Deadshifted (22 page)

A man was in his very nice and separate-from-the-bathtub shower. He was slumped in a corner of it, all his clothes on, eyes staring open, jaw dropped wide.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” Claire told the girl, but without any weird accent this time.

“It’s like this?” Asher asked me.

“All over the ship. That, or people have gone insane and jumped overboard. You don’t even know half of what it’s like.” I stepped back out of the room, and they followed me. “We have to pool resources, and quickly. All our cards on the table. For real.” And to encourage full disclosure—“I’m a human. I’ve got a master key to all the staterooms.” I looked over to Rory, standing at my right.

Rory crossed his arms, knife still in hand. “I’m Rory. I’m a human. I’m keeping this.” He waggled the knife.

Claire went next. “I’m a siren. I met Hal a long time ago. I can convince people to do what I want them to do, if they’re near enough and willing to listen. My voice travels better underwater.”

Rory’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve fought sirens in video games before. You all are never good.”

Claire looked affronted. “I hope then that we are at least hard to kill.”

“Depends on the difficulty setting.”

“Oh, I can be very diffi—” Claire began.

“I’m just a man who loves a siren,” Hal interrupted both of them, and Claire looked chagrined.

Emily knew it was her turn after Hal. “I have a radio.” She held it up for us to see. Hal must have given it to her. I gave her an encouraging smile, and then looked to Asher, who shrugged.

“I’m a shapeshifter. And I’ve never met one of you before.” He bowed to Claire.

“And I’ve never met one of you,” she said, somewhat regally from her perch.

“You only think you haven’t,” he said, with a puckish grin.

Now was not the time for my boyfriend to charm people. “What happened to you? Did you find anything out? And what the f—” I started to curse, saw Emily, and bit it back in time. “What was going on in that room?”

I saw the muscles in Asher’s jaw clench as he realized that whatever he wanted to tell me, he’d have to share with everyone at once. He inhaled deeply before he began. “I went downstairs to talk to Liz, like I told you—looking like Nathaniel,” he explained for the others, who hadn’t been there. “She was feverish, babbling things. About sea monsters—which I’d feel silly about sharing, except for present company,” he said, with a nod to Claire. “But eventually I figured out she wasn’t Nathaniel’s wife and Thomas wasn’t their child, just hers. He had a rare genetic disorder that Nathaniel promised her a cure for, after they came on this cruise with him.”

Maybe that was why she’d been running for pills the other night. “Then what?”

“I was concentrating so much on her that Nathaniel caught me there, looking like him. After that he knew what I was. He said if I went with him, he’d explain everything.”

“And just like that, you followed him?” I said, my voice rising. I wasn’t the only one whom peaceful months had made soft.

“I needed to know what was going on, Edie. I thought I could stop him,” he said, sounding hurt. “And I was right—he is behind all of this.”

“So what is he doing here with everyone on the boat?” Claire asked.

Asher inhaled deeply again, to buy himself time to think. “His prior research … fell through. And the people he’d been working for killed his daughter to punish him.”

I took me a moment, then I filled in between the lines.
Way to not mention vampires or blood substitutes, honey
—and that was what Nathaniel’d meant when he threatened a child for a child. I put a protective hand over my stomach. I’d need to find a way to tell Asher about that, privately.

“So this is his revenge,” I said. Asher looked surprised, then nodded.

“I don’t know if it’s from viruses, bacteria, protozoans, or what—but he infected Thomas first. And then Thomas ran around the whole ship touching things.”

Including Asher and me. “No wonder the doctor couldn’t figure it out.” I wondered what was happening to poor Dr. Haddad right now. “But what does he gain by killing everyone off?”

“He’s trying to raise something from the bottom of the ocean—which apparently requires a vast human sacrifice to awaken.”

“And he just told you all of that? Like in a villain monologue?” Rory said.

Asher continued to play coy. “We’d worked together in the past. I’ve been putting together two plus two.”

And so had Nathaniel. Who now knew what Asher was—and what Asher’s confession to the Consortium had cost him.

“I don’t know what it is that he’s raising. He wouldn’t say. But he threw my fingers overboard after he cut them off, ‘so that it would know my blood.’ He wouldn’t tell me what ‘it’ was. And at that point, I wasn’t really in a position to ask.”

“Whatever it is, the Shadows, those things we met in the morgue”—I looked to Rory to clue him in—“are afraid of it.”

There was a moment of silence between Asher and me, as we considered what could worry the Shadows.

“It doesn’t get much bigger than the Leviathan,” Claire said at last. At seeing our faces, Claire barked a sharp laugh.

Rory made a face. “That’s mythology.”

“Like me?” Claire said. “Another character in a video game?”

“Actually, yes.” He walked across the room and squatted down, putting his head in his hands.

I stirred my hand in the air for her attention. “Leviathan, as in the monster from the book of Job?” My mother would be so proud of me getting to use my Sunday school education now. Asher snorted, and even Hal glanced nervously at his wife.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised, the lot of you. Every great religion has a story of a serpent that lives in the sea. It was the most convenient frightening thing in olden times.” She looked at Hal in particular and gave him an indulgent smile. “You believe in me, don’t you? If you do, then some of the rest has to follow.”

He nodded, and she went on. “I don’t know what all those insane markings on his maps were about. But I do know what mass human sacrifice looks like. It’s not the first time I’ve seen someone try. I haunted shipwrecks professionally—there’s a difference when people jump overboard on their own, versus falling over with slit throats, dead before they can drown. You’ve only heard of the
Mary Celeste,
or the
Resolven,
but there’ve been a hundred boats emptied of people and wrecked too, by one loon or another trying to wake the Leviathan, trying to use carnage to lure it up. I’ll give this Nathaniel-man that at least—he’s got scale.”

“But what is it?” I pressed. “A great snake? A dragon?”

“No. The sea holds a lot of life, but eventually everything—from whales to plankton—dies and drifts down. The Leviathan comprises what all of that becomes, death after death, compressed over eons. It gained a slow kind of life, but it’s not alive—it’s like it’s the residue of a memory of what life could be.” She bit her lips in thought before speaking again. “You have to remember that most things in the ocean don’t live like you or me—the only thing they are is hungry.”

“Have you seen it?” asked Hal, rapt at Claire telling a story that was apparently new to him.

“I never went down that far. It’s not safe, and the pressure—” She shook her head. “But I know when it’s there. You’d feel it too. When you’re out in the sea—whenever you’re past seeing the ground, where blue stretches beneath you into black, and you’re scared of whatever it holds, just like you’re scared of the dark. It’s that. It’s the liquid darkness, somewhere below.”

Which sounded like a fair description of the Shadows—or their older, more frightening cousins—to me. I looked to Asher and could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“Then isn’t it always below? Everywhere? All the time?” Rory asked, tone logical and a touch snide.

“Yes. Sleeping. For now. Why someone would try to wake it up to deal with their problems, I don’t know.”

My lips twisted to one side. If I were trying to get revenge on vampires for killing my daughter, I knew I might try to get something worse than the Shadows on my side, too. It was the only way a human would have a chance.

Asher slashed his hand through the air. “That’s that, then. We need to get off this boat.”

“What about the worms?” Rory asked.

“Worms?” Claire asked.

“I saw them. With my own eyes.” Rory said, daring me to refute him. I couldn’t, not after what I’d seen inside Raluca.

“I saw them too.” I touched my stomach, just in case.

“It doesn’t matter, we still need to go—” Asher went on.

“It matters to me!” Rory protested. “I need to know if they’re inside me!”

“That’s what he infected Thomas with,” I explained, gaining speed as I figured it out. “The worms explain the fevers and seizures, the hunger and thirst—your body tries to fight them off, but if it doesn’t, they need energy to grow … and they want to reach water before they die. That’s why people keep going overboard and drowning.”

While I spoke, Asher watched me, weighing what I said—it felt like he was weighing me—and I saw his jaw set as he resolved something. He reached into the pocket of his torn pants, then held out four pills on his palm. “I saw him take one of these. That must be what they’re for. To kill the worms.”

“And when were you going to share them with us?” Claire asked.

“I forgot I had them,” Asher said as she tsked. “I didn’t know what they were for until now.”

Claire stared him down. At least I wasn’t the only one who knew he was a liar. I knew he didn’t get sick—but that wouldn’t stop him from saving them all for me.

“So we’re all infected—” Rory said, finally satisfied now that we’d confirmed his worst fears.

Asher shrugged. “I don’t know. Some of you all might have natural immunity, or luck, but Nathaniel doesn’t seem like the type to take chances.”

“How do you know all this?” Hal asked.

“We’d worked together. Like I said.”

“You helped him do this to us? To my parents?” Rory said. He wasn’t holding the knife anymore, but I doubted that he’d dropped it.

“Seven years ago,” Asher explained, shaking his head. “And I didn’t help, so much as steal some research for him. Damning with faint praise, I know.” Asher looked around the room to include the rest of the ship, then spoke directly to me. “If I’d known it would lead to this, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”

“I know,” I told him. I’d tell him about the Shadows interfering with our travel plans to bring us here as punishment later; it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else right now.

Emily’s face crinkled. “I don’t want there to be worms inside me.”

“I know, honey,” Claire told her, stroking her hair.

Asher pushed his hand out. “I don’t need one of these. And I’m not sure that one dose is enough. But I suggest the rest of you all take one.” Asher offered the pills on his palm to me. I picked one up, and then he offered the rest of them around. Rory took one, then Emily, and then it was down to Claire and Hal.

“I suspect sirens are immune,” she said. “I should be fine.” Hal nodded, her word gospel, and popped the pill into his mouth.

I held the pill up. “What is it?” They were faintly tan, pressed without any markings. My brain was filled with all the things that it could be.

“I don’t know. But I know he takes them. So they’re safe.”

I could tell Asher was overselling it. “For men. Non-pregnant men. I don’t feel sick yet,” I said, trying to ignore visions of the slowly spinning things dying in Raluca’s torso—and how Raluca had seemed fine. I swallowed drily.

“Edie, I can’t lose you.”

He couldn’t lose me—but I couldn’t lose this baby. And taking unknown and likely experimental medicine didn’t seem safe. Besides, what were the chances of one dose being enough? Or of me not getting reinfected before I got off this boat? I leaned into Asher’s shoulder so I wouldn’t have to see the look in his eyes. “I never should have left you,” he whispered, his head by my ear.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” I nodded into him, accepting his apology. “We can have another child though, Edie. If it can happen once, it can happen again. I need you.”

“I need you, too,” I said, because it was the truth.

Asher pulled me to him tighter, his roughness revealing his fear. “Please, just take the pill.”

“Okay.” I’d seen so many patients palm pills before that I knew it wasn’t hard. I put my hand to my mouth, faked a swallow, and felt him nod.

“Thank you.” His relief was palpable.

“What now?” I asked as he turned around. He didn’t see me putting the unmarked pill into the pocket of my jeans.

“Now—we figure out how to get off this boat.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Asher stood quietly for a moment thinking, and I almost felt safe standing by his side. I’d never be the kind of woman to give over all thought to anyone else, but it was nice, deep-down-in-my-bones nice, to have him here with me again. Despite the odds, with Asher around I almost felt like we had a chance.

Rory was sitting equidistant from Claire and us, trying to keep an eye on everyone who was supernatural at once, and Claire and Hal were whispering to each other just as Asher and I had been. Emily had the radio up to her ear in the semblance of a cell phone. Asher saw this and nodded at her. “Hey Emily—what do you hear?”

She shrugged and handed the radio out to him. He took it, with Rory swinging dramatically backward to be out of his way.

“The medical channel is number five,” I said, and Asher grunted, turning up the volume and flipping through the rest of them. Languages I couldn’t understand crackled through, sounding just as excited as they had when Hal had done the same earlier. Asher narrowed his eyes and held the
TALK
button down.

“Hello, is anyone out there? Can you hear me?
Hallo, is daar iemand daar buite? Kan jy my hoor? Alo, este cineva acolo? Poți să
mă
auzi?
” He started off in English and went through three different languages in quick succession. “What is happening? Are there any survivors?”

“Wie is jy?”
came through in a burst of static from the other side.