Page 29

" G ot any other brilliant ideas?” My beast mocked.

I rolled my eyes where I was hiding in the murky black waters that had been concealing me.

Another tentacle came hurtling down through the inky darkness and sent me skittering across the ocean floor like a damn leaf. “ This is all according to plan. ” I grunted when a large rock jabbed into my hip.

The cat all but yawned. “ Is it indeed? ”

“Are you taking a cat nap? Why don't you just choke on a fur ball instead while you're at it.” Dry words…serious words.

“What would you have me do? I’m bored and you're scurrying around on the seafloor like that jackalope I ate a week ago.” He said haughtily. “Which reminds me. I’m famished.”

“Who in the fuck says famished?”

“Cultured beings…unlike that disgusting Kraken you seem to be playing with.” He yawned again. “I told you not to trust that water fae bitch.”

Another tentacle sweep barely missed my head, sending me further along the ocean floor along with the muck. Only stopping when my back bumped into something slender and hard.

A grin spread across my face. “Did you just say bitch?”

The beast stilled, blissfully quiet for a moment. “Apologies, all this water is getting to me.”

I chuckled evilly. “Perhaps, I’ll make The Under my next vacation home.”

No response.

“Cowardly pussy!” Cronin yelled in frustration after another attempt to crush me using his blubbery arms. “Falcon, was right to turn on you.”

Falcon . I gripped the hard slender objects, baring my teeth in the darkness, and my heart thundered with rage.

Unlike my shifter brethren, natural bloodlust was never the cause of lost control for me…it was the blazing golden power inside that I feared.

“ You’re welcome. ” The beast yawned again.

Ignoring him, I breathed in the bloodlust. Embraced it. Seized it. I was fucking hungry for it. Hungry for blood. The price of my one hundred year old revenge.

“Oh yes, I like this way of thinking.” The cat perked up.

“Playtime is over.” My claws extended and my fangs lengthened.

With a loud wrench I yanked off the rib bone of the lochness carcass I had been gripping. Sending a sickening crack through the still waters.

“There you are, kitty cat.” Cronin roared, clumsily attacking my position.

A feral grin etched across my face and I roared back, thrusting the lochness rib upwards into the darkness and straight into the rubber appendage of Cronin’s tentacles.

Muscling over the curved portion of the rib, Cronin wrenched his appendage back with a painful wail. Suddenly, I was catapulted out of the darkness and into the light.

“ Poetry. ” Purred the cat .

I smirked. Whether it was at the cat’s sarcastic wit or the grotesque widening of Cronin’s red eyes in seeing me dangling like a worm on a hook in front of him, I didn’t know.

I tilted my head. “You know Cronin, whenever we see each other, I can never decide which cluster of eyes I should look at.” I snickered before I sliced my makeshift weapon downward, flaying his tentacle in two.

Cronin roared with pain, his split limb flailing uselessly in the water, releasing bits of white blubber and bright red blood into the soft flowing ocean.

Satisfied, I brandished the lochness rib and hissed with my fangs. “I thought you'd look better with nine thingys rather than eight.” I wiggled my claws at him. “Mistake that, you’re still fucking ugly as ever.”

I didn’t have a death wish but my life was filled with nothing but.

“And it’s just the beginning.” The cat snorted.

I didn’t move when one of Cronin’s functional appendages snapped outward and curled around me in a crushing grip.

I braced against the pain of the mounting pressure—my arms were still free, Cronin’s biggest mistake that I had bet on.

“I could snap you like a fucking twig and destroy you, you golden prick.” Cronin spat, molting gray skin flaking off of him with each agitated movement of his bird-like beak.

“How uneventful.” I leaned back into my free arms, the rib bone still clutched firmly in my grip and gritted against the painful squeezing of his tentacle.

“You’re right, I like the idea of eating you alive—listening to your screams while I do.”

“Oh goddess, not that.” I wiggled and thrashed against his grip, my eyes widening with mock terror.

“ If that's acting then I'm a mangey dog. ” The cat snorted.

Cronin’s laughter stirred the ocean current.

“ Nah, you just have to know your audience.” I brought my hands together, the rib bone pleading with me. “Please, please don’t eat me!”

Cronin’s laughter continued, amused by my begging. “As if I would grant such a request! I stopped following you blindly long ago, you golden prick. Looks like it’s going to be cat for dinner!”

I couldn’t hold back the gag from his rancid breath as I was brought to the underbelly of the kraken beast. His beak opened and closed rapidly while multiple rows of tiny razor sharp teeth gnashed back and forth in anticipation of their meal.

My grin grew the closer I came to the ominous clicking and sawing of teeth.

Raising the lochness spear high above my head I stabbed downward with a vicious roar, my beast's voice echoing within, and Cronin's sharp wails joining shortly after.

Ripping the makeshift weapon out, I repeatedly stabbed at the tentacle until it started to unravel away from me.

Fully free, I pumped my legs hard, the rib raised high, launching myself straight into serrated jaws of doom.

“This was your plan? ” The cat drawled.

“Did you expect anything less!” I roared back at him and braced before entering the kraken’s lethal mouth.

Streamlining my body, I clenched my jaw against the cracking of my scales from his sawing teeth, and gripped the lochness bone harder.

Roaring one more time, I entered into the darkness, pumping all my strength into my legs to shoot through his body like a knife through butter.

“I may not have thought this all the way through.” I choked on the hot viscous guts pouring out around me.

The beast snorted. “Clearly.”

Snarling, a final push popped me through to the other side of his blubbery body.

Spinning, I took my first fresh breath of clean water, listening to Cronin keen in pain while a trail of his thick dark blood oozed from his punctured body.

When I caught sight of movement in the water below, I narrowed my eyes and raised the rib bone defensively up in front of me. Tracking its movements, I chuckled darkly when it sprung into my view.

“Hello, my little fiends.” I lowered my makeshift weapon.

Deadly dark shadows split through the blood tinged water and brushed happily against my scales. I laughed as they rustled my hair playfully and then dove back down, swallowing part of the kraken in their wake.

“I tried telling you that help was coming. Instead you decided to be swallowed by a kraken. I seriously hope you do not come up with any other brilliant plans.” The beast rattled.

I barely heard him, searching for the familiar scent or stunning vision of my soulmate that never came.

“ She has survived this long without us. We will find her again. ” My beast attempted to reassure me.

“ Remnant shouldn’t have to survive anymore. ” I growled back. “ She should be living .”

Looking past the feasting shadows, towards the hidden lochness remains, I thoughtfully held up its rib bone before me.

“To the life given and the life taken too soon, the darkness will avenge you.” Releasing the bone, I allowed it to sink heavily back down into the murky water, passing by the shadows taking chunk after chunk out of the kraken like a school of flesh eating piranhas, to find some sort of peace within this forsaken place.

Glancing back at Cronin, I watched death glaze over his red beady eyes right before they were completely swallowed up by the shadows dark abyss.

“Well done, umbras.” I purred towards them and grinned when they rushed to entwine around my legs before flipping off of me in an acrobatic show of terrifying shadow.

“I assume your beautiful master sent you and that since you’re still here, she is not in any immediate danger.”

They swirled around me playfully in response, then coiled up my arm once more.

“I will take that as a yes.” I chuckled and stroked their shadowy form, cradling them in my arms like a baby cub. “What would you say to a little dessert, my beautiful little fiends?”

Darkness embraced me—only to be enhanced by the echo of my baleful laughter.