Page 5 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Ronin and Nikolai are fighting, knife to knife, both expert divers and master killers. It’d be a thing of beauty to watch them go at it—if I weren’t so terrified for Ronin. Looming over their struggling bodies and dangerously close, Cleo thrashes in a blind agony that tears at my own stupid heart.

That spear still bristles from her throat.

Damn it. Don’t be a moron, showgirl. That’s me, giving myself a lecture. She betrayed you, remember?

Before I can decide whether to try and intervene, a violent spasm of her thick forked tail slams into the two human combatants—Ronin and Nikolai—and sends them spinning apart.

Propelled by the powerful impact, Nikolai tumbles end over end.

Right into me.

The heavy cylinder of his tank knocks the Horn from my grip. The glittering crescent spins into the darkness, then drops under my light into the murky deep.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

I have to surface. Have to.

Ronin! I shout blindly through our bond, shoving the image into my mate’s head by brute force. I’m outta air. Get the Horn!

But I can already tell by the muddy feeling in our bond that a nullifying object is still in play. Even as Vasili’s dad fins away, struggling with his battered gear, I’m guessing Nikolai has the nullifying object tucked under his wetsuit.

Ronin can’t hear me.

The pit of my belly drops in despair.

But Ronin can still see.

Suddenly, my mate’s floating before me. Through the visor, his urgent amber eyes lock on mine.

Roughly Ronin pulls the respirator from his mouth and presses it to my lips.

I grip his wrist to stabilize both of us and suck in a desperate breath of delicious air, easing the crushing ache in my starved lungs with sweet oxygen.

I pull in two more greedy gulps to replenish my empty lungs, then pass the respirator back to him.

We’re buddy breathing.

Over his shoulder, I catch a flashing glimpse of something new emerging from the deep. A thick tangle of tentacles, purple as eggplant, speckled with sinister black. A cruel beak gapes wide under an indigo eye, cold and remorseless as death.

Cheese on toast.

Another monster.

I’ve never seen one in the flesh before, but I’ve done my witch academy homework.

That’s a kraken.

A fucking kraken .

And since they’re not any more native to the Med than great white sharks, I’m pretty fucking certain that kraken is Mordred the demon. Who’s clearly followed us from Avalon. Just like he threatened.

Never mind the fact that I never asked for his help. Or the fact that I explicitly ordered him not to follow us back, for reasons.

He’s a complication I don’t want.

An ally I don’t trust.

At least twenty kinds of trouble I don’t need.

Clearly disregarding every single word I ever said to him, Mordred’s kraken and Cleo’s sea dragon collide in vicious combat.

Now Malky the great white joins the fray with a pale flash of belly and a gunmetal thrash of fin.

The shark twists away with a bloody hunk of Mordred’s tentacle dangling from his jaws.

Oh my God, gross.

It’s Clash of the Titans down here, for real.

A hasty sweep of my beam in all directions confirms what I already know. Nikolai Romanov is nowhere to be found.

The sonic boom that splits my brain is either the impact of Cleo’s agonized body colliding with the big stalagmite…

Or the sound of my strategy to win the Dean’s Challenge getting blown to smithereens.

Nikolai might be twice my age (and then some), but he’s clever and he’s quick. No way to know if he saw the Horn fall and dove after it… or if the damage to his own gear after that violent collision drove him to the surface.

Same way that need is driving me.

Buddy breathing is an emergency measure. Ronin and me, we can’t search like this. And we definitely can’t fight.

But the Horn… it could be right under me…

I’m breathing in another hit of Ronin’s dwindling air supply, panning the bottomless depths repeatedly with my flashlight, when Ronin makes the tough call for me.

With a single decisive twist, he unbuckles his weight belt—the gear that gives a diver ballast so we can stay submerged at depth—and lets it drop.

Then, winding one leg around mine to keep us joined, he deftly unbuckles mine.

As the heavy belt falls into the endless night, I wrestle the now useless oxygen tank off my shoulders and let it fall too.

Then I throw my arms around Ronin’s neck.

Below us as we start to rise, the panorama of that deep-sea battle unfolds. Cleo is writhing in a sea of purple tentacles, spraying superheated steam in all directions, bleeding freely from the gaping tear in her neck where Ronin’s spear has been violently wrenched free.

But, damn, that girl’s holding her own.

Especially with Malcolm Uranus’ great white tearing savagely at the giant squid-like kraken from behind. The churning water around their writhing bodies is black with blood.

I don’t even know if demons can die. But Mordred is half Fae. And he’s losing a lotta blood—

The violent spectacle falls away beneath us. Now Ronin and I are racing for the surface. When Ronin gooses his regulator to inflate the buoyancy control device buckled around his torso, our natural buoyancy gets turbocharged.

Even though I can’t inflate mine without oxygen, we’re shooting from the depths like a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

His fins and mine churn in tandem, both of us pushing out the expanding air from our throats in a steady yell to protect our fragile lungs from rupturing under the pressure of our too-rapid ascent.

Because we don’t have time to pause every ten feet to decompress and acclimate to the changing pressure, the way you’re supposed to do in a sitch like this, you feel me?

Still locked together, we burst to the surface.

A literal deluge of rain batters our heads and shoulders like pellets. God, that tropical storm is right on top of us.

The heavy seas throw us around like air-blown balls in a lottery draw.

But Ronin’s inflated BCD functions as a life jacket to keep us both afloat.

My flashlight picks out the rocky crags that thrust above the surface—deadly dangers that need to be avoided.

Clinging tightly together in the vicious seas, while the wind howls around us and the rain lashes our limbs and streaks our visors, our situation is too chaotic and uncomfortable for speech.

I don’t even have the energy to spare for telepathy.

In grim silence, we ride the powerful surface current that sweeps us swiftly along the jagged coast of Icarus Island toward the extraction point.

Just like we planned.

Only we don’t have the Horn.

And maybe Cleo’s team does.

I’m starting to lose my grip, heavy fatigue clouding my thoughts and weighing down every limb, when I glimpse the warm glow of a lantern bobbing on an inflatable orange dinghy.

That’s Neo and the Filibuster , moored to the rocky outcrop that marks the end of this drift dive for Ronin and me.

I use the last of my fading strength to help Ronin propel us through the churn toward the dinghy.

The dark figure at the prow tosses out an orange life jacket on a rope to meet us halfway.

I wrap a chilled but thankful arm around the flotation device and Neo hauls us swiftly the last few feet through the furious seas.

Dimly I’m aware there are two of my warlocks—Neo and Lucius, both zipped into life jackets and drenched to the skin—dragging Ronin and me over the gunwale into the boat. Concerned hands lift the visor from my face and settle me into the stern. Beneath me, the dinghy pitches and rolls.

By now, my teeth are chattering with shock and exposure. Even when I clench my molars to suppress that shit.

“L-L-Lucius.” I unlock my jaws long enough to chatter into my headmaster’s pale face. He crouches protectively over me, dark hair plastered to his head, eyes glowing a wicked red in the darkness. “W-we n-n-n-need to go back d-d-down.”

“Don’t even think of it, my dear.” Firmly Lucius wraps me in an oversized mackintosh to shelter me from the lashing rain.

Gently he closes my fingers around an insulated thermos that emanates the blissful acrid smell of coffee.

“This tropical storm is turning into a full-blown cyclone. Staying on the water at all, much less diving in it, would be a suicide mission.”

I pause only long enough to slurp a bracing gulp of scalding coffee, laced with the bite of Irish whiskey. My eyes drift closed in momentary bliss. Like a magic potion, the hot java moistens my dry mouth, coats my parched throat, and seeds my cold tummy with a kernel of precious warmth.

Ambrosia.

Doggedly, I force my eyes open and push up to sit.

“We have to, Lucius,” I project my hoarse voice above the hiss and patter of rain so I can also reach Neo, who’s busy in the prow, taking care of Ronin. “We have to go back. We don’t have the Horn.”