Chapter 24
FOOL ME TWICE
ODELIA
He grins as he half-shifts. His coat shimmers and then dissolves, allowing rain to track down the cut of his honed body.
Scales grow over his forearms, and his wind-blown hair makes my stomach swoop like I’ve missed a step.
The feeling twists, warping with the shock of frustration that rocks through my rain-soaked body.
If the kraken doesn’t kill him, I will.
I should have known. Should have seen it from a league away.
He sprints down the stairs, leaving me trapped to the iron rings embedded in the mast, the ropes digging into me so tight that shifting isn’t an option.
He wasn’t taking any chances. Did he think I’d try to escape?
That I’d be stupid enough to get myself killed?
He’d kissed me and taken the key. And now he’s kissed me and roped me to the mast. And here I am, falling for it like something’s changed. Like he might forget what I am.
Like I won’t take the keys and run the moment they’re all secured.
I shake my head, blinking to rid my eyes of the rainwater that streams down my face.
Nothing has changed.
I’m still running from my own ghost. Hiding in plain sight. Odelia might be afraid of the water, might be grateful for the rope that stops her from going over. But Nisse will bleed any threat dry, and that’s what they need, even if they’d toss her over if they knew.
Panicked shouts erupt as the birds attack.
One lands hard in the centre of the deck, tangling in the ropes that pinwheel out from the main mast. Men and women go down, yanked by the force, and others leap forwards with weapons drawn.
The storm roc, tall as a man, flaps its massive wings, the sound drowned out by the scream of the wind.
Elio brings his blade up just in time to block the swipe of its spur.
His face twists in pain, and Rune steps up beside him to sink the tip of a halberd into the joint of its wing.
The scene explodes in a burst of feathers, and the bird retreats, struggling to gain enough altitude to reach the bones of the sail.
It settles on its perch, shaking its head and working its beak as more birds rain down. Rune jabs at the air as they pass, but none of the creatures attack in earnest.
They don’t have to.
My warning is swallowed by the crash of the waves as a single, suckered tentacle crawls over the ship’s railing. Slow, like spilled tar.
“RUNE!” My throat rips as I scream, fighting the wet ropes that burn me for my struggle.
The crew is focused on the birds, some even clambering up the masts and climbing the stairs ahead, aiming for a better vantage point.
Rune looks to the water beyond, but the tentacle is just another shadow betrayed by the lightning that booms as it reaches its long fingers down, called by the rocs.
The woman it grabs barely has time to scream.
It wraps her ankle and lifts her higher and higher, like a rod reeling in, even as her eyes flash and her body curls up to sink her dagger into its flesh.
The others shout, and it’s Tavi that flies to where the tendril bends over the ship’s railing, slicing at it in a flurry of impossible speed.
The woman, released, falls through the air, and her rope catches low on the wood of the mainsail and she swings, narrowly missing a roc that claws for her.
The tentacle writhes on the deck, severed.
In flashes of blinding white, it’s a faint, murky pink edged with iridescent green, its inside riddled with haphazard suckers.
The crew is on alert now, ready when the next slips over, and the next.
I watch, trapped, as the kraken grips the deck of the ship with three massive tentacles.
Fire flashes, there and gone again, doused by the rain.
The bolts can’t do their job in this. An attack from above me all but glues the nearest tendril to the wood and I look up to find Otto, sitting on the pole of the lower mizzen mast, his eyes squinted against the assault of the storm.
If this ship goes down, the ocean won’t spare even the best of us.
“OTTO!” I shout, trying to catch his attention so he can cut me free and let me join the fight. He looses another slug, and the stuck tendril is peppered with exploding shot, bursts of flesh tossed over the deck. “OTTO LET ME GO!”
There’s no use. The wind screams over everything.
Even the bursts of slugshot are silent compared to the storm.
The ship rocks dangerously side to side, water crashing over the deck in deadly waves as we rise and drop with the anger of the sea.
The half-drawn sails rip in the wind, tangling in the rigging.
The rocs sweep onto the deck, pecking gleefully at the mangled tendril and the bits scattered nearby.
A man charges them with a battle axe, all primal rage, but the one closest just skirts back, then leaps forwards with a push of its wings and spurs his gut open.
He goes down, and they begin to eat him before he stops moving.
I flinch away as a body crashes down near me, so close I can feel the graze of his clothes. The ship tilts again and the unconscious man slips a few feet away. His arms are mess of ribboned skin and muscles. He must have slipped away from one of the rocs.
Across the deck, Rune moves like a storm of his own, jabbing opportunistic birds from the air and batting back the kraken’s seeking grasp as the tentacles crack the ship’s railing and reach for masts.
A cut on his arm already weeps blood, but Tavi and Elio flank him, the latter in his half shift, his wounds open and seeping down his chest.
The ship tilts again, and when the body beside me tries to slide past, his sword appears from beneath him.
I catch it with one planted foot. The ropes strain painfully across my stomach and wrists, but the ship rights itself again.
I have the weapon, but I can’t reach it, and another rush of helpless frustration sets my teeth on edge. I slip a boot off. If I can—
The ship goes sideways and the weapon slips, sliding just a hair out of reach. I stretch for it, pain flaring in every nerve.
Then a dark shadow swoops down, crunching the body’s ribs with the force of its weight. The bird tugs at the strings of muscle already fanned across the wood, then one of its eyes trains on me.
Wet air saws in and out of my lungs as it cocks its head, then steps forwards.
The chaos of storm and sound and death narrows to the emotionless black of its eyes and the rain that forms glittering beads over the grey of its feathers.
I’m stuck. Another step. A leap, and I’ll be in gutting range.
No chance to fight it, no hope of grabbing the sword still trapped under my bare foot or the weapons sheathed beneath my clothes.
Rune left me here to die. Pride, fear. No matter the motivation, the end is the same.
We were so close.
The bird’s image blurs and I flinch away, waiting for the bite of talons, but none comes. There’s a jerk of pressure at my waist, and I open my eyes to watch the ropes fall away.
“Come on!” Otto grabs my aching wrist and wrenches me down the stairs, leaving behind the roc, whose massive claws are now glued to the deck with slimeshot.
He drags us past the overwhelm of shooting crossbows and arcing blood and into the captain’s quarters.
I yank my hand away just as he pulls me through.
“I’m not hiding,” I say, my voice hard.
“Cap said you can’t swim. You go out there, you’re going overboard. Unless you can get a rope on you, but it doesn’t look to be helping anyone else out there.”
The ship tilts as if in agreement, and we plant our feet as Rune’s coffee mug slips across the ground, rolling cheerfully to the other side of the room.
“I can swim. But you need to stay here.”
“But the captain said—”
“I don’t give a damn what your prince said, Otto,” I shout as I open the door to the gale of the storm and leave, letting it slam behind me.
I sweep my eyes over the deck, looking for the tell-tale silhouette of Rune’s massive body.
It’s carnage. Some are still tied to the mast, others have cut themselves free, trying to avoid the tangle of ropes and bodies.
The ocean crashes over the top in waves, washing the red of blood and sinew and bodies away in watery streaks.
An oily gel leaks from the tentacles, seeping out in a purple ooze.
Another bird drops beside me, but this one is down, its feathers still being chewed away by the acidic bolt embedded in its chest.
A group loads a larger crossbow mounted to the deck, aiming for the tentacles that reach up out of the water. Two meet their mark, exploding just seconds after impact.
“I think they’re retreating,” Elio shouts from somewhere across the chaos.
The lightning is high in the sky, sheeting across the clouds, illuminating the birds that have pulled away to circle above.
The tentacles fall back until only one is left, speared high in the air, with no apparent interest in the ship or the bolts that fail to make purchase.
For a moment, I think it might be over, and the creature’s retreat offers a half-second of easy breath.
I see Rune on the other side of the deck, his head tipped back to watch the sky.
Blood drips freely from the handle of his bone blade.
I follow his gaze to the rocs above, whose circle formation has tightened, sped.
Electricity crackles over their bodies, zipping in sparks and webs of rumbling light.
Then the sky erupts in a deafening boom, and white sears so bright the pain spears into my head. I flinch, blinking away the shattering cracks of light that live behind my eyelids.
The world seeps back into focus in muted shouts and blurred images. Water rushes over my feet—my boot is still missing. The ocean is chill, insistent.
“brACE YOURSELVES.”