An End of Night (A Shade of Vampire #16)(11)

Now we had both Kiev and Mona beneath the water. If we left, it would be relatively easy for Mona to locate us, but what if Kiev didn’t manage to find Mona and surfaced looking for us? How would he find us again?

“Over there,” Aiden whispered, horror in his eyes.

I followed the direction he was pointing toward and gasped. Through a thick film of sea spray, I could make out dozens of merfolk—male and female—seated atop the same giant seahorses as the one I had seen earlier and carrying long, razor-sharp spears. They shot out of the water, reaching high into the sky—high enough to see above the islets. If I had thought the previous screech was loud, now the noise had intensified tenfold. They all screeched at once, racing toward us at an alarming speed.

My father had seconds to decide what we were to do. Stay here and try to head them off, or flee and risk Kiev being lost.

“Ibrahim. Corrine. Put up a shield. Now!”

Caleb caught my hand and pulled me farther toward the center as the warlock and witch secured the islet.

Sweat was dripping from Corrine’s forehead. “Neither Ibrahim nor I have encountered creatures like this before,” she said. “We have to hope our shield will keep them out.”

We all backed close to each other in the center of the rocks, watching as the creatures came within thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet…

We braced ourselves as they shot straight toward our islet. Ten soared through the air on their fierce-looking seahorses, but to my relief, they hit against the barrier and slid back into the ocean. My father walked closer to the barrier as more began hitting up against it. The merpeople let out angry hisses, revealing long snakelike tongues. Matteo approached behind my father.

“We are not here to harm you,” Matteo said. “We have come to ask some simple questions and then we will leave.”

I wondered if the merpeople could even understand what Matteo was saying. They continued to hiss and glare up at us as they bobbed in the waves.

The three closest to the front exchanged glances. The looks on their faces told me that they were open to anything but to talking now.

My heart pounded as several of them leapt up toward us again, their spears aimed directly at the barrier. I took a step back involuntarily. Thankfully, the barrier held up, or a number of us would have likely found ourselves with holes through our chests.

They slipped back down, and then to my surprise, dipped beneath the waves and disappeared.

I hadn’t been expecting them to disappear so quickly. From the look on everyone’s faces, nobody had been. But the fact that we knew for sure that so many were now in this area—so close to where Mona and Kiev had disappeared—was worrying. Especially if they caught Kiev on his own. He only had one arm.

“What now?” I asked.

“We wait some more,” my father replied. “We shouldn’t leave the spot now until they have returned.”

I hated to voice such a question, but I couldn’t help myself. “What if they don’t return?”

My father shot me a sharp glance. “Let’s just take this one hour at a time.”

I was about to take a seat back down on the rocks when a chilling sight arrested me. A wave was rolling toward us in the distance. A towering, monstrous wave.

“What the—”

My spine tingled as it seemed to be picking up speed, now only three islets away from us.

“Uh, Corrine,” my mother said, her voice trembling, “This barrier should be strong enough to withstand water, right?”

Corrine and Ibrahim’s mouths hung open as they stared at the wall of water.

“Water, yes…. B-But that?” Corrine gasped as she pointed toward the base of the wave.

Now that it was nearer, I realized what she had spotted. The base of the wave was oddly discolored compared to the rest. There was a dark brown shadow.

“Oh my God,” I rasped. “It’s a… creature.”

Barely had I said the words when a set of jagged jaws the diameter of eight grown men poked through the wall of water, followed by two slanted pitch-black eyes. A spiky fin ran from the top of its head down along its spine and stopped at the end of its gargantuan tail. The only way I could think to describe it was as some kind of prehistoric sea monster. Or Frankenstein’s piranha.

Hurtling straight toward us, it smashed headfirst into the rocks. There was a deafening crack as the base of the islet shattered beneath the sheer force of the monstrous creature. The ground beneath us disintegrated, the ocean gushing up and consuming us. Sucked down into the water, I feared that the suction of the sinking islet would hold me under long after my lungs gave way. I splashed about, having no idea where Caleb was, or any of my family and friends. For all I knew, I could have been floating inches away from some kind of dreadful creature, perhaps the sea monster itself.

Relief washed over me as a strong warm hand gripped my arm. I didn’t need vision to know that it was my father. He pulled me upward until we reached the surface. I gasped for breath, wiping the water from my eyes.

“Where is everyone else?” I panted.

“We need to find them,” he said.

“There’s Corrine!” I pointed out at the sky to see a battered-looking Corrine hovering above us.

Before she could make it to us, a deep bellow rumbled through the water and vibrated through my insides. My father and I looked behind us in horror to see a mass of dark shadow beneath the water. An overwhelming suction pulled us downward and we were submerged once again in the ocean.