Dead Waters - Anton Strout [121]
“Taking the professor’s life now was all the more cruel and sweet a betrayal,” she said, “the power of his blood growing tenfold from it. In death, his power completes our ceremonial rebirth.”
She dropped what remained of the professor’s lifeless body to the tracks of the bridge and he fell through a shattered section down into the water below. I spied Jane and the lights from the boat as she headed straight for the sea monster, aiming for the yellow of its giant eye. I had to act fast.
I went to charge into the water wall around the woman, but the Inspectre’s hand came down on my shoulder. I turned toward the far end of the bridge and called out to Connor’s brother.
“Aidan,” I shouted. “Do something!”
He looked at me like I was stupid. He let go of the tentacle with one of his hands where he held it in place wrapped around the bridge support and pointed at it. “I am!”
“No,” I said. “About Jane!” I pointed down at the boat below as the spiked ram slammed into the creature. “Down there. Hurry!”
“I can’t let go,” he said. “If I do, that thing will destroy her boat for sure.”
Aidan was right. With the creature pinned in place up here, it couldn’t take on Jane or the boat unless he let go of it. The best I could do was join Connor and the Inspectre in fighting the green water woman. Maybe the key to stopping the monster lay in beating its keeper, the one helping it rise to full power.
The three of us turned our attention to the woman within the circle of water. Connor was busy uncorking a dozen or so stoppered tubes, rallying a thick swarm of ghosts all around him. He shouted instructions at them, but from where I stood I couldn’t quite make them out. I hefted my bat and came in swinging. I landed a solid hit on the woman through her tower of water, but once she felt it and became aware of my presence, every subsequent swipe of my bat passed through a liquid form of her body.
Another sound rose to meet my ears, one that horrified me. Jane’s voice rang out in all its technomantic glory from down below over the fight. With terror filling my heart, I realized it could mean only one thing. Jane wasn’t just going to ram the creature. She intended to blow the creature up with the blast materials and depth charges the Inspectre had brought along to dislodge all the sunken ships.
The fight went out of me and I ran to the edge of the bridge. “Jane!” I shouted.
The boat was underneath us and from where I was I could actually see her face. She looked up at me, her face sad but determined. She spoke, but I couldn’t hear her over the sound of everything, yet there was no mistaking the words her mouth formed.
I love you.
“Jane, don’t,” I shouted, but it was too late. She turned her head back to the ship and pressed her power into it. Sparks rose up all over the vessel as she pulled power from the boat itself, sending raw power across the bow like lightning strikes.
All that was enough to set things off, and the ship exploded. The heat of it rose up with concussive force, straight through the bridge. The gas of the boat and blasting caps fed one another, shooting a column of flame up in the air with its fury. Bits of the creature flew through the air, and I tried not to think of the same happening to Jane.
All around me the world slowed. I got back to my feet in time to catch Aidan letting go of the now-severed tentacle, letting it unwind and fall from where it had been wrapped around the bridge. Like a shot, the vampire transformed and shot up into the night sky and then down into the firecovered river below.
Behind me an inhuman keening arose from the woman as she watched her precious charge dying. The steady stream of water around her faltered and dropped away, yet she herself remained.
“Focus,” the Inspectre called out, slicing his cane through her body to no avail, passing right through her. “Don’t let up.”
His call to arms awoke something dark in the pain of my heart. I charged the woman again. Blow after blow of mine still passed through her as she came