Elias grips the sword tight to his chest and shudders as he hears the screams of terror. The Catamaran rocks as the passengers scramble to get back in the passenger cabin. How did I get here? He frets. I am the only one with a weapon. I’m just a scrawny kid that ran to the Catamaran from a creature of the night to be safe for a few more hours. He considered grabbing an armload of weapons to hand out to the passengers, that must be why he was assigned them right?

His feet move against his will, carrying him toward danger. Why am I doing this? How can I just leave them up there to fend for themselves though? He tries to fight down his internal argument and imagines what his dad would have done in his younger days. He drudges up a memory of his father from when he was a small child, from a time when he admired his father when he saw him as a powerful man.

His mother had run home scared in the rain. She had desperation in her eyes like a mouse cornered by a cat. Elias had been playing on the floor with his Brave Heart warrior toy. Several men were outside in the rain calling out to his mother. She screamed and cried out in such a way that Elias ran to her and clung to her leg.

Elias peeked out from behind his mother's leg to the men outside the window. They were jeering and angry. They walked determinedly toward the front door of the house. Then he saw his father walk around from the back of the house. He must have been working on the old truck he was fixing up to sell because he carried a large wrench clenched tight in his hand. He was shirtless, not an enormous man but well-built muscles rippled as he stormed the men. Rain had soaked his long hair to the sides of his face and his beard dripped large drops with each step.

Elias dug his fingernails into the back of his mother’s leg as his father swung the wrench like a backhand slap across the first man’s face. Without breaking stride, he slammed his forehead into the bridge of the next man’s nose, dropping him to the ground with a splash. The last man towered over his father and his father came to a stop looking up at the man.

Elias whined and covered his eyes briefly afraid to see his father so close to the big man. He peeked out again to see his father spit in the man’s face. The big man swung a fist like a boulder down at his face and crumbled as a barrage of fist, knees, and wrench went to work on his body. It was a blur to Elias but every strike that his father made seemed to bend and contort the man’s body in a smooth inevitable descent toward the ground. Like his father was bending a copper rod with the precise blows of a hammer.

“That is what I need to be right now EverAm. A hammer like my father used to be. Either that or make me the monster he is now. Just don’t let me get lost in it like he is.” Elias continues to walk toward the door leading out of the captain’s cabin as he lifts the vial to his lips.

The cool liquid soothes his tongue and throat as it goes down. He steps back out on the deck as several passengers dive off the boat into the water. Many others are smashing their way through the small doorway leading to the passenger cabin. Several gunshots ring through the air and Elias turns to see the short man in the fancy suit firing out into the darkness. He is snarling and his two bodyguards are testing makeshift weapons. One settles on a fishing gaff, a long pole with a hook on the end to drag in large fish. The other is struggling to free the chain that attaches to the anchor.

Elias sees a pair of feet dangling above the door he had just walked out of and looks up to see a red-haired man sitting on the roof of the captain’s cabin. He smiles down at Elias and pets his overgrown wiry beard with his hand. “Need any ‘elp friend? I’, a fair shaht, er I kin cloehb im fer ya.”

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Elias can hardly understand the man, so he just shakes his head. He fights to channel his father’s fierceness into his mind.

The red-haired man nods, “I dahn’t mend a show. I’ll be ‘ere if ya need me, joehst shooeht.”

Elias turns toward the sound of the charging creature in the darkness. All of this has been under a minute and Angel stands stock still looking out into the blackness at the glowing yellow eyes closing in on them. The sound of the pads of its feet hitting soft earth unnerve Elias but he takes two steps and jumps from the bow of the Catamaran and lands in knee-deep water.

This will not do as a place to make my stand against a wild animal. He thinks and presses toward the beach quickly forcing the light down into his legs to push against the heavy drag of the water.

He reaches the beach and the form sprints toward him on all fours. It is big with sharp protrusions on its back. He compares what he is seeing to creatures in his textbooks from elementary school. Some kind of large cat maybe? Its jawline is closer to a dog or a bear though. A razor-sharp tail whips out straight behind it. The light from the catamaran reveals the silhouette of his predator as Elias runs toward it screaming and holding the sword high above his head.

The two clash a second later, and large claws and teeth tear into his flesh. Alarm rocks through his body like an electric shock. Up until this moment, he had been driven by some force he could no more resist than if he were to step from a ledge. Now he is driven by a new force.

He is being tossed around in the sand like a rag wiping down a crusty countertop. The river of light coursing through his arm is all that keeps him from losing his grip on the blade. The beast opens wide a maw filled with teeth like a shark and it clamps down on his shoulder. A scream tears out from deep inside him clawing its way out of his throat.

Light drains into his wounds so fast that he begins to feel faint. In a matter of seconds, he knows he will run out of essence. He becomes suddenly, acutely aware that even with the essence he can and certainly will die.

One of the giant bodyguards lands on the sand beside his head and hooks the fishing gaff into the neck of the predator. He drags it away from Elias. “Hit it, Rex.” The giant man calls. The other bodyguard appears carrying the door to the captain’s cabin. He lifts the metal door above his head and drops it like a giant flyswatter on the creature’s back. The sharp plates that stick up from the cat’s spine stick in the door.

A gunshot from above hits the sand between the struggling twins missing the cat by several feet. Angel runs up and tries to drag Elias from the scene. Elias fights her off and forces himself to his feet. His wounds are mostly healed. He lifts the vial to take another drink but finds it empty. Growling he changes in and slashes a satisfying wound into the ribs of the struggling beast.

Now the beast redefines struggle. It shakes off the gaff, and the man holding it, then springs up from the ground like a coiled python. All three men scramble to get away from the whistling blur of claws.

The red-haired man leaps down into the sand with both arms spread wide and hands devoid of any weapon. He stands crouched, shirtless with hands and fingers outstretched like he wants to wrestle the feral cat into submission. His chest is covered in fiery red curls and his eyes are grinning with madness, “Aye, it’s plany pessed now ain’t it?”

The cat circles in the center of all four men now with a growl that rumbles out through clenched teeth. It tries to shake the door off its back and when it is unsuccessful it charges the redhead.

Elias shoves the last tendrils of light down in his arm and lunges forward shoving the blade right between the predator’s ribs to the hilt. The momentum of the beast nearly rips his arm from its socket, and it crashes down on its face sliding to a stop at the red-haired man's feet.

Red looks down in disbelief and disappointment, “Ahh mate I ‘ad ‘im I know it.”