by Jenn Bennett
“I was touching you,” I said. “I must’ve taken the force of the strike. I—”
A furious gale of wind rushed over the bridge, tilting the boat. I grabbed the railing to keep from sliding across the deck. When the rocking lessened, we both climbed to our feet. My lungs ached. Skin tingled. Hands were shaking. Like I sometimes felt after kindling a big spell. At least I wasn’t in the grips of post-magick nausea. The unsteady boat was already churning my stomach hard enough to make me dizzy.
“Fire.”
I looked up. “What?”
“Fire!”
My gaze shot to the polished teak dash behind the steering wheel, where flames danced wildly, playing tug-of-war with the rain dripping from the singed Bimini canopy. Lon ripped his jacket off and swatted it against the fire. The wet fabric smothered the flames, but the damage was already done.
Blackened, the whole dash. Glass cracked. Wood splintered.
VHF emergency radio melted.
Lon tried to grab the handset, but it was too hot to touch. He rubbed his fingers, breathing heavy as he surveyed the damage on the console, the hole in the Bimini canopy, a massive black spot on the deck where we’d been standing during the strike . . . my discarded shoes. “What the hell?”
“Don’t know where the lightning entered me, but it exited through my feet. My skin still hot?”
“Warm,” he said upon touching my hand. “But you were hot enough to burn me before. Jesusfuckingchrist, Cady. You’ve never felt that way after kindling Heka. You sure you’re all right?”
I nodded vigorously to convince myself as much as him. He crushed me against his rain-soaked chest and kissed me firmly on my temple. I could tell how scared he was by how hard he was holding me. That only increased my worry, so I pushed away and turned my attention to the bigger problem—the what the hell were we going to do now issue. If the controls were fried, and we couldn’t contact the Coast Guard, then . . .
Holy whore of Babylon, it was dark. Like night. And despite the raging storm, the seesawing boat was quiet. No humming below my feet. As in no engine.
Lights on the bridge were dark. So were the ones embedded in the stairs.
All lights were out . . . including the glowing Heka that had lit up the Æthyric seal in the center of the bridge.
The protective ward was down.
I gripped the rail as my eyes met Lon’s.
Jupe.
I glanced down at my hand. The bond Jupe and I shared through magick had, in the past, created a glowing thread of Heka that appeared when the kid was in danger. It wasn’t there at the moment. Hopefully that particular magick was still reliable enough for me to assume he was safe. But it didn’t matter, because Lon was already in protective-father mode.
“Go!” he shouted, herding me off the bridge.
As waves tossed the boat, we rushed down the stairs in the deluge, hardly able to stay on our feet or see the next step. My bare feet were numb with cold by the time we made it to the bottom and raced to the cabin. Jupe’s voice called out from inside. Lon wrenched open the door and we tumbled inside the darkened salon. Dim, gray light filtered in from the windows, sifting over the strewn contents of the cooler, sofa pillows, Kar Yee’s gold coat, and Lon’s camera bag.
“Jupe?” Lon shouted hoarsely.
Dark spiral curls popped up from behind the bar. “Dad!”
“Everyone okay?”
Kar Yee appeared behind him, holding up her cell phone for light. “Everyone except the captain and the boat. We moved him back here to keep him from rolling around. What happened out there?”
“Did we get hit by lightning?” Jupe asked before his gaze fell on my hair. “Cady—”
“I’m fine, and yes, we got hit.”
“Ohmygod,” he murmured, then glanced down. “Where are your shoes?”
“Melted,” I said, trying not to shiver. The boat rocked. I grabbed for Jupe to steady him.
“What about the Coast Guard?” Kar Yee asked.
Lon shook his head. “The radio upstairs is shot. We didn’t get a chance to use it.”
“Everyone check your phones and see if anyone can get a signal,” I suggested.
Nothing.
Jupe’s long arm extended and rotated as he moved his phone around, trying to get anything but a no service message onscreen. “Should we try outside?”
“Do not go outside,” Lon warned. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Okay, okay. So what do we do, then?”
“I suppose there’s not a second VHF radio around,” I said hopefully.
Lon wiped water from his face. “Should be another helm inside.”
“I don’t remember seeing it on the tour,” Jupe said.
“We’re at the back of the boat. Stands to reason that it’s past the kitchen.”
Lon was already heading for a closed door in that direction.
“Stay here,” I told Jupe and Kar Yee. “Watch the captain.”
The door Lon had spotted led into a hallway with a bathroom and crew quarters. One of the doors was different than the others: familiar sigils were carved into the wooden doorframe.
“Standard cloaking magick,” I said to Lon, who nodded, recognizing it as well. Unlike the exotic seal on the bridge above us, this was standard fare for medieval magicians, who used it to hide secret entrances, hoarded treasure, rooms filled with various and sundry debaucheries—whatever needed hiding.
The sigils were dead. Lightning must’ve overloaded all the magical work onboard. I slid open the door and found a small room with a built-in bed, stuffed chair, and narrow desk, over which several photos hung, including one of Captain Christie surrounded by busty bikini-clad women on the bridge of the Baba Yaga.
“Captain’s quarters.”
“The ward around the boat wasn’t enough?” Lon said, fingering the grooved sigils on the doorframe.
“He went to a lot of trouble to make himself a little bunker here.”
“Better than a state-of-the-art panic room.”
“Cheaper, too, if you know a good magician.”
He gave me a quick smile, then sniffled and rubbed his nose. “Wish Jupe could’ve asked him about all this instead of turning him into a vegetable.”
“Yeah, me too . . .”
Another door across the hall a few yards down opened to descending stairs. The scent of singed oil wafted up from below.
“Engine room,” Lon said, running his hand along the wall. “Look.”
Dark splotches with branching lines covered the paneling around a recessed light in the hallway. “Lightning went all the way down here? That’s not good.”
And it only got worse. The door at the end of the hall opened to the inner helm and a stronger, acrid burning smell. Curved windows provided gray light and a front row view of the storm raging outside on the bow of the yacht. Beneath those windows was a bigger console of equipment and two pilot seats. And the burn marks we’d seen in the hallway were here, too—just bigger.
“Fuses blown,” Lon said, looking at a panel on the wall. “Lightning must’ve overloaded the electrical system and caused a massive surge. Unbelievable.”
“Another VHF radio.” I picked up the handset and pressed the red emergency button several times in rapid succession—as if one lucky push would restart the system. “It’s dead, too.” Everything was dead. No lights on the gauges.
“We’re standing below the bridge,” Lon said, looking up. “You can see where the strike went through the ceiling, rode down the walls, and went through the floor. Christ. We’re lucky it didn’t set the whole boat on fire.”
I glanced out the window as Lon inspected the damage. The lightning and thunder had abated, but the storm was roaring. Waves crashed over the bow as the yacht pitched from side to side. But one of those waves, when it receded, it left behind a dark shape on the deck.
I leaned toward the window, straining to see through the sheet of rain obscuring my view, and just for a split second I could’ve sw
orn the dark shape was . . . crawling.
Not sliding. Not shifting. Not floating.
Crawling. With legs or arms or . . .
My thoughts shot back to the downed ward on the bridge. Panic ousted the adrenaline high I’d been riding.
“Something’s on the boat!”
Lon rushed to my side. “Where?”
Another wave arced over the bow, blanketing the dark shape. When it receded, there was nothing there.
“Where?” Lon said again.
Heart racing, I pointed to the spot and blurted out a crazed description of the dark figure. But as we intently scanned the bow for a sign of anything at all, anything that would give rational meaning to what I’d seen, we saw nothing at all. No deck chair, loose garbage bag, blanket. Nothing.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Do you think I’m just panicking about the ward?”
“Maybe,” Lon said. “Could’ve been a big fish. Shark. Killer whales are black, and they’re out here. Crazier things have happened than them landing on a boat for a moment.”
“That’s probably it,” I said.
“We should . . .”
“Yeah, of course.” God, I hated feeling paranoid. Hated that Lon was hearing my panicky embarrassment, but at least he wasn’t giving me any grief about it. He was too busy rummaging through cabinets on the back wall, dumping out the contents as he went. Power cords, computer cables, and boat manuals piled up at his feet.
“What are you looking for?”
He unlatched the last cabinet and made a happy noise as he withdrew a small case. Inside, snuggled in molded foam, lay a toy-like plastic gun, the color of a brand-new basketball.
“Emergency flares,” he said, shutting the case and tucking it under his arm.
Hope blossomed inside my chest as I trailed Lon to the salon and rejoined the group.
“Will they work in the rain?” Jupe asked when his dad unveiled his find.
“Rain, snow, sandstorm.” He loaded a fat orange shell into the chamber with sinewy fingers and a palpable confidence. I hoped he was right, and that this wasn’t just his avid love of guns talking.
I stood between Jupe and Kar Yee, watching as Lon opened the door to the salon, raised the gun toward the gray sky, and fired off four flares in different directions. Firework-bright red light and smoke streaked through the rain and lit up black clouds from within.
When he was done, Lon struggled to close the door against intense winds that howled from the stern and carried the sharp scent of sulfuric chemicals from the fired flares. “Don’t want to use them all up,” he said, securing the gun back inside the case. “Might need to launch more of them when the storm passes.”
Were they bright enough to attract attention in the middle of a nasty storm? Was there anyone around to see them?
We had our answer seconds later, because someone saw them all right.
Or something.
That black figure I’d been trying to convince myself was good-old-fashioned paranoia? It passed over the starboard windows as it climbed to the roof above us.
Jupe cried out near my ear, then jumped behind me. “Ohmygod, ohmygod . . .”
“What the hell!?” Kar Yee shouted.
“Did you see that?” I said. “You saw it, right?”
“I saw it! What did I see?”
“Jesus, Cady,” Lon mumbled. “You were right.”
“What is it?”
Jupe latched on to the back of my shirt. “Where is it?”
“Everybody hush,” I said.
We all glanced up at the ceiling, trying to hear something beyond the howling winds and sheeting rain and our own labored breathing. I swayed on my feet and bumped into Jupe, who started in fright, then whispered an apology before plastering himself against my back so firmly I could feel his heart racing.
The roof creaked. Or maybe it was the boat rocking. I held my breath, eyes rotating in their sockets as I desperately searched the ceiling. Moments later, a muffled Boom! above the TV made us all jump.
But it was the sound that followed, the sound of feet racing across the roof that made my stomach drop.
Whatever the hell that thing was, I knew one thing: I wasn’t going to stand around and wait for it to attack. I looked at Lon and spoke in a low voice. “Captain’s quarters. I can charge the cloaking magick around the captain’s doorframe.”
He nodded once.
“Lock the door to the deck,” I told Kar Yee as I retrieved my jacket from the jumble of loose things sliding around the rocking cabin.
Lon waved at Jupe. “Help me.”
With dueling grunts, father and son lifted the captain from behind the bar. Kar Yee and I trailed them as they carted Christie’s limp body through the kitchen, down the hall to his quarters. He moaned a little when they set him on his narrow bed—a good sign. We watched him for a moment but saw no other movement. At least he wasn’t in a coma.
Lon acted as my lookout while I inspected the cabin’s sigils to make sure everything was hunky-dory. I found connecting points in the corners of the room, the floor, and the ceiling. It was nice work; whoever the captain had hired knew what they were doing. And it wouldn’t take much to recharge it.
I searched an inner pocket of my jacket and found a couple of magical supplies I usually carried just in case. One of them was a portable caduceus, a carved magician’s stave with a thick core of graphite. I used a much bigger one in the bar, but miniatures were good for smaller spells like this. I palmed the caduceus, cracked my neck, and shook out my arms.
“Be careful,” Lon said. “The lightning strike . . .”
Yeah. I was a little worried about how that had affected my energy stores, too. Heka isn’t limitless. I stilled my mind and reached out for current. Didn’t take long for me to hone in on a fat supply nearby—likely the yacht’s batteries, from the sluggish, stale feel I got when I tugged and siphoned, but it was active enough to kindle Heka. When I felt the current catch, I took it slower, testing to make sure I wasn’t going to implode or anything. I didn’t, so I kept going.
Just when my cells felt like they were buzzing and I could take no more, I positioned the caduceus over a sigil on the doorframe and pushed. Bright-white Heka surged from the caduceus. One by one, like dominoes falling, the sigils lit up.
Post-magick nausea punched me in the gut, not that I had a chance to dwell on it. Lon pushed me inside the captain’s quarters and hastily slid the door shut. Kar Yee’s arm shot out to lock it.
And not a second too soon. A loud crash sounded from the salon.
We all stood stock-still, trying to listen over the cacophony of the storm, as four-too-many people crammed inside a space that was barely big enough for one. After a moment, another crash drew our attention. Jupe whimpered. I snagged his hand as the boat pitched. It sounded like the creature was moving around the cabin, but just when I thought it might be heading down the crew hallway, I heard glass breaking.
Then it was quiet.
“Is it gone?” Jupe finally whispered after a long moment.
I had no idea.
Kar Yee leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “Does the spell cloak noise?”
“Mostly,” I said. “Don’t yell or bang on the walls.”
But no one said anything for several minutes until Kar Yee piped up again. “Someone needs to find out if it’s still there. We can’t just sit in here and drift across the Pacific in a coffin for hours.”
I was closest to the door. “So I guess I’ll just peek outside. . . .”
Lon pulled the flare gun out of his jacket.
“What do you expect to do with that, set the boat on fire?”
“Stay low and I’ll aim high.”
I grumbled and crouched, then flipped the lock and slid the door open a few inches at a time. Nothing but darkness in the hallway. No noise but the storm and the sound of waves crashing against the hull. I stuck my head around the doorframe, craning my neck to look toward the salon. The windows filtered a dul
l gray light over the lounge area. I could make out shapes of the sofas and the edge of the bar. Could see the door leading out onto the deck. But I couldn’t see any movement other than the occasional stray soda can, dumped from our cooler, rolling around on the floor.
It took me a few seconds to realize I was focusing my sights too far. At the end of the hallway, between the captain’s quarters and the salon, a silhouette stood in the small kitchen. It had feet—or legs, at least. Arms, too. But something was . . . off. I lifted my searching gaze to its shoulders. Its face tilted to look at the ceiling.
A second face followed.
And a third.
Three heads. And all of them were sniffing the air.
All the small hairs on my neck and arms stood erect. I jerked back and slid the door shut, almost crushing Lon’s flare gun in the process. Our hands collided as we rushed to flip the lock.
“What?” Jupe whispered loudly. “Is it still there?”
“In the kitchen. I think it smelled me.”
Jupe’s eyes widened with alarm. “What did it look like?”
“Uh . . .” I pulled my damp shirt away from my stomach, thinking of the three heads.
“Did you see it, Dad?”
Lon blinked several times. “I don’t know what I saw. It’s not human. Not Earthbound. And I don’t want to see it again.”
“What do you mean, it’s not Earthbound?” Kar Yee said. “Are you saying that it’s something escaped from the Æthyr? That’s impossible. . . . Right, Cady?”
A few months ago, I would’ve agreed, but I’d seen a lot of weird shit lately. Lon and Jupe had, too. And though I wasn’t exactly forthcoming about everything when it came to Kar Yee, right now, I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Look,” I told her, “there’s a big ol’ demonic seal on the bridge, and I don’t recognize it. But the captain was trying to protect the boat against something, and it’s no coincidence that that thing appeared after lightning disabled the ward.”
“Oh, shit,” Jupe moaned.
“Yeah. That’s about right,” I agreed.
“What could it be?” Kar Yee said.
Lon crossed his arms over his chest. “Had to come from the water. Cady saw it come in on a wave.”
