“Only one turning green now!” Jak said, grinning.
AS LONG MINUTES TURNED into hours, all of the comrades knew the storm wasn’t getting any better. Rather than turn back, Ryan and J.B. decided to sail farther inland in an attempt to avoid the demon storm clouds that had been bearing down on them mercilessly.
A good plan, but it didn’t make for an easy voyage.
Still, all was as quiet and uneventful inside the long stateroom when Krysty suddenly bolted upright from the bunk she was resting on.
“What?” Jak said, instantly alert.
Krysty didn’t answer, her green eyes wide as she took in the room, looking but not comprehending what she was staring at in the real world.
She was somewhere else than the Patch.
“Something wrong, Krysty?” Dean asked.
“Mebbe so,” she said. “I wonder if everything’s okay above.”
“Take look. Back soon,” Jak replied, and vanished up the stairwell.
“Woe is me, for I shall never take another sea voyage for as long as I shall live,” Doc moaned. “I have nothing left to give—my stomach is empty, cursed sickness! Shall I donate a vital organ to your lust for watching me suffer?”
“Quiet, Doc! I’ve got to concentrate.”
There was a new menace, an unnatural threat beyond the storm and the thrashing sea.
This threat was man-made, but of what type she couldn’t tell. Her latent mutie senses had been in turmoil since they had left port in Florida. Drawing much of her inner strength from the land itself, Krysty never felt at ease when on water anyway, and she had attributed her feelings to that.
“Something’s wrong, something’s bad wrong,” she murmured to herself like a mantra.
Mildred got up and reached over to feel the redhead’s sweaty brow. “God, Krysty, you’re on fire,” the doctor said.
“Got to warn Ryan. There’s danger. I’m seeing red—bloodred.”
“What kind of danger? The storm?” Mildred was starting to get caught up in Krysty’s mounting hysteria, the buffeting of the boat, the loud crashing of the thunder, all had started to take a toll on the doctor’s usual internal calm. And for Krysty to mention seeing red, that meant they were all in even greater danger than they might have earlier expected.
But from what?
Before Mildred could verbalize her own fears, a second loud boom of thunder exploded in the night, but unlike the others, this one came from below the boat. Everyone in the crowded cabin was thrown back, then heaved forward as the yacht yawled from the impact. Doc fell to his knees, not hearing but still feeling his worn bones crack in protest. His lion’s-head swordstick flew out from his right hand, skipping like a tossed stone across the soaked carpeted floor.
“Accursed ocean,” he said bitterly from clenched teeth, trying to shake off the pain from his aching kneecaps. “If I survive, I shall be a bloody invalid by the end of this sea voyage.”
Dean slammed into Mildred, and the woman managed to hang on to the boy’s shirttail, keeping him upright. Doc reached out and was able to latch on to a metal lip that was attached to the bulkhead.
The remaining two members of the party weren’t as lucky. Krysty had been thrown off her feet and onto her upper back and neck. The suddenness of the explosion smashed her down with terrific force, knocking her instantly unconscious as she slid toward the gaping hole that had just appeared in the hull.
Jak, who had been coming back down the companionway into the lower part of the boat when the blast occurred, didn’t have a second to react as he was thrown forward down the narrow passageway and directly into the newly created hole, almost simultaneously with Krysty’s descent.
“Jak!” Mildred screamed, but there was no time to respond.
The albino twisted his lithe body as he fell, managing not to break his neck when he hit the churning water. Gasping for breath, his lungs emptied from both the impact and the sudden cold, Jak struggled to maintain some kind of proper sense of which way was up. Seeing Krysty’s limp body already being sucked into the undertow beneath the vessel, he pushed himself down farther, under the chilling ocean, and grasped a fistful of long red hair.