Sea Spell (Waterfire Saga #4)(85)

I need to help her! Sera thought frantically.

She tried to get to Neela, but every time she moved toward her friend, a rotter rushed at her, pushing her back. She used songspells and her sword to fight the creatures off, but as soon as she’d knocked one’s head off with a stilo, or cut it in two with her sword, another took its place. They were everywhere.

Sera saw, with an anguished clarity, that her troops were being beaten, and not only by rotters. Ceto and his fellow whales were using all their magic to hold off the Razormouths, yet some of the dragons had broken through their line and were slaughtering Black Fins. Sera could hear death screams. The water was turning crimson.

Yazeed swam up to her. His face was covered in blood from a gash in his forehead. Ling and Becca were right behind him.

“We’re getting massacred,” Becca said, panting. “We’ve got to fall back!”

“To where?” Sera cried. The land around the Carceron was nothing but a rocky flat.

“We’ll retreat to the south. There’s got to be somewhere to—” Her words were cut off by a roar so terrible, they both had to cover their ears.

“Abbadon!” Becca cried fearfully. “It must’ve gotten out!”

“No!” Ling shouted, pointing overhead. “Look!”

Yazeed tilted his head. “No way,” he said. “I do not believe this.”

High up in the water, Guldemar—the Meerteufels’ chieftain—was careening toward them at breakneck speed in a bronze chariot pulled by six gray hippokamps. He was driving the animals insanely fast, cracking a whip over their heads again and again. Rising up off the seafloor behind him like a lethal rogue wave was a nightmare come to life.

“G?! F?rst?r det onda!” Guldemar shouted over his shoulder. Go! Destroy this evil!

Sera knew this nightmare. Guldemar’s throne had been cast in its image. It was the stuff of legends, a mythical beast that the Meerteufel could call up in times of great peril.

Hafgufa, the kraken.





WITH A FURIOUS SHRIEK, Hafgufa ripped into Orfeo’s army. She attacked the Razormouths first, biting heads off, gouging wounds into flesh with her yard-long claws, severing limbs with a crack of her scaly tail. Blood and gore clouded the water. Bodies sank to the seafloor.

Within minutes, she’d killed most of the dragons. After that, she turned to the cadavru. Using her tail, she churned the water into deadly vortexes and hurled them at the cadavru, then watched, her green eyes narrowed, as the vortexes ripped them apart. Skulls rolled into the silt, snapping their teeth. Bony hands scrabbled across rocks. Legs tangled themselves in thickets of seaweed, kicking uselessly.

What the vortexes missed, Hafgufa tore with her teeth. As she plowed through the army of the dead, the surviving Razormouths, led by Hagarla, made a last desperate charge. Hafgufa saw the attack coming. Pulling herself up to her full height, she lunged at the dragons, catching one in her fearsome jaws. She savaged the creature, then gave chase to the rest.

Sera, bloodied and breathless, watched as Hagarla grew smaller and smaller in the water, and then disappeared entirely. She looked for the Meerteufel chieftain, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Thank you, Guldemar,” she whispered. “Wherever you are.”

The dragons were routed. The rotters had been decimated. Her troops were busy destroying any that Hafgufa had missed. But Sera knew that dragons and rotters were not her most lethal enemies.

“Sera!” a voice called out. “Are you all right?”

It was Neela. She was battered and bruised, but she was alive. Ling was with her. They swam to Sera and embraced her.

“Where are the others?” Sera asked. She shouted frantically for her friends.

“Over here!” Becca yelled back. She was in the clearing between the camp and the Carceron, and she had Yazeed’s arm around her neck. There was a deep gash in his tail; he could barely swim.

Sera and the others raced to them. They were joined a moment later by Alítheia and Ava.

“Thank the gods you’re all alive!” Ava said.

“Where’s Orfeo?” Sera asked warily, looking all around. “Where’s Astrid?”

“Did we…did we kill them?” Becca asked.

“No,” Ava said anxiously. “I can feel them. Both of them. Can you see them? They’re near…they’re—”

“Right here,” Orfeo said.

Sera whirled around. He was standing by the Carceron. Astrid was next to him. They were flanked by the few dozen rotters who’d survived the carnage.

“I’ve had enough of these games,” he said. “I want the talismans, Serafina.”

Sera was exhausted and bleeding, but she raised her crossbow.

“Come and get them,” she said.

Orfeo laughed scornfully. He snapped his fingers and two rotters roughly shoved someone forward—a small mermaid.

“Sera!” the little merl called out tearfully.

“No!” Sera cried as she realized who it was: Coco.

Astrid grabbed the child by her hair. She took her dagger out of its sheath. Coco whimpered in terror. She squeezed her eyes shut.

The sight completely unhinged Sera. How could Astrid do this? To them, to Coco?

“Who are you?” she shrieked at her. “That’s a child, Astrid, a helpless child! Is your pride worth an innocent life?”