I thought she was going to hit me, because if I'd been her, I would have hit me. Then multiple thunderbolts tore apart the darkened sky, revealing the look on Diana's face, and I knew she didn't want to hit me.

She wanted to kill me.

She opened her mouth and I braced myself, but I felt prepared for anything she might throw at me. After all, I'd been in this position more times than I'd care to admit, so it wasn't like I was going to hear anything from her lips that I hadn't heard before.

Strictly speaking, I was right about that. I'd heard better renditions of whale songs than I heard coming from her, but I had heard them before.

At first I was too dumbfounded to recognize what she was doing, then once I realized, I was too horrified to react right away. It took the surge of anger that followed that horror to give me the will to move. With less than gentle force, I slapped my hand over her mouth to shut her up. “What in Hel's name do you think you are doing?” I hissed.

And then she bit me . . . hard.

I wish I could honestly say that I didn't think I deserved that.

“Doing something I can do to save lives,” Diana said matter-of-factly as I pulled my hand away in pain and surprise. “Do you think it heard me?”

“Yes!” I screamed. I actually screamed it. “Yes, I do!”

“Is it on its way, you think?” she asked in the same tone.

It was taking almost all I had to keep myself in check, particularly with the monster's laughter threatening to split my skull, but I could feel the thing with Diana's sister take sudden interest and throw caution to the wind now that it knew it had the chance to double its prize. “Yes!”

Diana nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”

“No! Not good!” I shouted. “How could you do something like that?”

“My sister practiced that songs for weeks on end before we came out here, usually with me in earshot,” Diana answered with a shrug. “So it was easy.”

Page 17

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