The thing—the makara—is undulating in wide arcs, eating. It shakes its head back and forth with a twelve-foot-long shark in its mandible.
“I think I just peed myself,” I say. “How can you tell down here?”
Kurt shakes his head, gripping his sword even tighter. “If we live through this, I’ll point it out to you.”
As it swallows the shark like it’s munching on an Oreo, the makara is unaware of us watching. It’s curled up on a jagged black rock. Its head could belong to a crocodile—the long snout, the raised bumps that start on its nose and continue all the way down to the sharp tip of the tail. Crooked claws grip the bits of shark meat that fall from its mouth. It reminds me of a T. rex, arms short and close to the mouth. Chomp by chomp, the great white shark disappears inside the makara. There’s a dorsal fin off to the side, but nothing else.
Then the demon’s head snaps up. Maybe it can smell us. Maybe it caught the glint off our weapons. Whatever it was, two yellow eyes lock on us.
“No matter what,” Kurt tells me, “I will get you to the cove.”
“Don’t talk that way now,” I say, wracking my mind for something—anything. The makara is twice as long as our ship. Its body retracts, watching us carefully before it lurches forward. “You go left. I go right. On my go.”
“What?”
“Just do it!”
The demon drops the rest of its meal, blood billowing around it. The makara snaps its mouth once, twice. The sound of the crunch is so hard that the shock vibrates all the way to us.
“Now!” I dive to the right, up, and arc around.
But the demon isn’t following me.
It’s following Kurt.
I swim right behind them, trying my best to avoid the pointed tail. If there were ever a time for the scepter to work, it would be now. Why didn’t my grandfather give me a clue? Anything. Maybe he didn’t think I’d actually be able to get a piece of the trident. No, I can’t think that way. I was chosen for a reason. The hum of the scepter is dull, but I know its power is down there, like a prickle beneath the skin. I have to make it surface.
“Tristan!”
With every chomp, the makara gets closer and closer to Kurt’s fins. In a desperate move, I swing my scepter like a bat.
The demon’s skin is so thick that I’m not sure it actually feels the hit. The pointed end of its tail flaps around, trying to skewer me. I need to get closer to reach it with my dagger, so I swim underneath it and swipe. Blood flows from the cut.
The makara writhes, swimming past Kurt and up and up until it breaks the surface. Its cry is terrible, like a million snarling crocs. A thin line of blood trails from Kurt’s fin. We swim away, but not fast enough. It dives back down, barreling into me with one of the ridges on its face, pushing and pushing until I crash against the ocean floor. Something inside me crunches, hard. My vision is cloudy and every breath is a fire in my chest. I can feel the abyss of its open mouth over me, lips peeled back to expose the rows of massive teeth.
I search the ground around me until I find the cold gold of my scepter, screaming as I thrust it out. A blast of white light shines from the crystal.
The makara growls.
It shivers from snout to bleeding tail. Mouth open, eyes wide, it doesn’t move from the light. Slowly, I inch the crystal to the left.
It follows.
To the right.
It follows.
Kurt hovers above us. He holds his sword by the hilt, raises it high over his head. We look at each other for a second, nodding for reassurance. Kurt drives the sword between the makara’s eyes, piercing straight through the mouth until the hilt won’t go down any farther. The creature wails, a terrible sound that must carry on for miles. Blood pools in dark clouds around us as Kurt pulls the sword out and stabs it again.
I try to get out of the way, but I can’t move fast enough. The creature goes slack and falls right on my tail. Kurt’s so bewildered by the creature that he floats there and stares.
“A little help,” I groan.
“Yes, yes, of course. Can you move?”
“If I could move, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Right.” His chest is heaving. He swims around and clutches