I leapt across the platform toward Dionysus. I slapped his face. His chin jerked to the side. “Wake up, Scott!” Cold water from my hair splashed over his eyes as they winked open.
“What—” he said in a groggy tone.
“You have a visitor.” I jerked his chin toward the water.
The beast’s huge head rose from the surface a hundred feet from the platform.
Scott’s eyes widened. “What the fuck!”
I leaned forward and whispered, “You wanted chaos?” I pointed toward the beast. “Well, she’s coming for you.”
The monster’s two large yellow eyes zeroed in on us. A loud roar filled the night. She was coming in hot.
“Untie me!” His voice cracked with fear. “Please!”
“Kate?” Morales said in an urgent tone. “It’s go time!”
“No, you can’t leave me!” The Raven struggled against the belt, but with his ruined hand he didn’t have a hope of untying himself. “I’m begging you!”
Morales looked at me, unsure. Part of me wanted to leave the asshole tied to his own bomb—a little poetic justice. But in the end, I couldn’t justify leaving him tied up. I certainly didn’t intend to save him, but I also couldn’t damn him to being unable to try and save himself.
“Untie him. Quickly!”
Morales dove across the raft and quickly unbuckled the belt. Dionysus froze, as if shocked by the tiny mercy we’d shown him. “W-why?”
Morales came back to join me at the edge of the raft before he answered. “Because every man deserves to be able to go down fighting.”
A roar echoed over the water. All three of us turned toward the spine-chilling noise.
The monster’s mouth emerged from the water and opened wide enough to swallow a Volkswagen. A guttural sound escaped the maw. Morales and I edged to the opposite side of the platform from the bomb. Scott, clearly dizzy and weak from lack of blood, slipped and groped against the metal frame to regain his feet.
“Take me with you!” Scott yelled.
“Kate?” Morales was pushing against me.
“Patience,” I said. A sudden calm descended over me as time slowed. I glanced at the clock. Thirty seconds.
“It won’t work,” Dionysus yelled. “You’ll die, too, you stupid fucking whore.”
I taunted the monster. “Come on, you big, beautiful bitch!”
“Oh shit,” Morales said. “This is crazy!”
The beast’s mouth grew closer until it filled our vision like a portal to another dimension. Bending my knees, I wrapped my arms around Morales. His came around me, too.
I cast one final glance at Dionysus. He was crawling toward the other edge of the raft, his knees slipping in his blood. “So long, asshole.”
The monster loomed closer, closer. The man who claimed to love chaos screamed with a terror that would haunt my dreams.
“Now!” I shouted.
The first few boards of the platform crunched under the monster’s enormous, sharp teeth. Lunging with all our strength, Morales and I flew off the port side of the platform. Slamming into the water felt like belly flopping onto concrete. The air whooshed from my lungs and cold, dirty water surged into my sinuses.
Morales kicked his good leg and I scissored both of mine until we were clear. Once my head emerged from under the water, the shrieking registered first. Then a loud crunch. The sound of sharp teeth on bone and wood. The monster’s victorious roar filled the night. And then, silence.
We swam like mad things toward the raft he’d set adrift. I helped him in first, and then he pulled me up to join him.
An instant later a magical concussion spread through the water like an aftershock. Ripples spread in choppy concentric circles through the water, making our raft bob wildly in its wake.
I held my breath, watching the surface for signs of the beast’s fate. When I’d formed the plan, I hadn’t thought about what would happen when the bomb detonated inside the monster’s body. If she exploded, would the lake be contaminated?
But then, breaking the silence, a loud splash sounded. The monster’s body leaped out of the water fifty feet from our raft. The formerly black surface of her slick skin sparkled iridescent purple in the Blue Moon’s glow. As soon as she appeared, the Lake Erie Lizard descended back into the depths, taking every trace of Dionysus and his ill-fated bomb with her.
I finally released the breath I’d been holding. “Holy shit.”
Morales’s eyelids were drooping. “Jesus, Prospero, if I’d known you were going to play chicken with that beast I never would have suggested you summon him.”
“Her,” I corrected. “That was definitely a lady monster.”
He popped an eyebrow. “How can you tell?”
“I just know.”
He laughed. “Well, guess what, Cupcake? Since you’re so smart, I’ll let you row.” He tossed the oars to me. Despite the sarcasm, I could tell the suggestion was really a necessity.
He’d lost a lot more blood than me. Besides, he had the flare, which he shot into the air as I rowed us toward the lighthouse.
By the time the rescue boat reached us twenty minutes later, we’d both fallen into shocked silence. What other choice did we have? It’s not like we were going to talk about the secrets we were forced to know about each other. The ones we were both praying the other would never repeat.
I was shocked to see Gardner, Shadi, and Mez standing on the ship’s railing, loaded down with every Mundane and magical weapon in existence. They rushed off the boat and secured the area before coming to make sure we were okay.
Then we were being bundled in blankets, having our wounds triaged, and being urged onto soft benches to rest. Morales’s bullet wound was the most serious, so Mez focused his efforts there.
I went to sit while Shadi and Gardner peppered me with questions. I answered in a monotone, but my eyes were on Morales. His jaw was tight as Mez doctored his wounds with saline and iodine. His eyes met mine, and his face was a mask of solemn shock.
I’m not sure what Morales thought about during those moments, but I was thinking about the time I’d spent under the water. The moment when the moon that had caused a lot of my problems became a beacon of hope.
Eventually, Gardner explained that they’d been found by the sheriff’s tac-wiz team not long after Dionysus managed to get us out of the farmhouse. Best they could tell, he’d had a boat waiting in the Steel River, which ran along one side of the winery’s land. Of course they hadn’t known that then and wasted a lot of time trying to find us on the road. They’d spent the last twenty-four hours tearing the city apart. They’d been loading onto the boat to sweep the coastline when Morales’s flare exploded into the sky.