Page 26 of Darkest Dredge

Then what would we do with it? Bring it back home to prove we were right about Cthulhu and the sunken city all along? That didn’t seem so important anymore. There was a reason NASA had abandoned sea exploration to study space instead. Most humans had survival instincts to stay away from the darkest dredges of the ocean.

Not me.

My hand pressed over the hard spot in my belly again, my pulse quickening with a cocktail of dread and adrenaline.

As a biologist, I was exalted with joy at the new discovery.

As a normal human woman, I was afraid. For my friend and for myself.

And as a self-proclaimed sea monster armourist, I had twisted, wicked, complicated feelings about the particular development in mine and Noah’s hook-up.

The scream of a distressed whale call suddenly rumbled from beneath the vessel, chilling my blood more than the cold ever could.

Motion drew me to peer outside the porthole. Not that I could see anything beneath the water, or even on top of it. The weather had taken a turn for the worst, snow and ice making it nearly impossible to see anything.

Strange.

Ice storms usually didn’t happen this time of year here, even as far north as we were.

Something huge and pale swept past the window. I strained for a better view, and shot backward when green flesh slammed into the glass.

Noah hit the window with the speed of a pitched baseball, with enough heft to his brawny form to crack the thickly laminated glass.

Before my brain could parse what just happened, pale tentacles wrapped around his torso and plucked him from the deck like he weighed nothing. A moment later, whatever it was out there with him, slammed him back into the glass.

Another pale tentacle hit the window, and fastened to it. Unlike Noah’s tentacles, this one had puckered suckers filled with ravenous teeth, like hundreds of little lamprey mouths. Equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

Noah put up a good fight. Punching and clawing at the tentacles that kept him pinned, though it didn’t seem like he’d be winning this fight. The pale beast was too large, by a metric fuck-ton. Every time it shifted, the boat shuddered and groaned.

The Clamburglar wouldn’t take much more of this.

At this rate, the pale beast would sink the ship and we would drown. If it didn’t eat us first.

I jumped into action, scrambling to get dressed in my heavy duty weather gear. Didn’t bother with undergarments. No time for that. I only needed layers to avoid freezing to death.

Frantically, I searched for a weapon. The first thing my hand closed around was the abandoned tentacle toy.

“Fuck!” I needed something better than this. “Flare gun!”

There was one in the emergency kit beneath my bunk. I dropped to my knees and tore through stacks of books, until I found the case and ripped it open.

I wasn’t thinking. Only acting on adrenaline. So I flung myself out into the storm, flare gun in one hand and the tentacle dildo in the other. Guns—at least figuratively—blazing.

I saw the shape of the monster clearly now. It looked like a large porpoise, all pale with those terrible black veins and translucent skin. But, instead of a head, it had a huge mass of tentacles like a giant squid. The array of limbs opened up, revealing a huge, black beak sitting at the center of its flesh.

Was it a tongue? No, it was a rigid protrusion. Squinting through the snow, I realized what it was. A spiral horn, like a unicorn’s, but covered in black ichor.

With a blood-curdling roar, it shot the horn like it was a freaking harpoon, straight at Noah.

He managed to twist in its tentacles, and it embedded into the metal bulkhead as easy as a hot knife through cheese. Another horn pushed through the flesh, like the creature was loading the gun and took aim…

I wasn’t so sure it would miss its mark this time.

“Hey! Over here!” I shouted to get its attention, and when it didn’t notice the noise I made, I hurled the dildo at it with all the strength I could muster.

Luckily, the wind was on my side. An arctic gust sent the silicone tentacle hurtling at the creature’s head. The suction cup feature attached itself to its smooth head and wobbled as it latched on.

The monster screeched its annoyance and turned its blinking eyes on me.