Sword and Shadow (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Upon awakening, Raven found himself instantly reminded why he hated sea travel. He no longer had the capacity to get seasick, but the rocking motion left him unsettled nonetheless. The ship was at anchor, he noted, which explained the rhythmic undulating motion he found disturbing. He pushed open the casket lid and climbed out onto the hold’s deck.

The smell of fresh water mingled with the salty brine of the sea and, after a moment, he heard the drops of rain hitting the decking above him. It was raining; probably one of the reasons they’d pulled up and dropped anchor for the night. It was a common practice regardless, but they’d paid for an express service, which should have precluded nightly stops. The Captain most likely wanted to avoid any chance of running into one of the nasty squalls that occasionally struck during inclement weather such as this, uncommon as they were. Raven couldn’t blame him for that. Some of those storms were fierce, and could damage a ship even as seaworthy as this one. They weren’t paying him enough to risk his livelihood.

While he understood why, it didn’t make him any happier with the situation. He needed to catch up with that other ship, and that wasn’t going to happen if they stopped every goddamn night because of the weather.

He could always use a little mojo to make the weather more compliant to his needs, but he’d learned to be very hesitant to engage in weather manipulation. He might fix it here to suit his needs, but the chain reaction from it might devastate some other region and kill hundreds in the process. He didn’t find that chance acceptable.

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And it wasn’t as though he didn’t have other options anyway. They’d just require a little more planning and a lot more work. He could live with that a damn sight better than he could live with the thought of killing untold numbers of innocents. Laziness made a poor excuse for callous indifference.

The upper deck seemed empty when he climbed out of the hold, but he could both hear the heartbeats of the sailors and smell the rich scent of blood rushing through their veins. This served as a reminder that he’d gone a little long since last feeding and that he’d best find a source of fresh blood before the Thirst did it for him.

They probably appreciated the downtime, come to think of it.

Running twenty-four hours a day had to put a strain on the men.

Chances were the bunch of them were holed up somewhere tipping back a few quarts of grog and cursing the crazy passengers who wanted to work them to death and blessing whichever facet of the Threefold God who’d sent the storm.

All the better. Raven reached out and snuffed one of the lanterns and drew the shadows around himself, cloaking himself in darkness. Again, he became aware of the spell web around him, the flowing matrix of energy in which he’d hung all his prepared spells. It was, of course, invisible to anyone who was not a mage. He wasn’t, however, after one of his prepared spells this time. He would be working with the raw material of probability, the strands of mana that wormed through time and space, leftover energy from the creation of new universes.

He began pulling threads to put together a new spell. He grasped one strand and flattened it out, forming it into a convex lens and setting it aside to float placidly in the air beside him.

He grasped another thread and fixed the lens to one end, then hurled that end skyward, hooking it downward at the last minute. He opened one end and peered through, grinning inwardly as it became clear that this little innovation was going to work exactly as he’d expected.

He used this new ‘far-seeing’ spell to scan the territory ahead, seeking any sign of another ship anchored somewhere roughly a day 52

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ahead of their position. He raked the spy device across the sky, looking for any sign along the coast for a ship that might be bound for Muraz.

It took several minutes, but he found it finally in a small cove tucked deep into the continental landmass; a secluded little spot he imagined few captains even knew about. It figured that the one entrusted by the Church with the transport of their new acquisitions would be worthy of the task.

It wasn’t
Raven’s
fault that he was trying to protect the cargo from someone far more capable than most. Before dawn he’d whistle up some windsprites and nyads, elemental spirits of water, to increase their speed once they got going. They were a week out from Muraz, and, if they could run through the night tomorrow with ’sprites and nyads going the whole time, they’d catch up by the time it was preparing to raise anchor the next morning.

If the weather cooperated, anyway.

“Raven.”

He took a deep breath, irritated that he’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t heard her approach, then turned slowly to look at her. “Valerie.”

“I’m not sure I like being the only one up and around during the day,”

she blurted, then looked surprised at herself.

“Why? The sailors giving you trouble?”

“Not them. Bryon. He’s…been a little over-friendly. I’m not sure how to handle it. Ordinarily I’d just bust him in the chops and throw him in the drink, but I don’t think that’ll go over very well here.”

“You think right,” he murmured with a tiny nod. “You want me to have a chat with him?”

She appeared to hesitate, then nodded. “Don’t do anything irreversible.”

He gave her a dark look. “Go teach your grandmother,” he snorted.

“Make yourself scarce and I’ll go have a talk with him about messing with my girl.” He dialed his best smile and watched her face flush scarlet.

“That should get the point across without having to resort to actual violence.”

She gave a quick nod. “Okay.”

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He winked at her, drawing another blush. He nearly laughed aloud.

How can she possibly be this easy to embarrass?
She turned around and ducked into her cabin as he cloaked himself in darkness and made a silent leap to the forecastle—where he’d heard Bryon’s voice even in the midst of his conversation with Val.

He deliberately materialized on the edge of the twenty foot long deck, gliding in utter silence across the planking as the mayor’s son lifted his gaze from something in his hands. “How—? Where—? That’s…” His face flushed nearly as pale as Raven’s as the vampire pulled up barely a foot away from him. “How did you do that?”

“It’s a gift,” Raven replied. “I need to talk to you.”

“Where have you been?”

“Sleeping,” Raven answered. “I’m not what you’d call a morning person.”

He reached out and grasped a length of deck rail with the tips of his fingers, curling his palm against the smooth wood. He squeezed, the weathered wood creaking in protest as his fingers began to inexorably indent the surface. “Stay away from Val unless you’ve got business to discuss. She’s mine.”

“Yours?” Bryon gave him a skeptical look.

Raven’s lips curled into a feral smile and he felt the wood give, shredding away from the rail as he pulled his hand free. He handed the crumbled wood to Bryon, who stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before looking back into the vampire’s cold gaze. “If you bother her again, I’ll rip your face straight off your skull. That tends to discourage female interest, if you get my drift.”

A light dawned in Bryon’s eyes and he looked back at the wood in his hand, then at the rail, which looked as though a large dog had been chewing on it. The strength it would have taken to rip that chunk free was nothing short of astounding and he knew it. He reached out and clasped the rail himself, squeezing with all his own considerable strength and accomplishing exactly nothing. The look on his face told Raven he’d indeed ‘caught his drift.’

“I don’t want to hear anything more about it, understand?”

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“Yes, sir,” Bryon breathed, heart clearly sitting somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.

He positively stank of fear. Raven turned away, almost feeling guilty.

He’d intimidated other vampires for years—doing it to a poor mortal gave him no real satisfaction. But it had served its purpose. He wouldn’t be bothering Val again anytime soon.
And, again, the threat of force is more
effective than the application would be. Amazing how that works.

He knew it had wounded Val’s pride to be forced to come to him, but the social niceties of this world made it a necessity, if not a comfortable one. She could only stretch the boundaries of the sexual norms so much without making their jobs infinitely more difficult, and they both knew it.

He stopped and knocked on her cabin door. After a moment, she answered. “I’ve taken care of it,” he told her without preamble.

She nodded, then glanced over Raven’s shoulder, where Bryon was descending the ladder from the forecastle. “Maybe you’d better come in,”

she said, giving him the most dazzling smile he’d ever seen on her.

He shrugged imperceptibly and followed her into the cabin, shutting the door behind him.

“And why—?” He took two steps forward and froze as the door behind them kicked back open in response to what he could only assume was her telekinetic prompting.

She whirled and pressed him into the doorframe, her face mere inches from his own. “If you’re going to tell him I belong to you, we’d best give him some reason to believe it,” she said, as she reached out, wrapped strong fingers around the back of his head, and dragged his mouth to hers.

“What are you doing?” he murmured against her lips.

“Do you or don’t you know when to shut up?” she replied, drawing her face back just a little. “We have to make this look good, or else he’ll never buy it.”

Personally Raven didn’t give a damn if he ‘bought it’ or not. He’d made his threat and, the way he saw it, it would take a damn sight braver person than that little mite to ignore the threat.

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Of course, he thought, seeing a spark of what had to be irritation rising in Val’s eyes, there was something to be said for playing a role to the hilt. He returned the kiss as if he meant to swallow her whole.

The exact instant before Val would’ve been forced to break the kiss herself for lack of oxygen, she felt herself being pulled away to arm’s length by Raven’s firm but gentle grip on her upper arms. She found herself panting slightly, the edge of her vision tickled with tiny motes of light as she tried to fill her lungs with air.
Damn. Kissing a vampire is a
whole new experience.

She saw a hard edge in his gaze as she met his eyes and she felt her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t know exactly
why
she’d kissed him, but hadn’t regretted it at all until she saw the deep pool of dark fire behind his stare. “Before we start anything like this,” he murmured, almost angrily, as he kicked the door shut behind him yet again, “you’d better be damn certain where you want it to go.”

Taken aback by the vehemence in his tone, she opened her mouth to say something—anything—but was interrupted by a loud explosion and a sudden sideways lurch of the deck beneath their feet. “What the hell was that?” she cried out, her originally intended words snatched away by shock and fear.

“Cannon fire,” he replied through a clenched jaw. “We’re under attack.”

“By who?” she asked, instantly realizing how stupid the question was. If she didn’t know, the chances of him knowing weren’t one hell of a lot better.

He ignored the question, spun and ran for the ladder leading to the deck, little more than a blur as he burst through the door and vanished from sight. Cursing, she grabbed up her rapier and dashed out behind him.

Who on this world has cannons?
was the crazy thought that careened through her head as she ascended the ladder.
And who gave them to
them?
One way or another, it was her job to find out.

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Emerging on deck, Raven must have looked like a good target. A bandy-legged little man wearing a bandanna and a leather cuirass charged at him with a naked rapier. Moving like light made flesh, Raven danced forward and plucked the blade from his hand, dealing him a back-hand blow that lifted him bodily from the deck and hurled him over the rail into the sea.

Raven glanced around, instantly measuring the distance between their ship and the pirate ship off the starboard side. He caught a flash out of the corner of his eye and something nipped at the collar of his jacket, humming like an angry bumblebee as it passed. His vastly superior night vision spotted a lone figure in the rigging of the pirate vessel, fiddling with something in its hands.

Raven turned and vaulted the thirty or so feet between the two ships, landing lightly and scurrying up the rigging with uncanny dexterity. He snatched the shooter up with one hand, shaking him violently until the weapon fell from his grasp to thud heavily on the deck beneath them.

Allowing himself a wry grin, he threw the pirate up toward the mainmast before leaping back down to where the gun had fallen.

His feet struck the deck without a sound and he bent down to scoop up it up. He turned it over in his hands, frowning. It was some sort of muzzle-loaded pistol, its design one he didn’t recognize. Certainly nothing smuggled in from Earth.

Someone yelled close by and he whirled, ducking a wild slash and smashing his fist straight into his assailant’s face. Bones crunched and blood flew. He stuffed the weapon into his jacket pocket and lifted the pirate, raising his gaze high above them.

A moment later they stood in the crow’s nest, the squat, muscular pirate blubbering in terror as Raven held him casually out over the deck with one hand. “Sorry,” he said, not sure if he meant it or not, a mere second before plunging his fangs into the man’s corded neck.

He barely gave himself a taste before dropping his victim at his feet.