Disclaimer: Van Helsing premise and characters belong to Stephen Somers. The plot is. . . very much Sol's, and not mine. I'm just the poor schmuck she found to write it. (grin)
A/N: Dedicated to Sol, the instigator and title-creator, who really wanted more Sean Connery goodness – what can I say?
SUNKEN PERIL
Flesh scythed the waves.
Fingers first, with a dark-haired head tucked neatly under the strong arms that followed. Torso, belly, legs, and pointed feet were enveloped in cool darkness. The arc of flesh, muscle wrapping bone, the squeeze of tendons, reaching with the whole of the mortality that encompassed him. . . the dive had been exhilarating.
For all he was something other, Gabriel Bateman knew how to be human, too.
He needed to breathe.
And the light was so far above . . .
His head popped free of the cold Atlantic, body moving now to keep airways, the fragile grasp on life, above the chill swells of seawater.
Noise reached his ears. Cheers, war whoops, and more than one cat-call. He turned his head to the ship, and saw shouting crowds lining the railings of the two decks. Despite the sudden cold, he felt a blush sweeping his cheeks. One voice rang out over all the rest.
"Are you completely insane?"
Grinning, he struck out toward the ladder a few yards away.
"Fifty bucks says it's not there."
The Frenchman gave him an exasperated glance, but picked up the gauntlet. The technology was reliable; the crew were the best, though the mixing with the Americans had been. . . interesting, to say the least. Though they had been plumbing the depths for weeks without success, there was a feel in the air that their luck was about to change. "I believe we have not come this far to fail now."
"And if you win?"
The captain of Le Suriot gave him a look filled with mischief. "You jump overboard." Into the freezing depths of the Atlantic, was what he didn't say. Gabriel raised a brow, but accepted.
Moments later, a voice piped through the radio in exuberant French. "Capitan! Capitan! We have found her! Oh, she is beautiful - "
Through exuberant exclamations echoing from the speakers, the captain smirked at his first mate. "I believe the American expression is, 'cough it up'?"
Gabriel answered the smug smile with a wry shake of his head.
Fingers grasped the cold metal rungs, and he hauled himself up the side of the Le Suriot. Indy was waiting for him with a towel and a grin; the older Jones stood behind him with a scowl. The hunter's dry clothes, folded neatly, lay on a bench nearby.
"You are," Henry announced to the crew at large, "completely out of your mind." A senior scientist among the predominant French team, the two had become unlikely friends in the eyes of the crew. As was the friendship with the brash American archaeologist also unlikely.
That the three might know one another from a time before this venture did not even enter the thoughts of those same crewmembers.
Grabbing the towel, Gabriel chafed bare flesh. "I like those jeans," he answered calmly, not at all perturbed at his state of near nakedness. He canted a brow toward the Frenchman, who was leaning against the helmhouse wall, shaking his head in amusement. "Permission to come aboard?"
Jean had been standing there since the deep-sea diver had been hauled aboard, waiting to demand payment on their bet. He'd been shocked when his normally reserved first mate had companionably agreed, and stripped down to his briefs before launching himself off the side of the ship.
Rumors of the bet, accompanied by the unaccustomed sight of the first mate shucking shoes and clothes had gathered all hands on deck almost faster than the word had traveled.
Now Jean surveyed pale skin, shivers, and blue lips. "Granted. Coffee, for you. And blankets."
The dangers of hypothermia were well warded off. No one who expected to come back out again went into the Atlantic unprepared. The sea was beauty and mystery and unfathomable hunger; even the wary could be taken by surprise at her quicksilver moods.
Gabriel opened his mouth to reply – and the ship rocked violently under their feet.
"What the -"
"Fils d'unne chienne!"
"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!"
Assorted noises of shock and surprise died away as the tremor in the decks subsided. The Captain had already rushed to the helm; those members of the crew who knew the engines intimately scurried into the bowels of the ship. Scientists ran for their machines.
And Gabriel was left, mostly alone, on the foredeck.
"What was that?" Henry Jones, Sr., grasped the thick metal railing, gazing out into wind and wave. Salt lay heavy on the air.
Gabriel joined him, physical discomfort forgotten. Golden eyes stared into the waves, slicing as cleanly through the dark depths as his body had mere moments before. The problem was not on the ship, or in it. Yet, a cautious voice spoke up, drawing on experience. . . and something else.
"A shot across the bow," he said softly. Not for the first time, he wondered what had drawn him to this place in this moment. Something on the edge of his senses tingled, sunken so deeply that seeking it was akin to plumbing untold depths. Much as their search here, for the body of that one ship deemed unsinkable, was.
And the sense of other, honed and hidden within mortality and the back of his mind, flared to brilliant life.
The towel slipped from his fingers to land in a sodden pile on the deck. He sucked in a silent breath. Touched the feeling gingerly, turning it over in his mind. Examining the sense of contained chaos, of darkness and light and exploding emotion bubbled into a physical talisman only waiting to be found.
It was not evil, precisely. But it was dark. Ruthless. And wherever it was, it wanted out.
Wherever it was . . . Golden eyes were drawn once more to the deep, and the hidden wreck so many fathoms below.
"Gabriel?"
Henry was looking at him, worry in the old man's eyes and betrayed by every line of his face. Turning to him for reassurance, for answers. "What was that?"
It was something familiar, with a strange twist of the exotic. Undoubtedly dangerous; yet quiescent. For the moment. It was a promise of blood and passion, and a memory of creeping dread that floated just out of reach.
The whisper lay heavily between them.
"I don't know."
A/N: Well, I was stuck at the beginning for quite some time, and this came to me in the shower today. I'm only posting it because I'm hoping feedback will start the parasitic cycle of inspiration, as I don't actually have much more of this. Too much research, or not enough, methinks. Le Suriot was the name of the ship of the joint French-American expedition to raise the Titanic in 1985, but all the people you see here are my own creations, with the obvious exceptions of Gabriel, Indy, and Henry.