Jacky rose slowly to her feet. “What the…?”

Rad got up as well. “Oh my god…”

Jacky fumbled in her pocket for her phone, but by the time she had it in her hands the mermaid had disappeared beneath the surface of the water, leaving only a ring of ripples where its head had been.

Rad and Jacky stared at each other in wide-eyed amazement.

“Did we really see that…?” Rad asked, dumbfounded.

“It had blue hair,” Jacky said.

“It looked like a person. Its face… It looked…”

“It had blue hair.”

“Oh my god,” Rad said. “Oh my god.”

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

ELSA

Still panting heavily from her narrow escape, Elsa checked on Marty. His face was pale and slack, sunken in the harsh white beam of her LED light. His breathing sounded shallow but steady. She tilted his head to the side and gingerly felt the bump on the back of his skull. It was the size of a golf ball and slimy with blood. The ledge they were on was perhaps ten feet deep, so she dragged his body away from the water until it was snug up against the wall. She sat next to him and rested his head on her thigh. Her pulse continued to race, and she forced herself to calm down and think rationally.

Turn off the light. You need to save the battery. If it goes, you’re never leaving this place alive.

Reluctantly, Elsa turned it off. The blackness was absolute. The only sound in the empty silence was their breathing.

She played over what had happened in the water. The mermaid had clearly tried to kill them, first Marty by removing his respirator from his mouth, then herself by dragging her beneath the surface of the water. It only released its powerful grip on her ankles when she slashed it with her knife.

So it wanted them dead. The million-dollar question was, Why?

Did it consider them a threat? Interlopers? Food?

Elsa didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to dwell on hypotheticals. She needed to focus on finding a way out of the subterranean tomb. Yet this quickly proved to be just as nerve-wracking because the only exit was through the water, and that thing was there, and it was stronger and more agile than them. They didn’t stand a chance getting past it if it didn’t want them to.

They were trapped.

It knew that. It was likely biding its time, waiting in ambuscade, until they ventured back into the water, where it would kill them and feast on their flesh—

Stop it! she thought shrilly. Stop thinking like that! You need to stay positive.

Stay positive. Right. She was trying to. God, she was trying to. But how did you stay positive when you were being hunted by a creature that should only exist in nightmares?

∆∆∆

Rescue.

That was how they would escape.

They would simply stay put and wait to be rescued.