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Down the street, somebody whistled. Three vampires stood outside a grungy-looking bar, smoking cigarettes. One of them eyed me up and down, and I felt dirty just looking at him.
“Hey, sweet stuff,” he sang. “Why don’t you come join us and give Daddy some sugar!”
His buddies laughed. “Yeah! You can give us all a ride!”
“Fuck off!” Lucas sneered, flipping the men off. If the Ferryman hadn’t warned us to stay inside the boat, Lucas might’ve gone over there and shoved a stake through their hearts. Just the look the man gave me made my skin crawl. There was no question about the things that vampire was fantasizing about doing to me.
We passed the men—thank the Goddess—and continued through the city.
Talia gave a shudder. “This place is horrible. How can they go on living like this?”
“This is the way of their city,” the Ferryman said. “There’s a demon god who runs this place. A vampire’s worst nightmare is having to follow orders, never moving from their position for the rest of eternity. They’re stuck here with no improvement—just monotony and the same thing, day in and day out, for the rest of their lives.”
“How can they settle for that?” Chloe wondered. “Don’t they understand things could change if they worked to build a better city?”
“They don’t believe there’s anything better out there for them,” the Ferryman answered. “They’ve resolved themselves to their fate. They’re stuck in the same spot, not doing what they want to do, but doing what other people ask of them. Worse, they attempt to drag other souls into it.”
“How do they get out?” Grant asked.
The Ferryman dipped his staff into the polluted river. “That is for the vampires to decide. So many vampires live like this on Earth that they don’t see the difference between the life they lived when they were alive and the life they live as the dead, and that’s why they can’t get out. They’re here because they don’t know any better. They don’t know they can choose differently.”
I was grateful to see the streets come to an end up ahead. I didn’t want to stay in this place a second longer than we had to. The river spilled out into the ocean, and the skyscrapers disappeared behind us as we floated onto the surface of the sea.
Our boat rocked from side to side, and we had to grab on to the edge so we weren’t thrown into the water. Cold saltwater splashed into my face, and I feared the boat might capsize and sink. The sky above us swirled with dark clouds, and choppy waves stretched far to the horizon. The ocean water was gray and murky, with shining pools of oil floating along its surface. Something splashed in the distance, and I swore I saw giant tentacles rising from the ocean’s surface.
“We are now at the Deepest Trench of Atlantean lore,” the Ferryman announced. “Merfolk reside deep in these polluted waters, hiding from the monsters that lurk within. Their gills cannot breathe or see in the water here, as the oil is too thick, but neither can they die, so they continue to suffer in sickness and pain.”
The surface of the water beside us broke. A gigantic sea creature emerged. I could make out jagged scales, barbed, poisoned fins, and razor-sharp teeth, but the majority of the creature was so massive, I couldn’t see it all. It looked like it was going to gobble us up!
The Ferryman smacked it with the end of his staff—hard, I might add. “Be gone, beast!” he sneered, and the monster ducked back beneath the surface.
The boat rocked violently, making my heart lurch. I tried to hold on to the edge of the boat, but my fingers slipped. My friends and I were thrown into the water. An icy chill enveloped me, and thick liquid surrounded me at all angles. When I moved my arms, I found that the water was so oily and thick that it was difficult to swim through. My head broke the surface, and I glanced around frantically to see my friends gasping for air, too. The boat remained upright several feet away. The Ferryman stood upon it, appearing unbothered.
“Hurry back into the boat,” the Ferryman said flatly. “We don’t have all day.”
We started swimming back, but just as Lucas and I reached out for the boat, Lucas disappeared from my side. He let out a scream before his voice was silenced by something yanking him under water.
“Lucas!” I cried. I ducked my head under water to go after him, but the water burned my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.
My hands found his, and I grabbed him tightly and yanked him to the surface. As Lucas broke the surface, another pair of hands came out of the water, clawing up his body to try dragging him under.
A mermaid appeared, but she didn’t look like how I envisioned a mermaid would be. She looked like a skeleton, with hollow eye sockets and flesh rotting from her bones. Her long black hair was patchy and covered in oil. She lifted her tail from the water and smacked the surface, and I saw that her scales were rotting off.
“Help me!” the mermaid begged. “Take me out of his dreadful place!”
“I wish we could, but we can’t,” I told her.
“You must!” she screamed. Her voice had changed, taking on a deep, eerie tone. “Don’t leave me here!”
She lunged for Lucas and me, but the Ferryman’s staff came between us as he smacked her away. She hissed and ducked back into the water.
Lucas curled his arm around me, and he grabbed the Ferryman’s staff. The Ferryman dragged us out of the water and back onto the boat. Lucas and I lay on the bottom of the boat as we caught our breath. I quickly looked around to see our friends had made it back on while we’d been distracted by the mermaid.
“What the hell was that?” Lucas rasped. “Why is that poor mermaid trapped here?”
“There are many of her kind beneath these waters. The merfolk’s flaw is that they are always looking for someone else to save them,” the Ferryman said. “They want someone else to be their hero. What they don’t realize is that they can save themselves. They could swim out of here and to paradise, if only they believed they could.”
We situated ourselves back in our seats, and Grant immediately started to panic. “What’s that ahead!?”
