Monstrum (36 page)

His arm spasms.

There's a sharp blast and a flare of white light as the rocket fires, spiraling harmlessly into the night sky. It's followed by a second of ringing shock, as though none of us, even the chimera, can believe what just happened.

Cortés makes an indistinct, helpless sound. His hands open and close by his sides.

Flat on his back on the deck, the captain groans groggily, trying to lever himself up on his elbows.

The chimera chooses that moment to strike. Springing forward, it rears up on its back legs and lunges down, impaling Captain Romero through the belly with the spiny end of one of its front legs. The captain's body contracts and convulses, his limbs jerking in the air like an upside-down beetle trying to right itself. He squeals, arching, and his feet scramble and kick against the deck, as though he's trying to get up and run away. The chimera solves this problem by swinging one of its claws around and snipping off the captain's legs just above the knees. Blood spurts. The captain's face twists with agony, and his screams pitch higher. His arms flail uselessly. I don't know how he can still be alive.

Cortés shouts something and starts to move. Instinct makes me scramble back onto the boat, grab him and hang on.

One corner of the chimera's mouth peels back, revealing more rows of teeth. Endless teeth. With a final glance in our direction, probably to make sure it has our full attention, it lowers its head to Captain Romero's gut and—
oh, God
.

Captain Romero's screeching stops abruptly.

Now all I hear is the sound of wet smacking as the chimera chews.

Clapping a hand over my mouth, I turn away and lean over the side of the rail, struggling not to retch on the nasty bile that surges up my throat.

Cortés chokes down a sob, leans back his head and roars, long and hard. It's a sound I recognize because I've made it myself—frustrated anger mingled with an orphan's grief.

“Papa! Papa! Why, Papa?”

“Cortés!” I shake him, hard, but his body is like iron. “We have to go!”

“Papa!”

I don't think about it. There's no time.

“I'm sorry,” I say, backhanding him across the face so hard his head whips around.

He twists away from me, bending at the waist and resting his palms on his thighs for one long beat while he catches his breath.

When he straightens again, his dark eyes are wet but focused, and I know he's back.

We both scramble into the lifeboat, being careful not to step on Baer, and then he flips a switch on the winch. The cable whizzes, unspooling at dizzying speed, and suddenly we're falling down the side of the sinking ship and the churning water is racing up to meet us.

The descent is rough even though we probably have less than twenty feet to fall at this point. The storm is still in full force, and the wind and chop batter our poor lifeboat, making it thud against the ship's hull.

And then the lifeboat's front is stabbing into the frigid water with whiplash force. Monster waves swamp the lifeboat and show no sign of stopping. It's all I can do to cling to the bench's edge while the lifeboat settles in, deciding whether it likes being in the ocean or not. After a few seconds, some of the violent rocking subsides enough for me to feel comfortable using a hand to pull my wet hair out of my eyes, check on Baer to make sure he isn't drowning and find the oars.

That's when I see something through the driving rain.

There, closer than the horizon—the bright and unmistakable lights of a ship.

My heart cartwheels crazily. Certain I'm hallucinating, I rub my eyes and look harder, straining to see out into the darkness. Something's definitely there, though, and if I need any further proof, it comes right away: the single long, low blast of a ship's horn letting us know it's on the way.

Cortés, who's been checking Baer, looks around. “What's that?”

“A ship!”

“Where?”

“There!”

I point, and something strikes my wrist, wrapping around it, again and again. Tightening until all circulation is cut off and it feels like it's being sliced in half.

I cry out with shock and pain, trying to yank my arm back.

I can't break free.

Cortés's head whips around. “What is it?”

It's one of the chimera's pink tentacles, alive with pulsating suction cups.

“No!” I shriek.

“Bria!”

The chimera jerks my arm, pulling me to standing. With lightning reflexes, Cortés lunges for me, grabbing me around the waist with both arms. I struggle, yelling as I try to break free.

Cortés's iron grip constricts my diaphragm. That, along with my thrashing panic, quickly leaves me breathless. My arm stretches high overhead until the pain is unbearable, and it feels like all hundred and thirty pounds of me is divided between my armpit and my wrist.

“Bria-aaa!” Cortés heaves on me, and I can feel his entire body weight as he digs in his feet and pulls me backward.

The chimera flicks its tentacle, a lazy, rippling move. But it's enough to shake Cortés free of my lower half, and he lands in the bottom of the lifeboat. My arm gives way, dislocating with an audible pop and excruciating pain—it feels like I've been stabbed with a sword that's still hot from the forge. I have the fleeting and ridiculous thought that my fencing days are probably over, but then the icy reality begins to sink in: the only thing my future holds for me now is dying.

I scream . . . and scream . . . and am still screaming when the chimera swings me out of the lifeboat and dunks me into the frigid water like a rag doll it means to wash. There's nothing rational left in my brain. I quickly swallow half the ocean into my straining lungs, and then swallow more as I try to cough it out again.

I thrash as best I can, but my body is failing and my heart isn't in it.

Really, it's best to die now and get it over with,
I think as flashing spots of white begin to crowd my vision.

I
come to with a sudden, heaving splutter.

My lungs spasm painfully, convulsing with the effort of breathing in air while expelling foul bursts of sludge from my mouth. I don't know what it is that's choking me, only that it's salty and vile, thick and prickly. I cough and retch, trying to roll onto my stomach so gravity can help me clear my airway, but my body is on fire and my right arm is useless. I shift my weight, using my left arm for leverage and ignoring the way something cuts across my shoulder, digging into the flesh. My hand connects with something cold, hard and flat. I push against it.

It takes all of my body's waning strength, but I flip onto my belly. I open my mouth wide and my burning throat contracts, expelling something endlessly long and stringy. I open my eyes and yank on it, whatever it is, wanting it out of my body. It comes and comes, finally falling free with a wet slap, and my eyes focus slowly, trying to see what it is.

By the flickering amethyst light, I discover that the wilted mass inside my body was . . . sargassum.

I don't want to know anything else—not yet—so I focus on coughing some more and spitting out the last of the salt water that contaminates my lungs. My exhausted diaphragm squeezes and burns, and every part of my body is alight with agony.

When my lungs are finally clear, I take a deep breath, bend my left arm, press my palm flat against the hard surface and heave myself to kneeling. Something pats me gently on the back, startling me. It's the panga, I realize with more than a trace of bitterness. A tool as ridiculously useless in these circumstances as a G.I. Joe costume would be during the Normandy landing on D-Day. I could almost laugh with the sick irony of it all, but I don't have any energy to spare.

Shoring up my courage, I take a slow look around.

I'm back on what's left of the ship, on a tennis court-sized section of deck dotted with heavy equipment and ringed with purple fire. The dancing heat makes my cheeks, forehead and ears burn but doesn't touch any other part of my shivering body, which feels as though it's been chiseled out of the inside of an iceberg. I spend a fleeting second puzzling about this chimera fire, wondering why the drenching rain doesn't affect it, why it sometimes incinerates and sometimes goes so far and no further, and why it doesn't burn the chimera. I hear everything with exquisite clarity: the rain's patter, the crackling flames, the ship's creak as it rises and falls with the waves, my heartbeat . . .

The chimera's serrated breath.

The monster is right there with me, patiently sitting inside the ring of fire while it waits for me to get my bearings and turn my head in its direction, which I finally do.

Our eyes lock, and I could swear the thing shivers with excitement. Anticipation.

It towers several feet over me, even with its many legs neatly folded in a resting position, like a waiting spider or a polite crab. Its claws are lowered, resting harmlessly on the deck, and its tentacles are draped and arranged in a swirl around it the way a bride might arrange the train on her gown. Its head is cocked, and its clever eyes are bright and interested as it watches me.

It may as well be an excited child with a new pet hamster.

For once, the chimera doesn't smile.

It stares at me, taking a thorough inventory. My hair . . . my face . . . my torso with mangled shoulder . . . my kneeling legs.

I stare back, waiting for it to kill me as I telegraph my seething hatred. Hasn't it tortured me enough by now? Why didn't it let me drown? And if I have to die, which I clearly do, why do I have to die
now,
when the rescue ship is right there, probably fishing Cortés and Baer out of the water this very second? Why is it staring at me like
that
?

And the thing's overwhelming stench keeps me gagging.

Sea shit left to marinate in the sun.

Still it stares at me, unmoving, until the tension overwhelms my common sense.

I open my mouth. I want to shout, but my damaged throat produces only a strained croak.
“What do you want?”

Taking all the time in the world, it reaches out a tentacle. I stiffen, bracing myself for a blow. It touches my forehead, running the fluttery tip down my cheek.

Repulsed, I smack the tentacle with my left hand.

The chimera retracts the tentacle. The white brow markings over its eyes lower into a frown.

A warning rumble vibrates somewhere inside its crooked black and white body.

At this point, I really don't give a shit.

It reaches for me again, my torso this time.

This enrages me. What's with the sadism? Why doesn't it just torch me like it torched Murphy, and be done with it? I'm exhausted and in no mood for this cat-and-mouse treatment. If it's going to kill me, it needs to kill me. Now. I've had enough terror and torture to last several lifetimes, thanks.

I roar out my frustration through gritted teeth. “No!”

Smacking the tentacle away a second time, I clumsily push myself up to my unsteady feet. The chimera watches warily but does nothing to stop me.

What the hell?

If there's an opportunity, I'm going to take it, I decide, never breaking eye contact.

My movements are slow. Deliberate.

I reach behind my back, grab the panga and try to lift the strap over my head. It takes three awkward tries with my left hand, but I finally manage it. But when I try to shift my grip to the hilt, it slips out of my hand and hits the deck, clattering. Unbalanced and braced for a killing blow at any second, I squat, grab the hilt, straighten and assume a wide-legged stance, weapon raised.

The chimera makes another low sound, a wheezy chitter this time. A galling sound.

It's jeering at me, I realize.

Probably because you don't have to be human to see that there's no vital fleshy part of the thing that I can reach. The closest body part, its throat, is a good eight or ten feet high. I could slice off another couple of tentacles, sure, but what would be the point?