Page 11 of Sea of Evil and Desire (The Deep Saga #1)

9

Morgana

W hat the hell? Was I lying motionless, or was I floating?

The same song had played again, and the tune lingered. Images of the jetty, the wind, and the sinking flooded my mind. It was so still now.

Had Finn found me and taken me home to my bed again? I opened my eyes a fraction, and a watery green light filtered in.

At first, I thought I must be in my grandparents’ attic, because I was lying on a faded patchwork quilt, but when I sat up, I realized this one was tattered and coated in a greenish film. Gross!

The room was cramped, reminiscent of ship cabins I’d seen in films. The floorboards and walls were thick with grime. A round window cast shafts of emerald light, illuminating the dirt-streaked floor and a dresser, its mirror veiled in mold.

My eyes darted around the strange yet somehow familiar room, trying to piece together my surroundings. The oddest part was the sensation enveloping me; there was no wind, yet I still felt cool. I am underwater! I gasped. But the thought struck me as ridiculous.

Finn said the water here was cold enough to cause hypothermia, but I was comfortably cool, and I seemed to have some strange kind of oxygen reserve. I scrambled at my chest, exhaling a sigh of relief as I felt the slow thudding of my heart.

This is impossible! Perhaps I fainted, and this is all a dream.

That was it. I let out a long breath, sending a stream of bubbles swirling around me.

I gulped down my panic and leaped from the bed. My fingers slid through the water, and my long, red hair flowed behind me. I moved easily, not swimming, but walking.

My breath caught in my throat as I glimpsed my reflection in the grimy mirror. I rushed over, cleaning its surface. Scooping back my hair, I saw the fur. It covered my arms and stretched across my chest like a corset. I gasped as I took in the rest of my body—I was practically naked, aside from a covering of downy hair that accentuated my every curve. I stared, horrified, at where my breasts should have been. Now, there was just a fur-covered outline, my nipples still visible underneath the bodice of fur. It stretched over my torso and covered my legs, but it dispersed at my ankles, and my feet were bare. It was as if I were wearing a bodysuit like Catwoman’s, but instead of leather, mine was fur.

My feet . . . I did a double take. My toes now sported leathery webs. Ugh!

I choked, lifting my hands to my face and then drawing them away in horror. My fingers had the same tough-skinned webs between them.

What the fuck? I was no stranger to weird dreams, but this one . . . this one took the cake.

Racing to the door, I flung it open. I was on the upper floor of a grand steamship lined with cabins. The hallway of doors stretched into inky darkness to my left and right. Little lights hung at intervals along its sides, illuminating streaks of a rust-like substance running down the walls.

Every muscle in my body went taut, freezing me in place as I locked eyes with a ferocious-looking fish hooked to the wall. Long, pale fangs protruded crudely from its gaping mouth, and a bulb hanging from its forehead was glowing. I’d heard of these creatures—anglerfish, found only in the deepest parts of the ocean. They had bioluminescent bulbs on their foreheads. Someone, or something, is using them as lights!

Wait a minute. My shoulders slumped in relief; knowing this was a dream meant I could control it.

I relaxed my body. Eyes shut, I willed myself to wake. But when I opened them, I was still in the dark hallway, the anglerfish’s unblinking eyes fixed on me.

To my left, a staircase spiraled down into the murky darkness of the lower deck. The roof above was decaying in places, and shafts of greenish light fell right through to the compartments below.

I guess I have to brave the stairs.

I took a deep breath, edging my foot onto the first step.

It was almost too dark to see the sea life, but I felt their presence. A school of fluorescent fish darted to and fro around my ankles, and a crab scuttled sideways as my foot felt clumsily for the next step, but I continued down into the gloom. I willed my subconscious not to conjure anything scary down there.

I froze, ears pricked. Music . Deep and mournful, it wound its way up from the shadows. It was the same tune I’d heard upon waking, but there were no words this time.

The song swelled at the bottom of the staircase, and I found myself in another room. Tall wooden doors loomed before me, a deep-set engraving across them spelling “Davy Jones’s Tavern.”

Underneath the words was what looked like a roughly carved stamp. I ran my fingers across the grooves, which had blackened with slime. It was a circle, with some kind of runes running around the outside. In the middle was a carving of a crashing wave with a crescent moon above it. A paralyzing tension washed over me—it was the same insignia from my grandmother’s box and the bowl at the pawnshop. Around the wave and moon, there were five carvings. They were roughly hewn and obscured by grime, but I could make out the skull, mermaid, seal, some kind of sea monster—a squid perhaps—and another mermaid-like creature.

I ran my hands over each carving, my breathing ragged. This was way too much.

The music continued to wind through the doors, and I pushed against them, fingers sliding in the goo. Inside, high stools lined a slimy counter, and wooden tables and benches littered the floor—a bar.

More anglerfish lit the room. They were shoved into glass jars on the tables and caught in fishnets, strung between tangles of sludgy seaweed vines on the ceiling.

A man was hunched over a piano in the room’s far corner. Barnacles clung to the instrument, and seaweed swayed sadly to the man’s tune, yet the keys remained clean, shining like polished marble as he caressed them. The man had black hair, most of it turned gray, caramel skin, and a soft white beard. He would have been handsome before age took its toll. A navy-and-white sailor’s hat was perched crookedly on his head. He wore a matching uniform—captain’s attire. Noticing me, he looked up and smiled.

I couldn’t move. Only hours ago, I had felt Finn’s touch, his warmth beside me on the couch. Now, I was here in this eerie place, and I wasn’t waking up by the looks of things.

My throat constricted as a small sea snake popped its head out from the man’s right eye socket, knocking a wooden eye to the floor, and then darted back in when it saw me.

“What is this place?” Fear clouded my subconscious, and although only bubbles exited my mouth, I heard my words come out as a high-pitched squeak.

“You are in the Kingdom of the Drowned, and you can call me the Captain.” It came out as bubbles and strange gurgles, but my mind comprehended him in English. He had stopped playing, but his fingers still rested on the keys.

“Then I’m . . .” Dead . I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

The Captain surveyed me with his one good eye. “You are curious to me, because you are neither dead nor dying, but you do have the mark of the sea on you.” Once again, bubbles came out of his mouth, and my mind translated it—his accent was deep and husky.

“This is a dream!” I rounded on him, drawing myself up to my full height as if this would enable me to change my narrative.

I closed my eyes, desperately willing myself to be somewhere else, anywhere else, begging for control over the situation. Slowly, I reopened them, but was immediately disappointed as the green light filtered in. I was still in this . . . this . . . Davy Jones’s Tavern.

“Wh-why do I look like this?” I stammered. My stomach felt like it was made of lead.

The Captain smiled again.

Why does he keep smiling at me? I glared at him.

He rose from behind the piano, the movement jolting me. His wooden leg scraped against the floor as he swung it in a wide arc, limping toward the bar.

Of course he has a wooden leg. I rolled my eyes despite it all.

“Well?” I followed him and slid onto one of the high stools, running my finger over the counter, which was coated in green slime. Ugh!

The Captain reached up toward the shelves behind him, which glittered with glass bottles, all different shapes, sizes, and colors. He grunted as he stretched, grabbing two of them and placing one underneath the tap of a large wooden barrel.

“Drink.” He handed the bottle to me. It was green glass.

I lifted it to my lips but stopped, narrowing my eyes as the Captain retrieved his own bottle from the tap.

“You think I mean to poison you, child?” He raised his bushy brows. His good eye gleamed bright as topaz, but it was kind.

Still, I’d seen enough movies to know you didn’t accept drinks from strangers . . . especially not dead ones.

“What is it?” I raised the bottle to the light, and a dark liquid shifted inside.

“It’s only rum.” The Captain grinned, taking a long swig from his. The little snake slithered around to the left side of his head, surveying me with crimson eyes.

Great, more brown spirits! It was the last thing I needed, but I took a little sip.

The warm, spiced liquid was unlike anything I’d tasted—smooth yet potent, with the familiar burn of rum but no need for a mixer. Strangely, it didn’t feel like eating or drinking in a dream. As the liquid entered my body, I relaxed, if only slightly. I wondered if it had some magical properties, like the Drowned’s version of Xanax. I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the thought.

The Captain was surveying me over the top of his bottle.

“How did I get here? How do I get out?” I leaned further onto the slick wooden bar and met his eye.

“I cannot tell you why you are here, Morgana. That is for you to discover.”

“You know my name?”

“I know everyone who will pass through these doors before they do. You are not dead, but our world has marked you for some reason. Take a look.” He gestured at my left shoulder. Pulling it forward, an inky likeness that hadn’t been there before shone on my skin. It was a wave that curled around and came to a sharp point. A crescent moon rose above it.

“It’s the same as the carving on the door.” I swallowed. “What is that?”

“The insignia of the Kingdom of the Deep and all its houses.”

My mouth fell open, and I clamped it shut. I didn’t reply. I couldn’t.

“The sooner you realize this isn’t a dream, the quicker you’ll realize your destiny,” the Captain said matter-of-factly, and started polishing glass tumblers hanging on hooks behind the bar.

My destiny? How cliché.

“But this is not scientifically possible in any way.” I gestured to the anglerfish squashed into the jar before me on the bar.

“Is it that unrealistic for the drowned to live on in the depths of the ocean?” The Captain raised his bushy brows at me again. “I am not here to give people the answers. I protect this place and the souls that come here. You are in the Kingdom of the Drowned now, and down here, many things you may not believe in are possible.”

My throat bobbed as my eyes darted around the space. The rum had helped, but panic and disbelief were still roiling inside me.

“Ah, it is the drinking hour,” the Captain said after a moment, rubbing his weathered hands together.

The windows darkened, but the room brightened until I could no longer see the fierce teeth or bulging eyes of the anglerfish tangled in fishnets on the ceiling. They were glowing, and the mottled roof resembled a sky full of stars.

People of all ages began entering the venue. Some came through the swinging doors at the front, and others used the big wooden doors I had entered from. They moved like they would on land—not floating, but walking, as if some magical force kept them anchored to the ocean floor. A man with dreadlocks wearing a pirate hat glared at me as he barreled past. I let the bottle of rum I was holding fall to the floor, and it smashed beneath my stool.

These people must be the Drowned.

They were not translucent like the ghosts in tales. They were opaque. None of them were furry like me, though. They all wore the tattered clothes they must have drowned in—some years ago or centuries ago, by the looks of things.

The Drowned began to make themselves at home. Chess sets were drawn from rusted chests in the corners and games started on the slime-covered boards. Gnarly sailors pushed at each other to get to the bar. Two schoolgirls wearing pinafores over white torn T-shirts, probably from the 1950s or thereabouts, giggled at a table, and a woman in a ripped beaded 1920s dress conversed happily with a modern-day girl beside them.

The Captain began to fill more glass bottles and hand them to the sailors jostling beside me.

I was frozen on my bar stool. No way. This is way too weird.

But it was happening. More and more drowned people emerged in the bar. Sailors pulled laughing women onto their laps, and everybody snatched up spicy rum bottles that the Captain sent sliding down the long wooden bar. A man in a stained white-and-blue naval officer’s hat leered at me, his teeth green with algae. I careened backward, my stool clattering to the sandy floor.

The Drowned at the bar stopped to stare at me. I became acutely aware of the way my new furry bodysuit clung to every curve, wrapping my arms across my breasts as heat worked its way into my cheeks.

Some Drowned were good-looking and well-preserved. They had died handsome and young and were immortalized that way. Others were older, and some—who may have resided in this watery world longer—had missing teeth and dark rings under their eyes, as if the ocean had started to have its way with them. As the many stares of the Drowned devoured my fur-covered body, I realized I couldn’t sense their feelings.

I let the upheaval of the bar wash over me. Nothing . Apparently my senses didn’t work on the dead.

“How does the rest of the world not know about this?” I righted my stool but didn’t sit down. The Captain passed out more rum bottles as the merriment became raucous.

“The living cannot see us! Only the dead and those of the ocean like yourself can. To the inferior eye, the inside of this ship looks as decayed as the exterior,” the Captain yelled as he lined rum-filled tumblers along the bar. Despite his wooden leg and age, he was moving with a speed and agility that would outdo even the best young bartender in Kansas City’s most fashionable nightclub.

The crowd around me was becoming increasingly unruly. I shrank into the far corner, between the piano and the swing doors. What would I find outside?

Peering over, I saw only murky darkness. I ran my hand along the slimy doors. They couldn’t possibly have been here when the ship sank. They looked like something from a Western saloon. I wondered if they had been built by one of the Drowned or magically introduced.

What am I thinking?

A cry rang out as a pirate threw the man in a naval officer’s hat against the bar using the ribbon around the neck of his uniform. My mouth fell open as he yanked on it, pulling it tighter and tighter until the officer began to choke.

“I thought I told you to stay away from my girl,” the pirate snarled. He was wearing a white tunic and had long dark hair plaited down his back.

A woman was hovering nervously at the pair’s side. “Cedric, don’t,” she whimpered. She was wearing a power suit and had a short blonde bob. She must have drowned in the last fifty years.

The man in the naval uniform, whom Cedric had pinned to the bar, spat at his attacker. Without hesitation, the pirate pulled out a huge, hooked knife from his belt and thrust it into the officer’s gut. I gasped as the man cried out in pain, then slumped over the blade.

The woman let out a frightened squeak.

“Help him!” I cried, turning to the Captain, who continued serving customers nearby, unfazed by the scene unfolding beside him.

He chuckled.

Why is he laughing? This isn’t funny! A man is dead. But wait—he was already dead.

As if on cue, the officer coughed and returned to life as Cedric the pirate pulled out his blade. He, Cedric, and the woman with the bob all looked at one another and roared with laughter. Cedric pulled the officer from the bar and slapped him on the back.

“That will teach you to sleep with my girl,” he said, holding up his tumbler of rum. To my surprise, the naval officer held his glass up, too.

“I hear you, brother.” He nodded, and the three of them roared with laughter again.

What the actual fuck? Did they just cheers each other for murder?

I pressed myself further into the wall beside the swinging doors. Another fight broke out in one of the far corners, and a man in fisherman’s overalls broke a chair over the head of a man in a kilt.

I peered into the darkness beyond the doors. Perhaps stepping outside would awaken me. My nightmare couldn’t get any worse than this. Could it?