CHAPTER NINE #3
The plan, informed by my research, was to wrench the spears up and under those scales to pierce the tender flesh beneath.
An action that was far from intuitive, according to the fishermen who once confronted the Leviathan several decades prior.
Their captain noted that the scales gave the appearance of stiff, immovable armor covering the surface of the sea monster’s body.
It was only up close, fighting for their lives, that his crew found where the scales flared slightly, like feathers on a bird, creating inconspicuous openings between them.
Even with that discovery, everyone except the captain and one other man were slaughtered and swallowed whole. If the Strangers couldn’t find an opening to land a blow, the same fate probably awaited them.
Not for the first time, I wished I could do something more useful than standing on the beach. Watching it all play out.
Once everyone was lined up, Kieran stepped forward.
My breath caught in my throat as I waited for what would come next.
Slowly, he extended his javelin, gripping it near the steel head. Then he slid the diamond across his palm.
From where I stood, I couldn’t see the blood. But I cringed.
His hand still extended, Kieran submerged it, letting the blood mingle with the seawater.
There was a chance that it could attract some other carnivorous beast. A shark certainly wasn’t out of the question. But if my research was correct, most creatures in the ocean would steer clear while the Leviathan was nearby.
A few in the group began to shift in the water, full of anticipation.
I could relate. A sickening feeling of dread washed over me, and it took everything in me not to scream at the Strangers to come back to shore. To go out there and drag them all, one by one, back to the beach. I wasn’t strong enough to force any of them to do anything, though.
But suddenly, I desperately wanted to try.
I was walking, then jogging. The waves seemed to be picking up, reaching farther and farther up the beach. I followed their lead, gaining speed until I was at a full sprint. The soles of my feet pounded against the tightly packed sand, still damp from where the tide had been moving out.
It was rising now. The waves were climbing to meet me.
Maybe I was physically weaker than the Strangers, but my mind was sharp.
I could convince them to come back. I could find another way to get them what they needed.
After all, I had the entire Library at my disposal, not just the basement.
Once I got back to Cyllene, I would make it my mission to find an alternative to the Leviathan’s scales. No one needed to die today.
Now my feet were slapping against the line where the sand became slick and spotted with foam. And then they were splashing through the water itself, until I was knee-deep.
I stopped cold.
Ahead of the Strangers, water was erupting as if from a massive geyser, showering their faces. The waves were no longer just climbing back toward the shore. They were wild, directionless. Several people lost their footing and disappeared under the surf.
Then, through the spray, it emerged.
Towering over the Strangers was something like the head of a snake.
Three stories tall. Maybe more. Fins protruded from the sides of its massive jaw and the top of its head.
The surface area of each of them was larger than the canopy back on shore.
The beast’s eyes were an opaque black. Its scales—those impermeable scales—were iridescent even in the fading light.
It dropped its jaw. The fangs it revealed could’ve pierced through an entire person, head to toe, and still kept going.
Then it roared. And it was the first time a sound caused me physical pain.
My knees buckled under me. My ears were ringing so loudly, I couldn’t hear the splash as I fell, could only feel the water close over my legs as they sank into the sand. Once down, I could feel a release. Although I was sitting waist-deep in water, I was certain I had wet myself.
I had just enough awareness to note that Nya and Kieran were still standing.
And then it was chaos.
A wave knocked me over, and at the same time knocked me out of my stupor. Another wave was right behind, and I braced against it. Out of my left peripheral, I saw a giant curving shape arcing through the air.
The Leviathan’s tail. It was churning the water. In part because of how close it had come to shore, beaching itself. But maybe on purpose, too.
It was effective. In the distance, more heads dipped beneath the surface.
Cecil’s face contorted as though he were shouting something down the line, but even his voice wasn’t loud enough for me to make out over the commotion.
Somehow, the rest of the group must have heard him, because they jumped into action.
Cecil and Kieran charged straight at the Leviathan, while Nya, Xiomara, and the others seemingly rushed away from it. They were flanking it, as planned.
Kieran leapt into the air, using the force behind the Springing Spell to bring him even with the Leviathan’s face. He thrust the javelin straight at one of its obsidian eyes—an attack, and also a distraction.
The Leviathan tossed its head like it was shaking off a gnat, the scales of its cheek connecting with Kieran’s body with a sickening smack that sent him careening through the air.
Only moments after he landed, he was resurfacing and using the Springing Spell to bring him to stand near Cecil once again. The two of them aimed their spears at the sea monster’s neck, in that bend just below its jaw.
At the same time, the Leviathan lunged. I held my breath.
Then a wave knocked me off my feet again, dropping me straight down on my tailbone. Pain rocketed up my spine, and for a second, my vision became dark at the edges.
I staggered to my feet again. But I couldn’t make sense of the chaos before me—flailing arms and legs and the blunt ends of spears. Where was Kieran? Where was Cecil? Had they dodged the attack?
The Leviathan’s head was still above water, but it was moving faster than my eyes could track. Waterfalls of spray crashed down in every direction.
The monster roared again, and the sound mixed with the screams and shouts of the Strangers as they struggled. Then I spotted Xiomara and noticed she was braced against something, the butt of her spear sticking straight up as though it were embedded in something.
Please, please let that roar have been a roar of pain. Please tell me she had managed to wedge her spear between its scales.
What happened next, I couldn’t process.
I watched dumbly, motionless, as something shot up in the air. Spinning, turning, twisting.
A person.
The Leviathan had tossed one of the Strangers in the air. I watched numbly as it caught the body in its mouth, clamping its jaws shut with a clack that echoed across the beach.
A person.
It had eaten a person.
It had eaten a person whole.
Was that Kieran? Nya? Cecil? Even Xiomara, I wouldn’t wish such a fate on.
I was crying then, in a way I hadn’t cried since I was a child. I was crying for someone. For Irene, or maybe even my parents. I couldn’t explain who I was crying for.
“Help!”
The scream came from nearby.
I whipped my head back and forth, scanning the waves until I caught sight of a dark shape. Then a wildly gesticulating hand. One of the Strangers, a teenage boy whose name I never caught.
Instinctively, I headed for him.
The ebbing of the ocean must have sucked me deeper, because I was now submerged up to my thighs. As I smashed through the onslaught, waves breaking against my face, it was only moments before I was in water up to my waist. Then my ribs.
A wave lifted me, and for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to be weightless. I kicked as hard as I could, trying to stay upright. As soon as the soles of my feet connected with the sand again, I continued on.
“Please! Help me!”
As I neared, I saw that the boy was screaming at me and also screaming at the world, eyes terror-stricken and unfocused. His blood clouded the water around him.
“I’m here!” I called back.
His curly head kept bobbing out of sight.
Each time, I feared that he was gone. Then he would pop up in a slightly different spot than before, choking and sputtering.
Behind him, the Leviathan was still swinging its mighty head and tail, teeth bared.
Who knew how much more of it there was beneath the surface?
Then I had him. I grabbed the boy under one arm, my head over his shoulder, trying to pull him to shore.
“I’ve got you,” I repeated over and over, through his screams.
But he wasn’t calming down. The harder I pulled, the more he thrashed. Hysterical.
“Please!” I shouted. “I’ve got you!”
I could feel my feet slipping. A wave sailed over us, submerging us completely. When we resurfaced, we were both choking and sputtering.
“Please, I—”
And then I was down. Not just below the surface, but really down.
In his desperation, the boy had shoved me beneath him until my knees hit the bottom. I tried to resurface, but his arm smacked my face as it floundered. There was a tangle of limbs and the whirring of bloody water swirling around me, and then I was completely disoriented.
My brain blitzed through everything I’d ever read on swimming.
I kicked my feet again, trying to pull myself through the liquid, cupping my hands.
But I wasn’t breaking the surface. I didn’t even know where the surface was anymore.
I had swallowed saltwater on the way down, and my lungs burned with a pain I’d never experienced before. I wasn’t getting enough air.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I was drowning.
This was it. I was going to die.
For an uncertain amount of time, I thrashed there. The pain bordered on unbearable. The edges of my vision darkened.
And then there was a light.
Was I at the surface?
No. The light was underwater, illuminating the sand and shells and everything above me. Above me, because I was upside down.
Someone grabbed me. Spun me until I was upright. Then we were ascending at a speed that felt impossible.
Finally, the warm evening air hit my face.
Someone continued to hold me as I choked and gagged, salty sea water spewing from my throat. I coughed and gulped air, coughed and gulped air. Over and over until the coughing slowly subsided, my breathing becoming more regular.
My breathing. My lungs still ached, and my throat felt raw, as if pure flame and singed it, but I could breathe.
Then the air left me again. For a different reason.
The waters were still. The Leviathan’s tail, half a mile away now, was dipping under. Retreating into the distance.
And the arms that held me, like the eyes that stared back at me, were not human.