Wickerman Cove

Part 17: The Vision Quest of the Unknown Zoubareya

There was a lot less drowning than she'd expected. Also, a lot less swimming.

There was plenty of water, though. It was all around her – dark, cold and dim, with faint ribbons of light that came down from above. The current was carrying her, slowly and peacefully, deeper into the dark.

Steph tested her arms and legs. She could move, but they didn't seem to make the slightest difference to whatever was drawing her deeper into the sea. It was just about possible to turn and see the surface – a faint dappling of light, getting further away.

This couldn't be real. Even if things in alleyways and magic cultists and Russian special forces dudes with magic wallets were real, no way she could be swimming and not drowning.

She probably hit her head on the way down.

Then again, if that was true, she probably wouldn't be together enough to think about whether she'd hit her head.

Shapes moved in the darkness. No way the water at the bottom of the cliff was this deep. They were right on the coast.

Something with limbs bigger than anything that Steph had ever seen uncoiled. A luminous eye – a sickly yellow-green – blazed through the dim water, but the current drew her past without stopping, and it seemed happy to watch.

Steph held a breath she wasn't sure she was really taking. Telling an eel-like thing the size of a backroad about the scientific improbability of its existence was probably not going to protect her from being eaten.

The outlines of buildings emerged from the darkness – angular, spired structures that spread out wide enough to be a town the size of Wickerman Cove, maybe larger. Steph tracked the oddly shaped streets – they sprawled out, but upwards too, with what looked like squares and forums on vertical surfaces.

She was being dragged towards something huge. The water here had a glow that gave shape to the area – a cavern, or maybe a trench, with high stone sides. Something round sat ahead of her. It dwarfed the buildings, its mass almost liquid in the way it flowed.

Its body seemed soft, and made of globes, in contrast to the angularity of the buildings. Black tendrils, like fronds of kelp the length of skyscrapers, fluttered around it. The thing moved slowly, but noticeably, shifting and turning as she approached. Lights flickered in the water, every flash a burst of whiteness, stabbing the same pain through her eyes.

There was no slowing her speed. It had felt slow because of the distance they were covering. A look back showed the size of the settlement: it sprawled away to vanishing point, covering every surface, even the walls of the cavern, with spires and alleyways until the dim waters drew a veil over it.

Streets and plazas – whole districts – sped by. Eels the size of freeways wormed between buildings, rubbing against pale stone structures. Their tails vanished into the black mass. Some raised out of the city and craned towards her with open mouths, filled with endless, alien arrangements of teeth.

Her heart sped up until it was thundering in her chest, adrenaline shrieking through her system as the waters bore her towards the mass.

The light was stronger here. Ridged, black flesh glistened with mucus. It was a mollusc. A sea slug big enough to eat central fucking Washington. With a horrible lurch, everything came into focus – the eels, the kelp. Tendrils. Limbs. All part of the same, huge thing.

It should have roared. Instead, it opened a mouth the size of Times Square, filled with human-like teeth the size of houses. The flashing came from its eyes. Luminous, yellow-green orbs that grew on the floating fronds.

They were the source of the singing. It was almost too much to stand. The melody was sweet, choral, but there was something wrong. It excavated her sense of self, disrupting everything except the need to get the sound out of her head. She thrashed uselessly as the water carried her closer.

Images formed in the flashes of light – a man with a beard, stabbed by a woman; a box buried late at night, next to a bleeding tree. The face of the Russian asshole who got her into this.

* * *

Suddenly there was painful, caustic air in her lungs, and blinding light.

After a few seconds of general horror, she was convulsively vomit-coughing water onto what felt like concrete floor. The heaving wrung her body out, until finally she collapsed into what, logically, was a pool of her own freshly thrown up seawater.

It didn't matter.

Gradually, the light resolved into a blue sky and clouds.

Penny was standing over her. So was Renard.

She fixed the goth with every ounce of malice she could lay hands on, which wasn't much.

"Did you throw a goddamn boulder?" she asked, her throat tight and raw from almost drowning.

Penny did that apologetic smile-grimace that made Steph want to slug her. No, not slug. Punch. No more slugs, not for a while.

He had a gun, she signed. I was worried about you.

Steph closed her eyes for a moment. Renard nudged her. "I'm alive," she said, shoving the dog away. "Do me a favour? Think before you try to help."

Penny stroked her wet hair. Steph tried to hold onto the images. "This is going to sound crazy, but I think I had a vision."

Penny cocked her head, but didn't disagree.

"We need to find a bleeding tree. I think the professor buried something there... and if he did... he's probably dead."