Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (38 page)

Too soon, the water pulsed, like something had been thrust violently into it. It propelled me forwards, carrying me so my back collided with the earth above.

I pushed away from the clay ceiling and kicked, blinded by the swirling black water.

I’d been out of breath before I submerged, and my lungs begged for air already.

The current drove me towards the stone door. I slammed into the tunnel walls with each pulse.

I felt like I’d been caught in an undertow. Each collision, each push to keep myself moving forwards, expelled more air from my lungs.

Ahead, a sliver of daylight peeked through the muddy water.

I hit the ceiling again. The door was in front of me. I clawed at it, frantic, until my fingers stung.

The sliver of daylight widened.

The water around me was tinged red. Blood flowed from my palm and now my fingertips.

A hand seized me by the collar. It hauled me through a narrow gap and thrust me towards the surface.

I kicked towards the light.

My head broke through. I spluttered as a wave splashed into my mouth.

The entire earth was shaking, churning the water around me like a boiling pot. The trees in the schoolyard swayed.

Tanuu popped up next to me, eyes huge. Blacktail surfaced next, and then Annith.

“Get out of the water!” I shouted, my voice so raspy and panicked that I didn’t recognise it.

We swam furiously for the shore. I was so exhausted that the three of them overtook me easily. Blacktail reached the shallows first. She whirled around and extended a hand. I seized it. She dragged me out.

We waded for shore, a nightmarish struggle against the weight of waterlogged clothes.

Tanuu shouted something I couldn’t hear over the rumbling earth.

Water splashed the backs of my legs and battered the mud in small tidal waves.

“I can’t control her,” I shouted. “I tried thinking, speaking, moving my hands. She didn’t obey—”

A noise like cracking ice pierced the air.

On the other side of the puddle, where the tunnel must have spanned, the earth split. A great, jagged chunk of rock thrust skywards. A fissure opened up beside it, and the water from the trench poured inside.

I cried out, staggering backwards.

An enormous, black, scaled head erupted from the ground. A fringe of horns fanned out at the back of the skull, like a mane of bones beneath hard flesh. The serpent opened her jaws to reveal rows of curved teeth, each one the length of my forearm. Her tongue slashed the air in a streak of red.

Tanuu’s profanity was drowned out by the most agonisingly loud noise I had ever heard. The serpent’s roar brought my hands to my ears.

The earth stopped shaking as the sound echoed through the trees.

And I was sure, beyond doubt, that the entire island had heard—and felt—Eriana’s Host awaken.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ancient Awakening

The vibrations across the water penetrated my bones, a sense like nothing I’d ever felt. Ancient, timeless, like the feel of the sea itself.

I stopped. Each breath rushed into my lungs, hot and painful.

The feeling faded.

Then a roar like thunder. What kind of animal would make a noise so terrible?

There was one explanation.

Meela had found the Host.

“No,” I breathed.

Absurdly, I told myself I wasn’t too late. I could still stop her. I had time to fix this.

My heart beat so fast that I trembled as I stared across the water.

Eriana Kwai was visible, a faint mark on the horizon.

Maybe Meela hadn’t been the one to do it. Or maybe Adaro was wrong, and the Host didn’t require a sacrifice. She could still be alive.

The current changed, dragging everything down and away from the land.

As it gathered into an enormous wave, I dove.

I angled towards Eriana Kwai, fighting the pull.

The noise, the swells, the deep reverberation might have been the result of an earthquake. But I knew it was more than that.

An uneasy feeling settled deep inside me. If I’d heard and felt it way out here, how much further would it carry?

Waves continued to rise, pushing far out to sea. Every mermaid and merman for leagues around would feel this and believe it was the result of an earthquake.

But there was one who would know the horrible truth.

I wondered where Adaro was—and how long it would be until he found out that the Host had been awakened.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Descendants

We sprinted towards the forest.

Behind us, the slab of rock jutted from the middle of the schoolyard, revealing a gaping hole into the cave below. The Host’s endless body erupted from it, blacker and more solid than lava rock. Blasts emitted from her nostrils, each breath laboured. Water sprayed from her scales and flooded across the field in torrents. My ears filled with a sound like a waterfall.

Tanuu, Annith, Blacktail, and I plunged between two fat hemlocks, masking ourselves in the woods. I motioned for them to stop.

“I want - to see - what she does,” I said, wheezing.

The others were breathing too hard to say anything. They leaned against the trees, clutching their ribs. Our heavy clothes dripped onto the moss floor.

The leviathan’s body coiled in the trench, displacing the water and turning the field into a swamp. When the second head emerged, she raised it beside the first and paused. She surveyed the schoolyard with chilling intelligence in her eyes.

The world fell silent but for the water dripping from both heads.

She tasted the air with tongues the size of oars.

Her pupils narrowed. Her nostrils flared.

Both massive heads snapped in our direction, as though responding to a noise.

I stopped breathing. My pulse pounded in my ears.

Then the serpent lowered her head. I heard a wet grinding, like rock on mud, as she came towards us.

“Run.”

We sprinted headlong through the forest, crashing through branches, ignoring the pine needles whipping our faces and brambles catching our clothes. I concentrated on my feet. Though a lifetime of going barefoot had given me tough soles, stabs of pain shot up as I landed on stones and roots.

Behind us rose a symphony of splintering trees, puffs of breath, and grinding rock. The serpent was destroying everything in her path.

Or, almost everything. In that moment, I was more grateful than ever for the vast trees on Eriana Kwai. Even a leviathan couldn’t knock down a thousand-year-old sequoia. It was enough to let us stay ahead.

The serpent roared in frustration. The sound came so close that my eardrums stung, as though the sheer volume had popped them. She was much too close. Did I imagine the warm air on the back of my neck?

I didn’t dare look over my shoulder in case it slowed me down.

A buck shot from the woods beside me and I stumbled in surprise. I caught blind terror in his eye before he outran us and disappeared. I veered, trusting his path through the thicket. The others stayed close behind.

With each step, my sopping pant legs chafed and clung together. My lungs screamed; a stitch burned in my ribs. Nearest me, Annith breathed so hard it sounded like whimpering. Adrenaline must have kept her pushing past her injury.

Could we dive into a cave and let the Host pass? Or would she smell us and corner us in there?

Blacktail gasped something.

“What?” I said.

“Beach. Left. Lead - to ocean.”

I glanced left. If we broke the deer trail and kept running straight, we’d land at the beach. If we could get to the ocean—the leviathan’s territory—maybe she would satisfy herself on a more familiar meal.

We had to try.

The thought of the end of our sprint gave me new energy. I leapt off the deer trail, back into the dense bush. The absence of a pathway forced me to slow down. I used my hands to vault over a fallen log, and again to push between the cleft of a twin spruce.

Beside us, the ground plummeted into a ravine. I knew animals sometimes ran along creeks to wash away their scent when fleeing predators. Though I doubted the trick would work here, it was worth a shot.

I ran down the steep slope, arms flailing for balance. We splashed into the creek and turned downstream. The water came to my ankles, but it was easier to run through than the uneven bush.

Something thudded behind me, and someone grunted. A splash. Footsteps stopped.

I slowed, but heard Tanuu say, “I’ve got you. Keep running.”

Annith caught up and jabbed me between the shoulder blades. “They’re up. Go!”

I did.

The sky brightened ahead. The trees thinned.

We burst from the woods. I couldn’t slow down, and the drop in the earth made me trip. Reacting instinctively from years of combat training, I rolled into a ball as I fell, protecting my head. I flipped over once, twice, three times, rolling across the beach like a stone.

I hit something solid and sprawled flat, coughing. My shoulder seared where it hit, blazing through my back and arm.

I sat up, grasping for a sense of direction.

I’d landed on a rocky beach, my back to a boulder. Where the forest ended, dirt became rock, and grass became clumps of seaweed.

A dark shape loomed along the shoreline. The upturned fishing boat.

The tide was rising, splashing into the broken hull and sending a wide spray with each wave.

Lysi’s beach would be just beyond that. That meant there was a hollow behind this boulder where a tide pool liked to form.

Gasping, every part of me aching, I crawled around the boulder. The tide pool rose to my neck when I sat on the bottom. My clothes were so wet and icy that the water felt warm.

I glanced around for my friends. Nearby, someone was wheezing. Hands and knees slapped the rocks. A dirt-caked arm clawed the ground beside me. I reached for it. Annith. I pulled her behind the boulder, telling her to get in.

“Annith, where’s—?”

“They’re coming,” she said, the words a sob.

The din grew closer. The serpent was about to break through the trees.

Why weren’t Tanuu and Blacktail out of the bush yet? Annith had told me to keep running. She’d said they were fine. I should have stopped to make sure.

“Annith, where—?”

“Shh!”

Trees snapped. The noise echoed.

In the tide pool, the brief feeling of warmth passed. I shivered convulsively.

“There,” said Annith.

I turned. A short ways down the beach, our friends broke through the forest at full speed. They dove for the fishing boat.

The ground trembled. A roar brought my hands to my ears.

Tanuu wrapped a protective arm around Blacktail as they backed into the hull.

The serpent crashed onto the beach with a force like a mudslide. Sticks and dirt flew across the rocks.

She spotted the fishing boat and paused, nostrils flaring. The first head glanced around, taking in the beach, the treeline, the ocean. Her body and the second head still lay in the bush.

She dipped her tongue into the broken hull.

Annith tugged my arm, trying to get me to lean back. I couldn’t. Tanuu and Blacktail were pressed against the rotting wood, chests heaving.

The serpent grunted, sending a blast of air over the wreckage. Fragments of wood fluttered into the waves. A long tongue traced the edges of the broken cabin.

Without warning, the serpent swung her horned head, disintegrating the top half of the boat. Tanuu and Blacktail disappeared beneath the rubble.

I clenched my jaw, trying to stop my teeth from chattering so loudly.

The serpent blinked at the rubble, as though noticing the mess she made. She tasted the air around it. Then she turned her great head towards the sea. A low hiss met my ears.

She moved towards the water.

Those intelligent eyes revealed more than hunger. Was she searching for her master? Or perhaps the Enticer?

Though she hit the water in relative silence, torrents swelled on either side of her. I held my breath as they flooded the tide pool and briefly submerged Annith and me.

The body followed, undulating across the beach. The enormous black scales clicked over the rocks.