The helicopter circled. It tried to hover over the sinking ship, but one of the serpent’s heads followed it, and it was forced to keep moving to stay out of striking range.
It had found its target—but it couldn’t drop anything now. Not over their own ship, with the crew still aboard.
“For someone who hates humans so much, he sure understands a lot about them,” said Spio.
It was true. Adaro must have known the helicopter would stop pursuing him if he put the crew in danger.
Through all of this, it occurred to me Adaro could have been anywhere.
“We need to get around this,” I said. “We’re losing—”
A blast of heat hit my face. The chemicals had ignited.
Fire engulfed the ship. Shouts filled my ears from the deck.
The chemicals swelled towards us, reaching, billowing. I tasted poison on the water.
We had no option but to flee. Flames and toxins blocked every forward direction.
“If we go back far enough we can go around,” said Spio.
I cast desperately for any sign of Adaro. We couldn’t lose him now.
“What about the crew?” said Meela.
A cloud of smoke swelled into the sky. One of the enormous black heads rose through it, snapping at the helicopter. The people inside fired at it, bullets clanking off her scales.
“The helicopter will help them,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
To try helping would be a waste of time, not to mention dangerous. Besides, though I wouldn’t admit it to Meela, I hardly cared about the wellbeing of those humans at the moment.
Globules formed in the oil, drifting in every direction. On the surface, the slick spread and bobbed on the water like a raft. The flames were ravenous.
Meela conceded, letting out a moan of despair.
We surfaced far from the disaster. The breath caught in my throat as I looked back at the black cloud in the distance. The enormous ship, half submerged, looked like a toy next to the spreading smoke. It billowed into the atmosphere, blacker than iron, so high my head spun to watch it.
Meela looked at us fiercely. “We need to find Evagore before it’s too late.”
I knotted my fingers in my hair. “I know! I’m trying to think of where the prison could be.”
“What did Thetis and Nestor say, exactly?”
I screwed up my face, thinking hard. “I don’t remember! The acoustic channel was east and the luna bin was west—or that was east and the king was going west—”
“Luna bin?” said Meela sharply.
“Yeah. Some witless nickname they came up with for the Moonless… What?”
Meela’s mouth had fallen open.
“When Thetis and Nestor were waiting for Adaro to come, they said the humans dropped something over a prison. They saidluna bin.”
“They did?!”
“They were talking about the queen, then, weren’t they?”
“Yes!”
