Page 71 of Panther in the Shadows
Perfect for bait.
Rafe helps me aboard with steady hands. His touch lingers on my waist, protective instinct warring with tactical necessity. He wants to be the one on this boat. Wants to put himself between me and danger. But Catalina won't rise for him. She'll only rise for me.
"The wards you placed should hold." Declan climbs aboard his own boat after checking the equipment we loaded earlier onto mine. Salt water in ceramic bowls. Gran's grimoire wrapped in waterproof cloth. Silver daggers blessed at the old stones. "If anything goes sideways before she surfaces, they'll give you time to get clear."
"Nothing goes sideways." My words come steadier than I feel. "We stick to the plan. I position myself above the ritual site. She rises at midnight. You and the brotherhood engage the bound spirits while I face Catalina directly."
"And when you've weakened her enough, I finish it." Rafe's gaze holds mine. Promise and fear mixing together. "In the deep water where she can't escape."
The plan is sound. We've gone over it a dozen times. But sound plans still require perfect execution, and perfect execution requires luck we might not have.
Grayson unties the mooring line. "May the tides favor you, sea witch."
My breath catches. A bear shifter offering sea blessings isn't something I expected. I nod acknowledgment as Rafe guides the boat away from the dock.
Stormhaven Sound at night is a different creature than during the day. The friendly harbor waters that lap against fishing boats and ferry docks give way to something older. Hungrier. The kind of water that remembers every ship it's swallowed, every sailor who drowned screaming. Every child who slipped beneath the surface and never came back up. Thedarkness below isn't empty. It's waiting. Patient. And tonight, something down there is rising to meet us.
We motor north in silence, following the coastline toward the deepest point. The moon hangs fat and silver overhead, three days past full. Still bright enough to cast shadows on the water's surface. Still strong enough to pull at my magic, make it rise and surge with lunar tides.
Rafe cuts the engine when we reach the marked position. The sudden silence feels oppressive. Weighted. Even the normal night sounds have gone quiet. No seabirds calling. No waves slapping against rock. Just the gentle lap of water against the hull and the distant rumble of Declan's boat taking position a hundred yards to the east.
"I can still taste death here." Rafe barely whispers. "From when I threw those bodies in. The magic she used to bind them infected the water itself."
I lean over the side, dipping my fingers into the Sound. He's right. The water feels twisted against my skin. Oil-slick and cold in ways that have nothing to do with temperature. Catalina's taint runs deep here. Corruption that will take years to cleanse, if it ever can be cleansed at all.
"She's been preparing this site for a while." I pull my hand back, resist the urge to wipe it on my jeans. "Every death strengthened her claim on this space. Made it easier for her to rise. To call the bound spirits to her."
"Can you counter it?"
"I can try." I reach for the ceramic bowls, position them carefully around the boat's small deck. "Clean salt water to push against corrupted water. Protection wards to keep her magic from overwhelming me before the fight even begins."
The incantations come easier now than they did yesterday. Practice and desperation have unlocked something in me that'sbeen dormant for too long. Gran's training rising to the surface. The sea witch bloodline remembering its purpose.
Blue light begins to glow around the boat as the wards take hold. Bright enough to create a barrier between clean magic and corrupted, but not so bright it can be seen from shore. A thin line of defense against what's coming.
Rafe watches me work, panther-gold filling his gaze. His shadows curl around the boat's edges, adding his own protection to mine. Darkness and water twining together like they did in his bed. Like they're meant to.
"Five minutes to midnight." Declan's enhanced senses pick up sounds normal humans would miss, his words reaching us across the water via our comms. "Everyone in position. Jax confirms north perimeter secure. Kian has south. Finn is overhead and so far has seen no unusual activity yet."
Yet. Because Catalina will come. We're floating on her ritual site with a sea witch as bait. Everything she needs to complete her transformation is right here, waiting.
The temperature plummets without warning.
One moment the air is cool but manageable. The next, my breath forms clouds and ice crystals start forming on the boat's railings.
"She's rising." I grip the bowl nearest me, magic surging through my bloodstream in response to the threat. "Get ready."
The water transforms.
The oil-slick quality intensifies until the Sound's surface looks black as tar, thick and viscous like congealed blood. Reflects no moonlight. Shows no stars. Just empty darkness that seems to absorb light and swallow it whole, pulling it down into depths that shouldn't exist this close to shore. The water moves wrong now. Ripples flow against the wind. Small waves crest and break in patterns that make my eyes hurt to follow.
Then the stench hits.
Death. Not the clean death of fish left too long in the sun, but the putrid rot of bodies weeks in the water. Bloated flesh splitting open. Internal organs gone to liquid. Mixed with salt water turned septic, festering with things that should never grow in the ocean. The smell crawls into my nose, my throat, coating my tongue with the taste of decay. My eyes water. My stomach heaves. I lean over the boat's edge and retch, bringing up bile that burns my throat.
The water below my face ripples. Something pale moves in the darkness beneath the surface. Watching. Waiting.
Rafe makes a sound low in his throat. Recognition rather than a growl. "That's the stench from the disposal sites. The bodies I dumped in the Sound over the years. She must have been using them all along. Taking what I put down and turning them into this."
