“What are the boats made from?” I asked.
“Calamut trees,” Kobal answered.
I looked up at where he stood before me. “The calamut trees allowed themselves to be cut down?”
I couldn’t picture those colossal trees—with their sweeping limbs and ability to create walls with their branches—allowing anyone near them with an ax. I’d watched those branches pierce an ogre straight through before dragging him away. I preferred not to think about what they would do to someone who tried to chop one of them down.
“That would never happen,” Magnus said.
“The wood was harvested after the calamut died,” Kobal said. “It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally one of them does die or is killed.”
“I see,” I replied and ran my hand over the seat before rising.
Bracing my legs apart, I easily maintained my balance on the shifting vessel. A feeling of rightness stole through me at being surrounded by water again. I hadn’t spent much time on boats back home, but I’d spent enough time near the ocean to know its ebbs and flows well. The Asharún may not be the beautiful, rolling blue sea I loved so much, but the sway of its currents called to me.
The boat glided around a corner, and the jagged walls closed in on us. Kobal bent his head to avoid being stabbed by the rocks. The scent of brimstone and fire grew heavier on the air.
A wraith rose out of the water only a few feet away. Its human-looking hands clawed at the air before its elongated jaw and sightless eyes broke the surface. Seeing the human qualities on the deformed figure was more disturbing to me than witnessing them when they were entirely the twisted monstrosities they became.
I tried not to recall the image of my father as a wraith, but watching the spirit being pulled under the water again brought forth the memory of my father being sucked into the Fires of Creation and destroyed.
To keep myself centered in the here and now, I focused on the boat behind us. The hellhounds all sat within it, their amber eyes bright in the gloom.
Something bumped against the side of the boat with more force than the wraiths had exhibited so far. The bow went slightly off course before Carion corrected it.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“Probably a tahanusi,” Bale replied and pushed a strand of fiery red hair over her shoulder. Her skin held a red hue to it and her eyes were a penetrating lime-green color. Bale was one of Kobal’s second-in-command; the other one was Corson. She was one of the most stunning women I’d ever seen with her lethal curves and flawless features, but she was just as ruthless as Kobal and Corson.
“What is a tahanusi?” Hawk asked.
“A sea monster,” Magnus replied as casually as if he’d revealed they were starfish.
“A what now?” Hawk reached for one of his guns, but he no longer wore his weapon belt. Our human weapons had been lost during the battle with Lucifer.
Magnus’s mouth quirked in amusement when Hawk glanced between him, the Asharún, and back again. The realization we shared this water with something more than the wraiths made the hair on my arms rise. I scrutinized the water, trying to pierce through its murky depths to see what lay beneath, but the river refused to yield its secrets.
“The tahanusis won’t bother us,” Kobal said and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“But they’re sea monsters?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from the water.
“They’re Hell creatures who also feed on wraiths,” Kobal replied. “They rarely bother the boats.”
“You throwing that wordrarelyout there isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” Hawk said.
Something else hit the side of the boat, causing it to veer off course again. I bit back a gasp as I strained to see the creature beneath us. Not being able to see them made knowing they were there so much worse.
“They occasionally bump against the boats by accident, that’s all,” Bale said.
From fifteen feet away, a rounded back broke the surface of the water. It rose higher as it slid through the water like a serpent. The water streaming over the creature caused its scales to glisten like black diamonds before it finally vanished again.
Then, a tail lashed out of the water and flicked out behind the creature. I couldn’t stop my stomach from turning when I realized the tip of the tail resembled a rattlesnake’s. With a shake, the creature threw off drops of water, and its tail created a high-pitched rattle that reverberated like a gunshot over the walls of our close confines.
Beside me, Kobal stiffened. Magnus slowly rose to his feet. I glanced between the two of them as the gray tail slid beneath the surface of the water. Only a small ripple indicated where it had been. Carion planted his staff in the water and the boat halted. The vessel behind us stopped a few feet away. The foot-long talons in the back of Corson’s hands extended. The hounds all rose to their feet as a hush descended.
In the distance, another rattle echoed through the cavern, drawing my attention to the winding tunnel we’d already traversed. The curves in the rocks made it impossible to see more than twenty feet ahead or behind us. Kobal and the others all turned to face the direction we had come from.
Another rattle sounded from somewhere ahead of us. The strength of it vibrated off the walls and created ripples across the surface of the water. As the boat swayed, Kobal’s hand tightened on my shoulder and he drew me closer to him. His black fingernails lengthened into three-inch claws that could eviscerate someone.
