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.
It roared at her like a jet plane, its bulk displacing the water forcefully, its jaws gaping wide, one dark eye staring into her soul. The power of its passage spun her around, and she was untouched but disoriented for a moment, unable to distinguish up from down in the murky depths.
Just as she glimpsed a hint of sunlight from above, the shark came back again. Its own length was all that saved her for the moment; the necessity of a wide turn bought her an extra second to get her knife in position for a wild slice across its gills. Clearly hurt, the shark lashed around in the water, almost missing her entirely. Only the jagged edge of one tooth tore through wet suit and skin, leaving blood leaking out from a wound in her left calf.
It wasn’t much. But in the end, it would probably be enough.
*
MARCUS SAT IN the dinghy and looked at his waterproof watch for the third time. According to the timepiece, which had always been reliable up until now, Beka still had four minutes until her next check-in. Four minutes until he felt that tug on the rope that meant she was okay. Much longer than that before her tanks started to get low and she should be heading for the surface.
But his skin prickled across the back of his neck in a way that hadn’t happened since Afghanistan. A soldier learned the hard way not to ignore that feeling. Not if he wanted to survive to fight another day, and all his buddies with him.
Muttering a curse, Marcus pulled on his mask, grabbed the spear gun he’d tucked into the dinghy just in case, and slid into the water. Better to look foolish than to spend one more minute in that tiny boat, sure that something had gone wrong in the blue-green depths below.
Heading directly down, along the path of the rope that Beka should be following back up, he didn’t have far to go before he came upon a scene that seared itself on his brain, joining the worst horrors of the battlefield to forever haunt his dreams like reels of black-and-white movies.
The largest shark he’d ever seen was just ahead of him, its colossal body almost hiding Beka from sight. She was backed against a rock formation, knife held iron-steady in one hand while the other clamped desperately around a seeping gash in her leg. Blood oozed viscously into the water, like a watercolor brush tossed into a jar.
He could tell the second she spotted him. The clear seawater between them showed her eyes widening behind her mask, first in hope, then in terror as the shark’s snout swung ponderously in his direction.