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That’s future Never’s problem, I reminded myself.
What I needed, before I could lose the lunch swimming in my stomach, was one clear shot. The ship rolled and swayed. Bile threatened again, leaving its acidic taste lingering. Then another demon hand joined the first, clawing and climbing.
Come on, coward.If I kept waiting for the right moment, that thing would kill us all.
Those claws swiped at me, only missing by a hair when I ducked out of the way.
Fury filled Petra’s ugly face. The storm was reflected in those glassy black eyes. Then her lips peeled back in a snarl, and I remembered, in vivid detail, my first encounter with the monster.
In my world, with her growling my family name.
This bitch isn’t getting another shot at anyone I care about ever again.
I swung the curved blade with everything I had, letting my own furious war cry erupt from my lungs. She fell away with an angry scream that was torn away by wind, and I watched with a strange fascination as the monster—with one bloody stump flailing through the hole in her cage—disappeared into the churning water.
Petra’s remaining hand, claws still anchored in the wood, remained, even as the motion of the ship nearly sent me over the railing with her.
I didn’t want to touch them.
But what if that was all the shadow needed? What if a single monster hand was enough for the magic in this realm to bring her back?
I braced with one arm and pried the sharp claws loose with the curved blade. The ship dipped and rolled mercilessly as I worked, like a wild horse trying to buck me off. Wet wind yanked at everything. My hair, my clothes, my courage.
When I finally tossed Petra’s severed hand into the water, I only had the space of a breath to revel in that minor victory before another crushing wave hit. My feet slipped. Every inch of me was soaked to the bone.
I abandoned the blade and used both of my arms to clutch the railing, but my grip on the slick wood was failing.
“Come on!” I yelled.
Whether I was yelling at myself or the storm or the universe, I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe all three, but it was the storm that answered. It gave me a three-second reprieve from the violent rocking as a dark wave the size of a ten-story office building climbed into the sky.
We’re so fucked. So, so fucked.
Something hard slammed into me from behind, knocking the air from my chest. The next thing I knew, I was on the deck, pinned between that immovable stone and the thick wooden balusters, as a crushing wall of water dealt a punishing blow.
The ship cracked and groaned under the assault.
Then another wave hit. And another. And another.
33
HOOK
In all my time in the Nassa, I’d never seen a storm like the one in the eddy. There’d been plenty of thunderstorms and rough seas, but nothing I could remember compared to the onslaught that accompanied sending the demon to its watery grave.
I’d held Never against the uprights with my body for what had felt like hours, both of us holding on for all we were worth as the storm did its damnedest to take us out.
And all I could think about through it all was what would happen to her if the waves won.
Every tortured scenario I imagined, while wind and rain and saltwater battered everything I cared about, tightened the noose around my heart.
I was inclined to say luck was the only thing that kept the ship from going down, but I knew better. For a storm like that to crop up when it did, where it did? It wasn’t a coincidence. I might not know exactly what it meant, but I wasn’t foolish enough to dismiss it.
That knowledge hung over me as we dragged ourselves up off the deck. As my men and I inspected the damage to the ship. As Never and I ate a late dinner with Leo and the others. And when we fell into each other’s arms hours later. It followed me everywhere, even into the tumultuous dreams that plagued my sleep.
None of those haunted dreams were about Petra. The creature wasn’t dead. At least, not in the way mortals died. But she was, for all intents and purposes, gone.
Finally.
