Vampirates 1.5:Dead Deep Read Online Free PDF Page B

creatures we had no idea reallyexisted!”
    Connor grinned. “Well, they certainly do exist. Look at them!” He eased himself up into a sitting position and looked back along the deck at the fishtails, still sprawled over their chairs.
    “Connor,” said Jez, the tone of his voice suddenly changing.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m a tad concerned for our safety.”
    “Really?” said Connor. “You think there might be something fishy going on?” He smiled. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist! Go on.”
    Jez smiled, too, but then grew serious. “I’ve been remembering the old myths, and traditionally merm— fishtails— whatever you call them, well, traditionally they lure sailors and take them prisoner.”
    “You think we’ve been lured here?”Connor asked, alarmed.
    Jez shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re at sea, aren’t we? And I might be wrong, but I reckon we’ve been sailing through the night. We could be miles away from The Diablo by now.”
    Connor looked over the side of the boat. Was Jez right? It was hard to tell. How could you tell one patch of ocean from another? “Maybe I’m beingparanoid,” Jez continued, “but I just can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong here.”
    Connor frowned. He remembered his fleeting vision of Grace and her message to him. Danger. Underwater. Had she been warning him about the crew of The Lorelei ? He still couldn’t get his head around how she could know where he was, let alone that he was in danger. He wondered if he shouldshare the vision with Jez. “Actually,” he began, “there is something I wanted to—”
    “Hey, what’s up, dudes?” Bart’s cheery voice drowned out his own. He sat up and thumped them each on the back. “How are my fellow Buccaneers this morning?”
    “Concerned,” Jez said.
    “Concerned?” repeated Bart. “About what?”
    “Bart, this isn’teasy for me to say. I know you’re getting along well with Kally and everything.…”
    Now Bart was frowning. “If you’ve got something to say, Jez, then please just spit it out.”
    “You remember what they say about merm— erm, fishtails?”
    “That seeing them causes bad luck?” Bart didn’t seem surprised by Jez’s question. Perhaps he, too, had been ponderingthe myths.
    Jez nodded. “That and more.”
    Bart shrugged. “Is that all? You’re worried by a little maritime mythology? Life’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? I mean, think about Tempest’s sister, Grace. She was kidnapped by Vampirates, but they let her go. And, according to her, they actually took care of her. Isn’t that so, Connor?”
    Connornodded. Then a shadow crossed his face as he remembered Grace’s tale of her encounter with the evil Sidorio, and he shivered. Sidorio had imprisoned Grace in her cabin in an attempt to satisfy his bloodlust. The Vampirate captain himself had had to take extraordinary measures to rescue her from certain death. Grace had seemed very calm when she’d recounted the tale afterward, but perhaps that wasbecause Sidorio had been immediately banished from the ship and not heard of since.
    Connor turned to Bart. “Yes, all but one of them.”
    “That’s my point,” Bart said. “We have to be open and judge everyone on his or her individual merits. There’s good and bad in every group of people.…”
    “These guys aren’t people , though, are they, Bart?” asked Jez.“I mean, they have great big swishy tails instead of legs.”
    Connor thought Bart would be enraged by Jez’s words, but instead he smiled calmly. “You can’t write off a whole crew just because they’re a little different.” He smiled again. “Look, they’re waking up.”
    The others followed his gaze along the deck. One by one, the fishtails were pushing asidetheir blankets and bringing their chairs into the upright position. Their energy seemed to return to them instantly, and they began chattering and laughing. Just as Flynn had predicted, their rest had returned them safely to the