Shearwater: Ocean Depths Book One (FULL)

by D. S. Murphy

  “Dolphins are friendly and playful,” Sebastian said. “They’re usually happy to help, but you should never force them to do anything against their will. Just hold on and follow me.”

  I grabbed the creature’s dorsal fin just as Sebastian shot off through the water. The dolphin gave chase and I held on as tightly as I could. If my body hadn’t already been strengthened by the sea water, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep my grip. I tried kicking at first but it didn’t help—I could feel the dolphin’s annoyance whenever I kicked his tail. So I gave up and just hung on for the ride. At first all I could see was the white water hitting me in the face, but I finally put my head underwater. That’s when I saw how quickly we were moving, as the ocean floor sped by beneath us. I could feel the dolphin’s enthusiasm as it followed Sebastian, it was infectious. Laughter bubbled up inside me.

  We covered the distance in the space of a few minutes, and the dolphin stopped suddenly in front of the cave, practically tossing me into Sebastian’s arms. I pulled off the mercap and paddled over to firm ground. Sebastian had packed some supplies in a waterproof bag. He tossed me a towel to dry off, then we sat on some rocks outside the mouth of the cave, directly below the castle. It was an unusually bright November day. The black volcanic rocks gleamed in the sun, jutting up through the clear teal water. After he was dry, Sebastian peeled off the remains of his tail and tossed it into the ocean. It began to fizzle and dissolve immediately. I turned away as Sebastian pulled on a pair of shorts, then we walked into the cave and stepped into the shallow pool.

  “The ocean gives us strength,” he said. “So whenever possible, avoid conflict until you can get your feet in the water. You’ll heal quicker, move faster and be more powerful than your opponent—and they’ll be just the opposite. However, if you have to fight on land…” he pulled out an antique flask and tossed it to me, “bring the ocean with you.”

  “What do I do with it? Drink it?” He rolled his eyes at me, then pulled out some long strips of fabric from the backpack. “Soak these in sea water, then wrap them around your knuckles.” He showed me how to tie a loop around my thumb, then wrap the cloth around the back of my hand so the fabric tightens when I make a fist. He pulled it between each finger, then back around my wrist again. It took me a few tries before I could do it the same way myself.

  “Now soak your hand in the water.”

  I bent down and plunged my wrapped hand into the pool. I could feel the water soaking through the fabric and tingling against my skin.

  “As long as you keep the flask full and the fabric wet, you should have a big advantage over humans on land. That is, you’ll have more strength and agility. You still need to learn how to use it.”

  He reached down and soaked his hands until they’d nearly doubled in size, then held his palms up and nodded. My fists hit the palms of his hands with a satisfying smack. It felt like I was punching a cement wall, but with my hands wrapped, it didn’t hurt.

  “Harder,” Sebastian said. He corrected my footing and posture and showed me how to put my weight into the punch. Then he started dancing around, giving me a moving target to aim at. Suddenly he lashed out and clipped my ear with his finger.

  “Ow!” He’d barely touched me but it felt like he’d taken a chunk out of my ear. The bindings around my hands were already drying out, and I started to feel impossibly slow, and frustrated.

  “I’ll never be fast enough,” I said. “You move so fast, I can’t even see you.”

  “I’ve been trained, but most merrow have.”

  “How can I hope to fight trained soldiers?” I asked.

  “You can’t fight merrow directly,” he frowned. “You’ll never be fast enough or strong enough to win—unless you can draw them out away from the sea, long enough for them to dry out. At least twenty-four hours away from the ocean, hopefully more. Then, ideally, you’d shoot them in the head.”

  I laughed before I realized he wasn’t joking.

  “Wait, you want me to shoot them? Like with a gun?”

  “It’s too dangerous to fight them in hand-to-hand combat, and remember if they come, it’ll be as a group. Keep your distance. Stay hidden. Pick off as many of us as you can.” My blood ran cold when I realized he’d said us—as if he expected to be part of the invasion. I didn’t want to imagine any scenario where I had to aim a rifle at Sebastian’s head and find the strength to pull the trigger. I forced the image away, it made me feel like throwing up.

  “But I’m not teaching you how to fight merrow,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I’m just teaching you a bit of defense. It’ll give you a chance to survive an encounter.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this? Why learn to fight at all?”

  “The merrow aren’t the ones after you, remember? It’s the humans that are trying to kill you, the Tuatha Dé. Remember the way Ethan took out Ajax? What if he came after you?”

  “He wouldn’t—”

  “Maybe not, but Ethan’s young. The other Tuatha Dé will be even more powerful, and less likely to hesitate. Your advantage is speed and agility, not to mention your beauty, which might slow them down a little, at least if they’re men.”

  “My looks aren’t a weapon,” I said

  “Oh yes, they definitely are,” he smirked.

  “What about the other weapons? The legends say Lugh defeated Balor’s poisonous eye with a bloodthirsty spear. And one of the four relics of the Tuatha Dé is the Sword of Nuadha. Do you think those could be real? Is that what you meant when you were talking to Ajax, about the device?”

  “Well… it was before my time. But our weapon was real. It’s what sank Atlantis.”

  “Tell me about it?”

  “I only know what I’ve heard,” Sebastian said. “Probably not much more than you already know. Goibniu created two powerful weapons, a spear, which he gave to Lugh, and a sword for Nuadha, the first king of the Tuatha Dé. During the great battle, Balor killed Nuadha, but then Lugh threw his spear through Balor’s eye, destroying it. The explosion wiped out most of the Fomorian army. Lugh beheaded Balor and became the new king of the Tuatha Dé.”

  “So the eye of Balor was destroyed. What was the device then?”

  “An even more powerful weapon. The ruling family built it thousands of years ago as a failsafe, and only used it once. For Atlantis. But it was so terrible, destroying a whole continent, sinking a civilization, that they promised they’d never use it again. When my father petitioned the king to use it again, he refused. It wasn’t long after that that the entire royal family disappeared. They were the only ones who knew where the weapon was, and had the key to activate it.”

  “What key?”

  “The royal family have very powerful Baetulia. They’re larger and blue like sapphires. Some think they ran away to protect the device. So you see, even if we found it, it wouldn’t do any good, without the key. And I don’t think it would be any help to us against the merrow.”

  I sighed and stretched my neck.

  “So I guess I just need to keep practicing.”

  “Let’s try something simple,” Sebastian said, picking up a pebble and holding it in his open palm. “When you can snatch the pebble from my hand, young grasshopper, it will be time for you to leave.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Isn’t that from a Kung Fu movie?”

  He dropped the rock with a grin.

  “It’s a classic,” he shrugged. “Seemed appropriate.”

  I soaked my hands in the water again, feeling the rush of energy and power as the fabric dripped with sea water. Then we sparred for another thirty minutes. Sebastian taught me how to avoid punches, though I’m sure he was moving in slow motion to make it easy for me. Even so, I was soon exhausted and dripping with sweat. The bindings around my fingers kept drying out, leaving my hands red and swollen.

  “Remember, it’s better to duck than to block. Every time you take a hit, it’s going to do some damage to you. The salt water in the bindings wi
ll heal you quickly, but the more damage you take, the sooner you’ll dry out. And once your flask is empty—”

  “Game over,” I said, pulling strands of my hair away from my face. “Speaking of, are we done yet? I think that’s enough for day one. And we’re on the clock, remember? The note said 7pm.”

  We returned to the deep blue water outside the mouth of the cave. I held onto Sebastian’s shoulders and he pulled me behind him until the castle was just a bump on the horizon. The jagged coastline of Northern Ireland formed a crisp green line above the dark sea. He nodded at me, and I took a deep breath and put the mercap back on. Then we dove deeper. My heart started pounding immediately. At first all I could see was neverending blue in every direction, and the dark lip of the abyss we’d entered last time, the allswallowing void of the ocean depths. But that was still pretty far off. As we got deeper I could make out the bottom and relaxed a bit. Knowing there was some limit, seeing the edges of the space I was floating in, helped calm me. It was the absence of any kind of markers to indicate size or scale or distance that was terrifying.

  I flailed backwards as the bow of the ship emerged suddenly from the murky water—it was carved in the shape of a wild boar. It looked like it was bearing down upon us, even though we were the ones moving and it was stationary. The curved boards of the ship were jagged and split, like the broken ribs of a fallen giant. Sebastian’s pale body looked tiny in the shadow of the massive galleon. Torn strips of the sail beckoned slowly, waving in surrender even after being forgotten for centuries. Webbing and ropes made a maze of the wreckage. They tumbled out of the ship’s gutted mid-section like intestines. It was exactly the kind of place an evil sea witch would use for a secret lair. I shuddered and pulled back.

  “It’s okay,” Sebastian said, reaching back for my hand. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  We drove down underneath the front of the bow, and Sebastian started making wide circles around an area to the left of the ship. Finally he stopped and looked up at me, smiling.

  “Can you feel it?” he asked, pointing at the ground. There was nothing there but sand. I shook my head.

  “Shut your eyes and use your senses,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and felt the water around me, the subtle shifts in current as it parted around the massive ship, the wall of sand beneath us, the rotting wood—that’s when I felt it. The rusty iron and metal felt different. Wrong, somehow, like it didn’t belong. I could sense the large anchor on the other side of the ship, the thousands of iron spikes hammered into the hull, and then… something else. Another kind of metal. Finer, more elegant somehow.

  I opened my eyes and smiled back at Sebastian.

  “I’m like a human metal detector,” I said.

  “Almost everything down here is organic, or at least naturally forming. Manmade things stand out, metal especially.”

  Sebastian aimed his tail directly downward and started waving it back and forth like a fan, kicking up a cloud of sand and debris, and what looked like long white twigs. As the cloud settled I could see glittering pieces of gold now exposed on the ocean floor. He grabbed a handful of coins and flung them in my direction. They fell around me like sparkling rain drops.

  I swam lower and brushed a layer of sand away from a dark rectangular object. It was a chest of some kind, with leather handles coming out of each side. The large metal lock on the front was rusted over. I tugged on it but it wouldn’t budge. Sebastian winked at me, then his arm shot out and smashed the lock clean off. I opened the lid cautiously and my eyes grew wide. The chest was full of gleaming coins and jewelry. Sebastian pulled out a diamond necklace with a ruby as big as a marble. Behind the chest was a Spanish rapier with a richly decorated hilt. I reached for the sword, which was caught in a pile of white branches, and tugged it out. A few of the twigs snapped.

  “Take whatever you want,” he said. “They won’t miss it.”

  “They?” I asked.

  I looked again at the scene around us. My blood ran cold as I saw the twigs and branches for what they really were. Bones. We were in a forest of human bones. This wasn’t a shipwreck, it was an underwater graveyard.

  35

  “How could you not notice a hundred dead bodies?” I fumed.

  We’d taken all the treasure we could carry back to Sebastian’s place to clean up before meeting our blackmailer.

  “They’ve been dead a long time,” Sebastian said. “I didn’t think it would bother you that much. People die every day.”

  “But I don’t see it. Not like that,” I said.

  “I forget sometimes how young you are… you’ve never seen a war, or a famine, or a plague. Anyway I didn’t know there would be that many down there. Most of the bodies floated to shore and were buried in a mass grave near Dunluce Castle.”

  “Forget it, at least we got what we came for right? Let’s focus on one thing at a time. What’s next?”

  First we stopped by a pawnshop in Portrush. I thought the shop owner was going to have a heart attack when Sebastian pulled a fistful of antique gold coins out of his pocket and dropped them on the counter. Sebastian bargained the price to 1000 pounds per coin, about the worth of the gold weight. They were worth ten times that to the right buyer, he said, but we didn’t have time to be picky.

  The blackmail note said to come alone and drop off the cash in a blue crate behind the Old Bushmills Distillery, then take the first bus. If I stayed to watch, the photos and video would get released. So the plan was, I’d walk to the drop off point alone, then make a big show of getting on the bus back to Portballintrae. Sebastian, meanwhile, would wait and follow the blackmailer, and hopefully find and destroy any evidence they might have.

  Sebastian cut through the back of a bed and breakfast and found a perch for his stakeout; through the bushes he had a pretty good view of the lot behind Bushmills.

  “If I see anybody else coming, any sign of danger, I’ll rush in. They’ll probably want to avoid getting identified though, so I think they’ll wait until you’re gone before making a move.”

  I nodded, my stomach in knots. I hated everything about this. The photos that proved Sebastian wasn’t human; the fact that somebody knew our secret; handing over so much money to some blackmailing asshole. I left Sebastian and made a wide loop around the bed and breakfast, around the bus stop, then into the front of the distillery. It was a tourist site usually, but the lot was quiet now. It was almost seven and the light was fading. I felt exposed walking along the side of the huge factory building. In the back of the building the fumes of charcoal, barley and grain alcohol were nearly overwhelming. It wasn’t hard to find the blue crate—it was sitting on top of stack of wooden boxes near the dumpsters. I checked the time on my phone and waited until exactly seven to place the unmarked envelope full of cash in the crate. I had to force myself to let go of the fat stack of bills. Some people would have to work for years to save up this much money, and I was leaving it here like garbage.

  I took a deep breath and left the lot without a backwards glance, walking through the front gate and to the bus stop. The next bus came at 7:10pm. Whoever wrote the note had timed it well, I only had to wait a few minutes before the bus pulled up and I stepped inside.

  My part was over, but my anxiety increased once we pulled away. What if Sebastian got in trouble? What if the blackmailer was violent, or one of the TautheDe? What if this was all some kind of complex trap to draw Sebastian out? I’d probably been on the bus less than a minute before I pulled the emergency cord and begged the driver to stop the bus. The road had already wound up the hill and was near the Giant’s Causeway center. Far out of eyesight, but only about half a mile away. I raced through the fields to reach Bushmills town and then snuck around to where I’d left Sebastian. He spun around when he heard me approaching.

  “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

  I held up a finger, then bent over to catch my breath.

  “I was… worried,” I said finally. “Anything yet?
”

  He nodded, pulling me down next to him, then moved a branch out of the way with his fingers. There was a figure in the back of the lot, reaching into the crate. It was getting dark so at first I didn’t recognize her, but I saw her face as she glanced around furtively before stashing the envelope in her bag.

  Roisin. I was halfway through the bushes when Sebastian grabbed me and pulled me back.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he said, his arms wrapped around me tightly.

  “To throttle her and get the money back.”

  “She still has the pictures, remember? If we don’t pay her, you might see those in every tabloid in the country.”

  “So we just let her get away with this?”

  “Let her enjoy it while she can. The world might be ending soon, remember? Besides, now that we know who it is, we can keep an eye on her.”

  I stopped struggling when Roisin was out of sight, but I was sullen on the ride home.

  “You’re really going to let this bother you?” Sebastian asked as we got out of the car.

  “I just wish the money was going to better use,” I grumbled.

  “So we’ll go back and get more. Use it however you want.”

  “That’s not the point. I just don’t want her to have it.”

  “Forget about it. It’s over. Concentrate on more important things.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. It’s almost Christmas. How about we go shopping for presents?”

  “With what?” I scoffed. “We just left all our cash in the back of a distillery.”

  “Not all of our cash,” he said, pulling out a stack of bills that was almost as thick as the one we’d left for Roisin.

  “I kept some, for the holidays, and for Aedan. Thought it might put you in the festive spirit.”

  “You’re trying to buy my happiness?” I asked.

  “Is it working?”

  “Maybe a little. If only I had some friends to shop for.”

  “About that,” he said. “I think you should make up with your classmates. You’re becoming too isolated, it makes you vulnerable. Not to mention moody.”