The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 2

  But it beats a cell.

  And it sure as shit beats being on an island full of Draugar.

  The memory of that place turns my attention back to Willem and Jakob. I wouldn’t have survived that island without them. I should trust them implicitly. But they’re up to something. “Where are we going?”

  No reply.

  They know this will irk me, and knowing they know irks me even more. “Guys.”

  Still nothing. I note our general direction. “We’re going to the docks, right?”

  Willem’s quick glance at Jakob confirms it, but neither says a word.

  “I saw you there, you know. On TV.”

  That gets a reaction. Jakob spins around. “On TV?”

  “Just before I dropped Captain Fish-Breath over here.” I hitch a thumb toward Malik. “You were in the background. Loading something onto a ship.”

  Jakob is mortified. Speechless.

  Willem turns toward his father. “If the authorities saw…”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I say. “I don’t think anyone else would have recognized you.” It wasn’t necessarily true. Their pictures had been shown on the news more than a few times, along with mine, and Nuuk had a tight fishing community. As the only survivors of the Bliksem’s sinking, the pair was well known around the docks.

  Willem steps on the gas, speeding through the winding streets. My head spins from the motion, and a wave of nausea passes through my body.

  “We’re going to have to move faster,” Willem says.

  I groan as we round a corner and I’m pressed up against Malik’s body. “You’re moving fast enough.” My vision blurs.

  “We’ll leave today,” Jakob replies. “We have everything we need.”

  “What about her?” Willem asks.

  I see Jakob turn back to look at me, but his features are lost as my vision fades. “If she wakes in time, we’ll give her a choice,” he says.

  My eyes close.

  “And if she doesn’t?” I hear Willem ask.

  I feel myself fade as Jakob replies, “I would rather give her a choice, but in her current state, she won’t be able to think clearly. No one should be forced to face the Draugar, but I think it’s for the best.”

  Draugar? Draugar! The small part of my mind still awake tries to scream a string of curses at the old captain, but I fade into unconsciousness with nothing more than a drunken sigh.

  3

  I wake and open my eyes, but I don’t see a thing before someone punches my skull from the inside. My hands go to my clenched eyes as if they can stem the stabbing pain. With a groan I let loose a string of whispered curses. I’d like to scream the words, but anything louder than a dog fart is going to make me vomit.

  Among the great hangovers of my life, this isn’t quite the worst, but it’s compounded by a dizzying undulation that’s making me queasy. Where am I? I wonder, and then remember who I was with when I passed out.

  I stand but am sucker punched again and sent back down. I sit still, take several deep breaths, and slowly open my eyes. The floor is smooth. Painted dull gray. But a colorful braided rug covers most of it. A circle of light on the rug draws my eyes up. Through squinted eyes, I see a porthole, which confirms my fears.

  I’m on a ship.

  The light sends a fresh wave of pain through my head, and I turn away. The rest of the room is decorated…nicely, which seems strange. The dull gray floor and subtle scent of rust hint that this is a working vessel, not some cruise liner. So why are there flowers on the desk? Why is the blanket on the bed beneath me soft and colorful? And why is there a frikken bowl of fruit sitting atop the night table?

  When I see the glass of water and antacid beside the bowl, I understand. Hangovers are caused by dehydration. A lot of people drink coffee to defeat a hangover, but it’s actually counterproductive, since caffeine and alcohol are both diuretics, which dehydrate you further. Water hydrates. Antacid makes the road to recovery more gentle. And the fruit replaces sugar and nutrients flushed from the system by the alcohol.

  They’re taking good care of me, and for a moment, I don’t question it. I pop the antacid into the water, let it dissolve, and then chug the sixteen ounces of Greenland’s remarkably clean H2O. A banana chases the drink, and I’m actually starting to feel more human than tenderized beef.

  As the pain subsides, I stand, let my equilibrium return, and step slowly to the portal. The light still hurts, but I push past it. The urge to know whether or not we’re at sea is overpowering. Beams of sunlight reflect off the placid waters, striking my eyes like laser beams, but aren’t enough to squelch my relief. We’re still docked.

  Which means there is still time to get the hell off this boat. I head for the door and spot my keys, wallet, and Taser resting on the dresser. I pick them up, stuff them in my pocket, and reach for the door handle. It turns before I reach it and swings open.

  Willem stands on the other side, holding a fresh glass of water. We stare at each other in silence for a moment. Then his eyes drift toward the dresser and then my jeans, where the lump of keys is easy to see.

  “You’re leaving?” he asks.

  No shit, I think, but I keep the quip to myself. Not because I’m afraid of hurting his feelings, but because I really want that glass of water he’s holding. Without answering, I reach for the glass. He hands it to me, and then offers me two painkillers. I swallow the pills and drain the glass.

  The silence between us grows uncomfortable, and then he grins. I’m about to smack the grin off his face when he says, “The head is right here.” He raps his knuckles on a door to his right.

  “The head?” I say, wondering why he’d bring it up, but then it hits me. I have to pee. Bad. “Damn your Viking voodoo,” I say as the urge becomes unbearable. I open the door, slip inside, and quickly perch myself on the toilet bowl like a doting mother hen warming her eggs. I didn’t bother looking for a light switch, so I sit in perfect darkness.

  “Why the hell did you bring me here?” I ask, knowing Willem hasn’t abandoned his post by the door.

  When he doesn’t answer immediately, I shout, “Well?” but regret it when my voice echoes in the small metal-walled room, exacerbating my headache.

  “I’m trying to think of a way to explain that won’t result in you slugging me,” he says.

  “Good luck with that,” I mutter.

  When he laughs, I know he heard me. Which means he can probably hear me peeing, too. “How about some privacy? Or do you have some weird fetishes I don’t know about?”

  “I’ll be in your room,” he says, and I hear his heavy, booted feet clomp away.

  My room. Ugh.

  I finish up and return to the bedroom.

  “It was my father’s idea,” he says when I enter.

  “Bringing me here?”

  “The decorations,” he replies. “Bringing you here was my idea.”

  “I thought you were trying not to get punched?”

  He only half grins at this, probably because I’m only half joking.

  “You’ve seen the news,” he says. “You know what’s going on. With the whales.”

  In fact, I do know. Whales have been disappearing from northern Atlantic waters, not just around Greenland, but in all Atlantic waters from the Arctic Circle to the 45th parallel, an imaginary line stretching between New Hampshire and France. That’s a lot of water. And a lot of whales. “I know about the whales. The seals. The porpoises. And the fucking walruses. I’ve been telling your thickheaded Norse kinsmen the same thing for the past three months.”

  “I know,” he says. “Can you blame them for not believing you? Or me? Or my father?”

  He knows I don’t. If someone came to me with the same story, I’d have shipped them off to the loony bin. And maybe that’s where I belong.

  “We can make them listen,” he says. “We can show them the truth.”

  “How?” I demand. “Get video of whales acting weird? That won’t change a thing. At best, people will j
ust argue about the cause. Probably blame pollution. Or navy sonar. You know Occam’s razor, right?”

  “Lex parsimoniae,” he says. “I was a history professor, remember? The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation.”

  “That’s how most people think, Willem. We’re not going to be able to change that with a video.”

  “You forgot the second part of Occam’s razor,” he says. “The simplest explanation is usually correct, until new evidence proves it false.”

  I roll my eyes. “Video is not new evidence.”

  “We’re going to get a sample,” he says. “A parasite.”

  I react as though he’s just slapped me in the face. After a few moments of shocked silence, I say, “What?”

  “If we can collect a parasite, maybe let it infect a rat, show how it spreads and controls mammals, someone might take us seriously.”

  “You’re insane,” I say.

  Willem gets to his feet, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling. “You know what’s coming as much as we do! How can we not try?”

  I don’t have a good answer for this. I understand what he’s saying, but if I could go back in time and tell myself, “Hey, if you set foot on the Sentinel, you’re going to be shipwrecked on an island populated by Viking zombies that will eat your friends, unleash a parasitic plague on the planet, and generally fuck up your life,” I would. My reasoning is entirely selfish, and I’m okay with that.

  “I have nightmares,” I confess. “They start out simple. Like I’m brushing my teeth. But then my eyes are white and full of little white worms. Sometimes I claw my eyes out. Sometimes I try to wash it away with soap. In one dream, I jumped out the window. But each dream ends the same—I wake up screaming.”

  After a moment of staring at the floor, Willem says, “I have similar dreams. But they end differently.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “With you,” he says.

  “Please don’t say I save you or something ridiculous like that,” I say. “It won’t matter. You can’t guilt me into coming.”

  He smiles, but it’s sad. “You don’t save me,” he says. “You kill me. In a strange way, I guess that means you are saving me. From becoming one of them. A Draugr.”

  “That’s screwed up,” I say.

  He laughs gently. “I know. But you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

  I don’t answer. Can’t. Who would want to confess something like that?

  “That’s not really why we want you here,” he says. “You were an investigator. It’s what you do. You understand collecting evidence, proving things to a court. My father is a whaler, and I’m a professor. We’re kind of out of our element here.”

  I step toward the door. “You’re fast learners.”

  “Do you know the ships?” he asks quickly, stopping me before I leave the room.

  I turn back slowly, asking, “What ships?”

  4

  After saying that he thought it better if his father explained, Willem leads me through the bowels of the ship. We’re on the second deck, which is the lowest deck on the ship and mostly below the waterline. In rough or even choppy water, the portal in “my” room might be submerged. Fourteen crew quarters large enough to hold two people each line the hall at the core of the ship, seven to each side, each with its own small head—bathroom, to the nonseafaring. The quarters are sandwiched between the engine room at the ship’s bow and the propeller at the ship’s aft, which means that it’s loud as hell down here when the ship is under way.

  We follow the hallway until we reach a stairwell leading up. We take the stairs past the main deck and onto deck one. I follow Willem around a corner to another staircase that takes us to deck two. Why the second deck at the bottom of the ship and deck two are identified so similarly, I’ll never know. Most people chalk it up to the strange habits of captains or ship designers, but I think they’re just being lazy. When we follow two more staircases to reach the bridge, I know we’re on a sizable ship, which begs the question, What ship are we on?

  Willem pauses at the door to the bridge and looks back at me. “The Bliksem was insured,” he explains. “And since the whaling industry has gone belly-up…” He shrugs. “We picked up the Ra—the ship—with money left to spare.”

  Before I can comment on his cheesy “belly-up” pun, he opens the door. “C’mon.”

  The bridge is laid out a lot like the bridge of the Sentinel. In fact, where I am now is about where I was standing when the C4 that sank both ships exploded. The people who died from the concussive force of the blast or flying metal shrapnel or who drowned as the ship sank got off easy compared to Jenny and Peach, who escaped the bridge with me. I wouldn’t wish their fates on anyone. Yet here stands Willem, ready to buy a ticket for a chance to win that unholy lottery.

  I see workstations—radar, sonar, communications—all the stuff you need to pilot a ship this size. The long line of oversize windows provides a view of Nuuk Bay, full of islands that dull the brunt of the Arctic Ocean’s wrath. But I don’t see a single person. “Do you have a crew, or am I it?”

  “There are eight of us,” he says, but then he corrects himself. “Seven, if we’re not counting you.”

  “We’re not,” I say.

  “I’m in here,” Jakob calls out.

  I follow his voice to port, where I find a chart room off the back of the bridge. A long table dominates the space. It’s covered with maps of the North Atlantic, rulers, protractors, and compasses for course plotting. All very old-school, and exactly what I’d expect from an old Viking like Jakob.

  “I’m surprised you’re not sailing by the stars,” I say.

  He looks up at the sound of my voice and smiles so wide I can’t help but return it.

  “Raven!” he says and then rushes around the table to give me a bear hug. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling more like yourself.”

  I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, but I let it slide, partly because if I let the air out of my lungs, he’s liable to snap my ribs. When he puts me down, I see they’ve actually got a laptop at the back of the room. So not entirely a Middle Ages operation. But still suicidal.

  I decide to let Jakob down quick. “I can’t come with you.”

  His smile wavers for only a moment. “But you must.”

  “I’m sorry, Jakob, you—”

  Willem interrupts. “Tell her about the ships.”

  Right, I think, the ships.

  “If we’re talking about a party ship in the Caribbean with a conga line of Chippendale dancers, sign me up. Otherwise, I’m heading home.”

  “Raven,” Jakob says, sounding serious.

  “Please stop calling me that,” I say. The nickname came about because of my black hair and black clothing, and the black hooded cloak I wore when I’d first met Willem and Jakob. The raven has been the Olavson family crest going back to the Norse, so Jakob saw my appearance as a good omen. But the raven was also one of Odin’s pets, a creature called Muninn, later revealed to be Áshildr, a sixteen-year-old girl, an Olavson ancestor, and host to a Draugr Queen parasite capable of controlling the others. If not for the strong will of Torstein, Áshildr’s father-turned-Draugr, she would have killed them all. So I’m not the biggest fan of the name.

  Jakob waves off my request. “The strength of the Olavson crest is why we stand here today. The name is an honor.”

  It’s a fight I can’t win, so I drop it. “Get to the ships, so I can leave.”

  With a sigh, Jakob takes a seat and clasps his hands over his belly. “You know about the whales?”

  “God. Yes,” I say, getting exasperated. “We’ve been over this.”

  “Well, the ocean’s mammals aren’t the only things disappearing,” he says. Seeing he’s caught my attention already, he continues. “There have been an increasing number of ships lost at sea. No Maydays or distress beacons. No wreckage. They leave port and never return.”

  “How come I haven’t seen this on the news?” I ask.<
br />
  “The ships are from all over the world,” he says.

  “The only people putting the pieces together are online conspiracy theorists,” Willem adds.

  “We’ve tracked down news reports of twenty-three missing ships from around the world whose course took them through the North Atlantic.”

  “Twenty-three isn’t that many,” I say.

  “These waters haven’t been this dangerous to sail since World War Two,” he says. “The ocean might as well be teeming with U-boats!”

  “And yet you two are prepared to charge headlong like blind tap-dancing monkeys into a lion’s den.”

  Jakob looks confused. “Blind tap-dancing monkeys?”

  “Forget it,” I say. “The point is, you’re both idiots. And I want nothing to do with it.”

  “Jane,” Willem says in a pleading voice, his hand resting on my shoulder.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve felt his touch. I like his touch. But right now it only serves to exacerbate my annoyance. I shrug away. “Look, I get why you’re doing this. You feel some kind of ancestral responsibility. It was your ancestors who inadvertently set this plague loose, wiped out the original Norse settlements. And in a way, it was us who let that same plague escape the island. But it’s not just some mindless plague. It’s a parasite. An intelligent parasite. With a will of its own. It would have happened eventually, with or without the Sons of Olav. It’s not your fault. It’s not your responsibility.”

  Jakob’s face turns a few shades of red darker. “Jane, it’s our responsibility simply because we know and no one else does.”

  I read between the lines. He’s saying it’s my responsibility. I lean forward, planting my hands on the table. “I know that, Jakob. While you two have been at the docks playing Popeye the Sailor Man, I’ve been telling everyone who will listen. I’ve destroyed my life and any chance of a future outside of jail. And I really don’t need you reminding me about that.”