– Kupau wau i ka mano ka mano nui ka mano nui kupau wau i ka mano:
I am finished to the big shark, all consumed by the big shark, I am finished.
(Old Hawaiian saying)
I
Somewhere off the Kohala Coast, Hawai'i
May 9, 2070
Something wrong.
A beautiful day, a light breeze, the sea placid as blue glass, the auras of dolphins shimmering like comets screaming to earth.
But something was definitely wrong. A distant hiss of evil whispering from the depths like a murder of crows muttering on a naked limb above a newly-turned grave. The water's fingers stroked the hairs along his arms and neck into stiff hackles through his drysuit. Something snagged the meat of his brain like the set of a hook. Reeling him in…
Knows we're here. Maybe that's what it wants. Beneath his vest-definitely not standard-issue-a cold sweat pearled his chest. A new and more troubling thought: Jesus, can its magic reach this far? Can it see what I think?
Not good. He'd have to watch himself. No use tipping it off…
These are the demons. Daniel Ben-Yusuf raised a finger to his throat. Rachel's mezuzah hung around his neck-a focus, or simply a protective amulet of silver and amethyst, he was never sure-but his gloved fingers met only chilled trilaminates and butyl rubber. These are the princes of enmity dwelling in the abyss…
With the sleds, the light went fast, turning thin and watery at twenty meters. There were still plenty of fish-a rainbow of gobies and triggerfish and angels-darting in and around dense pinkish-white forests of elkhorn coral and the bristly quills of sea urchins. By the time his HUD said he was at twenty-five, the water was a weird blue- gray, and by thirty, as they stopped to purge their low-pressure lines and switch out to heliox, the reef was completely vertical, the fish petering out, the anvil of water palming Daniel's body dense and heavy. Far below, the sea was a very cold cobalt blue, the color of a lost day slipping inexorably toward night.
At sixty meters, they tied off their bail-out tank, double-checked their spare air canisters. (Hey, call him a cockeyed optimist, but if something went wrong at depth, the spare air might get one, or both of them to the bail- out.) At ninety-seven meters, a click sounded in his full facemask, and Alana's voice fizzed through, tinny and flat because of the depth: 'Oh shit. Look down, your two o'clock.'
The maw of the cave-a dead, unknown undersea volcano between the Big Island and Maui-yawned deep and fathomless, a nearly perfect circle as black as an empty eye socket. Just below the rim, a pair of motionless dive sleds was suspended on tethers.
But that kind of paled when you considered the sharks.
A school of white-tip reef sharks spooled up in a silent swirl, their auras ghostly, nacreous penumbras as insubstantial as cobwebs.
'Oh my God.' Alana's voice was shaky. 'Daniel, what…?'
'I don't know. Take it easy.' He watched the phalanx of animals ascend, saw them veer as one toward Alana.
'Daniel?' A note of panic now. Her hand moved to her dive knife.
'Alana, no. That's a fight you don't want and can't win.' Her aura blazed in his astral vision: a fierce, fiery orange-red sunburst, a supernova. He watched as the sharks angled right and began to circle the woman in a stately clockwise procession, maintaining their distance, never closing, never peeling away. 'Honey, listen to me: It's you, don't you see?'
'Yes, yes, kayn.' For the first time during the dive, the Rebbe's voice sizzled through his aural implant. A novel design, the implant could penetrate at depth and halfway around the world if need be. 'It is the only explanation.'
'What?' She was startled. 'What are you talking about?'
'It's like the petroglyph. You're calling them somehow.' He had an idea, a theory and the Rebbe echoed his thoughts: 'She's a latent. The tooth is a focus, kayn? But it's old, there is DNA…'
Daniel said, 'Alana, were they here when you and Harriman…?'
'No. I don't know. The only thing I remember is the descent and…' She drew in a sudden sharp breath. 'You feel that?'
He did: a tug. Not like the touch of magic this time but palpable, a swirl of current grabbing his body, first gently and then with more insistence like the subtle rush of water upstream that signaled the beginning of rapids just around the bend.
Something else homing in on her… on us…
The sharks felt it, too. They closed, their circle tightening round Alana, but he didn't think that would do any good.
'Okay, here's where you get gone,' he said. 'I'll take it from here.'
'Lo, lo!' The Rebbe hissed. 'No, what are you doing? You must replicate the conditions of her encounter exactly.'
Yeah, yeah, yeah. At that moment, he wished like hell that the Rebbe was psychic instead of eavesdropping. You're way the fuck in Israel. We're the ones on a one-way trip to hell.
'Not a chance,' said Alana. 'We go together. Lee's still in there.'
'That wasn't the deal.'
'No, lo, take her. She's…' the Rebbe began but then abruptly cut out.
What the hell? Then he felt it: how the sea went turgid and thick, the pressure fisting his body. Instead of rising, Daniel's bubbles hung in shuddering silver pearls, caught in a pocket scooped out of time.
Oh shit… 'Alana!' His voice came out as a wheeze, barely audible. His body felt gluey, like a fly upended on its back in a puddle of honey. 'Alana, go, swim, take your sled, go!'
Too late. Alana gasped, and then her body gave a great, convulsive jerk as something clamped round her ankles and yanked, hard. As one, the sharks knotted in a swirl, but they were creatures that must always move, or die and so there were gaps, and he saw what would happen before it did.
No, he thought frantically, take me! I'm the one you want…!
'D-Daniel!' Alana wailed. 'Help… h-help me!'
No, no! He wanted to scream, he wanted to hurl something killing, banish her someplace safe-and he should've while he had the chance and damn the drain; what a fool! But too late now: He couldn't move. Blood pounded in his temples. Blackness ate at the margins of his vision. He fought to clear his head, looked down at the seamount-and his heart nearly died in his chest.
A swirl of astral energy, livid as a bruise, spiraled up from the maw of the cave, twining round their bodies like the sticky weave of a spider's web. At its touch, the sharks writhed, and their formation faltered.
'N-no!' Alana's hands flew up, her wrists pinned together, and her back arched in a sudden, agonized rictus. Her sled spun away, and then her screams filled his ears as the astral web drew her down, down…
The web closed round and then he was hurtling, the water roaring, the ring of sharks flying apart and blurring at his passage…
And then the darkness took them both.
Four Days Earlier
II
Kohala Neuropsychiatric Institute, Hawai'i
May 7, 2070
