Blood in the Water (2 page)

The middle four cannon exploded. Twenty-four pounds of iron burst into the back of the English ship, throwing wood in every direction. The crew cheered. Eric hauled his wheel around to port as fast as he could. “All sail! Full speed! Any man not on a rope or sail, get down on the sweeps.” Bodies scrambled. In seconds, Eric heard the deep pound of the coxswain’s drum and the dark rhythm of his voice. The Sun jumped forward through the water. She accelerated faster than wind, carving through the sea. The predictable splash of oars pulled them forward.

The crow announced, “English are tacking port, sir. Halfway. Two-thirds. They’re chasing, sir, forty yards. Fifty.”

With forty men pulling the boat by hand, the Sun couldn’t be caught. At a hundred yards, Eric called the turn, “Tacking starboard. Hands on deck. Prepare to board. Ready guns.”

“Ready!”

“Ho, the sail.” The zip of lines filtered through crashing waves. Starboard oars rattled as the men pulled them in. The Sun listed hard in the water, turning as close as her speed would allow. By the time they completed the about-face, their English target had reached them.

The boats slowed beside each other, men screaming across decks and between guns. Eric gripped the wheel. “Starboard, fire all!” Both ships rattled with impact. Tangy gunpowder clouded the air. Men swung or jumped to the English vessel, screaming their fear or excitement equally.

A rail-mounted hand cannon fired on the Sun, bursting through rigging and bouncing off a metal grate on the deck. It flew through a man, taking parts of him with it. Eric jumped up onto a rail and followed his men to their prize. Blood already shone in the moonlight, painting the deck in abstract directions. Eric landed hard. He put a hand down for balance and inked his palm with blood. His chest stretched beneath the shirt. Eric swallowed hard; he forced himself to breathe.

An Englishman rushed him, sword up, screaming about something. Eric couldn’t hear him over the rush of sound in his ears. Not everything came from battle around him. He thrust his blade up and blocked, jerked his elbow into the Englishman’s face as he stood. Eric cut into neck and chest on the downstroke, then plunged his blade between ribs.

The Englishman drowned in his own blood. Eric pushed him back with his boot heel and swallowed again, keeping more than nausea at bay.

He considered the fight from his place aft of the wheel. Things didn’t appear to be in his favor. He knew a thirty-gun ship was risky. He rubbed his chest on the right, running his palm over a ring in his nipple. He breathed hard. The moon set his odds in sharp relief.

He thrust himself into the fray, half-sliding down the stair rail to the main deck where he jabbed and sliced at every English coat he saw, more to annoy than kill. “Everyone back to the Sun!” He bellowed.

Men disengaged and fled, running for their lives back to the ship. Eric distracted Englishmen left and right, catching their attention so they wouldn’t catch his crew. In a heartbeat, twenty swords surrounded him and twenty more formed another ring. He dropped his weapon.

“Kill him!”

“No, don’t touch him!”

“He’s cursed.”

“The whole crew is cursed.”

“That ship is what’s cursed, kill him!” Someone jabbed him in the back. Eric hissed.

“No!”

“Everyone, shut up!” The captain, bound in bright British blue, muscled between his men. He tapped the flat edge of his sword against Eric’s cheek, a bloody stripe that made his chest tighten. “Deumont, I presume?”

“Who’s asking?” He put his hands down to his hips and fingered the edge of his shirt.

“No one you need to know.” The captain put his sword to the top of Eric’s chest, slicing the shirt.

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Poke a hole in you?”

“Your crew’s right. I’m cursed. The moon will bring it out.” He kicked his chin up to the light, and several men glanced up with him.

The Captain just smirked. “No such thing.” He yanked his sword down, cutting into the shirt and Eric both.

Blood flowed down his chest, between his fingers where he held the skin closed. His shirt fell open down the center and hung off one shoulder. Moonlight illuminated him. It focused on his ink tattoo: not a man, not a beast, but something between. His nipple ring pierced through one eye.

“See, gentlemen? Just a drawing—”

The spirit exploded from Eric’s chest, tearing flesh and blood with it. Eyeless, it closed a wide palm over the Captain’s head and crushed his skull without effort.

Men screamed.

They fled from the creature, warded themselves with crosses or stars, prayed to their gods when it was far beyond too late for salvation. Eric fell to his knees. Blood ran from a thousand holes where Ghalil tore free of him, wetting his trousers. He blinked at the bright puddle of blood where the captain lay and saw the creature lick its fingers.

Ghalil didn’t move so much as will itself forward, catching a screaming man and turning his head around the wrong way. Another, it stripped of his skin. A fourth, it crushed every large bone and left him shrieking on the deck. Methodical destruction. One by one. Patient. Ghalil made its way from man to man, running their heart’s blood across the deck in more creative ways than men with swords.

Eric pressed his hands to the line down his torso and tried not to think about the burn. He couldn’t take a deep enough breath. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but the thought of moving made him light-headed. He bent down to rest his forehead on the deck, not strong enough to care about blood flowing like the sea.

He listened to Ghalil’s progress across the ship. Heard each crunch of bone over the waves. Each scream. Eric’s eyes closed without his permission. He fought to stay conscious and only won the battle half the time.

That had to be enough. Eric fumbled at his belt, picking through the hanging leather straps until he recognized a small pouch. He pulled the drawstring open, and between waves of black vision, he poured the contents into his palm. The last he had. The sharp scent of spice reached his nose and woke him up a bit.

Eric gritted his teeth. Then he slammed the handful of spice against the hole in his chest where Ghalil used to be. He screamed the incantation, spice burning through his veins, poisoning him but calling the spirit home. His eyes burned; his skin curled like a roast over fire. He hallucinated the ghost voice of his mother.

Ghalil slammed back into him, burning back into his skin in the same way it had torn itself out. Vengeful power rippled across Eric’s body, knitting wounds together, filling him.

Eric vomited blood— not his own.

He stood. Blood-covered but whole. He stank of spice. Anything was better than blood. The deck lay like a slaughterhouse. His crew watched from the Midnight Sun, deadly silent. They had won the ship, but if anyone doubted the rumors surrounding their captain… Eric stumbled toward the stairs of their prize, his entire chest throbbing. He made his way down to the gun deck, the crew deck, the hold. Six men huddled in a corner. One screamed at the sight of him, but there was nowhere else to run.

“You—” Eric coughed and spat something more solid than he cared to consider.

“You can join me, or you can die.”

“Stay away from us.”

“You’re cursed.”

“I won’t go near that thing.”

Eric nodded. “Do you carry any cinnamon?”

“I’m not helping you.”

“Stay away!”

Eric grunted and turned away. He struggled back up the stairs and found a plank bridging the ships. He crossed it. Men eased away from him like small fish from a shark. “Clear the hold. Mister Riviere… Boatswain, where are you?”

To his right. “Here, sir.”

“Register everything in the ledger. See that any cinnamon comes directly to me.”

A cabin boy resisted the hands that pushed him forward. When he found Eric looking down at him, he thrust both hands out and looked away. Eric accepted the bucket of seawater and upended it over his head. Cold. But the salt prickled his unblemished skin, and Eric relished being whole. He swished and spat. He traded bucket for shirt, and the cabin boy finally escaped his presence.

Eric covered himself and felt Ghalil settle down in his skin. Without the moonlight to get it excited, the spirit remained content with the blood it spilled. He rubbed his right pectoral as if it would help. It didn’t. Eric felt his crew take a collective breath. More subdued than before, they filed back onto the English ship to clear the goods.

Claude Riviere nodded down at Eric from six foot nine. “Is it satisfied, Captain?”

“For tonight.” Eric rubbed his chest again.

“Good. What do we do with survivors?”

“There are no survivors. Throw the bodies to the sea. Lash the two ships together and set Misters Bernard and Morel to the masts. We repair as we sail.”

“Yes, sir.” Claude rumbled. He barked at the crew to get moving.

Eric sighed on his way down to the gun deck. Men hauled cannon back from the edge of the ship, cleaned out their barrels and re-stacked the monkeys. He heard the clattering sound of broken wood swept out to sea. Eric closed himself in the aft cabin.

Everything felt muffled, here. More illusion than reality. Eric sat on his bed, breathing through a wave of nausea. Something bumped his elbow. Pressed and rubbed. Eric lifted his arm for Orthos. The tabby bumped his head against Eric’s chest and Ghalil squirmed to get away. Eric scratched Orthos under the chin until he purred like rolling thunder. Ghalil stopped protesting. The nausea subsided. Eric finally took a full breath of air.

This time when his eyes started to droop, it was from exhaustion, not blood loss.

****

February

A month later

The Nomad Hawk stalled in the wind, her sails crossed against each other to stabilize the craft. Kyros dropped his spyglass and handed it to Araceli. He pointed. “There, on the edge of the inlet.”

“I see them.” She took her time assessing the distance and sucked her teeth.

“What?”

“Shallows of some kind between us, looks like they run back around… I’m not sure.”

Kyros pointed at a man on deck. “Gregory, get up in the nest and tell me what you see.”

“Sir!” Gregory scaled the mainmast, all long limbs and swinging. He pulled himself up to the top and set his hand against his brow to block the falling sun.

Araceli shook her head. “They shouldn’t berth here. Something must have gone wrong.”

“Let’s hope it’s not with the cargo.”

“Looks like a reef, sir! Connects to the mainland there, or close enough, anyway.”

Araceli snapped the spyglass smaller. “We’d best go around.”

“After nightfall, then.” Kyros nodded at her. “Bring us back behind the island until after sunset. No lanterns. We’ll move once the sun isn’t lighting us up from behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell everyone to get some rest. We won’t need but a few for sneaking around. We attack in the early morning.” Kyros left the helm in her capable hands and took the steep stairs to the gun deck. He pushed the handle of his sword down to avoid knocking it against every step.

Antony sat to one side, working a fig into braided line. His right hand, bandaged from his encounter with the quartermaster, hindered his progress. Kyros jerked his chin in Antony’s direction, curt greeting. “You’ll get a chance to fight tonight, Louis. I’d like to see what you’re made of.”

“Captain.”

Not a hearty “yes”, but Kyros didn’t think Antony was here for the fighting. More like ready to sneak off with the loot. Both Rodrigo and Hugo had vouched for him, but Kyros had a feeling that support might waver if he pressed hard enough.

“Javier.” Kyros caught his coxswain by the shoulder on the way by. “Keep an extra eye on one of our new ones— Antony. He’s fore on this deck doing some line repair.”

“
Sí
, I don’t trust any of them.” A scar across Javier’s nose wrinkled with his rolling r’s.

“And good that you don’t.” Kyros slapped his shoulder and moved on. They only had an hour or so until full dark. He shut himself in his cabin.

Kyros sighed as he looked over the map spread on his table. The heading was clear, they had found the spice ship— and before the Midnight Sun, no less. As far as most of the crew knew, it was just another fight to win, but Kyros was after larger prey: an infatuation he failed to hide from Araceli.

He picked up a small, crimped, brass ring and sat heavily in his chair. Eric Deumont, pirate and treasure-seeker, captain of the Sun. Kyros knew what it felt like to be on the wrong side of Eric’s sword (the edged one) but that just egged him on. What secrets did the cursed captain keep? Kyros turned the ring in his fingers, remembering the feel of black locks in his hand.

After a year of shadowing the man, Kyros only knew one thing for sure. Eric cleaved to a specific hunt that occupied his full attention. Even to the point of neglect for all other pleasures. Kyros didn’t consider himself a treat, but to be dismissed out of hand? That wasn’t an offense he intended to accept at face value.

Kyros needed to know what kind of prize could capture a cursed man’s entire focus. And why.

Someone pounded on the door. Kyros jumped and slapped the ring down on his map with more haste than he intended. He pulled the door open to an expectant quartermaster and a silent gun deck.

“Skeleton crew for the move, Captain. Ready when you are.”

“Now is good,” Kyros said. He grabbed a jacket and yanked his door closed. “Any sign of movement?” He shouldered the abused leather and twitched one end free of his sword.

“None.”

“If you want to catch some sleep, you’re relieved.”

“Sir.” Araceli inclined her head, but the light in her dark eyes told him it wasn’t going to happen. Still, she knew to take a break when offered and headed below decks, regardless.

Kyros stomped up the stairs to shake the memory of Deumont from his skin and surveyed his ship from the wheel. Only nine or ten men worked, scattered around the deck and rigging. No lanterns, as he had ordered, but the darkness was her own kind of comfort.

Sail flapped with nowhere to go, and lines groaned against the ship. Only the wind greeted them when Kyros announced, low, “All sail.”