Deadshifted (Edie Spence 4)

I didn’t know what we were waiting for—all the explosions I’d ever seen in my life had been televised. But Asher’s hand kept us steady, and I was warm where he lay beside me and his skin touched mine.

We were too far away to hear it, but we saw it, half a second before we were sprayed with salt mist.

The bow of Nathaniel’s ship hopped up as though it had hit a speed bump beneath the waves. I got the feeling that keeping the explosion underwater made it worse—there was nowhere for all that energy to go but up. It shuddered, and where it had jumped, it broke in two.

“She keel-whipped it,” Asher said to himself, sounding like he approved. Maybe Asher had touched a torpedoman in his former life.

“Whoa,” I said, trying to bite off the end of the word so it didn’t roll into a groan.

The explosion Claire had caused created a chain reaction of combustibles within the ship. Sailors and soldiers flowed overboard like mythical lemmings, jumping into the water to escape the flames. I wondered how many more deaths would feed the Leviathan today because of her.

There was no way for them to reach their lifeboats. Only the helicopter made it off, just in time.

Asher leaned out and paddled bodily toward a field of debris. He pulled out one official orange paddle, a lucky find, and then a piece of a deck chair. It would be useless as a paddle; it wasn’t thick on either end, and I didn’t think I could help paddle, besides. Asher saw the questioning look on my face.

“In case they make it this far,” he said, and jabbed it out the raft’s opening demonstratively.

I snorted. “Don’t pop the boat. ”

Soon we’d be alone. Just me, Asher, and whatever else was dying—or coming to life—inside me.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The fleeing helicopter swooped overhead, surveying the destruction below. Lucky bastards, whoever it was inside. Asher pulled me farther inside the raft and I groaned.

“Edie, I’m so sorry—”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t blame him. Nathaniel, yes, for being crazy and evil, but not Asher, not ever him. I wouldn’t take back a moment I’d spent with him, even knowing it would all lead to this. He was the love of my life, even as I felt like it was ending. “I love you,” I said, hoping that that would say it all.

He pushed my wet hair away from my face, his hand catching in its tangles. “You don’t have to die. You’re the strongest person I know—”

Whatever he said next was drowned out by the sound of the helicopter making a second

low pass. “Goddammit, they don’t have to rub it in,” Asher said.

It paused when it arrived over us again. Its attention spun us in a circle, the blades pushing the water below them back in concentric rings, and the top of the life raft shuddered with the force of the sinking air. A door opened on the helicopter’s side and a man began to lower himself.

Nathaniel. He hadn’t gone down with the Maraschino or his mercenaries. Maybe he was right, and this was his fate. The muscles of my stomach roiled again and I screamed in pain and defeat.

No matter what happened, he’d already won.

“If he can save you—” Asher said, pressing forward, waving Nathaniel down.

“No,” I gasped out.

“He has a cure—”

“No!” I shouted, letting my anger ride another wave.

The towrope Nathaniel was dangling from lowered, and he held his arms out like he was a descending god—carrying a knife.

“If you save her—” Asher began to shout out, over the whirring sound of the helicopter blades—

And then I felt something beneath us. Like in summertime pools, when your older brother tries to be stealthy and sneak up on you and push you out of your inflatable lounge chair. The bottom layer of the raft rose up and rubbed against the top layer beneath me, making the entire raft subtly rise.

My eyes widened and I looked at Asher, but he was too busy bargaining to feel it.

A tentacle snaked out of the water. Three times as large as any of the worms I’d seen, much much longer, it rose up like a cobra about to strike.

“Asher!” I shouted in warning as the tentacle lunged for Nathaniel’s ankle and pulled.

* * *

He’d been so busy plotting to hurt us that he didn’t see it until it was too late. The harness trapped him upright; he couldn’t lean down to get his knife into play. The tentacle tugged down twice, like a fish testing bait on a bob, and then yanked. The helicopter dipped, listing to its open side, and a startled man fell out, while others barely hung on.

The helicopter reeled in line, but only lowered itself without raising Nathaniel an inch. He was frantically gesturing for them to pull him up—I saw the knife glint in the sun as he dropped it, forgotten—and they were trying to do as he told them, tilting away, but the tentacle yanked again, making the helicopter jump. In the frantic tug-of-war between its panicked pilots and whatever was beneath the waves, Nathaniel lost.