The ocean's surface became a sheet of hammered metal, reflecting the swollen silver eye of the moon. Frankie stood at the edge of the cursed cove, the black sand cool beneath her bare feet. This was it. The place where it had all gone wrong. The place she would make it right.

  She slipped into the water.

  Cold.

  Not the chill of the night. A dead cold. The cold of a tomb.

  She didn't hesitate.

  One last breath of salt and air. A final comfort.

  She dove.

  The world went silent.

  The roar of the surf above, a distant, muffled thunder. The water was a black, inky void. But she didn't need light. Her eyes, now glowing with a faint, crimson light of their own, cut through the darkness. The world resolved into shifting grays and deep, absolute blacks.

  A sound, a feeling more than a sound, vibrated through the water, through her bones. A low, rhythmic hum. A song. A shark-song. A call.

  The song pulled at something deep inside her. A primal urge to join the hunt, to answer the call. Her muscles wanted to relax, to drift with the current. She forced them tight, her own heartbeat a sharp, discordant drum against the deep, hypnotic thrum.

  She swam downward, her movements fluid, powerful, a creature of the deep returning to its element. The water pressure increased, a heavy, insistent hand on her chest, her eardrums. It tasted dead. It felt like a warning.

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  The ocean floor. A ghostly, alien world.

  Fields of pale coral reached for her. A forest of bone-white fingers. Dark, yawning crevices whispered of crushing depths.

  A living graveyard. Every shadow, a gaping mouth. Every flicker of movement, a promise of death.

  She followed the song, the humming vibration growing stronger, more insistent. It led her through a forest of kelp, the long, dark ribbons of it brushing against her skin like cold, dead fingers. It led her past the rusted skeleton of a sunken fishing trawler, its empty windows dark, staring portals.

  And then she saw it.

  A natural amphitheater in the reef, a wide, circular space of flat sand, surrounded by towering spires of black, volcanic rock. A cathedral of the deep. A place of power.

  And in the center, Kimo.

  He was not Kimo anymore. He was the monster. The Mano Ha’i. His form was a fluid thing, caught between man and beast. His skin was a mottled, scarred gray, his arms long and clawed, his jaw wide and filled with teeth. Gills flared on the side of his neck, pulsing in time with the shark-song.

  A circle of bone totems, their sharpened points gleaming dully in the strange, ambient light of the deep surrounded him. And circling him, not swimming but writhing, were spirits. Ghostly, translucent forms of sharks, their eyes glowing with the same cold, malevolent light as his. They were the souls of his ancestors, the fallen warriors of the Mano Ha’i, drawn by the ritual, by the scent of his power. By the scent of her blood.

  The ritual was almost complete. The water itself seemed to thrum with a dark, ancient energy. Frankie could feel it, a sickening, greasy pressure against her skin.

  She hovered at the edge of the amphitheater, a shadow in the deeper shadows, her heart a slow, steady drumbeat. This was it. The final showdown.

  Predator against predator. Ancient curse against living legacy.

  The fear was a ball of ice in her gut. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a wild, painful rhythm. But her vision was sharp. Every detail of the grotesque ritual was crystal clear. The rage in her veins was a clean, hot fire. The ice and the fire. The terror and the rage. She had never felt more alive.