Dead Waters - Anton Strout [119]
Jane continued staring at the receipt, a smile slowly building on her face. “Oh, Simon, thank you,” she said. “I love you.”
She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me hard. I melted into it, but after a few moments I felt I had to pull away.
“Not to put a damper on things,” I said, “but we kinda need to do something here. Something along the heroic lines.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Right. Of course.”
She handed the slip of paper back to me, hands trembling. When I went to reach for it, it slipped from her hand, the wind catching it and blowing it away. I turned, grabbing for it. It was just a slip of paper, but the weight of everything it stood for was so important that I felt compelled to get it back. It tumbled along the walkway of the bridge and I ran a few steps before catching it, then folding it and stuffing it back into my messenger bag as I turned back to Jane.
She wasn’t there. I peered through the dozens of ghosts manifested all along the bridge looking for her. After a moment I caught a hint of movement back where we had all climbed up onto the bridge together earlier. Jane was hurrying to get back to the island below, which meant. . . she had tricked me by pretending to let go of the note too soon. Why? To distract me. To run off before I could stop her.
“The boat,” I said, and then started running after her, my heart sinking. “Jane! No!”
I tore along after her, but the small lead she had grew as she monkey-barred her way down the structure of the bridge toward the land below. I climbed down after her as fast as I could, but by the time I had worked my way down, Jane had already reached the boat and was casting off the line, leaving it dangling from the tree we had secured it to.
“Jane!” I screamed above the sounds of the storm. The swells of water coming from the gigantic monster writhing in the river threatened to capsize the boat. Jane raised her hands above her, calling out to the boat, and its systems flew on, it searchlights practically overloading with power as they shone out into the darkness. Her eyes, however, remained on me.
There was no way I could reach the boat now that it was launched. Unless . . .
I looked up at the underside of the bridge. The under support holding up the structure was a web of steel that snaked out over the dangerous waters. If I could get myself out onto it, there was a chance I could jump down onto the boat. I started climbing out onto the steel skeleton until I was back in shouting distance of the boat.
“Jane,” I shouted. “Come back! Pull that boat over now!”
“I have to do this,” she said. “It’s too late for me, anyway. I can feel Charybdis pulling at me. She’s trying to take possession of me.”
“Just get off the boat,” I shouted. “We can fight her, together.”
Jane turned and pointed up at several of the tentacles crashing down around her, rolling the boat to its nearpitching point. “We have to stop this one if you’re going to have any chance of defeating her. I can do that.”
“Fine,” I said, “but do it away from the monster, then.”
Jane shook her head, and then slammed her hands down onto the control console of the boat. “Afraid it doesn’t work that way, hon. I’m so sorry.”
She turned herself away from me and pressed her magic into the boat, the lights on it rising as it gained speed heading for the body of the