Secrets at Sea

Chapter 29

Something's wrong. I can feel it in my core. I haven't seen a single psycho killer in over an hour. The pups and I cleared the engine room pretty quickly. I ventured back into the room where we had first seen the ritual and met the crazy scary messenger, but when I got there it was completely empty, no candles, no carvings or paint on the walls or floor. It's like the ritual had never happened. I've been searching the ship mentally trying to find any source of human life on board, but I've gotten nothing. Not a single red blip telling me that there's a threat.

Now that the ship is back up and running, I start making my way back towards the bridge of the ship to try and get the cruise's communications back on line. You would think that being a Goddess and all would grant me powers to talk with people outside of the ship's perimeters during a state of emergency, but even if I could, I'm still such a novice at all this Magick stuff that I wouldn't even know where to start. I can feel the power deep within me, but I have no idea what spells or incantations to recite in order to utilize my magick to its fullest extent.

Nyx, the larger of the two hell hounds, starts to growl and I can see the remaining hairs on her back rise up. Grimm, the smaller pup, follows suit and I freeze in my tracks. There hasn't been a mental notification of someone's presence in the surrounding areas, but I trust the pups' intuition over my own wishy washy spells any day.

"Sea?" A voice fills the air. A voice I know all too well, but it feels like a lifetime has passed since I last heard it. Brooks peers around an open doorway just ahead of me, his face completely covered in cuts and bruises. I rush past the pups and catch him before he tumbles to the floor from exhaustion.

"Brooks! What happened to you?" I haven't seen him since the night I was drugged and the whole ship was taken over by psychopaths. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen Chloe since then either. "Did you and Chloe find somewhere to hide? Somewhere safe?" I see pain erupt in Brooks's eye and my heart catches in my throat. Nothing good is about to come out of his mouth.

"Chloe's dead."

A cry releases itself from my lips and I have to use every ounce of willpower not to crumble to the floor in despair. I can't lose focus. I can mourn when this hellish vacation is over. I think and I pull both Brooks and myself up to our feet. "Have you seen anyone? It's like the rest of the ship has disappeared off the face of the earth."

"I haven't seen anyone for hours." He shakes his head slowly and wipes away a single tear falling down his cheek. "They killed Chloe when we were trying to escape from the hotel room." Brooks huffs, volunteering the information as we start making our way towards the bridge of the ship. The pups stopped growling when I went to Brooks, but I can still sense their tension. "We hid there for what seemed like days until the psychos broke down the door and attacked us. I barely made it out alive." My gut starts to feel uneasy as I listen to Brooks' story.

"When did you two end up in the room?" I ask, keeping my voice as even as possible as to not alert him to my suspicion.

"It was right after the party. Chloe and I spent the first night hiding in the back of the room. We opened the suitcases and covered ourselves with clothes as a sort of makeshift shelter." Brooks weaves his tale and the more he talks the more I know he's lying. Mason and I were the only ones in the hotel room that first night.

I keep my mouth shut as I try to figure out what to do with this newfound information. We hobble our way through the corridor only making it a hundred feet from the room that Brooks was hiding in before I hear a thud coming from behind me. I turn to look but Brooks throws a surprise punch that sends me tumbling to the ground. I look back to see Nyx and Grimm attacking one of the psychos that must have been in the room with Brooms. His bandanna has been ripped off by one of my pups and I can see a massive deformity covering most of his lower face. It's a mixture of some sort of acid burn and a tumor-like growth that is slowly pulsing underneath his raw skin.

"You should be dead." Brooks straddles me and starts to wring my neck with his bare hands. "One of the freaks on this ship should have gotten you and lover boy long ago, but yet here you are, poking around in things you shouldn't be." I grab at his wrists, trying to tear his hands from my throat, but he's a lot stronger than I had realized. I feel the energy in my core start to swell to the point where it explodes out of my chest, sending Brooks and his psychopathic cohort flying off the railing and into the ocean. I lay there for a moment, recovering from the massive energy output, as Nyx and Grimm nestle up next to me, keeping guard until I gather enough strength back to get up.

"Well shit." I whisper, more to myself than to my pups. Nyx raises one of her pup eyebrows confused as to why I'm upset that my magick worked.

I have more questions than answers at this point. I sigh and close my eyes, allowing the energy from the world around me to flow back into my body. Brooks had answers, answers he was willing to kill for rather than let me know about. If Brooks was in on this whole thing, then could that mean that another one, if not all of my friends are working with the crazies? He knew that the psychos took over the ship and my best guess is that he likely knows why.

I muster up enough energy and pull my ex-friend out of the water, sending him shooting up to the level I'm at and screeching him to a halt so fast that it knocks him unconscious from the sudden stop. I leave his sleeping body floating above the water and just far enough outside the ship's railing that he wouldn't be able to climb back aboard while I recuperate the rest of my power. Brooks and I are going to have a nice little talk when he wakes up.