Leashing the Tempest
Page 11

“Go!” he shouted, herding me off the bridge.
As waves tossed the boat, we rushed down the stairs in the deluge, hardly able to stay on our feet or see the next step. My bare feet were numb with cold by the time we made it to the bottom and raced to the cabin. Jupe’s voice called out from inside. Lon wrenched open the door and we tumbled inside the darkened salon. Dim, gray light filtered in from the windows, sifting over the strewn contents of the cooler, sofa pillows, Kar Yee’s gold coat, and Lon’s camera bag.
“Jupe?” Lon shouted hoarsely.
Dark spiral curls popped up from behind the bar. “Dad!”
“Everyone okay?”
Kar Yee appeared behind him, holding up her cell phone for light. “Everyone except the captain and the boat. We moved him back here to keep him from rolling around. What happened out there?”
“Did we get hit by lightning?” Jupe asked before his gaze fell on my hair. “Cady—”
“I’m fine, and yes, we got hit.”
“Ohmygod,” he murmured, then glanced down. “Where are your shoes?”
“Melted,” I said, trying not to shiver. The boat rocked. I grabbed for Jupe to steady him.
“What about the Coast Guard?” Kar Yee asked.
Lon shook his head. “The radio upstairs is shot. We didn’t get a chance to use it.”
“Everyone check your phones and see if anyone can get a signal,” I suggested.
Nothing.
Jupe’s long arm extended and rotated as he moved his phone around, trying to get anything but a no service message onscreen. “Should we try outside?”
“Do not go outside,” Lon warned. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Okay, okay. So what do we do, then?”
“I suppose there’s not a second VHF radio around,” I said hopefully.
Lon wiped water from his face. “Should be another helm inside.”
“I don’t remember seeing it on the tour,” Jupe said.
“We’re at the back of the boat. Stands to reason that it’s past the kitchen.”
Lon was already heading for a closed door in that direction.
“Stay here,” I told Jupe anphotold Jud Kar Yee. “Watch the captain.”
The door Lon had spotted led into a hallway with a bathroom and crew quarters. One of the doors was different than the others: familiar sigils were carved into the wooden doorframe.
“Standard cloaking magick,” I said to Lon, who nodded, recognizing it as well. Unlike the exotic seal on the bridge above us, this was standard fare for medieval magicians, who used it to hide secret entrances, hoarded treasure, rooms filled with various and sundry debaucheries—whatever needed hiding.
The sigils were dead. Lightning must’ve overloaded all the magical work onboard. I slid open the door and found a small room with a built-in bed, stuffed chair, and narrow desk, over which several photos hung, including one of Captain Christie surrounded by busty bikini-clad women on the bridge of the Baba Yaga.
“Captain’s quarters.”
“The ward around the boat wasn’t enough?” Lon said, fingering the grooved sigils on the doorframe.
“He went to a lot of trouble to make himself a little bunker here.”
“Better than a state-of-the-art panic room.”
“Cheaper, too, if you know a good magician.”
He gave me a quick smile, then sniffled and rubbed his nose. “Wish Jupe could’ve asked him about all this instead of turning him into a vegetable.”
“Yeah, me too . . .”
Another door across the hall a few yards down opened to descending stairs. The scent of singed oil wafted up from below.
“Engine room,” Lon said, running his hand along the wall. “Look.”
Dark splotches with branching lines covered the paneling around a recessed light in the hallway. “Lightning went all the way down here? That’s not good.”
And it only got worse. The door at the end of the hall opened to the inner helm and a stronger, acrid burning smell. Curved windows provided gray light and a front row view of the storm raging outside on the bow of the yacht. Beneath those windows was a bigger console of equipment and two pilot seats. And the burn marks we’d seen in the hallway were here, too—just bigger.
“Fuses blown,” Lon said, looking at a panel on the wall. “Lightning must’ve overloaded the electrical system and caused a massive surge. Unbelievable.”
“Another VHF radio.” I picked up the handset and pressed the red emergency button several times in rapid succession—as if one lucky push would restart the system. “It’s dead, too.” Everything was dead. No lights on the gauges.
“We’re standing below the bridge,” Lon said, looking up. “You can see where the strike went through the ceiling, rode down the walls, and went through the floor. Christ. We’re lucky it didn’t set the whole boat on fire.”
I glanced out the window as Lon inspected the damage. The lightning and thunder had abated, but the storm was roaring. Waves crashed over the bow as the yacht pitched from side to side. But one of those waves, when, a waves, it receded, it left behind a dark shape on the deck.
I leaned toward the window, straining to see through the sheet of rain obscuring my view, and just for a split second I could’ve sworn the dark shape was . . . crawling.
Not sliding. Not shifting. Not floating.
Crawling. With legs or arms or . . .