let’s go.”
There isn’t a plank on the ship, so we just have to jump off the
starboard rail. I drop my shorts, ignoring the tittering from Layla
and Gwen, and try to take on a serious voice. Like a commander. A
captain. Someone they can’t laugh at for having his ass out. “Arion,
whatever happens, get to the Vanishing Cove.”
“Aye, sire.”
“Dive on my count,” I tell Kurt.
He nods once, securing the leather sheath around his hips.
“Three. Two. One.”
I shift midair.
The numb prickle starts at my spine and trails all the way down.
Seconds before I hit the water, I catch sight of the turquoise blue of
my scales, and my adrenaline races. Then I break the surface.
My gills flare and my chest expands. Out of habit, I have the urge
to kick as if I’m in the pool. The movement jerks me forward and turns
into a flick. I spin in a circle at first, just to get used to the
fins. It’s constricting, being one movement instead of two, but the
speed is addicting. I press my arms at my sides and get into the
undulating rhythm of the current. When I turn around, the shadow of
our ship is long gone.
Kurt swims ahead of me by a foot, keeping closer to the surface
for now. His long tail is a flash of violet, barreling into a swarm of
fish. They scatter, then reform their circular pattern. We swim side
by side until we’re the only ones as far as I can see.
Then Kurt stops abruptly.
I double back to where he’s floating and staring into the far-off
darkness.
“What?” I ask.
“Listen.”
But I don’t hear anything aside from the swish of our tails and
the slow current. I kick out to swim again, but Kurt grabs my wrist
and anchors me. He shakes his head and shuts his eyes. “You have to
sense it.”
His gills open and close with the deep gulp he takes. I try to do
the same. Above water, this hypersensitive sense allows us to smell
emotions. It’s annoying-and nauseating when I’m surrounded by tons of
hormonal classmates. But down here, it’s different. I can taste fear,
like melting copper on my tongue, and it’s coming right at us in a
cloud of white.
I nudge Kurt. His eyes snap open.
Leading the pack is Thalia, her deep green hair pulled back
against the current. Her powerful tail is a good chomp away from the
mouth of a great white shark, his jaws wide open in a perpetual bloody
grin. As they come closer, the white cloud comes into focus, shark by
shark by shark.
Thalia wails again, glancing behind. I think I hear her shout,
“Stop,” but I can’t be sure.
Kurt raises his sword over his shoulder like a lance.
Something is wrong.
The coppery fear I sense isn’t coming from Thalia; it’s coming
from the sharks. I haven’t met many sharks, but I know one saved me.
I’ve seen him in my dreams. Always the same massive one who comes and
saves me from the silver mermaid’s grip. He had metal chains around
him, like a shark muzzle with handles at the sides for a rider.
These sharks are not part of the guard, but I know they’re
swimming away from something big enough to scare twenty sharks.
Thalia’s scream gets closer, and this time she’s waving her arms
in the air. She doesn’t want us to attack.
But Kurt’s ready to strike.
I lunge and tackle him around his waist.
He pushes against me, wrestling out of my grip. “What are you
doing?”
They’re feet away from us now. Thalia reaches her arms out for us
to hold. She’s moving so fast she can’t stop. We grab hold of her
tightly and the sharks, all of them, zoom right over our heads as if
we’re not even on their radar.
Thalia presses a hand over her heart. I can hear the thud of it,
the ragged strain in her breath. There’s a long gash of blood down her
arm.
“No time.” She takes our hands and tries to pull but there’s no
strength behind it. “No time.”
“What is it?” I ask, looking back at where she came from.
“Merrows?”
“Worse.” Her eyes are brilliantly green and panicked.
Kurt shakes her, but there’s no need. In the murky darkness,
something slithers. It weaves into the cracked sea floor and back out
again. Kurt’s face goes slack. He grips both of our wrists and pulls
us up and onto the surface.
“What the hell is that?” I cough out the water in my throat as my
gills clamp shut against the air.
“Makara demon,” Kurt says. “The king buried them centuries ago.”
“The cove is three channels south,” Thalia says. “That’s where the
demon rose, eating everything in sight.”
“It’s happening,” Kurt says. “Now that the trident is broken, the
king’s seal is loosening. That’s how the demon must’ve broken free.”
“How do we fight it?” I ask.
“With six of my best guards and lots of luck.”
“Thalia, go back to the ship. Tell them to keep going to the
cove,” I say.
She nods and swims away.
“We can’t lead the beast back to the others,” Kurt says.
He looks torn between following his sister and staying here with
me. But his duty wins, and he follows me back down.
The thing-the makara-is undulating in wide arcs, eating. It shakes
its head back and forth with a twelve-foot-long shark in its mandible.
“I think I just peed myself,” I say. “How can you tell down here?”
Kurt shakes his head, gripping his sword even tighter. “If we live
through this, I’ll point it out to you.”
As it swallows the shark like it’s munching on an Oreo, the makara
is unaware of us watching. It’s curled up on a jagged black rock. Its
head could belong to a crocodile-the long snout, the raised bumps that
start on its nose and continue all the way down to the sharp tip of
the tail. Crooked claws grip the bits of shark meat that fall from its
mouth. It reminds me of a T. rex, arms short and close to the mouth.
Chomp by chomp, the great white shark disappears inside the makara.
There’s a dorsal fin off to the side, but nothing else.
Then the demon’s head snaps up. Maybe it can smell us. Maybe it
caught the glint off our weapons. Whatever it was, two yellow eyes
lock on us.
“No matter what,” Kurt tells me, “I will get you to the cove.”
“Don’t talk that way now,” I say, wracking my mind for
something-anything. The makara is twice as long as our ship. Its body
retracts, watching us carefully before it lurches forward. “You go
left. I go right. On my go.”
“What?”
“Just do it!”
The demon drops the rest of its meal, blood billowing around it.
The makara snaps its mouth once, twice. The sound of the crunch is so
hard that the shock vibrates all the way to us.
“Now!” I dive to the right, up, and arc around.
But the demon isn’t following me.
It’s following Kurt.
I swim right behind them, trying my best to avoid the pointed
tail. If there were ever a time for the scepter to work, it would be
now. Why didn’t my grandfather give me a clue? Anything. Maybe he
didn’t think I’d actually be able to get a piece of the trident. No, I
can’t think that way. I was chosen for a reason. The hum of the
scepter is dull, but I know its power is down there, like a prickle
beneath the skin. I have to make it surface.
“Tristan!”
With every chomp, the makara gets closer and closer to Kurt’s
fins. In a desperate move, I swing my scepter like a bat.
The demon’s skin is so thick that I’m not sure it actually feels
the hit. The pointed end of its tail flaps around, trying to skewer