Under His Skin (19 page)

“No, the
toos
don’t have any bone along that line. That’s where their dorsal fin is. Even when they take human form, they keep that dorsal fin on top of their heads and the mouth on their backs.”

The rowboat tapped the dock and Brec lowered the oars.
Ana sat there mulling over the new information as Brec tied the boat to the dock.

“I’ve never met a
toos
before,” she murmured, half to herself.

“They like their privacy,” Brec agreed, a hint of anger crawling into his voice. “If the fins on their heads weren’t such a pain to hide, they’d probably come up onto land for more victims instead of just feasting on my people.”

Ana stared at the
toos
’
body.
Somehow the anger in Brec’s voice seemed wrong when the man was lying not ten feet away from them, unconscious and naked.

“He’s lucky those fishermen found him.”

Brec paused with his hands on the dock. He stared at her with his eyebrows furrowed. “Ana, they’re the ones who cut it off.”

Shocked, Ana let her jaw drop as Brec hauled himself out of the boat. “What do you
mean,
they’re the ones who cut it off? Why would they do that? Were they selkies? Was it revenge? Why would they bring him to you to be healed?”

At first Brec didn’t answer her. She watched as he bent over
Mano
, quickly inspecting him for further damage. After a moment, he picked up the unconscious man and after a little awkward stumbling, got his balance and began walking back toward Ana’s cabin.

“Can you bring the fish with you? I’ll explain everything after we get him back inside.”

Ana stared down at the bottom of the boat at the dead fish.
Images of men walking around on land with dorsal fins on their heads and gaping shark jaws on their backs danced across her mind, colored with blood and gruesome musings on what had happened to
Mano
. What a terrifying experience he must have had. She’d lost her skin to fire, but she hadn’t been wearing it when it was burned. What would it have been like to have part of her body brutally cut off? Would she have survived as
Mano
did?

Shaking her head at the turn her life had taken, Ana bent and picked up the fish by
it’s
thick tail. Setting it down on the dock, she climbed up the wooden ladder, retrieved the fish and started walking after Brec. With all the excitement surrounding the
toos
, perhaps Brec would be distracted enough for her to retrieve her skin.

She stared down at the fish, her mind drifting back to
Mano
. First she would find out what had happened to him. If she could be of any help, she’d assist Brec in nursing the
toos
back to the point where he could safely return to his home in the sea. Maybe if she did something good for someone else, Alaunus would see it make her spell would work.

Brec shifted
Mano
in his arms, trying to keep his head up as much as possible so the blood didn’t rush to his wound. Juggling a man with a mouth full of teeth on his back was one of the more challenging things he’d ever done, but as long as he kept one arm just under
Mano’s
shoulders and the other under his knees, he should be fine.

Of course, it might still be prudent to keep his attention on the
toos
instead of letting it wander to the peculiar woman walking behind him carrying a dead fish. Brec’s shoulders stiffened as he fought the urge to turn around and look at Ana again.

As it always did, the caress of the sea had cleared his mind. After swimming in the icy depths, hunting fish and just enjoying having a simple goal again, he felt sharper and more alert. For the past two days, he’d been viewing Ana as an enemy. He’d struggled with his conscience trying to figure out a way to force information from her without making his skin crawl and his sensibilities crack. Every time she spoke a kind word, or showed a vulnerable emotion, his plan wavered and his goal became more difficult to attain. He’d never stopped looking at her as the enemy—until now.

What a fool he was. Clearly Ana was not a bad person, not some evil creature bent on causing pain and misery. She had the urge to heal and a strong sense of right and wrong. If she was doing something as horrible as stealing skins, she must have a reason. The fact that she’d refused to share that reason thus far, even when she knew that she’d remain a prisoner in her own home until she gave up her secret, should have told him from the beginning that whatever her reason was, it was personal.

And what did he do? He demanded she tell him. Two days ago he’d showed up in her room, waving a blade around and threatening to skin her, and he’d just expected her to spill her precious secrets because he asked?

His mind replayed how Ana had rushed to retrieve armfuls of healing herbs, trying to anticipate his needs before he’d even asked her. He thought of the healing texts in her room, and the anger she’d shown when she thought he was being cruel to his patient. All this time, she’d been showing signs of wanting to be a healer and he’d never realized just what an opportunity was staring him right in the face.

Ana rushed ahead of him to open the door to her cabin and he smiled as he made his way inside with the unconscious
toos
still in his arms.

“I’m going to take him up to your spare bedroom, if that’s all right?”

Ana nodded.
“Of course.”
She gestured awkwardly at the fish. “Uh, what do you want me to do with this?”

“Grab some
gotu
kola and bring it and the fish up to the spare room. The
gotu
kola should give him enough energy to wake up and eat.”

He watched her walk into the kitchen and
retrieve
the herb, chuckling at how she paused to frown at the fish in her hand. She must have heard him laugh because she glanced up.

“Are you laughing at me?” she demanded.

The twitch in her lips betrayed her amusement and Brec nodded. “It is sort of funny to watch you carry around a dead fish.”

“Yeah, hysterical,” Ana grumbled good-naturedly. “It even smells funny.”

Brec laughed again and together, they went upstairs and got the
toos
situated on the bed.
Ana frowned as Brec settled
Mano
on his stomach.

“Why are you putting him on his stomach?”

The uneasy tone in her voice drew Brec’s attention to her injured fingers. He stepped back and gently took the fish and the
gotu
kola from her hands.

“I’m going to stuff the fish with the
gotu
kola,” he explained, keeping his voice calm and reassuring. “Then I’m going to drag it over the teeth in the mouth on his back and hope instinct takes over. The
gotu
kola combined with the energy from the food should be enough to bring him back to consciousness. Then we can start feeding him more like a human.”

Ana shifted her weight to her other foot, the look on her face clearly conveying her discomfort with the idea. “Can’t we just make the
gotu
kola into a liquid and pour it down his throat? Wouldn’t that wake him up enough to eat?”

Brec nodded. “That’s plan B. But this way would be faster.”

He began stuffing the herbs into the mouth of the fish.

“So you said you’d explain what happened to him,” Ana spoke up.

Brec paused, glancing at the
toos
. As much as he hated the shark people, even he had to admit that what the fishermen had done to
Mano
made his skin crawl.

“They caught him when he was in shark form and cut off his dorsal fin,” Brec answered quietly. Anger burned inside him and this time it wasn’t aimed at the
toos
. “Shark fin soup is a very expensive delicacy in
Asia
. Fishermen throw the rest of the shark’s body back into the sea so they’ll have room for more fins. The shark can’t swim without its dorsal fin so it drowns.”

“That can’t be legal,” Ana said.

The very suggestion that any human could mutilate an animal and then leave it to die seemed to horrify her, and Brec became even more convinced that Ana was not as evil as he had once imagined her to be.

“It’s not legal. But the money to be made from shark fins is too great to pass up for a lot of fishermen.”

“So cutting off his fin made him change to human form?”

Brec shook his head. “No. He likely took human form in an attempt to get the fishermen to pull him into their boat and take him to a healer. Without the dorsal fin on his head, he would have looked human as long as he kept the mouth on his back closed. With no teeth showing, the mouth just looks like a strange scar.”

“What about his own people? Couldn’t they have helped him?”

Now Brec had to laugh. It was a short humorless sound, brought on by images of the Spartan-like
toos
culture. “His own people would have eaten him if he’d been weak enough. The
toos
value strength and power above all else. Eating one of their own
kind
is a quick way to gain status.”

Ana’s lips parted as she stared at him. Brec raised an eyebrow.
“Still angry with me for the cayenne pepper?”

Immediately her eyes narrowed and Brec almost stepped back in surprise at the sudden anger that tightened her face. Before he could even try to compensate for his slip of the tongue,
Mano
began to thrash on the table.

Brec shouted as he jumped back, briefly registering the way the blood had drained from Ana’s face when the
toos
’
body started convulsing. When he was certain Ana was out of harm’s way, he focused his attention on his patient. It took less than ten seconds to realize what was happening.

Mano’s
skin turned grey before the flesh along the shark mouth on his back paled to white and the skin above it turned black. Dark blotches marred the white flesh and his two black bottomless eyes moved forward on a face that was steadily becoming more cone-shaped. His hair vanished and his legs fused together as his shark form roared from within his human body. His hands and arms flattened into fins. In what had only been a matter of minutes, Ana and Brec stood staring at a fully grown male salmon shark.

Ana screamed as the shark jerked its tail around, the torpedo shaped body nearly tumbling off the bed as the wide open jaws closed on thin air. In shark form, the
toos
was at least nine feet long. His tail extended off the bed, only the heavy weight of its torso keeping it off the floor. The mattress creaked and groaned as over four hundred pounds of shark strained its springs.

“What is he doing?”
Ana shrieked.
She stared at his back. “His dorsal fin only sticks out an inch, it hasn’t healed yet!”

“He’s suffocating, that’s what he’s doing,” Brec said loudly. He walked up to where the shark’s eyes could see him. “We can’t carry you to the water, you’re too heavy. You’re going to die if you don’t change back.”

The shark savagely thrust from one side to another. Brec didn’t know if
Mano
was trying to leverage himself off the bed, or if he was struggling to take on his human form again. Either way, things didn’t seem to be going well.

“Come on,
Mano
,” Ana urged. “You have to take human form again. You can do this, I know you can. You have to let us help you. We’ll heal you and you can go back to the water. You have to trust us.”

Brec’s jaw dropped as the
toos
began to twitch and the black shiny skin of its back began to lighten. As if some deity was rewinding reality like a motion picture, the transformation process reversed itself.
Mano’s
tail split and formed two legs, his fins thinned into arms and hands, and his entire body shrank down to form the muscular human body that had first arrived at Ana’s in a bloody sheet.

When it was all over,
Mano
lie on the bed, pale and covered in sweat. He sucked in air as if he hadn’t taken a breath in hours, the sound of oxygen being dragged into his desperate lungs almost painful to Brec’s ears. He gave the
toos
time to catch his breath, holding the lecture he was obligated to give in the grand tradition of healers everywhere.