The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (9 page)

“You can turn around now. I’m decent,” I say.

“I doubt that very much,” he says, turning toward me. When he sees me, a smile spreads across his face. “Dressed for battle?”

“What?” I ask, looking in the mirror. I immediately see what he’s talking about. I’m dressed from head to toe in black and wearing the cloak that helped earn my Raven nickname.

“My father will be pleased,” he says.

I roll my eyes and let out an “Ugh.” The clothes are the warmest I have with me, and I’m not about to change again. I look down at the brown boots I was wearing before. They’ll screw up the whole Raven thing nicely. But then I think how pleased Jakob really will be. He’s the kind of guy who sees omens and takes pride in connections to his ancestors. “Fuck it,” I say, reaching into my backpack and taking out my steel-toed black shit-kicker boots. While I’m working on the laces, cinching them tight, I ask, “So what’s the deal with Helena?”

“What do you mean?” he asks. He sounds casual. Not at all defensive. And I’m not sure what to make of that.

“Why is she here?”

“She volunteered,” Willem said. “My father was opposed to it, of course.”

“Because she’s a girl?” I ask. “You’d think I put that stereotype to bed for him.”

“Because Helena is the one person my father adores more than you,” he says.

I pause tying my boot mid-loop.
How much more do you adore her?
is the question I want to ask but don’t. When it comes to Draugar,
man-eating polar bears, and undead whales, I’m all spit and venom. When it comes to Willem, I’m kind of a pansy. If he’s with Helena, it’s my fault. I’m the one who pulled away. And I really don’t want to hear that right now, so I clamp my mouth shut and finish tying my laces.

Willem, on the other hand, decides I need to hear all of Helena’s finer qualities. “I’m actually the one who talked him into allowing her to come. She’s been around ships more than I have. Knows how to pilot, can repair an engine, and can fire a harpoon better than most whalers. Her father was a whaler. Died at sea when she was sixteen. She’s been working the sea since.”

Boo hoo
, I think.

“At the time we had a crew of just five, two of whom hadn’t spent any time on the water. She really is essential.”

I finish on the boots and sit up. “If I’m the person your father adores second in the world, why was he not just willing but determined to have me on board? Is there room for just one person at the top of his list of people to protect?” Willem looks confused by my line of questioning. “I suppose that’s better than you, though, right? You wanted both of us here.”

“Jane,” he says, sounding all caring. He puts a hand on my shoulder, but I yank it away. The act makes me feel like a bitchy teenage girlfriend, but I’m not about to reverse course.

He sighs. “Jane, you’re here because you’ve proven yourself to my father. He’s seen you in action. You’re not just a survivor—you’re a fighter. He didn’t think we could do this without you. And I agree with him. You proved it again today. No one else could have gone head-to-head with fifty feet of Draugr and come out alive.”

I hate being buttered up, and it takes all of my self-control to not cuss him out. The only thing that stops me is that I think he’s
actually telling the truth. In fact, Willem rarely ever lies. But he’s also wrong. “Willem, I’m not as strong as you think. I drowned myself in alcohol. I picked fights. I’ve been a total mess for the past two months.”

He sits down next to me. “My father has been on Prozac since the hospital.”

This is news to me. I can’t picture the old sea dog taking prescription drugs or admitting that something like depression exists.

“We all have ways of coping with horrible things,” he says.

“What was yours?” I ask.

“At first, it was you.” He squirms uncomfortably, and I think I know what’s coming. “Then you left.”

“And Helena took my place,” I conclude.

“I wouldn’t say she took your place,” he says. “But she—”

I stand and limp toward the door. I’ve suspected their relationship all along, but confirmation fills me with a jealous rage. And right now isn’t the time or place for a love spat.

“What—where are you going?” he asks.

“Last I heard, we had a distress call to answer and an incoming target.”

Willem’s blue eyes widen. He’d already left the deck when Talbot delivered the news. “Distress call? Target?” He stands. “Are you okay to walk?”

In answer, I hobble out into the hall and make my way toward the stairs without looking back. I move with purpose, like I’m storming the beaches of Normandy, but my mind is still on the conversation. I’d like to move past it, but I find my thoughts focused on the man behind me. Then I step onto the bridge and forget all about Willem.

T
arget is four miles out and closing!” Talbot shouts out as I step onto the bridge. He’s standing at the radar display. “But it’s popping in and out like a dang woodchuck!”

“GPS signal is just a half mile out,” Klein says, staring at his laptop screen.

“I reckon we’ll have about twelve minutes before it reaches us,” Talbot adds.

“Does anyone see a ship?” Jakob asks.

A quick glance out the window reveals there’s no ship within a half mile. Even a small boat would be easy to spot. But something even smaller might not be. “Look for something small and orange,” I say.

All eyes turn back toward me and linger for a silent moment. I don’t know if they’re surprised that I’m here at all or confused by my darkly clad appearance. Maybe they’ve heard stories of Jakob’s mythical Raven and are in awe of my glory. Whatever the case, Helena snaps them back to reality.

She steps through the exterior door and onto the bridge. “Off the port bow!” I might not like Helena for catty reasons, but she’s earned my respect. She’s all business and rarely not focused on the task at hand, including hacking off part of my leg.

“Show me,” I say, stepping up to the window. When she joins me, I feel dwarfed. She points, but I’ve already seen the life raft. It’s
similar to the one I used to escape the sinking
Sentinel
a few months back; it bobs in and out of view as it rolls up and over wave crests before disappearing in the troughs.

“Can we turn around and back up to it?” Klein asks.

When the captain doesn’t answer, I glance back. He nods at me, giving me the go-ahead. Apparently I’ve earned the lead on this. “Take us alongside the raft, and park us in front. Keep us between it and whatever’s coming our way.” Speaking of which… “Talbot, where is it?”

“Should be in visual range any second now,” Talbot says, looking up from the radar screen like he can eyeball an object three miles away. “But it’s still erratic. Appears for just a few moments at a time, then it’s gone again.”

I turn to Helena. “Keep watch with the harpoons. We’re going to be vulnerable when we stop to pick up the people on board that raft.” As she turns to leave, I take her arm. Whatever issues Willem and I have, they’re not her fault. When she turns to me, I say, “Thanks. For the leg.”

She smiles and sings—yeah, sings—“Let me take a part of you.” She does a little jig, too, which is one part adorable and one part freakish, mostly because it’s so out of character. She’s forever destroyed the standoffish Viking warrior-maiden aura. She’s also created a conundrum for me. By not only singing Devo but altering the lyrics to suit the situation, she’s (A) revealed us to be about the same age, (B) exposed a previously hidden sense of humor that I appreciate, and (C) made me not hate her guts.
Bitch.

My laugh sends Helena on her way. I turn to Willem, who’s still at the back of the bridge. “Go with her.”

As Willem heads out, I look at Jakob and ask, “Malik is ready at the dive deck?”

He nods, steering the ship closer to the orange life raft.

“You won’t have any trouble steering us into position?”

He gives me a look that says
Please
, like I’ve just asked him if he can breathe air.

Klein joins me at the bridge window. With us being nearly on top of the GPS signal, he doesn’t need to be at the laptop. He hands me a pair of binoculars and raises a second pair to his eyes.

“Talbot?” I say. The unsaid question is obvious.

“Two point five miles. Dead ahead.”

I stand at the center of the bridge, line up the binoculars with the tip of the forward bow where Willem mans a harpoon gun, and slowly raise them toward the horizon. All I see is an endless, empty stretch of ocean. “I don’t see anything.”

“Neither do I,” Klein adds.

“It’s not on the radar, either,” Talbot says. “But it’s been like that the whole ti—wait, there it is.”

I turn my attention back to the binoculars in time to see a gray blur fall into the distant ocean, casting up white froth as it drops out of sight.

“The hell was that?” Klein says. Apparently he saw the same thing I did but couldn’t identify it either. “Looked like a surfacing submarine.”

“Wasn’t a sub,” I say. I suspect the truth but don’t want to say anything until I’m sure. I adjust the focus on my binoculars until the waves surrounding the object’s appearance come into focus.

It returns thirty seconds later, and a good deal closer. As it rises from the deep, I adjust the focus and see it clearly as it reaches the apex of its breach.

“Oh my God,” Klein says. “It’s a whale.”

I watch the giant bend forward and plunge back into the water. When it’s gone I turn back to Jakob, my face ashen. “It’s a sperm whale. A bull.”

I don’t need to say anything more. Jakob knows everything there is to know about whales. Bull sperm whales can grow up to sixty feet long and weigh fifty-six tons. They’ve got the largest head in the history of all living things, which can be, and has been, used to ram and sink ships. Sperm whales also have the largest brains of all animals, weighing up to twenty pounds, which means they’re also quite smart. For a whale. Unlike the humpback whale, the sperm whale doesn’t use baleen to filter out its food. Its powerful jaws sport sixty conical teeth that are eight inches long and weigh two pounds each. That’s a tooth bigger, heavier, and denser than Malik’s hand. Basically, you don’t want to be in the water with a sperm whale if it’s grumpy. And given the speed and course of this whale, I’d say it’s beyond grumpy.

It’s Draugr.

Probably summoned by the humpback’s call.

How many more are on the way?
I wonder, but I force my thoughts back to the situation at hand.

“Why is it jumping out of the water like that?” Klein asks.

“It’s spotting,” I say. Whales breach for a number of reasons, but I think the one barreling toward us is jumping out of the water for the same reason we’re peering through binoculars. While sound travels great distances through water, visibility is the same for a whale as it is for a person. It’s not going to see us underwater until it’s quite close. But with each leap, it gets a glimpse of its target—an easy-to-spot black splotch marring the blue sky and ocean.

“Coming up on the raft,” Jakob says.

I see the orange life raft pass by on the starboard side. The cover is up, and the hatch is zipped shut. Not unusual, but I don’t see any movement, which is uncommon for people about to be rescued. It’s not a good sign.

“Klein, come with me,” I say, heading for the exit. “Malik might need a hand.”

As I leave with Klein in tow, I glance at Jakob, and he gives me a nod. If it was a test, it seems I’ve passed. I’m not sure why he’s so willing to let me take charge, but I appreciate it. I don’t think I’d have admitted it before—hell, I could barely think about it—but this is my fight. The Draugar killed my friends and tried to kill me. Same as Jakob. And now we’re in this together. A regular pair of Captain Ahabs.

The Arctic wind blasts me as I leave the bridge and hobble my way down to the aft main deck.

“Should you be walking on that leg?” Klein asks me.

I ignore him and move faster, arriving at the ladder that leads to the dive deck a moment later. Malik is there, reaching out to the raft with a long wooden rod with a hook on the end, usually used to move whale meat. I wonder if the Greenpeace people aboard will have a moral quandary about being rescued by a device used in the slaughter of the creatures they’re sworn to protect. That is, if anyone on board is still alive. For a second it looks like Malik is going to pop the raft, but he raises the hook and snags the top of the rubber covering. With one hand gripping the cable running from the
Raven
to the
SuzieQ
, he pulls the raft in until the zippered hatch is resting against the dive deck. He lowers the pole, squats by the raft, and says a gruff “Hello. Is anyone there?”

“Just open it,” I say, making the big man flinch.

He looks up at me. “I nearly fell in!”

“Sorry,” I say. “We’ve got about five minutes before a bull sperm whale with a grudge gets here.”

This news sobers him up. Like Jakob, Malik has spent a lot of time on the ocean. He understands the power of a sperm whale, and I doubt he’s read
Moby Dick
. It’s boring as shit.

Malik unzips the hatch and pushes it open. I can’t see what’s inside, but he hauls the raft farther up on deck and leans inside. When he comes back out, he’s got a young man in his arms. The kid looks young, barely drinking age if that. And he’s passed out cold. Maybe dead. I don’t think Malik has checked, and I don’t ask. I just reach down with Klein and take the kid’s flaccid arms. Together, we haul him up onto the main deck and lay him flat.

Malik climbs the ladder. He’s got a metal bucket in one hand.

“Just the one?” I ask.

Malik nods. “He was alone.”

I kneel by the kid and gently slap his face. “Hey. Wake up.” When there’s no response, I check his pulse. “Well, he’s alive.”

A column of ice-cold Arctic water pours from Malik’s bucket and strikes the kid square in the face. The reaction is immediate. He coughs. Sputters. Flails. His eyes dart around, seeing Malik, Klein, and then me. And then he starts screaming like we’re playing jump rope with his intestines.

T
he kid’s really shrieking like a banshee. His eyes are wide with horror, but I don’t think he’s really seeing anything at all. Or maybe everything he’s seeing coupled with Malik’s ice-cold rude awakening has him supremely confused. Whatever the case may be, he needs to get a grip. And soon. I’ve got him by the shoulders and am shouting in his face, but it’s not helping, so I do the only other thing I can think of.