Sadie backed away from the railing as the color drained from her face. “Yeah, I think they actually will,” she said. “And we’re a hundred miles from shore…”
Shit, she was right. If this ship went down, our chances of survival were roughly zero. “Well, we have to stop them,” I said. “Any ideas, Taeral? Like, is there an anti-mermaid spell or something?”
“No, there is not.” He gave me the you’re-an-idiot look and peered over the edge at the figures dotting the water, now at least two dozen with more popping up every few seconds. Some of them were holding tridents and other sharp-looking metal objects. “And they are too far away to hit with a stun spell.”
Just then, the ship shuddered harder than ever with two consecutive bangs. Mr. Wilt swore a blue streak and fought with the wheel, but the ship lurched to half-speed and started to list to the left. “She must be taking on water!” he shouted over the grind of failing engines and the raging surf. “If you’re gonna do something, mate, do it now!”
“Yeah, I’m working on it,” I said, not exactly sure what ‘something’ would be. If Taeral was right about them being out of range for a stun spell, I couldn’t waste my spark trying. I’d burned through a lot of magic healing Taeral. The flinging spell wouldn’t work because they were in the water. And even if I did know a drowning spell, I didn’t think it was possible for mermaids to drown.
But there was one spell that might at least slow them down. Another Fae had used it when we fought the Unseelie Queen’s guards in Arcadia. And though I’d never done it myself, I’d gotten pretty good at picking up new spells fast.
I leaned over the railing and held an arm down toward the water, at once recalling the Fae word that the captain of the Guard had spoken. “Leíchtraana!”
Electricity surged from my outstretched hand and zapped the water, and a few jagged blue-white bolts branched out along the surface. The spell didn’t go very far, but I did catch the closest two bobbing figures. They stiffened and thrashed in the water, and then started to sink.
The rest of them saw what happened and scattered, parting to head down the sides of the ship. For just a second I hoped they’d been scared off. Then the ship shuddered again, this time the impact coming from the right, and there was a ghostly, tortured groan of metal.
“Shit!” I started for the stairs leading down to the main deck, gesturing for Taeral and Sadie to follow. “Electricity stuns them, if they’re close enough,” I said. “Maybe we can shock them away long enough to pull clear or something.”
I spotted Alex hurrying along the side rail, headed toward me, and rushed to meet her. “Hate to tell you this, but they’re—”
“Mermaids,” she spat. “I know.”
“Wait, you knew that mermaids exist? I mean, you don’t seem especially surprised.”
“Of course I knew. I’m a sailor, and a witch,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve seen one or two over the years, but never this many.”
“Fantastic. You could’ve said ‘hey, we might run into some mermaids out there’ before we headed out to the middle of the ocean,” I said. “Any idea what they want?”
Her features tensed. “More or less. They probably want to eat us.”
“Are you serious?” Sadie yelped.
Alex threw her an angry glance. Before she could answer, probably with something like ‘no, they actually want to invite us to a tea party’, the door leading below decks slammed open and a soaking wet Low Tide rushed out with Kjell and Solveig at his heels. “The damned hull’s gushing down there, Captain,” he panted. “What the hell keeps hitting us? Can’t be a reef way out here, can it?”
Alex pressed her lips together, shook her head. “Mermaids,” she said.
The twins shared a startled glance, and Low Tide’s jaw dropped. “Like, for real?”
“Yes. And there’s dozens of them,” Alex said. “Listen, you need to get back down there and get the bilge pumps started, right now. I’m assuming you already sealed the bulkhead. Then come back up with whatever you can find for a weapon.”
“But, Captain—”
“Move it!” she bellowed. Low Tide snapped to attention, spun on a heel and ran back down below decks, and Alex addressed the twins. “You two, grab all the nets, pole hooks, and spears you can find in the next thirty seconds and haul ass back up here.”
With identical nods, Kjell and Solveig booked through the door.
“All right,” Alex said, heaving a sigh as she turned back to the three of us. “Whatever you can do to keep them off us, start doing it. I’ve never even heard of this many—”
Just then, a deep-throated cry rose from the back end of the ship. I whirled to see Junkyard backing rapidly away from the side, fumbling in his jacket for something while a mermaid heaved itself up over the rail with its sharp teeth bared in a hiss.
“Holy shit, they’re amphibious?” I shouted in dismay.
Close up, the utterly genderless thing was even more horrifying and less human. Its skin was gray, its eyes glossy and black. Sharp hook-like fins curved back from its elbows, and its fingers were webbed and lined with suckers like an octopus. Thick, rough blue-green scales covered its lower section from waist to tailfins.
Taeral was already sprinting down the deck. “If these creatures are going to come out of the water, we can fight them,” he called as he ran. “Céa biahn!” He gestured, and the mermaid was flung off the ship into the air, a look of surprise on its rudimentary face.
Alex snarled, turned in the other direction and thrust her wand at the sky. The already dark clouds swirled around the beam she shot into them, and a whirling cloud funnel descended toward the railing. It picked off a mermaid I hadn’t even seen coming and flung it into the air.
That was when I noticed the rest of them. Four, maybe five more pulling themselves onto the deck. Two more who’d somehow gotten onto the yardarm and were climbing down the mast toward Grygg.
I heard a low growl behind me and knew Sadie was going wolf just as the twins burst back out of the hold, each carrying armfuls of lethal-looking implements and Kjell with an oversized duffel bag slung across his back. Alex raced to meet them. So now everyone would be armed with something, except Grygg.
I didn’t think mermaids would be able to eat him, but I figured I’d help him all the same.
The electricity worked the first time, so I’d stick with that. I raised an arm toward the creatures shimmying down the mast as I ran toward it, noticing that the ship was now nosing slightly down and listing at the same time. “Leíchtraana!” I called out, throwing a massive bolt at the mermaid closest to Grygg. It screamed, an earsplitting, high-pitched whistling sound that drilled into my brain as it fell away from the mast and landed convulsing on the deck.
Grygg turned slowly to look up the mast as I hit the other one and sent it plunging down. “Thank you, Gideon,” he rumbled. “I have been chewed on by mermaids before. It’s unpleasant.”
“Great, you knew these things were real too?” I said, gasping a little as I threw a spell at another one crawling across the deck. My spark hadn’t recharged very much since I’d healed Taeral, and I could feel it guttering now. “It would’ve been nice to have a heads-up, is all I’m saying.”
Technically, I’d heard that mermaids were real before. But I didn’t exactly believe it because the person I heard it from was Chester.
Chester had also said that a mermaid saved his life once. Faced with these monstrous, snarling things, I was finding that a little hard to swallow.
“Gideon,” Grygg said. “There is something you must know.”
“Any chance you could tell me fast?” I said, rushing another mermaid who was trying to flop over the side railing. “I’m a little busy.”
“There is some kind of protective magical field beneath us, rising from the ocean floor.” Grygg’s face slowly rearranged itself into a frown as he plodded around the mast and moved toward the back of the ship. As he walked, his weight gradually brought the forward-til
ting ship down to something that approached level. “The field contains breathable air.”
“What?” I half-shouted, flinching as Sadie let out a pained roar somewhere behind me. I whirled to see a mermaid clinging to her massive, furred arm by its teeth. She swiped at it with her claws, shredding its throat to ribbons and releasing a gush of inky black blood, then yanked the dying creature off her and threw it at one that was headed toward her. I started toward her to help, but Taeral flashed past me and I turned to engage another mermaid coming down the mast. “What do you mean, breathable air? Like, under the ocean?”
“Yes.”
I frowned as the potential implication of why he’d mentioned that hit me. “And you’re telling me this because…”
“This ship is going to sink,” he said as he stopped at the back rail. “They are pulling it down. If you can reach the field, you can survive.”
I started to ask if he was crazy. That was when half a dozen mermaids surged over the back rail in a coordinated effort, swarmed all over Grygg, and yanked him back over the railing into the ocean below.
“Grygg!” I screamed, and started to run for the rail. But the ship lurched and tilted forward violently without his weight keeping it balanced, and I fell back and slid several feet before I could stop myself. Shouts and screams erupted across the deck as everyone struggled to stay up.
Though everything in me insisted that I try to save Grygg, even though I knew it was impossible, I forced myself to focus on what was more important right now. Grygg couldn’t be eaten, and he couldn’t drown. Both of those things could happen to the rest of us — and were about to, if we didn’t do something about it. I could feel something tugging at the ship from several points, dragging it down.
“Hey!” I shouted, waving my arms wildly over my head to get the attention of as many as I could while the most insane idea I’d ever had started to form. “We all need to group together, right now, if we want to live past the next five minutes!”
At least Alex, Junkyard, and Taeral heard me and started toward me. “Look, the ship’s going down,” Alex said loudly as she looked around, alert for any movement that had scales and sharp teeth. “I think we got most of them, so we’ll have to use the lifeboat—”
“No way. We get out into the open water, and these things will eat us,” I said. “There’s a lot more than you think. Six of them just dragged Grygg overboard.”
Taeral gasped. “No! We must save him—”
“He’ll be okay. They can’t eat him and he doesn’t need to breathe,” I said. “But he told me something before these things grabbed him, and I think it’s the only way we’re going to make it.”
“Please tell me there’s a rescue plane coming for us or something,” Junkyard said.
“Er, not exactly. But we all need to get close together, right now.”
“Why?” Alex demanded. “Tell me what you’re planning.”
“It’s a long story, and you’re just going to have to trust me,” I said. “Please.”
“Do as he says,” Taeral snapped at her as he strode off, heading for Sadie.
Though it felt like forever, everyone on the ship was gathered in the middle of the deck about a minute later — including Mr. Wilt, who’d given up trying to steer the damaged ship. By then it was listing severely enough to make it hard to stay standing. “Okay, listen,” I said. “I’m going to cast a shield over us, but it’s not going to be enough. When the ship goes down—”
“You mean if the ship goes down, right?” Low Tide said hopefully.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer that question. “The shield won’t be enough, because the water will come up from the bottom and I can’t make a globe. So, Taeral, you need to use the lodestone and do exactly what you told everyone you could do before. Crumple the ship into a big metal ball.”
He stared hard at me. “You wish me to enclose us completely in metal, so that we can sink to the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “Is that what you’re saying, brother?”
“Basically, yeah. That’s the plan.”
“You’re out of your goddamned mind!” Alex exploded as the ship gave another violent lurch, nearly throwing everyone to the deck. “That’s a death sentence. And it won’t be a quick one, either.”
“No, it’s not. À dionadth,” I said, raising both arms and gesturing in a wide circle to create a dome shield around the group. “Grygg told me that there’s a magical field under us with breathable air. We’ll make it if we can get there.”
“Hey, hold on a minute. Make it where?” Junkyard said in strained tones. “Besides the fact that a magical air field under the ocean sounds like a lot of made-up bullshit, we’ll be at the bottom of the goddamned ocean! With a ruined ship!”
“Look, we’ve got three choices,” I said. “Drown, get eaten by mermaids, or do this. Which one do you think has the best chance of survival?”
Taeral flashed a grim expression. “I will use the lodestone to enclose us.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Despite the explosion of protests, heated arguments, and a few of the crew members banging on the shield trying to break through and get away from us lunatics, Taeral pulled the lodestone from his neck and held it in his normal hand. “Foraas na cloahc,” he said, and deep purple light flowed over his hand to form a spectral gauntlet. He gestured and directed the spell, manipulating and twisting the metal shell to stretch up and over the section of the deck where we stood until nothing outside was visible.
The instant he finished creating what still might serve as our tomb if Grygg was wrong about the whole magical field thing, the metal ball started sinking like a rock.
CHAPTER 20
Even while we were sinking at what felt like about a hundred miles an hour, the mermaids didn’t let up. There were a lot of thumps and bangs against the outside of the sphere, and the occasional teeth-grinding squeal of metal on metal as they tried to pry open the tin can with their tridents and get to the tasty meat inside.
The thought made me shudder. I really didn’t like being a sardine.
Everyone had taken a seat on the buckled, cracked deck boards that remained in the makeshift diving bell, and the shouting had died down. “If we get out of this somehow, I’m going to kick Chester’s ass,” Sadie muttered, cradling her bleeding arm. “He lied to us. Mermaids are not helpful.”
“You remember that too, huh?” I said, managing a grin. “Are you okay? It looked like one of them took a pretty good chomp out of you.”
She shrugged slightly. “I’ll live. At least until we get smashed by a million tons of ocean, or run out of oxygen.”
“You know we’re all going to die, don’t you?” Alex said darkly, looking at me. “And you destroyed my ship, you bastard.”
“Yeah, well go ahead and bill me for it,” I shot back. “I’m telling you, this is our only chance.”
“There’s nothing down there! Your golem has a few screws loose. Or maybe he’s just full of shit.”
“Grygg does not lie,” Taeral said. “And he is far more powerful than you, or any of us. If he’s said there is a field of air beneath us, I believe him. Besides, did that dreadful woman not say that some kind of barrier had been preventing others from recovering this lost ship of hers?”
“Tethys definitely said that.” I wouldn’t refresh Taeral’s memory about what he’d said in response to her suggestion that we unmake the barrier — that some things should not be unmade. We’d worry about that when we got there.
Mr. Wilt frowned suddenly and half-raised a hand. “Hold on a minute, mate,” he said. “If this magical whatnot is keeping out the ocean, how are we supposed to get through it? You know, to the side with the air?”
My gut spasmed a little. I really hadn’t considered that, and I had absolutely no idea what to do about it. If there was a barrier, we might just bounce off it and get stuck at the bottom of the sea forever. Well, at least for the forever it would take while we suffocated.
Before
I could get good and panicked, the sphere smashed into something beneath us hard enough to jar everyone out of position and land in a big, half-tangled heap. The impact hurt like hell. For a second I thought we’d come to a complete stop, but then I realized we were moving slowly down, like we’d landed in a tar pit or something.
“What’s going on?” Low Tide said in a high, breathy voice, looking around rapidly as everyone struggled to extricate themselves from the people pile. “Did we hit quicksand?”
For some reason everyone was looking at me, like I was suddenly the expert on magical underwater barriers. “I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe—”
A vast popping sound came from outside, followed by several distant bangs, and the sphere started to drop rapidly. This time it felt like freefall. The descent didn’t last long, and we landed with a jarring thud that hurt a lot more than the first one.
Then we rolled. Just a few feet, enough to tilt the remains of the deck and slide us against the wall.
My heart stopped beating as hope washed through me. Objects in water didn’t roll like that. “I think we made it,” I said cautiously, waiting to see if the sphere would move any further before I pushed to my feet. “You guys felt that, right?”
The various expressions that came over faces suggested everyone was thinking the same thing. “We rolled,” Alex half-whispered. “That could mean there’s no water out there.”
“Exactly. But there’s only one way to be sure,” I said. “Taeral?”
He was already standing, pulling the lodestone from around his neck. “Foraas na cloahc.”
He winced and let out a gasp as he spoke the spell and the glowing purple gauntlet formed. “My spark is nearly drained,” he said, pressing his hand gently against the side of the ball. “I’ll not be able to power the stone for long.”
An uneasy feeling sunk into my bones. I had just about nothing left, except what was stored in the moonstone — which wasn’t a lot, since I’d had to tap into it for the last few mermaids I’d fended off. Sadie had just about used up the moonstone flecks in her choker when she transformed, too. And even if this barrier was real, we had to be under a mile of water, at least. There was zero chance of moonlight penetrating that far.
The Scrolls of Gideon Page 8
