The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) Read Online Free Page A

Coney Island.
    Tumultuous waves pull me in different directions, but I keep my eyes trained on the burning ship and swim around it. All of its contents are spilling from the seams. Silverware, cannon balls, daggers, and the glass jars the urchin brothers collected. The rest is burned beyond recognition.
    I see a familiar black mound and swim to it, each flick of my tail sending an agonizing shock through my body. Five, six, seven, I reach it. My backpack. I sling my arms through the straps. It’s a tiny bit of hope, and I let it fill my head. I watch the wreckage, trying to spot Brendan or Kai or Arion. I wait and wait, but soon the flames eat at the wood like a match igniting a cigarette.
    I want to shout their names, but I know better. My ears perk up at a distant echo. I haven’t spent much time communicating underwater, but I know it isn’t friendly. Poseidon, Vishnu, sweet Baby Jesus, I say. Please, please let my friends be safe.
    The sharp cry gets louder. Nieve’s merrows have found me. I can finally understand what they’re saying. They can smell combat fire and my blood. They’ve found the champion’s ship.
    I swim up to the surface where it feels like I’m in the middle of a cloud. With the best breaststroke that won All-City Champ three years in a row, I head right into the mist.
    •••
    When Brendan said the mist was terrifying, I didn’t think he meant this.
    The change is unnoticeable at first. Fog, thick and wet, envelops me. The cries of my hunters are replaced by whispers along my skin. Fish the size of marbles rise up from the depths and jump all around me. This is not a good time to be attracting fish like I’m the Snow White of the seven seas. Except these fish bite. The first one doesn’t hurt, but then their white shimmering bodies become a swarm. I pull out my scepter and concentrate on its energy connected to mine. I thrust it outward and wait for the blinding white light to come from the crystal but it doesn’t. The cold gold feels like lead in my hand, and the swarm comes down on me one more time, pulling me under.
    I flash back to this one time at the aquarium in Coney Island. One of the demonstrators threw a hunk of bloody meat in the piranha tank, and within seconds, it was clean. If I don’t get these things off me, I’m going to bleed out. I swipe at them with my tail, breaking their formation, but they come back together, pulling me down. I’m going to lose the mist. I scream in frustration as more of them appear out of thin water.
    I give my scepter one more try, and this time I let everything I’ve been trying not to feel wash over me. I think about Layla, her eyes full of rage as Gwen held a knife to her throat. I think about Nieve, her moon-white face waiting expectantly because I was going to surrender to her. I think about the very first time my grandfather showed me the history of the kings in the pool of his chambers, my very first time at Toliss Island, and I know that I’m stronger than this. With a shudder, light bursts from the crystal of the scepter and the mass of marble piranhas dissolves into foam.
    I look down at my arms and the red bites are gone.
    It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
    But I’m farther down than I thought. I race back to the surface. I kick my tail as hard as I can, pushing against the pain in my bones, my arm stretched out for the finish line. The moment my hand breaks the surface and I touch the mist, I get sucked into its current.

I can’t remember the last time I went through a portal, but this one feels like I’m getting squeezed into a compact little box. When I come out in one piece, my whole body sighs.
    I let the water push me onto the sandy shore.
    I roll over and throw my backpack off.
    The sand is white and soft and dotted with smooth oblong stones. I pick some up and sift them between my fingers. I shut my eyes and brace against the rip of my tail. Fiery numbness coats my skin and then stops at my upper