“What was that?” he shouted. “Did we hit something?”
Quinton started to answer but a sudden, violent gust of wind whipped across the flying bridge and stole the words from his mouth. Water splashed up over the railings and the boat rocked like a toy. Everyone looked out to see what we had struck or been struck by, but nothing was readily apparent.
Zantree took the wheel, saying, “All of you go down to the deck and look around in the water. If you can’t spot what hit us, we may have gone over it. We don’t want whatever it was to damage the propeller or the rudder—or the hull if it bounces back up. Logs sometimes float vertically and if they pogo, they’ll knock the prop clean off her. And we sure don’t want to be dead in the water here if this storm comes in. Those rocks off the port bow are mighty sharp.”
We scrambled down the ladder and spread out around the boat, peering over the sides for any sign of what we’d struck. The boat moved sideways and leaned over as if it were being pushed by something in the water. I saw a bit of lambent color below the surface on the left side—the port side—but it moved away like a swimming snake and vanished. There was nothing else to see but water that seemed unusually agitated. Water splashed up onto the deck, spattering over the side rail where I stood, wetting my clothes from the hip down.
“What is that?” Solis shouted from the front. I gave up staring at the water and ran around toward him, heading for the bow. I could hear Quinton’s footsteps going around on the other side but couldn’t see him.
I cleared the front of the cabin bulge and started to the other—the starboard—side toward Solis, who was standing halfway up the open section of the bow deck and staring northeast out to sea on his right. He turned his head, saw me coming, and pointed over the rail toward the bulk of San Juan Island. “What is it?” he repeated.
I rushed to the rail beside him and grabbed on, astonished by the sight of what looked like a tower of water undulating across the waves toward us.
Quinton caught up to us and looked out, too. “Waterspout!” he shouted.
“Blast it!” Zantree yelled down from above. “There shouldn’t be any of those around here!”
“What is a waterspout?” Solis demanded.
Quinton glanced at him and said, “It’s like a tornado but on water, so it condenses moisture from the surface as mist. That’s a fair-weather spout. They usually don’t move much. . . .”
“Someone had best tell that to the waterspout,” Solis suggested, watching the rising vortex of mist, water, and debris waver toward Mambo Moon. “How do we avoid it?”
“We stay the course we’re on. The waterspout should continue on its line, east to west, and we’re heading north. As long as we’re moving at ninety degrees and faster than its intercept speed, we’ll pass it safely. But it shouldn’t be here—there’s no cloud above it.”
“I thought you said it was a fair-weather spout.”
“That just means it’s not part of a cyclonic storm. That one there’s a micro cell, but . . . it should still have a cloud. . . .”
“You said they condense moisture from the surface?” I asked.
The boat shuddered again and swayed side to side.
“Yes.”
“They don’t suck water up?”
“No. Something that size doesn’t pick up water or objects.”
“Then that’s not a waterspout,” I said. “And I don’t think we’re going to have to search too hard to find the sea witch.”
Staring at it through the Grey, the waterspout was thick with creatures that writhed and twisted in the rising liquid. A handful of human forms spun, screaming, in the water, festooned in seaweed and trailing chain. In front of it, coils of blue energy reached and spun through the waves toward Mambo Moon. The sea witch—or her minions—had come to us.
Quinton and Solis both gaped at me. I felt sick and my cracked rib seemed to stab into my side, sending a cold chill of fear and pain through my chest. Or maybe it was Quinton who was feeling scared and sick, but I didn’t think I was immune to common sense; the waterspout was not natural and it wasn’t staying put or moving in a nice, straight line. It was coming to get us.
“I think the sea witch wants her bell back. . . .”
Solis turned to me. “You have it aboard?”
“Why wouldn’t I? If we’re going back to where it happened, we have to have all the parts of the mystery or we can’t solve it.”
“How would the sea witch know we had it?”
“The same way she knew Fielding was aboard: spies. I’ll bet the dobhar-chú aren’t the only paranormal intelligence agency around. After all, they’re the enemy so the sea witch wouldn’t go to them. She’d post her own observers. And it doesn’t matter who; it only matters that they found us.”
That was when Zantree shouted down, “Hands on deck! Prepare to fend off!”
TWENTY-ONE
“Fend off?”
“Well, you don’t say ‘repel boarders’ when it’s not human, do you?” Quinton shouted back. He snatched a pole from a pair of clamps beneath the rail and shoved it into my hand. “You go to the bow and smack down anything that tries to come over the rail—this is going to hurt and I’m sorry about that rib, but we have no choice. Solis, you stay on the side deck—your back will be protected by the cabin, but you’ll have to move up and down the deck pretty quickly to keep off whatever’s coming. I’ll take the stern until Zantree tells us otherwise. We don’t have time to tie off to safety lines since we didn’t run any, so be careful, keep your flotation vests on, and grab or tie yourself to something whenever you can.”
He ran back to the stern and returned in a moment with a wicked, narrow hook on a short handle. He thrust it into Solis’s hand and then dashed back the way he came.
Solis blinked and paled, then turned to me. “What is coming and how will I know?”
“I think you’ll see it just fine—these guys aren’t being subtle. And if you can’t tell, hit anything that isn’t one of us or part of the boat.”
“What about Zantree?”
“He’s pretty busy on the bridge.” I gave his shoulder a steadying squeeze. “It’s just like any other fight. Only wetter.”
I didn’t wait to hear him object but ran forward to take up my position on the bow, partially as the specially talented lookout, I realized, as much as a defender. I was puffing uncomfortably by the time I reached my spot and my side was already achy.
The waterspout was less worrisome than the roiling sea ahead of it. The gleams of Grey energy I’d spotted earlier were uncoiling now, reaching toward our boat and spreading like blind vines groping for us with seeking tendrils. And as they came, the strands formed outlines of shapes, monstrous and strange: creatures half-man and half-fish with wide mouths full of jagged teeth and extra appendages like the grasping tentacles of giant squid. The lines began to fill with sea foam whipped by wind and our own personal squall drew in fast, accompanied by harbingers of magical destruction and a high, keening song that caught across my ears and my throat, sharp as the metal taste of ozone. I risked a drop into the Grey to get a better look. . . .
The ghost world roared with the voice of a storm and the cold blackness of the Sound flickered with lightning rising from the depths to burst through the surface in gouts of green, blue, and violet light. The colored energy from the depths reached into the smoky substance of the Grey, twisting it into vaporous shapes and running in quicksilver streams through the billowing eddies of ghost-stuff. Farther away, the Grey held a small cohort of more solid shapes that surged through the water. At this distance it was hard to be certain, but the things seemed to be the same shapes as the monsters projected in the magic and sea foam that was closing in nearby. One of the fast-running threads of energy snapped toward me with the sound of lightning and a stink of ozone; it clamped around my upper arm and yanked backward, trying to drag me off the boat. I snatched at it with my free hand and tried hooking one of my legs around the nearest upright on the rail and bracing my feet against whatever solid purchase I could feel to resist the strand’s tugging me into the water, but the rail was insubstantial so deep in the Grey. I threw myself backward, pinching off the energy strand that had wound itself around my arm as I tumbled back into the normal.