I couldn’t be pissed that my blood now blended with brine, ringing the dinner bell for sharp-toothed creatures to swim swift and hungry.
But I could be worse than any of them combined.
Ignoring the harpoon stabbed clean through my thigh, I pushed off against the sand beneath me. My lungs burned from lack of air while the surface above me taunted. So close yet so unreachable unless I could get the bastard’s foot off my spine.
A slither of oily black appeared in the darkness.
A quicksilver whip of a fin.
The reef sharks were always present here. Most no bigger than a small dog. Most passive and content to swim side by side without challenging for dominion.
But their teeth were sharp and their nose for blood incomparable.
And I was wounded in their waters.
One brushed past my leg where the harpoon delivered blazing pain.
A scream sounded above the surface, warbled and followed by splashing of another diver as someone got bitten.
Digging my hands deeper into the sand, I searched for a weapon. Any weapon. Oxygen was needed. Breath was paramount.
Finding a piece of dead coral, I fisted it and struck with every last bit of power I had. I reached behind me, striking at the leg of the bastard drowning me.
I connected.
His foot vanished.
I shoved to the surface and stood with a huge gust of fury and air.
A shark oozed between my legs. The sharp nip of teeth against my already shredded flesh shot me from the sea and toward the beach.
The twine imprisoning me to the harpoon gun, shot by some hired mercenary, jerked me to a stop. Twisting, I reached down and fisted the rope, searching for a way to rid myself of the harpoon as three divers launched themselves from the shallows thanks to the cruising hungry sharks.
The diver holding the gun attached to me had a hole in his wetsuit and a trickle of blood down the back of his calf.
Yanking the rope, I jerked the harpoon out of his hands, making him slam to a stop, pinning his gaze on me.
Tearing out a hunting knife from a sheath around his thigh, he advanced on me.
Pain flared in his gaze. Panic a debilitating emotion.
I was above all that.
I felt nothing.
Heard nothing.
Saw nothing but rage.
Throwing myself at him, I whacked the coral against his temple, cracking his mask and most likely his skull, sending him plummeting to the sand.
Two other divers rushed toward me, their harpoons thrown away in the shark attacks, their hands fumbling for blades.
It only took a single heartbeat before I crushed the windpipe of one with a well struck punch and plunged the blade of the other into his heart.
Three bodies in the shallows, more blood dripping into the sea.
White water appeared in the darkness as the small sharks turned into a frenzy.
Breathing hard, I glanced at the horizon, seeking Drake’s boat.
Shit.
He was so much closer than he’d been before.
No longer barely noticeable, his black craft sped toward my shore and beached itself in a heavy wake. My guards immediately added more firepower, shooting and surrounding the boat. Some aimed at the hull and the men hiding within while others aimed at the engines to create an explosion.
Only…it was pointless.
Drake proved once again he had no respect for life.
A machine gun spritzed my shores, mowing down my men, a blanket of bullets all firing faster than their fingers could squeeze the triggers on their semi-automatics.
Forty guards.
Reduced down to nothing.
Fuck!
I stumbled as the throb in my leg amplified. My gaze drank in the carnage, my golden sand turning black in the moonlight with blood.
Cal.
Where the fuck is Cal?
A rush of bile burned my throat as I found him. Flat on his back, his black shirt torn apart, blood all over his chest.
His eyes closed.
FUCK!
Grabbing the harpoon gun so I didn’t drag it behind me, I ran.
I ran with a goddamn spear in my leg the second the machine gun stopped reaping death and bellowed, “Still a fucking coward, Drake. Too much of a pussy to do the dirty work yourself!”
I dropped to Cal’s side, my hands shaking as I searched for a pulse.
Thud-thud.
Thud…thud.
Weak and fading, but there.
Hold on, my friend.
Drake appeared in the boat, laughing under his breath. Smoke from his gun curled into the sky, hazing him as if he’d stepped from a crack in the underworld. “Well, that was easy.” He pouted. “I’m rather disappointed.”
Standing, smearing Cal’s blood with my own, I grabbed a discarded gun from a dead guard and fired.
I fired again.
And again.
I emptied the entire fucking clip, wishing each bullet lodged firmly into my brother’s brain.
When I had no more ammo and the sky rang with noise and reeked with gunpowder, he stood up in the boat again.
With a sneer, he plucked at the small graze I’d given him. A simple cut on his side.