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The large female felt her nerves tingle as her senses heightened and her muscular body tightened, her flesh changing from a mottled pink to crimson red in the dark water. She twisted her body to direct her weaponry toward the fleeing prey and darted upward, lashing out with two longer tentacles to ensnare it.

But she was not the first to attack. Another large female—the badly scarred sister she recognized by the missing fin tip—rushed ahead of her and caught the slow creature as its head broke the surface of the water.

They rapidly towed the quarry back under, then pulled it tightly into them, engulfing it in their many powerful arms. The two sisters gripped its body tightly, dragging and pulling with powerful bursts of water from their siphons. They moved away from the surface, toward the deep. The prey was thrashing violently, jabbing and striking at them, but they sensed no injury or pain.

Together they pulled the creature farther down. Others from the shoal approached and latched on to its thrashing body; several gripped its leg, another its torso next to the one-eyed female, yet another affixing itself to its face. Drawing the prey tightly against her as she held her position on her own patch of flesh, the large female dug her sharp beak into the creature’s side through its loose outer skin. Underneath the sheath of fibrous, inedible fabric her beak met with warm, bloody flesh, rich with fat, and she bit further into its belly.

With a few powerful spasms, the prey finally gave up its fight and yielded to the shoal. The hungry mob, gathered tightly into an enormous ball around the dying animal, drifted slowly down into the blackness as it fed.

S
turman pressed his thighs against the handrail to maintain balance in the slow Pacific swells, then groaned with satisfaction as he sent an arc of piss off the bow of his boat. As the stream entered the water, the ocean magically lit up around it in a swirling, turquoise glow.

“Let there be light.” Sturman let out a loud, drunken belch. “Hey, Pop, check this out.”

Steve Black walked over, beer in hand. “Fuck me! Glowing shrimp! Why don’t you go swimming with ’em, Sturman?”

He shoved Sturman in the back, nearly pushing him over the rail. Sturman managed to keep his balance and turned to face Steve, unsmiling, his face flushed. Steve laughed and slapped him on the back.

Sturman’s expression slowly melted into a grin. “Watch it, old man.”

“Just fuckin’ with you, son.”

Sturman’s old drinking buddy was one of the few people he couldn’t stay mad at. “Try that again and I’m gonna turn around and water down your feet, asshole.”

“Go ahead. It’s your boat.”

“By the way, they’re plankton, you dumbass pirate.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’re not shrimp. They’re plankton . . . little crustaceans that light up when you
piss
’em off.” He had once spent a lot of free time learning about marine biology. There was a time when he thought he would get a degree and study the ocean. But that was long ago.

“I’ll be damned. You’re smarter than you look.”

“I’ve never lit ’em up with my piss before.”

“Where the hell you learn this stuff, son?”

“You should try reading sometime. If you know how.”

Sturman finished and watched the glowing plume quickly vanish from the water. “Where you goin’, guys?” Sturman considered for a moment. “You know what, boys? I think I’ll take a swim.”

“You’re crazy, son. That water’s fuckin’ cold.”

“Suit yourself.”

Sturman zipped up his fly, tossed his straw cowboy hat at Steve, then executed a less-than-perfect dive over the rail, directly into the water where he had just urinated. Bud probably wouldn’t follow him in. The dog had gotten bored with the men after they started getting drunk, and was now sleeping in the stern of the boat.

As Sturman entered the cool water, he opened his eyes and saw that the tiny bubble trail he had just created was aglow. He watched the glowing tracers follow his hands as he waved them through the water. He flapped a hand up and down in front of his eyes, striving to see one of the miniature creatures in the ghostly underwater light, but realized in a sober part of his mind that even with a dive mask on he wouldn’t be able to see the individual critters—they were too small.

After half a minute, when Sturman felt his lungs burning for air, he kicked for the surface. Floating on the dark ocean next to his boat, he looked toward the bright, artificial lights from shore. How utterly different the harsh white and yellow lights of shore looked in comparison to the soft, supernatural bioluminescence he had just witnessed.

They were only a mile or so off the coast of Capistrano Bay. The moon was nearly full, the winds were light, and the sea was mostly calm. He savored the moment, knowing it was fleeting. It wasn’t often he was happy to be alive. Now, though, he was drunk. He usually felt better when he was drunk, because it made him forget, and the water was his favorite place.

 

 

That morning, Sturman hadn’t been in such a cheerful mood. He had been restless all week, following the doctor’s orders to stay out of the water for several days following his accident. Nothing a six-pack couldn’t fix, though. He and Steve had begun the evening by wandering over to one of the tourist-friendly bars to knock a few back. While Steve had tried his luck with two younger cougars visiting San Diego for the weekend, Sturman had been his usual brooding self, to the disappointment of the two brunettes. Things had been going remarkably well for Steve. The women were intrigued by his pirate charm until he had gotten buzzed and started talking about the size of his penis, scaring them both away.

Only very adventurous or unintelligent women attracted to the criminal type could stomach Steve’s crude attitude and rough appearance. Steve really wasn’t a bad guy at heart. Just really rough around the edges. It probably didn’t matter anyway—those cougars had been looking for super-virile surfer dudes or soldiers in their early twenties. The old pirate never had a chance.

Steve had been unaffected by the rejection. He had bought Sturman a few more beers before wandering off to hit on some younger tourists. Left to brood on his own, Sturman had started to think about Maria. He told himself that he was saving his friend from being shot down again when he suggested that if they hurried, they could get in a few hours of fishing.

They’d left the bar, grabbed some fried chicken and beer at the store, and walked to the harbor and Sturman’s floating refuge. He didn’t like being around other people when his mood grew sour, especially women, and the boat that served as his home and office was where he went to think. And get drunk.

 

 

Sturman dove down several more times and played with the shrimp, but the water was less than seventy degrees and he quickly cooled. He swam around to the stern of the boat and climbed the swim ladder, then stood dripping on the transom, goose bumps covering his wet skin. As he wrung the seawater out of his T-shirt in the moonlight, Steve Black looked down at him from the flying bridge. He was reclined in the padded swivel chair, his long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, listening to music softly playing over the boat’s built-in speakers.

Sturman listened with him for a moment and began to feel a familiar lump creep into his throat. Brooks and Dunn’s rendition of “My Maria” was wafting into the cool night air.

“Mind changing the station, Pop?”

Steve reached to turn the radio dial to a local classic rock station. “Sorry, Will.”

“It’s all right.”

Growing up landlocked, Sturman had always wanted a boat. He had once pictured himself traveling the Caribbean and Mexico in a boat like this one. He had modified the thirty-six-foot fishing boat into a bachelor pad and home business, designed for diving. He had affixed tank holders in the stern and removed the dining table just inside the cabin to offer paying divers plenty of room to sit on the bench seats as he shuttled them to and from dive sites.
Maria
was a great vessel for a small dive operation that catered to groups of four or five divers, but she wasn’t big enough to live on comfortably. Sure, she had a galley, a head, and decent sleeping quarters in the bow, but she was a lady designed only to spend a weekend with, not for the commitment of moving in together.

Sturman’s needs were simple. He ate out often and worked as much as possible. He could always be seen wearing his old cowboy hat, cargo shorts or old jeans, and a worn T-shirt. Off the boat, when he had to wear shoes, he opted for flip-flops or an old pair of shitkickers.

Sturman looked up at Steve. His friend was out cold.

“We better head in, Pop. I’m not lonely enough yet to sleep with you.”

As Sturman dried off, his friend began to snore, but “My Maria” kept playing in his head and soon he was again melancholy. He climbed the ladder to the flying bridge, now feeling thoroughly chilled and a little more sober in the ocean breeze. As they motored slowly back toward the harbor, he allowed himself to think about her.

When he neared the no-wake zone of the harbor, Sturman eased back on the throttle and climbed down the ladder. He stepped around Steve, who had moved down to the stern and curled up near Bud, out of the wind, and headed into the cabin to find his bottle of rum.

I
t was a smaller headline, tucked away in the local section of the Sunday edition of the San Diego daily paper. Slouched on his brown leather couch, Joe sat up as he reread the subhead, focusing on one word in particular:

Glowing
.

The kid running immigrants had said something about the water glowing for a moment near his boat, but Joe and the other interrogators had laughed it off. The kid had been drinking, and was probably a liar. They figured he had simply seen the glow of the floating flashlights he said were on the water. Joe read the rest of the brief article.

Joe lowered the paper onto his lap and leaned his head back into the couch, shutting his eyes. A glow. Could there be any connection here?

Two thoughts occurred to him. First, that the loss of the immigrants last week might not have been an isolated incident. Second, he was starting to realize he should be doing something about this, but it was his day off. He felt the first pang of guilt and threw the paper across the room. This was crazy. His wife was right when she said he tried to bear the weight of the world. What the hell was he supposed to do here?

“What’s the matter, baby?” Elena was in their open kitchen preparing breakfast.

“Nothing, hon.” He forced a smile. “Padres lost again.”

Elena was beating eggs in a large metal bowl. “Why do you care so much? It’s only one game.”

“Only one game? You know how much I love baseball. Better be careful what you say before my morning coffee, lady. Unless you want to be spanked.”

Joe looked back to the article.
A little girl.
The article said a twelve-year-old girl had gone missing. Joe looked over at Gabby. His daughter was lying on the floor, playing a video game. She wasn’t much older than that. He slid off the couch and crawled up next to her, nudging his shoulder against hers.

“Stop it, Dad!”

“You winning,
mija
?”

“You don’t win this game, Dad. I’m building my army.”

“Why play if you can’t win?”

“You win later. I need to build my army first.”

“Of course you do.”

The thought of losing Gabby kept forcing its way into Joe’s mind. He couldn’t even begin to think about what it would be like. He put his arm around his baby girl.

“Get off me, Dad! You just made me go in the wrong door. . . . Now I’ve got to go all the way back around again. Thanks a lot.”

“Anytime, baby.”

Joe thought for a moment about the case with the missing immigrants. He could leave that for now; he would look into the fishing accident first.