The Sea Wolves by Christopher Golden Page A

himself, Sabine, and any other survivors to the small boats while the crew put out the flames, but he knew in his heart that there wouldn’t be enough time. He could do nothing but stand and listen to innocents die.
    Jack screamed his fury and slammed his fists against the inside of the door. After several long moments, shaking with grief and rage, he slid the dead bolt he’d opened back into place.
    â€œSabine…,” he said. From elsewhere on the ship came another scream of terror, a cry of immeasurable agony … and then silence. “What are they?”
    â€œYou know what,” she said gently. “You’re bright enough, Jack, and the clues were all there. Don’t tell me you weren’t already thinking of them as wolves .”

CHAPTER FIVE

OUT OF SIGHT
    J ack had read that if a person was deprived of one sense, then some or all of the others would be enhanced to compensate. And sitting there with Sabine in that strange room in the ship’s hold— a safe room, built for just this purpose, constructed to keep people protected from whatever might be outside —he closed his eyes, trying not to listen to the slaughter.
    It seemed to go on forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. He could easily distinguish between footsteps—the prisoners’ were panicked and shuffling, running this way and that through gangways and across a deck they did not know; the wolves’ were definite, methodical. And fast. A heavy thumping that he could feel in his bones. He followed both sets of sounds in his mind’s eye, and each would stop for a moment when another prisoner was cornered or caught.
    He closed his eyes, trying not to listen to the slaughter .
    Then would come the cry of terror, the scream of pain, the crunch of breaking bones.
    And even in the safe room, Jack could smell the blood.
    He and Sabine sat close together in the love seat, but for those few minutes they existed very far apart. Jack felt utterly alone, even though he could hear Sabine’s uneven breathing and smell her subtly perfumed scent. He thought of holding her hand, but that would feel wrong. She had known what was to come, and she had done nothing to warn him, nor to help those men and women locked away in the hold like rabbits caged in readiness for the hounds’ amusement.
    Worst of all, if she truly had some second sight and she had used it to lead the Larsen to the Umatilla , then she had to share in the blame for the murders Jack bore witness to now—sightless witness, though in some ways they were worse in his imagination.
    It was a surreal moment, sitting motionless while all around him were the sounds of pursuit and murder, and the ship swayed in tune with the Pacific swell. He felt like the center of things but not the focus. He was like the unmoving observer in the flow of life, a rock in a river of chaos. Sometime soon, he would have to shift.
    When the running and screaming ended, the howling came again. There was more than one howl, and their tones were triumphant, some distant and some close by. The hair on Jack’s arms and neck stood on end. He opened his eyes, preferring the brash light of the room to the darkness behind his eyelids. The ship dipped and rose, and he wondered who was steering, who was watching the sails and ensuring the Larsen remained on course.
    Of course, the answer was no one. The normal people—the human beings—on board were either in this room or scattered across the decks, torn to pieces, their insides being lapped up by monsters that followed the moon.
    â€œBut even we’re not normal,” he whispered.
    Sabine’s hand touched his arm, a shocking contact. Jack jerked away. “Sh,” she said, holding his arm tighter.
    â€œNo,” Jack said, and he pulled away. “You’re not normal.”
    â€œI’m not one of them!” she said, pointing at the door.
    â€œNo, I didn’t mean