opaque in the cloudy light. The tide sighed and murmured over the rocks, leaving behind bowls of rich water brimming with
life.
He rolled his shoulders, the tension leaching from his muscles. Head erect, he strode over the deserted strand, shedding the
things that constrained him in human form: shoes, sweater, pants, worry, conscience. The finfolk were powerful shifters, and
he was their lord. He could transform even his outer garments. But tonight he wanted nothing between him and his element.
He splashed through pockets and pools of water, his world revealing itself in stages, blue-green algae clinging like shadows
to the rocks, small, complex fortresses of periwinkles and barnacles, rubbery mats of sea wrack and Irish moss.
The water seized his ankles like cold manacles in the dark. His balls tightened. He grinned fiercely and waded forward, the
warden‟s medallion at his throat shining like a second moon.
The ocean surged to receive him, rustling around his knees, lapping at his thighs. He shook back his hair and dived, holding
his breath against the shock of cold, the painful ecstasy, into the clear salt dark, into the pulse and surge and curl of the water,
letting the joy take him, letting the water take him, one with the joy and the water.
Home.
Free.
His boundaries blurred and dissolved. His bones melted, stretched, fused. The pulse of the waves became his pulse, the
heart of the ocean, his beating heart. He felt the Change rip through him like another pain, another ecstasy, tearing, convulsive,
consuming as climax.
He retained just enough of his human mind to shape the Change as the hand of a potter shapes the clay. He was speed, size,
strength, he was death in the water. He was the wolf of the ocean, Orcinus , seal killer, whale killer, killer whale. Scent
disappeared. Sound enveloped him, vibrating through his bones, echoing in his head.
He plunged and breached, his breath a cloud, exhalation and exultation. He rocketed through the rushing dark, out-racing
human thought and the oily taint of humans in the water, propelled by cold and energy.
Home.
Free.
The lash of heat flicked like a whip across his belly. He reared, rolled, fearless and confused. He was predator, not prey.
Yet even in orca form he recognized ENEMY.
Human? No.
He reached out with questing thoughts and rapid clicks, received them back as echoes in the dark. He felt the heat rising
like a plume, like a stain, like blood from the broken breast of earth. A sea vent, he realized, on the ocean floor, seeping heat
and malice.
“ I feel your frustration, finfolk lord, even in the depths of Hell. Why do you not take what you need? ”
Gau. He recognized the source of heat, the voice in his head. The demon lord Gau, Hell‟s emissary to Sanctuary, an old
acquaintance and sometimes adversary who served the prince of Hell as Morgan served the prince of the sea. They knew each
other well, fellow elementals equal in age and power, pride and position. They understood each other.
Perhaps too well, Morgan acknowledged. For in the demon lord, Morgan recognized his own lust for survival, his own
personal ambition.
He bent his thoughts downward to the vent. “ Gau. I thought we buried you. ”
The demon‟s amusement curled upward like smoke. “I am immortal. Remarkably hard to snuff. Didn’t I see you go down
with the wall on Sanctuary?”
The previous winter, the children of fire had attacked the merfolk‟s island. Morgan had stood with Conn on the walls of
Sanctuary when an eruption of the earth‟s crust had turned the sea itself against them, sending a great wave down like a
hammer on the castle.
“ I am finfolk, ” he returned blandly. “ Remarkably hard to drown. ”
“Ah, yes, I remember. You saved your lord that day and got small thanks for it.”
Surprising the resentment that stirred. Or not so surprising, Morgan reflected, trying to shield his thoughts. Gau was very
good at his work.
“Better thanks, I am sure, than you received from your lord for your defeat.”
A hiss of fire, another flash of heat.
“ Your lord is weak, ” Gau spat. “He allies himself with weakness to the detriment of all your kind.”