Anton Strout - Dead Waters

“It’s a start,” I said.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say we know for sure what brought the General Slocum down,” Connor said.

“Crap on toast,” I said. “That is one giant octopus thing.”

“Steady, kid,” Connor said. “Just remember. The bigger they are . . .”

“The more damage they do. . . ?” I finished.

“That’s not where I was going with that,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do with all these spirits up here, see what they can do to help Jane. Let’s see if I can get them interested in a little revenge on this monstrosity or the woman.”

As the bridge creaked and swayed, I started back to the water woman, Mason Redfield, and the Inspectre out at the center of the bridge. Ghosts were flying across my path and I was having trouble seeing, but when I was about fifteen feet away, I caught sight of the three solid figures. The Inspectre looked like he wasn’t having much luck in dealing with either of them.

“Charybdis,” Mason shouted, pointing at the Inspectre. “Attack!”

“No!” I called out, racing the last few feet to put myself between them and the Inspectre, who looked resolved to await his fate at their hands. I braced myself for a wave of water coming my way, but when nothing happened a moment later, I opened my eyes.

Mason had turned to the woman within their protective bubble. “Did you not hear me?” he asked. “I told you to attack.”

The woman walked over to him, taking slow, deliberate steps. “I think. . . not,” she said. “I serve no man.”

“What?” Mason said, fury in his eyes. “What about our arrangement?”

“There is only one arrangement,” the woman said. “And that is mine .”

The woman pulled in her arms, the column of water around her closing in on the two of them. The professor’s face filled with horror as water rushed into his mouth and down into his lungs. From the panicked look in his eyes, there was no doubt that he knew his death would not result in his rebirth as it had the last time.

Before any of us could try to reach into the watery barrier, the professor’s body imploded from the water pressure, red rushing out of him. It ran into the woman and her body changed, growing in power and strength until the water ran clear and her body turned more solid in the column of water than I had ever seen her.

“Why?” the Inspectre shouted. “Why would you do that to your ally?”

The woman spoke in Greek again, but I didn’t bother to wait for the translation from Connor. I thought I knew.

“Betrayal,” I said, piecing some of it together from everything I had investigated so far. “It feeds her soul, which is why it took Professor Redfield sacrificing students like George to bring about her rise, but in order to get his help in that, she had to promise him something. His own rebirth. She killed Mason Redfield the first time so he could be reborn first to help her rise and also to awaken Charybdis.”

“Taking the professor’s life now was all the more cruel and sweet a betrayal,” she said, “the power of his blood growing tenfold from it. In death, his power completes our ceremonial rebirth.”

She dropped what remained of the professor’s lifeless body to the tracks of the bridge and he fell through a shattered section down into the water below. I spied Jane and the lights from the boat as she headed straight for the sea monster, aiming for the yellow of its giant eye. I had to act fast.

I went to charge into the water wall around the woman, but the Inspectre’s hand came down on my shoulder. I turned toward the far end of the bridge and called out to Connor’s brother.

“Aidan,” I shouted. “Do something!”

He looked at me like I was stupid. He let go of the tentacle with one of his hands where he held it in place wrapped around the bridge support and pointed at it. “I am !”

“No,” I said. “About Jane!” I pointed down at the boat below as the spiked ram slammed into the creature. “Down there. Hurry!”

“I can’t let go,” he said. “If I do, that thing will destroy her boat for sure.”

Aidan was right. With the creature pinned in place up here, it couldn’t take on Jane or the boat unless he let go of it. The best I could do was join Connor and the Inspectre in fighting the green water woman. Maybe the key to stopping the monster lay in beating its keeper, the one helping it rise to full power.

The three of us turned our attention to the woman within the circle of water. Connor was busy uncorking a dozen or so stoppered tubes, rallying a thick swarm of ghosts all around him. He shouted instructions at them, but from where I stood I couldn’t quite make them out. I hefted my bat and came in swinging. I landed a solid hit on the woman through her tower of water, but once she felt it and became aware of my presence, every subsequent swipe of my bat passed through a liquid form of her body.

Another sound rose to meet my ears, one that horrified me. Jane’s voice rang out in all its technomantic glory from down below over the fight. With terror filling my heart, I realized it could mean only one thing. Jane wasn’t just going to ram the creature. She intended to blow the creature up with the blast materials and depth charges the Inspectre had brought along to dislodge all the sunken ships.

The fight went out of me and I ran to the edge of the bridge. “Jane!” I shouted.

The boat was underneath us and from where I was I could actually see her face. She looked up at me, her face sad but determined. She spoke, but I couldn’t hear her over the sound of everything, yet there was no mistaking the words her mouth formed.

I love you.

“Jane, don’t,” I shouted, but it was too late. She turned her head back to the ship and pressed her power into it. Sparks rose up all over the vessel as she pulled power from the boat itself, sending raw power across the bow like lightning strikes.

All that was enough to set things off, and the ship exploded. The heat of it rose up with concussive force, straight through the bridge. The gas of the boat and blasting caps fed one another, shooting a column of flame up in the air with its fury. Bits of the creature flew through the air, and I tried not to think of the same happening to Jane.

All around me the world slowed. I got back to my feet in time to catch Aidan letting go of the now-severed tentacle, letting it unwind and fall from where it had been wrapped around the bridge. Like a shot, the vampire transformed and shot up into the night sky and then down into the firecovered river below.

Behind me an inhuman keening arose from the woman as she watched her precious charge dying. The steady stream of water around her faltered and dropped away, yet she herself remained.

“Focus,” the Inspectre called out, slicing his cane through her body to no avail, passing right through her. “Don’t let up.”

His call to arms awoke something dark in the pain of my heart. I charged the woman again. Blow after blow of mine still passed through her as she came at us with a watery fury, unleashing waves of it at each of us. Connor’s assembly of spirits swarmed her to the point of distraction that had her firing off her powers in every direction. One of the blasts hit the Inspectre, sending him flying onto his back, his sword cane falling through the slats of the bridge.

“If you got anything better than a bat,” Connor said, still orchestrating the spirits in their attack, “now’s the time to use it, kid.”

The bat was doing nothing more than distracting her for a few seconds at a time. I collapsed it and slid it into its holster. I reached into my satchel to assess my other options. My hand slapped against what I thought was my emergency medical kit, but when I pulled it out I saw it was the Ghostbusters lunch box Jane had given me. Without hesitation, I opened it and shook out the contents. I grabbed it by its handle and lid, thrusting it toward the woman. I had been going about this the wrong way. I thought back to the vision where I had first seen Mason Redfield. He and the Inspectre had tried going for the ghouls’ hearts as a first means of stopping them. Even tonight, the Inspectre had tried that tactic, trying to stab her there, but that wasn’t the way to go about it. A blade or a bat could pass through water, no problem. What I needed was to take the woman’s heart from her in whatever form I could.