The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (16 page)

The pain instantly subsides. Pins and needles dance over my skin, prickling as the warmth eats away the cold that seeped to my core. Several shivers rise from my feet and stop at my head. Another deep breath relaxes my thoughts. In the back of my mind, I’m still aware that there are six giant whales en route to kill us, but I keep myself from thinking about them. Instead, I think about Willem. Our first night together.

I didn’t feel like doing the downtown thing again—the local “everyone knows everyone” bar scene gets obnoxious when no one knows
you
. So we retreated to his house. Despite the cold outside, the place felt warm. It’s a small house, heated by a woodstove and a fireplace. Decorations are sparse, but almost all items in the house have some historical value or story attached. For the first hour, he regaled me with tales of wood-carvers, stonemasons, and blacksmiths of old. Not much has survived from the days of Norse Vikings, especially on Greenland, where only a few foundations and potsherds remain to be found, but he had authentic-looking replicas.

I became bored with the past, but not with the man telling me stories. He was gentle the entire time, and kind in a way that should be impossible for a man who’d fought Draugar and escaped. He never spoke about the incident that night. It would have been easy to slip in some information about Torstein’s giant ax, or how the settlement had been destroyed by Draugar, or any number of
things. But he didn’t. He seemed far more interested in me, which pretty much sealed the deal, though he didn’t know it. I sent him to the kitchen for a drink, and when he returned I was as nude as I am right now under this blanket.

The rest of the night was a blur, and when I woke up—

Wake up!

I sit bolt upright with a gasp.

Was I asleep? Was I thinking about that night? Or dreaming about it?

I slip out of bed and step to the portal. I can see nothing but blue sky and blue ocean. No whales. But that doesn’t mean anything.

I unbutton the cloak and let it drop to the floor. I pull out fresh clothes—Jakob will be thrilled that they are once again all black—and halfway through hiking up my pants, I realize that I’m not shaking and the pain is nearly gone. Seems I just needed to warm up, though I suspect I’m going to hurt sorely in the morning. More so the following day.

Fully dressed, I snatch the cloak from the floor, yank the plug out of the electric blanket so I don’t set the ship on fire, and head for the door. I’m wearing sneakers now in place of my boots, but find myself moving faster because of it. In fact, I’m running by the time I reach the end of the hall and take the stairs to the main deck two at a time.

When I emerge into the light of day once more, all of the warmth regained through the electric blanket and fond memories is sapped away by the chilly ocean breeze and sight of three massive bull sperm whales breaching in unison just a few hundred feet off the stern. Willem is there, manning the rear gun. Talbot is on the starboard gun and Helena on the port. Klein squats at the center of the deck with a wooden crate of explosive harpoon tips, ready to help reload the first person to fire a shot. But the whales are still
too far out to fire with any kind of accuracy, and they’re gaining slowly because we’re still moving away at full speed. It probably goes against Jakob’s nature to run from a fight, especially with a whale, but it will give us the most time.

A puff of misty air catches my attention. It’s followed by five more. The orcas are on an intercept course, moving in tight formation.
Why are they helping us?
I wonder.
Can they sense something wrong? Are they intelligent enough to identify Draugar as enemies? Is this vengeance?
I suspect we’ll never know why the killers are helping us. Hell, they might not even be helping us. Their arrival at this moment might be coincidence. If so, hallelujah to the god of coincidence because he saved my life. Of course, I
did
pray for help…but I’m not quite ready to believe a higher power sent an orca pod to save me, though I have no doubt that’s what Helena believes.

When I step up next to Klein, he flinches and falls back, catching himself on his hands. “Geezum crow,” he whispers, then says to me, “That was fast.”

“Fast?”

“You’ve been gone just ten minutes,” he says.

Guess I didn’t fall asleep. “What can I do?”

“Not much, I suppose.” He rubs his nose. “Figure we can run to whoever fires off a shot, pull in the line, help reload, and get off another shot. Nice and efficient. There are three whales, so it’s not inconceivable we’ll have more than one gun to reload at a time.”

I’ve heard everything he says, but a single detail jumps out. “Just three whales? What happened to the blues?”

“They were farther back,” he says. “But they haven’t surfaced in five minutes.”

“Blues can stay under for thirty minutes,” I say and then mentally kick myself. “But these aren’t blue whales. They don’t need to surface at all.”

Klein looks down like he can see through the hull to the water below.

“Yeah, sucks,” I say. “Each one can weigh up to two hundred tons.”

“Just two of them weigh as much as the
Raven
!” he says.

“Yeah, but if just one of them decides to swan-dive on the back deck like that humpback did, we’re done.” I sigh. “You sure there isn’t something else I could be doing?”

His brow furrows. “Not unless you know how to fire a grenade launcher.”

I stand up straighter as a fiendish grin slips onto my face. “We have a grenade launcher?”

“You know how to use one?” Klein asks.

“Did you forget who my father was?”

He scratches his head, upsetting his comb-over. “Right. The Colonel. But that doesn’t mean you can—”

“Ain’t a gun I don’t know how to shoot,” I say.

Klein stands, takes note of the whales’ location, and starts back toward the supply closet. “You sound like Talbot.”

“I guarantee you, I’ve fired some guns the UFO Ranger has never even heard of.”

I watch him work the combination on the supply closet lock. It’s my birthday. “Did Jakob set the combination?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “Why?” Then I see his eyes dart back and forth for a moment, and before I can respond, he says, “Oh. Your birthday. Interesting.” He pulls the lock and swings open the doors.

I gasp. Not only is there a grenade launcher, but there are several assault rifles, handguns, swords, axes, and boxes of ammo. “Hot damn, where the hell did Jakob get all this?”

“Uh,” Klein says, adjusting his glasses. “I sort of pilfered a few weapons contacts from the office before I left.”

“Jakob bought weapons from an arms dealer?”

Klein waves his hands in front of him. “No one will ever know, of course, but I—”

“I’m not worried about that,” I say. “It’s just awesome.” I take the grenade launcher—a Mark 14 six-shot revolver-style weapon that can pop off six 40mm rounds in three seconds, open it up, and give it a quick look-see. It’s in nice condition, and the storage closet, which I can now see is heavy duty and designed to hold weapons, has protected it from the elements nicely. The Mark 14 isn’t large and weighs just eighteen pounds fully loaded, so I can manage it just fine. Even better, it has a five-hundred-foot range, which means I can take the fight to the sperm whales a little bit sooner.

“Why weren’t you using this?” I ask as I open a case of fragmentation rounds and load the weapon.

“I—I don’t know how,” he says. He takes out his girlie-size handgun. “I can barely operate this peashooter.”

I slap the launcher closed and stand. “Well, you’re about to get a lesson in modern warfare, Colonel-style.”

As I turn to the rear of the boat, I hear Helena shout a Greenlandic curse. Two hundred feet behind the
Raven
, the orcas have engaged the bull whales. I see blood in the water already, from the center bull, I think, but the monster still has some fight left, a fact displayed when it dives and catches an orca off guard with its fluke. The massively powerful tail snaps up and catches the much smaller killer in the side, flinging it out of the water.

As the orca arcs back toward the ocean, a second bull rises from the deep and snatches it from the air like a Frisbee-fetching dog. Definitely not typical sperm whale behavior. The whale slaps back down into the water, taking the killer with it. Our would-be defender belongs to them now. And if we don’t do something soon, the other four will be turned against us, too.

I
walk toward the rear of the ship, looking through the grenade launcher’s sight. I center the red crosshair on the spot where I think the whale farthest to the right will breach again. When I reach the stern rail to the right of Willem, I plant one foot on the lower bar and lean forward, bracing myself against recoil. The Mark 14 has very little kick and its low-pressure chamber fires nearly silently, but I’m not planning on squeezing off a single round. When you’ve got thirty tons of mean to kill and have a weapon that can spurt six grenades in three seconds, that’s exactly what you do.

That’s the plan anyway. But the whale, who hasn’t surfaced yet, isn’t playing along.

“I thought you’d like that,” Willem says.

Without looking away, I say, “Should have told me about it sooner.”

“Try not to shoot anything on deck,” he teases.

I lower the weapon and look over at him. He turns to me with a grin that’s one part mocking me and one part some kind of genetic Viking battlegasm. I’m about to tell him as much when the whale chooses that exact moment to breach.

We both turn and aim, but it’s too late. The breach was quick, timed perfectly to get a look but avoid getting peppered with a
40mm hail à la Jane Harper. “That seem a little too well timed?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the ocean. I won’t do that again.

“How could it know we were distracted?” he asks.

The center whale surfaces and I nearly shoot, but the ocean around it is swirling pink with blood. Lots of blood. The sperm whale pounds its tail at the water but can’t move. Its fluke is missing. Score one for the killer whales.

The victory wasn’t without cost, though. The bodies of two orcas float to the surface. One is unmoving, probably dead, and slides back beneath the waves. The second is having some kind of spasm, its fluke slapping the water, while it swims on its side with its mouth locked open. When it completes a revolution, I see that its dorsal fin is missing and its back is bent at an unnatural angle. Its spine is broken. That tail is on autopilot. The killer slips beneath the water, its fluke pushing it down to the depths, where it will drown.

Twin puffs of steam pull my aim to the right. Two tall dorsal fins cut through the water, moving away at high speed. The two remaining orcas are retreating. Seems even porpoises abide by the “live to fight another day” mentality.

“Here they come!” Willem shouts, pulling my attention back to the stern.

Twin mounds of water surge toward the
Raven
as the two remaining sperm whales kick into high gear and charge. They’re just a few feet below the surface, easy targets for Willem and me.

“Wait,” Willem says. “We can’t miss.”

Technically, I can miss five times, but I don’t say anything. I’d rather put all six rounds into the Draugr’s head and make sure the job is done. The whales continue on their path, closing to within fifty feet. What are they doing? Ramming the back of the ship won’t
do much. If they were going to breach and try to crush us, they’d have to go deep first.

When they close to within thirty feet and hold their distance, I’m even more confused, but I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever it is they’re up to, I don’t think they’ve equated a Mark 14 into the plan.

Then I see it. A band of white spread out between them.

“What is that?” I ask. “Between them.”

“Not sure,” Willem says. “But they’re close enough.”

The whales close in, breaking the surface as though offering themselves to us. As they rise, the line stretched between them comes into view. It’s a rope. A thick rope. The ramifications of what they’re attempting makes me hold my breath. It’s the oldest trick in the antiwhaling handbook. The large rope won’t be hacked to bits by the prop, it will be sucked in and wrapped tight until the blades can no longer spin. If the engine keeps running at that point, it could burn out. The only defense against it is cutting power to the engines and sending in a diver to cut the line free. “They’re going to prop-foul us.”

That they’re employing the technique chills me, not because it’s intelligent—I already knew the Draugar are smart—but because I have no doubt they learned how to prop-foul from the
Sentinel
’s crew. They could have absorbed the knowledge from McAfee, Peach, or even Jenny.
Poor Jenny.
That they might be using my friend’s mind against me now makes my jaw clench tight with rage.
These fuckers are going too far.

“Fire!” Willem shouts.

Don’t need to tell me twice.

The boom of Willem’s harpoon firing drowns out the four coughs from the grenade launcher. But the sound is nothing compared
to the simultaneous explosions that tear through the air when our projectiles find their marks. Willem’s harpoon strikes the starboard side whale dead center in the head, tearing through several inches of skin and flesh before sinking into the spermaceti-filled case and detonating. A geyser of red and yellow bursts from the wound.

The four grenades launched from the Mark 14 find their target as well, each one striking the crater created by the previous shell. In two seconds, the four fragmentation grenades punch a hole all the way through the whale’s head, partly severing it from the whale’s body. While the water fills with a slick of fleshy gore and slick chunks of yellowish wax, the whale’s forward momentum is arrested. It falls behind and sinks.

“Jane!” Willem shouts.

I turn and find that while his whale sports a crater the size of a kiddie pool, it still has some fight left in it and the rope clutched in its jaws.

I zero in on the wound, which makes a convenient target, and squeeze the trigger twice, firing my last two grenades. The second shot must reach its brain because as the insides of its head burst into the outside world, the body seizes and goes still. The rope slides free from its mouth and bobs in the water behind us.