When Malahide did not reply, the boss grinned. He turned to look at Morag, who by now had gained some courage and stared back at him.
“When were the police called?” the boss demanded. “Was it by radio? Telephone?”
“Go to hell, you murdering bastard,” Morag snarled.
The boss leaned back, looked surprised.
“I get the feeling nobody has called the police,” he said. “Yet that makes no sense. Crazy. So, we move out beyond the three-mile limit, now, into international waters. Just in case.”
He snapped out a command and the smaller of the two henchmen disappeared. There was some shouting outside. A few moments later came the sound of rattling chains. Malahide realized that the yacht was pulling up its anchor.
***
“You can't do this!” shouted Dan.
“Evidently, we can,” said the woman, standing beside him in the cabin.
Dan shoved past her, no longer restrained by the two burly islanders. One man was now steering the boat, the other had gone to take up a position in the bows of the boat. But Dan realized as he looked back at the crowd on the jetty and quayside that there was nowhere for him to go. He could jump overboard, but he was too exhausted after the long swim to the sea-cave. Even if he succeeded in getting ashore in his bulky diving suit he would simply be recaptured.
“You're really going to hand me over to Korochenko's thugs?” he demanded, turning back to face the woman.
“Why not?” she asked. “They will leave us alone if we give you to them. And return the cross the Deep Ones forged for us.”
Dan laughed.
“Give me a break,” he said. “These guys don't make bargains with little people. They'll just kill us all and keep the cross. They've already committed murder. Why not do it again?”
A fleeting expression passed across the woman's pale face. It was, Dan thought, a mix of apprehension and anger. She had, he realized, no real grasp of how violent the outside world could be. The islanders were all getting a crash course in a culture that they had held at arm's length for centuries.
“Very well,” she said. “Fergus, I must go. Take him out to the motor yacht.”
“Aye,” replied the man in the wheelhouse.
Before Dan could comprehend what was happening, the woman had started taking off her clothes. As she revealed more of her body, he began to understand just how accurate Malahide had been. And with startling speed, she had leaped over the side of the boat. Dan was left staring at the fading patch of white foam where she had splashed down. For a couple of minutes, he waited for her to appear again. Then he gave up and looked ahead to where the sleek white yacht was starting to head out to sea.
The fisherman at the prow of the boat raised an object. A red flare shot into the summer sky, leaving a trail of lurid smoke.
***
“What's happening?” whimpered Lisa.
“The engines have stopped,” said Malahide. “Perhaps there's a fault?”
“Or maybe it's the Coastguard,” suggested Chad. “Or the navy? Nah, we couldn't be that lucky.”
The four prisoners were locked in a cabin on the main deck, with a small porthole in the door. Judging by the lurid, skimpy clothing strewn about, the cabin had been occupied by a young woman with expensive taste. Outside, a guard with a gun stood, back to the door, looking in the direction of Soray. The man's bullet head blocked most of the view, but Malahide could just make out a trail of red smoke. A flare, which suggested a boat was near.
“Something's happening,” he said. “Maybe they're bringing Fox.”
“Oh, God,” cried Lisa. “They'll kill him!”
“Serves the asshole right!” growled Chad. “Thinks he's so damn superior. He won't look so smart when they hang him up in a meat locker below decks.”
Lisa shoved him hard.
“We should try to escape,” said Morag.
“How?” the priest demanded. “We're locked in. There's just the one steel door.”
Morag gestured Malahide aside and went to the porthole. She peered through for a few moments, then took a pace back.
“She gonna charge through it head-first?” sneered Chad.
“Shut up,” said Morag quietly, then took a deep breath. “This is not easy.”
Malahide had an inkling of what she was trying to do. He looked around, found something he had seen earlier, and grabbed it. An iPod, complete with headphones. He shoved the white plastic buds into his ears and fiddled with the device. The playlist was in Cyrillic characters, but he assumed the music would be thumping dance tunes.
“Yeah, right, this is the time for a silent disco,” said Chad.
“Cover your ears,” the priest replied, turning up the volume. An electronic beat began to hammer its mindless rhythm into his ears just as Morag opened her mouth, threw her head back, and began to sing.
The priest could not hear the siren song, but he knew it was filling the cabin. Chad was staring vacantly at Morag, while Lisa pressed her hands over her ears in apparent discomfort. Chad walked over to the girl like a somnambulist, then stood staring at her, mouth agape. Malahide was looking at the cabin door, though.
The guard had turned, his expression puzzled as he peered through the port. Then he opened the door and stumbled in, reaching for Morag. The girl skipped back with agility, and the guard shambled on in pursuit. Malahide reached out and took the gun from the man's waistband then brought it down hard on the thug's shaven scalp. He felt the crack of the impact run up his arm.
Morag closed her mouth and looked down at the guard, who was on his knees clutching at a bloody head wound. The girl hurled herself onto the man and as began to claw and bite at him. Lisa screamed while Chad bellowed in panic. Malahide ran out onto the deck and, after a moment's hesitation, hurled the pistol over the side.
“Bad move, Father,” said a familiar voice.
Malahide looked up to see the boss aiming a rifle at him over the rail of the yacht's upper deck. The priest raised his hands just as two thugs, both armed with rifles, appeared around the end of the main cabin.
“I don't know how you got out,” went on the boss. “But you had better–”
The Russian was interrupted by a yell of terror and pain. The guard crawled out of the cabin on all fours, Morag's teeth embedded in the back of his neck. With an exclamation of surprise, the boss fired almost vertically downward, straight through the girl and into his own henchmen. The bodies jerked for a few seconds as bullets tore through them, then slumped into a bloody heap.
The boss snapped out a series of commands. The two thugs near Malahide turned their attention to the approaching boat, and took aim.
They're going to cut their losses and run for it, he thought. They'll kill me and the others, and dump our bodies at sea.
He fell to his knees and began to recite a prayer. The priest felt true serenity wash over him for the first time in months. Soon he would be free of this brutal, insane world, and be at one with his God.
***
“What was that?” Dan demanded, though it was clear enough that they were hearing shots.
The fishing boat was about thirty yards from the Demeter. Dan saw small puffs of smoke, and people running on the main deck. A man in black was kneeling. Dan guessed it was the priest. There were more shots, and splinters of wood flew from the fishing boat.
“They're too trigger happy!” Dan shouted. “Turn back or they'll kill us all.”
The islander who had fired the flare did not reply, instead retreating to the wheelhouse to talk to the helmsman. Dan ducked behind the small structure, as it was impossible for three men to fit inside. Another burst of gunfire tripped a row of gashes in the wheelhouse and shattered the glass. The Soray men both fell, one moaning in pain. The other was silent and ominously still.
“Give yourself up, Dan,” said Melinda.
She was standing over him, looking down, dressed in a halter top, shorts, and sandals. She had a pair of sunglasses pushed back on top
of her unruly hair.
“Go to hell!” he said. “They'll shoot me.”
She knelt down, shook her head.
“That Korochenko guy wants you to suffer,” she pointed out. “Offer to go aboard his floating palace and you'll buy some time. They won't kill you straight away.”
“And that's a plan?” he yelled.
“One more thing,” she said. “When you get the chance, throw it overboard.”
“What? What do you–”
A staccato burst of shots ripped more holes in the wheelhouse. Dan flinched instinctively and closed his eyes. When he opened them a split second later she was gone. All rational thought fled and he jumped up, waving his arms, and ran to the front of the boat.
“Hey!” he called. “You want me, here I am, you slimy bastards!”
More shots tore chunks out of the deck near his feet, but then he heard a sharp command and the firing ceased. The voice that had reprieved him was familiar. The fishing boat was moving slowly in a circle.
“Turn off the engine, Mister Fox,” shouted Korochenko through a loudhailer. “Or we will not waste any more time on you.”
***
Dan, Lisa, Chad, and the priest were paraded by two thugs in front of Korochenko, who sat in the main lounge fondling the Soray crucifix. The Demeter was heading out into the Atlantic, engines at full power. The oligarch had explained to his prisoners that, once outside Scottish waters, he would 'pass judgment' on them all.
“This precious thing,” he said, “while not of the true Orthodox faith, is still a worthy addition to my collection. I have many icons, paintings, holy relics. But nothing like this.”
He scrutinized the cross more closely, frowning.
“It is a strange thing,” he said, “that so much work should be expended to make something that seems – unholy. Don't you agree, Mister Fox?”
Dan gave a noncommittal grunt.
“It is unwise to keep it,” said Malahide, speaking with remarkable confidence.
Chad nudged the priest viciously, hissed at him to shut up. Lisa looked scared, showing the whites of her eyes as she stared at the man in black.
“Unwise?” Korochenko stood up, walked over to the priest. “Father, you are unwise. I would not normally consider killing any man of God. But that mad girl, what she did to Oleg.”
The Russian gave a shudder that did not seem wholly feigned.
“Your flock is degenerate, so you are perhaps not truly a man of God, yes?”
Malahide smiled, looking levelly at his interrogator.
“I have been a feeble excuse for a priest, it is a true. But I will die with a clear conscience. Can you say the same?”
Korochenko raised a meaty hand, fingers laden with over-sized rings, but Malahide did not flinch. The Russian stepped back, rubbing his chin, then seemed to dismiss the priest.
“I think we are in international waters, now,” he said. “So it is time to dispose of irrelevant people. Then, Mister Fox, we will see how you endure real pain. Not just a little pat-a-cake like you have in London, no, Vassily here is an artist. He will begin by tying copper wire around your toes and fingers, so that–”
The oligarch stopped talking abruptly, lurched sideways, as did the guards and hostages. The Demeter had slowed suddenly. There was a rising mechanical whine as the engines seemed to strain, then suddenly they cut out. The lights in the lounge went out at the same time. In the silence, they heard a deep, resonant sound, something like a groan. It seemed to vibrate the hull of the entire vessel.
Korochenko shouted a hasty command at the guards, then left the cabin. The two rifle-toting thugs looked confused, and went to look out of the windows. The sea was still fairly calm, and from this viewpoint nothing else could be seen.
“Perhaps we ran aground?” suggested Lisa, quietly.
Chad shook his head.
“No reefs around here,” he said. “We're way offshore, it's nearly a mile deep. Continental shelf drops away real fast.”
“The Deep Ones,” said Malahide, as if talking to himself.
A tremendous blow struck the Demeter and the yacht tilted by nearly forty-five degrees. The prisoners and their captors fell, arms flailing, and slid across the plush carpet into the wall of the lounge. As they tumbled, one of the guard's guns went off and tore a hole in Chad's leg. Dan grabbed the other guard's gun as the man dropped it, pointed it at the first guard as the vessel started to right itself.
“Drop the gun!” Dan ordered.
The first guard laughed, swung his rifle around towards Dan, who pulled the rifle's trigger. It didn't fire. Dan fumbled to find the safety catch on the unfamiliar weapon, watching his clumsy fingers moving in apparent slow motion over blue steel. The safety catch was probably the round button just a few inches away. It might just as well have been a million miles.
No time, no chance, what a dumb way to die.
But before the Russian could shoot him, the lounge windows above them crashed in. What looked like a huge black snake lashed around the cabin. It was, Dan realized, a tentacle tapering to a foot wide at the tip, and too big to reach far inside. It thrashed around, flipping Dan's bleeding body across the room like a doll. He crashed into the rear wall of the lounge and slid down, eyes staring blankly.
The armed guard fired at the glistening, muscular limb waving above his head. The shots tore holes in the glutinous tissue, spraying black gore. The vast appendage reared up, as if it were in pain, then crashed down onto the unarmed Russian, flattening him into a shapeless pulp. The surviving guard continued to fire and the colossal arm withdrew. Another shock ran through the hull, accompanied by a metallic groan and a rending of metal.
“She's going to drag us down,” gasped Malahide, trying to sit up amid the wreckage of Korochenko's glass coffee table. “We're all culpable – sacrilege – killing her children…”
Dan saw that the priest was bleeding badly from a vicious looking glass splinter embedded in his groin. The Soray crucifix, now coated with Malahide's blood, lay half-concealed under him. Dan stood and picked his way through the sharp debris, grabbed the cross.
“I'll give it back to them,” he said. “Hang in there.”
He scrambled downhill towards the smashed windows and clambered out onto the sloping deck. With a vast eruption of foaming green water, another huge tentacle appeared and descended upon the Demeter. The blow missed the cabin, instead smashing the rear of the yacht. There were cries, screams, more gunfire. Dan saw a couple of people in the water trying to swim back to the Demeter. A second later, one was dragged under, then the other. Another serpentine limb emerged and wrapped itself around the bows of the yacht, started to pull it under.
“Hey!” Dan shouted. “If you can hear me, read my mind, whatever – I did not steal this, and I'm giving it back.”
The cross was much too heavy to throw like a baseball, so he hurled it overboard in an under-arm throw with both hands. The crucifix spun through the air, gleaming in the sunlight, then vanished with a small splash. Dan had hoped for some kind of immediate effect, but the onslaught from below continued. The sound of tortured metal came again, much louder, and the Demeter heeled over so far that Dan began to slide toward the broken rail. He grabbed at a stanchion, missed, and plunged into the water. His dry suit was no longer sealed at the collar, and the heavy garment quickly began to fill with water. He kicked desperately for the surface, burst into the sunlight for a moment, gulped a lungful of air, and sank again.
Around him pale shapes swam, kicking downwards, heading away from the light. They were almost human, but moved through the water with amphibious ease. He saw a gleam of gold far below. Then a shape, long and black, appeared and rose remorselessly toward him. He tried to make it to the surface again but his waterlogged suit held him under. The vast tentacle surrounded him and with surprising gentleness, began to pull him down.
Melinda! Help me!
But instead of her voice, he heard the echo of Chad's remark, made only minutes earlier,
though it seemed a lifetime ago.
It's nearly a mile deep.
***
“He's coming 'round. Can you hear me, man?”
The voice had the thick accent of the islanders, but was warm, full of concern. Dan opened his eyes and looked up at a ginger-haired, bearded face. A friendly face. It was a young man, thirty at most. Pale blue eyes widened, the man nodded. Chad became aware of the sound of an engine. It was nothing like the Demeter's powerful turbines but a chugging diesel, close at hand.
“Aye, you'll be all right, pal. I'm Kenny, by the way. And you are?”
“Where am I?” Dan asked. “Oh, I'm Daniel Fox, call me Dan.”
“Welcome aboard, Dan,” replied Kenny. “You're in the Osprey, a trawler out of Rothsay.”
Dan tried to recall where Rothsay was, gave up. He asked how far they were from Soray.
The fisherman frowned.
“Soray? That's nigh on fifty miles out from here. You were on Soray?”
Dan nodded weakly.
“On Soray, then on the Demeter. A yacht. There were other people.”
Kenny looked puzzled, then understanding dawned in his eyes.
“But God Almighty,” he said, wonderingly. “That boat went down three days ago. Are you saying you've been in the sea all that time?”
“I guess I must have been,” said Dan. “But what happened to the … to the crew, the passengers?”
Kenny shook his head sadly.
“All lost in some kind of freak accident,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry. It happens, even on a clear day, the sea can surprise you. My old man said you can never take Nature for granted. Was there anyone special to you, on board?”
Dan thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Somebody I worked with, a colleague. She must have … drowned, I guess.”
Kenny looked uncomfortable, a kind man unused to coping with another's trauma.
“They didn't actually find many bodies,” he added, hesitantly. “But if you survived, well, you never know.”
Dan thought back to the immense being that had captured him, dragged him down, then apparently freed him. On impulse he held a hand up in front of his face, fingers spread. There was no obvious sign of webbing between the digits.
Dark Waters (Mephisto Club Series Book 1) Page 14