Deadshifted (27 page)

I was lucky not to be impaled on an upturned chair. If the water’d been any shallower, or if my ass had been sliding down tile—I splashed around without thinking about it, sputtering up. My feet found purchase on things that were already sunk in the room and I bobbed.

I was a poor swimmer but an excellent floater, courtesy of my God-given body fat. What I wasn’t counting on was the cold. All the heat was leaving my body—I could feel the tables and chairs submerged below me and even stand on them for now, but for how long?

There was a splash beside me as someone slid down in the dark. I bit back a yelp of surprise and ducked, so that only my eyes were above the waterline.

The sound of struggling up above continued. The emergency lighting would have shown me Nathaniel’s life jacket, so whoever had followed me down had to have been one of his guards.

Something moved beside me in the water, waving like a snake—one of the worms that had emerged from Kate. In the seawater it was a patchy sickly green, like a glow stick left in a dirty gutter outside an all-ages club.

Every sphincter in my body clenched, but the awful thing slid on by. It had other places to be, and that was frightening too. It was one thing to be in a room that was filling with water; it would be another to be forced to swim out of here and into the open sea where a monster was rising up.

I heard a gurgle of air escaping from beside me, too near. I’d backed away from the worm without thinking, and gone nearer whoever else had fallen down. But he hadn’t come down here on his own—blood was billowing out from his face in a slow wave. Marius must have kicked him and broken his nose, and in falling he hadn’t been as lucky as me. The wind had been knocked out of him, or he’d been kicked senseless, and his face was underneath the rising tide.

Living in Port Cavell I’d heard too many stories about sailors climbing onto other sailors’ backs to survive to want to be near one waking up. Whoever this man was, he’d watched Kate die, and he’d been willing to sacrifice me—not to mention all the other people who’d already died because of the machine gun that was pulling him below now.

I couldn’t stop shivering anymore—I couldn’t stay here much longer. I didn’t have to bend over to hide; the water was so high I was standing, and soon I’d have to swim.

What kind of monster would you have to be to murder four thousand people? I’d been willing to throw a lot away to find Asher—how much greater destruction would I find myself capable of to save my own child? I wasn’t like Nathaniel, but—

The man beside me gurgled again in a final-sounding way. I reached for him and unbuckled his life vest with numb fingers, slinging his limbs out of the armholes one at a time. I pushed him away when I was done. It wasn’t the same as holding him under the water with my own hands, but it was close enough. We were swimming in the same blood-colored sea.

“Edie!” Asher called down to me. The fight above me was through.

I took another cautious look around to make sure I didn’t see orange anywhere before I shouted out my location.

“Edie!” Asher shouted, voice breaking with desperation.

“I’m here! I’m fine! Come get me!”

Movement above blocked out the lights so I couldn’t entirely see what was going on, which frightened me. It was a taste of what it would be like when the ship succumbed to the waves, and everything was dark.

“Hurry, please!” I shouted up.

“Hurrying!” Asher shouted back.

*   *   *

Asher managed to get Jorge and Marius down, and between the ropes that they’d been hung by and their own strength, they were able to lower a rope. I caught hold until they’d pulled me firmly up onto the damp carpeting, and then I clambered as they pulled. On my way I passed by Kate, still twitching and spewing out worm after worm to drop back into the rising sea.

“She’s still alive—” I said with sorrow.

“That’s not living,” Marius said, giving me a final heave up into Asher’s arms. He held me for a second, and then shook me once, hard.

“That was reckless and dumb.”

“Says the man who said he’d be back in a day!” I shook him off. “Besides—you needed a distraction. Where did he go?” I looked around as if talking about Nathaniel might make him emerge, like saying an evil spirit’s name.

“When the fight broke out he dove aside.” Jorge clenched his fists. “I’d like to see him again though—without a gun.”

Asher’s face said he had more to say to me, but that he’d wait until we were alone.

“Let’s get out of here and find a lifeboat—” I said.

“If there are any left,” Marius said darkly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Asher held my hand like he was never letting go. “That was stupid of you.”

“Well, you know. I’m stupid
and
lovely,” I said, with a snort. “You couldn’t fight him if you were busy protecting me. I took a chance.”

“A shitty one.”

“But it worked. Now we just need to get off this boat.”

Outside, the storm had passed and it was almost dawn. The surface of the sea was eerily calm now in a way that I knew had horrified ancient mariners, courtesy of high school English class, as the
Maraschino
continued her stately descent. There were life rafts scattered around the surrounding sea, bright orange dots, but I couldn’t see anyone on board any of them—maybe as the ship sank they’d been knocked loose?

The rest of the life rafts were still attached to the third floor, and we were up on the ninth. It wouldn’t be safe for us to go back inside the ship, we all knew that without saying it aloud, although climbing down the outside of the ship still seemed like suicide—what I hadn’t wanted to do with Claire and Hal and Emily hadn’t gotten any safer since.

“If we follow the vertical railings—” Marius pointed to the welded pipes that went from floor to floor, providing the structure for the plastic sheets that blocked the wind.

“Sure.” Jorge grabbed hold of the first one and shimmied down it until his feet were on the balcony of the next floor. “I hope none of you is afraid of heights,” he called back to us.

Marius followed him. Asher and I were bringing up the rear. Asher watched me mount the pipe. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

By holding on to the edge of the railings above, aligning my body with the pipe, and going slowly, I could just about get my feet down to the railings of the floor below us. It was an easier reach for the taller men, but I was managing, floor after floor. The thought of getting off this boat—even if was onto a smaller one—gave me wings.

Then the first wave hit. Not the
Maraschino
—but me. My stomach cramped, the muscles there turning into a knot. I groaned involuntarily.

“Edie?” Asher asked. Marius and Jorge were already down another floor.

“Sorry. The heights,” I lied. My hands went white on the pipe I held as I tried to transfer the pain. My stomach released and I prayed the worst was over while I finished my shimmy—but no. My abdominal muscles had only relented to get a new hold. This time I managed not to groan, but it was harder.

We were almost there. We were so close. And all of my heroism didn’t matter. I was losing the baby. Or myself, to a worm.

I threw myself down the pipe, almost spinning on it—if my wet clothing hadn’t stuck I might have fallen off and onto the balcony below. But I didn’t—I charged, in between seismic bursts of abdominal pain. Asher knew something was wrong. He came down nearly as fast as I did, and we found ourselves together much closer to the water’s edge, on the wide promenade of the third floor.

Marius was taking control. “I can operate the davits. You all just push on it so that it starts to slide down the outside of the boat.”

Another wave of pain hit. I grit my teeth, trying to bite back a scream.

Oh, God, was this how Kate had felt?

Asher grabbed me. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“My stomach—I think—” I didn’t want to say it aloud. His expression went dark.

Jorge was throwing his back into getting the life raft free from gravity. “A little help here?”

Asher looked at me. “We still have to get off the ship,” I said, my voice flat. He stepped away from me reluctantly as I tried to hide another wave of pain. I sank slowly to my knees as he pushed against the lifeboat with his back, eyes on me.

This wasn’t fair. I was still alive after all this time. I didn’t want to be filling up with worms, or losing this child. It wasn’t fair.

Asher and Jorge weren’t enough—Marius eyed me warily from the davit controls.

“I’ll show you how to do it, so I can help lift.”

I nodded, practically crawling over to him, and using the control panel itself to pull myself up. The joysticks were like playing one of those claw-and-grab games. “I can do it. Go.”

As the davits pulled from above the three of them managed to get the life raft over the lip of the boat. From there it was a straight drop down the hull into the water. Marius came back to oversee lowering it, letting the ropes down slowly, the metal of the life raft grating against the metal of the
Maraschino
’s side. I sank down, my back against the control panel, curled into a ball.

Jorge was looking over the railing’s edge, oblivious to anything other than the life raft’s progress. “It’s in the sea! You’ve done it!”

All that was left was to somehow get aboard.

A fresh wave hit, and this time I had to scream. Asher rushed to my side to cradle me.

“Oh, no. No no no,” Jorge said, looking back, as he realized what was happening.

Marius started shaking his head and backing away. “She’s not getting in my boat.”

Asher’s grip on me tightened. “We have a greater chance of survival if we’re all in the same boat.”

“She’s infected—”

“You all probably are!”

Marius drew himself up to his full height—the same as Asher, and wider in the shoulders. “She’s not getting in my boat,” he repeated.

“She risked her life to save you!”

“I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am—but if she’s like Kate was, she’s already as good as dead.”

At this, Asher erupted from my side and went for Marius, swinging.

“Don’t!” I said, but neither of them heard me, and maybe I hadn’t said it as loud as I’d thought. It felt as if I were getting rabbit-punched in the lower abdomen, over and over again. What the hell was happening inside me?

Marius and Asher couldn’t circle each other at the ship’s angle, but both of them watched for openings, like people who’d beat the shit out of other people before.

“Stop it—” I pleaded. Jorge knelt by my side, ignoring the other men.

“Are you okay?”

It hurt so bad it was hard to talk. I just nodded while grimacing, holding my stomach, rocking back and forth.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jorge said, and even though I knew he was lying, it was still nice to hear. I nodded again, and he squeezed my shoulders, until the most recent wave of cramps were done.

“I think it’s the baby. I’m losing it,” I whispered.

“I’m sure that’s what it is,” he kindly agreed. Because miscarrying was slightly less awful than being burst apart by worms.

Asher and Marius had gotten a few blows in on each other, but the tilting of the boat was making it hard. It was one of those fights that’d degrade into a wrestling match given the chance, and it wouldn’t stop until someone got hurt. “We’ll take another boat,” I said, but only Jorge could hear me. More cramps hit me, like a physical blow. This was worse than when I’d been stabbed—and Asher’d saved me then, too. I whimpered, and Asher looked toward me, and then Marius—

“Look out!” I hissed.

Marius swung, connected, and followed through, his entire body leaning into his punch. It connected on Asher’s jaw with a loud smack and sent him reeling uphill, to fall back on the empty deck. Marius came forward to kick Asher, but Asher recovered, faster than a normal human would. My man was still a little supernatural, after all. He lunged for Marius’s outswept leg, grabbed it, and twisted, hauling Marius over himself and down.

Impossibly quick, Asher was up again, on top of Marius like a cat. Marius was facing down on the deck, and Asher was on his back, Marius’s head between his hands. He started bashing it against the deck’s wood.

“No!” I protested, a fresh wave of cramps turning it into a howl. Jorge turned his face into me so he wouldn’t see. I was left gasping as the wave passed, I hurt so badly I was dizzy, it made it hard to see or think—

“Stop! Everyone stop!” A new voice broke over the awful sound of their fighting. “I have a knife!”

There was a lull in the haze of pain. I blinked furiously, and things came into focus.

“Get off him!” someone commanded.

Rory. His voice broke as he shouted, and I could see him brandishing his weapon, the same knife he’d used to help me cut Asher free.

Asher paused, weighing his options. “Why are you still here, boy?” Marius tried to shake Asher off again, and I was relieved: It meant that Marius wasn’t dead yet.

Rory laughed harshly, at himself, and then pointed at Asher with his knife. “I was too scared to go alone. I should have been too scared to go with you!” He pointed again with the knife, this time, off to the left. “Take that raft—it’s one of those canister rafts you told me about. It’s yours. But let him live. He’s a good man. I don’t know what the fuck you are, but he’s a good man.”

Asher released his hold on Marius, and the prone man groaned. “Take care, sweetheart,” Jorge said, letting go of me and rounding Asher for Marius’s side.

Marius’s nose was broken, and he was stunned—he’d need help to get into the raft for sure, and who knew what kind of other concussion damage Asher’s violence had done—but he was able to stumble to a kneel. Rory gave his knife a warning shake in our direction, and then went to help Marius up.

No way in hell we’d be welcome on their boat.

“Get out of here. All of you,” Asher warned, like we were leaving them instead of the other way around. Jorge helped Rory pull Marius up to the side, and then they were over, down the
Maraschino
’s hull to the lifeboat.