Page 21 of Panther in the Shadows
When the fishermen pulled me from the water hours later, I was alone.
"I tried. I tried to use my magic?—"
"You tried." She drifts closer. The stench of rot and deep water makes my stomach heave. "You reached for power you couldn't control. And when it didn't answer, when the sea took what it wanted, you gave up magic entirely. Hid from your gift for all those years while I rotted in the dark." The dead eyes bore into mine. "But someone else found me and knew how to raise me from the dead and bind me to the deep." Water drips from her fingers. "I’ve waited for years, Moira, years of loneliness and grief became rage. Years of cold and dark and screaming where no one could hear."
Magic rises unbidden, drawing water from the pools, from the ocean beyond, gathering everything within reach. She watches with something that might be pity.
"Go ahead. Fight me. Use your magic." Elspeth spreads her arms, water streaming from every part of her. "Every spell you cast feeds whoever's controlling me. Every drop of power you spend makes them stronger. Don't you understand? You can't win this, Moira. You can either watch me kill everyone on this island, or you can join me in the deep. Those are your only choices."
The water I gathered slams into her. Passes through like smoke. Nothing solid to hit. Nothing physical to damage. She reforms instantly, closer now, reaching for me with hands that drip seawater and rot.
Fear whites out everything else. This is my sister. Was my sister. Whatever she is now, she died years ago, and someone pulled her back into something monstrous. And I'm alone on these rocks with no training, no preparation, no idea how to fight someone I once loved.
Ice spears launch from three pools at once, converge on the drowned thing wearing my sister's face. They pass through her like she's made of nothing. Shatter against rock. Useless.
She laughs. At my attempts. At the tears that won't stop streaming. At everything I am and can't fix.
"Don't cry, Moira." Her hand closes around my wrist.
Cold. Not cold like winter or snow or ice cubes in whiskey. Cold like the bottom of the ocean where sunlight has never reached, where fish swim blind and pressure crushes human bones to powder. My skin splits where she touches. Blisters rise. Ice crystals form on my flesh, spreading up my forearm.
The pain wipes out thought. She drags me. Pulls me toward the largest pool, and my boots scrape stone but find nothing to catch. Nothing to hold. Toward the water where I'll drown like she did, like the dock workers, like Jamie Fraser?—
A roar splits the air.
A black mass explodes between us. Fur and muscle and teeth, four hundred pounds of apex predator slamming into Elspeth's corpse with enough force to tear her grip from my wrist. The cold vanishes. Leaves my arm shrieking, nerves misfiring, but free.
Rafe's panther form dwarfs any natural cat. Shoulders broad as a man's chest. Paws the size of dinner plates. Claws that extend three inches when he flexes them, digging into the necromantic binding that holds Elspeth's shape together.
"The shadow-walker." Elspeth's voice changes. Goes flat. Old. "You weren't supposed to interfere. She didn't account for you."
The panther's response vibrates through the rock beneath my knees. A growl so low, so threatening, that prey instinct screams at me to run despite knowing he's here to help.
He lunges.
Claws rake through the space where Elspeth's throat should be. Find purchase where my water magic passed through uselessly. His teeth close on the corruption binding her corpse, and he shakes his massive head like he's breaking a rabbit's neck.
The shriek that tears from her mouth makes blood run from my ears. Not my sister's voice. Something older. Furious. Ancient. Using her body like a puppet while it rages.
Tendrils of rotten seawater erupt from the pools. Wrap around the panther's legs. Try to drag him toward drowning. He roars again, tears free in a spray of salt and shadow. Circles. Tail lashing. Yellow eyes tracking her movements.
She strikes from three directions at once. Water from multiple pools converging on him. But he's faster. The panther's form blurs. Becomes something less solid. Smoke and darkness that the water passes through without finding flesh to drown.
He reforms behind her. Jaws snap closed on her neck—or what passes for a neck on a corpse held together by twistedmagic. When he tears, she doesn't bleed blood. Black water pours from the wound. Hisses where it hits stone. Eats into rock like acid.
They crash together. Fur and shadow and corrupted ocean. His claws dig deep. Teeth tear deeper. A tendril catches his shoulder. Rips through muscle and leaves four parallel gashes that well dark blood. But he doesn't release. Just bites harder. Shakes. Tears.
Elspeth realizes she's losing. She shrieks again, the sound making my ears bleed worse. She dissolves in the panther's jaws, the binding breaking, retreating into the tidal pools like water down a drain.
"This isn't over, big sister." Her voice echoes from the water, young and terrible. "I'm coming home. And when I do, you'll finally understand what it's like to drown."
It vanishes into the deep water, leaving only the scent of rot and the echo of laughter.
The panther stands over the tidal pool. Sides heaving. Gaze locked on the darkness beneath the surface, tracking for movement. Waiting to see if it returns.
Minutes crawl past. Nothing emerges.
He turns to face me.
