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The cannon recoils with great violence, pulling back at the ropes that hold it in place and the roundshot fires straight into the Kraken’s eye.
It lets out an otherworldly bellow that shakes the whole ship, that sounds like it’s come right from the bowels of hell and the ruined eye starts to fall from view but now the tentacles are slamming into the side of the hull, shaking the ship.
Screams and cries come from the deck above and I know I need to help them. I look at Remi and Horse, at the fear on their faces. They don’t look like this when they’re battling the Royal Navy, but the Kraken is an entirely different fight altogether, one that could spell death for them all.
“Did Thane come by here with the bottle earlier? No, he didn’t have time,” I answer myself, hoping that bottle is still getting passed around up top.
I take hold of my arm and rip off the bandage, the motion opening up the wound from earlier. My blood starts to flow and I quickly jam my arm up into Remi’s face. “Suck!” I yell at him, aware of how it sounds, also aware that Ramsay has been very adamant I don’t share my body with others. But when it comes to a life-or-death situation and not a hypothetical one, I don’t give a whit what he thinks.
Remi delicately sucks back the blood, giving Horse an unsure look, and then I see his pupils turn red and he’s biting me.
“Ow, damn it!” I cry out, “you didn’t have to bite me.”
“Remi,” Horse chides him, pushing him off my arm, droplets of my blood gathered in his thin mustache, then Horse begins to feed. He shows a little more restraint and doesn’t bite me, but Remi already made it easier for him.
Then Horse’s pupils go crimson and I know he’s starting to get carried away so I kick him in the shin until he stops.
“You feel it now?” I ask them and they nod vigorously, their eyes growing large with verve. “Then fire again!”
They jump to it, moving so fast now that they’re a blur.
I turn and run out of the gun deck and to the stairs until I’m face-to-face with the carnage up top. The Kraken’s tentacles are wildly thrashing the ship, one pulling down the foremast, another slamming through the railing until the shards go flying across the deck, another pounding the deck like a fist.
“Help!” Crazy Eyes screams as a tentacle grabs hold of him, squeezing him like it means to cut him in two, and then Cruz is there, slicing through the tentacle with a broadsword, wielding the giant weapon like it’s a toy.
The more I look at everyone, the more that I see they’ve all had my blood. They’re moving faster, they’re stronger, they’re thinking two steps ahead. I don’t know how long a shot of it will last in their systems, but it might be enough to destroy the Kraken.
And what about Edonia?I can’t help but think.If she’s here, where is she? Why doesn’t she show her face? And where did Nerissa go? Has she abandoned us already?
Dread shocks my system.
What if Nerissa led Edonia right here? What if this was all part of her master plan? What if there is no destiny but something that she controls?
I’m thinking that over in horror, refusing to feel betrayed, while I watch as the crew keep hacking away at the Kraken’s tentacles. It’s a massive beast the size of the ship, yet with the cannons firing into it from below and the strength of fight that the Brethren is showing, it seems to be giving up.
I run closer to the edge of the deck, stopping beside Matisse who gives me an up-and-down look of approval. “Thank you for the blood, by the way,” he says in his French accent. “You taste magnificent.”
I just shrug off the strange compliment while Thane yells, “It’s retreating!”
“Fill the sails!” Ramsay yells from the aft deck. “Let’s outrun the beast!”
“Aye!” the crew shouts as they start running to and fro.
“All thanks to Maren!” Sam says, stepping up on the crate beside the rail. She raises the nearly empty bottle of my blood in the air. “Thanks to your mermaid—”
A purple-black tentacle rises up from the other side, right behind Sam as she stands there at the edge. I open my mouth to yell her name but the tentacle curls back for a moment then strikes so fast that I choke on the sound.
The Kraken punches a hole straight through the middle of Sam, obliterating her heart.
“Sam!” I finally manage to scream. I run toward her, my cutlass raised, and start hacking away at the tentacle that is sticking straight through her body. I stab and slice and cut, tears rolling down as she falls off the crate and lands face first onto the deck.
The tentacle then retreats, with Sam’s heart still pulsing in the suctioned tip.
“No!” I scream, aware that the others are running toward me now, yelling for Sam, yelling for me, horror taking over the ship.
Then another tentacle appears, and as the one with Sam’s heart slides back into the sea, the other one goes straight for me.
I try to leap out of the way, but the tentacle is fast. It curls around me like a fishhook, the slimy suctions sticking painfully to my skin, then it raises me in the air and starts pulling me overboard.
