Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(53)

Serafina shot to the top of the net. With a snap of her tail, she tried to propel herself through what was left of the opening. She didn’t make it. The net closed around her hips and tightened painfully. She grasped the edges with her hands and pushed them down. At the same time, she thrashed her powerful tail with every bit of strength she had and managed to wriggle out just before the net broke the surface. Its edges had scraped off some of her scales. She was bleeding, but she was free.

“Neela!” she called out.

“Over here!” Neela shouted, swimming to her. “Where’s Ling?”

The net continued to rise through the water. The screams of the shad were deafening.

“I can’t see her!” Serafina shouted. “Ling! Ling!” she called, circling the net.

And then she saw it—a hand thrust through the net, reaching for her. A face pressed against the mesh, eyes wild with terror, mouth open in a scream.

It was Ling.





“NEELA, GRAB THE NET!” Serafina shouted.

The two mermaids hooked their fingers in the bottom of the heavy net as it broke the surface, hoping the weight of their bodies would pull it back down into the water. The winch made a grinding noise. It slowed, but didn’t stop. The net was out of the water and rising. The filament was cutting into their fingers, but still they hung on. It pulled them farther out of the water until only the tips of their tails were submerged.

“It’s no use! Let go!” Neela shouted.

“We have to help her!” Serafina cried.

“Sera, let go before they get us, too!” Neela shouted again.

Serafina shook her head, but the net rose even higher, toward the deck of the fishing ship, a small trawler named Bedrie?r. The shad gasped agonizingly for water. Ling’s screams ripped through the air.

“No!” Serafina shouted. But her fingers couldn’t hold her weight any longer. She dropped back into the water. Neela did too. The net rose even higher. Serafina and Neela stayed in its shadow, out of sight of the trawler’s crew.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Neela asked fearfully.

Serafina heard voices, the sound of goggs shouting to each other. There was a sudden silence, and then, “What the hell? Mr. Mfeme! Quick! Over here!”

“No. It can’t be,” Serafina said. She only knew a smattering of the gogg language called English, but she knew that name. She swam as close to the edge of the shadow as she dared and looked up.

A shirtless, sunburned man caught hold of the net with a grappling hook and pulled it toward the ship. Another man joined him. He wore jeans, a faded black T-shirt, a baseball cap, and sunglasses.

Serafina gasped. “Neela, that’s him,” she said. “The man who broke into the duca’s palazzo. The one who attacked us. He’s Rafe Mfeme!”

“Bring her aboard!” Mfeme shouted.

Ling’s screams carried over the water.

“I’m going to try a vortex,” said Sera, desperate to save her friend.

She started to songcast, but struggled to project her voice. In the air, her spell sounded thin and strained. She managed to conjure a water vortex, though, about twelve feet tall. She aimed it at the trawler, hoping to hit it hard broadside and knock the net loose from the winch.

“A waterspout, Mr. Mfeme!” one of the crew shouted, just as the vortex got within a foot of the ship.

As the man’s words rang out, the vortex stopped violently, as if it had hit a wall. The whirling water flattened, then sheeted back into the sea.

“Let me try,” Neela said.

She cast a fragor lux spell using sunrays and threw it at the trawler, hoping to put a hole in it, but the frag exploded uselessly a foot away from the ship.

“A waterspout, and now a sun dog,” Mfeme said. “What very strange weather we’re having.”

As he spoke, he looked over the ship’s railing, into the water, as if he knew they were there. Sera grabbed Neela and pulled her farther into the net’s shadow.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t our songspells working?” Neela whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Sera. “It makes no sense. Terragoggs can’t do or undo magic.” Then the answer hit her. “I bet it’s the ship’s hull! I bet it’s made of iron.”

“What are we going to do? How are we going to free Ling if we can’t use magic?” Neela asked.

Sera had no time to reply.

“RAFE MFEME!” a voice suddenly boomed. The mermaids turned and saw that it had come from another ship, a fast, sleek cigarette boat that had just arrived off the trawler’s starboard bow.

“Rafe Mfeme, this is Captain William Bowen of the vessel Sprite. The Bedrie?r is in direct violation of the Black Sea Treaty. You are not permitted to fish in these waters. The Romanian Coast Guard is en route.”

“It’s the Wave Warriors,” Mfeme growled. “Start the engines.”

“Mr. Mfeme, sir, the Warriors can’t board us, but the coast guard can. We can’t outrun them. Their vessel is lighter and quicker. If they come aboard…if they see what’s in the hold…”

Mfeme cursed the air blue. “I didn’t even want the damned shad! I wanted jellyfish!” He strode over to the winch’s control box and hit a lever. There was a loud, grinding sound as the winch released the net. It fell into the water and disappeared below the surface.