Wake of the Bloody Angel

Chapter Nineteen

I knew about the octopus, the squid, and the cuttlefish, all disgusting pulpy creatures with long arms laden with suction cups. I’d even seen squids as big as a man attack a horse that had fallen off a troop transport. But whatever lurked below this nameless ship bore about as much resemblance to those creatures as my boot dagger did to a battering ram.

The arms poking through the hatchways were already as big around as I was, and those were just the tips. They reached unerringly for the puckered flesh and enormous beak, seeking the source of the sudden pain. For the moment the path to the deck was clear, and Kaven made a break for it, clattering up the stairs and shrieking like a girl. He’d just reached the top when something knocked him back, and he landed across the walkway with a thud. The ship swayed back and forth, rolling his limp body into the stagnant water. The tentacle that had smacked him now filled the hatch entrance, blocking our escape.

I glanced at Jane. She was flat against the curved wall, slashing madly at the tip of a tentacle. It withdrew with each cut but resumed its attack at once. Suhonen, meanwhile, had pinned the tip of one beneath his boot, and as I watched, he sliced off a good six feet of it. The ship rocked in response, and the stump covered him with a spray of blue-tinted blood.

More tentacles squeezed in alongside the first ones, spreading out along the walls, alert for any movement. I got a good look at the damp, revolting suction cups that lined the undersides. In the middle of each cup was a single hooked claw as long as my index finger, made of the same shiny black material as the beak; now I knew where all those gouged tracks came from.

Veasely slashed at the tentacle coming down from above, but didn’t notice the one from the stern porthole that suddenly wrapped around his waist. He screeched, the high cry of agony that I’d heard many times on the battlefield. The arm lifted him as if he weighed nothing and carried him over me toward the beak. The vicious maw strained at the top of its shaft, open wide and ready. I jumped and grabbed one of Veasely’s feet, but the creature shook me loose with no effort. I landed in the stagnant water.

“Help!” Veasely shrieked, beating futilely at the tentacle. “Help me!”

I risked a look at the stairs. Duncan huddled on the bottom step, knees drawn up to his chin and his eyes scrunched shut. Kaven lay where he’d fallen, and another tentacle was almost upon him. Neither could help. “Suhonen!” I yelled.

He looked up, saw Veasely in trouble, and stepped off the tentacle he’d cut.

This was a mistake, as the stump simply thwacked him across the back and sent him, too, flying toward the thing’s mouth. Luckily the creature was still reaching up for Veasely, so that when Suhonen hit the puckered flesh, the beak was five feet above him. He drew back his sword to cut the beak’s shaft, and if he’d been able to do it, a lot might have been different.

But the stump hit him again, and another tentacle wrapped around his torso. The pain of those long black claws puncturing his skin made him yell and drop his sword. He, too, was lifted into the air and pushed toward the snapping beak.

Veasely got there first, though, and the tentacle stuffed his shrieking, struggling form down the creature’s gullet. The beak snapped shut, and one of the sailor’s legs was severed at the knee. It dropped with a thud to the walkway, then bounced into the stagnant water. Immediately, a swarm of pale crabs rushed from beneath the walkway and began devouring the leg’s flesh.

All this took about five seconds. During that time, I scrambled toward the mouth’s hatch, hoping I could finish what Suhonen had tried to do. The ship careened back and forth, alternately slamming me into the hull and tossing me across to the other side. I was nowhere near close enough when the creature pushed Suhonen toward its ravenous, now-bloody maw.

“Fuck!” Jane yelled. Now it lifted her into the air by one leg, dangling her upside down. She’d lost her sword as well.

The beak opened so wide, it was almost horizontal. At the last second, Suhonen slammed his feet down, one on either half of the beak, and jammed them apart. Red blood spurted from beneath the tentacles as it squeezed his chest, but he held fast, roaring his defiance. Jane hung above him, waiting her turn, struggling to slash the tentacle with her dagger.

I still wasn’t close enough for a regular sword strike, so I did the best I could. I threw my sword like a spear, and it struck the disgusting gullet stalk dead center.

And went right through. I heard it clatter against the hull on the far side.

Now that pissed me off. Come on, LaCrosse, I told myself. You once killed a genuine fire-breathing dragon and faced down Gordon Marantz. You going to let a boneless sea monster get the best of you?

I drew my boot knife and yelled, “Suhonen! Jump!”

He saw what I was about to do, bent his legs, and sprang up. The beak snapped shut, just missing his feet. Then I leaped and wrapped my arms and legs around the shaft.

It was like hugging a skinned deer that had been left out in the rain for a week: soft, slimy, and rank. There was nothing to hold on to, and I began to slip almost at once. I braced my feet on the hatch lip, buried my knife into the shaft, and began to saw. Most of it was pulpy and put up no resistance, and my hand sank into it up to the elbow. Suddenly, though, the blade bit into something solid, a tendon or shaft of gristle, and I viciously cut through it.

The ship rose beneath us. What ever this thing was, it was big enough to push the whole vessel up above the water when it was hurt. It shook me off the shaft, which flopped to one side. Only half the beak now moved. The tentacles dropped Jane and Suhonen and rushed their tips to the beak, which oozed blue blood where I’d cut the tendon or muscle inside it. The tips fluttered around the wound like a grandmother’s fingers.

The ship crashed back down into the water, bouncing us into the air. I got up and looked around; Jane and Suhonen weren’t moving. Jane lay facedown in the bilge, and the water around her was already stained red. The white crabs were examining her, not quite certain she was carrion. I was coated in disgusting sea monster saliva, and wiping at it only spread it around.

I looked back at Duncan, still huddled on the bottom step, clutching his knife as if it were a child’s sleep toy. “Duncan!” I yelled. “Get over here!”

The boy blinked, looked at me, and, despite the utter terror I saw in his eyes, jumped up and ran to me.

The ship continued to groan, and somewhere wood cracked. I realized we were descending. The injured monster was trying to pull the whole ship down with it. I didn’t know if the hull would hold. Water surged in through the four portholes.

I turned Jane onto her back. She was alive, but her skin was wan and her lips faintly blue. It occurred to me that those tentacle claws might be poisonous. “We have to get them out of here, back onto the deck. You take her; I’ll manage Suhonen.”

“No one has to manage me,” Suhonen said. He was on his feet, weaving but alert. Three punctures diagonally crossed his torso, oozing blood. The scar on my own chest twinged in sympathy; if one of those claws had gone deep enough to get to his lungs, I knew just how unlikely his survival would be.

Suhonen tossed Jane over his shoulder as easily as I might a sleeping child. “I think the party’s over,” he said, and made his way toward the stairs, battling the rolling ship.

I picked up Suhonen’s dropped sword, then retrieved Jane’s and handed it to Duncan. “Ready to go?” I asked. He nodded rapidly. “Then let’s make sure nothing nasty follows us.”

I watched ahead of us, while Duncan kept an eye behind. I had to trust him-more tentacles were squeezing into the portholes, seeking to touch the injured beak shaft. When one came too near, I slashed, and it withdrew at once. We got to the stairs and only then did I risk a look back. Duncan was right there, and from the fresh blue blood on the end of his sword, I knew he’d been busy.

Kaven lay where he’d fallen beside the stairs. His eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing; the impact had snapped his neck across the walkway’s edge. I said to Duncan, “You go up first,” but he shook his head. It wasn’t the time to argue, so I clambered up the stairs and squeezed past the thick tentacle that blocked half the hatch, aided by its natural slime. Duncan followed.

On the pitching deck, Jane sat with her back against the mainmast. Her right leg was stuck straight out, and blood pulsed from the puncture in her thigh. She was conscious again, weak from shock and loss of blood. Her attitude hadn’t changed, though. “Holy shit,” she gasped when she saw me, “that was fucking close. I didn’t think we’d get past that last tentacle.”

Suhonen knelt at the rail, trying to haul in our boat. The ship was so low to the water that it bobbed at deck level. If it stayed this low, the water rushing into the big hold would sink it.

“Go help him,” I told Duncan. The boy rushed to take the rope from Suhonen, who didn’t put up a fight. Instead he flopped to the side, unconscious, as soon as the rope was out of his hands. Duncan put Jane’s sword on the deck under one foot and began to pull with all the might his panic provided, which was considerable.

Across the way, the crew of the Red Cow waved at us. At first I thought they were cheering our success, which seemed odd; then I realized they were pointing behind and above us. I turned.

Three tentacles rose as high as the ship’s foremast into the air. They wound around the masts and snapped the topmost lengths off. Splinters rained down on us. Duncan had almost gotten the boat to the rail, which was good because the monster now had us so low in the water, waves began to swamp the deck. “Come on!” the boy yelled.

I helped Jane to her feet and she hopped quickly to the boat, landing in an undignified heap across the bow seat. Then I muscled the unconscious Suhonen across my shoulders and rolled him in on top of her, eliciting a weak but outraged, “Ow! Watch it!”

A huge column of water shot into the air. I knew cuttlefish propelled themselves with water jets, and it seemed this one was no different. The ship groaned, more bits of mast fell off, and the wherry nearly capsized. I grabbed the rope from Duncan and said, “Get in the boat!”

He did as I told him, almost impaling himself on Jane’s huge sword. I was less than a second behind him. Another jet of water pushed us rapidly away from the ship, accompanied by a surge of jet-black ink. The water smelled rancid now, and Duncan and I quickly began to row for the Cow.

As we pulled away, another tentacle appeared and reached for us. How many goddamned arms did this thing have, anyway? Before I could react, Duncan stood and whacked the tentacle with Jane’s sword. A three-foot section dropped into the boat and flopped at our feet, spewing blue blood. The rest of the arm recoiled, knocking the sword from his hands and into the water. But by then the combination of waves and our own frantic rowing put us safely out of reach.

The creature’s other tentacles enveloped the ship now, and the bow sank beneath the surface. “No way,” Jane whispered in awe. “It can’t possibly pull the ship down.”

“I don’t think it knows that,” I said.

With a great unearthly cry-part scraping wood, part animal’s shriek-the boat shot into the air as the monster lost its battle to pull the ship beneath the water. The vessel bounced, sending several waves toward us that pushed us toward the Cow even faster. Then it settled, the tentacles withdrew, and by the time we reached our ship, the strange vessel once again sat motionless in the sea, although lower, thanks to the water in its hold. Only the broken masts and ink-stained water indicated what had happened.

Jane looked up from tying a tourniquet around her leg. “That was a hell of a trap,” she croaked.

“It was,” I agreed.

She began to laugh.

“What?” I said.

“You. You look like you’ve been tongue-kissing a barrelful of slugs.”

I wiped some of the slime from my beard and grinned. “I have been at sea for a while, you know. Your standards change.”

She laughed even harder, until with a long sigh her eyes closed and her body went slack.