Page 10 of Panther in the Shadows
"Every drop. Left positioned like the others—arms spread, facing the water. And before you ask, yes. People are saying your name."
Bodies drained of blood, found near water, in my territory. The math is simple even for humans who don't know about shadow-walkers or the darker things that hunt in Stormhaven's waters.
"Who?" I ask.
"I don’t know that we know for sure. We do know he’s male, maybe late twenties. Kian's tracking the scent trail, but it's contaminated. Salt water, blood, and something else he can't identify."
My senses sharpen. Threat. "Show me."
We leave through the back entrance, where darkness pools thick enough to hide a dozen bodies. I move easily through it, but stay beside Declan as we make our way through Stormhaven's empty streets. They’re empty at this time of night, just past three in the morning when even the drunks have stumbled home and the fishermen haven't yet risen. Mist rolls in from the sea, thick and damp, turning the streetlights into fuzzy halos.
The old smuggler's caves sit on the north shore, carved by centuries of waves into the cliff face. Perfect for hiding contraband, bodies, or secrets that need to stay buried. I've used them myself more than once. I know every twist and turn, every hidden alcove where tide pools form and crabs scuttle.
Kian waits outside the main entrance, his tiger form a massive shadow against darker stone. When he sees us, he shifts, the transformation flowing over him like water reshaping itself. Naked, scarred, and covered in mud, he looks like a nightmare made flesh.
"Inside," he says, voice rough from the shift. "Twenty meters. The scent is all wrong, Rafe. There's magic in this."
Magic. Not the shifter kind—this is older, deeper.
I slip past them both, moving through the darkness like it's part of me. The cave mouth yawns before me, dark and wet and smelling of brine. My panther rises, eager, hungry. It's been too long since I let it fully loose. Three days at least, maybe four. The beast prowls the corners of my mind, demanding release.
I shed my clothes quickly, folding them and leaving them where they won't get soaked by rising tide. The night air bites at bare skin, but I barely notice. My focus narrows to the darkness ahead, to the scent of blood and magic mixing with salt water.
The change comes easily.
Silvery mist swirls around me as the shift takes hold, instant and seamless. My body reshapes in a heartbeat—human to panther in the space between breaths. Fur ripples into existence, black as midnight. Hands become paws, fingers shortening, claws emerging like curved blades. My senses explode outward in a cascade of input that would overwhelm a human mind.
Smell intensifies until I can taste salt and blood and fear on the air. Every scent becomes a story, a map, a history written in molecules. The victim's last meal—fish and bread, eaten hours ago. The soap he used that morning. The fear-sweat that poured from him as he died.
Hearing sharpens until I catch the whisper of water against stone fifty meters away. The skitter of crabs in tide pools. Declan's heartbeat, steady and strong behind me. Kian's breathing, still rough from his own transformation.
Vision shifts, colors fading but contrast intensifying. Darkness becomes shades of grey, obstacles outlined in silver. Texture of stone, variations in wetness, footprints humans would miss completely.
My mind changes too. Becomes more immediate. Less concerned with past or future, focused entirely on now. On preyand predator. On territory and threat. On blood and bone and the simple mathematics of survival.
I pad forward on four paws, soundless as smoke, lethal as nightmares. Every step is placed with precision, weight distributed to avoid noise. My tail extends behind me for balance, twitching as I navigate the cave's entrance.
The darkness inside would blind a human. Even Declan, with his wolf's enhanced vision, would struggle. But I am a creature of night, and this is my element.
I move deeper, tasting blood on every breath. The cave twists, narrows, opens into a chamber where the ceiling rises fifteen feet above. The sound of waves echoes from deeper in the system, a reminder that high tide will reclaim these spaces in a few hours.
The body lies in the center of the chamber, sprawled on stone still wet from the last tide. Male, young, dressed in clothes that mark him as local. His throat has been torn open, but not by teeth or claws. The wound is too smooth. Almost surgical. Too clean, too precise. No defensive injuries on his hands. No signs of struggle.
He was dead before he hit the ground. Killed so fast he didn't have time to fight back.
The blood is gone—not pooled beneath him or spread across stone, but gone. Consumed or carried away. I've seen deaths by violence, by accident, by time. This is none of those. This is ritual. Purpose. Magic shaped into murder.
I've seen blood magic before—Marseille taught me what it smells like. But this is corrupted, twisted into something fouler.
I catalog the scents with an intensity that borders on obsession. Sharp acrid terror. The salt of the ocean, clean and familiar. Blood magic, like copper mixed with ozone. And underneath all of it, a presence that makes my fur stand on end and a growl rumble deep in my chest.
Sea-magic. The same salt-sweet power I've been tracking for some time, trying to identify its source. The power I finally traced to Moira Flynn when I watched her calm a storm that should have destroyed three fishing boats.
But there's more here. Layers that speak of complexity, of multiple sources. Where Moira feels like clean ocean and storm-touched waves, this reeks of deep water and drowning and things that hunt in trenches where light dies. Corrupted. Wrong. Like comparing fresh rain to stagnant swamp water.
I circle the body, examining it from every angle. Looking for evidence humans would miss. Footprints? Washed away by the tide that's been in and out twice since the killing. Fabric? Nothing snagged on stone. But there—caught on a rough edge near where the victim's head rests—a single hair.
I examine it carefully, memorizing everything. White as salt, long as my tail, and vibrating with residual power that makes my whiskers twitch. Not Moira's. Her hair is dark as midnight, and her magic feels different. Protective. Controlled. Anchored to this place in ways that speak of generations.
