“I’m afraid I have to insist, chum.” That got a laugh from his crew. “Can’t have ye plannin’ anything foolish in there.” He signaled to the Lass again, who eagerly raised the dagger over Ahab.
For all of Nash’s lack of confidence in mundane circumstances, when it came time to act, he was decisive and fearless. He hadn’t hesitated to shoot a fleeing woman in the back in San Juan. Of course, she’d never admit that she admired him for that.
Without looking to see if she followed, Nash pushed open the creaking door and stepped into the dusk. At the sound of the door opening, Srenners hurried down from his seat, placed a stool, and offered Livi his hand.
“Thank you, Srenners.” Let the Pirates see the perfect image of composure.
“Are you welcome? You are,” said the footman.
As soon as she showed her face, the largest of the Marauders broke rank and ran to Jack Tar. He was easily six and a half feet tall and dark enough to make the dusky captain appear colorless. His excited whisper didn’t carry far, but Livi caught it easily. “Do you know who that is, Cap’n?”
“Aye. That saucy morsel be the key to our provisions for the next fortnight. And entertainment for the men.”
Livi scanned the Marauders looking for a saucy morsel of her own. One of these men would be a delicious victim.
The huge, wide-eyed Marauder distracted her as he shook his head vigorously, not taking his eyes off Livi. “No, sir, that’s Livi. She’s a Vamp.” The screech in his voice at that word made her smile. “Not just any Vamp, neither. A very bad Vamp. I used to watch her on the hollows all the time. She’s drunk the blood of hundreds of people, mostly scum and lowlifes like … well, like Thiefs and such.”
It wasn’t exactly fear on his face, but concern.
Jack Tar eyeballed her, wearing a sneer. Quietly, he said, “She be one girl, Hoss. And we be an entire mutiny. If I didn’t know it to be impossible, I’d say ye were scared.”
Still whispering, the large Marauder said, “No, Cap’n. It’s just that, well I were raised that you should no eat or drink blood, and I don’t want any part of that. If she do bite me, I might turn into a Vamp.”
“That be nothin’ but rumor,” said Jack Tar.
Still whispering, the huge Pirate said, “I don’t know, Cap’n, but fighting her do no be worth risking my eternal salvation.”
With a sharp step forward, Livi activated her fangs at maximum volume. The effect was disappointing—not a single one of the fools even flinched. After looking between Livi and Jack Tar a few times, the Marauder stalked back to his horse. Without hurrying, he mounted and trotted away, trailed by a pale, skinny Pirate who followed him at the last second.
“Run, ye sons of a biscuit eater!” yelled Jack Tar. “Ye’ll never work on another crew as long as ye live!”
Nash looked over his shoulder at Livi. Hiding her embarrassment at the unimpressive reaction, she snarled playfully. Jack Tar continued to cuss out the deserters.
“A mutiny of Marauders?” he muttered.
Not a big enough mutiny. “Two against nineteen,” she agreed in a whisper. “Hardly seems like a challenge for a guy like you.”
Nash shook his head and blew out a frustrated breath. His head came to stop looking down the road past where the two men were riding. Livi followed his eyes and saw the silhouette of a figure standing on a hill. Long black hair, simple black clothes with a red cape and obnoxious red lipstick.
“It’s your old pal Sparky,” said Livi, not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“She’s not here to help,” said Nash with despair in his voice. “If she was, she’d be here and not over there. She led them to us somehow.”
So it was a setup. That raised Livi’s worry meter a couple of notches.
Jack Tar finished his rant, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and turned his attention back to Livi and Nash. “Now then,” the Booty Master said as the flush began to fade from his cheeks.
“We don’t want a fight,” said Nash. “Just leave us, the servants, the horses, and the carriage and we’ll pay you what you want. We all live to fight another day.”
Jack Tar took a few leisurely steps toward them, speaking as he came. “Yer philosophy is flawed, me boy. What if today be your last day? What if this be your last chance to fight?” He stopped and spread his arms, taking in the whole world around him. “It do be a beautiful day, and what is it I say, mateys?”
As one, his mutiny responded, “A beautiful day do be a beautiful day to die.”
“Aye aye,” said Jack Tar.
Livi couldn’t argue. The air was fresh and clean, thin streaks of sunlight made it through the leaves here and there, shooting above her head, and the trees around them were striking witnesses to a battle that would be unlike anything she’d experienced, or even witnessed. A fight was inevitable. Livi knew it, the Pirates knew it. This banter was pretty much a formality on Hollow Island. An unspoken agreement that all the world was a stage as far as both parties were concerned, and regardless of the outcome, good sportsmanship meant humoring the other side before trying to kill each other.
Once it went down, Nash would pull out some surprises and save the day. She had to believe that he could get them out of this because Livi didn’t have much idea of how to help. She’d always relied on her daggers.
Two small pops came from the hill where the two deserters had gone, where Sparky had been. Gunshots, and Livi was sure it was one for each of the men. She glanced at Nash to see if he’d heard, but he was still intent on Jack Tar. It wasn’t information that would help their situation now, so Livi tucked it away.
“What about parlay?” asked Nash. “Isn’t that sacred?”
“What more can be said, boy? The Calico Crew demands revenge, so you must die. And you won’t go without a fight. There do be no middle ground today.”
“There’s always middle ground,” insisted Nash.
Loud enough for only Nash to hear, Livi muttered, “The Pirates are right on this one. No middle ground.”
“Robby.” Jack Tar looked over his shoulder at a Marauder who still sat on his horse. “What do it be that you always say?”
That was all the motivation Robby needed. He put his heels into the horse’s side and they launched forward as Robby yelled, “Swords up, let’s do this!”
“Ah, hell,” muttered Nash, drawing his gun.
Out of nowhere, torrents of heavy noise drowned the space between the trees, a babel that hit Livi like a hurricane. It almost sounded like voices, but they were impossibly loud. It was more than mere noise; it was a sonic weapon that disrupted any possible thought process in Livi’s head.
Nash somehow had enough concentration to drop Robby with his gun. When it went off, it barely added to the noise.
Another Marauder charged Livi and she dove to the ground to avoid his sword. The commotion dug into her ears and shredded her concentration, as if someone was shouting into both ears with feedbacking megaphones. She jumped back to avoid another charging Marauder and noticed he was yelling as he passed.
Figging pirates. I knew their voices were poison.
The shouting was entirely different than the ‘yarr’s and ‘ahoy’s she’d heard earlier. It penetrated her head like ice picks being driving in with sledgehammers.
Dodging yet another charge, Livi shook her head to clear it, but the cacophony persisted.
Nash’s gun went off about as loud as a cap gun, reminding her to fight and she reached under her dress to draw the daggers from the sheaths at her thighs. Another mounted Marauder came at her and she sidestepped while swinging at his leg. Instead of slicing, she went for power, swinging like she was on a cricket field. The aim was on target. The skin remained intact, but she felt the bones of his shin crack.
Nash fired twice more but Livi had her back to him so she couldn’t tell if he was making progress. Six more bullets now. Or was it seven? She felt like she was trapped in a phone booth with a colony of Africanized bees, and had a vice pressing in on bo
th temples.
Back and forth, dodge, dodge, dodge as Marauders on horseback raced past her. The only asset she had was speed, but the sonic barrage made the air feel thick and her brain feel slow. Finally a chance came for her to snag a leg as a Marauder passed. The man came off the horse backward, landing on his back and neck with an audible oomph. He lay still in the weeds. Stepping in and using her entire body for momentum, Livi forced a dagger against the Marauder’s chest. It easily went through leather vest and shirt, and she could feel the sternum crack under her weight, but the skin still didn’t budge. Livi swore, not really surprised, but she had to test the limits at some point.
The Marauder cried out in pain and grabbed for her dagger, but he was too slow. Livi elbowed the Pirate in the face then stood quickly, ready to defend herself again. A small break in the action had opened around her, but the noise persisted. Drawing back like a corner kick in soccer, she sent the toe of her foot into the unconscious Marauder’s temple. Couldn’t have him waking up and joining the fight.
Either Nash’s gun was running out of steam or her hearing was wearing down under the aural barrage. More than a dozen Marauders were still mounted or afoot, all shouting the infernal babble.
This is a fight we can’t win, she thought. The tumult added credence to her doubts, crawling in her ears and forcibly poisoning her thoughts. The noise! My head! RUN!
Running was the only escape. She was fast enough, and the only way out of this was to get out.
Livi turned to the closest line of trees It was now or never.
She caught a glimpse of Nash. One Marauder held him in a choke hold, with a few others approaching.
The trees offered her refuge. And silence. Fighting was useless.
Feelings she’d never let herself admit forced her to reconsider. She really had started to feel something for Nash. Friendship and … loyalty? Real attraction? No, the vocal assault was messing with her head. Still, no matter what explained the feelings, she couldn’t leave him behind.
Before her resolve broke entirely, Livi sprinted into the skirmish. In no time she covered fifteen feet, but when the Marauder who held Nash turned the full force of his scream on her like a fire hose, she had to force herself to keep moving into it.
Reflexively, Livi shouted back. “Crepi il lupo!” Her puny voice didn’t penetrate in the slightest.
The dagger she shoved into the Pirate’s gaping mouth, did penetrate.
The scream stopped immediately, dropping the decibel level from asphyxiating to smothering. The Pirate slid off her dagger and crumpled to the ground.
“Throats aren’t blade-proof like the skin,” she yelled at Nash.
“What?” Nash yelled back.
“The throats. You can stab right into them.” She was using all the volume she could muster, but it was a whisper in a windstorm, like a really bad nightclub experience.
Something slammed into her back and Livi found herself face-down in the grass under someone twice her size. All of the air in her lungs had been forced out, and she sucked in grass and dirt when she tried to breathe. One arm pushed her face into the ground while the other rained punches on her head and back. Blocking was impossible, breathing was impossible, and each blow landed like a boulder, driven in by the audio assault.
The pummeling ceased so she turned her head and looked over her shoulder. The Marauder who had mounted her also looked back, directing his vocal assault into the barrel of Nash’s gun.
Nash cringed away from the noise and fired point-blank. The brains and blood Livi expected to see didn’t appear, but a piercing shriek drilled into her ears. Livi felt like she’d be deaf within seconds if it didn’t stop. Only by covering her ears did she maintain her sanity.
The Marauder turned his head to reveal a needled face like the demon from the Hellraiser Re-risen movies, but with Barbs pinning his eyes open wide in shock. He wiped and scrubbed at the Barbs, driving them deeper.
Livi wriggled, but the Pirate was too heavy, especially since she couldn’t take her hands from her ears. Nash had both hands over his ears and a painful grimace on his face. With obvious effort, he planted the bottom of his foot in the porcupine face. It silenced the Pirate and landed him limply on the ground next to Livi.
“My hero,” mouthed Livi, looking up at Nash through a cloud of invisible commotion.
A sword arced toward him from behind.
Desperately, Livi struck out with her foot at Nash’s ankles, bringing him down on his back. The sword caught his shoulder as he fell and appeared to sink in. Nash bellowed and grabbed the injury with the other hand, but it was already bleeding profusely. Two other Marauders dismounted and closed in.
Jack Tar came into view when Nash dropped. The Booty Master was red-faced and shouting unintelligibly.
Nash was done. There was no way he could fight with that injury. If she was going to run, it had to be now.
A dozen or so Marauders were still on their feet, closing in. When their situations had been reversed, Nash had faced the Wares instead of leaving her to die. If she saved him, they’d be even and she could stop feeling like she owed him something. There was only one chance to save his life.
A Marauder dove at her, but Livi shot to her feet and sprinted at the Booty Master in one movement. His eyes grew wide and his scream intensified, a jackhammer of sound. Two Marauders stood between her and Jack Tar. The first swung late and she easily stepped around him. The second was more prepared for her speed. His timing was right on, but Livi ducked under his sword. She loved living in a world where everyone else moved in slow motion.
Every step into the boiling noise was pain, but Livi forced herself to continue. At the last second before reaching Jack Tar, Livi veered to the side and spun behind him, escaping the acoustic barrage to a degree. Her daggers lay back by Nash, so Livi bared her fangs. As she lunged for the Booty Master’s neck, he turned his head toward her and almost blew her head off with a sonic blast. Blinding light, and an odor of lethal acid came from the scream. There was nothing else in her world except a never-ending concussion that rattled her brain back and forth between her ears.
Livi closed her eyes and dipped her head into the sound, expecting it to rip the skin away from her face. Unsure which part of his body she’d connect with, Livi funneled the onslaught into her jaws and bit with more conviction than ever.
Relative silence embraced her. Breath returned along with the rest of her senses. The reprieve was as sweet as blood, and just as wet. Livi opened her eyes and found herself at Jack Tar’s neck. Beautiful red blood dripped to the ground.
She’d broken the Pirate’s skin! A running leap with all of her weight behind a dagger couldn’t do it, but her amazing, magical teeth had done it. The wide stretch of her mouth made smiling impossible, but she’d never smiled so broadly on the inside.
At the odd angle, Livi couldn’t see Nash laying on the ground. She hoped it wasn’t too late for him. The intoxicating smell of blood was everywhere, but she couldn’t tell how much of it was his and how much came from the Marauders.
The Booty Master raised both hands and dropped his swords. Fighting the urge to tear and drink, Livi relaxed her jaw to let him breathe, but kept her fangs latched in his skin. She didn’t know if she could muster the strength to pierce it again.
After drawing a stifled breath, Jack Tar croaked, “Parlay.”
A nearby woman’s voice repeated the order in a voice loud enough to carry. One by one the remaining shouts stopped and the ruthless voices echoed away into the trees. Livi’s eardrums tingled painfully with pins and needles as if they’d just woken up. A few early coquís chirped their own name, the only thing filling the perfect vacuum. Livi was glad she could hear the frogs, it meant she wouldn’t be permanently deaf.
I hope the eyes are catching this. Out here in the middle of nowhere it probably wouldn’t be high def, 3D hollows, but as far as Livi knew, cameras covered every inch of the island.
“Safe passage,” whispered Jack Tar.
Livi tried to ask for clarification, but her mouth was full of neck.
“Safe passage for you and your crew,” he grunted. “My word as Cap’n of Calico Crew.” He kicked his leg out and made contact with someone nearby.
The woman’s voice sounded again. “Cap’n Jack has given his word that the lady and her crew shall have safe passage.”
If she killed the Booty Master, the other Marauders would kill Nash immediately. Livi was already feeling drained and wasn’t sure if she could even run as far as the trees. Staying as they were with her fangs in his neck and her mouth stretched wide wasn’t an option. Taking the captain’s word for it was the best they could hope for.
All she had to do was pull her mouth away from the sweet, rejuvenating taste that now filled her mouth. The smell of his coppery blood filled her nose like the screams had filled her ears. The trickle she’d elicited only made her want to drink from a fountain, and she was so …
so …
close …
“Do we have a deal, lass?”
Reluctantly, but instantly, Livi released her hold before she could reconsider. After licking her lips, she exercised her jaw, and the captain put a hand to his neck. He looked at his hand as if expecting to see something other than blood, and when it came away wet and red, his eyes and mouth fell further open.
Ahab sat on the ground nearby, a hostage of the woman Pirate. Nash lay flat on his back. Not moving. His clothes were drenched with blood, and not just from his shoulder. Four Marauders stood within striking distance. Livi glared at them as she approached, but they didn’t shy away like normal people, even though she flashed her fangs again. Safe passage or no, if they’d killed Nash …
“Call off your men,” she said over her shoulder, then bent to check on Nash. His eyes were open, the white of his real eye was dotted with tiny red specks. The skin around his eyes had the same blood-blister specks. It was a sign of being choked out. Livi hadn’t realized they’d gotten him that good. After a couple of seconds he blinked and focused on her.
In a raspy voice, the Booty Master said, “Captain Jack Sparrow, the greatest cap’n of them all did say, ‘Ye can always trust the untrustworthy because ye can trust that they will be untrustworthy. ‘Tis the trustworthy ye cannot trust.’”
A Mutiny of Marauders Page 11
