Tempest Revealed by Tracy Deebs Page A

more. It also made it impossible to apply pressure because there was no longer anything pulling me in the other direction. I was still tethered, only now it was by one leg—a gruesome balloon for some monstrous ocean creature.
    I stared at my bound leg, out of ideas and nearly out of time. Adrenaline was racing through me, fear a wild animal clawing at my insides, but I tried to focus.
    I bent in half once again, studying what I had to work with. When the chain holding on to my right leg had broken, it had done so about thirty links below the manacle, meaning I had quite a nice length of iron chain still attached to my right ankle.
    After curling my legs up to my stomach, I started to search the still-taut length of chain for the link that had begun to give earlier. I prayed that it was close to me and not farther down, and for once I got lucky. It was only about fifteen links away from the manacle itself, which put it well within reach for what I planned to do.
    I wrapped the length of the broken chain, still attached to the manacle on my ankle, around the intact chain so that the two lengths crisscrossed. Then I focused on the electricity bouncing around inside of me, molding it into a solid ball of heat and light. I had to be careful—metal was a great conductor of electricity even without the water to help things along. The last thing I wanted was to fry myself along with the chain. But at the same time, I needed to heat the metal up to the point that it was malleable.
    Again, not an easy thing to do, as the chain was currentlyimmersed in the very cold Pacific. The heat I needed to generate was immense, and I could very easily end up burning myself as the chain warmed up on either side of the weak link. That was why I had wrapped the broken chain around it to begin with. If I somehow did manage to get it hot enough to bend, there was no way I was going to be able to touch it.
    When I’d gathered as much power as I could, when the ball was as tightly wound as I could make it, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed it to explode outward in one giant, fiery eruption, aimed straight at the chain that was still, inexorably, pulling me down.
    It nearly killed me. Nearly vaporized me on the spot, like it did the hundreds of gallons of sea water directly surrounding me. For a second it was like I was hanging in an air pocket, in a vacuum where nothing else existed, and then three things happened at once.
    The chains and manacles actually melted, leaving molten hot iron wrapped around both of my ankles.
    The weight of the ocean absorbed the sudden air pocket until I was once again surrounded by water.
    And finally, sea creatures of all kinds swarmed around me, terrified and angered by the electricity that had snaked through the water in every direction.
    A hammerhead shark shot straight at me, mouth gaping wide. My instincts—and my fear of sharks—screamed for me to get away from it, but at the same time I could feel the molten iron burning the skin around my ankles. Thank God for the nearly frigid ocean water, which was cooling the metal down rapidly. But if I wasn’t careful, I would end up right back where I started.
    I settled for dodging out of the shark’s path at the same time I used my fingernails to scrape the metal from my ankles. My fingertips sizzled a little as they came into contact with the still hot metal, and I knew I’d have second-degree burns on them. But at least the shark decided to leave me alone, intent as it was on getting out of the area as fast as it could.
    As I got rid of the last of the metal, I knew I had a choice to make. I could dive deep and see who was behind this attack, or I could head back to the surface and make sure my father was all right. I knew my dad well and I was pretty certain that, near-death experience or not, he wouldn’t head to shore until he knew I was all right.
    That knowledge made the decision for me. Though I was aching to use the element of surprise to