Deeper (16 page)

Something in
the water with him let out a deep bleating honk and I let go of Belle and ran
for the portside ladder where I heard Charlie's voice.
 
I got there just in time to watch Charlie go
under, his face locked in a gasp of surprise or pain; I couldn't tell which.
 
His arms were wrapped around something that
was fighting back, something that thrashed and bucked against the net wrapped
around it.

"Jesus
Christ on a bike!
 
What the hell did you
catch?"
 
I stepped onto the ladder,
hanging on tightly with my left arm as Charlie came back up and rammed whatever
he was fighting with against the side of the
Isabella
.
 
It let out another
deep croaking noise and then sat still, pressed by his weight against the side
of my yacht.

By the time I
was low enough to offer a hand, Charlie had help.
 
Diana was there, one of the harpoon guns held
in her hand, the point of the business end pressed against the thing they were
struggling with.
 
Whatever it was, it
seemed to know that the weapon was deadly and it stopped throwing itself
around.

I reached down
and caught a portion of the netting.
 
I
felt the rough sandpapery skin of the thing they held and pulled the net
tightly toward me.
 
Charlie lifted from
below and both of us were grunting with effort as I started back up the ladder
and Charlie climbed after his prize, both hands holding onto the net where
whatever it was gasped out breaths and shivered.

In the water
below Charlie I saw the rest of the diving team as they bobbed up to the
surface and started swimming toward the yacht.
 
I think most of them would have been babbling but they all still had
their regulators in place.

As soon as it
was out of the water completely, Charlie's catch started throwing itself around
violently from side to side.
 
I hauled on
it faster as my right arm was sent all over the place.
 
The damned thing was strong and it was pissed
off.

I had a moment
where I was pretty sure I was going to come off the ladder and hit the water
below and I probably would have, but Jacob Parsons was there and he grabbed my
shoulder and my belt and started hauling me back.
 
It made it much easier for me to keep a hold
on Charlie's prize.
 
With Jacob's help I
was back on the deck in short order and hauling the wiggling package of net and
fish onto the yacht proper.

I let it go
around the same time the thing inside the net tried to bite me with a mouthful
of some nasty-looking teeth.
 
I heard the
sound of the teeth snapping together and felt the vibrations from it near my
hand.
 
I couldn't help but wonder what would
have been left of my fingers if I hadn't seen the motion.

Charlie climbed
to the top of the ladder, panting and dripping seawater.
 
His face was red from exertion, but he was
smiling about the nastiest smile I'd ever seen on him.

"I got
that sunuvabitch!
 
Yes!"
 
He kicked off his flippers and was halfway
out of his buoyancy control device before the next person came up the
ladder.
 
Diana put a stop to that when
she pressed the sharpened tip of the harpoon gun against the flesh near the
mouth of the thing.
 
It stopped
struggling and instead
laid
back, panting and gasping
for a good breath.
 
The heavy nylon cords
that made up the netting around it were strained, pushed against the grayish
flesh, but not cutting into the thing, despite all the struggling.
 
Most people would have at least had some
serious friction burns by then, but whatever Charlie had brought back with him
was apparently made of sterner stuff.

It was tangled
very thoroughly into the netting, and I could see at first like a fin
protruding from the webbing.
 
I looked
more carefully and realized it was a foot, complete with individual toes.

The thing
croaked again, a loud, rattling noise that shouldn't have been possible from a
human throat.
 
That, more than the teeth
that almost removed my fingers, made me realize it wasn't just a guy in a
costume.

Professor Ward
walked closer, peeling off his mask and regulator as he got toe where he could
get a clear view of the thing.
 
He had a
dozen different expressions trying to make
themselves
known on his face and none of them were very pretty.

I realized
right around that moment that I didn't know Ward.
 
Not at all, actually.
 
He was quiet when he was around me and I had
just taken that to mean I wasn't important in the scheme of things.
 
Hew as a professor on a mission and I was
someone who was working for him, nothing more and nothing less.

But the thing
Charlie and the others had caught?
 
Well,
that was a very different story.
 
He
looked at the writhing package on the ground with the same sort of obsession
that a religious fanatic would display when encountering the Holy Grail.

"This is
a great moment."
 
He spoke with that
sort of reverence, too.

"No, it's
a fish."
 
I couldn't resist giving
my personal editorial on the situation.

"A fish?"
 
Ward looked at me like I'd just taken a piss on the altar of his
preference.
 
"It's not a fish, you
moron!
 
It's a Deep One!"

I got in his
face.
 
I don't normally do that sort of
thing.
 
I usually just shrug and grin
when someone gets stupid with me, but today I was missing one of my crew and I
didn't feel very charitable to the idea of being called a moron by some stuffed
shirt with delusions of Nobel Prizes for Pomposity.

"Who are
you calling a moron, you little shit?"
 
I don't think he could have backpedaled faster if I'd pulled a knife and
set it against his crotch.

Charlie
stopped things from getting worse.
 
Several people actually came forward to help, but some of them would
have had to step over the thing between us and them and Charlie was just a
fraction faster.

"Calm
down, Joe.
 
He didn't mean it, did you,
Professor Ward?"
 
Charlie had that
purr going in his voice.
 
It was the same
tone he used to sweet-talk the ladies and the same tone I'd heard a few times
when he realized things were about to get ugly.

Here's the
thing; it's normally me talking Charlie down and I couldn’t for the life of me
figure out exactly why I was getting so completely pissed off about what was
basically a social screwup.
 
Believe me
when I say the opinions of people like Ward meant very little to me, because I
knew his kind.
 
He was only comfortable
when he was nose deep in a book.
 
He
probably hadn't meant to open his mouth at all, and I know he didn't intend to
insult me.
 
I've ignored much worse
insults without batting an eye, because it's my job to ignore rude
comments.
 
You don't get to stay in
business for long, especially when you run fishing trips for a living, if you
don't develop a thick hide.

But, damn it,
I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat right then and maybe break a few of
his ribs in addition.

I stepped back
and made myself calm down.
 
It wouldn't
do me any good to get into a fight with a man half my size.
 
As my grandfather used to say, five minutes
of satisfaction isn't worth six months in the local slammer.
 
Belle would never forgive me, and I didn't
want to come out of this looking like the bad guy.
 
So I closed my eyes, thought about the chunk
of money sitting in my savings account, and nodded my head.

"I'm
terribly sorry, Captain Joe..."
 
I
looked at Ward and he looked appropriately apologetic.

"No
problem.
 
I guess we're all a little edgy
today."
 
I put out my hand and
smiled a closed mouth little smile.
 
It
was the best I could do.
 
Charlie nodded
his head, glad that everything was calmer.

And the thing
in the net lunged, and snapped its teeth together on the edge of my shoe.
 
I know it wanted more, but all if got was the
tip of my loafer.
 
I felt its cold
breath
and felt the spray of moisture from its mouth as it
spat out the leather and tried again.
 
All of us backed off a little as it struggled and let out a roar that
shook the bones in my legs.

Ward looked
around like a deer in hunting season and stepped back even more as it shook and
growled and clawed at the netting.
 
Three
thick claws, each as long as the last two knuckles of my fingers, ripped
through the nylon rope and cut at the air.

Several people
made loud screaming noises.
 
I could
barely hear them over my own.
 
Despite
everything, I was still convinced it was just a strange-looking fish up until
that moment.
 
I've never in my life seen
a fish with an opposable thumb, and the thing in the net had at least one,
judging by the hand scratching at the deck.

"Charlie,
what the hell did you bring onto my boat?
"
I was
barely even aware of speaking.

Charlie
stepped forward and then thought better of doing anything.
 
His feet, minus the flippers, had only a thin
layer of canvas for protection.
 
Davey
wasn't worried about that.
 
Davey was a
fisherman first and a sailor second.
 
He
brought down his steel-toed boot and slammed it against the claw on the
deck.
 
The thing let out another roar and
started struggling, but I took the harpoon gun away from Diana and clubbed it a
few times in the head with the butt of the thing.
 
It stopped fighting as much and Charlie
looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"What?
 
It stopped, didn't it?"

"We want it
alive, Joe."

I looked at
Charlie for a few seconds and tried to read what was going on in his head.
 
Finally, I shrugged.
 
"So bind the damn thing up properly.
 
And you better figure out where you want to
keep it, because there isn't a fish tank on this rig."

I looked back
at the thing.
 
It was still there, still
breathing and unconscious and still mostly wrapped around itself inside the
netting.

I didn't like
it and I didn’t want it on my boat, but unless it gave me a reason, I'd
tolerate it being there.
 
Besides, it was
only for a few hours, right?
 
We'd be
back at Golden Cove in a little while and all would be well.

Damn shame how
things never work out the way we want them to, isn't it?

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The thing had
to go somewhere, and it would need water to survive.
 
Luckily for the people who wanted it intact,
there were three showers available for their use.
 
That might sound cruel, but it was all I
could think of.
 
Also, I noticed that it
was breathing outside of the water, so I had to guess it was an amphibian of
some kind.
 
Either that or it was taking
its own sweet time with the whole suffocating thing.

So it went
into a shower and stayed wrapped up inside its netting.
 
I watched the whole operation because — I
have to be blunt here — I didn't like the idea of the fucked-up thing on my
yacht.
 
Three separate ropes tied the
beast in place as far from the glass door of the shower as possible, anchoring
it to the showerhead and to the two handles for adjusting water flow.

I looked it
over carefully in the stark light of the bathroom and finally got a decent idea
of what it looked like.
 
In a word:
 
ugly.
 
The hide was a mottled, dark gray with lighter patches and an almost
white belly.
 
Even through the coarse
netting, I could see the face well enough:
 
it had wide, round eyes that were eclipsed by a prominent brow, a pair
of thin slits for a nose, and a mouth that drew downward the same way as a
barracuda's.
 
The shape of the head was
all wrong, longer than a human head should have been and set almost improperly
on a powerfully wide neck that sloped into equally brutal-looking
shoulders.
 
There were gills on either
side of that neck, running from directly below the mouth down to the bottom of
the skull.
 
You look enough fish and you
get familiar with the shapes that gills can take.
 
These reminded me most of a shark's:
 
streamlined and almost invisible if you
weren't looking for them.

The legs and
arms of the thing were disproportionate to the body.
 
They were longer than I would have expected
from a human shape, and all of them ended in a collection of lethal
weapons.
 
The claws I'd seen earlier were
attached to hands and feet that were also too long, with a heavy webbing of
skin between each digit that I was sure worked like a diver's flippers, only
with a lot more efficiency.