She looked deeper. Their lives pulsed, vivid and terrified. She couldn’t see their animal sides like this—she wasn’t Irina Diaz, peering into strangers’ souls—but hey, if she could freak them out enough, maybe they’d break. Like she always did.
She felt powerful, and awful, like she was fully stepping into her own body at last. Being herself.
Or being someone else.
Maybe that was better.
“We’re rats! Rat shifters. That’s all. Most of the crew are.”
“Stop talking to her!” The second guard raised his weapon in a way that told Carol he had no idea what he was doing. Plus, he was backing away. “You’re not meant to talk to her! We’re just going to do this job and go, that’s what you said!”
“What job?”
“Ohgod,” he whimpered. His back hit the door.
“What job?” Carol repeated. She wasn’t even sure why she was asking. But the question seemed effective.
“I thought it was going to be coke and babes! Crewing a cruise ship? We’ve seenBelow Deck!It’s meant to be all drugs and fucking and weird rich people! Not—fucking—we’re rats! And we can’t even ditch this fucking ship because we’re in the fuck end of nowhere and we’llfreeze!”
“…Huh.” Carol put her teeth away. “You’re not in on this with him?”
“In onwhat?Creepy bird people with knives on their wings? You? No offense. I didn’t mean you. I mean—I’m sure you’re, like, you’re a great person, not an actual vampire, and you’re not going to rip my throat out or eat my heart or—”
“Geez, okay.” She put her hands up and took a step back, reconsidered, then grabbed his gun off him. He let it go with a whimper. “You’re not even trained to deal with someone likeme? I thoughtIhad no idea, but you… Is this even loaded?”
“I really hope not.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
It’s all fake. The fancy-ass library, the guards, Fairchild’s kindness…No. His kindness wasn’tkind, but what he thought he was doing? That was all real. And he believed in it.
So why fill a ship with guards who didn’t know what the hell they were doing?
“What about the rest of the ship?”
“Look, lady—miss—ma’am…”
“No one else knows what’s going on,” the other guard admitted in a wary undertone. “I’ve asked around. We’re all shifters. None of us can swim good, or fly, so we’re all stuck with the job until it’s over, so fuckingdo your job,Joe,and stop telling her all this shit!”
Big words from someone who’d just spilled the beans about his colleagues.
Everyone on the boat was a shifter. But in a world of people who could turn into fish, or marine mammals, or birds, Fairchild had hired a crew with no way of getting off the ship.
They were all trapped. Carol swore.
“He’s going to feed you to this thing too, isn’t he?”
“N-no—”
“What thing?”
“Get your gun back off her, you dipshit!”
Carol raised one eyebrow and held out the gun. “Joe” took it with shaking hands. “Where’s the getaway ride?”
The two guards exchanged nervous glances. She sighed.
It turned out the downside to embracing your terrifying, nightmarish self… was that sometimes you terrified a pair of dumbasses who were as much victims of the situation as you were.
“Just—guard me from outside, okay?”
