But I didn’t have time to deduce whose it was. We had to get on the ship. That’s all I could think about. Get. On. The. Ship.
We drifted up to the side of the Weaver where the climbing nets had already been lowered.
“Climb! Climb!” men yelled. Gunfire filled my ears. Shouting. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought we were in a battle with the navy, but no. We were fighting monsters from the deep. Creatures that had no right to take lands where men once stood.
Through the side of the boat, a jagged spearhead splintered the wood, grazing my boot. When it pulled free, water sloshed in around our feet. Hands shot up, reaching and grabbing at us.
Meridan, bleeding from her leg, was hauled to her feet and draped over Mullins’ back. She wrapped her skinny limbs around him as he climbed the nets, roaring with exertion.
I spun to scoop Dahlia up in my arms, but in truth, I didn’t know how to get her up the nets without her legs to aid me.
“You must hang onto me,” I told her, crouching with my back to her so she could get a good grip around my neck.
When I felt that her hold was strong enough, I started climbing. She was heavy. So heavy, I feared I would lose my strength and doom us both, but I gathered everything I had to get us onto the ship. As we ascended, the beasts from below began to fill the boat. Women, long and slim to the point of looking almost skeletal with slick, bald heads tore at the lines, heaving their serpentine lower halves behind them as they gave chase. Nothing about them resembled any sirens I had ever seen. Their eyes were overly large and had a strange, yellow glow behind the deep blackness. Their teeth were sharp and their mouths opened far too wide, nearly tearing their cheeks as they screeched.
“Don’t leave!” came a voice from the creature’s crooked lips, the tone identical to Meridan’s.
“What the fuck!” Mullins yelped, horrified.
“Climb!” Gus yelled from only a couple of feet above us. I could hear the dread in his voice. He didn’t often express it, but on that night, in that pandemonium, it was obvious that he was afraid.
Dahlia shifted off of me and took hold of the nets, relieving me of her weight. I maneuvered myself beneath her, pushing her upward as I climbed. Below us, the sirens and the ravenous xhoth were gaining on us, shaking the nets. They would have caught up to us with ease had they not started fighting each other over the spoils. They turned their aggression on their neighbors, ripping and biting to climb over those nearest to them.
“Cap’n!” Gus shouted.
I didn’t look back. The railing was right there, just within reach. I shoved Dahlia toward it, shielding her body with my own. Gus, clinging to the railing, drew his pistol and fired toward my legs just as bony fingers wrapped around my foot.
The bald-headed siren released me… and turned its attention to Gus. It scurried toward him, wrapping him in long, gangling arms and a glistening black tail. I watched it rip him off the netting, using its weight to tear his fingers from the ropes.
“No!” I roared.
I reached out to grab him, my fingers barely grazing his shirt as he descended into the sea.
“Gus, no!”
Dahlia twisted out from between me and the net and dove after him, barely missing the boat beneath us. All the bodies that had flooded it slithered after her like she was a corpse being thrown into a shiver of hungry sharks.
“Dahlia!” Meridan screamed from above.
The moment she disappeared beneath the water, my heart leapt into my throat. I immediately began climbing back down the net as my men fired on the remaining beasts, chasing them back into the waves. I dropped into the now empty boat but leaking, rage gripping me like a vice trying to drown me. Mullins tossed the ropes down and I quickly started to secure them to the metal rings on the frame in hopes that Dahlia and Gus would resurface and we could be hauled out of the water together.
I could hear my men reloading guns and harpoons above me, screaming at each other to hurry, but nothing was surfacing. It was as if Dahlia had appeased the ravenous waters by surrendering herself to them and the monsters had fled.
“Come on,” I said to myself.
“Vidar,” Meridan said, tossing Lady Mary into the boat beside me. I grabbed it, arming myself for any surprises. The moon cast her blue light over the water around me just as plumes of red bubbled up from below. It took everything not to leap in after Gus and Dahlia, despite knowing that I could do nothing for them if I did. As good a swimmer as I was, I could not match those born in the water.
I swallowed, my pulse racing under my tingling skin. Everything quieted as if we were reaching the eye of a violent storm and then finally, from the deceivingly calm water, came Dahlia with Gus in tow. He was coughing weak, wet coughs, blood spurting from his mouth as she dragged him with her toward the boat.
“Here!” I beckoned, reaching out. “Come to me!”
She struggled to lift him toward me and I did everything to take his weight off her so she could climb in herself. Once Gus was splayed out inside the boat, she rolled over the edge after him, tail and all. She coiled around him in an almost protective manner as I crouched on the other side of his body. Only then did I see what had been done.
“Raise the boat!” someone shouted from above.
It wasn’t ideal to raise the boat with three bodies in it, but what choice was there?
We started to ascend as others began pulling the nets up in case another wave of ferocious fiends decided to continue the attack.
