Cursed Throne: Lord of the Ocean #2 Read online

  Yet there were subtleties in the Earth’s waters she was only beginning to notice. Not all was smooth sailing even though the horizon remained clear. Often—too often—Zamir stood at the stern, frowning as he watched the water as if he could see the things that moved beneath it. Rarely—too rarely—Kai surfaced to speak to his grandfather in lowered tones.

  Ginny heard little of their conversations.

  She and Zamir did not speak much anymore.

  “Something the matter?” Corey, the medic, asked her as she hung out in the bridge with him and Meifeng. The crew were a study in contrasts—Corey with his hulking build and white beard; Meifeng a Chinese man, beardless, short and slim, who moved with quick and nervous grace. At that moment, however, he stood at ease, his hand resting on the wheel. His gaze remained on the ocean, but Ginny had no doubt that he was listening.

  Something the matter?

  Everything was the matter. Why couldn’t Zamir see that something was wrong? His connection to Ondine hadn’t come out of nowhere. It could only have come from their one, common link—Nergal.

  If the dagger was bound to deliver its next soul to Zamir, perhaps it had done precisely that. Perhaps it had delivered Nergal’s soul to Zamir—even though Zamir already had a soul. Perhaps the First Commander’s soul, already resident and dominant, had kept Nergal from taking over.

  But it didn’t mean that Nergal’s soul wasn’t in Zamir.

  It could easily mean that the planet’s greatest enemy was somehow still alive—and in Zamir.

  And Zamir—the stubborn dolt—refused to even consider that possibility.

  He had withdrawn even further. She didn’t think he spoke much to Corey or Meifeng either. And he was just so damned angry all the time. Any question, however, innocuous—although Ginny was clear-headed enough to admit that there was nothing innocuous, ever, about her questions—either plunged him into an icy-cold fury or exploded into an outburst.

  Honestly, at the rate he was going, Zamir was going to give himself an ulcer.

  Or a heart attack.

  And it would be his own damned fault.

  Meifeng took his attention off the ocean for a split second, to cast Corey a glance. Taking the hint, the older man spoke. “Is Zee all right?”

  Ginny grimaced. “I don’t know. But if he’s not, he’s not been all right for a while, so maybe this is perfectly normal—the status quo—for him.”

  “Anything we can do for him?”

  “I don’t think normal human remedies work on him.”

  Corey chuckled. “Oh, we figured out that part a long time ago. He doesn’t sleep, hardly eats, and seems none the worse for wear. It’s almost as if time passes differently for him than for us. Our days are mere minutes to him.” A wry smile quirked the corners of his lips. “It’s a nifty trick. I could have used that back at boot camp, or when preparing for my medic examinations.”

  That was Arman’s doing. It was now his body, after all.

  Ginny snarled. She couldn’t stay on top of how messed up Zamir was.

  And he refused to dwell on it; heck, he even refused to acknowledge it.

  The door of the bridge opened. Ginny’s head snapped up. “Za—Zee.”

  “Something’s coming up behind us. It’s not visible yet.”

  “In the water, or above?” Meifeng asked. His hands flew over his console. “It’s not showing up on our radar yet.”

  “Both. It’s in and above the water. Likely multiple things, but moving together. Enough to shift the air and the water.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Hard to tell. The larger it is, the larger the shift, and the greater the distance at which I would notice.”

  Meifeng frowned. “Our radar has a range of thirty nautical miles. So you’re saying it could be a small thing about thirty-one miles out, or a really big thing fifty-plus miles out.”

  “Exactly.”

  Corey lumbered up to Meifeng. “Seeing how we’re not expecting any friendly folk in these waters, how about we put some more distance between us and that thing, whatever it is.” He looked back at Zamir. “Is Kai okay out there?”

  “I assume so.”

  Corey’s eyes widened. “Assume?”

  “He hasn’t swung back around to report in more than twelve hours. He could be resting.”

  Corey frowned. “Time passes differently for him too, doesn’t it? His body cycle doesn’t run like humans, in twenty-four-hour days.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.”

  The medic nodded thoughtfully. “He’s awake for longer periods, but when he rests, he’ll probably rest for longer periods too. Are you like that, too, just even more extreme?”

  Zamir answered with a brusque, “I think so.”

  “So…when you do go to sleep, how long will that be for? Weeks? Months?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ginny folded her arms across her chest. “As far as I know, you haven’t slept for weeks, ever since that final battle with Nergal.”

  Meifeng interrupted. “More to the point is, how long will Kai sleep?”

  “Thirty human hours, on average. Longer, if he’s tired.”

  Corey and Meifeng exchanged alarmed looks. “He’ll have a long way to catch up, then. Do you know where he’s resting?”

  “Under the hull.”

  Meifeng’s jaw dropped. “Under the…hull? Of this ship?”

  “He used kelp to strap himself to the ship.”

  Ginny frowned through her confusion. “So he should have sensed the changes in the water current too?”

  “He might not, because he’s resting and he’s too close to the large water displacement of the Endling to sense minute changes farther away, but in an emergency, he’s close by.”

  “So, we keep going and hope we can outrun it?” Meifeng asked.

  “We can’t outrun it, and we should prepare for a fight, but we should get out of these waters before the battle.”

  “Why?” Corey asked. “What’s in these waters?”

  A muscle twitched in Zamir’s cheek. “Just get us out of here.”

  The pained moment of silence made it clear that nobody liked his response.

  “All right,” Meifeng said finally. “I’ll push up our speed a bit, see if we can open up a bit of a distance between them and us.”

  “I’ll wake Kai,” Zamir said, then strode out of the bridge.

  Corey scowled, the expression grossly at odds with his full white beard. “What do you suppose is in these waters?”

  “If it’s enough to worry Zee, I’d say it’s nothing we’d ever want to see,’ Meifeng said. “I’ve got the bridge for now. Corey, can you make sure everything vital is locked down? And that we’ve got everything we need to put out an engine fire, short of sinking the ship?”

  “Right,” Corey acknowledged, his voice grim. They were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, no land for hundreds of miles. This was not the place to go down.

  Ginny hurried after Zamir. He had shrugged off his shirt and tossed it on the ship’s side rail. “What should I do?” she asked.

  “Nothing, for now. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He dived off the ship, making hardly a splash.

  Ginny had never felt lonelier than in that moment. Meifeng was on the bridge, and if she strained hard enough, she could hear Corey scurrying below the deck, preparing for a battle everyone hoped to avoid. Both Zamir and Kai were nearby, but at that moment, she was alone, on an empty deck, with only the endless horizon and the vast ocean all around her.

  She didn’t belong here.

  She was most at home in campus libraries, surrounded by dusty books and old microfilm. But that life would never be—could never be hers again.

  Not until the Temple of Ishtar stopped hunting her.

  It was them out there. She was certain of it. Somehow, they had gained military level capabilities. They were not just a cult anymore. They had escalated into a force to be reckoned with. And they, absurdly, pursued a tiny
ship of four crew. And a merman.

  Motion flicked at the corner of her eye.

  She spun around as Zamir’s head appeared above the side of the ship. He pulled himself over the rail. Water dripped off his long limbs to pool on the deck.

  Ginny tried not to think too hard about how delicious he looked. All lean muscle and smooth, bronzed skin.

  Zamir wasn’t human, for God’s sake.

  And he was furious with her.

  “Did you tell Kai?” she asked.

  Zamir’s mouth was set in a grim line. “He wasn’t there.”

  Chapter 9

  When the Ancients emerged, the waters trembled and the earth shook.

  Kai knew the legends—stories so old they had passed into myth. He had never before seen an Ancient, other than Big Thing, the titan that made its home in Medea’s cave. There were others, he knew, much less friendly than Big Thing.

  Many of them still ruled the unreachable depths of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

  The low pulse vibrated the water like a steady heartbeat, slow and ominous, rising from the deep. Not an approaching ship. Not even a submarine.

  He eased out of the tight knot of kelp that had nestled him against the ship’s hull. Still exhausted, he closed his eyes for a moment, as if the motion would squeeze the fatigue from his mind and body. The sea rippled around him, the currents a tangle of confusing and often conflicted information. Something large—several large somethings—likely a convoy of ships and submarines followed in the wake of the Endling.

  But there was something else—an undercurrent that no one but a Beltiamatu would have picked up on.

  One of the Ancients had awakened.

  And it was on the move.

  Kai frowned as the steady hum of the Endling’s engines quickened. Good. They knew something was wrong, and were hurrying away from trouble, but whether they escaped would depend on him.

  He dove deep. The currents intensified around him. Pressure pulsed against the base of his spine before shooting upward to rock his skull. The unending punches of pain in his head overwhelmed his senses, disorienting him. He twisted in the water, but no matter which way he turned, nothing lessened the wrenching rhythm.

  Sonic booms.

  The submarines were expelling high-frequency sonic blasts, often used to clear underwater mines. They were equally effective at disorienting marine life and sending predators into a frenzy. If Beltiamatu resided deep in these waters, they would have been chased out by the sonic booms.

  Instead, the cult had awakened a titan.

  Kai did not know which. The kraken perhaps, or the leviathan. The Beltiamatu believed both resided in the Atlantic Ocean, once tasked with the protection of Atlantis. The Ancient…or Ancients were on the move, possibly as disoriented, and likely far more enraged.

  The water rippled from the sonic booms. The currents twisted in the titan’s wake. The ocean churned with so much motion until Kai hardly knew which way he was going.

  He followed the twisting current until the water turned murky with sediment thrown up from the ocean floor. Visibility faded into nearly nothing. Something large swooshed past him. Kai twisted around in time to see the disappearing tail fin of a great white shark.

  The ocean’s largest known predator was fleeing—

  From greater predators.

  Kai drew a breath tainted with sand. His lungs rasped from the effort, his shoulders convulsing on a silent cough. Moments passed, untracked, and only then did Kai realize that the currents twisted less, even though the sonic booms were no less intense. Was the titan headed in a different direction? He turned in the water and found a rock wall that had not been there before.

  The barnacles and corals affixed on the wall swayed as the wall shifted imperceptibly, rising then falling.

  As if it were breathing.

  His jaw slack, Kai visually traced the spread of the wall vertically and horizontally, until its uneven surfaces blended into the ocean’s dark water.

  If not a wall, then…

  He kicked away to take in a wider perspective of it.

  Kai’s breath caught. He could not tell how large it was, only that he was smaller than one of the many bone-white teeth that encircled a mouth large enough to fit a blue whale—whole.

  There was no leading this titan to the cult or from the Endling.

  He could only hope that the Endling escaped before the titan was bestirred enough to reach the surface and strike out against the sonic booms that had awoken it.

  Kai darted away. In his peripheral vision, something moved, displacing as much water as an aircraft carrier. A tentacled arm, like an octopus, but infinitely larger, swept across the water. It was not fast, but it did not have to be. It was so massive that there was no way to escape its strike zone. Kai lunged vertically up, swimming with all his strength, but not even that frantic burst of speed sufficed. The edge of the titan’s tentacle swiped across the lower half of Kai’s body, the impact tumbling him through the water as if he were a baby seal tossed by full-grown orcas.

  His head was still spinning when he realized that the pain slicing through his tail was not going to go away. He had broken a bone…or several. Blood trailed from his open wounds like crimson strands in the water. Gritting his teeth, he swam for the surface, painfully aware that he was leaving a trail the titan could follow.

  To the cult then…

  If he was damned to lead the titan to a human feast, better the fanatics in the Temple of Ishtar than his companions on the Endling.

  The currents twisted behind him as the Ancient turned, its countless tentacles churning the water. Kai’s heart thudded, its beat rapid, straining. He would not make it to the surface. Even if he were not injured, he could not outswim the titan. The only thing left for him was to point the monster in the right direction and trust its primal instincts for absolute destruction.

  In the blur of blue water, despite his senses overwhelmed—assaulted from the front by sonic blasts and from the back by the twisting headache of churning currents—Kai raced toward the surface, toward the shapes emerging in the distance, like torpedoes, sleek and gray.

  Submarines—he counted at least six—accompanied by several frigates.

  It was a great deal to send after one little pirate hunter. How was the cult accessing these resources? What country did they have under its explicit or implicit control?

  His thoughts flittered away under the constant pressure of breath-wrenching agony. Each undulating motion jarred more of his tail’s splintered bones out of place, until they pierced and tore through his flesh.

  Almost there. Just a few more moments.

  The sonic blasts rolled past him into silence. Then something—two somethings—then three and four whooshed out of the submarines’ hatches.

  Torpedoes!

  Kai twisted aside, scarcely in time. One passed so close to him that its heated metal burned his back and his tail, then shot forward, ignoring the small target for the large one.

  The much larger one.

  One after another, torpedoes struck the titan, with as much effect as raindrops on the ocean.

  The titan did not flinch. It did not even roar.

  But it accelerated, its countless arms coiling, as if to strike.

  The environmental overstimulation from the twisting currents pounded against Kai’s head. He reeled. He could go no farther, but his tail still beat down hard, this time to counter the ferocious current pushing him forward, straight into an encounter between the submarines and the titan.

  An encounter, wounded as he was, he could not hope to survive.

  The surface of the water churned as the frigates circled, like an indecisive shoal of fish. The submarines fired more torpedoes. He tried to dart away, but there were two others, too close. Kai evaded as deftly as he could manage in close quarters and with a broken tail, but one torpedo struck a glancing blow against his shoulder before slamming into the titan.

  The force of the explosion, close
r than even Kai had anticipated, flung him forward. His dazzled senses could hardly make out the shifting currents as shapes moved swiftly toward him. A voice. Naia’s voice. “He’s badly hurt.”

  “I’ve got him.”

  Kai recognized the second voice as Badur’s.

  A lean chest pressed against his back, and strong arms encircled him to lock around his chest. “Lead me out of here.”

  The rapidly shifting pressure of the water around Kai would have torn a scream out of him, but he was almost beyond response. Pain and extreme fatigue had taken too much from him.

  He knew only that Badur swam with him, carrying his weight, and that Naia and Thaleia swam slightly ahead. Their tail fins brushed against Badur’s face, so that he could follow. Their wake made it easier for the blind merman to battle the current, and lessened the weight of the burden he carried. All three Beltiamatu swerved like erratic minnows, weaving around the swaying tentacles lashing at the submarines.

  One tentacle smashed through the middle of a submarine, and the ocean exploded into flames. The submarine, split almost perfectly in half, sank slowly as the sea filled with debris and bodies.

  Another tentacle coiled around a submarine, then squeezed.

  The sound of crumpling metal moaned across the currents, like a dying creature. When the tentacle gracefully unwound, the crushed hull of the submarine drifted down to join its shattered companion on the ocean floor.

  The currents around them twisted. Naia glanced over her shoulder, alarm flashing over her face.

  “Move!” she screamed, as a heavy tentacle descended, straight toward them.

  Chapter 10

  The radio Zamir wore on his belt warbled. “Eight frigates,” Meifeng reported tersely. “They’re right on the edge of our radar and closing fast. At that rate, they should have us in visual range within five minutes.”