“You’ll do better to-”
“Shall we send up flares, Captain?” one of the sailors yelled at his leader as he pointed at the creature. “It’s scared off such things before.”
“Blow off as many as you can find!” Marc instructed him before turning his attention back to me. “In! Now!”
Ramaro pressed his forehead against my ankle and tried to push me toward the door. “Go on. You heard the captain.”
I pursed my lips, but allowed Ramaro to guide me toward the cabin. Loud noises behind me made me spin around, and Ramaro stumbled forward a few steps without me. The men had opened a crate and were throwing bright red flares at the creature. The flaming sticks fell into the ocean or bounced off the thing. None of them deterred its path toward us.
Its soulless eyes fell on me. I felt a terrible cold sink into my body.
“Keep moving!” Ramaro ordered me as he resumed his place against my ankle. “Come on! Move!”
I stumbled forward, a horrible thought rising in the back of my mind. Ramaro herded me into the cabin, where I stumbled into the middle of the room. My wide eyes saw nothing, and my heart thumped loudly in my chest. My blood ran cold, and the color drained from my cheeks.
Ramaro slammed the door shut. “There. That should-” He noticed me standing stiff with my back turned to him. The agama scurried up to my side and looked me over. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you just swallowed something that didn’t go down right.”
A few whispered words escaped my tight throat. “It’s me.”
Ramaro blinked at me. “What’s you?”
I pressed my fists against my chest, but that didn’t stop my body from shaking. “That thing wants me.”
He wrinkled his snout. “And how do you know that?”
“Because it keeps looking at her.” I jumped and spun around to find Marc standing a few feet in the cabin. The door stood open behind him. He shut it at my turning toward him. “That’s why the flares aren’t working. It sees something better aboard the ship.”
Ramaro scoffed. “But what would it want with her?”
Marc looked me over. “Your sea song. It must have heard your voice last night on the beach, and it’s come to take you to its nest.”
My voice came out in a shivering whisper. “And then?”
“The nest of such monsters lies far below the surface. You’ll be drowned.”
I had forgotten to breathe. My lungs felt they were about to burst. I took a long, shuddered breath before letting it out.
“What about using some of the ship’s grimspall on it?” Ramaro suggested.
Marc folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “It’s too soaked in water. The stuff would never work.”
Ramaro studied Marc from head to foot. “I’d say outrun it, but you look about outrun already.”
A wry smile slipped onto Marc’s lips. “Even if we could outstrip the monster, Jaeger will catch up to us before I have the strength to evade him.”
I stood there, listening to their conversation with a creeping sensation in the back of my mind. There was only one thing to do, and it terrified me.
“You have to put me on a boat.”
My quiet voice didn’t break through their conversation.
“Then lead the monster to Jaeger and let him deal with it!”
“It doesn’t want him, it wants Rose.”
I balled my hands into fists at my side and stomped a foot against the floorboards. “Put me on a boat!”
That got their attention. Ramaro turned to me and wrinkled his snout. “Put you on a boat? Why?”
