across the deck. Right smack against the side of the ship. My head spins, and my shoulder makes a loud crunch. I scramble for my dagger with a trembling hand, and despite the black spots floating in my vision, I get back up. To my right, Thalia attacks a red merrow with a shark fin on the back of his head. She fakes to his left and jumps on his back, straddling like a horse. She’s this wild thing, bringing down her daggers into his back until the hilts won’t let them go any deeper. Planting one foot on his spine, she kicks. He slides off like butter, breaking down the way they do into oozy black blood and sinew. She holds out her hand, and despite how small she is, she pulls me right up. “Where’s Archer?”
He’s gone from the deck but I know he’s still there somewhere.
One of them lunges at Thalia, but I block his arm and drive my dagger deep into his solar plexus. I hold my breath from the retch snaking its way up my throat.
“Brother!” Thalia shouts, but she’s blocked again. “I’ve got this, Tristan. Help him!”
Kurt is wrestling with a merman and a merrow. The merrow, like Archer, is more human looking than the others I’ve encountered, except for his shark-like face. The merman is covered in tattoos.
A trident is tattooed on his chest, and a nasty scar runs from his clavicle to his belly button, as if he was gutted and then put back together. He’s fast. Faster than even Kurt, the way he uses the edge of his hands to deliver crosshatch hits until he’s got Kurt in a master lock while Shark Face sucker-punches him in the gut.
I tap Shark Face on the shoulder, and when he turns around, I bash the hilt of the dagger in his eye. He makes a terrible sound, cupping the nasty black blood pouring down his face. Something the nautilus maid said bugs me. Would it make it easier if you didn’t think of me as people? Bad time to feel her freaky vibes in my head, but Shark Face doesn’t even come after me. He’s going back after Kurt.
My hands are shaking. I don’t like killing anything. Not merrows, not mermen. I hated it in elementary school when Angelo used his BB gun to kill squirrels. But if I don’t do it, my friends are going to keep dying. I grab Shark Face around the throat in a nelson, and from behind me, Layla screams, pushing her sword into his chest.
It takes her two tries to get it through to the back.
I can feel the tip of her blade as the merrow breaks down all over me, a hand still grabbing onto my wrist. “That was too close,” I say. She smiles, wiping the black ooze from her cheeks.
I pull the merrow’s hand off my wrist and throw it at the merman fighting Kurt. He turns around, eyes glowing like headlights. “You’re lucky, prince.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because no one is to lay a finger on you.”
That’s enough of a distraction for Kurt to kick the breath out of him. Kurt lifts his sword over the merman’s head. Kurt’s breath catches and he hesitates, just for a moment but I can see it. He drives the sword right through the merman’s back, and the merman turns to a slopping pile of foam.
Behind Kurt, Archer shows himself again. He’s crouching on the edge of the ship, one hand under his chin. He’s studying us, smiling the whole time.
There’s a bang on the other end of the deck, and its force knocks me forward into Kurt. Fishy chunks of merrow spray everywhere. We scramble to Gwen, who is fending off the last merman in Archer’s troupe. He’s so tatted up that there isn’t any bare flesh except for his face. He’s holding his knife right over her, execution style. I reach out with my dagger, but Archer’s hand clamps down on the merman’s neck with a powerful squeeze. The merman strangles, eyes peeled back and body shaking until Archer’s fist is full of surf and air.
An arrow falls to the floor, and I realize Archer’s grip wasn’t what killed him. Someone shot him.
“You’ve fought well tonight.” Archer runs to the ledge of the ship. “But soon our numbers will span the entire sea, and you, brother, will join our cause.”
“We shouldn’t let him get away,” Thalia says, craning over the ledge. “We can swim to him.”