Dagger Magic

As they trod water, hampered by heavy shoes and clothing, Peregrine hazarded a look over his shoulder, where the conning tower was slipping deeper, a wash of phosphorescent green bubbles streaming upward from her rapidly vanishing hull.

"This thing isn't going to suck us under, is it?" he gasped, with a wild glance at Adam.

"I hope not."

"What about sharks? Are there sharks in these waters?"

Before Adam could answer, the depths below them were suddenly suffused with a blooming burst of opal-green radiance. A split instant later, the shock of the explosion hit the surface. The booming roar tossed them skyward on a geyser of sheeting foam. Neither Adam nor Peregrine remembered coming down again.

The blast hurled a wall of water toward the shore, catching the Lady Gregory and spinning her around, dangerously canted over. Looking down from the pilothouse, Eamonn could see nothing of the deck but a shelf of racing foam as the water crashed over her port rail and swept across her decks.

Magnus alone managed to hang on to the forward railing. Farther amidships, the chest containing the Black Tennas skidded the length of the deck and lodged itself against the stern rail. Aoife and McLeod were swept off their feet and carried after it, and only just managed to keep from being washed overboard. For a foundering moment they seemed certain to capsize; but then, with a shudder, the Lady Gregory righted herself, shedding water in sheets as she settled back on her keel.

McLeod had lost track of the number of times tonight that his ears had been set to ringing, and almost missed the distant drone of aircraft engines picking up speed as he got to his feet. Turning numbly toward the sound, powerless to stop it, he swore audibly to see the seaplane lumbering away from them, gathering speed and lifting off, making for the open sky. But a shout of alarm from Aoife forestalled his dwelling on Raeburn's escape.

"There's Adam!" she shouted. "Where's Peregrine? Does anybody see him?"

Looking down in the water where she was agitatedly pointing, McLeod spotted a second puppet-like shape floating face-down in the waves a short distance away. Neither was moving.

"Eamonn, get a spotlight on them!" he called up sharply to the pilothouse, already struggling out of his jacket and kicking off his shoes.

Chapter Thirty-Five

ADAM came groggily to his senses to find himself lying face down on the deck of the Lady Gregory. His chest felt bruised and his mouth tasted of bile. His ears were ringing. He heard someone coughing beside him and lifted his head to see Peregrine, half on his hands and knees, retching as a waterlogged Magnus grabbed him around the middle, helping him clear his lungs. The artist's face was a pasty shade of green, similar to the olive-drab blanket Aoife laid around his shoulders, and he hugged it around him, shivering, as Magnus helped him collapse to a sitting position.

Rolling gingerly onto his side, Adam tried to speak, but nothing came out but a soggy-sounding cough.

"I'd stick to breathing just now, if I were you," said McLeod's gruff voice.

Strong hands helped him sit, as another blanket was drawn around his shoulders. A coughing fit brought up what seemed like gallons of sea water and left him wheezing, lightheaded. When he could focus again, he saw that McLeod, like Magnus, was drenched to the skin, and guessed that the two must have been responsible for pulling him and Peregrine out of the water after the explosion. Part of him wanted simply to lie down and sleep off the shock and the chill of near-drowning. But there were too many things he wanted - and needed - to know.

He cleared his throat and tried again. "Where's Raeburn?"

"Flown the coop," McLeod said sourly. "There wasn't much we could do to stop him, by the time we were sure the two of you hadn't drowned. Magnus called the mainland on the cell phone and put out an APB on the plane - our radio's kaput - but I doubt it'll do much good. This part of the coast is honeycombed with places where he could have hidden another boat to take him well away from here."

"And the chest?" Adam's voice was starting to come back to him.

McLeod allowed himself a brief, wolfish grin. "We've still got that. Raeburn didn't have it all his own way."

Moving cautiously, Adam edged himself back to lean against the side of a locker. From where he sat, he could see the open sea through the Lady G's railings. There was no sign of the submarine. McLeod glanced in the direction of his gaze, then looked back at him and answered the question Adam had not yet summoned strength to ask.

"I don't know whether Raeburn actually rigged that explosion, or whether all that jostling was enough to set off one or more of those fifty-year-old torpedoes," he said. "Or maybe it was some after-reaction from all that magic being released. Whatever the case, the sub is history again."