Page 61 of Hunters and Prey

“You heard him! Get rid of the little fuckers before they overcome us!” Matteo shouted.

A low thump struck the deck behind him. Expecting to find another creature boarding the vessel, Matteo spun and came face to face with a red-haired warrior, a glorious avenging angel wielding a spear longer than he was tall. The tip gleamed wicked and sharp in the dwindling sunlight.

“Need some help?” she called over the din of gunfire and battle.

Giving him no chance to respond, she thrust past him and buried the spearhead in an aberration. She kicked it off the tip and twisted in the air, performing an Olympics-worthy gymnastics move that hurled her into the thick of them. Her next strike hurled two deformed crabs into the water and cleared a portion of the deck.

She moved too quickly for his eyes to track at first,water dripping down a lean figure dressed from head to toe in blue and violet scales. Tall boots reached her knees, edged with razor sharp fins down the back of each calf. She was built like the goddess of sin had sculpted her by hand, her hourglass silhouette defined by impressive toned limbs and bountiful curves.

“Hold your fire!” Matteo bellowed, not that the command was necessary.

Tentacles tumbled to the deck, splashing blue blood and lavender-gray bits, then she took off the top of the crab creature’s head.

Warrior hadn’t been the best word to describe her. Goddess, maybe, and even that felt inadequate.

Another beast clambered onto the research vessel, larger than its predecessors and trailing two black barbs. It had the torso and face of a woman, but the body of a squid, like the world’s most fucked up ocean centaur. Adrenaline pounded the blood through Matteo’s veins and sharpened his—damn near superhuman, he’d been told in the past. The monster belched a caustic black liquid that flooded over the deck and sent up acrid fumes. He ducked beneath the rancid spray and unloaded a shell into the body. It jerked, but it didn’t fall. Instead, the creature retaliated with a swift stab toward his shoulder that he sidestepped before ripping his combat knife through the tentacle. The other darted toward Malcolm, but he pivoted on a foot and it flew past him.

“Beheading them is the easiest way to slay them!” Elpis cried. “Your human ammunition cannot harm their torsos. Aim for their joints and heads!”

He wasn’t lucky enough to miss the next wave. Acid splashed over his left shoulder, sizzled through his body armor, and scorched through his flesh. The battle cry Matteo bellowed as he pumped the next slug was half rage, half agony. Malcolm met him from the other side and their combined might felled it.

“Fuck yes. Take out those barbs and they’re just big pussies,” Malcolm muttered.

“Got that right.”

That became their fighting tactic, replicated a second and then a third time without fail until a living freight train composed of powerful cephalopod muscle crashed into Matteo’s side. It knocked the wind from him, and suddenly he was airborne, the choppy waves of the Atlantic Ocean flying up to meet him.

Matteo sucked in air, filling his lungs before he hit the water with a splash and cold shocked his system. Somehow, he didn’t gasp and exhale it out again. A tentacle wrapped around his ribs, capturing him in an unrelenting grip he tried to alleviate with his combat knife, slicing through thick muscle even as the beast pulled him under, even as it fought to squeeze out his last breath.

They turned and turned in the water, man and beast, his knife stabbing the tough shell of its oblong body. It was like striking rubber.

And they were going deeper into the ocean. And deeper. As they left the sunlit world above them behind, he realized its goal—it wanted to drown him.

His chest burned, lungs screaming for oxygen. They reached thirty meters, maybe fifty, and his firearm was useless. He relied on his knife, still stabbing his captor in a fruitless endeavor as his limbs grew impossibly heavy and difficult to control. A hard projectile struck them, and the world faded dark, wavering in and out as the burning sensation in his chest faded.

A bevy of different sensations gradually emerged from the temporary sensory deprivation: soft lips against his, rhythmic pressure of two strong hands centered above his sternum, the scent of lilies and salt water as wet hair touched his cheek.

Water gushed from his mouth as he snapped back to awareness and twisted onto his side, choking up what remained in his air passage.

Elpis knelt on one side of him as the battle waged on around them, though it seemed to be winding down. “He’s going to make it,” she announced.

How long was he down? He couldn’t tell, but he lurched to his feet and surveyed the carnage littering the deck around them. Shells and crab claws, bits of monster. She was barely winded, though his squad was all soaked in sweat, a few of them bleeding. Banks had collapsed near the hatch while fighting another bloated squidwoman. It had shown uncanny intelligence in trying to twist the hatch to gain entrance, though that was the last thing he recalled seeing before the other squid took him into the water.

Before Matteo had a chance to thank her, she charged across the deck with her spear in hand. “Was he stabbed by one of the barbs?” Elpis demanded.

“I don’t think—” Her weapon tipped down, the blade a hair’s breadth from meeting Banks’s throat. “Hey! What the hell are you doing, lady?”

“Was he or was he not stabbed by one of the barbs? If he has been stabbedthrough the heart by a scylla, his head must be separated from his body, lest he arise again as one of them. As part of the Gloom.”

“He wasn’t!” Matteo growled, no longer dazzled by her beauty or her sweet combat moves, not when she had one of his men under threat of a blade. “Christ. Hold on. I’ll show you.”He crouched and rolled Banks onto his back. “See? No chest wound. It glanced off his ballistic armor, then one of the bitches grabbed his shoulder in her pincer.”

“Apologies,” she said, rising. “I will secure my coral glider to your vessel, and then we must leave this area at once. Now that the Gloom has located you, they’ll keep trying until we reach Atlantian waters.”

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