With the sail out of her face, Jill could see Allison. Her skipper was wide-eyed with panic. Her sunglasses were gone and the sunscreen on her nose was now smeared across her left cheek. It looked like warpaint made of Elmer’s glue.
“I don’t want to get caught in the fog,” she whined.
Jill was scared, too, but they had no choice. “It’s just until we catch the wind again.”
Allison mouthed something.Ohorokay, maybe. Jill wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they needed to keep moving. They needed to put more distance between themselves and the black mass in the water.
Glancing at the stretch of water behind them, Jill searched for the two boats.
She saw only one, lying on its side, its sails floating impotently in the water. It looked like a broken bird or the wreckage of a small plane.
The other boat was gone.
It wasn’t behind the capsized boat. It wasn’t speeding away in another direction. It was just gone.
Suddenly, a sound hurtled toward Jill from across the divide—a high, animalistic shriek that raised gooseflesh on Jill’s arms and stole the breath from her lungs. It went on and on, sweeping over the two girls in the boat as they sat in frozen terror.
Jill wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to stop the sound from getting in—from proving to her that nightmares were real.
The noise wasn’t coming from an animal.
It was coming from a kid.
One of the boys in the capsized boat was screaming.
13
Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith used a tentacle to push the boy’s severed arm down her throat.
The boy was a Pure One.
As she chewed his flesh, her mouth filled with his salt-laced blood and the neurons in her brain exploded, filling her vision with a searing light. She was blinded by ecstasy.
The euphoria hurtling through her cells was so powerful that she was temporarily stupefied. She drifted in the water, belly up, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her jaw hung open, revealing the strips of skin and strands of hair caught in her teeth.
Like a shark, she’d entered a state of tonic immobility. Her muscles relaxed. Her breathing slowed. Lost in pleasure, she had no awareness of her surroundings.
Her children writhed in agitation. They swam over her and under her, trying to conceal her from above and below. The eels knew she was completely helpless—susceptible to propeller blades or fishing nets. Vulnerable to discovery.
The Mother of Eels had already taken a huge risk by capsizing the boat. She’d arced her lower arms through the water, sending them crashing into the centerboard just as the littlecraft was tacking. Struck from the side with incredible force, the centerboard caused the boat to careen violently to one side, the mast toppling like a felled tree.
The sails landed in the water with a helpless slap. The young humans shouted in surprise. Seconds later, she saw a pair of legs frog-kicking. She saw sunlight bounce off a watch face. She paused for the briefest moment, watching the laces of an untied shoe dance in the current. The wriggling strings looked like glass eels.
Then, she struck.
She wrapped a tentacle around the man-child’s ankle, pulling him under the surface with a vicious tug. She ripped off the life jacket with her teeth as the human screamed. The sound was muted by the water as a frenzy of bubbles poured out of his mouth. Mrs. Smith witnessed his final exhalation with mild amusement before biting into his torso.
Enveloped by clouds of blood, she waited to be electrified by his flesh. But this man-child was not a Pure One. He was sweet and delicious—a vast improvement over shark or whale meat—but she feasted on him quickly, eager to capture the second human and drag him to the bottom.
The other boy, the one climbing onto the centerboard, had to be a Pure One. She couldn’t have taken this risk for nothing. She’d read the yacht club’s newsletter. She’d researched the rules. She knew the skippers were too old to be Pure Ones but that the crew members were the perfect age.
Mrs. Smith crushed the first boy’s bones between her jaws. A nimbus of flesh and clothing fragments floated around her head. The eels darted in and out of the murk, swallowing every tiny morsel.
Maddened by a frenzy to feed, they inadvertently bit their own brothers and sisters. Lacerations appeared on their blackskin. More blood oozed into the water. The eels wriggled and twisted in excitement, their lust for meat equal to the Mother’s.
Eager to taste the second human, Mrs. Smith didn’t bother consuming every bit of the first boy’s body. Leaving several digits and a whole ear to her children, she swam toward the surface.
