A Trail of Echoes (8 page)

I brought myself back to the present. For now I was full, and I had River with me, who would hopefully stave off my cravings longer than usual.

By the time I was finished with my musings, I heard the bathroom door click next door, and River’s footsteps as she stepped out of the shower.

There was a knock at my door, and then she stepped inside. Her long hair was wrapped up in a towel, and she was wearing her black robe again.

“I was thinking how Lalia wasn’t marked with a tattoo,” River said, taking a seat next to me on the bed as she unwrapped her hair and began drying it with the towel. “Neither was Hassan or Morgan. I wonder why?”

I shrugged. “Perhaps because they’d been intended solely for, uh, consumption.”

River shuddered. “Thank God we got them out of there.” Parting her hair into three bunches, she began working it into a braid. “I also keep thinking about that vial in my bag. I-I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s something to help my brother. That dream I told you about, where I imagine having a normal conversation with him, it keeps coming back.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but would you really risk giving it to him? What if it was something else?”

She looked nervous at the thought. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been—”

The submarine jolted, sending River flying off the bed. Before I could catch her, she’d slammed against the wall. She cursed, rubbing her head. I would’ve gone flying too had I not gripped hold of the bed to stop myself from crashing into her.

As the submarine steadied, I crouched next to her and examined her head. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll survive,” she grumbled.

I hurried out into the corridor and entered the control room. I stared through the window at the murky waters, trying to get a clue as to what had just happened. Something had obviously collided with us. But what? It must’ve been some kind of large creature—a shark, possibly even a whale. River joined me a few moments later and the two of us scanned the waters.

My heart leapt into my throat and River let out a scream as a creature shot up from beneath the submarine. A creature unlike anything I’d seen in my life.

She appeared to be a woman, with scaly green skin and matted purple hair that covered her bare chest. Her hideous face was pressed right up against the glass, her thin lips parting to reveal fangs. She slid upward against the window, glaring down at us through yellow eyes. She moved higher and her bottom half came into view—the tail of a fish.

My God. Is this a…

River finished my sentence for me, her voice choked with horror. “A mermaid?”

She screamed again as the creature brought a fist down against the reinforced glass. She slammed against it so forcefully, I felt the floor beneath me tremor. If she continued to hit like that, I didn’t know how much longer the glass would hold up.

I moved closer to her, baring my fangs and giving her a menacing look, hoping to scare her back.

It didn’t. If anything, it only aggravated her. Now she began bringing both fists down at the same time. I could hear her snarling through the water.

Dropping into the control seat, I ramped up the speed of the submarine suddenly, tilting downward, then upward, sideways right and left, hoping to jerk her off the vessel. But she remained clinging as though her hands had suckers on them.

There was a thud against the roof of the submarine. A few seconds later, another equally hideous creature slid down the window, taking up a place next to the first. This one appeared to be badly injured, however. She had a deep bloodied gash in her torso. It was bleeding so much, it was staining the water.

Mermaids. What are they doing here?

Is there a gate nearby? Somewhere in the water? How else would they have gotten here?

I had left The Shade with a map of gates connecting the human and supernatural realms. Unfortunately, it had later been confiscated by hunters, but I couldn’t remember noticing a gate in any seas or oceans. I could only guess that the map was not comprehensive.

The two creatures began punching the glass in unison.

Crap.

In my panic, I performed maneuvers with the submarine that I hadn’t thought I was capable of in my continued attempt to throw them off, but it was futile.

“Ben,” River gasped. She clutched the arms of her seat with white knuckles. “There’s another one.”

Sure enough, barely a second later, another slammed against the glass. Now all three pounded away.

I stopped trying to shake them off and this time focused on rising to the surface as fast as I possibly could. As the first crack formed in the glass, we burst up above the waves.

These were fish. I expected them to immediately start gasping and writhing, but they did no such thing. Although their natural habitat was in the water, they could clearly survive for some time above the surface. Encouraged by the crack that had appeared, they beat harder against the glass.

I grabbed River’s hand and pulled her out of the control room, slamming the door behind us.

Gripping her head, I forced her to look me in the eye. “Lock yourself in a cabin. Don’t come out until I say. Understand?”

She looked terrified, but nodded and raced away.

A hellish screech assaulted my eardrums as I hurried up the ladder and pushed open the hatch in the roof of the submarine. Hauling myself out into the night, I glared down at the three creatures still clinging to the window. I was furious to see that one of them had managed to punch a fist right through the glass by now. She didn’t seem to be at all concerned about the fact that her fist was now a bloody mess. She was still gripping the jagged glass, trying to make the hole bigger.

Extending my claws and baring my fangs, I moved toward them, slashing the nearest one to me across the face. She howled and went tumbling down into the water.

One of the remaining two launched toward me with alarming speed, her hands outstretched and aiming for my foot. I dodged her, and she went rolling off the side of the submarine, back into the sea. The third one—with an injured torso—had now managed to make a hole big enough to slip through. Grabbing hold of a pole so I wouldn’t go skidding into the water, I reached for her. She slipped through too quickly, and although I managed to grab the tip of her tail, it was too slippery for me to hold onto.

I was about to slip through after her when a squelching sound came from above me on the roof. Turning to face the open hatch, I was just in time to see a tail disappear through it, and then a loud thud came from inside the submarine.

Damn.

Why the hell do they want to get in our submarine?

Rushing through the open hatch, I laid eyes on another creature squelching away from me across the corridor. But this one looked different than the others. With shorter hair, broad square shoulders, and a thick waist, this was clearly a male.

I caught up with him in a few strides and gripped the back of his neck. He squirmed beneath me and twisted round on his back to look up at me, revealing a face that was no less hideous than the women’s. He tried to bite my wrist with his sharp black fangs, but I struck him hard across the face. I was about to slit his throat when I noticed that he was wheezing badly. He looked so ill and pathetic as he lay beneath me, I decided to just leave him there and deal with the other who had made her way toward River’s side of the submarine.

Following the trail of dark blood the mermaid had left along the floor, I found her, to my surprise, curled up in a fetal position in a corner of an empty cabin. The fin at the end of her long tail was splayed out to cover her face. Her whole body trembled as she too had begun to make a wheezing sound.

I hurried back along the corridor to fetch the merman and dragged him into the cabin along with the female. I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I really didn’t want to kill them, but I also didn’t see the point in throwing them back in the water when they clearly didn’t want to be there. It seemed that they would rather die up here. Locking them both inside, I headed back to the control room to examine the broken screen.

I breathed out in frustration.
Great.
After all the trouble we’d undergone to find a submarine, now we were going to have to spend the rest of the journey above the waves.

I was about to go to River when something outside caught my eye. Bright blue lights. Flashing beneath the surface of the water. Grabbing a pair of goggles from one of the cabinets, I slid out through the hole in the glass and stood at the edge of the submarine. Staring down to the dark waters, I tried to make out what was causing the light. But the moonlight was reflecting too much over the surface.

Lowering myself into the sea, I put on the goggles and dipped down. Beneath the surface I looked toward the direction of where the light seemed to be coming from, and almost swallowed a mouthful of water in shock.

Perhaps a hundred merfolk darted in all directions as blue light shot toward them. Five black submarines were surrounded by dozens of divers in black suits, all armed with some kind of mini torpedo.

River and I needed to get far, far away from here.

I was about to haul myself back onto the submarine when a diver came into view about twenty feet beneath me. He was staring up at me, his head cocked to one side.

Hurrying out of the water and back into the control room, I just prayed that in the few seconds that diver saw me, he had not been able to detect that I was a vampire. I hoped he’d assume I was just a curious onlooker who happened to be passing this way.

I urged the vessel forward as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

“Ben?” River called. “What’s going on? Can I come out?”

“Just… stay where you are for now,” I replied.

The strong sea wind entered the control room as the sub sped faster and faster. I breathed in a scent that chilled me.

Human blood. Warm human blood. It was close. Too close.

I urged the vessel forward, but it was already going at maximum speed.

I pulled myself through the hole in the screen and looked round, trying to trace the source of the blood. Then I caught sight of two submarines above the surface, chasing after us.

No.

“Ben? What’s going on?” River’s voice again.

I didn’t answer her.

If those hunters catch up with us, this is the end of our journey. The end of us.

Navigating the submarine, I had been so focused on the two vessels behind me that I only noticed the one in front when its smooth surface emerged from the waves. It was a much larger submarine than ours and was positioned deliberately to block our path. I swerved to the right to avoid it, but the two submarines behind me were fast closing in. As all three worked together to trap us, it became clear to me that it was only a matter of time.

We had two options. Continue to try to skirt away from them in this vessel, the vessel that was much more outdated and slower than their own, or dive into the water.

My guess was that we would survive longer beneath the water than in such a big, clunky open target. Keeping the submarine speeding on autopilot, I left the control room and raced to River’s bedroom. As I opened the door, she looked at me in panic, a line of sweat on her brow.

“What is happening?” she gasped.

I just grabbed her and pulled her toward the ladder. Climbing up, I opened the hatch and raised my head slowly.

A shower of bullets fired at me the second my head came into view. I ducked just in time to avoid being hit by one square in the jaw.
It’s too late.
If we were to step out now, we’d be blown to bits within seconds.

I looked down at River. “Hunters. Change of plan,” I breathed through gritted teeth, closing the hatch again and pulling her back down the ladder.

As I moved back toward the control room, the sound of the window smashing filled my ears. I didn’t need to step inside to realize what must’ve just happened. The submarine that had been closing in from the front had caught up. As the scent of human blood grew stronger, and footsteps rang out near the nose of the submarine, I gripped River’s hand and dragged her toward the furthest room away from them. A small bedroom cabin. Locking the door behind me, I looked down at her.

“We’re trapped,” she whispered.

A beeping had started from the other side of the submarine, and now there were footsteps in the control room. A door swung open.

I focused on River, taking in her face, her eyes, her lips. Bending down, I gripped the sides of her head and kissed her. Hard. She responded, even as her hands trembled as they touched my hair.

“Get underneath the bed,” I breathed, as our lips parted.

She lowered to the floor and slid beneath the bed. She was still holding onto my hand, trying to drag me down with her.

“Ben.” She looked at me pleadingly.

I shook my head, and detached myself from her.

“They’re going to kill you the moment they see you,” she whispered.

Maybe.
But I was going to try to take a few of them out before they shut me down. I wanted to make this as difficult for them as possible.

I just looked down at her calmly, taking in her beautiful face for what I was sure would be the last time, and then turned to face the door. The beeping grew closer and closer, as did the footsteps, along the corridor toward us. A few moments later, someone gripped our door handle. It rattled as they began shaking it.

I leapt up to the ceiling, stretching myself out against the walls like a spider, so I would have an advantage over them when they first came in, and a greater chance of taking a few out before they got to me.

I waited with bated breath as what sounded like several men began to kick the door. Then metal clicked. And a gunshot rang out. A bullet shot right through the door and shattered the mirror at the opposite end of the room. Then came another gunshot, and another, until a circle of holes had been created around the handle. Now all they had to do was kick the door open. Bracing myself in the next few seconds that River and I would have in this cabin alone, I prepared to pounce.