Cast In Dark Waters (9 page)

"Dead men," Daphna answered. "They come out of the water."

Welsh said, "Well, if it's true, then those savages actually had call to pass them rumors."

Crimson handed him a sharpened piece of ash wood and the iron pike. "Listen to me, goat, you're about to get an earful and you'd better take heed."

"I already know the wives’ tales, lass, and better than you, I'd wager. One fell swoop of a cutlass ought to do the job right, so I hear. I'll take a bloke's head off, if need be."

"A stake through the
unbeating
heart. One blow, don't miss your chance. And iron is a bane to them as well."

He held the heavy metal pike up. "To us all, I'm
thinkin
'."

She grabbed the iron rings. "These are supposed to work around the throat, keeps them from biting, it's said. Strangles them."

"You've been
talkin
' to the wrong kind of people, lass."

"Be glad that I have been or we might have no chance at surviving this night."

"A sad waste of diamonds that'd be.”

“Are they coming yet?"

"No."

She scanned the outlying jungle as that child inside her, giddy with delight, searched for Tyree in the shadows. The murdered men stood unmoving and cracks in the stones sipped at the ocean water trickling from their ragged cuffs.

"Why aren't they attacking?" She turned to Daphna. "Tell me, girl, what you know of this, and be quick."

Daphna spoke with no inflection. She continued caressing
Villaine's
cheek as if he might awaken at any moment. Crimson kneeled beside her and patted her shoulder, taking a new tack. "Help us, Daphna. Explain what you can."

With a languid motion the girl started gently rocking. The jutting piece of wood in her lover's chest vibrated and new pulses of blood throbbed loose. "They said the tide brings in strange beings from the lower depths. They said these creatures come up in certain seasons, on special nights, and feed. Slowly at first, and then more often."

"Is that what happened?"

"
Villaine's
men became ill, one after the other. They lost all appetite for food and water. Their eyes and skin could not stand the searing light of tropical day. God, how I prayed. They grew hungry, and that unholy appetite drove them insane. The sight and smell of blood sent them into frenzy. Animal blood at first, and then, soon after, human blood."

Welsh spat out into the soil and said, "If I didn't know better myself, I'd swear the bastards were carved from the same rock as those steps. They haven't twitched so much as an eyelid."

"The sick men spoke of stealing the sloops," Daphna said. "Of raiding other islands."

A frigid thread of fear wove through Crimson, imagining the contamination spreading up through the Bahamas and into the Americas. "Did any leave? Is that why there are no ships here?"

"I don't know. I'm not certain how many of the men were sick at the end, or how many of the healthy freebooters ran out before then. There were terrible struggles, friends pitted against one another. God forgive us
for ever
setting foot here."

"It's not your fault for falling in love. Even with a pirate."

"Villaine knew of the superstitions and sought them out. He hunted his own men after they began to change. We thought
Benbow
was almost rid of all the creatures when more appeared, from out of the water. We've been fighting for days.
Villaine
was...taken captive. He soon showed signs of becoming ill." Daphna began to shake free from shock and the flintlock finally dropped from her hand. "This evening, when the moon rose, he could battle his infection no longer and begged me to kill him. I did so, and was about to fire a shot into my own heart when you arrived."

"We'll get you off this damned piece of rock.”

“I can't leave," she said, "you see, I've fallen ill myself."

Crimson saw no marks on the girl's throat other than bruises and drew back, wondering how easy the sickness was to pass on. Daphna guessed her thoughts and drew down the collar of her dress, showing scabbed marks on her breast. Villaine had infected his own love.

"These creatures from the depths...did you see any of them? Were they men?"

"They're calling to me."

Welsh perked up. "Who?
Them's
outside?”

“Those outside, yes. They want me."

"Your parents want you more, I'll wager,"

Crimson told her.

"I'm unclean."

Those four, like standing pieces of the temple itself, awash in the gloating moonlight, drying in the wind. This dealing in blood hadn't put any fat on them, for sure. Bodies were so skinny that their ribs stuck out sharp as knives. Their eyes sparked with loss and something like a sad lust. Crimson had to hold down a peculiar excitement within her, guessing at who else might be out there in the dark or floating in the dark waters between here and the
San
Muy
Malo
. Was the vessel under attack? Daphna made as if to rise but did little more than shift the corpse across her legs.

"Can you blokes talk?" Welsh called out. "Have you come about hopin' to share me final pint of whiskey?"

"We're leaving this island," Crimson said to them, hoping they could still understand something of the human world. "Any of you fool enough to try to stop us will be sent straight to hell."

The four appeared to move a bit, as if drawn back to earth from whatever walking perdition they suffered. "Give us..."

"You'll be getting nothing from us, now move on!"

"...the woman."

"They're not such bad fellows," Welsh said. "I've a
feelin
' I've tipped a few tankards with them before."

Crimson tried to calm herself but the frothing agitation kept right on bubbling up in her. Tyree visited her every night, and she felt he had to be out there now. Her hands quivered badly unless she tightened her grip on the ash wood until her knuckles cracked.

"Why do they want you?" she asked Daphna.

"Need you ask? For companionship.”

“But—"

"Even the dead... especially the dead...can be beset by loneliness."

She let that pass for the time being. "When did they last feast?"

"What?"

"When did they last kill? Are they hungry?”

“We're always hungry."

Stepping forward, the four
Daemonia
Wampyros
, these
Blutsaugers
, made their way across the community meeting area towards the hut.

"We're in it now."

"They don't seem to be much interested in us now, Cassie," Welsh said, and she heard the implication. He was offering a way out. They could leave Daphna behind and make a run for it.

"I've never left a job only halfway through. And this has more to do with love than diamonds."

"I know," he said, "just
thinkin
' aloud I was."

"Remember," Crimson said. "According to the tales, you need to plunge it into the heart, with one blow."

"
Ye've
said it before. Don't you be
worryin
' about me none, you
jest
watch
yerself
." He stuffed the stakes into his belt and held his dagger out. "Let's see if steel matters any to 'em."

With perfect aim he cast the blade fifty feet, to where it struck one of the beasts in the throat. The blood drinker let out a startled cough and nothing more. He didn't even bleed as he continued trudging along with his mates, all of them so caught up in their own profane doom that she had a fleeting sense of sympathy. Casually, without interest at all, the creature drew the dagger from its neck and tossed the weapon into the dank undergrowth.

And then the four dead men silently launched themselves.

Crimson leaped past Welsh and brought her cutlass clean across the first
Blutsauger's
shoulders, taking his head off with such speed that she surprised herself. There was no living muscle or tendon to slow her blade and the force of her own swing threw her off balance.

Behind her, Daphna Maycomb said, "Let me go to them."

Using the pike, Welsh cleared a path outside the hut, pressing back two more of the
Loogaroo
without actually being able to touch them. The beasts were fast, when they wanted to be, but were so far removed from their former lives that they could not recall why they should defend themselves. He wheeled aside into the brush and stepped on the pommel of his own dagger. It tripped him up enough to stumble over snaking roots, and as he swung the pike around to batter at one of the creatures, another moved in from his left, his blind side.

Crimson fought the third
Blutsauger
, keeping it at bay with the edge of her sword and weaving a stake before its heart. She saw Welsh floundering and shouted, "Goat, left side!"

"I can smell 'em."

"Do more than that."

The headless dead man limped in circles, arms waving and searching. Crimson watched for an instant, entranced, wondering what it must be like to take the form of a human and have so little to do with who you might once have been. A spasm of fear worked up her back imagining Tyree down below the ocean waves, buried up to his neck in silt. Alone and as different from the man she loved as this bloodless thing groping with endless need. But it still wanted a woman.

And, as she watched, one of the beasts bit down on Welsh's fist.

"Welsh!"

"I'm fine, he snagged his teeth on my wristlet."

He'd backed up to the dying torch and readied himself as the two creatures dove towards him. He waited until they were so close that their fingernails brushed his belt, sensing the activity on his left side without seeing any of it. He swung around and brought the pike down into the heart of the first beast, using his momentum to carry him into the clutches of the second. Its flopping tongue slid against his eye patch as he thrust upwards with the stake, shattering ribs and piercing its heart. He fell on top of both corpses waiting for them to rise again, but neither did.

"And that's what a near-blind old man can do in these parts! You tell 'em all your tale in Hell!"

Whirling, Crimson slashed the fourth
Loogaroo
across its naked chest with her cutlass. No blood welled, only a foam not unlike whitecaps in the crashing tide. She swung wide again, aiming for the critter's heel. She hooked it and yanked, cleaving through bone and dropping the beast. With a snarl she threw herself atop it and staked the damned thing through the belly.

Welsh stepped over to finish the job, hauling' back his arm to deliver the final stake in the heart. Crimson said, "No, wait!"

"What's that?"

"I'll have some answers first."

"And what questions will ye ask?"

She kneeled over the beast that had once been a raiding pirate and draped two rings around its neck. With its lips drawn apart in anguish, she saw all those spirals of teeth leading all around its mouth. It reacted violently, choking and bringing up gobs of black fluid and hunks of bone.

"Tyree," she said. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

The
Blutsauger's
mouth worked meaninglessly, chewing at the air as its fangs gnashed together and it slowly strangled on the properties of the iron. It gagged and moaned in agony. Its teeth were broken deep in the back of its throat. She needed to know what it knew about the other ghosts.