“Boat in pieces. Dead Humans. Yes. We were there. We saw.”
“Ask him if he saw what caused the boat to go down,” Beka suggested. “An explosion, or something else?”
“Big boom make boat sink?” Alexei asked. “Large wave?”
The shark bumped its head against the side of the boat, making the whole thing shudder slightly. “No boom. No wave. Was Too Large to Be Prey thing. Very big, Too Large to Be Prey.”
Great. “He calls it ‘Too Large to Be Prey,’” Alexei reported. “Sounds like our friend the kraken all right.”
“Kraken?” Calum said, eyes wide.
“It’s a giant squid,” Bethany corrected. “Probably. Shush up and let him finish talking to the shark.” She bit her lip in a way Alexei always found particularly adorable. “Damn it. I can’t believe that sentence just came out of my mouth.”
“If you believe I can talk to sharks, maybe you should believe me when I say there is a kraken,” Alexei pointed out crossly before turning his attention back to White with Big Teeth.
“Do you know where Too Large to Be Prey is?” he asked.
The shark swam in another circle. “Followed Human boat because they followed fish. When Too Large to Be Prey took boat to very deep, it ate all fish. No fish, no stay.”
“Crap,” Alexei said. He’d brought along a cask of fish to use to bribe the sharks if necessary. Now he wished he’d given it to the scarred nose dolphin, since it didn’t seem as though they were going to get anything helpful here.
“Maybe Baba Yaga ask Humans in other ship,” White said.
“Wait, what? There was another ship out there that day?” Alexei and Beka exchanged startled glances.
“Ask it if the kraken attacked the second ship,” Beka said, gripping his forearm in an iron clasp worthy of one of his own.
He asked.
“No,” was the answer. “Too Large to Be Prey swim to other ship. Give something to Humans. Swim away toward place where sun sets.”
“Son of a bitch,” Alexei breathed. “Someone is controlling the kraken. How is that even possible?”
“It shouldn’t be,” Beka said. “Although I remember something…I can’t quite put my finger on it. I need to call Barbara and Bella when we get back to land. Maybe they can shed some light on this.”
“At least you know it headed west,” Calum added. “Maybe it has a cave or an underwater cavern in that direction it holes up in.”
“Even if this doesn’t help us find it, it does give us an important piece of new information,” Beka said. She suddenly looked a lot less like a cute California surfer girl and a whole lot more like a dangerously powerful legendary witch.
It made Alexei nostalgic for the old days. “So what do we do next?” he asked.
“First we give the sharks the barrel of fish we brought with us, and thank them politely,” she said. “Then we head back to port so I can make some calls. If the others can’t remember whatever it is I’m thinking of, I might have to take a trip to the Otherworld.”
She set her jaw. “After that, I am going to track down whoever thought it was a good idea to set a kraken loose off Cape Cod and stop him. Even if it means I have to feed him to his own creature.” For a moment, her eyes gleamed with an unearthly light. “Especially if it means I have to feed him to his own creature.”
“Hell,” Bethany said. “She’s pretty fierce when she gets riled.”
“Damned straight,” Alexei said. “Atta girl.”
*
Bethany sat at her kitchen table nursing a cup of cold coffee and ignoring the paperwork piled up in orderly stacks in front of her. It was late, and Calum had been in bed for hours. The house was silent and peaceful.
If only that could be said for the inside of her head.
A thousand aimless thoughts swam inside her skull like a school of minnows. She was still trying to wrap her brain around the fact that there really was such a thing as a Baba Yaga, even if the mythological witch was nothing like the stories. Okay, especially because the wicked witch was nothing like the stories. Oh, and there were dragons, and sprites, and yes, unfortunately, a kraken. But that was all right, because the witch was here to deal with the kraken.
Jeez Louise.
Oddly enough, the part Bethany found the least difficult to accept was that Alexei was something more than - or at least different than - Human. Maybe it was because he was such a huge presence, impossible to ignore once he walked into a room. Maybe it was because he’d affected her in ways that no other man ever had. She’d always thought there was something out of the ordinary about him. Silly her, she’d just figured it was charisma or something.
But no, the only man she’d been attracted to in years was…well, she didn’t know what he was. Except leaving, sooner rather than later, probably. And he was everything she despised in a man, from watching her father fight and drink his way through life. The universe clearly had a strange sense of humor, since neither of those things kept her from thinking about him constantly, even before she found out he was a mythological hero.
Once Alexei had picked up the heavy barrel of fish in a seemingly effortless movement and dumped its contents over the side of the ship, he and Calum had settled in together at the bow, leaving Bethany and Beka to head up to the cabin and get them under power and heading back to port.
Beka could have done it on her own, of course, but Bethany had some questions and she figured she was more likely to get answers from Beka than she was from Alexei, who had lapsed back into a sullen silence as soon as he stopped talking to sharks.
“Is he okay?” Bethany asked, once they were underway.
Beka sighed. “Define okay. If he were a Human being, I’d say he was suffering from post traumatic shock. He and his brothers went through something awful. It not only robbed them of their positions as The Riders, which was all any of them had ever known, but left them broken in ways I don’t think anyone can really comprehend. His brothers Mikhail and Gregori had their own struggles too, but they eventually found their way to new paths and to women who loved them. I’m not sure Alexei is even trying to find anything to replace the life he once had.” Her blue eyes looked immeasurably sad. “I’m not sure he ever will.”
“He does seem to be working rather hard at drinking and fighting,” Bethany said
Beka laughed, but it lacked her usual humor. “Well, you could say that used to be a hobby for the three of them when they were together. I hope he hasn’t decided to turn it into a full time career now that he’s alone.”
“I hope not too,” Bethany said. “I’ve only just started letting him back into the bar again since he wrecked it the last time. I’d hate to have to ban him for good.”
“What seemed like over-exuberant high spirits when it was the three of them just seems desperate and unhealthy when he is on his own.” Beka gazed out over the wide expanse of ocean in front of them as if it might hold some elusive answer. “I wish I knew what to do to help him.”