“It’s okay, Jo. Let it out. Let it out.” He held her for a few moments longer, stroked her hair, and reassured her. He then put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back slightly so he could look into her eyes.
“I know this is hard,” he kept his tone gentle but firm, “but right now we need to figure out what we’re going to do, yeah?”
“Everyone’s dead,” she said, not quite meeting his eye.
“Well, not everyone. Holloway’s in a cage underwater and that mad bastard Laine is out there somewhere.”
Slater took a deep breath, sniffed hard. “Right. What do we need to do?”
Aston was impressed with her rallying. She was tough.
“The hell with Holloway,” she said, scrubbing her wet eyes with the back of her arm. “Let him deal with his own situation. I say we go up there, release the net so that creature can get on with its life, and we take the Merenneito back to town. Tell Rinne everything that’s happened, tell him how Holloway held us all against our will, and see how it all pans out. Hopefully we’ve got a shred of credibility with him since you made the effort to tell him about Dave while Holloway tried to hide it.”
“You think that’s the best course? I agree about letting the creature go and taking this boat to town, but I’d like to get back to dry land and just run away from it all as far and fast as we can.”
Slater shook her head. “We can’t run, Aston. We have to own what we’ve done. Face the consequences. In the long run, we’ve done nothing illegal, right? It’s all on Holloway and Joaquin. And Laine maybe.”
Aston drew a long, deep breath. Morally, ethically, even legally, she was probably right, though he had little faith in the smooth running of due process. But he couldn’t really argue with her. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. Let’s get up there and release the net first.”
Slater held his eye for a moment, then nodded once and kissed him quickly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She reached up and patted his cheek. “All of this.”
He smiled, unsure what to say. He was groggy from the fight, and from Holloway’s gun butt. His head pounded, he was probably concussed, but things were finally starting to settle down. He squeezed her shoulders once, then turned to head up to the bridge. She was right behind him as he reached the top of the stairs and froze. A figure moved along the rail, hood drawn up against the raging downpour.
“It’s Laine!” he hissed. They froze, crouching in the darkness, watching and waiting.
“He didn’t come in by the dive platform,” Slater whispered.
“Must have climbed up from his rowboat. Probably hoping to surprise Joaquin.” Aston wondered what the man’s game was. Why had he faked his death? Clearly he had some sort of fascination with, or attachment to, the lake monster. But dancing around on shore looking like a druid? Madness. They were all mad.
Laine moved out of sight along the side so Aston and Slater hurried forward, still crouched below the bridge’s windows, watching to see where he went.
“Of course,” Aston said as Laine reached the winch arm and hit the button.
The net began to unfurl as the winch motors whirred at full speed. Laine tipped his head back and they heard him chanting some repeated phrase over and over to the heavens. The weather had taken a nasty turn. What had been a light rain was now a steady downpour. The words were whipped away by the wind, but the tone, harsh and guttural, carried to their ears. Aston knew he would never understand that language.
Slater tapped Aston’s shoulder. He turned to see her holding out the small fire extinguisher from the helm. It was about a foot long and weighed a good few pounds. He frowned, shook his head. “A fire?” he asked stupidly.
Slater rolled her eyes. “Run out there and crack him over the head with this. Then he won’t be any more trouble.”
Aston grinned. “Oh, I see.”
Down in the water, a great thrashing and splashing erupted as the monster whipped up and free of the loosening net. They were momentarily distracted as it breached and curved up and over to crash back into the storm-tossed waves. He couldn’t deny its magnificence.
“Quick, while he’s distracted!” Slater urged.
Aston nodded, winced against his headache, but grabbed the extinguisher and ran outside. The rain was ice cold, driven sideways into his face by howling wind as he exited the bridge. It helped to clear his thoughts. He was soaked to the skin in seconds as he approached Laine’s back. The monster rose and dived in the water again, sending up a curtain of spray. Laine continued his mad chant, louder than ever, his voice triumphant and crazed.
Aston got to within six feet of the mad zealot, and began raising the extinguisher to strike, when a voice amplified by a megaphone burst out behind the Merenneito.
“Everyone put your hands in the air and prepare to be boarded!”
Aston jumped, instantly recognizing the Superintendent’s voice even through the loudspeaker and the storm. Laine spun around and took two quick steps back as he saw Aston there, the bright red metal cylinder high over his head.
“No!” Laine shouted and his hand emerged from his voluminous robes holding an automatic pistol. “I have to keep her safe. It’s my calling.” Madness glinted in his eyes. He gestured wildly at the police launch. “More flesh and souls for the God of the Lake!” he yelled.
“You have got to be winding me up.” Aston dropped to the deck as Laine fired three fast shots that strayed out into the night.
Rinne hollered something sharp and angry, and gunfire erupted from the fast-approaching launch. Shots whined and sparked off the metal rails, punched holes in the fiberglass walls of the boat. Laine dived for cover in front of the bridge and Aston stayed down, quickly commando crawling back inside to Slater.
A stray bullet struck one of the deck lights outside, sending a fine spray of glass through the open door.
“We need to get below before they kill us all,” Aston said. She nodded and they both scrambled to their feet and hurried down the stairs.
Up above, Laine opened up again with his pistol, answered immediately by the police launch. If they were aiming their shots, Aston didn’t know what their target was. Slugs thumped into and through the Merenneito. Glass shattered. He and Slater were ducks in a shooting gallery.
“What do they think this is, the Wild West?” he panted. They were all mad. Every last one of them.
Chapter 38
“All flesh for the God of the Lake!” Laine yelled. He shouted something in Finnish, and then more in his bizarre language. Beneath the sounds of his cries and the steady rush of the storm, the low drone of the police launch drew ever closer. “You have no right!” Laine screamed. “The god was here before you and will be here long after you are gone!”
“Could things go any crazier?” Aston said as he and Slater hurried down into the SCUBA room at the back of the Merenneito. More shots rang out and bullets peppered the gunwales, tearing through the sides. The situation was dire. It was only a matter of time before they were randomly hit. He pressed a hand to his aching head.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Slater asked.
“Swim for it.”
She looked at him as though he had sprouted extra feet from his forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“We need to get out of here. Get a wetsuit and tank on. We can dive straight off the back, get down to the lake bed for cover, and head straight for shore.”
She pointed with her thumb back over her shoulder. “Laine just released a massive prehistoric predator. Or did you forget that?”
“That’s a hard thing to forget. But if we stay anywhere around here, we’ll be shot for sure. If not by the police, then by Laine. I don’t like being the only fool in a gunfight without a weapon.”