The Sea Wolves (18 page)

Filled with hatred and righteous fury, he nevertheless had to keep his emotions in check long enough to find a way for both of them to escape the
Larsen
. And that meant navigating the tension on board carefully.

The bullet clinked into the pan Jack had set aside. He held a clean cloth against the wound and reached for bandages, but Kelly slapped his hand away.

“You've done your work, Cooky. My kind don't need bandages.”

Jack glanced at the wound and saw that, with the bullet removed, it had already begun to heal over. Kelly stood stiffly, grimacing, but forcing a smile as he went into the short corridor and up the steps to the deck.

“You still alive in there?” Jack called into the galley, where Louis was laid out on the floor.

“I would not mind dying so much,” Louis replied, his voice a rasp coming as if from nowhere at all. “But, yes. I live.”

He'd attempted to excavate the bullets from his own torso and failed. Now he waited in pain and frustration, though he had insisted Jack work on Kelly first because he didn't want to listen to the other pirate grumble about his one bullet wound to Louis's four. Jack had been more than happy to get Kelly out of there.

Jack picked up the tools he'd been using on Kelly—tongs and a sharp, thin knife—and the pan with the bloody bullet rattling inside, and started out of the mess and into the galley to work on Louis. The steps leading up to the deck creaked, and he glanced up to see the massive shadow of the captain descending, silhouetted against the daylight. For a moment Jack expected him to emerge from his own shadow wearing the face of the beast, but as he reached the last step and no longer blocked out the sunlight, it became clear he had not changed. This wolf still wore the face of a man.

“Young Jack,” Ghost said. “If you know something, speak now.”

“I said as much, didn't I?” Jack said defiantly. “You want to know where your first mate has gone? Over the side. He's been murdered, stabbed to death with a silver blade during your assault on the
Weyden
, and dumped into the ocean.”

Ghost scowled. “You saw this with your own eyes?”

“I did.”

“Absurd. Why would anyone aboard the
Weyden
have such a blade? They'd have to have known we were coming, and what we were, even before they set sail.”

Jack blinked in surprise. “You really can't imagine it, can you? It wasn't one of them, Ghost. It was one of
you
.”

In the next room, Louis would be listening, but Jack did not glance toward the galley, unwilling to give away the presence of the wounded sailor. He wondered if Ghost would catch his scent but thought that in the midst of the food smells of the galley, Louis and his blood would be lost.

Ghost frowned deeply, working it over in his mind. Then a dark light glinted in his eyes.

“Finn,” he growled.

“You knew?” Jack asked.

Ghost shook his head. “No. But he's at the bottom of the pack now, and a desperate fool.” He peered at Jack through doubtful, slitted eyes. “Why tell me? Maybe Finn means to murder me next. Wouldn't that suit you?”

“Not if it means Finn becomes captain,” Jack said. “Whatever reason you have for keeping me alive, he doesn't share it. With Finn at the head of the pack, it'd be me salted and stored away for the crew's supper.”

The smile that lifted the corners of Ghost's lips was the cruelest Jack had ever seen.

“On deck, Mr. London,” Ghost said. “With me.”

He went up the steps. Jack glanced toward the galley, knowing that Louis must still be listening but unwilling to give him away. If the pirate's wounds had pained him so much that he could not wait a few minutes, he would have called out then. But Louis remained silent, either fearful of the captain … or dead.

Jack followed Ghost up onto the deck.

Maurilio remained in the crow's nest and Louis in the galley, but the rest of the crew gathered on deck at the captain's summons. Ghost had no weapon other than his massive hands and the beast inside him, though Huginn and Muninn stood nearby, apart from the others but watching them warily, fiercely protective of their captain. They were thinner than Ghost, lacking his raw power, but Jack felt sure they were equally deadly.

Not that Ghost needed them. This was his pack. His ship. His crew.

“Finn,” the captain said, the word full of grim threat.

They all looked at Finn, edging away from him. The pirate tried to hide his alarm with a nervous smile. He had been keelhauled already, driven to the bottom of the pack, where he would have to bare his throat in supplication not only to Ghost but to even the lowliest among them. Jack knew that they all expected Finn to be gutted, there on the deck. Their excitement was palpable.

Jack hung back, partially hidden by the mainsail's boom, and watched as Ghost strode up to Finn and stood eye to eye. Hatred and terror warred in Finn's eyes, but Ghost fixed the sailor in his gaze without expression, impassive as a cobra waiting to strike.

“Go on,” Ghost said, barely a whisper but audible for all to hear. “Let's see it.”

Finn raised his chin, attempting to stand firm under his master's glare. “What's that, Captain?”

“Your knife, Finn. The silver blade you've got on board
my ship
.”

Several of the others began to growl, a low rumble in their chests. Vukovich smiled, eyes bright in anticipation of the bloodshed to come. The pirates began to breathe more deeply and to cast hungry glances at Finn.

The fear in Finn's eyes made any real denial impossible. But he tried.

“Don't know what you mean, Captain.”

Ghost tapped Finn's chest with a finger, hard enough to knock him back half a step. “The knife you used to kill Johansen. The knife you used to murder the first mate, because you're too much of a coward to challenge him openly.”

“Bastard,” Demetrius grunted.

“Captain, I swear—,” Finn began.

“You were seen, you fool,” Ghost said, his tone full of grim certainty. Jack feared Ghost would glance over and give him away, but the captain kept his gaze locked on Finn.

The mystified expression vanished from Finn's face. He glared back, falling silent.

Ghost glanced at Huginn and Muninn. “Search the forecastle.”

The rest of the crew waited. The ship creaked and the ropes swayed, the wind filled the sails, and they knifed through the water. On the southern horizon a fogbank churned as if beckoning them to lose themselves in its white folds. Within a handful of minutes the twins returned. The one Jack thought was Huginn—his eyes a paler, icier blue than his brother's—handed the silver blade to Ghost.

The captain grinned, his canines sharp and glistening in the sun. The pack watched the blade, its silver evidently just as poisonous to their kind as the legends claimed. Jack wished he could get his hands on that blade and secrete it away for the moment he would need it most. But Ghost flung it overboard, and it vanished into the sea.

The crew seemed to exhale, but only for an instant. Then they began to move closer to Finn.

“Go on, then,” Finn said.

Ghost shook his head. “Oh, no. I won't make it that easy for you, boy.” He leaned toward Finn and bared his throat. “Come for me.”

Finn blinked. “What?”

Ghost sneered at him. “You want to climb the ranks of this pack, you'll do it properly. Challenge me. Why slink in shadows or kill in secret? You want to kill me, then kill me. If you've got the guts for it, Finn, then try me.”

“Captain,” Tree said, his voice so deep, Jack could feel it in the deck planks. So he could speak, after all. “This isn't how it's done.”

Ghost ignored him, staring at Finn, who dropped his gaze in shame. He did not have the courage to attack the captain directly. Ghost had called him a coward, and the truth crushed him where he stood.

“Kill him,” Vukovich muttered.

“Take his throat, Captain,” Kelly said, bloodthirsty as ever.

Even Ogre had begun to look at the captain strangely. Jack saw it happening, the wave of discontent among them. This was not how the pack worked. It was clear they expected immediate punishment. Already down a man thanks to Johansen's murder, nevertheless they wanted Finn dead.

“Captain—,” Finn began.

Ghost slapped him across the face so hard that Finn went to his knees on the deck. He stood over Finn, waiting for him to try to rise, but instead the sailor curled into a fetal ball and began to whimper and cringe like a whipped dog, utterly humiliated.

“You'll have to try me eventually,” Ghost told him. “Either that, or you have to live with your cowardice eating away at you, gnawing at your guts until it drives you mad. I look forward to the day.”

He began to walk away, leaving the sniveling Finn on the deck, but then Ghost paused and glanced around at his pack. Their faces betrayed their disapproval, but none of them dared challenge him.

“I'll need a new first mate,” Ghost said, glancing at Huginn and Muninn, the two he trusted most of all. Then he turned to Jack. “It'll be you, Mr. London.”

“What?” Jack said, feeling the pack's hateful, violent eyes upon him. “You can't—”

“You'd put a man—and barely a man at that—above the rest of us?” Kelly asked.

Ghost arched an eyebrow. “Are you about to tell your captain what he can and cannot do?” he asked, turning from Kelly to Jack. “Either of you?”

Jack hesitated. He was not one of them, not a part of the pack. His presence as a member of the crew had only ever been some strange capricious whim of Ghost's, his death a matter of Ghost growing uninterested in their philosophical dialogue. The pack would never accept him. Already they were exchanging glances, and he saw the bitter, resentful, almost mutinous way they were looking at their captain.

And Jack thought…
I can use this. If it doesn't cost me my life first
.

“No, sir. Of course not,” he said.

“No, Captain,” Kelly added.

“Excellent,” Ghost said, grinning. “Demetrius has our new course heading, Mr. London. See to it. And then finish your doctoring. I notice Louis never joined us on deck. He'll be needed before long.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack agreed.

Ghost returned to his cabin, leaving his new first mate to discuss their heading with fat Demetrius, even as the rest of the crew prowled the deck, eyeing him carefully and planning for the moment of his death.

Jack knelt in the galley's gloomy light and dug the bullets out of Louis one by one, letting them clink into the blood-dappled pan. The black man grimaced with each twist of the tongs, and his gold tooth gleamed as the others grew longer and sharper. Something changed in his eyes, too, when he was in pain, and patches of fur sprouted on his dark flesh.

“Talk to me, Jack,” Louis said, his voice a snarl. “Best you distract me, 'fore I forget we are friends and let the pain make me do something we'll both regret.”

So Jack told him everything that had unfolded up on deck with Finn and his knife and the decisions Ghost had made.

“You're joking with me, Jack,” Louis said. “Just be glad I have a sense of humor.”

Jack had to probe deeper for the last bullet, widening the wound so he could get to it. He thought Louis might claw at him then, but though the werewolf's eyes changed color and grew larger, he only groaned and clenched his claws into fists.

“It's no joke,” Jack replied.

Taking deep breaths to calm himself, flesh returning to normal as the last of his wounds began to heal, Louis looked at him worriedly.

“No, I don't suppose the crew finds it funny one bit,” Louis said. He shook his head in bewilderment, eyes searching the shadowed corners for some way to make sense of what he'd been told. “This bodes ill for us all.”

Jack glanced at the entrance to the galley, listening for the telltale creak that would give away the footfalls of anyone who might be eavesdropping. Then he turned back to Louis, wondering if this man, this beast, might not be his enemy.

“Their faith in him is shaken,” Jack said. “I saw it. Hell, I
felt
it.”

“Ghost is toying with Finn,” Louis said. “He will never let him leave this ship alive. Finn knows it, and he will have to try to kill Ghost eventually. Surprise is his only chance, and a very thin one. Ghost will tear him apart. But Finn killed Johansen, and the punishment for that is clear. I have only been a
loup-garou
, a wolf, for three years, but the laws of the pack are taught to us in our first days. We kill each other, but face-to-face. A challenge is followed by combat, and the winner takes his place in the ranks above the loser. And if the loser should be killed, there is no retribution. It is the law.”

“But murder…,” Jack said, letting the word hang there between them, echoing with the clanging of pans and ladles swinging on their hooks.

Louis nodded. “Murder is different. The punishment is swift death. Ghost is playing a game with Finn, but the pack will see it as weakness. Might even wonder if he is getting soft.”