You sonovabitch. I rolled to my feet and grabbed my sword. “You must think you’re funny.”

A weredolphin threw himself at us from the right. Curran tripped him and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back, and I sliced the pirate’s throat and punctured his heart with two quick strikes.

“Just saying, you have to pull your own weight. A hot body and flirting will only get you so far.”

Hot body and flirting, huh. When I’m done killing people . . . “Everything I do, I learned from you, boy toy.”

Another pirate rushed us. I dropped, slicing the tendons behind his knee, while Curran headbutted him and ripped out his throat. The pirate fell.

“Boy toy?” Curran asked.

“Would you prefer man candy?”

The deck was suddenly empty. Blood painted the ship. Gray corpses lay here and there, torn and savaged by claws and teeth. A huge shaggy Kodiak bear prowled the deck, his muzzle dripping gore. The last pirate still on his feet was running toward Andrea and Raphael near the bow. Andrea raised her crossbow. She was still in human form. Raphael stood next to her, light on his feet, his knives dripping red. A trail of bodies led to them, bristling with crossbow bolts. The pirate rushed her. She sank two bolts into his throat. He gurgled, his momentum carrying him forward. Raphael let him get within ten feet and cut him down in a fury of precise strikes.

Past them a black panther the size of a pony slapped a weredolphin with a huge paw. The shapeshifter’s skull split, crushed like an egg under a hammer.

On the left a humanoid creature crawled onto the deck, lean, furry, with a round head and short round ears. Disproportionately long, sharp brown claws protruded from his oversized fingers. He strained and heaved another, much larger body onto the deck. It landed in a splash of water and a shaggy pile of brown fur, turned over, and vomited salt water from a half-human half-bison muzzle. Eduardo.

The reddish beast sank next to him, baring sharp white teeth. His bright red eyes, the color of a ripe strawberry, had a horizontal pupil, like that of a goat. They made him look demonic. I knew of only one shapeshifter with eyes like that—Barabas.

“Why don’t you know how to swim?” His diction was almost perfect.

Eduardo unloaded more water on the deck. “Never needed to.”

“We are crossing an ocean. It didn’t occur to you to learn?”

“Look, I’ve tried. I walk into a pool, I thrash, and then I sink.”

Ahead the flotilla of boats fled behind the island. Bodies littered the deck. I counted. Fourteen. None of them ours. We were bloody, hurt, but alive. The pirates weren’t.

What a waste of life.