Alex neptune dragon thie.., p.1
Alex Neptune, Dragon Thief, page 1
Meet Alex Neptune, the boy with the power of the ocean in his hands – a brand-new hero for fans of Percy Jackson and Dragon Realm!
For as long as Alex Neptune can remember, the ocean has been trying to kill him. So he’s not too happy when a bunch of sea creatures drag him to the abandoned aquarium on the hill, where an imprisoned water dragon needs his help. But how can he say no to a magical myth?
Recruiting his tech-genius best friend Zoey, legend-lover Anil, a sharp-shooting octopus, four acrobatic otters and a thieving seagull, Alex plots a heist to break the dragon out. And suddenly discovers the power of the ocean at his fingertips…
For Teddy,
Hard-earned, well-deserved, so loved.
CONTENTS
About this Book
Dedication
Map
Chapter One: Welcome to Haven Bay
Chapter Two: No Such Thing as Sea Monsters
Chapter Three: Neptune’s Bounty
Chapter Four: Wonders of the Deep Sea (Now Closed)
Chapter Five: Mayor of Monsters
Chapter Six: The Water Dragon
Chapter Seven: Attack of the Water Sausages
Chapter Eight: The Great Seagull Stick-Up
Chapter Nine: How to Attain Your Dragon
Chapter Ten: The Dragon Tunnels
Chapter Eleven: World’s Strongest Girl
Chapter Twelve: A Scrappy Encounter
Chapter Thirteen: The Dragon Cage
Chapter Fourteen: Dragon Hunting Runs in the Blood
Chapter Fifteen: The Final Recruit
Chapter Sixteen: Ocean’s Five
Chapter Seventeen: Funny Looking Mayor You Got There
Chapter Eighteen: The Lowest Bidders
Chapter Nineteen: Keep Your Arms Inside the Ride at All Times
Chapter Twenty: Dragon Wagon
Chapter Twenty-One: Seaweed Smackdown
Chapter Twenty-Two: Darkness
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Second Siege of Haven Bay
Chapter Twenty-Four: Heck Breaks Loose
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Sharp End of the Harpoon
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Ocean Sings Its Wrath
Chapter Twenty-Seven: After the Storm
Chapter Twenty-Eight: A New Tradition
Read on for a Sneak Peek…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
For as long as Alex Neptune could remember, the sea had been trying to kill him.
The very first time he dipped a toe into the ocean, a rogue wave had crashed over his head and swept him off his feet. Ever since, a gentle paddle would summon the tide foaming high to drag him out of his depth, a timid swim inviting seaweed to wrap fast around his legs and haul him under. His mere presence could provoke vicious currents and monstrous swells from the calmest seas.
Everybody told Alex it was just bad luck. Only he knew the truth.
The ocean wanted him dead.
The cause of this maritime grudge remained a mystery, so his best chance of surviving it was to stay away from the water altogether.
Which was a problem when he had lived his entire life in the seaside town of Haven Bay.
“I got my underwear wet.”
Zoey Wu, his best friend, squelched up the beach from the waterline. Although her clothes were dripping wet, the sea had failed to wash away the black grease smeared across her cheeks or the sawdust shavings stuck in her straight black fringe. She lived at the local boatyard with her dad, who handled repairs and sold spare parts to fund his dream of becoming an artist, creating bizarre sculptures from scrap metal in his spare time. Zoey spent the summer holidays pretending to help, while secretly stealing bits and bobs to transform into what she claimed were brilliant inventions. Alex had lost count of the number of times she had accidentally burned off her eyebrows.
“Can you please hurry up?” Alex pressed his back against the sea wall, as far away from the lapping tide as he could get.
“You shouldn’t hate the ocean so much,” Zoey said. “It hasn’t tried to murder you in ages.”
Alex didn’t hate the ocean. The repeated assassination attempts – as well as Grandpa expressly forbidding him from going anywhere near it – had simply left him terrified of it. Sometimes he was sure the ocean actually taunted him. Waves pealing against shore, wind whistling over rocks, seagulls cackling in wheeling circles – it all felt as if the water was beckoning him into its clutches so it could finish him off for good.
He shivered and turned away towards town. Haven Bay was an old fishing village built on a hill that lifted steeply from the ocean. It rose in layers: first, the wide sea wall bounded the beach, topped by the wooden-framed shops and cobbles of the high street, with the old harbour and the boatyard at one side of the bay.
The next layer up the hill was multicoloured houses, faded to pastel shades by countless summers, tottering against each other like a pirate’s crooked teeth. Above those was a thick strip of trees and bushes rising steeply up until the hill flattened at its highest point.
There, Alex could just see the domed glass structure housing the aquarium. The unlikely location had been selected a century before by an eccentric mayor who believed visitors would enjoy the panoramic sea view. Unfortunately, this made the aquarium extravagantly expensive to operate and it had finally closed down a few years ago. Now the empty tanks inside the grand glass walls had been left to rot.
“Let’s find out what’s really in the water.” Zoey had collected a jam jar of sea water. It had taken months of begging before her dad had agreed to buy her a chemistry set so they could perform some tests. Now she busied herself wedging test tubes into the sand and filling them up.
While she squeezed droplets into the tubes, Alex gazed out across the bay. The shifting waves smouldered under the broad disc of the setting sun. An unruly formation of seabirds was making its raucous return to roosts in the nearby cliffs.
It would have been beautiful, were it not for the litter that smothered the water. Carrier bags and plastic bottles, tins and crisp packets, yoghurt pots and cotton buds formed floating bands of filth. Oil glistened on the surface of the waves. The lapping water left a shifting black tideline of gunk along the beach.
Barely a year had passed since Mayor Humbertus Parch took control of Haven Bay and approved construction of a mysterious facility known as the Station. The grey concrete building perched on the water’s edge like an unsightly barnacle. Apart from the arrival or departure of the occasional boat, nobody was ever seen going in or out. Security guards in black uniforms stood watch outside every hour of the day.
The mayor claimed the Station monitored water quality. But shortly after it was built the water turned foul and tourists stopped showing up. It couldn’t be a coincidence. In the pub, cafe and chip shop, locals grumbled their suspicions about the Station. But whenever anybody tried to investigate, key documents would conveniently disappear and professional water-testing teams would find their equipment sabotaged overnight.
Alex and Zoey hoped that Mayor Parch wouldn’t notice two kids with a chemistry set. If they could prove the Station was to blame, Alex was sure the town would rise up and fight to get it shut down.
“What the heck?” said Zoey, snatching his attention.
The water inside the test tubes had turned a series of bright colours: orange, purple and a particularly sickly green.
“All of those are normal. This is the only one I don’t understand.” Zoey picked up the last tube in the row. The water inside had turned sludgy and grey like blended mussels. “There’s a substance in the water I don’t recognize.”
“Could that be why it’s so filthy?” asked Alex. “There can’t be anything living out there by now. Nobody can even go swimming any more.”
“At least that means they can’t get eaten by sharks,” said Zoey.
“We don’t have sharks here,” replied Alex. Over the years he had researched every sea creature in the world capable of killing him. He figured there was no harm in being prepared. “And I’ve already told you, they hardly ever attack people.”
“That’s what the sharks want you to think,” Zoey countered. “People go out there all the time, right, so it must be safe. And then snap! They get chomped the heck in half.”
Alex shuddered. “There are way more dangerous things living in the ocean.”
“Like the Water Dragon?”
Like most old seaside towns, Haven Bay was rife with stories and legends handed down over centuries. Alex knew all about them from the books his family sold in their souvenir shop. And every single local legend was tied to a mythical sea monster called the Water Dragon that had supposedly created the bay.
The story went that hundreds of years ago the people who lived along this shore forged a connection with a dragon that ruled over the waves. It gave them powers, allowing them to breathe underwater, live unnaturally long lives and communicate with the sea creatures they lived alongside.
All of that changed when the people betrayed the Water Dragon. In its fury, the dragon took an enormous bite out of the coast, destroying their civilization and forming the bay.
It would be a century before the dragon returned to Haven Bay.
Alex had always loved the stories, but now he was older he suspected they had been invented by bored fishermen and their hazy details exaggerated as they were handed down through the generations.
“There’s no such thing as sea monsters,” he said firmly.
Which was
Before Alex could move, Zoey had snatched up her shoes to wield as weapons.
“Sea monster!” she bellowed.
The shoes smacked against the monster’s side and sent it rolling dramatically onto the sand.
“Ow!” it cried. “A mortal wound! The end of a short but beautiful life!”
Alex reached out to stop the footwear onslaught. “I recognize that voice.”
Zoey ignored him and lifted the shoes again. “Die, vile fiend from the depths!”
The monster’s distinctly human hand reached up to peel away the octopus firmly attached to its face. Eight suckered limbs popped stubbornly from the skin beneath as it flailed to cling on.
Anil Chatterjee grinned at them from underneath, face covered in round sucker marks. “It’s not a sea monster, it’s me!”
Grudgingly, Zoey lowered her weapons. “Yeah, I knew that already.”
Alex rushed forwards to peer closer. “Where did you get that?”
The octopus had now wrapped itself in a tight embrace around the boy’s elbow. Its bulbous head was a deep, splotchy blue and orb-like eyes with narrow pupils seemed to squint at them all with shrewd suspicion. Its body would fit in the palm of his hand, but its long limbs made it seem much larger.
“Stay away from its tentacles, they’ll sting you!” shrieked Zoey while simultaneously pushing for a closer look.
“They’re not tentacles, they’re arms. And they can’t sting you.” Alex peered at the octopus. “I didn’t think anything was living out there any more. Where did you find it?”
“In one of the tunnels. I think it was lost. It seemed keen to hitch a ride.” Anil gave the octopus a tentative poke. “I was coming here to bring it to you. I heard you know all about this stuff?”
Anil’s family had moved into town a few months ago after his parents took jobs as doctors at the local hospital. The boy had immediately tried to make friends with Alex and Zoey, sitting nearby at school and attempting to impress them with jokes and stories. Alex didn’t mind, but the new arrival had brought out a fiercely protective streak in Zoey, whose cold shoulder made it clear Anil should stay away. Now he seemed to spend all his free time exploring every nook and cranny of Haven Bay.
“You shouldn’t be in those tunnels!” warned Zoey. “Don’t blame me when you drown!”
Anil grinned again. “No need to worry about me. I used to go to the swimming pool with my cousins every weekend. I can hold my breath for ages. Like, whole minutes. Hours, probably!”
“And yet he never stops talking,” she muttered.
Every child who grew up in Haven Bay was taught about the dragon tunnels. Although the nearby cliffs appeared imposingly sheer, at their base began a honeycomb of narrow shafts and serpentine burrows. The stories insisted the Water Dragon had carved them out and stuffed them with riches beyond imagining. Nowadays they were considered little more than deathtraps. At low tide you could easily walk along the beach and climb into the caves and passages. But the ocean could rush back in with wicked quickness to trap anybody still inside. Alex suffered a recurring nightmare where he was trapped in the darkness of a tapering tunnel as the water rose mercilessly around his neck…
The stories only encouraged Anil to ignore the dangers and stubbornly scour the cliff passages for lost treasure. The most he had discovered so far was a few glass bottles and a set of rotten wooden teeth.
Anil lifted the octopus to give Alex a closer look. The octopus unfurled its arms, crawled swiftly along Anil’s wrist, and plopped onto Alex’s shoulder. He froze, half-expecting the creature to attempt to strangle him.
“It’s like a living bogey,” Zoey declared. “I think I love it.”
Anil opened his mouth to speak, just as a pink iced bun, missing a single crescent-shaped bite, dropped from the sky and bounced off his head. Moments later a plump seagull landed, flapping, on his shoulder. A band of grey feathers was sketched across its wings.
“Pinch!” Anil shouted at the bird. “I told you to stop stealing food from people!”
The gull simply tilted his head and nipped affectionately at Anil’s hair.
Anil had found Pinch in the school playground, struggling with an injured wing. Seeking medical advice from his parents, Anil had lovingly nursed him back to health. The bird had refused to leave him alone ever since, choosing to repay his saviour by snatching snacks from unsuspecting townspeople and offering them as unwanted gifts.
“A thieving seagull is not the kind of friend my parents want me to make,” Anil said. He retrieved the hijacked bun, icing now crunchy with sand. “Anybody want some?”
Pinch thrashed his wings and lifted himself into the sky to join the straggling birds still returning from sea. Alex craned his neck to watch as the sun slipped closer to the horizon.
“That’s weird,” he said.
The birds weren’t settling on the cliffs. Usually the rocky face was so restless with beaks and feathers that it appeared alive. Tonight, a mass of seabirds had bypassed the cliff to gather over the top of the town, above the old aquarium house, wheeling and shifting in chaotic formation.
“I’ve never seen them do that before,” said Alex.
Zoey and Anil were too busy arguing over how much sea water you’d have to drink before you’d vomit to pay any attention. The gathering grew larger by the second as more birds streamed to join from every direction, an ominous shadow see-sawing across the darkening sky. The cacophony of their cries seemed to bounce off the glass dome of the aquarium like a siren, making Alex shiver.
When he was younger, Alex had forced himself to visit the aquarium to face his fears. There had been a thrill to cautiously watching the glamorous fish and heavily armoured lobsters, shimmying eels and hustling turtles. He was fascinated by creatures that could survive three miles under the waves, liquefy their bodies to escape being eaten, glow and shimmer with alien light. The ocean was a harsh environment for them too, but unlike him they had found a way to withstand it.
Now, long after the aquarium had closed, it had begun to drown his dreams. For the last two nights he had dreamed he was locked inside the glass structure. Ghosts of the animals that had lived there were trapped inside their old tanks. They banged against the glass, louder and louder, begging to be released, until Alex fell out of bed and jerked awake.
He should have told Zoey about the nightmares, but it was bad enough being so scared of the sea when his best friend didn’t seem to be scared of anything.
And now the birds circled over the domed glass roof of the aquarium as if they were being drawn to it.
“Something is wrong,” said Alex, unsure why the words sprang unbidden to his lips but feeling their truth in his gut. In response, the octopus cradled itself in the crook of his elbow. It was almost cute, gazing up at him with quizzical eyes. “You definitely shouldn’t be here.”
“You should take it home and make sure it’s okay,” said Zoey.
The octopus agreed by tightening its grip on his arm. Apparently Alex didn’t have much choice.
When the aquarium closed down, Alex’s dad had decided to rehome some of the smaller creatures in the hope it would help Alex overcome his fear of the ocean. Plus they made for colourful displays around the shop.
The plan was scuppered when a tank burst in the middle of the night. Alex had been too scared to help with the rescue effort, and for weeks afterwards they were surprised by shrimp in the sink, crabs in the kettle, and a crayfish that found its way into the toilet to give Dad a startling nip from underneath.
So he probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to lay eyes on the octopus Alex carried home in a bright plastic bucket full of sea water.
Neptune’s Bounty – the tourist shop Alex’s family owned and that he lived above with his dad, grandad and sister – was closed for the night. Their ice cream van – which Grandpa ran, mainly to get the grumpy old man away from the shop as much as possible – was parked outside. While Alex fumbled for his key at the front door, the octopus clambered out of the bucket and onto his shoulder.
“You’re not a parrot!” Alex told it. Though now he looked, the elegant swoop of its body and the backwards curve of its egg-shaped head – like a crown of plumage – lent it an oddly bird-like profile.
