Sins Against the Sea (5 page)

Casting aside the past, Cuan spewed a sigh of bubbles and opened his eyes. Thinking of her, even after all this time, still made him feel like an oyster robbed of its pearl. Why had he grown so attached? What was wrong with him? Why did he prefer an inferior Nic to Shan, who wanted to be his blood brother?

“Kiss me,” he would whisper in the dark, and Cuan would do as his friend bade, feeling all the while like a hermit crab in a borrowed shell. How could he agree to be Shan’s lifelong partner when his heart yearned for something else? Something he couldn’t name that called to him from somewhere out there like the song of a siren.

Cuan shook his head in self-disgust. This was hardly the time for self-reflection. Not when there were more pressing matters at hand—namely
Ketos
and the dream. He knew what he had to do. If the dream turned out to be a warning, he would return and alert the others. Not that there was much they could do beyond relocating to safer waters. All the same, he’d have no peace until he knew if the dream was only a dream or something much more threatening to the inhabitants of the Minch.

Cuan left the castle, doing his best to avoid notice. It wasn’t difficult, given that his fellows were all too deep in their cups to notice much of anything. Outside the cave, he surfaced. In the pale gray light of dawn, the water’s choppy surface resembled liquid slate. Effervescent foam, like floating lace, danced on the swells around Cuan. Soft white mist hung over everything like a bridal veil. How he longed to take a bride one day—an impossible dream given his clan’s attitudes about mixed sex couplings.

Pushing high on his tail, he spun in the surf as he scanned the coastline for any sign of oil. To his great relief, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He sniffed the air, smelling nothing strange. He licked his lips, concentrating on the water’s flavor. He tasted the usual brine and that toxic undertone he detested, but nothing else of consequence.

In the distance, through the mist, a lighthouse beacon flashed intermittently, telling him he’d reached the span where the human ferry crossed from Skye to Lochmaddy.

The dream’s harrowing images returned to his mind. Entire schools of fish floated belly-up in the muddy surf while the bodies of seals, dolphins, and seabirds littered the rocky shore. He recognized the sloped, rocky shore and the solitary white cottage overlooking the loch—the only dwelling yet remaining on the unpopulated isle of Ronay.

As he scanned the landscape for any sign of oil, he thought about his father. Cuan had seen his death, too, in a dream the night before it happened. Had he known at the time it was more than a nightmare, he would have done something to warn his father.

Submerging, he swam on, instinctively steering toward the jagged coast where the tanker had run aground. Unbeknownst to the others, he’d gone there many times, stealing away when he was certain he would not be missed for long periods at a stretch.

Just as he was approaching the submerged cliffs of Skye, he sensed movement on his right. Looking to see what was there, he found a dolphin swimming alongside him. It was Delphine, a frequent playmate. He pulled up when he saw the fear swimming in her eyes.

Turn back
, she said into his mind as they circled each other.
Warn your clan. There is trouble ahead.

Her words tightened his chest.
Is it oil?

Yes, and it’s spreading.

So, just as he’d feared, his dream had indeed been a glimpse into the future.

I must see it for myself.
He could hardly sound the alarm at
Tír fo Thuinn
on the word of a dolphin, clever as they were.

Nay, Cuan. You mustn’t go there. It’s far too dangerous

I have no choice.

Leaving Delphine behind, he swam on toward Ronay. Before long, the water began to taste biting and rank. He also could feel the oil’s viscous slime coating his tongue and skin, seeping under the scales of his tail, and saturating his hair. He was starting to feel lightheaded, too. His gills were pumping hard, but bringing him little air. Realizing the oil was clogging his airways, he surfaced, gasping. As his lungs took over, he coughed up chunks of black goop. Reviled by the taste and texture, he spat into the water.

Soft pinks and blues streaked the morning sky. A ghostly sheen mirrored their reflection on the water, whose lacey white foam had turned a dingy shade of brown.

Mist shrouded the coastline, making the islands look as if they were floating on clouds. He briefly considered turning back before deciding to persist a wee while longer. He had little to report so far, after all, beyond traces of floating oil.

Sticking to the surface, he made his way toward one of the coastal lochs. Unused to swimming like this for long stretches, his muscles were already burning with the strain. He stopped to rest, treading as he surveyed the shore, still several meters away. Through the mists clinging to the bay, he could see
Ketos
, still held by the rocks, pitching on the waves. Oil now poured from the crack in the tanker’s hull. The sight both sickened and troubled him.

Waves swelled and broke around him in explosive bursts. He fought hard against the drag. A powerful undertow had him in its grip. Giving up the struggle, he let the current sweep him along. It swirled and churned, slamming him into jagged rocks that tore at his scales before dumping him on the beach.

He dragged himself out of the tumbling surf, fingers raking pebbles and wet sand, arms shaking with fatigue. Beside him were what he thought at first were dead seals. They turned out to be the bloated corpses of some of the crew—blackened by the grease, as he was. Their swollen skin, cracked in places, was oozing yellow puss. The smell was wretched. Flies buzzed all around. Fighting the urge to retch, he shimmied away only to slip down the slickened rocks. He tried to hold on, but found nowhere to grip. He landed hard on a grassy patch of sand—smack in the middle of a pile of dead fish. A whole school of dogfish coated in sludge.

The hum of an engine broke the silence. Some sort of small boat was approaching the island. As panic squeezed Cuan’s chest, he searched the misty horizon. Within seconds, a blue-and-yellow cruiser bounced into view. The side of the cabin bore a large English word: Coastguard.

His stomach tightened. If they spotted him, he’d have to kill them, which he would rather not do. Normally, killing humans bothered him little, but these men had done nothing to harm the ocean. In fact, they often stopped others of their race from committing crimes against the sea.

Frantically, Cuan looked about him for somewhere to hide. Then, he remembered the tidal cave he’d discovered on an earlier visit. He glanced toward the cliff in search of the curtain of bracken concealing its entrance. To his dismay, the cave was still at least a dozen meters away. Could he make it in time? He only knew he had to try his best.

Rolling onto his belly, he dug in and dragged himself toward the rise. It was hard going. Sand clung to the oil on his tail, weighing him down. He glanced again from the cave to the cruiser, now piloting toward the beach. His heart wrenched. If they landed now, he didn’t stand a chance of avoiding their notice. He looked up at the brightening sky. Perhaps he should try to summon a storm. Nothing too severe; just enough wind and rain to obscure their view of the island until he was safely hidden inside the cave.

As he prepared to call a storm, a new worry besieged him. What if the wind spread the oil, making the devastation worse? Abandoning the plan, he scrambled over the rocks toward the cliffs as fast as his arms could pull him along.

* * * *

Corey nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell started buzzing on the coffee table.
Please, let it not be Peter and please, let the tanker not belong to Conch.
Though she’d just completed her training to be the designated on-site spokesperson for such incidents, she felt utterly unprepared to handle the pressure. Heart in throat, she made a dash around the sofa and snatched up her cell.

“Hello?”

“We have a problem.” Peter’s typical blunt greeting was delivered in a Scottish accent softened by decades in the States.

“I’m watching the news right now.” Corey braced herself for the bomb about to drop on her head. “How bad is it?”

“A team from U.K. operations is heading over,” he replied. “We won’t really know what we’re dealing with until we have their report.”

Peter preferred the “Artful Dodger” approach to public relations, as Corey liked to call it—a classic strategy of deny, dupe, and delay. It was, in her opinion, the
worst
possible way to handle a crisis. She used to roll her eyes and ask herself if he’d learned nothing from the
Valdez
disaster. Then, wising up, she realized he’d learned a great deal.

In the immediate aftermath of the Alaskan spill, the news media described a coastline littered with dead animals, ruined vegetation, and a blanket of black stretching more than a thousand miles. Within a few months, however, the press reports coming out of Prince William Sound were practically love letters to Big Oil. Rather than criticize the carelessness that caused the wreck, reporters only praised Exxon’s preservation efforts—the fertile harvest of a well-sown spin campaign.

“Well…” Corey pushed the word through her tightening throat. “We need to tell the media something…although I have no idea what that might be.”

“You’ll think of something,” Peter said off-handedly. “If you want to keep your job.”

Corey gulped to clear the thickness from her throat. Her head was spinning and her limbs suddenly felt like cement. “Will we be setting up a command center on the island?”

“That would be the plan.”

“Maybe with Ronay being so remote, the accident won’t draw as much attention as usual,” Corey offered, trying to sound positive. Not that she believed there was much cause for optimism.

“Sure thing, Pollyanna. Believe what you want.” Peter’s condescending tone set Corey’s teeth on edge. “But it’s also going to make the clean-up efforts all-the-more challenging. Rocky shores are the worst. That idiot captain couldn’t have picked a poorer place to run aground.”

“Is the captain still alive?”

“Yes, but he’s unconscious. He’s been air-lifted to a hospital in Inverness.”

Corey prayed he hadn’t been drinking like the skipper on the Valdez. Not that she really believed intoxication was the cause of what happened in Prince William Sound.

“How’d it happen, anyway?”

“With the only survivor still unconscious, nobody can say for certain,” Peter told her. “Some kind of freak storm, according to the coastguard. From the look of the damage, they believe the tanker might have been hit by one of those rogue waves.”

A shiver went through Corey. They’d said the same thing about the sinking in which her dad had drowned. She went into the kitchen, realizing only as she picked up her empty wineglass that her hands were shaking. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop her mind from calling up those awful images of the yacht her father had been aboard smashing against the rocks like a matchstick model.

“Does this kind of thing happen often in the Minch?”

“Often enough.”

His cavalier intonation made Corey’s blood boil. “Then why isn’t the strait better protected?”

“It’s what’s known as a political football,” Peter replied. “Apparently, the environmentalists over there have been petitioning for decades to get the Minch declared a Marine Protected Area.”

Corey looked back at the television. The image hadn’t changed. “I don’t get it. Protecting a diverse natural habitat like the Minch seems like a no-brainer.”

Peter laughed in that belittling way of his that always grated on Corey. Between derisive snorts, he said, “That’s because you don’t understand how things work—or, rather,
don’t
work—across the pond.”

On top of being indecisive, Peter could be a condescending know-it-all, which galled Corey to the marrow. “Then enlighten me.”

“While I’d love nothing more, we’ve got a plane to catch.”

Except for a slight wine buzz, Corey was ready to go. She kept a bag packed at all times, had no social life to put on hold, and owned no pets to drop at the kennel.

“When and where?”

“Long Beach. In just over an hour.”

Corey threw a glance at the digital display on the VDR. It was a few minutes after seven o’clock. Knowing Scotland was five hours ahead, she did a quick calculation. Now that the bomb had dropped, she was eager to get on top of things. “I’ll start working on a statement.”

“There’s something else you should know…” After an impossibly long pause, during which Corey dangled in suspense, Peter added, “
Ketos
is a single-hull Aframax.”

Corey took a moment to search her mental file cabinet on tankers. Aframax was the classification given to those with capacities under 120,000 metric tons deadweight. The name was based on the Average Freight Rate Assessment or AFRA. Aframax tankers were largely used in places where the harbors and canals were too small for very large crude carriers (FLCCs) and ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs)—places like the Black Sea, North Sea, China Sea, Caribbean, and Mediterranean.

So, the fact that
Ketos
was in the North Sea didn’t seem all that unusual, though it did seem strange that the tanker was a single-hull carrier, since such models were all but obsolete, having been replaced for the most part by double-hull designs, which were less prone to leaks. Still, none of that explained the pregnant tone of Peter’s disclosure.