The Pirate Fairy (2 page)

A year ago, Denny Derrick Dalton had come up with the brilliant idea, which increasingly seemed less so, to switch his activities to the North Atlantic Ocean. He’d managed to hide gold in various caves throughout the Caribbean and had even bought a house on a hill above the seaside in Cornwall, England. He’d looked forward to an early retirement, until he’d been cursed. Things had gone from bad to worse since rescuing Prince Merritt and his sister. Sisters were bad news. Denny knew that from experience. But Merritt’s sister was the worst.

Damn that woman. I can’t retire until I find her and make her take her whammy off me
. Aware now of all the crew members’ scrutiny, Denny frowned at Sorenson. “Where’s my porridge?” he fumed.

“But, sir.” Sorenson pointed a shaky finger at the boats in the far distance.

“We have time,” Denny snapped. He did not add,
Unless you’d prefer to walk the plank
, because the last time he’d threatened, somebody had elected to walk it. The intended victim had somehow managed to survive the initial plunge. Denny had decided not to order the crew to have cannonballs tied to the man’s feet. He hadn’t been bound or blindfolded either. Denny had done it to teach him a lesson but the man had refused to come back on board. He’d swum away laughing at Denny. It had upset everybody. Nobody knew if the man had survived after the initial drop but several of the crewmembers were upset by the incident. And today, there was no time for hard feelings. There was, however, always time for porridge.

Sorenson scuttled away. Satisfied, D
enny studied the map his second mate, Rigby, spread out before him.

Foster handed him a telescope and Denny put it to his eye and peered across the bay. He couldn’t see a darned thing. Everything was fuzzy and weird. He scrunched his eye hard but it only made things worse.
I’m falling apart! That curse has done me in! Now I can’t bloody see out of my eyes!

“You’re looking through the wrong end,” Rigby whispered to him. Rigby was the token Australian aboard and the only man Denny trusted. Rigby was a solid type who told it as he saw it. He liked his ale a little too well, but who didn’t?

“Ah,” Denny said and flipped the telescope around. He was certain he heard a few crewmembers snickering. Before his affliction, they’d never had reason to mock him. He’d made certain to hide himself as much as possible since disaster had befallen him. Only two of them had seen his…shame.

He took a deep breath and looked again. And there they were. Thirteen boats sheltering at anchor in Port Rosewater. He lowered the telescope, checked the map, looked up at the boats again then back at the map
. Port Rosewater?
Where the hell was that? He tried to decipher the numerous hand jottings on the map. He didn’t recognize anything. Not a single name. Even the longitude and latitude coordinates resembled no place he’d ever sailed, and Denny had covered a lot of ocean water in his time.

He gulped. Could he ask Rigby where they were?
Nah. He’ll think I’ve really lost the plot.
Denny sensed tension around him.
I’m being paranoid. Of course they’re tense. We’re about to take on thirteen boats.

“Where the hell’s my porridge?” he roared.

Sorenson scuttled back to him, a battered metal bowl in one hand, and a spoon in the other. Why were the lad’s hands shaking?

Denny peered into the milky-looking sludge. “I hope those black things doing the back stroke in my porridge are raisins,” Denny said.

Sorenson winced and shrugged. “Sorry, sir. No. A rat infestation.”

“It’s rat poop?” Danny thought he’d throw up on the spot. “Where the devil is that cat? Why isn’t he earning his keep?”

“He disappeared, sir.”

“Disappeared?” Denny gaped at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

They all looked at him then, cutting glances to and fro between them, then back at Denny.

“What?” he asked Rigby. If anyone could be trusted to spit out the truth it would be him. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Rigby’s gaze shifted from side to side, and he added, “Sir,” as though it were an afterthought.

“Take it away,” Denny roared, pushing the bowl of porridge back toward Sorenson.

“Are we ready to prepare for attack, sir?” Rigby seemed annoyed.

“Yes, but I’d love a cup of coffee.”

“Later,” Rigby snapped.

“Okay.” The boats were getting a bit closer but Denny did love his cup of morning coffee. As long as it didn’t have rat poo in it.

“Awaiting your instructions, sir.” Rigby’s facial expression was neutral.

Denny didn’t know what to make of it, because he sensed Rigby’s seething fury beneath his flat vocal tone. “Where are we?” he whispered to his second mate.

Rigby gave him an odd look and said something that was obscured by a frigate bird’s wild cry. There must have been fish on the boats in the distance. They were always attracted to boats carrying fish. Rigby said something like, “Date with destiny.” What did that mean? Was it the name of one of the boats? Denny’s head throbbed. Was he still sleeping? Nothing made sense. Maybe Rosewater Bay was part of some bigger port with a name like Bay of Destiny. Maybe that’s what he’d heard. Some of these ports had very strange names, but he was afraid to ask Rigby in case his second mate thought Denny was losing his hearing, his eyesight, and his damned marbles.

He took a gamble. “Excellent,” Denny said, feeling for the familiar knife in his pocket. “All hands!” he yelled. “All hands on deck! Hoist the flag!”

His crew yelled back acknowledgments and ran around doing his bidding.

“Fire the cannons!” he roared. He loved saying that, even though the actual firing made his ears ring for days. They currently had no prisoners. Denny was wary of taking on anymore after the last bloody catastrophe. The black pirate flag rose high as the first cannon boomed.

Denny felt better than he had in ages. Except he was hot. Damned hot. He wished he could shed the coat but knew he couldn’t. Nobody could see the horrors that lay beneath it. His beautiful ship surged forward toward the doomed vessels and he smiled widely until he glimpsed one of his crew running past him. As soon as the man became aware of Denny’s scrutiny he gave a strange whimpering sound, clapped a hand over his badly swollen right ear and tiptoed backward away from Denny.

“What’s he doing? And what happened to his ear?” Denny demanded of Rigby who sighed.

“You don’t remember?”

“No. What am I supposed to remember?”

“You tried to have sex with his ear last night.”

“I— What?”

“You heard. You broke into his bunk and tried sticking your cock in his ear. I had to thunk you over the head to get you to stop.”

Denny frowned at him. “Is that why I feel like utter shit this morning?”

“No. That’d be all the
la féeverte
you’ve been drinking.” A hint of malice Denny had never seen before danced in Rigby’s eyes.

Denny’s mouth opened and closed. He had nothing intelligent to say but, since a comment seemed to be required, he mumbled a feeble, “Oh.” He was certain Rigby had used these words deliberately
, la féeverte
, or the green fairy, which was the folk name given to absinthe. The green-tinged one-hundred-and-forty-eight proof alcohol had been the only thing that could lift Denny’s, er, spirits in his dark days of late. The only trouble being that, tasty as it was, it had been accused of being a powerful hallucinogenic.

I might have to stop drinking that stuff. Why would I try to have sex with somebody’s ear? I know I’m a horny git, but this is ridiculous! And the guy isn’t even handsome! I wish my bloody affliction was a figment of my imagination but it isn’t. Why me? Why the bloody hell did it happen to me?

He ignored the answer that came to his mind. He knew why. He just couldn’t get over the reason. And, he never would. He decided to play along with his crew, though the word
mutiny
flittered into his mind.
Nah
.
They would never do that.
Thanks to him, they were richer men than they’d ever dreamed possible. They angled closer to the fishing boats, and Denny stared. They weren’t fishing boats.

Holy guacamole
. They were blackbirding boats!

As in slave traders!

“We can’t rescue all them slaves,” Denny said to Rigby, reverting to the ill-bred language of his youth. They couldn’t do it, even though he wanted to. Denny Derrick Dalton abhorred slavery, but he could see dozens of dark faces and they worried him. He couldn’t fit them all on the La-Di-Da, and some of them looked very ill.

Rigby gave him a harsh laugh. “We’re not here to save the slaves.”

“We’re not?” Denny stared at him.

“No. We’ve come to sell
you
to the traders. Your wings are the talk of the high seas. Good luck, Captain. You great big bloody fairy, you!”

Denny opened his mouth, but Rigby snatched the telescope out of his hand and swung it hard and close, knocking Denny so viciously, his head snapped to the left. Denny grabbed hold of the instrument to stop Rigby from hitting him again. This time, Rigby hauled back and shot Denny with a right hook to his left temple. It was the last thing he remembered. Denny sank into an instant, befuddled nightmare where the beautiful young girl who’d tried to bed him turned into an old crone when he’d confessed he preferred men.

“You’re beautiful,” he’d said with a moan. “But I just don’t fancy you.”

She’d gone bonkers. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her he was in love with her brother, but Denny had always prided himself on his passion for honesty. She’d run around his cabin screaming and hurling things, some of them aimed at his head and groin. She’d turned old, her hands going first. They’d looked like crooked, veined talons by the time she’d turned a long, gray finger toward him.

“I banish you to a lifetime of shadow and light, where you will learn to use your wings. Or not.” She’d unleashed a dirty cackle. “I’m turning the fairy into a fairy.” She’d cackled again, then howled with joy.

Denny had tried to think of it as a dream. A very, very bad one. And she’d lied. There’d been no light in his new world. Just shadows and the fearsome things he sometimes saw out of the corner of his eye. Strange specters, the ghosts of men and women. Theodore, the cat, had hissed at him and run out of the cabin.

The witch-woman had turned back into a young beauty, but her hands had taken longer to change into their former youthful smoothness. She’d put on her cloak and hidden them under the folds, leaving him locked in his cabin. She had plunged him into perpetual night. And he couldn’t fly. His wings hurt whenever he stretched them. He always felt them, whether awake or asleep. They seemed to sense things before he did, if he allowed them to transmit messages to him.

He didn’t have to try hard to interpret the soft, whispery words they sent him now as he came to, carried by his own men from the La-Di-Da across the wooden plank he’d built himself. They dumped him onto the deck of a blackbirder. Denny spotted the side of his beloved ship and saw that her name had once again been changed. Written in green paint were the words,
The Pirate Fairy
.

Denny Derrick Dalton knew he was in trouble. Deep, dark, trouble.

Chapter Two

Merritt didn’t feel like much of a prince, more like his sister’s prisoner. He had no choice but to be with Fortunata, and some days she was in such a good mood, their sparkly palace seemed the most wonderful place in the world. Other days, he wished he could escape. But he could never go anywhere for long. She always found him, questioned him, and would scream and yell if she suspected Merritt was moping.

“Stop thinking about
him
!” she’d shriek. But it was difficult. He missed Denny terribly. He’d tried sneaking messages out of the palace via his household staff to seamen whose vessels turned up at the secret island where he and Fortunata lived, but most were intercepted by those loyal to her. Merritt kept hoping one of his notes would make its way to the crew of the La-Di-Da and into Denny’s hands.

But then what? If Denny read the note and hoped to rescue Merritt, how could he do so? His sister had so many enchantments on the palace and its immediate surroundings that he would never get inside its walls. Or, maybe he could. Denny was a cunning man. Smart, principled and, Merritt was certain, devoted to him.

Day and night Merritt dreamed of Denny, of the too-brief joy they’d shared. He feared for his lover’s safety because he knew Fortunata had cursed him, and lately, he’d been experiencing troubled dreams. Early one morning, his manservant, Elvin, awakened him.

“She’s gone, master. Not for long, but she’s gone!”

“My sister?” Merritt opened his eyes wider. The room was still dark. When Elvin nodded, he asked, “What time is it?”

“Five o’clock in the morning. She’s gone to the forest.” Elvin bit his lip, afraid, it seemed.

“Thank you.” Merritt threw back his bedclothes. He’d been wondering about Fortunata’s half-day disappearances on the mornings before a full moon rose each month. He’d paid Elvin with small bags of gold to follow her. For several weeks now, Merritt had known his sister was visiting a witch in the forest, soliciting information on Denny’s whereabouts.

Why is she so obsessed with him? And why is Elvin acting so weird?

“She will kill me if she finds out,” Elvin whispered. He might have been the chief elf in their district, but Elvin was like a limp noodle where Fortunata was concerned. She was a cruel mistress to fairy folk, but Merritt adored them all.

“Fortunata will never know. I can promise you that.” Merritt reached into his bedside table and extracted a small silken purse filled with gold. He pressed it into Elvin’s hands. “Take it. You’ve earned it.”