that those tentacle claws might be poisonous. “We have to get them out of here, back onto the deck. You take her; I’ll manage Suhonen.”
“No one has to manage me,” Suhonen said. He was on his feet, weaving but alert. Three punctures diagonally crossed his torso, oozing blood. The scar on my own chest twinged in sympathy; if one of those claws had gone deep enough to get to his lungs, I knew just how unlikely his survival would be.
Suhonen tossed Jane over his shoulder as easily as I might a sleeping child. “I think the party’s over,” he said, and made his way toward the stairs, battling the rolling ship.
I picked up Suhonen’s dropped sword, then retrieved Jane’s and handed it to Duncan. “Ready to go?” I asked. He nodded rapidly. “Then let’s make sure nothing nasty follows us.”
I watched ahead of us, while Duncan kept an eye behind. I had to trust him-more tentacles were squeezing into the portholes, seeking to touch the injured beak shaft. When one came too near, I slashed, and it withdrew at once. We got to the stairs and only then did I risk a look back. Duncan was right there, and from the fresh blue blood on the end of his sword, I knew he’d been busy.
Kaven lay where he’d fallen beside the stairs. His eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing; the impact had snapped his neck across the walkway’s edge. I said to Duncan, “You go up first,” but he shook his head. It wasn’t the time to argue, so I clambered up the stairs and squeezed past the thick tentacle that blocked half the hatch, aided by its natural slime. Duncan followed.
On the pitching deck, Jane sat with her back against the mainmast. Her right leg was stuck straight out, and blood pulsed from the puncture in her thigh. She was conscious again, weak from shock and loss of blood. Her attitude hadn’t changed, though. “Holy shit,” she gasped when she saw me, “that was fucking close. I didn’t think we’d get past that last tentacle.”
Suhonen knelt at the rail, trying to haul in our boat. The ship was so low to the water that it bobbed at deck level. If it stayed this low, the water rushing into the big hold would sink it.
“Go help him,” I told Duncan. The boy rushed to take the rope from Suhonen, who didn’t put up a fight. Instead he flopped to the side, unconscious, as soon as the rope was out of his hands. Duncan put Jane’s sword on the deck under one foot and began to pull with all the might his panic provided, which was considerable.
Across the way, the crew of the Red Cow waved at us. At first I thought they were cheering our success, which seemed odd; then I realized they were pointing behind and above us. I turned.
Three tentacles rose as high as the ship’s foremast into the air. They wound around the masts and snapped the topmost lengths off. Splinters rained down on us. Duncan had almost gotten the boat to the rail, which was good because the monster now had us so low in the water, waves began to swamp the deck. “Come on!” the boy yelled.
I helped Jane to her feet and she hopped quickly to the boat, landing in an undignified heap across the bow seat. Then I muscled the unconscious Suhonen across my shoulders and rolled him in on top of her, eliciting a weak but outraged, “Ow! Watch it!”
A huge column of water shot into the air. I knew cuttlefish propelled themselves with water jets, and it seemed this one was no different. The ship groaned, more bits of mast fell off, and the wherry nearly capsized. I grabbed the rope from Duncan and said, “Get in the boat!”
He did as I told him, almost impaling himself on Jane’s huge sword. I was less than a second behind him. Another jet of water pushed us rapidly away from the ship, accompanied by a surge of jet-black ink. The water smelled rancid now, and Duncan and I quickly began to row for the Cow.
As we pulled away, another tentacle appeared and reached for us. How many goddamned arms did this thing have, anyway? Before I could react, Duncan stood and whacked the tentacle with Jane’s sword. A three-foot section dropped into the boat and flopped at our feet, spewing blue blood. The rest of the arm recoiled, knocking the sword from his hands and into the water. But by then the combination of waves and our own frantic rowing put us safely out of reach.
The creature’s other tentacles enveloped the ship now, and the bow sank beneath the surface. “No way,” Jane whispered in awe. “It can’t possibly pull the ship down.”
“I don’t think it knows that,” I said.
With a great unearthly cry-part scraping wood, part animal’s shriek-the boat shot into the air as the monster lost its battle to pull the ship beneath the water. The vessel bounced, sending several waves toward us that pushed us toward the Cow even faster. Then it settled, the tentacles withdrew, and by the time we reached our ship, the strange vessel once again sat motionless in the sea, although lower, thanks to the water in its hold. Only the broken masts and ink-stained water indicated what had happened.
Jane looked up from tying a tourniquet around her leg. “That was a hell of a trap,” she croaked.
“It was,” I agreed.
She began to laugh.
“What?” I said.
“You. You look like you’ve been tongue-kissing a barrelful of slugs.”
I wiped some of the slime from my beard and grinned. “I have been at sea for a while, you know. Your standards change.”
She laughed even harder, until with a long sigh her eyes closed and her body went slack.
Chapter Twenty
It took four men to carry Suhonen belowdecks, and three more to manage Jane. I had to coax Duncan out of the boat; he clutched his sword and stared at the other ship as if he expected the creature beneath it to come after us. Honestly, the same thought had occurred to me. I wondered if we’d dealt it a mortal blow, or just an inconvenience.
The ship’s surgeon, a portly old man named Skurnick, judged Suhonen the more seriously injured and began working on him at once. Jane was carried unconscious to her cabin, but she was already pale and sweaty, and she began to mutter to herself without waking up. Dorsal waited outside the cabin and watched, wide-eyed, as Jane was tended, then slipped in when only I remained watching over her.
“She’s hurt real bad,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Yeah,” I agreed. I was still covered with slick, sticky monster spit, and it did not grow more pleasant as it dried. “Can you watch her until I get back? I need to get this gunk off. If you need me, holler.”
“Sure,” he said.
I undressed, went on deck, lowered a bucket, and washed as best I could with seawater. Around me, the crew worked in grim silence, aware of what lurked beneath the innocuous ship across the way.
Good- natured, secretly love-struck Captain Clift was as furious as I’ve ever seen anybody. He stalked the deck like a panther, snapping orders that Seaton did not have to repeat. He glared at me as I cleaned up, but I knew his anger wasn’t personal. He’d narrowly avoided the fate of all those other ghost ships, and the nearness of it rubbed him the wrong way.
“Cap’n!” a sailor called. They were tying up the boat we’d used, and several men stared into it. One of them reached down and retrieved the dismembered tentacle tip. “Appears we have a souvenir.”
Clift looked it over. He lifted one of the claws from the center of a suction cup, and muttered a curse I didn’t catch.
I said, “Ever seen anything like that?”
He nodded. “Bigger than any of ’em, of course, but I know the type.” He flicked one of the claws near the tentacle’s end. It was only two inches long, but no less intimidating when you thought about it buried in your flesh. “Want to hear the worst part?”
“There’s a worst part I don’t already know about?”
He pulled the claw free. It was smooth, and with a wide ball at the base. Blue ichor dripped from it. “There’s no barbs.” “What does that mean?”
“They don’t get the barbs until they’re full grown.”
I was so tired, it took a moment for that to register. “You mean it’s a baby?”
“More likely a teenager. But yeah, it’s not full grown.” He handed me the claw. “I hope we don’t run into
