Blood in the Water (15 page)

Koenraad tracked him to the arena where spectators could watch the aquarium’s two hippos swim underwater. Darius stood on the steps, his pose casual, his arms folded across his chest. He was dressed in a neat linen suit topped by a fedora. All he needed was a pocket watch and a monocle.
 

“What brings you here?” Koenraad asked.
 

Darius looked up, surprised. The older shifter hadn’t realized he was there.

But Darius quickly buried his reaction. “Would you believe me if I said I haven’t been by the aquarium often enough lately?”

“No,” Koenraad said honestly.
 

Darius smiled. If Koenraad hadn’t known better, he really would have bought the whole avuncular act. But he did know better.

He also knew he’d be wise to play along. Maybe Darius would accidentally spill something of use.

Unlikely, but possible.
 

“You’d be right,” Darius said. “In fact, I’m meeting Victoria here.”

Koenraad repressed a shudder. He didn’t want to run into her. “Why here?”

Darius smiled. “How often do you see shifters here? Never. The island is overrun with shifters, and this is the one place I can have a conversation without being overheard.”

“How about your house? Your office?” He looked around. “Where are your bodyguards? Or don’t you trust them anymore?”

“It’s family business,” Darius said. “I don’t want rumors.” He looked at Koenraad as if he were contemplating telling him something important.
 

Koenraad decided to take the bait. “Rumors about what?”

“I’m dying,” he said.
 

Koenraad didn’t believe it for a second. “You don’t look like you’re dying. And you don’t smell like you’re dying.”

“Nonetheless, I am. I’ve had four heart surgeries in the last five months. My body tries to repair the damage, but it’s working from a flawed blueprint, according to my doctor. Each surgery tries a more drastic correction.”

Koenraad nodded. Yeah, this was the biggest load of whale shit he’d heard in a long time. “So it’s a secret, and you’re meeting with Victoria out here?”

“She’s my only heir,” Darius said, sounding disappointed about it.
 

“That doesn’t explain the location. You could have gone a million other places.”

“Why not here?” Darius asked, irritated. “It’s soothing.”

Koenraad was trying to decide on a follow-up question that might anger Darius into giving something away when an ear-piercing scream shattered the calmness of the morning.

Koenraad recognized the voice immediately.

He knew exactly where it was coming from.

And he knew he was so very screwed.

Victoria had found Brady.

Chapter 17

Victoria’s screams reverberated in Koenraad’s skull. She sounded like she was on the edge of complete hysterics.

Employees rushed toward the area, but Koenraad and Darius pushed past all of them. For a shifter with a supposedly bad ticker, Darius was awfully light on his feet.
 

Koenraad plowed through the door to the room containing the holding tank. “Out!” he said to the employees who were already there. “Out, now!”

Their obedience was proof that giving an order in a commanding voice was enough to compel people to listen.

Koenraad ushered out the last of the employees and locked the door.

Darius was already on the upper level. When Koenraad got up there, Darius turned to him, and Koenraad had to admit that the shifter looked helpless.

Then Darius stepped aside, and Koenraad saw Victoria.

She was doubled over, naked and soaking wet. Her hunched shoulders shuddered with ragged breaths.

When she saw Koenraad, fury transformed her beautiful face into a nightmare.
 

“How fucking
dare
you!” she screamed as she staggered to her feet. Her voice caught on itself, so great was her emotion. She was also starting to shift, her brow receding, her teeth sharpening, and it gargled her words.

Darius suddenly pulled himself together. He covered the distance to his niece in a short moment, drew back his hand and slapped her hard enough across her face that the impact sent her sprawling to the floor.
 

When she looked up, her anger was just as fierce, but she’d mastered control of herself.
 

“You fucking bastard,” she hissed to Koenraad. “He was here all along. You let me think he was lost.”

“What are you talking about, Victoria?” Darius demanded.
 

“Can’t you smell anything?” she snapped. “I caught Koenraad’s scent and followed it to this room.”

“Yeah, I come in here,” Koenraad said. If Darius couldn’t smell Brady, then Koenraad was going to use that to his advantage. He would deny everything, let Victoria look insane. Darius already thought she was obsessed, so the battle was half won. “I was here yesterday,” he admitted. “My parents asked me to—”

“And Brady was also here, in this tank,” she said to Darius. “Koenraad moved him within the last hour.”

“I just got here,” Koenraad said. It wasn’t hard to sound confused. Brady couldn’t have gotten away. The idea was preposterous. There was nowhere for Brady to go.

Just like when Brady shouldn’t have gotten out of the inlet
, he thought, cold dread crawling along his skin.

Darius was watching him. He returned the shifter’s gaze with a baffled shrug.

Victoria’s hands clenched in her hair, close to the scalp. Her face had turned so florid that Koenraad suddenly understood the cartoon trope about steam shooting out of ears. If some of the pressure didn’t escape, she seemed liable to explode.

And the way she was looking at him… She
knew
. No matter how he handled Darius, no matter how the next few minutes played out, there was nothing on earth that would convince Victoria of anything but the truth that she smelled with her own nose.

What stunned him was that she seemed to actually care. He guessed she was angry at being fooled.
 

“I don’t smell Brady,” Koenraad said evenly. “Darius doesn’t smell him. You’re the only one who does.”

“Darius can hardly smell anything—” She leapt to her feet, grabbed the lapels of Darius’s suit and shoved him into the water.

He landed with a splash.

Koenraad took a step forward as Darius surfaced. His fedora floated peacefully several yards away.

Executing a neat breaststroke, Darius swam to the hat with a surprising amount of grace and dignity considering what had just happened. He collected his hat and delivered it to the side of the tank.

He did not, however, immediately get out.

Koenraad strode forward and offered Darius a hand.

“I’m already wet. Might as well take a look around,” Darius said. He removed his clothing and tossed it onto the concrete, where it sat in a sopping mess. Then, in the blink of an eye, he shifted into an enormous shark.
 

He floated at the surface for a moment, his dark eyes staring murderously at Victoria. Koenraad could smell her fear; it resonated like a strident bell in the room’s calmness.
 

But she didn’t stand down. “Do you smell him?” she challenged. “Or are you so useless—”

Her degrading taunt was left unfinished because with a graceful undulation, Darius vanished under the surface.

Koenraad began counting the seconds.
One. Two. Three. Four.
 

Still no Darius.

Sweat rolled down Koenraad’s face.
 

“You bastard,” Victoria repeated over and over. “How
could
you?”

“You’re hallucinating,” Koenraad said, his voice steady. “If I knew where Brady was, I would have told everyone.”

Darius launched himself into the air. He shifted human the moment his tail cleared the water’s surface, and he landed in an elegant walk.

“Did you smell him?” Victoria asked.

“There was a shark in there,” Darius said. “But I don’t think it was Brady. I’m sorry.”
 

And then Koenraad found himself flying sideways.

Tackled by Victoria.

They landed in a thrashing jumble of limbs and snarling bites.
 

“Children,” Darius admonished lazily. Koenraad was certain he heard amusement in his voice.
 

Victoria raked her nails down Koenraad’s cheek, and he smelled his blood well up in the troughs she’d left behind.

Of course he would heal, was already healing.
 

He tried to catch her wrists but she was fast, and he only got one of them. In trying to catch the other, his hand inadvertently brushed up against her bare breast.

“You want to fuck me,” she said as she ground her hips against him. “A human mate is no mate at all. In six months you’ll be begging me to challenge her, to put you out of your misery.”

“That’s quite enough,” Darius said, and this time the amusement was gone.

Koenraad flipped Victoria onto her back. “If you ever come near my mate, I will personally rip you from limb to limb.”

There was a metallic creaking noise that Koenraad didn’t immediately identify, nor did he connect it to the swelling sound of water surging through a hose.

Then he and Victoria were both washed into the pool, and he caught a glimpse of an irritated Darius aiming the hose’s flood their way.

Victoria had already shifted, and she was coming right for him.

It was a strange time to think of his clothing, but he couldn’t very well walk through the aquarium and to his car in the buff.
 

All he needed were his pants.

He kicked off his shoes and fumbled with his belt, pausing only to strike a blow to the side of Victoria’s head as she charged him.

The thing about sharks, as he’d explained many times, in vain, to Monroe, was that the moment they were biting, they were essentially blind. When a shark employed its most lethal weapon, it was at its most vulnerable.

And Victoria was gnashing blindly.
 

If he’d been a human, she’d have killed him within seconds. But he wasn’t human. He was a shifter. Fast. Strong. And even when her razor-sharp teeth raked across his forearm, it merely sliced his skin superficially.
 

Already the tissue was knotting together.

He yanked off his pants and immediately shifted into a shark. His shirt was reduced to strips of cloth.

Victoria aborted her furious charge. Now she wasn’t dealing with a 6’5” shifter in human form. For anyone, attacking a dominant shark of over twenty feet in length was a serious proposition. If she rushed him and missed, he could easily whirl, take an enormous chunk out of her, then come back and finish her.

Koenraad knew exactly how debilitating that would be. Shark bites hurt like hell.

As she retreated, he took a moment to cast about for Brady.

He assumed his son was hiding somewhere in the back of the tank, and that was how he’d escaped detection by Victoria and Darius.
 

He just hoped Brady wasn’t witnessing any of this.

Victoria started a charge, then veered off long before she was within biting range.
 

The truth was that if the two of them tried to kill each other, the outcome would be uncertain. Even though Victoria’s human form was anything but physically threatening, she was almost twenty feet long as a shark.

Koenraad was the outlier. The biggest sharks were usually the females, but males ran larger in some family lines.
 

One thing Koenraad knew for sure. He wasn’t leaving Victoria alone in the tank. If she checked more thoroughly, she’d find Brady, and that would be the end of that.

For the sin of hiding Brady from the boy’s criminally neglectful mother, Koenraad would be restricted to infrequent, supervised visits.

And if Brady attacked another human, he’d be put to death. Victoria would have absolutely no problem carrying out that sentence.
 

If Koenraad told her to be careful, to keep an eye on him?

No, he didn’t see that going well.
 

She swam back and forth, her tail flicking angrily at the completion of each traverse.
 

This was his chance to kill her.
 

Or to try.

But then it would be over. Monroe would be safe. His family wouldn’t have to hide anymore. And Darius was a witness. Victoria had started this fight.
 

He didn’t know if he would win, but he had to try.

Koenraad’s streamlined body hurtled through the water, his teeth ready to slash, his eyes fixed on the kill.

He wouldn’t let her get away this time.

Chapter 18

Victoria didn’t move at all for a moment.

And then she did.

Koenraad expected her to meet his charge, but she surprised him by fleeing toward the back of the tank.

He gave chase.

She whipped to the right, skimmed along the side of the glass. He could smell her fear now. Apparently she’d never expected he would come at her so readily.

That mistake would cost her.

She nearly slammed into the glass where it curved, and at the last minute she arched for the surface. Realizing her tactical error, she practically jackknifed down.

Now she headed straight for the area where Koenraad estimated Brady was hiding.
 

Could Brady see?

And if he did?
 

Even if he didn’t, once Victoria’s blood touched the water, Brady would know… And Koenraad wanted to teach his son not to attack, not to kill.
 

Koenraad hadn’t even decided to change his mind, but he was already slowing. He suddenly realized something. Victoria and Darius hadn’t missed seeing Brady because he was actively hiding from them.

The young shifter was somehow… gone.

It made no sense. Koenraad could
smell
him, smell that he’d been here much more recently than the hour Victoria had estimated.
 

In fact, Brady’s scent was so strong that Koenraad would have bet money that Brady was still in the tank.