Read Online The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) by Jeremy Bishop - Free Book Online

toward the humpback’s head and accelerate.
    Whales have always made me feel small, even though I’ve only seen them from the deck of a ship. Being this close to a fifty-foot giant makes me feel absolutely insignificant. And blue whales can be twice this size!
    Moving slowly, I head toward the creature’s massive mouth. Humpback whales are filter feeders. They suck in vast amounts of seawater and then use their giant tongues to force the water back out through their sieve-like baleen, filtering out the tiny krill. Normally they’re not a threat to people, though I suppose this one could easily suck me in, filter me out, and swallow me whole. I have no intention of being a modern-day Jonah, though, so I keep my distance.
    I’d hoped to find its tongue hanging out of its mouth, but no such luck. The Draugar are the basis of not only modern zombie stories but also the vampire legend. Young generations of parasites reside in the gut, driving their host to consume flesh. Brain matter is a delicacy. Once the parasites have matured, they move to the tongue, covering it in a layer of wriggling white worms. The parasites on the tongue easily invade new hosts via simple bites and start the cycle anew. Victims decay to a point, but everything essential is preserved by some kind of secretion. This gives the Draugar the look of a zombie, but the eternal life of a vampire. And since they’ve got some kind of hive intelligence, controlled by a much larger Queen, they’re capable of strategizing in ways I have yet to comprehend.
    All of this flits through my mind as I swim back toward the eye. If there is one other place the parasites are guaranteed to befound, it’s the eyes. They fill the host’s eyes, wriggling inside the juices and using the clear membrane as a window on the world. A single human eye might hold fifty parasites, each of which has two black specks for eyes and a tiny but powerful mouth. I doubt they can see well individually, but together, who knows?
    I pause in front of the closed eye, knife in hand, sample jar ready. My plan is simple—jab the eye and position the jar to catch anything that spews out. I aim the knife tip over the navel-orange-size eye but don’t strike. My pondering on the inner workings of a Draugr has me concerned.
    “Jakob,” I say. “How do we know this whale is dead? Like really dead, not Draugr dead.”
    “It’s not breathing,” he replies. “Did it move?”
    “No…but do Draugr even need to breathe?”
    His answer is not what I was hoping for. “I—I don’t know.”
    Damnit
, I think. I should have thought of this before I jumped in the water. But I’m here now, and the whale hasn’t shown any sign of life.
Just do it and get the hell out
, I tell myself.
    I take one last look around, searching for some imagined danger, and then turn back toward the eye.
    The white, wriggling,
open
eye.

11
    I have no idea if they can hear my rapid-fire string of curses up on the bridge of the
Raven
or not, but I’m pretty sure even the Colonel would have winced at some of what I’ve just shouted.
    “Jane, what happened?” Jakob says. He may not have understood what I’ve just said, but he clearly understood the abject horror that fueled my words.
    “It’s a Draugr!” I shout. “A fucking Draugr whale!”
    I jam the DPV pedal down as far as it can go, surging up through the water. A sound gives chase, deep and resonating. I recognize the whale call instantly. The ten-second blast vibrates my insides and makes my head spin. But it’s not the sound that bothers me; it’s the knowledge that sound travels faster and farther in water. Whales can hear each other’s calls hundreds of miles away. This means that every Draugr whale inside a several-hundred-mile radius might now know exactly where to find the
Raven
.
    The DPV launches me out of the water, but not completely. After catching a glimpse of the
Raven
, I fall back to the sea. I manage to arc my body and reenter smoothly, but