Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) (8 page)

CHAPTER 10

Piles of kelp and twisted branches littered the shore, the remnants of the storm’s destruction. But the sky was clear and the water bright blue. Rachel stood on the dock beside the white boat and stared out over the horizon. It was all blue sky bleeding into blue water, without even a puffy, white cloud in sight.

Yet her stomach fizzed and churned. The storms—
Abbadon’s storms—were getting more frequent, more violent. She seen on the news that morning that it’d rained snakes off the coast a few miles south, and another spate of tremors had shook the ground farther inland. Rachel shivered despite the heat that settled thick and wet against her skin. She felt kind of like she was living in the first few minutes of an apocalypse movie. And venturing out onto the water in a glorified rowboat was not something that movie’s ultimate survivors would do.

“You’re sure about this?” Rachel couldn’t quite keep the fear out of her voice.

Daphne handed another set of snorkel gear over the stern to a waiting Kendra. “Yes, honey. Bruno and I need to run a few things by Kai.” She held up a mask and gave it a little shake. “We’re just snorkeling.” Daphne handed more gear to Kendra. “Thank you for talking to your dad for us. We could really use his input. Abbadon is proving a nastier demon than we anticipated.”

Kendra smiled brightly and then looked over Daphne’s shoulder to Rachel. “Don’t be such a worry-wart,
Rach.”

Rachel rubbed her arms and looked out to sea again. She couldn’t shake this pit in the bottom of her stomach. It was gnawing at her. “It’s just … I haven’t been back to Shipwreck Cay since we went after those sirens. And I don’t know why Kai didn’t want to meet us like normal in Breaker Cove.”

Kendra shrugged and slid giant sunglasses from her hair back down to her face. “He said something about the hippocampi.”

Right. So what in the sea
didn’t
want to destroy them?

The dock rumbled underfoot, and the sound of two men speaking low and angry in French curled around Rachel’s ears. Rachel grimaced and jumped into the boat. Daphne had forced a tentative peace between Bruno and Kendra, and Rachel wasn’t about to be seen not being on Kendra’s side in this fight. The air rustling through the boat chilled as Bruno and Sid hopped aboard.

“Mr. Guillory,” Kendra said. Her lips didn’t frost over, but Rachel wouldn’t have been surprised.

Bruno looked somewhere over the girl’s shoulder. “Kendra.” He crossed his arms over his chest, cords of muscle tightening under his skin. “I’ve just been on the phone with Claire and Luc
DuBois,” he said to Daphne.

The older woman pulled her lips in between her teeth. “I can’t recall …”

Sid slammed his duffel onto a seat, nostrils flared. “You don’t recall the sadistic murder twins? Lucky lady.”

Bruno slid a glare Sid’s way. “Luc and Claire are efficient. They’re excellent hunters, Sid, and you should be grateful they’re coming to help.”

A sweet smile pulled at the corner of Kendra’s lips. “Are you saying you can’t track down Abbadon on your own, Mr. Guillory? I’m shocked.”

If the air between the two was chilly before, now it became downright frigid.

“All right then!” Sid clapped his hands together and tried for a smile. It looked painful. “Enough about the DuBois twins. Let’s go find our merman.”

The boat roared to life, and Daphne took the wheel leading them out of the marina. The sun beat down on them, making sweat bead along Rachel’s hairline and trickle down the side of her face. But soon the whip of the ocean winds dried the sweat, and they jostled over the waves out to open ocean.

Shipwreck Cay was a hump of green in the distance, weather-worn and wind-swept and utterly lonely. Rachel remembered the last time she’d made this journey, her hands tingling with anticipation and fear at the prospect of facing sirens and their attack kraken. But now the sun made the shallow waters near the cay dappled and turquoise, and the oaks crowded at the center of the little island were deep green with summer.

Yet the island had earned its name for a reason. Shadows loomed just under the water’s surface, giant rocks just waiting to scrape at their hull and make their boat another statistic. Water slapped the sides of the boat, and the engine was nothing but a dull whine. Slowly, slowly they slipped through the rocks, everyone silent.

Rachel peered over the side of the boat and watched their progress. Her heart thrummed in her chest and her palms grew clammy. It was a long swim back to shore if Daphne didn’t steer them true.

But soon the rocks dropped away and the white sand beach of Shipwreck Cay rippled under the water’s surface. To their right, the old docks were saggy and sad, bleached by the sun and missing more than a few planks. Daphne cut the engine and beached the boat directly onto the sand.

“So where does Kai want to meet us?” She grunted a bit as she threw a line overboard to a waiting Bruno, who tied them off.

“Over in the western cove,” Kendra answered. She grinned at Rachel and jumped over the side, splashing into the water up to her knees. She crouched and submerged up to her neck, cupping water over her gills with a small smile on her face.

Rachel’s lips pressed into a thin line. “So exactly where those sirens tried to kill you.”

Kendra rolled her eyes.

Daphne handed Rachel a backpack holding the box of herbs and some towels. Rachel didn’t miss the fact that the bag held some daggers too. Apparently she wasn’t the only one recalling the last time they’d been in the water. Sid jumped from the bow of the boat, his bow strung over one shoulder and a short sword strapped to his back.

“You’re going to sink like a rock,” Kendra teased.

“An ass-kicking rock,” Sid said back. “I’m not going under with just a diving knife again.”

Bruno was the last in the water and landed with a heavy thud. He waded past Kendra without a look or a word, trailing his club through the water behind him.

The trek over Shipwreck Cay was short and sweaty. The air was dense within the copse of gnarled oaks, and Spanish moss draped over them like sticky mold. Rachel was almost happy to clear the trees and look back down on the sheltered cove where she’d first spied the sirens all those months ago. The rocks around the edges of the cove were jagged and dark, piled there like a trap just waiting for its next victim. Rachel knew those same rocks waited just under the water too.

At the water’s edge, Rachel dropped the backpack and stripped off her
coverup. She strapped two daggers to her hip and noticed Daphne did the same. Bruno still clutched his club, and his hand was tight around it, like he expected danger to burst from behind every rock. Sid ducked his head under his bow and leaned it against one of the cruel looking rocks, but he stubbornly kept the short sword strapped to his back. Kendra, Rachel noticed, didn’t carry any weapon. Rachel was glad for it. She didn’t need her best friend going all stealth ninja and slicing anything in half again.

The water was warm as a bath, and it did little to cool Rachel. The sun was high and unforgiving overhead, blaring down on them. Rachel waded in to her knees, then her stomach, then
her chest. The ebb and flow of the water tugged at her limbs, trying to pull her out to sea and dash her against the rocks at the same time. Sid slipped into the water beside Rachel.

“Any sign of Kai?”

Rachel snapped her goggles over her eyes and ducked under the water. Nothing. Just clear blue fading to dark.

“He’ll come. Let’s swim out a bit more,” Kendra said. She floated by on her back, just her face and her boobs above the surface. Then she flipped over and kicked under the surface, sending a spray of water into
Rachel’s and Sid’s faces.

Sid spluttered. “Right. After you.”

Rachel fluttered her feet to turn in a circle. Daphne wasn’t far behind them, but Bruno stood nearly at the shore, that club still clutched in his hand. Rachel just shook her head and paddled out toward Kendra.

The
water cooled out here in the depths. Rachel tread water, waiting. Daphne and Sid clumped nearby, Kendra doing a backstroke around them.

“So what is it you wanted to talk to Kai about?”

Daphne slid through the water, until Rachel, Daphne, and Sid formed a tight circle. “If we’re going up against Abbadon, we need allies. I already talked to a local were pack, and I’m hoping I can get the mer on board too.”

Rachel peered out over the water to where Bruno stood sentinel near the beach. “I bet Bruno really loves this idea.”

Daphne pressed her lips together before she spoke. “He understands the necessity of it.”

Yeah. Rachel was sure he did.

She was about to say exactly that when something tugged at her ankle. She yelped and plunged her face in the water. Her stomach flipped.

Something warm had wrapped around her ankle.
Something that looked like a giant, amorphous puddle of snot with a pulsing green core. It hugged her ankle with its thick, oozy body, inching up her foot and toward her leg. Rachel wrenched her face up and swallowed hard.

“
Globster,” she panted.

“What?” Sid put his face in the water.

“A. Globster,” Rachel said again. She was trying to stay calm—globsters were just a pest … a really disgusting looking pest—but it was becoming a losing battle. Point: snot monster. “What do I—”

And then she was under. The thing tugged again, a bulge of its massive amoeba body rearing out with the force. It scuttled up her leg, squeezing until parts of it squirted out the sides in oozy tendrils. Rachel retched and sucked in a mouthful of seawater.

The thing was all slime and muscle under her hands. She tried to pry even one finger under its body, but the thing was a vice around her thigh. She kicked hard and broke the surface, coughing up bile and saltwater that foamed across waves.

Daphne grabbed her under one arm, Sid the other. The
globster was tugging again, sliding and rippling up her leg and around her hip. Leaving a trail of warm slime. Rachel was pulled under again, but Sid hauled her back up.

Kendra popped above the water a few feet away. “What is
that
?”

“
Globster,” Daphne burbled. The thing was pulling hard, and she and Sid were having a hard time keeping Rachel above the surface against the pull of the berserk globster. “But I’ve never seen one this big or aggressive.”

Kendra swam closer, and the
slimeball scuttled up to Rachel’s stomach and squeezed. Squeezed so hard Rachel’s breath was pushed from her lungs. “Ow,” she hissed. “Holy crap, ow.”

Sid reached over his shoulder with his free hand and slid his sword free but Rachel squeaked. “No way! You’ll gut me.”

“I’m not trying to
fight
the thing,” Sid growled and then heaved the sword away from them. He bobbed higher in the water without the weight of the sword, pulling Rachel with him. Sid wrapped an arm tighter around Rachel and swam, one arm pumping through the water, the other tucked around Rachel’s back and hooked under her armpit. He yelped, and Rachel realized Sid’s hand was
really
tight against her skin, like it was being held there by something. Rachel kicked, her toes hitting sand, then they were hauling each other to shore, fused together.

Bruno roared and slapped the water with his club, but it only helped in spraying salt into their eyes. They crawled to shore, the
globster holding tight. It squealed shrill and high and wrapped higher around Rachel’s chest. Her skin burned under its hold, and the sac of green mucus at the center of the creature’s body—it’s heart—pulsed fast. Sid’s hand was flat against her ribs now, fingers pressing hard into her skin under the globster’s muscles.

Daphne and Kendra raced to shore, and Daphne fell to her knees at the discarded backpack. She grabbed the box of herbs and skidded through the sand to Rachel and Sid. Rachel was having a hard time breathing now, feeling the pressure in her ribs where they’d healed back together only weeks ago. Daphne made a horrible mewing noise at her daughter’s gasping breaths and dug through the box.

“Where’s the agrimony!” Daphne’s voice was pinched.

Rachel could only groan, but Sid answered for her. Daphne slapped clumps of wet hair out of her eyes and rifled through the box, muttering to herself. Then she grabbed a vial holding something sludgy and black that smelled like a toilet when unsealed and dumped it directly on the
globster.

The creature shrieked and flailed, its body bulging in a hundred different directions as it shuttered in a stomach-churning spasm. But Rachel could breathe. She dragged in a deep breath and gagged—she could finally breathe again which meant the toilet smell was even stronger. Like a
porta-potty left outside at a summer music festival for a week.

The
globster arched, its slimy body quivering and its green sac heart pounding, and slammed back down directly onto the box of herbs. There was a crack and a crunch, and the beautiful, carved wooden box splintered under the creature’s body. And then it went still. The mucus heart inside the globster pulsed, slow and steady.