Page 52 of When Monsters Fight
“No!” I grabbed him. “Kabiel, no. Listen to me. Listen to my voice.”
He came to a standstill, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched as he fought the siren song.
I grabbed his face and pressed my lips to his and opened the channel to the Morningstar power. I wasn’t sure if it would help, but I needed to do something.
He gasped, mouth parting against mine so our breath mingled for a moment. His skin softened to silky smooth beneath my fingertips, and the tension in his jaw melted.
“I’m here,” Kabiel said. “I’m here, Rue.”
I broke the connection and pulled. “It worked.”
“I can hear it, but it’s not as compelling any longer.” He looked at the fog. “The relic is in there, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We have no choice but to go through it. But I have a plan.”
The Morningstar powerseemed to help calm the watchers, making it easier for them to resist the siren song that to Jilyana and me, sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
“We can’t stay here while you go out there alone,” Gabriel said after I relayed our plan.
“You’re a liability out there right now. All of you are. If Jilyana is right, then the creatures out there want you because you’re male. They don’t want me or Jilyana. We can steer the ship through the fog, and if those things attack, then we can use the Morningstar power to defend ourselves.”
Asbeel moved to the door as if in a daze, and Jilyana pulled him away from it. “Please,” she said. “Please stay hidden.”
“I don’t like this,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like you doing this alone.” But his tone said he knew that we had no other choice.
“We need that relic piece, and if it’s in the fog, we can find it. If not, then we can steer us through. We can do this.”
To make doubly sure they stayed put, we pulled the downy stuffing out of a pillow and used it to block their ears. Hopefully the injection of Morningstar power plus the ear plugs would be enough to keep them safe.
We locked them below deck and hurried back up intothe night. A lock wouldn’t keep them penned in if they were determined to be free, but it made me feel better.
The boat continued to inch forward, despite the sails being down, and the fog had eaten away half of it.
Jilyana took my hand. “We can do this.”
“Yes. We can.”
The fog sucked us in, washing over us until it was all around us, until we were in the thick of it and the screeching was all I could hear.
“I wish they’d stop,” Jilyana said. “It’s so loud.”
Itwasloud, and it was getting on my nerves. If they thought they were getting their fins on my watchers, then they were mistaken.
“Hey! Stop it. Stop fucking screaming!”
Something hit the side of the ship to my left. Then something else thudded against the right.
A scrambling sound followed as the creatures climbed up onto our boat.
“Are you ready, Jilyana?”
She nodded. “I am.”
Several shadowy figures landed on the deck around us with wet sounds. I caught the impression of yawning mouths and eerie green eyes before I opened the channel to the Morningstar power. Jilyana pushed out her hand, sending a jet of dark energy toward the nearest creature. It screamed as the power hit it, then exploded into white glowing cinders.
Another one rushed forward, and we blasted that too, then a third and a fourth.
A shrill scream tore through the night, the pitch like needles to my eardrums, almost making me lose my connection to the power.
