by M H Ryan
“I don’t know. She’s been here since before him, I think,” Shaya said, staring at me with those big, intense eyes.
Emma groaned and let go. She bent over, breathing hard.
“Sorry, Jack, if I held on any longer, I’d be as worthless as a lost sock,” Emma said.
“It’s okay,” I said, staring at the dead body of Lyra’s chimp.
Was her power to possess creatures? If so, she could freeze us where we stood and take our powers from us. If she had been standing in front of us, there is nothing we could have done to stop her. We were powerless to some sea chimp and I just hoped we never had to cross paths again with Lyra.
Why had she even been with this group of Crultar?
“Should we push the bodies into the ocean?” Cass said. “That thing’s making my skin crawl.”
“No, I’ll get the crocs to clean it all up after we leave,” I said. “I don’t want any of us touching it.”
“You think it has a stone?” Carmen asked, taking a step toward the dead primate.
“What?” Benji asked. “It better not.” She held out her hand and then closed her eyes. “No stone over there, thank God.”
“Something was powering it,” Carmen said. “That was kind of incredible, really. I mean, she animated that monkey and then it…what, like, froze us in place. I think only a stone could have that kind of power.”
“There’s no stone. I’d feel it if there was. I know how to now,” Benji said. “Well, within reason.”
“Maybe I’ll check the body, just, you know, to make sure,” Carmen said.
“No,” I said. “Leave it be. We don’t know. It might be able to jump to another body on contact.”
I didn’t think that it could, but I needed something to scare Carmen away from the thing. She stared at the dead creature, tapping her chin, then she frowned and looked away from it. Good. I didn’t want to have to tie her down. I took another glance at the thing and wondered if she was right, though.
“Eliza, has anything changed?” I asked.
“No, we still need to leave, but I sense a plan forming now. A devious one.”
“Of course there is,” Aubrey said. “Always some shit going on. I just want to get to Hanna as quickly as we can.”
“I can’t wait to see Hanna again,” Benji said, hugging herself.
“Yeah,” Aubrey said. “And some chimp-possessing-sea-hag isn’t going to stop us.”
Shaya groaned from behind us but didn’t say a word. She looked as if she might be getting sick.
“This is a good thing that happened here today. For one, we know who this person is and what they can do now,” I said. “Carmen?”
She flinched at her name.
“I want you to work on your skill more. I want to see if you can learn to project your shield out, so if we run into this kind of thing again, we won’t be caught with our pants down.”
“Okay, I can try. If I had a stone, I bet I could do just about anything,” Carmen said, glancing at the dead body once again.
“I swear, if I see you or Jack with a stone, I’m creating a dungeon for the both of you,” Benji said. “They are pure evil. They ruin entire islands and fuck with your head. You have to see that, Carmen.”
“I know, I know. I just want to help the group as much as I can. Today, Jack showed me how to use my power, and if I can be more powerful, I can help more.”
Benji rolled her eyes.
“I get it,” Cass said. “I didn’t really feel like I was fitting in until I found I could manipulate metal.”
“You didn’t fit in because you were being a bitch,” Aubrey said.
“Hey!” Sherri said, using her commanding voice. “We have a friend out there that needs us. We have a long boat ride, during which we can discuss this shit. I say we load and go on the double.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Everyone get back to your tasks. I want the ship loaded and ready to go in thirty minutes.”
Chapter 8
We moved across the smooth ocean with a slight breeze at our backs. I wished for more wind, but at least it was enough to keep the sail taut. I stayed at the back of Luna, near the rudder. It was blocked in place, heading right in the direction that the stones in the sand told us to go. Plus, Eliza and Shaya agreed with it.
One thing we had added to the craft since we last took it out was a shaded area around much of the center cabin. We had run out of sunscreen, and Kara’s pale skin didn’t do well in direct sunlight. She hated the darker shade her milk-white skin had gotten since we’d been here. She took it as an attack against the monochromatic look of her pure black tattoos. Also, I liked the way she looked as well.
Hell, I was looking at her now, with one hand on the cabin, looking out front as the boat moved over the small swells of the seas. The breeze blew her straight, black hair around, and she glanced back at me, catching my stares. She smiled and raised her shoulder against her chin slightly while giving me a sweet expression laced with a sexiness. Even from halfway across the boat, I got lost in those ocean eyes.
Kara could feel the islands and what they held. She had been practicing on feeling different items as well, seeing if they had a story inside she could unlock. It was an interesting thing to watch, and one she loved to share. Knowing where she had come from, her smiles brought me joy.
She shared some of her dark past, but stories regarding the scars on her wrists were something she to herself. Thinking of her so hurt that she felt there was no other way out gave me chest pains.
My mother had dealt with depression. I hadn’t realized, growing up, why she would lock herself in her room and not respond to my pounding fists on the doors. My father had construction in his blood, and that meant every problem was an opportunity for a solution. For the most part, he succeeded. Most of the bad parts were hidden from me and my child optics. Only later, as an adult, did I understand why my mom would only wear long sleeve shirts for months, and sometimes the mommy vacations would last for weeks at a time.
My dad, though—he never showed that any of it got to him. It must have, though. How could it not? If it did, he hid it better than any magician’s trick. Well, until the day that I buried so deep that I wondered if it was even real any more…a day that made me never want to be alone again.
A chill ran over me. The breeze had kicked up some ocean mist, spraying us with a cool water.
For some people, the good days could be counted on one hand. This was a good day, even with the attacks and possessed chimp. This was still a good day.
The girls were crowded more toward the rear of the boat, near me, while Sherri took a position at the front of the ship, making sure we didn’t run into something. I did my part as well, keeping my senses open, listening to the seas. A static filled my head with the occasional blip as a shark neared our craft. Pesky bastards, they were, but they didn’t feel like the flying sharks that attacked us a few days ago. These were bigger—slower and more methodical.
These sharks were keeping back a ways from us, though, and not even going to surface, exposing their dorsal fins. I didn’t even bother telling the girls about the sharks, as they were too far away to pose any real danger. At least for now.
“Rains coming,” Aubrey said, looking at the clear blue sky.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Just a small storm. But we’re going to get soaked. Probably around sunset.”
“Great,” Emma said. “Just when I was getting my hair to a decent state.” The southern bombshell picked at the ends of her blonde hair.
“You think Moshe and the chickens will be okay?” Eliza asked, looking back at our island, just a dark spot on the horizon now.
“She’ll protect them,” I said, making sure she knew what I expected of the sea cat before we left.
“I wish we could take them, but the travel would stress them too much. And they just started regularly producing again,” Eliza said, almost apologetic.
“We can all have omelets when we get back
,” I said.
“Oh my God, that would be amazing,” Cass said. “Do we have cheese? Or can we make cheese?”
“I probably could get some crude cheese going if we had milk,” Emma said.
Sherri pointed at Emma’s large breasts. “You telling me those melons are empty?”
“I’m not eating titty milk cheese,” Aubrey said.
“And I’m not getting milked,” Emma added indignantly.
Shaya smiled at the exchange and then squeezed her breasts, pointing at them as her nipples hardened. Then she used her finger and thumb, touching her hard nipples.
“I’m not down for any mermaid tit milk either,” Aubrey said. “You guys are fucking weird.”
We laughed, and Shaya rolled her eyes, letting us know she was just joking.
“I have a feeling if we ever get Shaya talking without restrictions, she’s going to be a ball-busting joker,” Kara said.
Shaya groaned out in pleasure. The sound sent a ripple across my skin, and I sucked in a breath. She gave a pleading look to Kara, as if she wanted to speak to us freely more than anything else in the world.
I wanted that as well—not just for the information we could finally get from her, but I wanted to get to know her better. From her culture, people, the symbols on her chest, and why or how the king had control over them. What did the king do to them to make them so beholden over him, and a million other questions. Maybe once Emma was feeling up to it, we’d try again. I just hated using her remarkable powers out here on the water. At any moment, we could be facing something that required Emma to be at a hundred percent.
“There it is,” Kara said, pointing to the starboard side. “Yin Island, my starting island.”
Kara stared at the island, rubbing her wrist.
Aubrey went to her and put her arm over Kara, hugging her from the side. Kara leaned her head against Aubrey’s shoulder as we passed the island.
This was the furthest we’d ever gone in this direction. We were going toward the king now, toward his domain, and this great barrier mentioned. We were getting closer to Hanna and toward a rather nasty-looking section of black clouds.
Chapter 9
“I thought you said this was going to be a small storm!” Sherri yelled as water spit from her mouth.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this bad,” Aubrey said over the wind and rain.
“Just keep an eye out ahead,” I said, pointing to Sherri. “Eliza said the island is getting close, and I don’t want to run into it in the dark.”
The sun had set a couple of hours ago, and a couple of hours ago, we were supposed to be at this middle island Eliza said we needed to get to. I didn’t like the idea of arriving at a new island in the dark, but we needed to get off the sea before the waves got too big and the wind too strong—or if those sharks that were now just a dozen feet away, decided to make their move finally.
“Eliza, where’s the island?” Cass demanded, some of that old sass coming through.
“It’s right ahead, I swear,” Eliza said as the rainwater streamed down her face.
I gripped the rudder and kept us sailing straight as I could as the wind pushed from the side. We had already lowered the mainsail and only had the small front one still up. The wind pushed at the sail, keeping us moving faster than any oar could.
A wave slapped against the side of the boat then washed over the bamboo deck before falling between the cracks. The girls jumped at the impact, clutching their weapons and watching the railing around the boat. It hadn’t been long since those flying sharks had slammed into the small walls surrounding the boat. The braces were gone. We had reinforced the walls from the outside and under the boat, but they were untested.
If one of the big boys swimming nearby decided to strike us, I doubted any amount of bracing would help.
“We’ve got a pair of sharks off the boat, ten feet, big ones. So just be ready in case they try something,” I said, and then wiped the water from my mouth.
The front of the boat rose over a wave and then crashed down on the backside, sending water cascading over the front of the boat. Sherri clutched the wall next to her as the water washed all the way up to her hips. Once it passed, she went right back to looking at the dark waters.
Visibility had gone down to a couple of dozen yards, maybe less.
“Dorsal fin,” Benji said, pointing at the aft side.
The large black fin cut through the choppy water, dipping below as a wave passed by and reappearing on the other side. A deep shadow in the dark waters, a shadow nearly as long as our boat.
As we all stared at the beast, I sensed the other shark on the starboard side of the boat. It rushed toward us like a torpedo.
“Shark, on the other side!” I yelled. “Brace for impact.”
The girls all ducked, grabbing their oh-shit handles mounted to the deck floor just as the shark slammed against the side of the boat with its mouth wide open. The wood cracked and popped as its teeth plowed through it. Chunks of it flew over my head and into the sea. Luna lifted several feet, and some of the girls fell to their sides.
I screamed at the shark, trying to make a connection, but its slick mind alluded me.
The boat crashed back down as a flash of lightning lit up the darkness, giving me a look at the shark that held our boat in its mouth. It stared at me as it bit into our craft, crunching down on the wood.
Benji got to her feet first and pulled back her bow with a stone-tipped arrow. She fired her arrow and extended her hand as she screamed. The arrow cracked with a sound of a rifle being fired and then impacted the shark-like an explosive. The arrow struck it near the eyes and then blew out of the back of its head with a sickening spray of organic matter.
I felt the creature die in an instant. It slid off the boat. It’s teeth dragging along the wood, leaving gouges before it fell into the sea and disappeared under the black waters.
“Holy shit,” Carmen said. “What the fuck are you putting in those arrows?”
Benji bent over, breathing hard. “I just pushed the stone at the thing as hard as I could. I didn’t know if it would work.”
“But it did,” I said. “That was incredible.”
I turned, facing the wind as rain smacked my face. I wiped my face, trying to ignore the water running into my eyes. I felt the other monster out there and the heat from its anger. I thought I spotted it in the dark waters, but I had to wipe my face again.
Then the water directly in front of my stopped in midair—a thousand droplets hung in the air and then retreated from me. I glanced up, seeing the same thing as if I repelled the water.
“I got you,” Sherri said, holding out both hands.
The boat that was once covered in continuous rain now had this invisible umbrella expanding over it much of it.
“Whoa,” Carmen said, looking up.
“Fucking-A,” Aubrey said, staring at her own hands. “I can do this. Fuck this wind.”
Aubrey thrust out her hands and the wind stopped. The silence hit me in the gut, and now just the sounds of us breathing and Luna slapping the rough sea could be heard.
“We need you, Cass,” Eliza said in a panic. “Right now.”
“What?” Cass said, looking terrified. “Do what?”
That’s when I sense the remaining shark realizing its companion was dead. The thing’s anger turned into a white-hot rage. I grabbed the spear and faced the direction it was coming.
“Another impact incoming,” I yelled out.
“If it hits the boat, we’re going down. Luna won’t hold,” Eliza yelled out. “Cass, we need you.”
“Emma, hold Cass,” I said.
Emma rushed to a confused Cass as I grabbed a piece of metal and tossed it to her. Emma had her hands on Cass’s shoulders. The metal stopped a few feet in front of her, a sheet of aluminum we pulled off of Danforth’s wrecked plane.
Cass stared at the metal hovering just in front of her, rotating at the speed of a clock’s second hand.
“Stop that shark,” I said, turning to face it.
Its massive black dorsal fin cut through the water, heading straight for us. Cass screamed, and the metal flew out from her hand. It happened blindingly fast, but I spotted the metal folding and rotating as a fast a plane propeller. The air shimmered around it, and it hummed as it zipped by me.
The spinning, shiny metal struck the water just in front of the shark and slammed into the shark’s snout. The spinning metal sliced the water and the shark with ease, cutting the thing in half. The insides of the shark spilled into the sea. A rush of red-stained water hit the side of the boat.
The shark’s previous momentum allowed the dorsal fin of the shark to hit the boat, giving us a small bump before the thing sunk to the murky depths below us.
Sherri collapsed to the deck, followed by Aubrey, and the full fury of the storm struck us. The wind, rain, and waves acted as if they needed to make up for the lost time.
“Hang on,” I yelled over the storm.
The small sail thrashed in the wind, and the boat jolted forward. We all fell to our knees and grabbed anything we could. I shimmied closer to Sherri, holding onto her.
“There’s a wave coming,” Sherri said, struggling to breathe. “And I can’t stop it.”
She pointed to the back of the boat.
“Oh shit,” I said.
A wave the height of a house rolled toward us.
“Wave!” was all I got out before Luna’s back end started rolling up.
I held onto Sherri and thought of the moment we had been on the Veronica. I had been holding onto her, Aubrey, and Benji right at the end. These waves were just as big, but this time we were in a small raft instead of a large ship.
“I love you,” Sherri said, holding me tightly and kissing my neck.
“I love you, too. But we aren’t going to die. Not today.”
She looked ahead to see what I was seeing.
The very wave we were riding rolled toward an island. In the dark, I spotted the white sands and scattered trees near the shoreline.
The wave didn’t crest but simply smoothed out as it shoved Luna and us over the sands and into the trees, much like a river over land.
