It spasmed wildly, tearing the lodged knife from his hand and disappearing into the blackness. Marty was already rolling into a prone position and finning toward the bag. Elsa, he saw in his light, was already at it. She produced the assault rifle and pushed off the bottom, raising clouds of silt. When she was a meter from him she jerked suddenly and released the weapon.

He finned past her without stopping, knowing if he didn’t retrieve the assault rifle they were both dead.

It disappeared into the silt. Cursing to himself, he went in after it, feeling around blindly, fully aware that just because he couldn’t see anything didn’t mean the merfolk couldn’t see him. With echolocation, they would know exactly where he was.

Patting the ground, he felt only stone and began to despair. He wasn’t going to find it in time—

One of his hands brushed metal. In the next instant he had the assault rifle in both hands and was pushing off the bottom. When he emerged from the turbid water, he saw Elsa brandishing her knife, fending off two merfolk that floated before her, spears in their hands.

His confusion as to why they weren’t attacking her lasted only a fraction of a second, because in the next instant he realized they were acting as a distraction.

A third merfolk was soaring toward her, spear extended, from behind.

Marty aimed the assault rifle at it and squeezed the trigger. The weapon had a firing rate of seven hundred rounds per minute with an effective underwater range of about fifteen to twenty meters at this depth. The merfolk was only three meters from him, and the onslaught of bullets shredded its body, killing it instantly. He swung the weapon toward the other two creatures, ready to unleash a thunderstorm of lead on them, but they had retreated out of sight.

Chapter 44

Chapter 44

PIP

Standing in the pilot house behind the softly glowing control panel, Pip was steering the Oannes around the perimeter of Demon Island yet one more time, the ship’s spotlight sweeping over the shoreline seventy meters away.

When Marty and the others didn’t return on time, she wasn’t immediately concerned. They would be a little late, she told herself, just as they had been a little late the day before.

When an hour passed, she became worried.

When two hours passed, she became very worried.

When three hours passed, she made the decision to circle Demon Island, not knowing what else she could do but unwilling and unable to do nothing.

This was now her seventh circuit and she had all but lost hope of spotting them.