Monstrum (23 page)

Taking Gray's hand, I let him pull me up and into his hard embrace, where the infusion of his strength is almost magical. Gray and I have always been there for each other, and we always will be—no stupid argument can change that. I linger against the warmth of his body, freshly scented with soap from his shower, for one weak second, and keep my eyes squeezed shut against the circle of devastated faces surrounding us.

“Esperanza Torres is not . . .” Murphy's voice is broken. Incredulous. I open my eyes to find him creeping toward the bed with an old man's hesitant gait, one hand outstretched and the other massaging his chest. “She's not—”

“What seems to be the problem in this cabin?” Captain Romero, followed closely by one of his officers, storms through the door, bringing his anger, flashing eyes and clipped voice with him. The air around us changes immediately, turning hostile and unforgiving. It's as though he's embodied the hurricane, swallowed it whole and now radiates its negativity through his pores. “Did I not tell you, Murphy, to keep these children under control? I'm far too busy to deal with this!”

This pompous speech is way more than I can take right now. Pushing myself away from Gray, and excruciatingly aware of Cortés's unfathomable gaze leveled at the two of us, I wheel around and point an accusing finger at the captain.

“It's your fault that thing killed her! We told you not to bring it on the ship, and now it's loose!”

“Impossible,” Captain Romero says flatly, taking a closer look at Espi's staring eyes. “How unfortunate. What's happened to the girl?”

“Her name is Espi!” I shout. “And I just told you! Your chimera killed her! And it's probably loose right now, roaming around your ship and searching for someone else's blood to suck!”

The captain gives me a disdainful look. “The chimera is safely in the tank, where it has been all night. Dr. Baer is with it. And at any rate, it does not suck blood. It is not a vampire.”

“We don't know what that thing can do!” Rising desperation—I knew he'd never believe me—keeps me loud and shrill. “You admitted it yourselves!”

“For God's sake, man, check,” Murphy says, recovering from his momentary shock. His cheeks are bright red again, a sure sign that he's regained his fighting spirit. “Until we figure out what's happened to the lass, at least send someone to check on the beast's whereabouts.”

Captain Romero's brows contract and his eyes narrow, but he waves a hand at his officer. The man nods and hurries out the door, which makes me feel better. Hopefully they'll put out a ship-wide APB or some such on the chimera, and it'll be recaptured before it can harm anyone else.

“Now,” the captain says. “Tell me what happened.”

I swipe at my wet eyes and struggle against my simmering emotions. “We got to the cabin. Espi complained about feeling tired. She was really cold and started slurring her words. Her breathing sounded terrible. Really labored. Right?”

I turn to Maggie and An for support, and they both nod quickly. “And she was pale,” An adds.

“There was no color in her face at all,” Maggie says.

“So then her breathing stopped, and I was trying to help her, and that's when I saw it,” I continue. “Her neck, I mean. Look.”

I hate displaying Espi's wound almost as much as I hate the way everyone crowds around and gawks at her, but there's no way out of it. Nor is there any way around the fact that, a mere five minutes after her death, she's been reduced to a scientific specimen, the same as a cadaver on a stainless steel table in any gross anatomy class.

“Here it is,” I say, pointing.

Captain Romero frowns down at the round mark, which is positioned exactly over her jugular vein like some obscene hickey.

We wait anxiously.

At last the captain looks up and shrugs. “It is a mark. So what? Any leech could have done it.”

My jaw hits the floor just as a round of angry muttering ripples through my circle of friends. “A
leech
? And it just--what? Decided to climb up the ladder and onto the boat?”

“It must have latched onto the girl when you went into the water,” the captain supplies easily. “It must have been there for hours.”

Murphy steps forward and jabs the captain's chest with a crinkled and arthritis-knotted index finger, to no discernible effect. “Now, listen, man,” he says. “I've coached Bria Hunter for years, and she's no liar, nor is she a hysteric. If she says the chimera killed Esperanza Torres, then you can take that to the bank.”

My gratitude for this fervent vote of confidence is short-lived.

“Is that so?” Captain Romero asks. There's a vague note of boredom in his voice now, and I find myself hating him harder than I've hated anything since the cancer that devoured Mona from the inside out. “And how can we be so sure? Did your precious Bria Hunter see the chimera prey on the poor girl? If so, she hasn't mentioned it.”

Everyone looks at me.

“I . . . didn't actually see it,” I confess reluctantly, my cheeks heating up. Several of my friends exchange uncertain glances, but I ignore any signs of doubt, including my own. “I heard it.”

Captain Romero crams two tons of derision into one raised eyebrow. “You
heard it
? What does that mean, precisely?”

I hitch up my chin and plow ahead, determined not to wither under this cross-examination. “I heard a wet, flopping sound, as though it had dropped off her bed after she was dead. And then I saw a trail of slime across the floor toward the door.”

We all automatically look down at the floor, but there's nothing to see. My heart sinks. “The trail probably got all messed up when everyone walked into the room. I know what I saw and heard, though.”

“Indeed,” Captain Romero says. “And what did your friends see and hear, pray tell?”

An ducks her head so she doesn't have to meet my gaze and shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Nothing,” she admits.

Maggie, whose ears are beet purple, is my last hope, but she also shakes her head. “I didn't see or hear anything, either.”
Sorry,
she mouths to me.

I nod at her, dejected.

Captain Romero presses his index finger to his lips and makes a show of looking thoughtful. “And was the door open or closed at the time of the chimera's alleged visit, I wonder?”

I hesitate because I know where this is going. “Closed.”

Captain Romero stares at me for several endless beats. I know better than to show him any weakness, but I have a hard time maintaining eye contact with him. His frigid stare is like an icicle stabbing me through the face, and it's not a stretch to imagine him choking me the way he choked his own son earlier.

“Of course,” he says finally, smirking, “we mustn't forget that the creature has long tentacles. Perhaps it used one to turn the knob as it came and went? Oh, but you missed that, didn't you, because you saw nothing at all.”

My mouth opens to begin my scathing response, but the wall phone beeps before I can say anything.

“One moment,” Captain Romero says, answering the phone with a sharp, “Yes,” and then listening for half a second.

I hold my breath. We all go absolutely still, waiting. Maggie rests her hand on my arm, and the soft pressure is reassuring.

Captain Romero hangs up and faces me again, his expression inscrutable. “Dr. Baer wants to see us. Immediately.”

“I knew it!” I cry, triumph making me a little reckless.

Without wondering whether the chimera might be waiting around the nearest corner to kill me in some gruesome new way, I wheel around and sprint for the tank cabin and Dr. Baer, who will surely believe my account of Espi's death.

A few muttered curses and thundering footsteps tell me that the group is bringing up the rear, but I focus on keeping my footing and gripping the waist-high rail as the ship's rolling sends me careening from one wall to the other. By the time I barge through the door and into the dim tank cabin, my lungs are ready to burst.

A couple of armed crewmen stand off to one side, forming an alert guard. Dr. Baer, who is sitting at a corner desk and typing something into his laptop, looks up as we stream in, but all my attention is focused on the bubbling blue waters and swaying plants inside the tank.

I stop short, panting and paralyzed with disbelief.

The chimera is in plain view, lying on the rocks at the bottom with its black and white head resting on its crossed claws and its tentacles wrapped around its shell and body like some bastardized version of a cat's tail. Its eyes are closed and it is, from all appearances, sleeping peacefully.

The only things missing from this touching little nocturnal scene are a teddy bear, fuzzy blankie and night-light.

“I don't believe it,” I say weakly, pressing a hand to my churning belly. I search the tank's glass with increasing desperation, looking for a crack, hole or other vulnerable area that could have allowed the thing to escape, but there's nothing. “It's not possible. It got out and then got back in again or something. It had to.”

My friends crowd around me to show their silent support, and I focus on them rather than my own growing doubts. A persistent voice in my head is reminding me that, even though there was the mark on Espi's neck, I never actually saw the chimera, after all, and hearing a funny noise isn't exactly rock solid proof of anything.

Dr. Baer rolls away from his computer, stands and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I'm sorry about Espi. I don't know what happened to her, but Mindy can't escape,” he says.

“Mindy?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dr. Baer smiles sheepishly. “I'm calling the chimera after my mother. For now.”

I catch Cortés's eye across the sea of faces, and we exchange revolted looks.

“Anyway,” Dr. Baer continues, “the tank is rock solid. We have two guards posted here at all times.” He gestures at the silent crewmen, who have rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols on their hips. “And I've been here all night—”

“How can you be so sure?” I persist. “We know it can camouflage itself, right? And maybe it can squeeze through the top of the tank or something.”

“And what about that ladder back there?” Cortés, who still has his baseball bat, uses it to point to a rail ladder nearly hidden by the seaweed that I hadn't noticed before. “What's to prevent the thing from climbing out that way?”

“Look for yourself,” Dr. Baer says, pointing at the hinged and padlocked steel grate that covers the tank and has only two-inch gaps between bars. “There's no way she could fit. She's too big and she's got the shell and the claws. And think about it. If she could escape, why would she come back?”

I fall into a sullen silence, because of course I don't have any answers.

Sammy speaks up. “Maybe Mindy—”

Carter elbows him sharply in the ribs.

“Ow!” Wincing, Sammy gives Carter a sidelong glare, edges away from him and continues. “Maybe the chimera can shed her shell at will. It's possible, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, brightening. “What about that?”

Dr. Baer doesn't budge. “Even if she can shed the shell, the rest of her body is too big to fit through the bars. The physics of it just don't add up. And even if they did, I'll say it again: if she can escape, why didn't she jump over the rails and back into the ocean?”

My head tells me this is all perfectly logical, but my gut won't let it go. “How should I know? Didn't you say it's a trickster? Maybe this is its ideal setup. Maybe this is the kind of thing it thrives on. You yourself said no one knows what they can do.”

“Bria's right,” Murphy says. “Just because we don't know all the whys and wherefores doesn't mean it didn't—”

“In my best professional opinion, I don't think it killed Espi, folks,” Dr. Baer says. “Bottom line. It just couldn't happen.”

“You see?” Captain Romero says. “That settles it.”

“It doesn't settle anything!” I say.

“And I need to get back to my duties.” The captain takes a couple of steps toward the door. “I'll have one of my men see to the girl's body. Everyone should settle in for a good night's sleep. The day has been long and difficult.”

“Hang on.” Axel approaches the captain, and I take a good look at Axel for the first time in a while. His nostrils are flared, and his face is a blotchy and anger-stained purple. He shifts restlessly on his feet and makes a sweeping gesture with his hands, creating an agitated, about-to-blow energy that's a little alarming. “Did you just say we're supposed to have a good night's sleep?”

The captain had almost made a clean getaway from us troublesome survivors, but now he heaves a long-suffering sigh and turns back.

“What seems to be the problem, young man?”