Oh, Bite Me (Guardians of the Deep 1)

“What will you do with the sharks when you find them?” Ruby asked.

He pulled his shotgun from his shoulder and slapped the barrel against his left palm.

“I’m gonna shoot them in the fucking head,” he said. “Every last one of the damn things.”

An awkward silence passed between them all, and then Keelan’s mouth switched into a wicked smile, and he said, “Well, you all have a wonderful day. Stay safe.”

“We will,” Ruby said, curtly. “You try to do the same.”

“You too,” Kalina added with a wave, bringing some warmth back into the goodbye.

Keelan walked back to the boat, hopped in, and took off.

“This isn’t good,” Ruby said.

“Fucking Evelyn,” Kalina added. “Thane warned her about this.”

“She doesn’t care,” Ruby said. “This is what she wants.”

“How did he know where you lived?” Penny asked.

“I don’t think he knows anything about us,” Ruby said. “I think he was patrolling and happened to see us.”

“No,” Penny said. “Something wasn’t right. It felt like he was surveying the camp. He was looking around too much. He knows something.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Ruby said. “Because if you’re right, things are going to get really fucking bad.”

Chapter 9

Thane stayed gone the rest of the day. As Ruby put it, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her, it was simply his way of making sure she was safe from harm. In their school, or group, the males often did that. They would patrol the waters and protect their home. If Evelyn was on the loose, nobody was safe. Surfers, divers, and snorkelers were in danger any time she felt the need to hunt. Penny thought of all the people she’d met at the resort and realized any of them could go out on an ocean excursion at any time. Any of them could be Evelyn’s next victim.

Sitting next to a small campfire on the beach, Penny thought about Thane and what it must be like to run with him toward the ocean, dive in, transform, and then race beside him through the water. It sounded fantastic, but Thane always seemed to make his life sound far from glamorous. She needed to get the truth from the others.

“Do you like being shifters?” she asked.

Jagger, who’d been lying flat on his back looking up at the stars with Hailey’s head resting on his chest, lifted his head to look at her.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Most of the time. I didn’t like it at first.”

“At first?” Penny asked. “You mean when you were a kid?”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t born a shifter like the others. Hailey wanted me all for herself and the only way to make sure I wouldn’t grow old so quickly and die was to change me.”

“Couldn’t have that handsome face and that rockin’ bod fall apart on me,” Hailey joked.

Penny had seen enough werewolf movies to know the Hollywood version of a wolf biting its prey and by the next full moon the victim was a full-blown shifter. She never knew how much truth was in those stories. If that were true, were sharks able to do the same thing? Could Thane change her? Jagger looked so used to it as if he’d been this way all his life. She could adapt too.

You’re all so chill. You’re like that gang of vampires in the movie “The Lost Boys.” But more care-free. Like those vampires mixed with the bank robbing surfers in “Point Break.”

“You don’t get older,” Penny said softly.

“Well, we do,” Ruby corrected her. “We do age, but we age much more slowly than your kind does. I’d say maybe we age one year for every five of yours.”

“The change. How does it happen?” she asked.

“You don’t want this life, baby girl,” Ruby said. “Trust me.”

“I like it,” Hailey said.