Marcus came down from the prow to give her a totally unnecessary hand with her equipment and a brief, secret smile that caused butterflies to flutter around inside her already unsettled stomach.
“We’re going out to the same spot as yesterday,” he said as the boat pulled away from the dock. “My father was really happy with the mackerel haul we brought in, so he’s going to see if they’re still around.”
The huge catch had made Beka happy, too, mostly because it meant that Kesh had done what she’d asked and stopped chasing the fish away from the Humans’ boats. She hoped he was feeling as benign after she’d made him leave last night. Still, she thought she’d made her point, and he was a reasonable man. It wasn’t as though he was actually interested in her; he and Marcus just had one of those competitive testosterone things going on.
She wasn’t sure if Marcus was actually interested either, but she was working hard at convincing herself that she didn’t care. Much.
As usual, she and Marcus put on their diving gear and lowered the dinghy into the water. The Wily Serpent moved off slowly, nets lowered to glide through the nearby seas in search of fish. Rather than try and make awkward conversation, she slid into the water right away, a few sample bags tucked into her belt pouch. Marcus gave her the thumbs-up and she dove down, although not nearly as far as she had been going.
So far, there was still no sign of an issue this close to the surface, other than the usual bits and pieces of flotsam that floated out from the shore or were dumped by careless boaters. That was good news for fishermen like Marcus, but it meant that the problem was almost certainly limited to the Selkie and Mer home trench, far below.
This baffled her, since the mystical creatures were normally excellent custodians of their watery realm; it was literally their entire world, and there was no other for them to go to. Not that this stopped Humans from destroying their own environment, but sea beings had a close connection to the ocean they lived in, and generally treated it with respect and care.
Beka swam lazily back up toward the dinghy, wondering if it was possible that one of the court wizards could have done some sort of magical working that had gone wrong, and then been afraid to confess it to his or her ruler. She wasn’t looking forward to broaching the question with either the King of the Selkies or the Queen of the Merpeople, but it was worth looking into.
Despite the rich oxygen mix in her tanks, even this brief dive had left Beka feeling tired and short of breath. Maybe she would risk the potentially unsettled atmosphere, stuck in a tiny boat with Marcus, and give herself a break. Or even let him take a turn diving instead, although he’d be doing it for fun, not to try and keep an impossible promise and save an entire supernatural homeland.
A huge shadow blocked out the light from the surface for a moment, and she glanced up to see if she’d misjudged the location of the dinghy. What she saw sent adrenaline rushing through her veins and made her heart skip a beat as she grabbed for the knife she always wore in a waterproof sheath strapped to her calf.
Above her, a great white shark circled, its belly only six feet from the top of her head, its massive body between her and the surface.
SIXTEEN
THE SHARK SWAM through the currents, its vast maw open as if tasting the water for hints of something edible. Beka desperately hoped it would find something other than her and swim away.
It didn’t.
Instead, it turned its blunt, bullet-shaped snout in her direction, revealing multiple rows of sharply serrated teeth. Beka froze, knife in hand, trying to estimate her chances of getting past the beast to the surface without being noticed. Considering that it was at least twenty feet long and had the ability to sense electromagnetic fields as well as movement, she didn’t count the odds as being in her favor.
A brief, regretful thought of Marcus and what might have been flashed through her mind, and then she focused all her attention on trying to stay alive.
The shark circled, closing in on her in an ever-tightening loop. Beka gripped the knife so hard her fingers ached, the sound of her own breathing reverberating loudly through the regulator in her mouth. She had to force herself to take slow, calm breaths; panicking underwater would get her killed with or without the shark’s assistance.
Something about its behavior struck her as odd; sharks usually came up on their prey fast, attacking from below. Despite what you saw in the movies, they didn’t usually lurk about, looming ominously. Maybe this one hadn’t read the rule books, because it was doing a damned good job of doing just that.
For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of an impossible oddity—a thin golden chain around its massive neck. And then it attacked and she stopped thinking and just reacted.