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Flickers of orange light come from above the surface, glimmering on the water like fire behind frosted glass. Hopefully, that’s not a real fire. Perhaps more magical energy balls from her mom and Queen Maple.
Two smaller shadow creatures come out of nowhere, attempting to get in Tammy’s way as she torpedo-swims for the big monster.
Without thinking, she instinctively chomps them together. Their rubbery bodies burst into an explosion of cold muck, splattering up across the roof of her cavernous mouth. Fortunately, they don’t taste like anything. A swarm of similar smaller monsters futilely attack the ship’s hull, clawing and biting the steel.
Tammy ignores them and swims straight into the central mass of the main squid thing—and takes as big a bite as she can. It feels like her entire face has been shoved into a cake. Squishy black flesh oozes around her. She sinks her teeth into the undulating mass, biting through it so easily it startles her. Razor sharp megalodon teeth pierce the creature as easily as if human Tammy had bitten into a layer of strawberry mousse. A chunk of… not quite meat comes off in her mouth.
Gah! It’s horrid.
The creature gives a shrieking cry of agony and detaches from the boat.
Tammy whirls around for another pass as the shadow monster reorients itself toward her. Apparently, it is a squid… as it now points a colossal beak in her direction. The battle cry she imagines only exists in her mind, as sharks lacked the ability to yell.
She launches herself at the squid, swerving to the side and biting off one of its tentacles. As she does, it thrusts its remaining appendages at her, grabbing her with at least six of them. Instantly, it pulls her towards its giant beak.
Crap.
Three options flicker across her mind. One: act like a normal shark, freak out, and try to swim away, only to be overpowered and bitten in half. Two: shapeshift again to something much smaller and escape. Three: pull a full-moon Kingsley and respond with unbridled rage.
Tammy decides on option three.
Before the tentacles squeeze her so much she can’t move, she launches herself headfirst at the squid’s gaping beak, diverting at the last second up and left to chomp its eye. An eyeball the size of a semi-truck cab explodes inside her teeth.
The squid freaks, flinging her away in a panic before hurling itself downward, fleeing for the deep, dark depths, trailing a billowing haze of dark ink, blood, or something similar.
Instantly, something magical appears to be happening in the water. The squid must have been what pulled them across into the shadow realm, and now it’s let go of them. She has to be on the ship before it shifts over, she’s sure of that.
No time to wash the awfulness out of her mouth or care about anything other than getting back to the boat.
Tammy flicks her tail, rolls to the side, and dives down a short distance to get a ‘running’ start before pulling up and swimming at the surface with as much speed as she can force out of the massive shark’s body...
Chapter Twenty-one
Stormbreak
I stare at the railing where Tammy jumped.
The only reason I’m not diving after her in a panic is the enormous splash she caused. My daughter is pretty skinny and not that tall. There’s no way she made a splash that big in human form. Megalodon, huh?
Well, seems to have worked. I force myself to trust her for now.
I summon Talos again and leap back into the air.
Whatever the unicorn had been doing to protect the ship before, she isn’t anymore. The tentacles are starting to whip and smash at the boat with increasing desperation. Everyone on board must feel like beans inside an empty soda can someone’s shaking.
I aim for the tentacles as they rise up and prepare to slap downward. For now, the dragon breath fire is enough to make them jerk backward and take cover in the cool water. While my attacks don’t appear to be convincing this thing to go away, I’m probably a big part of the reason our ship hasn’t capsized yet.
The exertion is getting to me, though, making it a struggle to even stay in the air at all, much less continue breathing fire. What the hell is this giant squid thing? Can’t I do something easy like kill the Devil again, maybe? Gah. But if I give up, my entire family plus Angus and his men are going to die. I’m going to keep going until Talos’s body just quits on me and I fall out of the sky.
If this is the end of the line for the Moon clan, I want to go with them.
No. Dammit, Sam. That’s fatalistic talk. Don’t give up.
This isn’t the end of the line for the Moon clan. Besides, no matter what happens, Anthony is going to be fine. It’s Tammy and Paxton I’m worried about.
Speaking of which, what the hell is going on down there? I can’t see through the churning black water surface...
Another tentacle rears up to hammer down on the stern section of the boat. I swerve around and blast it full force with as much fire as I can cough up. All nine visible tentacles retract into the ocean so fast my fireball misses.
