards like glass.
The attack slams into my chest. Throws me backward. Stone meets my shoulders, drives the air from my lungs. Before I can recover, invisible fingers wrap around my throat and squeeze.
Clawing at my own neck finds nothing but saltwater fingers, malice made solid, tightening their grip. Can't see what's killing me. Can't fight what has no form.
My power surges in response. Salt and storm and the ocean at midnight. Water responds instantly, rising from the tidal pool in a column, slamming into the invisible attacker. The pressure on my throat vanishes. Gasping, coughing, I scramble away from the pool's edge.
"Moira Flynn." The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Female. Young. Each word carries the weight of deep water and drowning. "The sea witch who hides. The sister who survived."
My blood turns to ice. That voice. I know that voice.
"Who are you?" But I already know. Some part of me already knows.
"Don't you recognize me?" Laughter bubbles up like air from drowned lungs. "We used to play in these pools, remember? Before Gran said I was too wild with the gift. Before the ocean took me back."
No. No, this isn't possible.
The invisible force hits again, harder, drives me to my knees. Blood wells from my palms where stone splits skin, drips onto rock. The drops don't disperse. They gather. Coalesce. Feed something that grows solid from shadow and saltwater until?—
Eight years old. Dark hair plastered wet against her skull, tangled with kelp. Eyes like mine but filmed over. Milky. Dead.
The breath stops in my chest.
Elspeth.
Her skin carries the grey-blue tint of meat left in cold water too long. Seawater streams from her mouth when she opens it, pours from her nose, leaks from the corners of her eyes in a constant, terrible weeping.
"Hello, Moira." The voice gurgles. Wet. Wrong. "Did you miss me?"
My throat closes. "You're not real. You're not her. Elspeth is dead."
The thing wearing my sister's face tilts its head. More water spills out. "Dead? Or drowned? There's a difference, Moira. The drowned don't always stay down. Not when someone calls them. Not when someone knows the right words, the right blood, the right price."
She circles me the way she used to circle the tide pools, looking for crabs and starfish. But now her movements are wrong. Too fluid. Like she's still underwater even standing on dry land.
"Someone's raising you," I whisper. "Using corrupted magic to pull you from the deep."
"Raising me?" That terrible laughter bubbles up, childlike and horrible. "Oh, Moira. I've been down there all along. Saw you grow up. Saw you inherit Gran's power and hide it away while I rotted in the dark." Her dead eyes fix on mine. "You should have saved us that day." The whisper cuts worse than shouting. "But your magic wasn't strong enough. You reached for the water and it wouldn't listen. So you watched us drown while you floated there, safe, alive."
The boat capsizing. Dad shouting to hold on. Elspeth's scream as the waves took her under. And me, thirteen years old, reaching for my power, trying to call the water to obey, to lift them, to save them. But the ocean ignored me. Swallowed them both while I thrashed helpless in the waves, too weak to command what should have answered.
