“Oh no you don’t,” I gasped, getting a mouthful of seawater for my pains.
I braced my other foot against the rail as I was dragged to the edge and jabbed the boat hook into the gaping maw of the thing, shattering it. I dropped back onto the deck, free, but still down and hurting like I’d been beaten with a stick. I gagged on water and pain as I scrambled up, panting and not sure why the pole worked but my foot hadn’t. My leg stung where the aqueous phantom had clutched me and my chest throbbed. I gulped mouthfuls of air to refill my lungs and stabbed at every shape that came toward me.
I cut my gaze to the side for a moment to check on Solis. He seemed to be holding out, though he was soaked and confused, moving in quick lunges side to side following the jerky turns of his head. I could see the whites of his too-wide eyes and he slashed and reposted again and again with a surprising economy. If I’d had time, I’d have admired his fighting form, but there was no such luxury.
“Just poke them. Don’t waste energy; they’re not real,” I gasped, but my voice had no strength and he didn’t hear me.
A few more of the sea-foam creatures boiled over the rails and I dispatched mine with simple jabs, conserving my strength so I could get up and fight the denser forms beginning to thrust through the vanguard of shaped liquid as the gleam of magical energy began to fade and the scraping, spiraling song with it. They were difficult to see through the water and spray, but I assumed the new assault was formed by the merfolk themselves—if the monstrous things I’d seen in the distance were they.
One of the merfolk—a creature only vaguely human above its muscular dolphinlike tail—broached the surging wave and snatched at Solis with arms like the leaf-shaped tentacles of a squid that shot forward and wrapped the sergeant tight before the monstrosity fell back toward the heaving surface. Solis gave a shout as he was lifted and dragged over the rail, flailing his hook against the thing’s body, the point gouging into the monster’s flesh. Red blood spattered onto the deck and the hook caught on a rail stanchion, arresting their fall for a moment.
“Rey!” I shouted into a gasping silence in the attack.
The illusions collapsed in a crashing wave and the horrifying monster forms of the real merfolk—a mere handful, though they’d seemed like a hundred—began to recede as the one grappling with Rey tried to yank him under the surface. It opened its mouth, showing the rows of shark teeth within, and I lunged forward, driving the prong of my boat hook into that dreadful maw.
The mer-thing made a gurgling cry and jerked backward, tearing Solis’s hold free of the stanchion as it fell into the water. Solis fell after it, free of the tentacles for the moment as he vanished into the foam and spray of the merfolk’s retreat. I tried to heave myself over the side after Solis, but I wasn’t breathing well and my legs had gone limp under me while my ribs seemed to catch on fire. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.
“They’re falling back. I’ll get Solis,” Quinton shouted in my ear, rushing onto the side deck to shove me back. “You get to the bow and get ready to throw the life preserver to us.”
“Life—” I started, forcing my watering eyes open.
“Big orange ring with a rope on it,” he shouted back, pointing.
Then he was over the side and gone into the water.
The noise of the boat and the storm dropped to a high whistling and dull clanging and splashing, the merfolk—stripped of their monstrous illusions, but still monsters—sweeping back from whence they came. Zantree came scrambling around to the side deck and got me on my feet.
“You all right?”
I panted at him. “Just. Winded. You?” I hurt all over and thought I was going to throw up from it, but I wasn’t going to say so.
“Had to cut the engine so we wouldn’t run over the boys and cut ’em up with the props. Why did those things break off like that?”
“Out of power . . . I think.”
“I hope they aren’t just regrouping. . . . But I’d better get back topside and keep an eye out for the boys. If you miss with the ring, we’ll have to circle around—if we can and if this hole in the weather holds long enough. Can you manage?”
I would have to: There was only the two of us left aboard and I couldn’t maneuver the boat like he could. I nodded.
Zantree spun around and bolted back to the flying-bridge ladder.
I held the rail near the life preserver and stared out toward the water, looking for any sign of Quinton or Solis. I spotted something dark, splashing a distance out from the side of the boat but well to the rear. I wasn’t sure how to throw the life preserver that far from the bow, but I felt as much as heard the engines roar back up to speed and the boat turned, coming around and moving toward a point above the splashing. The engines cut back to a burble and the boat glided, turning a bit more so we weren’t coming straight on it. In a moment the splashing resolved into the shape of two heads and a thrashing arm. I grabbed the life preserver and tossed it like a giant Frisbee, letting out a sharp squeal of agony as it flew free from my outstretched arms. I folded over the jabbing in my side, scraping my arms against the rails as I went, and forced my eyes open to see the ring splash down.
The orange ring skimmed out over the water and plopped onto the surface near Quinton’s head with the grace of a belly-flopping eight-year-old. But it was close enough for him to stroke to and grab and I thanked every god I could think of that I wouldn’t have to throw it a second time. The ring wasn’t big enough to shove around any adult’s head, but Quinton held on to it with one arm while he kept the other wrapped around Solis’s chest. I ran the line around the anchor winch and started walking—crabbing painfully—backward to haul in the slack until the men bumped into the side of the boat.
It took a bit of mucking around with the rope to get Solis and Quinton to the swim platform at the back. Solis came up coughing and sputtering as Quinton lifted him, and the edge of the platform butted into his gut, forcing out air and water. He wasn’t steady on his feet and Zantree had to push, pull, and haul him back up to the main deck and then into the main cabin, but he was alive and whole when he got there. By the time Solis was dried off and bundled up in new clothes and warm blankets, sitting in the galley with a cup of hot coffee, the wind had risen and the boat was being shoved by wild gusts and unexpected waves once again.
“I don’t know why those monsters fell off—and thank God for it—but it’s still going to be a fight all the way up,” Zantree said, sticking his head in through the hatch to the enclosed bridge above the galley. He looked at me. “You think they’re coming back anytime soon?”
I took my best guess and shook my head. “Can’t maintain the storm
“I’ll take your word on that, ’cause the winds aren’t dying down, but I sure don’t see any more of those fish men. I’ll keep the helm a while longer down here in the pilothouse station while you guys dry off and warm up. I may need a lookout on deck before that, but I can handle the wheel myself. You think you’ll be ready to take over in an hour or two?”
“Yeah,” Quinton replied from under a towel. “Are we still running for Roche Harbor?”
“That’s my plan, though it sounds like we need to go on and find Gary’s cove before we’re out of time or battered to pieces. If this storm keeps up we may have no choice—we’re way off course and fighting the shore current on the west boundary. The wind pushed us out a good bit and if it keeps on the same way, we’ll be pushed back toward the rocks around the Chatham Islands. I’ll have to work her out of the current and back into the main channel as soon as it starts to slack up. Then we’ll have to scoot across to the west shore of San Juan and hope for a lift up the inside current once the tide’s turning. We’re going to be two or three hours later than we thought, if we can make it at all without overshooting Mosquito Pass.”
“Doesn’t sound good . . . That was a hell of a storm,” Quinton said.
“I’d say hell’s exactly where it came from. Never seen anything like that. It was like the squall picked us out. And now it’s back, so I’d better hop to it.” He vanished up the steps and we could hear him moving around overhead.
I looked at Solis, huddled in his blanket. He looked pale but it appeared he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I was still a bit damp and battered myself but better off than he was.
“You still with us, Solis?” I asked.
He nodded with more vigor than I thought needed. “To the bitter end—if it comes to that.”
“I hope not.”
