The Oracle's Message. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ straight up on its tail in the water and then jerked back, freeing itself from Annja’s sword. A dark flow of blood spilled into the water, clouding Annja’s vision.

      And then the shark turned and shot away, trailing blood behind it.

      Annja looked overhead and saw she was only eight feet below the surface. She kicked, surfaced and gasped air into her starved lungs.

      Her boat bobbed on a swell a few yards away and she clawed through the surf toward it, willing the sword away to the otherwhere with the power of her mind.

      As she reached the catamaran, she felt herself rise up as something struck the boat from below.

      The shark hadn’t fled, after all.

      Damn, Annja thought.

      Disregarding the boat, she ducked back under the surface and saw the tiger shark, grievously wounded, circling around, preparing for another attack.

      Annja summoned her sword and waited.

      The shark had a look that told her it would attack her until one of them was dead.

      There would be no quarter.

      Annja steeled herself and the shark came at her, moving with an almost supernatural level of speed through the water.

      Annja bent backward as the shark’s jaws snapped close by her head. She saw its belly pass over her face and plunged the sword as far as it would go into the underside of the massive beast.

      The blade cut deep, scoring a line across the belly. Entrails slipped out while blood spewed into the ocean around her, turning everything dark and cloudy.

      Annja imagined that she heard a deep rumbling gasp from the shark and then it simply turned over and slipped away from her.

      Dead.

      She watched it sink down to the ocean floor. Instead of Annja being its dinner tonight, the tiger shark would be dinner for the smaller fish around the reef.

      Annja nodded grimly. There was no joy in killing the magnificent beast, but she’d had no choice.

      She turned toward the surface and broke through, again taking a deep breath of air. She turned toward her boat, but misjudged the distance. In the choppy water she was thrust forward and knocked her head on part of the catamaran.

      She saw stars and felt blackness rushing for her.

      Her final thought before she slipped under the waves was that at least she’d killed the tiger shark.

      Somehow, death by drowning seemed better than being eaten by a shark.

      3

      She heard voices. That was enough to tell her she wasn’t underwater.

      But was she dead?

      “Miss?”

      She opened an eye and found a tanned, handsome face staring into her own. Judging by the scar on his cheek, he’d seen some sort of fighting at one point in his life. But there was an eagerness in his expression that told her he was very concerned.

      She tried to speak but coughed instead. A bottle of water found its way to her lips and she took a greedy gulp, coughing some more and letting the better part of it dribble all over her face.

      “Easy, easy.” His voice was strong and soothing.

      Annja smiled. “I guess I’m not dead, after all.”

      “Almost. But not quite.”

      Annja propped herself up on one elbow and saw she was in a boat, one much larger than her catamaran. “What happened to my boat?”

      “It sunk.”

      Annja frowned and then remembered that the tiger shark had rammed the pitifully small catamaran. And when she’d surfaced after killing the shark, she must have hit her head against a piece of it. She felt her head and found the large bruise. She winced at the touch as pain sliced through her body.

      “You’ll need to get that looked at, I suspect.”

      Annja touched the spot again. The skin was bloated, swollen, and felt a little mushy to the touch. But she thought it was probably nothing worse than a bad knock. “I’ll be all right.”

      “For a moment, you weren’t.”

      She looked into his eyes and then smiled. “My name’s Annja.”

      “Hans.”

      “You’re German?” She could hear the accent now.

      “I am.”

      Annja sat up and saw another couple of men sitting in the boat looking at her with a mixture of amusement and concern. “I’m on your boat, I take it?”

      Hans nodded. “We saw the commotion in the water, saw your diving flag and wondered if you might be in some sort of danger.”

      Annja shrugged. “Tiger shark.”

      Hans started. “A tiger shark? You’re sure?”

      “I know those stripes, Hans. Trust me.”

      “How did you get away?”

      Annja shook her head. “I didn’t. I killed him instead.”

      That brought a low murmur from the other men on the boat. Hans smiled. “How large was the shark?”

      “Probably fourteen feet. Give or take a few inches.”

      “And you killed it? With what?”

      Annja almost said something about the sword but caught herself. “I had a diver’s knife with me.”

      “That must have been some knife,” Hans said.

      “I stabbed the shark in the head with it over and over until it died.”

      “You’re quite a remarkable woman, Annja.”

      “I don’t feel so remarkable right now.” Annja groaned. The bobbing of the boat, which wouldn’t have bothered her if she’d been uninjured, now made her intensely nauseous.

      Hans moved out of the way just in time as Annja rushed forward and vomited into the sea. After heaving a few more times, she leaned back and wiped her mouth. “Got any more of that water?”

      Hans handed her the bottle and held up his hand. “Perhaps you shouldn’t drink it quite so fast this time.”

      Annja nodded. “Yeah, that would be good idea.” She swirled the water around in her mouth and then spat it out along with the taste of bile. She took another sip and tried to hand the bottle back to Hans.

      But the German only held up his hand. “That’s fine. You can keep that bottle. We have more.”

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