Monstrum (21 page)

“Amazing,” agrees Captain Romero, raising a fizzing champagne flute to the chimera before sipping appreciatively. “One of God's most spectacular creatures, without question.”

Revolted, I watch this obscene beast, thinking that if God put these three animals together to create this perfect killing machine, he defiled all of them in the process.

Bang-bang-BANG.

“Hey!” I cry, backing a couple of steps away from the tank. “Is anyone besides me worried about this thing cracking the glass and escaping—which it's clearly trying to do?”

“Impossible,” says Captain Romero. “This glass is not ordinary glass. It is a state-of-the-art polymer with reinforced—”

BANG-BANG-BANG.

The rest of the gang is now also backing up. “Anything can be broken, man,” Murphy says. “I don't know what they taught you in those Spanish schools of yours, but I'm from Belfast, born and bred, and I know my history, even if you don't. Ever hear of a ship called
Titanic
? Well, it was built in Belfast. People said it was unsinkable, and we all know how that turned out.”

“I think you will agree,” Captain Romero says, not bothering to hide the trace of amusement in his voice, “that technology has advanced somewhat in the last hundred years, yes, Mr. Murphy?”

Murphy, typically, doesn't back down an inch. “A little humility wouldn't go amiss is what I'm saying to you.”

Captain Romero tips his head back and cuts loose with a booming laugh as appropriate as a dance contest at a funeral mass. I stare at him, appalled. No one else seems to be in a laughing mood, either, I notice. Murphy glowers; Gray and Carter shake their heads and mutter to each other; Cortés snorts derisively.

These reactions all go unnoticed by Captain Romero, who seems to have the tact of a walrus. “Dr. Baer and I will leave the humility to lesser men, won't we, Doctor?”

“Ah,” Dr. Baer mumbles, snatching his glasses off his beet-red face and polishing them with a hankie. “Well. . .”

Maggie, bless her sweet heart, gets us back on track with a well-placed question. “What does it eat?” she asks quickly.

“We're not sure,” Dr. Baer admits. “She's a carnivore, of course. We can tell that by the teeth.”

“And the stench,” Gray mutters, pinching his nostrils together. “The thing smells like they filled a dumpster with dead fish and then stored it at the cat house at the zoo. Pure moldering funk.”

Dr. Baer colors as though someone has accused him of neglecting his antiperspirant. “Well, yes,” he says. “When you have a carnivore, you get an odor. That's a nature rule. No way around it.” He chuckles at his little joke.

No one else cracks a smile.

“A-hem.” Clearing his throat, Dr. Baer continues with his chimera fun facts like he's in the final round of a game show. “Where was I?”

“It's a carnivore,” Captain Romero prompts.

“Yes, but we don't know what she eats. So we're giving her something from the diets of each of her constituent creatures, and then we'll see what she prefers.”

“What about people?” Cortés asks, brows lowered. “It seems to be fond of people. Who's on the menu now that Juan's dead? Do we have any volunteers willing to sacrifice themselves if we need to whip up a batch of chimera chum?”

Absolute silence falls, except for Espi, who ducks her head and sniffles while the rest of us exchange dread-filled
uh-oh
looks.

Captain Romero, who was about to take another sip of champagne, stops, flute suspended in midair, and turns his glacial face in his son's direction. “Silence from you,” he says after an excruciating pause, setting his flute back on the tray with a clink.

Cortés doesn't bother to so much as glance at his father. “What about its behavior, Doc?” he continues, leaning against a wall and crossing his legs at the ankles. “Do we know what it likes to do in its free time? What sets it off? What kind of behaviors we should expect from it when it gets tired of trying to escape from its tank? Or what about this: is it more orca, more octopus, or more crab? Any answers?”

“Cortés,” says Dr. Baer.

Cortés steps away from the wall, his face darkening and his voice rising. “Because I'm thinking those seem like important questions someone should have asked before you Einsteins brought this thing on board a ship filled with kids in the middle of a hurricane!”

“Cortés.” Captain Romero's voice remains low and calm, but there's no missing the warning, his flaring nostrils, or the way his full lips have thinned to near invisibility. “I do not want to lose my temper, and now is not the time for discipline—”

“Just sayin'.” Cortés finally looks at his father, and his mouth twists into something that's half sneer, half crooked smile, and all taunt.

Captain Romero's face goes utterly still, except for a thick vein that grooves down his forehead and begins to pulse in time to a muscle in the back of his jaw. Moving with slow deliberation, he takes a step toward Cortés, twisting the signet ring on his finger as he goes.

“It's okay, Diego,” Dr. Baer interjects quickly, waving a conciliatory hand. “I don't mind the questions.”

Captain Romero pauses and watches his son as though daring him to say one more thing, even if it's only to ask for a cup of water. His fingers work absently, and I find myself distracted by the flash of that thick gold band.

Dr. Baer turns back to Cortés, who seems perfectly willing to trade badass glares with his father. “You're right, Cortés. We don't know any of that, which is why this is such a crucial capture. Because now we can take her in and research her.” He points to the tank, where the chimera has now lowered the rock and focused its restless energy on the humans in the room. Its bizarre black and white head pans left and right, watching all of us. “This is an important specimen. Think how studying her will advance our field of knowledge. This is a turning point, the same as the discovery of dinosaurs.”

“Not quite the same,” Cortés says mildly. “Dino skeletons don't try to kill the paleontologists that dig them up. Do they?”

“Silence, you disrespectful little punk!” Captain Romero roars.

With the reflexes of a pouncing cheetah, he launches himself the remaining few feet to Cortés. For one arrested second, the rest of us watch as he knocks Cortés against the tank's wall, thunking his head hard enough to stun him and make him yell with pain. But by the time he latches his long fingers around Cortés's throat, several of us are in motion. Gray, Carter, Murphy, Axel and Mike, all red-faced and shouting, pile on and try to separate the two.

I'm spurred by Cortés's glazed expression and sagging body, neither of which seem to be stopping his father from throttling him. But I have something more pointed in mind than trying to yank father and son apart.

Actually, that's not true; no real thought is involved.

I just reach for the champagne bottle, give it one vicious whack against the metal stool, creating a spectacularly loud and messy explosion of broken glass and fizzing liquid, and, dodging flailing male arms, thrust it in the direction of Captain Romero's left eye.

All action stops.

Several voices cry out. “Bria!”

I barely hear them; this is between Captain Romero and me now. His eyes widen with a gratifying new respect as he stares down the length of the jagged bottle and into my face, waiting.

Rage makes my voice shake, but years of fencing keep my arm steady and my aim true, even when Cortés begins to wheeze, choking.

“Let him go,” I say.

A cold, speculative smile turns up one edge of Captain Romero's mouth, and he doesn't let go. His grip tightens until Cortés emits these terrible gurgling sounds that make me want to scream with an entirely different kind of fear than I feel with the chimera.

I don't hesitate. I widen my aggressive stance and lean forward until the only thing separating my deadly weapon from Captain Romero's cornea is his black fringe of eyelashes.

“Now,” I warn.

Captain Romero blinks and releases Cortés's neck, backing away. Carter shoves him out of the way and everyone converges on Cortés to make sure he's okay, but not before I lock gazes with Captain Romero for a millisecond.

I see all I need to know in Captain Romero's frigid, empty expression.

I've just made a dangerous enemy. He'll never forget this insult, or that a teenage girl made him back down and lose face.

The sound of Cortés hacking yanks me back to earth. I lower the bottle and drop it to the floor, where the pitching ship causes it to roll into a corner. I try not to notice how badly my limbs have begun to shake. Gray, Carter and Murphy now have Captain Romero backed into the wall and are yelling at him, jabbing fingers in his impassive face, while Dr. Baer hovers and tries to pull them back.

The other kids, meanwhile, are still surrounding Cortés, who is bent at the waist, hands resting on his thighs, trying to catch his breath. As his coughing tapers off, he raises his blue-tinged face.

Through the jostling crowd of bodies standing between us, our eyes connect. His colorless lips turn up in the beginnings of a smile.

Relief surges through me in a wave so dizzying that I have to turn away and work on my own breath.

“Why, my son?” Captain Romero brushes past Gray, Carter and Murphy, all of whom keep a wary eye on him, and approaches Cortés, palms out. His shoulders are slumped, his face is distraught and, honest to God, tears sparkle like crystals in his brown eyes. “Why don't you listen when I ask you to be more respectful? Why must you force me to discipline you so harshly?”

“Discipline?”
Murphy shouts before Cortés can say anything. “You were choking your own son to death, man! Now I'm wondering exactly how many monsters it is we're harboring on this ship! You'll not touch the boy again, do you hear me?”

“I can speak for myself, Murphy. Thanks,” Cortés says.

He now has livid purple bruises appearing around his neck, and his voice sounds like it's been fed through a meat grinder. Even so, he straightens as he faces his father, squaring his shoulders and speaking with a new authority, as though what he just endured has propelled him that final step out of childhood and into manhood.

“Look at me
,
Papi,
” Cortés orders.

Captain Romero had lapsed into a round of silent, shoulder-heaving sobs, but now he raises his head to face Cortés. A tear traces down his left cheek.

The rest of us watch, motionless.

“I'm not an awestruck eight-year-old anymore,” Cortés says quietly. “I'm not that scared fifteen-year-old who was so desperate to earn his daddy's love that he put up with his daddy's abuse.” He pauses to clear his throat and fend off a renewed bout of coughing. “That was the last time. If you raise a hand to me, ever again, I'll kill you.”

Captain Romero's face contorts into a passable approximation of a heartbroken father. “I love you, my son.”

“I. Will. Kill. You,” Cortés repeats.

Dr. Baer steps forward. “I think we all need to take a deep breath and—”

“Oh, my God,” Espi cries suddenly, pointing at the tank. “What's that? What's it doing?”

We all swing around and stare at the chimera.

It's right there on the side of the tank closest to us now, attached to the glass by seven of its tentacles, which are suctioned on in what looks like an unbreakable grip. The eighth tentacle swings lazily over its head, waving back and forth as though it's greeting old friends it's bumped into at the beach.

The tip of that eighth tentacle is wrapped around something gold and shiny, and I have to do a bewildered double-take to figure out what the object is.

Cold realization finally sets in.

“It's a watch!” Espi shrieks, outraged. “That's Mami's Rolex!”

It sure is.

My racing thoughts stumble along, trying in vain to keep up. Why does it have the watch? Has it been in its tentacle this whole time, or does it have some secret storage compartment inside its shell?

Is it . . . is it
taunting
Espi with the watch?

If so, it's working.

“You killed her, you monster!” Lapsing into full screaming hysteria again, all but convulsing with her sobs, Espi pounds the glass with her palms and fists. “You put her watch down! Don't you touch it! Don't you—”

Everyone surrounds Espi, trying to pull her back from the glass and calm her down, but my attention is riveted elsewhere. Forgetting Dr. Baer's stern warning, I look straight at the chimera—into its eyes.

Just as it looks straight at me and stares into mine.

Its eyes are close together.

Enormous.

Black.

Unfathomable.

Hypnotic.