Soren grabbed Aya and bolted.

The monster filled the trench. It moved quickly for its size and could crush them against the rugged cliff, but it didn’t do so. The body flew backward, dragging them toward the teeth.

He kicked harder.

The megalodon sensed his flight. It reversed faster.

Aya clutched the Life Tree with both hands. Her pale face whitened.

The trench narrowed. An overhang offered protection. He aimed for it. This was his only chance.

The monster stopped.

Did it realize his aim? That didn’t matter. Soren kicked hard for the safety of the rock.

The monster rotated in the trench like the spoke of a wheel. Its tail pointed down. Its nose rotated up. Teeth passed them. It smashed the skinny overhang without seeming to notice.

Great boulders broke off and careened down on them.

Soren dodged.

Its mammoth teeth leveled with them. Giant circular marks, the sucker-scars of fighting a cave guardian, marred its jaw. This was not its first trip above the Blacknight Sea or its first taste of mermen.

It inhaled the eerie inhuman wheeze.

He kicked with all his might. Aya and the Life Tree folded over his shoulder. They were going into its maw!

At its lip, the water bubbled as it was sucked over the edge of the cliff. Super-accelerated current! Soren kicked for it with all his might. The megalodon’s inhale assisted them. He strained to touch. Almost…

The current sucked them in and shot them for the trench floor.

The Life Tree shrieked. Or was it echoing the scream of Soren’s heart?

They flew down the monstrous body. Its wake disturbed the vortex at the base. A riptide pulled Soren backward and upside down through the corridor along the jagged base of the trench.

The megalodon was still vertical, inhaling, unaware they were long gone.

Aya pointed over his shoulder. “There’s the boy!”

He readied himself. “Hold on.”

She tensed.

He shifted to human feet and smashed the passing floor to kick free.

The glass walls held.

She made a noise. The Life Tree pulsed. Glass shattered and knocked them free.

He threw out an arm and slammed into the youth.

The youth jolted in shock and emitted a death scream.

“Silence!” He rotated and scooped the youth around his skinny waist. Aya echoed his response with an edge of fear.

The eerie hissing paused.

Their commotion had reached the megalodon. The youth’s exhausted, dark eyes gazed over Soren’s shoulder with new horror. He struggled.

“Hold.” With the youth in one arm and Aya holding the Life Tree in the other, he changed to human feet again and kicked off the ground. Once more, the Life Tree flashed. He zoomed upward through the water with a new burst of speed.

It was what he needed.

He shifted to fins and flew.

“You can’t make it.” Aya sounded faint with terror.

His leg muscles twitched at the end stages of exhaustion. There was the lip of the trench. Right there. “I will make it.”

“It’s rotating to horizontal. The jaws will close over us in five, four, three, two—” She sucked in with fear. The shadow fell over them. “—one—”

They couldn’t make it.

He kicked into the cliff cave, diving under a rocky underhang. It was a shallow cavern where the first trench fish had hidden to attack them.

The displacement of the falling monster whooshed them against the far wall and then sucked them right out. He scrambled for the cave and anchored them behind boulders. The entrance was too small for the monster.

The megalodon’s disk-eye peered into the depths, noting each of them with bloodless hunger. It rotated and waved a fin.

Massive waves smashed them against the wall and tried to flush them out.

The Life Tree fell out of Aya’s grip. She snatched it and flew out of the cave.

Soren caught her ankle and yanked her in. The youth cowered against the deepest rock. Soren fixed Aya behind an underhang and locked his arm.

The megalodon smashed into the wall.

The underhang broke off and thunked to the ground. Debris hazed the water with choking thickness.

Good. Now they were more obscured.

They would survive this encounter. Soren would be the first in almost a generation to face down their ancient enemy and survive.

The megalodon rotated its mouth so the teeth scraped the entrance. The eerie sound started again. The sucking power was horrifying. It was inhaling.

“Go away!” Aya screamed. “Leave us alone!”

Soren held her to the boulder with both arms. The suction pulled harder than a super-accelerated current. Rock, dirt, everything flew into its maw. The youth lifted from the ground. He lost one hand’s grip on the pinching rock and cried out, hanging over the maw by one pinch. His fins thrashed helplessly, smacking Soren’s shoulder.

Soren grabbed his ankle and pushed him back to his rock. The youth wedged in with shaking determination.

Soren’s human feet slid across the bare floor. He scrambled back. The boulder he and Aya braced against shifted.

Her head lifted. Yes, she felt it. It shifted across the rock a foot. Her scared eyes fixed on him.

He gripped her bicep. What was fixed? There was no room by the youth. Where could he lodge her that would be safe?

The Life Tree slipped in her grip. She hugged it fiercely.

The boulder shifted another foot toward the entrance.

Where?

Their boulder shook and a crack appeared between them. It fractured! Her side toppled over and wedged solid.

His side dislodged and tumbled into the maw.

He scrambled. The floor itself rose in mucky pieces. He lifted entirely off the ground. His feet transformed into fins and he struggled to kick.

The Life Tree flew past him.

He crossed the megalodon’s thick lip, scraped against jagged teeth, and entered murky blackness.

Aya’s horrified eyes were his last sight.

“Go away!” she shrieked.

Light flashed. A shockwave smacked his back and pushed him forward, out of the maw, into the cliff.

The sucking stopped.

He kicked furiously to Aya. Her arms reached out and he tackled her to the cave ground. Fiery agony raked his back, like during the battle at Atlantis when Blake’s submersible severed the Life Tree, and then faded.

Was he bleeding?

The jaws hadn’t closed on him, and he didn’t smell blood in the water. He also didn’t check thoroughly. They lay still.

Water currents shifted. The monster turned to look at them again.

Soren covered Aya. A thick layer of dirt and rock buried them. The youth huddled against his rock, a shivering, dirt-crusted lump.

A trench fish swam out of the megalodon’s gaping mouth.

Water currents shifted again. The monster chased after the escaped trench fish. Its eerie inhaling started again and grew distant. Shadows lightened. The megalodon moved down the trench. It was leaving.

Soren collapsed on Aya, careful of her small, shivering body, but needing her crushed against him to prove they were both still alive. She was unhurt. He rolled her over, cupped her pale face, and kissed her cheeks. They were whole. He kissed her forehead and her chin. Both whole, unblemished, without scar.

What was this trembling? Was she so badly frightened? No. The trembling was him.

She put her small hands over his and sought his lips. They united in one hot, gritty, soul-affirming kiss.