Bite Me Harder (Guardians of the Deep 2)

“What if what I want is you?” she asked.

“Fuck you!” Penny yelled. “He doesn’t want you.”

“Penny,” Thane said. “Don’t.”

“What is this bitch behind you doing here?” Evelyn asked, turning her attention to Sylvia.

Evelyn sniffed the air.

“Great white, huh?” she added. “You should join the winning team. We could use a shark like you.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sylvia said. “That’s my best friend right there. If anything happens to her, I’ll rip your goddamn head off your neck.”

“Oh,” Evelyn said with a wince. “So graphic. So serious. So mean. I love it. Yes, you’d make a great addition to our team.”

“There are no teams,” Thane said. “Evelyn, you can end this. You’re not a bad person. I knew you before all this. You’re not evil. You’ve got good in you. It’s what I always…”

He didn’t finish.

“You always what?” Evelyn asked. “Loved about me?”

“Evelyn,” Thane said. “Please.”

Evelyn looked at the thugs and nodded. They squeeze Penny’s arms tighter and dragged her closer to the edge of the boat.

“Stop!” Sylvia yelled.

“You move one step closer to the edge and I’ll tear you all in half,” Thane threatened.

“Really?” one of the thugs asked as he hinted at taking another step but stopped.

“Wait,” Evelyn ordered. “Tell me more about…us.”

“Let her go,” Thane said.

“Toss her,” Evelyn said.

It happened too quickly for Thane or Sylvia to react. The guys rushed toward the side of the boat and pushed Penny. She screamed.

“No!” Thane yelled.

Thane dove at her as if he might be able to catch her in time, but it was too late. Her legs hit the rail on the side of the boat, and she flipped over.

Penny flew through the air, but then something else came up out of the water right in front of her. Coby, in great white form, soared through the air and smacked into her, knocking her back onto the boat as he flew over it. His teeth clamped around the first thug in sight, ripping his torso from his waist. Blood flew all over the other thugs and onto Evelyn who’d ducked in time to miss having her face torn into. She was fast, and as Coby dove through the air and was making his way completely over the boat in a perfect arch, Evelyn picked something up from the boat deck. It was a metal pole of some sort, maybe a radio antennae or spear from a spear gun. Sylvia wasn’t sure what it was, but right before her eyes, she watched as the pointed end of the pole tore into Coby’s underbelly. The gash ripped his skin open and blood spurted everywhere. The weight of the giant shark pushed the metal spike deeper into him.

“Coby!” Sylvia yelled.

Coby went over the edge and splashed into the water, leaving a trail of blood at the surface. Evelyn smiled at her and Sylvia lost it. She ran at her, hell-bent on revenge, not only for what she’d done to her man, but for what she’d done on the barge. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thane run to Penny, but as he went to grab her, the other thug who’d been holding onto Penny, stepped in his way. Thane grabbed the guy’s head and twisted, snapping his neck. He was occupied, and still too far away, when the third thug ran at Penny and tackled her, pitching them both overboard. Thane jumped to grab her and only got hold of her ankle, holding her in place at the side of the boat, but then, as her body widened in his grip, he realized it was too late. There was no holding a tiger shark by its fin.

As Penny shifted, Sylvia grabbed Evelyn by the hair and yanked her into the water with her. Sylvia landed in the cold ocean, her body instantly changing back into the form of the great white. Evelyn hit the water and morphed into her tiger shark body. Twenty feet away, Penny too was in tiger shark form and Sylvia knew no matter what happened now, her friend had died a little bit already. Evelyn would pay.

Chapter 29 – Rafe

Rafe was barely able to keep swimming. If it weren’t for the magic Kalina’s old sea turtle friend had worked on him, giving him an extra dose of strength and power, Rafe believed he’d already be dead. A chunk of his side was missing, stuffed in some shark’s stomach. He’d been hit from the side, a cheap shot, and then the shark was gone. Or at least he’d thought it was gone. From his left side, it crashed into him, and this time its teeth missed Rafe by a quarter of an inch as Rafe shot forward and left the beast chomping at nothing. He’d been in many scraps before, but nothing like this. For a second, he thought maybe he’d pushed the envelope. Maybe in his pursuit of excitement and adrenaline, or in his quest to woo Kalina, he’d allowed his mind to move toward fiction, believing he was unstoppable and was like the rest of them – them being sharks with so much more experience in battle. He was a man. He was a surfer. He wasn’t a tiger shark and he definitely wasn’t a hammerhead or a great white.

Beanie wasn’t far away when Rafe heard him laughing and making some ridiculous cheese ball joke that ended abruptly in a gasp and grunt that was followed by a sickening silence.

“Yo! These sharks are like newbies on the beach, man. Ain’t we the new—”