His expression darkens as he continues, muttering to himself as much as speaking to the rest of us. “I should not have to accomplish this by myself, but what can I do? Some of my crewmen and the first officer on my escort ship are so pathetically superstitious that they cannot see a black cat without losing their bowels like an infant. They are afraid of their own shadows and fear the chimera as though it is Satan himself. They have decided to leave me, Dr. Baer and a skeleton crew here to bring the Venator and the chimera to port by ourselves. So that is what we will do. Good riddance to them and more reward money for us.”
Dr. Baer swipes at his bleeding cheek and gives the captain a hard stare. “We can’t pilot this ship by ourselves and catch the chimera, Diego.”
The captain starts at the sound of someone else’s voice and frowns at the ongoing disrespect, making a low rumbling sound in his throat.
“It’s not possible,” Dr. Baer says. “We don’t have the manpower.”
“It is possible, I assure you.” Captain Romero’s face is still again, except for a spasming muscle along his jaw line. “I will pilot the ship. You will find the chimera. Simple.”
“And we’ll get out of here with the crew before we miss our chance.” Murphy extends his arms to herd us together and toward the door, pausing to give Captain Romero a curt nod. “Good luck to you, sir, and to you, Baer. You’re both going to need it. Let’s go, you lot.”
I can’t move away from the base of the tank.
“Bria,” An calls. “We don’t have all day.”
I’m trapped inside my sudden terror. Something cold, wet, pulsating and invisible has just skimmed down the side of my face in a caress that’s as gently reverential as it is obscene.
It’s one of the chimera’s tentacles. It has to be.
Trembling, I open my mouth to tell them what’s going on—to scream for help—but all I can produce is a strangled gurgle because I can’t breathe. My lungs won’t work.
And then it winds its way around my neck, and I know that if it tightens down, I’m dead. Will trying to yank it off make it tighten down? Are my reflexes quicker than the chimera’s? Am I already dead no matter what I do or don’t do?
A second tentacle—or maybe it’s only the tail end of the first—traces down my nose and over my lips. Total paralysis keeps me rooted to the spot, except for my pounding heart, which seems determined to escape through my chest wall and leave the rest of me to my gruesome fate.
“Bria?” Cortés asks sharply.
This is my only chance.
“Help . . . me,” I whisper, and twist my body, trying to wrench free.
The chimera reverts to its original form. Right before our disbelieving eyes, it materializes, grinning, in the tank, where it apparently was the whole time. My terror ratchets higher when its tentacles, pink and glistening like slugs, come into my peripheral vision. They stretch from the chimera, up through the bars at the top of the tank, and down to me.
“Help me!” I shout, grappling with the unyielding tentacles.
“Bria!” Cortés yells, his voice cutting across everyone else’s shocked cries. Reaching for me, he wrestles with the tentacles, which do, in fact, tighten down. My lungs heave, trying for one good breath that doesn’t come. An and Dr. Baer jump in to help Cortés. Maggie and Sammy shout encouragement.
Murphy and Carter swing their rifles up, stare down their sights at me and take aim.
The crushing pressure on my throat reduces my screams to gurgles. I try to pry the tentacles loose, but my hands are useless.
“Stop!” Gray roars. “Don’t aim for the tentacles! You’ll hit Bria! Aim for the body!”
Murphy and Carter swing around to aim at the tank. Captain Romero catapults in front of the tank, spreading his arms wide the way a normal person would protect their child from a speeding car.
“No!” he commands. “Don’t shoot it!”
“Get out of the way!”
My straining lungs threaten to explode. Black spots appear across my field of vision, but not before I see Cortés bend and reach for something near his foot. I see the blurry gray flash of a blade as his arm swings down, severing one of the tentacles.
The chimera screams. Its raw agony soaks through my body the way its hot blood soaks through my clothes. The tentacle drops to the floor with a sickening wet thunk, freeing up my throat and letting me drop to my knees, where I gasp for air.
The remaining tentacle snatches my aquamarine necklace from my neck and retreats.
The chimera screams again.
Blind panic makes me scoot backward on my butt, as far away from the tank as I can get, until my back hits the wall.
“What’s it doing?” shrieks An.
Murphy and Carter lower their rifles. Captain Romero, seeing the direction of everyone’s gazes, turns to face the tank.
The chimera keeps its gleaming black eyes on us and its teeth bared as it shimmies and slides out of its shell, revealing a misshapen stretch of black and white body that culminates in those wicked tentacles, one of which is still gripping my necklace. Its legs remain with the shell and fall slowly to the tank’s bottom, discarded. The chimera gives its body a single hard shake. The claws drop out and also drift to the tank’s bottom.
“Oh, my God,” Maggie murmurs.
Now freed of all of its armored parts, the chimera thrusts its tentacles to propel itself to the top of the tank. My first thought is that it intends to yank the metal grid off the top and escape, but that’s not what it has in mind at all. With a lingering look back at us, as though it wants to make sure it has a rapt audience for its stunning display, it reverses its position, presses its tentacles together to form a single long appendage and inserts the tip into one of the two-inch spaces between the bars.
I watch, cowering, as it flattens and wriggles its body through the space, which is impossibly and exponentially too small for it to fit.
But it does fit.
The head, now smaller and longer than the average cucumber, is the final part to emerge. A vigorous full-body shake like a dog does after its bath restores the chimera’s body to its previous dolphin-esque shape and size, and it seems good as new, minus its shell, legs and claws. Free at last, the monster pauses atop the grid to roar with triumph and stare down at us as though deciding who it wants to eat first.
Its avid gaze lands on me and stays.
“Run,” I breathe. “We need to run.”
No one moves.
The tentacles undulate along the grid, snakelike now, and inch the chimera to the edge, where it rears up.
This, finally, galvanizes everyone.
We all scatter as fast as we can.
Behind us, the thing leaps the fifteen or so feet to the floor and lands with such light ease you’d think it weighed no more than a sparrow. I tell myself not to look, but I am Lot’s wife and have a self-destructive fascination with what’s going on behind me. So I take a glance—just a small one, over my shoulder—and see that the chimera has already regrown its spiny crab’s legs. Only these are taller and faster than they were before, big enough to support a Great White rather than a mere dolphin.
The chimera, now six feet tall, at least, angles itself sideways, scuttling after us and zeroing in on me.
My mouth twists open, but the scream is caught in my throat and my body is a concrete slab of terror, incapable of movement.
A hand grabs my wrist, hard, and I discover that Cortés has me, and he’s shouting for me to run! So I run. Captain Romero and Maggie are on my other side, closing in on the bottleneck of bodies at the door.
I see Murphy at the threshold, wildly waving kids through and screaming for Maggie, Cortés and me to hurry, HURRY HURRY! and not look behind.
But I do look behind.
The monster is now as much phoenix as it is chimera. The thing has regenerated a massive new shell to encase its growing body, and the shell is gray and unscratched, with spiked armor and rows of fortified ridges.
I keep
running.
And I watch, with dread, as jostling bodies knock Maggie, the smallest of us, off her feet. I duck around the captain as he runs out of the cabin with the last of the kids, trying to keep her in sight. Before I can shout her name, she is skidding on her butt and coming to a stop at the chimera’s many scuttling feet.
“Maggie!”
Sobbing, she focuses on me and frantically tries to get up.
So she doesn’t see what I see—which is the chimera slowing to a stop and leering down at her from its shocking new height of about ten feet.
“Maggie!” I shout again, trying to run back to her and struggling against Cortes’s unyielding grip. “I have to get her!”
The grim resignation in his expression tells me what I already know. It’s too late.
The chimera cocks its head and studies Maggie as though it can’t believe its stupid good fortune.
Then it raises a claw and, with a horizontal snip so casual and effortless it might have been a gardener cutting roses, neatly cuts Maggie in two through the waist.
I scream all through the endless second when her head, arms and torso linger, teetering, on the bottom portion of her body. I stop screaming only when the ruined halves of Maggie topple to the floor, separating from each other in a shower of blood.
For one long beat, while I scream and scream and scream, the chimera studies its handiwork with a distinct lack of interest that I find insulting, even in my hysterical state. It doesn’t bother eating Maggie, savoring the smell of her fresh flesh or even checking to see if she’s got some jewelry it could pilfer.
None of that matters to the thing.
It killed Maggie for the same reason it hid in plain sight inside the tank and then attacked us at a moment of its choosing:
Just because it could.
Now it raises its head and, once again, zeroes in on me.
With Cortés’s hand as my only lifeline, I run.
We careen the rest of the way down the corridor and stumble up the metal staircase. I’m half-blinded by my hot tears for Maggie, so I focus all my attention on not plowing into the people ahead of me. I’ve learned my excruciating lesson about slowing down to look, and there’s no point in looking behind, anyway. The approaching clatter of the chimera’s spidery legs is painfully audible as it gains on us. There’s also no point in wondering if it can get up the stairs when I know it can and surely will—either by climbing or jumping.
If the chimera has a weakness, I haven’t seen it yet.
I do a quick head count to make sure we haven’t lost anyone else and discover that my friends are all wearing identical expressions of wild-eyed, open-mouthed, silently-screaming fear. It occurs to me that this, above anything else, is what fuels the chimera. Not the blood, the chaos or even the shiny trinkets.
It wants our terror.
At that moment, it lets loose with a piercing shriek that’s harrowing enough to turn my hair whiter than Murphy’s. This triggers a panicked yell from all of us.
We run faster. At last we arrive at the heavy glass door leading to the deck.
Murphy bangs it wide with a vicious shove.
“Through here!” he roars, holding it open and yanking us through. “Hurry!”
My turn comes, with Cortés and Dr. Baer bringing up the rear. I have no idea where Captain Romero has gotten to, nor do I care. If I could, I’d serve him up to the chimera on a silver platter, which is exactly what he deserves.
Everything that’s happened, especially Maggie’s senseless death, is his fault.
Shaking and still crying, I swipe at my eyes and try to get my bearings as we emerge onto the deck. The hurricane immediately swallows us whole and absorbs us into the black night.
A driving rain, as frigid as it is relentless, stings my face and overcomes the tears in my eyes, blinding me anew. The howling wind slams into my face, making Silly Putty of my skin and threatening to rip off my features.
The hurricane is going to kill us before the chimera can, I think.
The ship churns against the ocean’s crests and troughs, as battered as a kid’s newspaper sailboat in a carwash. Waves the size of mountains rise up and lash us through the metal railing. We cling to it in a desperate attempt to avoid being swept overboard. Within seconds, I’m soaked to the marrow of my bones and slowed by my wet clothes and shivering limbs. Another wave hits, and Dr. Baer goes down. The water sweeps him, yelling and thrashing, away from the rail. He disappears into the shadows at the base of some of the heavy equipment. I falter, wondering if we should go after him.
Someone shouts. Points over the rail, out to sea.
Squinting, I see the winking lights of the escort ship. Further down the deck, a clump of crewmen huddle around the dinghy tied to the railing.
My brain is numb with fear and cold, but I understand the plan, and this is what I focus on:
We need to get into the dinghy before the chimera kills us or the ocean drowns us, zoom the hundred yards or so to the escort ship, climb aboard and head for dry land and safety.
Simple.
But walking across the wet deck while the ship rolls from wave to wave, even while holding on to the rail, is like trying to cross an ice-covered tightrope stretched across an abyss.
We do our best, inching along in single file with Murphy in the lead.
Up ahead, the crewman in charge of the evacuation directs the last of his coworkers into the dinghy, looks up and spies our group.
“Vamos!” he shouts over the wind, waving us on. “Mais rápido!”
Without warning, he pauses. His eyes widen and his jaw drops into a frozen gape as he tips his head up . . . and up . . . and up to stare at something behind us.
Something that causes the door’s glass to shatter and spray shards in a wide radius, catching me across the back.
I holler with pain, as do several of the others.
“Meu Deus!” Crossing himself, the crewman in charge abandons all pretext of an orderly evacuation and shouts at us as he vaults the rail and jumps into the dinghy. “Mais rápido! Mais rápido!”
Murphy reaches the dinghy first, turns to us and gestures wildly. “Come on, you little shits! Let go of the bloody rail and get your asses over here now! NOW!”
I let go and try to run, but the ship rolls to one side. I slam back into the rail with enough force to rupture my kidney. I ignore the searing pain and keep going, my sneakered feet scrambling for traction. Cortés, who seems much more sure-footed than I am, yanks on my hand to keep me going.
“Mais rápido!” the crewman shouts.
Through the wet strands of hair trailing across my face, I see that Gray and Carter have jumped over the rail and are now safely in the dinghy helping the others in. Sammy and An are next.
“You can run faster than that!” Murphy shouts at me and Cortés.
We run.
Mike’s in the crowded dinghy now, thank God, and that leaves just me and Cortés.
“What’re you doing, you feckin’ yellow cowards?” Murphy screeches at a crewman fumbling with the cables. The crewman answers angrily in Portuguese. The voices of my friends rise up in protest. “Don’t you lower this dinghy until all of my kids are on board! Don’t you dare!”
The dinghy is already several feet lower than it was just a second ago and dropping fast toward the water. My gaze is locked on Murphy, so I see the exact second when his attention is diverted from the dinghy to whatever the chimera’s doing behind us.
My lungs heave for air, my straining thighs want to collapse and I’m desperate to look back, but we’re less than five feet away from the dinghy now, and if I can just. . .
I hit a particularly slick spot and drop fast and hard, landing on my butt and then hitting the back of my head on the deck with a sickening thud.
“Bria!”
Stunned, I try to sit up because I know it’s important and there’s something long, thin and hard digging into my back . . . God, my head hurts, and that hard thing—I remember now it’s
the panga’s wooden hilt—is really painful. Yes, I need to get up . . . why do I need to get up? It’s the chimera, isn’t it—
“Bria!” Cortés thunders.
I give my head a shake and try to focus.
The chimera . . . ? Yes! The chimera is coming! We have to hurry . . .
“Cortés, get her on the boat, man, d’you hear me?” The urgency in Murphy’s voice pierces my foggy brain, and, with great effort and Cortés’s help, I heave onto all fours and get one foot back under me. “Don’t stop for nothing!”
I’m up now, and the three of us—me, Cortés and Murphy—just need to climb into the dinghy and we’ll be on our way to safety. But I see, as I look past the vibrating cable and over the rail, that the dinghy, with all my friends in it, is now much closer to the water than it is to me.
“Bria!” Gray stands and reaches his arms up to me, struggling to keep his footing as the dinghy drops lower and lower. “You have to jump! Jump, Bria!” He turns to the crewmen. “Goddammit, will you wait for them? You have to wait!”
He, Carter and Mike get into a scuffle with a couple of the crewmen, tussling over the cables. An gets in on the act, too, jumping onto the back of a guy who’s got his fist cocked to nail Carter in the face and wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Don’t you touch him!” she shrieks while the guy stumbles blindly in his effort to fend her off. “And you keep this dinghy right here until my friends get in! Do you hear me?”
Ignoring the hot pain knifing its way through the back of my skull, I swing my leg over the rail and look around for Murphy, who should be right there and ready to jump with us.
He’s gone.
“Murphy?” I say.
I hear a giant splash and the rising cries of my friends. The dinghy’s hit the water, then. But we can’t leave without Murphy.
“Bria, c’mon, let’s go!” orders Cortés.
“Where’s Murphy?” I demand, squinting against the driving rain.
Oh, God. Murphy, no.
Murphy’s dropped to one knee in the middle of the deck. He’s got his rifle braced against his shoulder and is squinting through the sights, taking aim at something far above him.
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