This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(64)

I took another look, and this time I spotted something strange beyond the rocks. The air was blurry. The way it looks when the sun is beaming off the concrete in the hottest part of the summer, like the air had been turned to shimmering liquid.

“What is that?” I asked, passing the binoculars to Circe.

As she peered through she gasped. “That, my beautiful niece, is Aeaea.”

“You sure?” I asked.

Circe handed the binoculars to Marie and turned to Persephone. “It’s cloaked. Just like we thought, but it’s there. I can feel it.”

I stared into the distance as the sun sank lower on the horizon.

“It’s nearly sunset and we’re almost to the point of no return,” Persephone said. “Let’s get our headphones on and prepare for the worst—”

“But hope for the best,” Circe said quickly.

The mood had shifted. There was a renewed sense of hope. We were so close.

“We’ll have to steer directly through the outcroppings,” Persephone said. “Circe, we need a big gust and then you need to call down the broom so we can keep the sails as still as we can. Once we’re clear, send them up again and get us to shore as quickly as possible.”

Circe nodded, set her headphones over her ears, and went to the deck to do as she was asked.

“Stay together, stay quiet.” Persephone adjusted her own headphones and went to take her place at the wheel.

Marie gripped my hand and led me to the main deck, where we watched as Circe brought in a gale-force wind, then called down the broom, letting it drift silently to the deck. The sails deflated as we glided closer to the rocks. The sun dipped below the horizon, and within a few minutes the fiery sky had turned almost purple. I touched the plastic cups of the headphones, hoping they would do their job.

Without the wind pushing it forward the ship slowed to a crawl. The hazy mirage of rippled air moved like a hulking, shadowy beast just beyond the rocks. My heart thudded in my ears and stirred a sense of terror in me. I looked down at my feet—at the boards of the deck. In my headphones I could hear my own heart, but anyone else within earshot would have heard the beating of another. When I raised my head, Circe was staring straight at me as if she’d come to the same sickening realization.

The Heart was beating like a drum—announcing our presence to whatever creatures prowled the Black Sea.

From the corner of my eye, Persephone’s flailing arms caught my attention. She motioned frantically to the water, and as I raced to the ship’s rail, I caught a glimpse of long fishlike tails, streaked with green and blue bioluminescent markings, cutting through the water at impossible speeds. I blinked, and a dozen more appeared just beneath the surface—heading straight for us.





CHAPTER 17

Something impacted the hull below the waterline and the ship shuddered under me. I struggled to see in the encroaching dark, but as more tails joined the swarm gathering at the side of the ship the black waters lit up, casting a hazy glow all around us.

The sirens darted through the water and the ship began to rock from side to side. Marie grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the rail, her terrified eyes wide and black. She pushed me against the center mast, and I gripped it to keep from sliding across the tilting deck.

Persephone came scrambling down as Circe grew another stalk of broom in the palm of her hand. She was going to try and get us moving again. No sense in trying to stay quiet anymore. We’d already been noticed. Circe plucked off the blooms and prepared to launch them into the sky when the ship listed violently to the side. Her legs twisted under her and she tumbled across the deck. Marie was at her side in an instant, catching her around the waist and helping her steady herself.

“We’re gonna tip over!” I shouted.

Marie didn’t even glance at me. She couldn’t hear me as I screamed at her to grab onto something. None of them could hear me. I focused on the tendrils of Devil’s Pet laced through the rails. I willed them to grow. They writhed around the ship, their red thorns jutting out, ready to impale anything that might have tried to climb up.

Circe gathered another handful of broom and got it up in the air, calling down the wind, but it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. The breeze puffed out the sails and we lurched forward, but it was at a fraction of the speed. Circe’s gaze darted from the rail to me and back again. She was absolutely terrified.

Persephone wrestled with the wheel as she struggled to keep the ship in line. Suddenly, something slammed into me from behind. A sharp pain rocketed through my right hip as I hit the deck with a thud. I instinctively touched my back where the pain was the worst and my hand came away wet. Blood? I struggled to see clearly, examining my hand. Not blood. Water.

Circe stood to my left, but she didn’t move. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring ahead, and as I followed her gaze, I let out a scream that only I could hear. A siren had made its way to the main deck.

It drug itself along the wooden boards, its webbed hands slapping at the deck. It stopped and coiled its long, narrow tail under itself so that it could raise its torso into an upright position and stare at us.

I scrambled back as far as the confines of the ship would allow. The siren’s tail flexed like a muscle covered in slick evergreen scales, the wide fin pressed into the deck, allowing the creature to steady itself. Its upper torso was humanlike, but this creature was not some fairy tale sea-princess. Slits between the flesh of its ribs opened and closed as it heaved. Its webbed fingers ended in sharp bony protrusions. A clear membrane closed over the eyes as it blinked, and a scant layer of thin dark hair covered its head in patches. This was the creature all the stories said sailors feared, and I understood why.