In Over Her Head

by Judi Fennell

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  She felt the pull of the water like a riptide and fought it. No way was she getting close to whatever the hell that thing was.

  Lightning flashed behind her like a strobe, illuminating that monstrous head as it swung forward, crashing against the bars. Thunder reverberated along the rock wall. Another arc of lightning showed the monster shaking its head like a boxer getting up off the mat. Blood slid over one eye, several chunks of scales missing on one cheek. It shook its head, reared back again, then, in another flash, it grinned.

  The next crash of its head had the steel doors groaning and the rock they were embedded in cracking. It wouldn’t take much to bring the doors down. She had to do something. It was up to her to save them. She looked around as more lightning illuminated the cavern. There had to be some way out. Something to stop the creature. She wasn’t going to die like this. Not without a fight.

  She adjusted Reel’s weight and lowered him beneath an outcropping as the giant leech tried again. Reel grunted but didn’t wake up.

  He had to regain consciousness before that thing broke through.

  Broke through… hmmm.

  She looked at the glass wall. Difficult to tell how thick it was; maybe the harpoon would do the trick. The point was especially nasty, but could it splinter glass?

  The Thing growled and smacked its lips. Yeah, she needed to get to work.

  She hacked at the wall but working in water didn’t give her much force. All she managed were a few measly InOverHerHead.indd 188

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  scratches. A tiny gouge in what turned out to be not glass, but Plexiglas. Probably from some giant aquarium or innovative pool on a cruise ship, but nothing was going to get through that stuff. She needed a Plan B. The monster thwacked again, this time raining chunks of rock around them. Erica scooched Reel further under the outcropping to protect him, then scoured the recesses of the cavern for something—anything that could help them get out of here.

  The monster shook his head again, parts of his flesh now floating in the water inside their chamber. There wasn’t much in the way of possible weapons. The harpoons would be worthless against this Thing unless she got close enough to stab it in the eye. Not something she wanted to try. Last resort only. At the far side of the cavern, a wall of cooled magma rose almost to the ceiling, something sticking out from behind it. She dove over to find a pile of debris—remnants of shipwrecks, parts of hulls, artifacts, broken pottery, pieces of pipe, discarded furniture, disintegrating wood, a broken ship’s mast…

  Lightning exploded just as the giant glob of monster muscle crashed against the doors again. This time, the walls shuddered.

  They didn’t have much time. The mast was her best option. If she could somehow get it to the glass wall…

  It’d need a lot of force behind it.

  The sea monster slammed the door again. More rock rained down. The metal groaned, the upper edge exposed. A section of the grillwork spit its rivets onto the floor. The monster was going to be inside with them soon if this didn’t work.

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  Diving, swimming, kicking like an Olympic swimmer, Erica shoved and rolled the mast toward the doors. A double burst of lightning showed the monster leering through the grillwork. The stench was almost overpowering.

  Reel shifted and groaned. He wasn’t waking up fast enough. They had one, maybe two more crashes left before all Hell broke loose—and she didn’t mean figuratively.

  She hoisted the end of the mast but misjudged its weight. It slipped out of her hands, clanging against the doors.

  The reverberation quieted the monster for a moment, but when it shook its head, a long, black, bisected tongue slithered out, like some Technicolor cobra on acid. It swabbed its face, lunch remnants dislodging to fall through the bars.

  That was so not what she needed to see right now. More lightning flashes enabled her to see well enough to lodge one end of the mast into a section of grillwork. The monster watched with its non-bloody eye. A long, thick tail curled onto the ledge, twitching like a cat’s before it pounced. Not a good sign. Her muscles screamed and her lungs needed some serious downtime as she hauled the other end into a crevice by the window. Hopefully, the monster would hit with enough force to crack the Plexiglas. She dove through crisscrossing bursts of light to retrieve the harpoons then swam over to Reel. “Come on! Wake up!” She shook his shoulders. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know how fast I’ll be able to carry you when that wall goes.”

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  Again, when, not if. Huge difference. Life and death difference.

  Reel groaned again.

  The sound was enough to remind the monster that it wasn’t here to study her architecture. It shook its head, drool and lunch bits flying in every direction, and it let out another growl.

  “Come on, Reel!” Erica rolled him onto her back again just as the monster’s head came crashing down in a halo of lightning and the roar of thunder. The steel wall groaned inward.

  Rocks splintered, showering all around, bouncing off the outcropping as the doors gave way with a loud pop. The ship’s mast split in half.

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  Chapter 23

  Water eddied around them, swirling until she was dizzy. Reel slumped against her, his arms floating by her waist.

  The monster roared in triumph.

  Oh no. It was not going to win. She did not survive Joey, a shark attack, being turned into a fish, and facing the mother of all sea monsters to die at the hands, er, teeth of some towering, slobbering tube of fish flesh. She shoved Reel behind her and brandished the weapon.

  “Oh no, you don’t. I will not go down without a fight.” She threw in a few harpoon lunges for good measure. A twist of its tail, and the monster slid through the opening. All twenty muscular, undulating feet of him, an eerie kaleidoscope of glittering scales. It was over. There was no way out.

  “Erica? What happened?” Reel pulled himself up with a hand on her shoulder. Lightning shone on the monster like a spotlight. “Holy Hades. Kraken.” Reel’s voice went from slurred to alert in the space of a word.

  “Kraken?” she yelped over her shoulder as the monster’s threatening rumble rocked the water. “That’s Kraken? Isn’t he supposed to be a giant octopus or something? A Norse myth? What’s he doing in the Caribbean?

  I thought you said he was killed a long time ago.”

  Reel’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Ceto must have spread that rumor to keep this guy a secret.” A InOverHerHead.indd 192

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  harpoon appeared next to hers, another burst of lightning gleaming off the metal. “As to the octopus thing, where do you get your information?”

  “Johhny Depp?” Obviously not a reliable source. “So now what do we do?”

  Kraken raised its teeth-laden head.

  “We split up.” Reel lunged, brandishing his weapon.

  “What? Are you crazy? You can’t kill that thing by yourself.”

  “With any luck I won’t have to try.” Reel kept circling his harpoon, drawing Kraken’s focus. “There’s a gap at the top of the glass. Swim through it while I draw him off. I’ll evade him and join you on the outside. The darkness between the lightning flashes should help mask our movements.” He raised himself to gill level with the monster.

  “But how are you going to get away from him?”

  “Just get out of here, Erica! We still have a lot to do, like find the diamonds.” Reel did a triple-twisting reverse tuck with a sharp turn at the end
, making Kraken’s head swirl as it tried to follow the movements. She reached the gap then ran her hands over the hem of her suit to check for the bag. Satisfied, she tossed her harpoon out. “I’ve already got the diamonds, Reel. We just have to get you out of here!” She wiggled through, but the utility belt snagged on the edge. She worked it through, tearing a few layers of skin in the process. She’d worry about the blood in the water later. A shark would have to be on a suicide mission to show up here. She dove to get her drifting harpoon, swiping the hair from her eyes, only to see Reel take a nasty tail flick to the shoulder, disarming him.

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  “Reel!” She swam harder, scraping her knuckles off the hardened magma as she reached for her weapon. She somersaulted and pushed off, her toes stinging from the bite of the rock.

  Reel flipped and twisted, maneuvering his way around the creature and back toward the opening, blood snaking behind him from the wound.

  The monster, simplistic though it might be, figured out where Reel was going. Its tail flicked from side to side. Lashing out, it sliced another gash in Reel’s shoulder then curved to the other side like a pitcher winding up. Reel had been injured twice now; he didn’t stand a chance. Erica wriggled back through the opening, yanking and tugging on the damn belt. Once through, she aimed the harpoon at Kraken’s eyes. She was going to have to go right up to it for the blade to do any damage, but could she get there in time to save Reel?

  Was she insane to even try? This thing was more dangerous than a shark.

  But Reel had protected her. She owed him. She cannon-balled off the lip of the Plexiglas.

  “Erica! No!” As she shot past him, Reel stopped midkick and somersaulted around after her. She unwound her hands from her knees, veering sideways at the last second, never once taking her eyes off the creature.

  A reappearing target in the lightning seemed to confuse it. Good.

  “Reel, you’re hurt! Get out of here! The opening’s big enough. I’ll be right there.”

  “No way, sweetheart!” He kicked to her side. “I can swim faster. Come on!”

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  By the time Kraken had processed the two images converging, Reel had grabbed her harpoon and propelled her over his head.

  Kraken zoomed in for the attack.

  Reel jabbed the metal spike into its neck then took off for the gap in their prison walls. The creature howled. Blood poured from the wound.

  “That ought to keep him occupied long enough for us to get out of here.” He shoved Erica through with a bone-jarring push and another twisting/turning nightmare to get the belt through. She was going to have one hell of a bruise on her hip. When she turned downward to retrieve one of three knives she had left, she saw the monster rub its neck against the wall, dislodging the harpoon. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

  Reel torpedoed through the opening—

  —and got stuck halfway.

  “Aaagh!” Biceps straining, he braced his arms against the rock and shoved.

  Nothing.

  He twisted, grunting.

  Kraken shook his head and snorted.

  Erica scrambled up the Plexiglas, a strange desperate mixture of climbing and swimming, to reach Reel. Gripping the knife between her teeth, she braced her feet against the smooth wall and shoved her hands under his arms while he linked his behind her back, then she tugged for all she was worth.

  He only wedged in more.

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  releasing the hold he had on her. “It’s no use. I’m stuck. Get out of here while you still can.”

  Kraken’s neck undulated so that it faced them. Over Reel’s shoulder, Erica saw the monster’s bulbous green eyes following the movements of Reel’s legs as if mesmerized.

  “If you think I’m going to leave you, you’re out of your mind. That thing is going to eat you,” she gritted against the knife blade. “Come on, Reel, you can do it. Kick your legs or something.” She linked her hands behind his back, arching her back while her legs helped with leverage.

  If anything, he only wedged in more.

  “Erica, it’s no use. Get out of here. There’s an island to the east. Head that way. He should be… occupied…

  long enough for you to reach it.” He reached behind her, angling her face to his, his eyes burning into hers. “I mean it. We’re talking life and death here. Get out while you still can. No sense in both of us… well… you know. I’ll do what I can to give you as much time as possible to get away.”

  “No! I’m not giving up and neither are you! Wiggle, dammit!”

  “Erica, I mean it!” Instead of wiggling, Reel—damn him—reached down, grabbed her feet, and tossed her off the glass. “Head for the island!”

  Kraken slithered closer, “S”-ing across the floor like a snake.

  Reel strained against the rock, shoulder muscles bulging, his face contorted with frustration. “Go! For Apollo’s sake, just go! Let me do something noble for once in my life! Just save yourself!”

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  Kraken lunged.

  And then, just like a champagne cork, Reel popped from the opening.

  With a tail.

  The rocks around the Plexiglas shuddered.

  “Go, go, go, go, go!” Reel aimed right for her, his tail propelling him through the water faster than she’d ever seen him swim. He scooped her up as he reached her, never breaking stride.

  Kraken hit the wall with a seabed-shaking quake. Reel tucked Erica against his chest and thrust toward the surface. “Let’s get out of here. Once he figures out how to put pressure on the glass, he’ll be after us.”

  Colder water churned around them, blackness disappearing in the flash of lightning, only to reappear like waves rolling ashore.

  “How did you get a tail? And why are we going up?”

  she asked.

  “I don’t know any more than you do, and I have to get my bearings.” His tail stroked her legs every time it surged in, reminding her of swimming with the dolphins at a sea park. Minus Kraken, of course.

  “Bearings?”

  “See where we are. I can see land better above water than below it.”

  “In this weather? And won’t leaving the water kill you?”

  “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Well, I thought, you know, since we’re breathing water and you’ve got a tail that, you know—”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

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  Heavy drops pounded the sea’s surface, stinging her cheeks and pelting her eyes. Her hair swept forward, obliterating her view.

  Lightning streaked and waves invaded her throat, rain-laden spray stinging her skin. Reel spun around, muttered a “There!” and had them back below the surface as the water swirled around them, sucking them again toward the surface when it swelled. Reel fought the waves with his new tail.

  “Where are the marlins when we need them?” she muttered.

  “Everything within twenty miles cleared out when he showed up. That’s why I need to find an island. Preferably an uninhabited one. Makes it easier that way.”

  “Easier for what?”

  What sounded like an avalanche roared toward them on a wall of water with Kraken’s bellow echoing it.

  “Hades! He’s out!” Reel kicked his tail harder, going deeper to fight t
he swells.

  The water streamed over her head, rushing into her eyes so quickly that she had to close them. Sounds jumbled with the gush of water: the echoes of falling rock, the whump of Kraken’s tail, its grunts as it tracked them. Reel was breathing hard so she tried kicking to help, but his “oomph” killed that idea when her feet collided with his tail. She hoped he wasn’t still feeling the aftereffects of whatever had knocked him out, and that he had enough adrenaline to outswim Kraken. And that the tail would last long enough to get them to land. And where the hell was land? She peered out between her eyelids and—thank God!—saw the underwater pedestal of an island.

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  Another thwack from Kraken’s tail sent water surging around them.

  Reel kicked as hard as he could.

  Man, they were cutting it close.

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  Chapter 24

  The roar of the surf threw them onto the island. Erica was never so happy to feel land, even with Reel’s body driving slivers of crushed shells and sand into her chest and the utility belt digging into her backside.

  Another wave crashed over her head, and Reel let go. She rolled out from under him, blinking against the pouring rain, coughing up seawater. Thunder boomed. More sand stung her skin like shards of glass, and kelp latched around her legs and in her hair as the relentless waves slammed the beach. Lightning zigzagged, bolts overlapping, throwing the bowing palm trees into stark relief. Erica spit the sand from her mouth and clawed her way to her knees. Rain slashed her face, a chill seeping beneath the adrenaline.

  This was The Council’s fault. And Reel’s. And Joey’s. And hers—

  Kraken broke the surface twenty yards behind them, his head thrashing, tail slapping the surface, creating waves so strong they threatened to pull her back out to sea.

  “Reel, he’s right behind us! Hurry!” Thunder crescendoed and Erica struggled to her feet, stumbling inland. But Reel still had the tail.

  How was she supposed to help him now? He’d been hard enough to carry in the water, but out of it? Not possible. InOverHerHead.indd 200