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Aggression overwhelmed her curious impulses. Her body turned a deep purplish color. Joining her brethren, she hurtled into the being before her, enveloping its head in her arms and pulling her body down tightly against it so her beak could find flesh.

The writhing mass of predators and prey drifted ever more gracefully downward in slow ballroom spirals as the prey ceased to struggle. Farther and farther from the surface, their courtship took them deep into the blackness as the shoal fed.

 

 

The excited screams of the swimmers gradually died down.

It was a relief. For a few minutes, the drunken group in the water below had really made a ruckus that Captain Dawkins had been able to hear even over the loud music blaring through the yacht’s speaker system. In that sort of chaos, people might get hurt. Now the dance music was all he could hear.

He reached for the switch on the dash. He hesitated, knowing all too well that he was probably going to see an embarrassing scene in the water next to the yacht. If it was quiet, the horny young men in the water were almost certainly clinging to the mostly naked women in the water with them, kissing and groping and more.

Dawkins pondered his job security a moment longer, then swore. He couldn’t leave the lights off any longer. He had already been irresponsible to allow Flynt to have his way this long. If the young actor was upset, he’d deal with him tomorrow when he was sober. The kid was usually apologetic on the morning after, if he’d gone too far.

Dawkins fully expected to see one of several possible scenes when the lights again pierced the dark water. One involved pairs of lovers clinging to the sides of the boat; another was composed of a full-on orgy in the water next to it. Less likely, but also quite possible, they would just be treading water and talking quietly. Yet as the bright hull lights revealed the ocean along the sides of the yacht, he was totally unprepared for what he saw.

Dawkins jumped to his feet and stared at the clearly lit water around the boat.

They were all gone.

Surely this was some sort of trick. The captain hurried to the railing and followed it down the length of the yacht to the tip of the bow, then back down the far side, scanning the clear blue water from near the vessel to as far out as his eyes could see in the dark night. Nothing.

Except there
was
something—some sort of dark cloud in the water, slowly dissipating as he watched. Blood? A moment later, the dark spot was gone. Maybe he was seeing things.

Dawkins stopped near the staircase leading to the stern and stood motionless for several moments, unsure of what to do. They couldn’t all be gone. It wasn’t possible. It had only been a few minutes. The lights had only been off for a few minutes. The boat hadn’t even drifted. Dawkins squinted past the reach of the lights at the darkened sea surface. Even in this almost moonless night, however, he knew he should be able to see the group on the surface if they were within a few hundred yards. It was some sort of trick. He shook his head, then rushed down the staircase to the stern.

“Fernando, turn off the music! Now, goddammit!”

The handsome Latino bartender looked at him with a puzzled expression, then wiped his hands dry on his vest and turned a knob on the wall behind him. The music died. After a few seconds, the loud chatter around the men died down as well.

“What’s up, man? Get the tunes back on!” A stocky young man with spiked blond hair, mixed drink in hand, was looking at Dawkins.

“You, son. What the hell is going on here? Where did they go?”

“Where did who go?” The kid was in a drunken stupor, looking as though he might pass out on his feet. A large tattoo covered one of his pectoral muscles and one shoulder.

“The swimmers, you idiot!” Dawkins grabbed the man roughly by the shoulders, pulling his face close. “Your friends in the water! This isn’t funny. Are they hiding somewhere?” They must have reboarded. They were playing some sort of game, with the captain the sole victim of their joke.

“Who you callin’ an idiot, grandpa?”

Dawkins shoved him aside and raced inside the yacht. He stormed through each room, smashing in one locked door to find a couple having sex, but there were only a few others belowdecks. He knew this boat well. There was no hidden location where more than a few people could conceal themselves. He returned to the helm on the upper deck, huffing as he felt the extra pounds he’d put on over the past few years. He reached into the storage cabinets underneath the dash, withdrew a spotlight, and plugged it into the console.

Breathing hard, he swept the beam of light across the surface of the ocean. As his search began to come full-circle back to the starboard side, he felt sick to his stomach. Nobody. Nothing. Bobby and the other kids were no longer there. They weren’t anywhere.

They were simply gone.

V
alerie Martell accepted the bearded yacht captain’s hand as he helped her board his vessel. She jumped lightly from the gunwale of the law enforcement boat down onto the transom. It was a beautiful, sunny morning just off Catalina Island, with gentle seas and a cool westerly breeze.

The middle-aged captain looked weary and discouraged, which didn’t surprise Val. Joe had told her the man had lost an estimated sixteen passengers last night when the missing group had gone swimming in the open ocean. Joe jumped down onto the transom after Val, followed by a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff named Bailey and one of his crime technicians, and the police boat pulled away from the yacht to idle on the waves nearby.

Joe had called Val on her cell early in the morning to tell her about the missing kids. She’d spent the previous night at a hotel in Costa Mesa, south of Los Angeles, where she’d stayed up late trying to decide if she should head back to Mexico.

Because so many of the yacht’s passengers had gone missing—and, according to witnesses, in very rapid fashion, apparently in a matter of minutes—Joe had followed a hunch that they might be dealing with another incident related to the shoal. He had called Val and asked her to come along.

“Captain, I’m Valerie Martell.”

The captain took his hat off to shake her hand, resting it on the pressed white shirt covering his full belly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am. Leonard Dawkins. I’m the captain of
Night Flight
. Are you a police officer?”

“I’m a marine scientist.”

He frowned. “Why are you here?”

“She’s helping us with an ongoing investigation.” Joe stepped up to shake his hand. “I’m Joe Montoya, a sergeant with the San Diego County sheriff. Can we go sit somewhere to talk? We’ll want to interview each of the passengers in turn, but we’d like to start by talking to you.”

“San Diego County? But I would think that—”

“I know it may seem unusual to have the two of us here with the local authorities. We’ll explain in a bit.”

“I understand. Fernando, can you please bring our guests some coffee? We’ll be in the dining room.”

After Deputy Bailey and his technician had introduced themselves to Captain Dawkins, he led them all to a beautifully crafted dining area belowdecks, complete with hand-carved cherrywood trim and paneling. The passengers sleeping or sitting bleary-eyed in the room were escorted out, and the group sat down at the solid cherrywood table. After the police officers took out notebooks and a tape recorder, the L.A. deputy, who sported an old-time pencil-thin mustache and a crew cut, started in on a basic series of questions about the previous night’s events, all directed at the captain: “Full name?” “Are you the regular captain of this vessel?” “What were you all doing here last night?” “Who was on board when you left shore?”

After determining the basic scenario of the previous night, the sheriff’s deputy asked tougher questions. He asked the captain to explain his relationship with the missing yacht owner, to detail the situation at hand. The captain’s story was brief, and rather puzzling, Val had to admit. It didn’t seem possible for every one of those kids to go missing as fast as he claimed they had, in calm seas. Off the top of her head, she couldn’t really think of any plausible explanation for the disappearance of so many.

“Have you searched for them in the daylight today?” the deputy asked.

“No. I did as your dispatcher instructed, and remained here. We’re at approximately the same location as we were last night. You have vessels out searching for them, though, don’t you? The water isn’t that cold, and if we find them soon enough . . .”

“Of course, captain. The Coast Guard has two boats in the area right now, and officers in Avalon have been dispatched to search the coastline. We’ll let you know as soon as we learn anything.”

“I know what I’ve told you may seem impossible, but ask the others—they’ll tell you the same. Many of them were drinking heavily . . . or otherwise not in their right minds. These kids today, you know how they are. But Fernando was sober. He’s my first mate and handles bartending and other duties. He’ll corroborate my story.”

“We’ll be sure to get his statement, Captain. Now, was this a usual practice? To allow your passengers to swim in the open ocean at night?”

“Of course not.” The captain’s face turned red. “You have to understand the vessel’s owner, Bobby Flynt. He’s a young actor. You’ve probably heard of him? He did that big vampire film that came out last year. Well, he often wants to do things that I disagree with, but as my employer . . .”

“Go on.”

Val felt the tension as the lawmen stared at the heavyset captain, waiting for more. She felt a sudden urge to leave. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Is there a head nearby, Captain?”

“Sure. The second door on the right.”

“Thank you.”

Val walked off, grateful to leave the others to the interrogation. She wasn’t sure how she was going to help in this process. The poor old skipper was already having the worst day of his life.

Even for a yacht, the washroom was enormous, with fixtures much nicer than Val had in her bathroom at home in Monterey. After washing her hands, she shut off the decorative chrome faucet and dried her hands. As she opened the door to leave, she thought she heard a muffled sob. She paused in the doorway for a moment, listening to the men talking in the dining room.
There.
She heard it again, behind her. She turned back into the bathroom and slowly pulled aside the striped shower curtain.

Hiding behind the curtain in the large tub was a beautiful, deeply tanned young woman, almost completely naked. She was curled into a fetal position, her head turned to the wall away from Val. Long, damp hair covered her face.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

The woman shuddered and pulled her arms tighter around her folded legs. Val reached down and touched the woman’s hair lightly. Without warning, she let out a terrible scream and swung her fist awkwardly at Val’s hand. Val jumped backward and stumbled against the toilet.

An instant later, Joe burst through the doorway. Val noticed that his hand rested on the pistol at his belt. The L.A. deputy sheriff ’s head appeared over his shoulder. Both men took on concerned expressions when they saw the girl in the tub.

 

 

After wrapping a towel around the young woman and offering her much gentle coaxing, Joe and the others managed to persuade her to leave the tub and join the group in the main cabin. The girl was handed a warm cup of tea. Then the questions started. As when talking to the captain, they got her name, her profession (unemployed, from the Valley), and her age (twenty), before moving on to the big questions.

“So tell us what happened last night,” Bailey said.

She paused, then looked right at Val as she answered. “They took them.”

“Who took them?”

“I don’t know. These
things.
They pulled them underwater, and they never came back.”

She told her story in a quiet, wavering voice. Val suspected the cops from L.A. were simply writing off her strange story as the effects of hallucinogenic drugs. But to Val, whose stomach sank further as the girl’s story unfolded, it was all too clear. Despite everything Val thought she had known about Humboldt squid, she quickly became certain that they were dealing with another attack.

Val could tell Joe realized as much from the looks he gave her as the statuesque brunette described what had happened. How when they had gone swimming the previous night, vaguely glowing shapes had suddenly materialized in the water beneath them after the hull lights had gone out. Her story didn’t flesh out many details, as she had understandably gone into a full panic upon seeing the faces of the people around her disappear under the waves, one by one, their arms violently thrashing at the water as they went under. Yet Val knew of only one thing that could be responsible.

Apparently, the girl had somehow gone untouched in the frenzy and, finding herself near the transom, lunged back onto the boat and rushed unnoticed past the drunken dancers into the safety of the cabin. They couldn’t be certain, because the poor girl couldn’t remember anything after the terrifying scene in the water.

When they finished with her, they allowed her to lie down and rest while they spoke with the remaining passengers. By the time they had finished speaking to everyone at the end of the day, only the girl’s story offered any clues to the disappearance. All the other kids had been too busy partying.

One thing that everybody sober enough to remember agreed on was that the hull lights had been off only for a few minutes. The group in the water had disappeared very quickly.

Late in the afternoon, Deputy Bailey stood on the top of the yacht with Val. Joe was also there, making some notes in a small pad, but the crime tech and the other passengers were belowdecks.

“I don’t know, doctor,” the deputy said. “A vague description of some underwater lights sure doesn’t single out these squid as the explanation for what we’re dealing with here.”

“I don’t know, either. But have you got a better explanation ? The Coast Guard still hasn’t found any survivors, have they?”

“No word yet.”

“If we could get my scuba gear, maybe I could dive down here, look for evidence—”

“Ma’am, you’ve already done enough. And nobody’s going into the water, especially if our current theory is that a pack of squid is in the area killing people. I’m going to get this boat in to shore now. These people have been through enough.” The deputy walked aft, leaving Val and Joe alone.

“Val, how long can you stay here in Southern California ?” Joe looked tired.

“Well, I’ve already been here for over two weeks. I hadn’t really set a return date, though.”

“I was hoping you might stick around. We might need more help with this.”

“I can probably stay for another week, but at some point I need to get back to my research. It’s what pays the bills.”

“I understand. Any help you can provide would be appreciated. Hey, Val—what happened with you and Sturman, anyway? He never returned my phone calls, either.”

“I don’t know, Joe.” Val looked toward the emerald-green mountains rising on the south end of the scrubby island, backlit by the late-afternoon sun. “I wish I did.”