Seawitch (24 page)

“It’s the point in the cycle where the currents have slowed as the tide is nearing the turn. In this case, just before the tide starts to come in, instead of going out like it is now. Areas of slow water like coves and harbors behind breakwaters become still and there’s little to no current movement at the surface. It’s very easy to maneuver in slack water because there’s no current to oppose you.”

“How long does it last, this still period?”

“Depends on the area but it’s usually two to three hours.”

“Then . . . we should be in slack water in an hour or two?”

Quinton paused a moment to consider the math. “Yeah. So the tide will be slacking about the time we have to turn for Mosquito Pass—the southern pass to Roche Harbor. We’re still on the ebb tide now.”

I scowled. “But if it’s slowing down, why are we being pushed sideways more now than before?”

Something slapped the boat again, sending a shiver through the whole structure. I stumbled sideways and Quinton lurched the same direction with me, dragging the wheel around a few degrees before he let go of it.
Mambo Moon
wiggled in the water like a gaffed fish. I heard the doors below slide open and Zantree came zooming up the ladder to the flying bridge.

“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

“F
end 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.

And into a descending wave cresting over the rail.

“I’m getting . . . a little sick . . . of being wet all the time,” I muttered, picking myself up, wincing and gasping.

A storm front pushed by the waterspout had closed in on the boat with unnatural speed while I’d been “out” and
Mambo Moon
was already pitching against thrashing water and gusting wind. Just keeping my footing on that moving deck was a painful task. Beyond the squall line the water was a little choppy but otherwise undisturbed and other boats seemed to have no trouble turning aside. But no matter how Zantree maneuvered, the waterspout closed on us, bringing bigger and bigger waves that soon broke over the rails. Trying to maintain my hold on the normal world and the boat, I didn’t dare fall deeper into the Grey and had to content myself with glancing at the incoming storm from the corner of my eye, scanning for the horrors it concealed and breathing in uncomfortable gulps.

It wasn’t so much a concealment as it was a literal front. The magic wasn’t deep and it probably wouldn’t hold up past a certain degree of damage, distance, or time, but how long or far we’d only know when it broke. The first real assault came over the side as blue-green figures of foam and water, reaching for us with tentacles and teeth. I heard Solis shout in alarm as the watery specters heaved aboard. I swung my boat hook at the nearest one, feeling the shaft connect with a slow thud to the mass of animate liquid. But the pole didn’t stop; it merely bogged down against resistance and snapped out the other side too fast under the power of my muscles, causing me to stumble and twist forward as the hook came free into the air on the other side. The figure I’d swung through dissolved into a huge splash, as if I’d shattered an aquarium.

I swore as pain broke across my ribs and I jabbed the pole’s butt backward into the next sea-foam monster. That, too, fell into a dousing explosion of water that knocked me down onto the deck, breathless and unable to refill my lungs as each heaving attempt was cut short by the sharp agony in my side. I needed to hold on to something or I’d pass out and the enchanted waves would wash me right off the other side. I rolled onto my back with care and started to shove my feet against the next one, but my foot passed through it and I felt a wet, electric shock as something gleaming wrapped around my leg and yanked me toward the rail.

“Oh no you don’t,” I gasped, getting a mouthful of seawater for my pains.

I braced my other foot against the rail as I was dragged to the edge and jabbed the boat hook into the gaping maw of the thing, shattering it. I dropped back onto the deck, free, but still down and hurting like I’d been beaten with a stick. I gagged on water and pain as I scrambled up, panting and not sure why the pole worked but my foot hadn’t. My leg stung where the aqueous phantom had clutched me and my chest throbbed. I gulped mouthfuls of air to refill my lungs and stabbed at every shape that came toward me.

I cut my gaze to the side for a moment to check on Solis. He seemed to be holding out, though he was soaked and confused, moving in quick lunges side to side following the jerky turns of his head. I could see the whites of his too-wide eyes and he slashed and reposted again and again with a surprising economy. If I’d had time, I’d have admired his fighting form, but there was no such luxury.

“Just poke them. Don’t waste energy; they’re not real,” I gasped, but my voice had no strength and he didn’t hear me.

A few more of the sea-foam creatures boiled over the rails and I dispatched mine with simple jabs, conserving my strength so I could get up and fight the denser forms beginning to thrust through the vanguard of shaped liquid as the gleam of magical energy began to fade and the scraping, spiraling song with it. They were difficult to see through the water and spray, but I assumed the new assault was formed by the merfolk themselves—if the monstrous things I’d seen in the distance were they.

One of the merfolk—a creature only vaguely human above its muscular dolphinlike tail—broached the surging wave and snatched at Solis with arms like the leaf-shaped tentacles of a squid that shot forward and wrapped the sergeant tight before the monstrosity fell back toward the heaving surface. Solis gave a shout as he was lifted and dragged over the rail, flailing his hook against the thing’s body, the point gouging into the monster’s flesh. Red blood spattered onto the deck and the hook caught on a rail stanchion, arresting their fall for a moment.

“Rey!” I shouted into a gasping silence in the attack.

The illusions collapsed in a crashing wave and the horrifying monster forms of the real merfolk—a mere handful, though they’d seemed like a hundred—began to recede as the one grappling with Rey tried to yank him under the surface. It opened its mouth, showing the rows of shark teeth within, and I lunged forward, driving the prong of my boat hook into that dreadful maw.

The mer-thing made a gurgling cry and jerked backward, tearing Solis’s hold free of the stanchion as it fell into the water. Solis fell after it, free of the tentacles for the moment as he vanished into the foam and spray of the merfolk’s retreat. I tried to heave myself over the side after Solis, but I wasn’t breathing well and my legs had gone limp under me while my ribs seemed to catch on fire. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.

“They’re falling back. I’ll get Solis,” Quinton shouted in my ear, rushing onto the side deck to shove me back. “You get to the bow and get ready to throw the life preserver to us.”

“Life—” I started, forcing my watering eyes open.

“Big orange ring with a rope on it,” he shouted back, pointing.

Then he was over the side and gone into the water.

The noise of the boat and the storm dropped to a high whistling and dull clanging and splashing, the merfolk—stripped of their monstrous illusions, but still monsters—sweeping back from whence they came. Zantree came scrambling around to the side deck and got me on my feet.

“You all right?”

I panted at him. “Just. Winded. You?” I hurt all over and thought I was going to throw up from it, but I wasn’t going to say so.

“Had to cut the engine so we wouldn’t run over the boys and cut ’em up with the props. Why did those things break off like that?”

“Out of power . . . I think.”

“I hope they aren’t just regrouping. . . . But I’d better get back topside and keep an eye out for the boys. If you miss with the ring, we’ll have to circle around—if we can and if this hole in the weather holds long enough. Can you manage?”

I would have to: There was only the two of us left aboard and I couldn’t maneuver the boat like he could. I nodded.

Zantree spun around and bolted back to the flying-bridge ladder.

I held the rail near the life preserver and stared out toward the water, looking for any sign of Quinton or Solis. I spotted something dark, splashing a distance out from the side of the boat but well to the rear. I wasn’t sure how to throw the life preserver that far from the bow, but I felt as much as heard the engines roar back up to speed and the boat turned, coming around and moving toward a point above the splashing. The engines cut back to a burble and the boat glided, turning a bit more so we weren’t coming straight on it. In a moment the splashing resolved into the shape of two heads and a thrashing arm. I grabbed the life preserver and tossed it like a giant Frisbee, letting out a sharp squeal of agony as it flew free from my outstretched arms. I folded over the jabbing in my side, scraping my arms against the rails as I went, and forced my eyes open to see the ring splash down.

The orange ring skimmed out over the water and plopped onto the surface near Quinton’s head with the grace of a belly-flopping eight-year-old. But it was close enough for him to stroke to and grab and I thanked every god I could think of that I wouldn’t have to throw it a second time. The ring wasn’t big enough to shove around any adult’s head, but Quinton held on to it with one arm while he kept the other wrapped around Solis’s chest. I ran the line around the anchor winch and started walking—crabbing painfully—backward to haul in the slack until the men bumped into the side of the boat.

It took a bit of mucking around with the rope to get Solis and Quinton to the swim platform at the back. Solis came up coughing and sputtering as Quinton lifted him, and the edge of the platform butted into his gut, forcing out air and water. He wasn’t steady on his feet and Zantree had to push, pull, and haul him back up to the main deck and then into the main cabin, but he was alive and whole when he got there. By the time Solis was dried off and bundled up in new clothes and warm blankets, sitting in the galley with a cup of hot coffee, the wind had risen and the boat was being shoved by wild gusts and unexpected waves once again.

“I don’t know why those monsters fell off—and thank God for it—but it’s still going to be a fight all the way up,” Zantree said, sticking his head in through the hatch to the enclosed bridge above the galley. He looked at me. “You think they’re coming back anytime soon?”

I took my best guess and shook my head. “Can’t maintain the storm
and
the illusions for long. There weren’t very many merfolk and they retreated as soon as one was hurt. I suspect she can’t afford to lose people. She’ll put her energy into wearing us down with the storm and save the rest in case we make it to the cove.”

“I’ll take your word on that, ’cause the winds aren’t dying down, but I sure don’t see any more of those fish men. I’ll keep the helm a while longer down here in the pilothouse station while you guys dry off and warm up. I may need a lookout on deck before that, but I can handle the wheel myself. You think you’ll be ready to take over in an hour or two?”

“Yeah,” Quinton replied from under a towel. “Are we still running for Roche Harbor?”

“That’s my plan, though it sounds like we need to go on and find Gary’s cove before we’re out of time or battered to pieces. If this storm keeps up we may have no choice—we’re way off course and fighting the shore current on the west boundary. The wind pushed us out a good bit and if it keeps on the same way, we’ll be pushed back toward the rocks around the Chatham Islands. I’ll have to work her out of the current and back into the main channel as soon as it starts to slack up. Then we’ll have to scoot across to the west shore of San Juan and hope for a lift up the inside current once the tide’s turning. We’re going to be two or three hours later than we thought, if we can make it at all without overshooting Mosquito Pass.”

“Doesn’t sound good . . . That was a hell of a storm,” Quinton said.

“I’d say hell’s exactly where it came from. Never seen anything like that. It was like the squall picked us out. And now it’s back, so I’d better hop to it.” He vanished up the steps and we could hear him moving around overhead.