Page 27 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
Rake wasn’t sure why he’d moved so close to Mai. Maybe he instinctively wanted to comfort or reassure her—but no, that wasn’t it. Perhaps, after holding her face in his mind for the last part of his journey, it seemed supremely fortunate—fated, even—that she should be the one waiting for him at its end. The significance of it rolled through him like a tide and washed him nearer to her.
He felt a raw power within himself, a delicate vibration over his skin, a compulsive force making him brace one forearm against the wall where she cringed. He remembered cornering Kestra in that way, right after he’d come on land for the first time. He had laced a hand around Kestra’s throat and bargained for safe harbor on Kiken Island.
But this time, he didn’t intend a threat. He simply moved in obedience to a latent instinct.
Standing bare in Mai’s presence, a soft ache woke deep in his body. Instead of easing that ache, his proximity to her made it more intense—so intense that he felt himself heating and tightening in a way he hadn’t done since—
A wall of memories slammed into his consciousness. Bruta’s body surging against his, the whip of Acrid’s sharp tail across his arm, Calla’s claws dragging grooves down his back. The queens, taking what they wanted from him. Teasing him to react, forcing him to please them, over and over. Every bit of pleasure he’d ever achieved had been tainted and soured by their cruelty.
Rake pushed himself away from Mai, fighting the urge to pull back his lips and bare his teeth in a snarl. “Clothes,” he managed, turning his back to her. “A good idea.”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
He heard her footsteps retreating quickly, and it was all he could do not to rush after her so he could inspect the shadows she passed and growl at anything else that might dare to threaten her. He wasn’t sure when he’d become so violent—sometime during his journey, perhaps, when he’d had mere half-seconds to react to danger before it swallowed or slashed him. Or maybe sometime before that, when he’d spent weeks curled in the curative sac in the belly of the Horror, while it sprayed countless memories through his mind. Many of those memories involved pain and suffering, because the Horror was fascinated by conflict. It belonged to a communal Entity that operated as one, for the good of all the connected organisms—and the aggressive antagonism of humans was a curiosity to its mind.
Maybe Rake’s new penchant for violent responses had been born from those images. Or maybe they’d slithered inside him during his life as a breeder to the Queens, when all he’d known was cruelty and cunning.
He moved into deeper shadow and sank down behind the shed, with his bare rear against the rocky ground. The fleshy buttocks were the oddest part of his human shape, but he was glad of them, since they made sitting possible.
Sitting. A way to rest the legs. He hadn’t used legs in a long while—just briefly on Kiken Island before his journey—and he was out of practice. When he wasn’t reacting to a threat, like the men who touched Mai, it took concentration to stay balanced, and to walk. Not like gliding effortlessly through the water. On land he was confined to two dimensions, to surfaces and steps and streets. It felt very odd after his weeks of healing and days of swimming.
He was fortunate his muscles hadn’t atrophied while he resided in the Horror. Whatever restorative substance the creature possessed had kept him at peak fitness. Knowing Mai, she’d ask him about the healing process once she recovered from her shock at seeing him.
“Rake.” Mai’s soft voice sent a sharp thrill through his abdomen. He’d felt something like that thrill before, but only in Kestra’s presence. Frowning, he placed long fingers against his stomach.
“I’m here,” he said.
She appeared around the corner of the shed, carrying a leather coat.
Rake liked coats. One day he hoped to have one of his own, a big one that billowed in the wind like Flay’s did.
“A coat.” He smiled and took it from her hand, climbing to his feet. He unslung his satchel, and Mai held it for him while he swept the garment around his body. She kept her eyes averted until he had buttoned it.
“Whose coat is this?” he asked, returning the satchel to its place over his shoulder.
“That coat belongs to Corklan, one of Flay’s sailors,” Mai said. “I stole it from the hook where he’d hung it. You’ll have to give it back eventually.”
“Of course.”
“You said the Horror healed you.” Mai’s eyes glittered at him as they moved out of the shadow, along the sea-wall. “How did that work?”
Rake grinned.
“What?” Her eyebrows lifted.
“I knew you would ask about that. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. Its tentacles secrete a painful paralytic toxin, but its body seems to have regenerative abilities. It healed my wounds before during a memory exchange session, when I was connected to its mind-mouth—and this time I was actuallyinsideit, in a kind of sac.”
“Could you breathe? Did it feed you? What did the material around you feel like? Fleshy, gooey, cloudy?” Mai frowned, rubbing her forehead. “Ugh, I’m too drunk to think of proper questions. We’ll have to talk about this tomorrow.”
“Drunk,” said Rake slowly. “That’s what happened on Flay’s ship a few times on the way to find the Entity. When the sailors had too much of the spicy drink, they became foolish, loud, and sometimes angry.”
“Or sleepy,” Mai said. “Like me. I drank liquor so my rutting brain wouldstop, and now you’re back, and it’s trying to run but the gears are all gummed up.” She swayed, bumping lightly against Rake’s shoulder. “That’s where we’re headed. That inn.”
She pointed toward a long row of buildings with golden windows. Rake drank in the sight—the night-blue sky, the stone and brick and plaster of the shops, the light-gilded cobbles of the street—not so much a street as a stone-paved expanse stretching from the piers to the buildings. His gaze skipped upward, past the black rooftops and smoking chimneys, to heaps of more buildings and starlike windows beyond. A great city, hunched in the dark. The immensity and monstrosity of it scared him.
He was used to the expansive world under the sea; but he’d never imagined the human world could be this big.
Rake hung back. “I don’t like this place.”
