Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

“I don’t know what you two are, but I’m not like you.” For a second I felt boldly proud—until his next words. “I need to get off this ship.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Asher said, giving me a look.

I wanted to encourage Rory to come with us, but I couldn’t in good faith. The deck was getting worse. If he didn’t go he might not make it back to where the life rafts were stowed.

“See those canisters?” Asher said, pointing to what looked like oil drums attached to the Maraschino ’s railings at small intervals. “If all else fails, grab one of those and go overboard. They’ll inflate if you pull the string out from the end.”

“How do you know?” Rory asked him, like I’d learned how to stop myself from asking long ago.

“I read a lot of books. Hurry up. Good luck.”

Rory nodded. “You too.” And then he scrambled off as the deck neared forty-five degrees, and another wave hit the Maraschino ’s side.

“We probably don’t have much time,” Asher said.

My hand found his injured one. “I know.”

Together, we walked over the face of what had been the outer wall of the spa, up to the nice restaurant where we’d eaten a fancy dinner with Liz and Nathaniel just two nights before.

Arriving there like this in this set of circumstances somehow felt more right than the other night when I’d been all nicely dressed. This made more sense—the chaos, the mess, the nearness to death. Of course the last seven months of peace were just a dream; I’d been a fool to ever think they weren’t. I didn’t know if I didn’t deserve happiness, although it sure as hell seemed like someone thought I didn’t, or if chaos was in me from the way I was raised. But everything being messed up felt strangely right somehow. Probably because messed up could have been my middle name.

“I’m not going to let him kill you, Edie. We’ll do what we have to do, and get lucky if we can, but you can’t ask that.”

“I’m not. I’m asking you to give us a chance to save the others.” I nodded at him, and leaned in for a fast kiss. “I promise.”

We reached the restaurant door, hung skew by either violence or the current gravity, and carefully crept in.

Nathaniel was there, leaning against a column near the front door. He looked the same as when I’d seen him last, except now he had an orange life jacket on. Two of his gunmen stood to either side.

Jorge, Marius, and Kate were strung up from the exposed beams in the ceiling, trussed like flies caught in a spider’s web. They were gagged, but not so much that they couldn’t talk around them. Jorge gasped to see us arrive, Marius’s soldier’s training kept him quiet, and Kate quietly moaned to herself, not in recognition. None of them looked well, but I was no shining example of health right now myself.

Nathaniel leaned forward but didn’t take a step. With the unstable deck, he wasn’t completely in control. “I knew you weren’t dead, even if my men weren’t always careful.” He gave Asher a nod. “And look, you managed to rescue your man.”

“What do you want?” Asher stood in front of me, blocking me with his body.

“Like I already told her. Revenge.”

“I didn’t kill your daughter. The Consortium did.”

Nathaniel’s eyes widened and then he laughed, cold and long. “Oh. Of course you would assume that. You couldn’t possibly know.” He pushed himself forward off the column and took a step nearer us, without blocking his hired guns. “The Consortium didn’t come out to punish me themselves. They told my employers to ‘clean things up.’ Do you know what they did?” he asked us.

I shook my head, mute. Asher didn’t move.

“They didn’t kill her. They took her from me. They’ve had her, all this time. You ruined a decade of research and made monsters kidnap my only child.”

Things fell into place. That was why Nathaniel was willing to sacrifice thousands of people to get the Leviathan on his side. He thought his daughter was still alive.

What wouldn’t a parent do to try to rescue their own child?

“When I found out you were on board, with your lovely, stupid, pregnant wife—it was almost too good to be true. I couldn’t believe my luck—and that’s when I knew my plan would work. You being here, me getting this chance—it’s fate. The Leviathan is already on its way.” He took a gun from one of his employees. Kate started to moan louder, and from deep in the restaurant there was the sound of a rush of water, as though a dam had burst, and a shallow wave swept in across the back of the floor.

Nathaniel pointed the gun at us, and Asher moved to stand in front of me. “You know I could have killed you already, but I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I do want you dead—but more than that, I want to take something of yours. Your woman and your child. I’ll take them away from here and make you wonder every waking moment of your days if they’re still alive, or if I’ve killed them. If they cursed you when they died. Maybe I’ll even raise up your child as my own. You can spend the rest of your life imagining him calling me Father.”

Despite saying he didn’t want to kill us, he pointed the gun straight at Asher’s head—and then twisted it up, to aim it at Kate. “Your woman will come over here or I’ll shoot them.”

Asher flung his arm out to block me. “They’re already going to die.”

“Are they? Can you be absolutely sure?”

The water lapped higher behind him, making some of the fallen tables float. I pressed against Asher’s arm.

“I was doing what I had to do to survive. What was your excuse? You could have been anything! You could have worked for anyone!”

Nathaniel’s lips lifted up in a cruel smile. “So could you.” He shot the ceiling in front of Kate, and both Asher and I jumped.

The faucet sound got louder, and some distant part of the structure groaned, as if he’d wounded the Maraschino itself. Kate began to scream around the gag. I thought she was reacting to Nathaniel pointing the gun at her, but I realized she was shouting a word. “Water! Water water water!” rising in volume each time.

“You come here, or I’ll shoot her,” Nathaniel said, addressing me, and then bringing the barrel of the gun down. “Or I’ll shoot both of you and be done with it.”

I stepped around Asher’s arm with finality.

“Edie, don’t you dare,” he said as Nathaniel returned the gun to point at him.

Kate kept screaming, and water kept rushing in, and it seemed like I didn’t have a choice. All I could do was walk slowly toward Nathaniel and block Asher from his gun—when Kate got torn in two.

She shrieked as she came unglued at the seam of her belly, like a doll torn between two dogs. Dark things rolled out of her, dripping down. Worms, cascading out, slithery and black, born one after another.

The previously unflappable gunmen startled at this. They were human, and the sight of a human unraveling and worms shedding out was beyond the pale; even Nathaniel was stunned. Jorge tried swimming away from her in midair, while Marius was impassive; he’d already seen worse in the Dolphin. The still-armed gunmen stepped back into Marius’s kicking range, and he gave me a look with his eyes: Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!

There was only one thing left that I could do. Nathaniel wanted me? Well, he could come and find me then—I intentionally slipped and fell, sliding for the far side of the room.

“No!” Nathaniel and Asher shouted behind me in unison, and I heard the sounds of a fight break out. I had time to register the heat of the friction burn the carpeting gave me as I crossed the entire room on my ass, slid into the water at its bottom, and was blasted with salty cold.