Page 18 of Fated to the Fang

"Movement."

"Where?"

"Other side of the shed. Gone now."

The shed door moves.

Not swings. Moves, like something on the other side has breathed against it. O gets one frame before the door slams open and a man steps out where no man should have been. Too pale. Too still. Wet dark at his mouth. His gaze drops to the collars in my hand first, then at me.

"Avery," O says.

"Boat," I tell him.

The man moves.

There is no middle to it. One second he is by the shed, the next O is thrown sideways into the gravel, camera skidding hard enough to crack the casing. I swing the tag reader because it is the only thing in my hand. He catches my wrist before the blow lands, and his fingers are cold enough to make my bones ache.

Then Dorian is there.

He comes from the rocks beyond the shed, crossing ground no body should cross that fast, and drives the man away from me with a hit that sends both of them into the station wall. Wood splits. Rust flakes from the roof. I stumble back, clutching my wrist, and every explanation I have been using dies at once.

"Get to the boat," Dorian says.

"How are you here?"

"Now, Avery."

The man lunges again. Dorian catches him by the throat one-handed and slams him into the rail hard enough to bend iron. The thing laughs through broken teeth.

"He wants her curious," it says.

Dorian's face goes empty in a way that scares me more than anger would. "Who?"

The man's hand closes around something black at his chest. Dorian reaches too late. The shell cracks. The body jerks, and whatever was inside him goes slack, erased from behind the eyes before it can answer.

Dorian lets him fall.

I stare at the bent rail. At the split wall. At the impossible distance between the rocks and where he stands now.

"That was not adrenaline," I say.

His eyes come to mine. "No."

"Then explain it."

A horn cuts across the water, thin and wrong.

Dorian's head turns toward the channel. Whatever answer he was about to give disappears.

"Get O to the boat," he says.

"Dorian—"

"Now."

He is gone before I can ask how. Not running. Not leaving in any way a body should be able to leave. One blink, and the rocks beyond the shed are empty.

People are clustered at the stern in bright waterproof jackets, all of them standing when no crew would let tourists stand on that chop.