He nodded, and she went on. “I don’t know what all those insane markings on his maps were about. But I do know what mass human sacrifice looks like. It’s not the first time I’ve seen someone try. I haunted shipwrecks professionally—there’s a difference when people jump overboard on their own, versus falling over with slit throats, dead before they can drown. You’ve only heard of the Mary Celeste, or the Resolven, but there’ve been a hundred boats emptied of people and wrecked too, by one loon or another trying to wake the Leviathan, trying to use carnage to lure it up. I’ll give this Nathaniel-man that at least—he’s got scale.”
“But what is it?” I pressed. “A great snake? A dragon?”
“No. The sea holds a lot of life, but eventually everything—from whales to plankton—dies and drifts down. The Leviathan comprises what all of that becomes, death after death, compressed over eons. It gained a slow kind of life, but it’s not alive—it’s like it’s the residue of a memory of what life could be.” She bit her lips in thought before speaking again. “You have to remember that most things in the ocean don’t live like you or me—the only thing they are is hungry.”
“Have you seen it?” asked Hal, rapt at Claire telling a story that was apparently new to him.
“I never went down that far. It’s not safe, and the pressure—” She shook her head. “But I know when it’s there. You’d feel it too. When you’re out in the sea—whenever you’re past seeing the ground, where blue stretches beneath you into black, and you’re scared of whatever it holds, just like you’re scared of the dark. It’s that. It’s the liquid darkness, somewhere below.”
Which sounded like a fair description of the Shadows—or their older, more frightening cousins—to me. I looked to Asher and could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“Then isn’t it always below? Everywhere? All the time?” Rory asked, tone logical and a touch snide.
“Yes. Sleeping. For now. Why someone would try to wake it up to deal with their problems, I don’t know.”
My lips twisted to one side. If I were trying to get revenge on vampires for killing my daughter, I knew I might try to get something worse than the Shadows on my side, too. It was the only way a human would have a chance.
Asher slashed his hand through the air. “That’s that, then. We need to get off this boat.”
“What about the worms?” Rory asked.
“Worms?” Claire asked.
“I saw them. With my own eyes.” Rory said, daring me to refute him. I couldn’t, not after what I’d seen inside Raluca.
“I saw them too.” I touched my stomach, just in case.
“It doesn’t matter, we still need to go—” Asher went on.
“It matters to me!” Rory protested. “I need to know if they’re inside me!”
“That’s what he infected Thomas with,” I explained, gaining speed as I figured it out. “The worms explain the fevers and seizures, the hunger and thirst—your body tries to fight them off, but if it doesn’t, they need energy to grow … and they want to reach water before they die. That’s why people keep going overboard and drowning.”
While I spoke, Asher watched me, weighing what I said—it felt like he was weighing me—and I saw his jaw set as he resolved something. He reached into the pocket of his torn pants, then held out four pills on his palm. “I saw him take one of these. That must be what they’re for. To kill the worms.”
“And when were you going to share them with us?” Claire asked.
“I forgot I had them,” Asher said as she tsked. “I didn’t know what they were for until now.”
Claire stared him down. At least I wasn’t the only one who knew he was a liar. I knew he didn’t get sick—but that wouldn’t stop him from saving them all for me.
“So we’re all infected—” Rory said, finally satisfied now that we’d confirmed his worst fears.
Asher shrugged. “I don’t know. Some of you all might have natural immunity, or luck, but Nathaniel doesn’t seem like the type to take chances.”
“How do you know all this?” Hal asked.
“We’d worked together. Like I said.”
“You helped him do this to us? To my parents?” Rory said. He wasn’t holding the knife anymore, but I doubted that he’d dropped it.
“Seven years ago,” Asher explained, shaking his head. “And I didn’t help, so much as steal some research for him. Damning with faint praise, I know.” Asher looked around the room to include the rest of the ship, then spoke directly to me. “If I’d known it would lead to this, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”
“I know,” I told him. I’d tell him about the Shadows interfering with our travel plans to bring us here as punishment later; it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else right now.
Emily’s face crinkled. “I don’t want there to be worms inside me.”
“I know, honey,” Claire told her, stroking her hair.
Asher pushed his hand out. “I don’t need one of these. And I’m not sure that one dose is enough. But I suggest the rest of you all take one.” Asher offered the pills on his palm to me. I picked one up, and then he offered the rest of them around. Rory took one, then Emily, and then it was down to Claire and Hal.
“I suspect sirens are immune,” she said. “I should be fine.” Hal nodded, her word gospel, and popped the pill into his mouth.
I held the pill up. “What is it?” They were faintly tan, pressed without any markings. My brain was filled with all the things that it could be.
“I don’t know. But I know he takes them. So they’re safe.”
I could tell Asher was overselling it. “For men. Non-pregnant men. I don’t feel sick yet,” I said, trying to ignore visions of the slowly spinning things dying in Raluca’s torso—and how Raluca had seemed fine. I swallowed drily.
“Edie, I can’t lose you.”
He couldn’t lose me—but I couldn’t lose this baby. And taking unknown and likely experimental medicine didn’t seem safe. Besides, what were the chances of one dose being enough? Or of me not getting reinfected before I got off this boat? I leaned into Asher’s shoulder so I wouldn’t have to see the look in his eyes. “I never should have left you,” he whispered, his head by my ear.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” I nodded into him, accepting his apology. “We can have another child though, Edie. If it can happen once, it can happen again. I need you.”
“I need you, too,” I said, because it was the truth.
Asher pulled me to him tighter, his roughness revealing his fear. “Please, just take the pill.”
“Okay.” I’d seen so many patients palm pills before that I knew it wasn’t hard. I put my hand to my mouth, faked a swallow, and felt him nod.
“Thank you.” His relief was palpable.
“What now?” I asked as he turned around. He didn’t see me putting the unmarked pill into the pocket of my jeans.
“Now—we figure out how to get off this boat.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Asher stood quietly for a moment thinking, and I almost felt safe standing by his side. I’d never be the kind of woman to give over all thought to anyone else, but it was nice, deep-down-in-my-bones nice, to have him here with me again. Despite the odds, with Asher around I almost felt like we had a chance.
Rory was sitting equidistant from Claire and us, trying to keep an eye on everyone who was supernatural at once, and Claire and Hal were whispering to each other just as Asher and I had been. Emily had the radio up to her ear in the semblance of a cell phone. Asher saw this and nodded at her. “Hey Emily—what do you hear?”
She shrugged and handed the radio out to him. He took it, with Rory swinging dramatically backward to be out of his way.
“The medical channel is number five,” I said, and Asher grunted, turning up the volume and flipping through the rest of them. Languages I couldn’t understand crackled through, sounding just as excited as they had when Hal had done the same earlier. Asher narrowed
his eyes and held the TALK button down.
“Hello, is anyone out there? Can you hear me? Hallo, is daar iemand daar buite? Kan jy my hoor? Alo, este cineva acolo? Poți să mă auzi?” He started off in English and went through three different languages in quick succession. “What is happening? Are there any survivors?”
“Wie is jy?” came through in a burst of static from the other side.
“Ek is ’n gas hier, wegkruip van die manne met gewere! Wat de hel gaan aan?” Asher said.
“Hoe weet ek dat jy nie een van hulle?” said the man back. I finally recognized the accent.
“It’s Marius!” I said and clapped my hands.
Asher broke into a grin. “I believe we met once, outside the medical bay.”
There was a staticky pause. “So your girlfriend found you at last?”
“Yes. What’s going on out there? Stay in Afrikaans so they won’t translate you.”
There was another, longer burst of Afrikaans, as Asher nodded.
I didn’t know what Marius was saying, but I recognized some names. Jorge—I was so glad he was all right—and Kate.
Asher let go of the button to address us again. “He says they’re trying to get to the lifeboat deck, but they’re scared of the gunmen. They’re getting ready to make a run for it.”
I nodded. “Then so should we.”
“Hello?” came in another voice, with another accent, shouted over mechanical background noise. I tensed.
“Hello?” Asher answered back, with the same accented English.
“Naririnig mo ba ako! May mga lalake dito na may hawak na baril! Tulungan niyo kami!”
I didn’t know what they were saying, but Asher’s expression turned dark, and he asked a series of fast questions.
“Mga trabahador kami sa ibaba ng barko, dito kami sa baba, malapit sa lugar ng makina. Bilis!”
“What language is that?” Rory asked.
Asher let go of the TALK button. “Tagalog. He’s one of the fish in the engine room—the workers who live belowdecks.”
“Tell them about the guns—”
“They already know,” Asher cut in. He pressed the button back down and asked what sounded like questions. His eyes narrowed at their fast response and asked them another question in turn. “Ano ang itsura ng nilalagay nila? Nakikita mo ba?”
“Mukhang gam! Isang malaking gam!” came the response, followed by a gun report.
“What’s he saying?” Claire demanded.
“He sees gum.” Asher rocked back, lowering the radio. “They’re putting plastic explosives on the walls.”
Hal groaned. “They want to breach the hull.”
“But if they do that—” I said in a whisper.
“We’ll all die,” Rory finished for me.
Asher held the radio up again and asked another question. “May naiisip ka bang paraan para mapatigil siya?”
“Bahagi siya ng isang pares. Tinututukan siya ng baril ng isang lalake. Natakasan lang namin yung isa dahil naubusan siya ng bala.”
“Lost at sea’s no way to die—tell him to escape,” Hal suggested as Asher’s conversation went on.
“Subukin mo makarating sa ikatlong palapag. Subukin mong makatakas.”
There was a bitter laugh on the other end of the line before another response.
“What’s he saying?” Emily asked me.
“I don’t know, honey,” I said, as Asher gave me a look that was both hapless and dismayed, clicking off the line definitively.
“He’s injured, a bullet shattered his leg. They took down one gunman, but one remains,” he said.
“We have to stop them,” I said, and Hal nodded agreement.
Asher took a measured breath and shook his head. “No, we don’t. What we need to do is get off this boat. We get to the third deck, and then we get the hell out of here—”
“But there’s still people alive on board. Not just the ones we talked to on the radio—we have to try to warn them. If this ship is going down, we have to,” I protested.
He paused, and I could tell he was choosing his next words carefully for my sake. “I can’t see any possible way this will work.” I didn’t know whether him being willing to leave everyone else to die was instinct, fear, or love—or maybe all three. Even worse, I knew he was right. But—
“Mercenaries don’t sign on for suicide missions.” Hal interrupted my thoughts. “Unless somehow those are government guns, those men think they’re getting off this boat alive. And if they’ve got time to get off, we’ve got time to stop them.”
Asher didn’t say anything. He just put his hand out toward me, palm up. It said everything he wouldn’t. Please. Just come with me.
Hal went on, in ignorance, or just plain old ignoring Asher. “I’ve got a plan. We’ll split into two groups. You two and the boy go upstairs, get up to where the intercom is, and see if you can figure out how to warn people to evacuate in all the languages you can think of. Tell them all to get to the lifeboat deck—and see if you can tell anyone on land what’s going on out here. Claire, Emily, and I will go downstairs. We’ll figure out a way to stop the ones down there from blowing up the boat.”
At this, the expression on Asher’s face changed to one of complete disbelief—an expression I felt mirrored on my own. An old man, a woman who couldn’t walk, and a little girl were going to take on armed men?
“I’ll go with you,” I blurted out.
“No way in hell,” Asher said. He looked from the door to me, his opinion clear. Screw everyone else but the two of us—we could make it if we left right now. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t going to go without them—and I was too big for Asher to pick up and carry. “You’ll figure out a way?” Asher went on, mocking Hal, his voice incredulous.
As much as I loved him, that was the fundamental difference between him and me. He could displace his guilt, push it away so that it was something reckoned with later or even never, his work with Nathaniel case in point. Whereas with me—I could never manage to feel guilty later for something I could feel guilty about right now. There was a helpless man with a broken leg watching other men put explosives on our boat. There were Marius, and Kate, and Jorge.
I swallowed and looked away from Asher. I loved him with all my heart, but that didn’t mean that sometimes he still wasn’t wrong. I looked over to Hal. “I’m in.”
“Okay. We should get going then.” Hal bent over so that Claire could clamber up onto his back.
Asher blocked me. “This is a bad plan and you know it. I didn’t just get you back only to lose you again.”
“You won’t. You’ll know where I am the whole time,” I said with false bravado.
I watched his jaw clench and his throat swallow. “You’re the only thing in the world that matters to me. I won’t let you die.”
Hal shrugged Claire up into place. “Does that mean you’ll help?”
Asher looked to me, giving me one last chance to change my mind. When I shook my head, he shrugged helplessly. “What other choice do I have?”
“I’m sorry. I love you so much.”
Watching his face I was afraid for a second that he’d be angry with me. But he looked crestfallen instead, so deeply, deeply sad. He held out his arms and I stepped into them, if not agreed with, then forgiven. He kissed me hard, scared, like he’d never taste my lips again, and then stopped just as fast as he’d begun, his face close to mine, looking deep into my eyes, as if memorizing this new me, the one that I’d changed into since the last time we’d touched. Then he inhaled and exhaled, dropping his frustration, putting on another mood like someone else might put on a mask, becoming the suave charmer who was always in control. “I love you too,” he said, then he looked over to Rory. “You ready, boy?”
“My name’s Rory.”
“That’s a yes, then.” He walked over and flung open the dead passenger’s closet doors, and then looked back to us and started stripping. “I can’t do what I do looking like this. I need a minute.”
“Meet you on the lifeboat deck in under an hour, or when we’re both underwater, whichever comes first.” He didn’t risk another kiss, for which I found myself both hurt and grateful. “Live, or else I can’t be held responsible for what I’ll do.”
“I will,” I promised.
He jerked his head at Rory, and both of them went for the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
After Asher left, it was as if all the air’d gone out of the room. I’d known it would hurt, but—
“Such an interesting fellow!” Claire said, newly reperched on Hal’s back. “Ready?”
“Ready!” Emily said, eager to follow the older woman’s lead.
I tried to shake my fears away. Was that the last time I’d see Asher alive? I’d done the right thing but that, as I well knew, was frequently futile. I pressed my fingers to my mouth as though I could hold his last kiss there.
Claire coughed for my attention, and I looked up at her. “Is the siren-thing why your legs don’t work?”
“No. I’m just old. Gravity’s harder on a girl when you’re on land. Water’s kinder.”
“You used to live in the sea?” Emily asked.
“Yes. I loved it there,” Claire said, leaning over to speak to the girl.
“But you loved me more,” Hal said, shifting her back.
“Well, you know. You’ve been sort of fun,” Claire said, with an obvious tease. Then she squeezed his thick shoulders tightly. “We’ll go first, and if we see anyone, I’ll try to talk them down,” she said, and Hal opened the door to lead us into the hall.
I felt uncomfortable with Hal and Claire being in the line of fire ahead of me so I put Emily behind me to at least protect her. If I stopped being brave now, I might be too smart to start again.
Edie Spence [04] Deadshifted Page 18