Her eyes adjusted. No human eyes could have, there wasn’t enough light, but human limits did not bind the Suit. Raz’s white pants flashed when he kicked.
They passed few fish at this depth, and no vampires she could see. They’d almost reached the bottom. Sharp grim coral towers jutted from the murk below. White flakes of sea snow flitted between the peaks. Could Raz have been mistaken? He’d sounded so sure.
The coral towers moved.
Earthquake was her first thought, though there were no quakes in Alt Coulumb. The movement’s scale was too great for anything else. It could not be a living thing—nothing so large could live, on land.
But they weren’t on land anymore.
The towers swelled and reddened as they approached, sharp pitted texture filling out with roseate skin. Blue sparks crackled beneath a translucent surface. High-pitched cries filled the deep. Arms the length of Alt Coulumb’s coastline coiled, wreathed by clouds of dust. Currents tossed her as the thing beneath bloomed, the coral forest transformed into a city-sized mantle. The Suit fed liquid beauty through Cat’s vein, but chemical confidence was little help. As she grasped and failed and grasped again at the sheer inconceivable scale of the thing coming oh gods toward her, its displacement current pulled her down, tossing Raz head over heels— And what she’d taken for wrinkles on the creature’s skin were blade-sharp ridges— She caught Raz and pulled him close as the star kraken crashed into them.
Blade-flesh drew sparks as it scraped her Suit; she tumbled into a canyon-sized wrinkle, bounced off a rubbery wall, pushed herself away—Raz tugged her out of the groove before it snapped closed, mouthlike. She kicked off and down again, and realized they were not alone.
Nearly human creatures slipped through the water around her. She’d taken them for snow at first, decayed dead things fallen to the benthic plane. They swam, long limbed and webbed, skin every color she had seen, jaws distended with curved teeth. Darting about the kraken, they pierced its flesh with spears and carved broad wounds with knives. She saw a slick naked girl unhinge her jaw and sink fangs into punctured kraken flesh. Blue blood leaked from the seal her lips made. The girl swallowed convulsively, released the monster, and howled.
Not all the shapes were human, or humanlike: Cat saw sleek bottle-nosed bodies, fangs curving from their open beaks. Hundreds streaked through the night—tiny beside the kraken, but pale corruption spread where their spears bit, and their teeth, and the kraken shriveled as it rose.
The kraken hit her again. She sprawled on its mantle as a translucent sack of flesh inflated overhead. That bloodred mass held many eyes, their pupils figure eights within which Cat could have stood upright.
Then the mantle collapsed and they fell, propelled down by the kraken’s jet. Cat stared up into a beak that could crush mountains, ringed with lightning, and within that gnashing mouth a furnace. The speed of the kraken’s retreat slapped its arms and tentacles together, and Cat and Raz and all the hunters tumbled down, down— To land dust-clouded on a stony plain.
Raz recovered first, which pissed her off. He offered her a hand. She ignored it and stood on her own.
Around them the dust curtain settled, unveiling an ancient city.
What she’d taken for a stone flat was in fact a plaza ringed with column-fronted, wedge-topped buildings. She remembered the style from textbook woodcuts, though those ruins had never been crusted with coral and seashells. Towers rose beyond the temples.
Vampires surrounded them.
They hung in water, red eyed and alien, half-visible at this depth even to her. Were they living, she could have seen their heat. They were not. Coins glistened in wide red watching eyes. She looked up and saw no surface overhead. The hunters returned, blood-wreathed, spears and teeth sharp. Dolphins swam alongside. Sonar clicks played over Cat’s skin.
Raz swam into the center of the crowd. His hands moved, not just for swimming. Sign.
A woman emerged from the crowd. She might have been thirty or three thousand. Seaweed trailed her limbs. The signs she addressed to Raz were crisper and more elegant than those he offered in reply. Whatever their language, he spoke it only haltingly.
The conversation continued for tense and quiet minutes. Raz frowned after the woman—the priestess—responded to his third statement with a hook of her finger as if inviting. Their exchanges grew sharp. The priestess bared her teeth. Cat doubted this indicated progress.
Excuse me, Cat said.
A ripple passed through the crowd. Heads turned toward her.
I’m sorry if we interrupted you, she said. I’m—we’re—from the surface. My name’s Cat; Raz brought me here because he thought you could help.
Silence, full of clicks and curiosity.