“Did you get sick or something?” he asked.
“No. Someone mugged me in a parking garage after work,” she said. “Kicked me down a flight of stairs. My neck broke when I hit the bottom,” she explained. “Survived, obviously, but it left me—how do you say? Quad. All I can do is get fed like a baby. Wiped like a baby. Treated like a baby—only, I don’t have a future to look forward to. At least babies get to grow up. All I can do is rot. So, don’t you dare confine me to that fate here, and don’t you dare let me die either. I won’t go back to that hellish existence.”
Ethan swallowed the newly formed lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I don’t want your pity,” she said. “Just make it right. You owe me that.”
Hairs rose across the back of Ethan’s neck, and as he held Katryna’s fearful gaze, he knew he was at a crossroads yet again.
He dug his fingers into his scalp, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, it seemed that changing her was the only right course of action, but on the other, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the hell that would eventually follow would still be somehow far, far worse for the woman. And that didn’t even get into how badly he was about to break a sworn promise to Zoey. What would that mean for the future? He hadn’t the slightest idea, but in the end, seeing her helpless broke his heart, and he chose compassion over fear—over integrity.
Zoey would understand later, he told himself. She’d have to.
“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
1 Compassion gained.
You feel as if people will see you as less trustworthy and reliable.
Ethan sighed at Narrator’s update and went to work. Though Zoey had never given him full instructions on turning anyone, he had a good recollection of what had taken place when Zoey had changed him from a hapless human to a newly minted vampire.
With that experience in mind, Ethan sank his fangs into his wrist. Blood spurt from the wound, ran down his forearm, and splattered on the ground. Right as he was about to offer it to Katryna, Zoey’s cries cut through the air.
“Ethan! What are you doing?” she yelled as she raced toward him, face full of panic.
“I’m making her like us,” he stammered. “Saving her. She’s paralyzed. For good. All because of me.”
“Look, I don’t know what happened, but I know it’s not your fault,” Zoey said.
“No, it is,” he said, looking away and shaking his head. “Just like Jean getting killed is my fault too.”
“Ethan, you didn’t kill him,” Zoey said as she put her hand on his shoulder. “And you didn’t do this to her, either. They did.”
“My pistol did this,” he shot back, his heart breaking with every word he spoke. “Mine. The one I looted from Lord Belmont, and the one Sir Gideon now has because I bet it in a stupid card game because I was too stupid to know any better.”
Zoey knelt at his side. She framed his face with her hands and turned him toward her. “I get it. This world sucks a lot, sometimes, but don’t do this,” she said with a soft, even voice. “Please, believe me, you don’t know the fury that awaits us all if you do. She’s not playing for anyone. She’d be better off losing here and going home.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” Ethan said as he squeezed Katryna’s hand. “She’ll rot away if that happens. And if we don’t turn her, she’ll rot away here, too.”
Zoey’s brow furrowed, and she reflexively pulled away. “What are you talking about?”
“He means I’m a quad back home,” Katryna said. “You still remember what those are, right?”
“Yeah…yeah, I know what those are,” Zoey softly replied. She then cursed and buried her face in her hands. When she finally let them drop, she folded her fingers together and rested her chin on top of them. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I had no idea. Why didn’t you say all of this before?”
“Because I don’t want to be treated like a cripple,” she said, her voice taking on a distinct edge. “All I want is to live.”
“If you do this, they’ll come for you,” Zoey said, now sounding academic about it all. “I want you to understand that. I want you to really understand that some of the darkest, most dreadful beings in the world will come after you. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or even next year. But they’ll learn of what happened here, eventually, and when they do, you’ll never be safe. Do you understand?”
Katryna nodded. “I understand. I am not buying a cat in a sack. I know what to expect.”
“We still have The Duchess,” Ethan pointed out. “Or will, at least. I’ll sign the deed after the race, and we can go from there.”
Zoey fell back on her haunches. Angst gripped her face, and water clouded her eyes. After a couple of slow, steady breaths, she asked him a simple question. “Do you remember what I said to you when you were dying?”
“That you didn’t want to lose me?”
Zoey nodded. “I don’t. And I can’t. And I won’t.”
“You’re not losing me,” Ethan said. “I don’t care who comes after us or what ghost thinks she can come between us. We’re in this game together. Always, but we can’t sacrifice everything and everyone else at our expense.”
Zoey laughed. “There you go again, being the slightly naïve hero.”
“You forgot the adorkably sweet part,” he said. “I’m that, too. Remember?”
“One of these days, it’s going to get us killed,” she said, clearing her eyes.
Ethan smiled. “But it is not this day.”
“Okay, Aragorn,” she said, laughing again. Zoey then exhaled slowly and nervously clapped her hands in front of her face several times. “Okay…okay, okay, okay,” Zoey said, her eyes drifting toward the ground, “…okay.”
The air grew silent and still, and Ethan waited for a beat to see if either would say anything else. When neither did, he pressed his still-bleeding wrist against Katryna’s mouth. “Drink.”
The woman latched on, holding his forearm tight with both hands. He felt her strength return more and more with each passing second and watched the hairs across her body stand on end. In turn, his own skin felt cold, and his head floated above the clouds.
“God, I feel amazing,” Katryna said, pulling away from Ethan’s wrist and wiping her mouth. “In fact—”
Katryna doubled over. Her face turned scarlet, and the cords in her neck bulged. Ethan grimaced, knowing full well the excruciating pain wracking her body as the unholy versus holy fought. He put his hand on her shoulder and tried to offer her some sort of comfort, but it didn’t help. She screamed, arching her back and clawing at the ground. Dry heaving came next, followed by the spitting of dark, coagulated goo. When it was finished after what seemed to be an eternity, she lay there, panting.
The woman pressed her thumb into one of her new fangs and smiled. Her lips, however, turned downward, and her eyes widened a moment later. “I—I still can’t move my legs,” she said.
Ethan, swaying due to feeling extremely lightheaded, knitted his brow. “Say again?”
“I said still I can’t move my legs!” she barked.
Thankfully, Zoey had a palatable answer. “You have to feed to regenerate,” she said. “You should be fine after that.” She then turned to Ethan and said the same. “You’re going to need something soon, too. You look terrible.”
Katryna bit her lower lip and nodded. Her eyes scanned the battlefield, and in the span of a few heartbeats, they lit up with determination. The newly made vampire threw herself forward and dragged herself across the ground with frightening speed.
“You can’t feed on the dead!” Zoey yelled, giving chase.
Katryna didn’t listen. She reached a fallen man before Zoey could catch her and yanked back his head while simultaneously taking a bite on his neck. The man cried out and tried to fend off his attacker with a few feeble strikes, but he was no match for Katryn
a.
“He was still alive?” Zoey asked, chuckling in disbelief. “Holy crap. I thought they were all dead.”
“He’s still alive,” Ethan said. He repeated those words a couple more times so they penetrated the haze he was still in. Once they had, he staggered over to where Katryna was feeding and joined in, taking his prey by the wrist.
Sailor drained!
You heal some wounds!
Ethan relinquished his grip at Narrator’s voice and relished the strength that had returned to him. His body still ached, and he still counted at least a dozen bruises with bruises across his limbs, not to mention felt a small knot on the back of his head, but at least he didn’t feel completely broken anymore.
Katryna, too, had healed some. Though she still fed, she no longer was sprawled out on the ground next to the man but now had her legs tucked underneath her so she knelt as she drained what lifeforce was left.
A rumble in Ethan’s stomach prompted him to take seconds. Two minutes later, refreshed and restored, he stood and offered Katryna a hand up.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her up. “We’ve got a race to win.”
“And a Golden Templar to send straight to hell,” the woman said, beaming. “Should be easy enough now that Zoey has the bottle.”
Zoey shook her head. “I don’t have it.”
Ethan arched his eyebrows as surprise splashed across his face. “What do you mean you don’t have it?”
“I mean, I don’t have it,” Zoey said. “I never had it.”
“But you’re a thief.”
“Yeah? And? That doesn’t mean every time something goes missing, I had something to do with it.”
Ethan groaned, and when she looked at him with annoyance, he held up his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of all the times when you stealing something would’ve been really, really helpful, this would’ve been it.”
“Believe me, I know,” Zoey said.
“If you don’t have it, then who does?” asked Katryna, furrowing her brow.
Zoey threw her hands up. “I honestly have no idea, but if we don’t get back to our ship this instant, we’ll never win. They’ve already got too much of a head start on us.”
“Then we’ve no time to lose,” Ethan said.
With that, the three raced out of the fort.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Back to Sea
Ethan dashed through the forest, Zoey and Katryna following, trees and foliage zipping by in a blur. His legs drove him with powerful strides, and he followed the ever-increasing scent of saltwater and sounds of breaking waves on the shore.
More than one fallen tree along the way tried to slow him, but he took each with a hurdle without losing stride. For a while, he worried that the other captains had already reached their ships and now had an insurmountable lead, but after fifteen minutes or so, he heard the faint sounds of gunshots up ahead.
“Good,” Zoey said between labored breaths. “Maybe they’ll all kill each other.”
“That’d be nice, but I don’t think even I’m that lucky,” Ethan said.
“All the more reason to run faster,” Katryna tacked on.
Not long after, they cleared the tree line and found themselves on a wide, debris-filled beach. Three ships could be seen sailing away, while a fourth, the Victory, lay anchor a few hundred yards away. Thankfully, right after Ethan spied it, he also spotted a longboat beached fifty yards away.
“That’s our crew! They’re here already!” Ethan shouted as no one in their right mind could ever mistake who the raggedy group of skeletons by the boat belonged to.
The group redoubled their pace, practically flying across the sand. By the time they reached the craft, Mister Potts, who also happened to be in the group, was already knee-deep in surf, turning the boat around.
“Where’s Jean?” he asked.
“He didn’t make it,” Ethan said. The words weighed heavily on his soul, and he was surprised at how hard they were to get out, how weak they sounded in his ears—how weak they made him felt.
Mister Potts frowned and nodded, pausing a moment before flashing a smile. “Then I guess we’d best win for his sake,” he said. “Lest he haunts us the rest of our days.”
“You’re damn right we will,” Ethan replied.
Ethan took a position next to the helmsman, with Zoey coming to his side. Everyone else found spots as well, and after a count of three, they spun the boat around and drove it into the surf. The lifeboat’s bow punched through the waves cleanly, but the amount of force needed to do so was more than Ethan had expected.
After driving it far enough into the water, they each jumped into the longboat, Ethan being the last to throw himself in. A solid wave knocked him in the chest as he did, and it took a little extra help from two of the skeletons and a whole lot of flopping on his part to see himself in. At that point, he scrambled for a seat and an oar, and together, the crew rowed hard for the Victory. Thankfully, she seemed no worse for wear, and her colors still flew proudly.
“How far ahead are they?” Ethan asked as they started to row.
“They all raised anchors maybe twenty minutes ago,” Mister Potts replied.
Ethan’s eyes scanned the area and quickly found his opponent’s ships near the horizon, and as much as seeing that sank his spirits, seeing his own ship, nearly a quarter mile away practically in the opposite direction, sank them even lower. “Why are we so far away?”
“Because Marcus didn’t want us to take on any extra holes, Captain, and I was rather inclined to agree.”
“Extra holes?”
“Aye, sir. From their cannons,” he explained. “They’ve been trading shots at each other since the storm passed.”
As if waiting to reinforce what he’d said, a series of booms carried through the air. Ethan leaned in his place on the bench to see billowing clouds rise from the portside of the Griffin, and Sir Gideon’s ship, the Red Fish, no doubt took a heavy hit from the attack as it sailed by. What sort of damage Sir Gideon now tended to, Ethan couldn’t tell, but he guessed it must have been severe, for the Red Fish not only didn’t respond with a broadside of her own, but she turned away as hard as she’d go, running with the wind to escape the Griffin’s firing arcs.
A few seconds later, The Popinjay sent out a volley of her own. Sedra had wisely kept her from the warring pair, but with that caution, he’d sacrificed a leading position as he sailed several hundred yards behind and off to the side. Whether or not his cannons hit anything on either the Griffin or the Red Fish, Ethan didn’t know. He could only hope.
Minutes later, the ships exchanged another set of volleys. Ethan strained his eyes, trying to see what sort of damage they’d dealt each other, but he couldn’t tell anything other than none had blown up in a spectacular fireball.
A minute later, their longboat bumped against the Victory’s hull. The group hastily climbed the rope ladders, with Ethan being the last. As he hoisted himself up and over the railings, he saw some of the crew scrambling, trying to get the longboat aboard before it drifted away.
“Leave it behind,” he ordered. “Weigh anchor! Full sails to the wind!”
The crew immediately abandoned the lifeboat and ran to their stations while Mister Potts went for the helm. Katryna started for the bow, intent on taking Jean’s role at commanding the gun crews, but Ethan caught her arm. He had a much more important role in mind for her.
“How’s the vision?” he asked. “Better, yes?”
Katryna laughed. “I could count the hairs on a fly’s ass from twenty yards.”
“Perfect, I need you up there,” Ethan said, pointing to the crow’s nest.
A growl escaped her lips, and her eyes narrowed. “The only reason I’m not flat out disobeying right now is because of what you did for me back on the island,” she said. “But you’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m going to be happy sitting up there and watching while everyone else sinks t
he Red Fish.”
Ethan took her by the shoulders and squeezed. “I know. But I need the keenest eyes in the nest if we’re to have a chance at winning. If the hooks go out, I definitely want you in the fray. But not a second before that.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Absolutely. Now go.”
With a reluctant nod, Katryna raced up the ratlines. Less than two minutes later, the Victory was well underway, and a familiar, raspy voice drew Ethan’s attention from behind.
“Sign…” Ethan jumped and spun to find the Duchess floating nearby, staring through him as she always did. In her hands, she held both the deed and a raven-black quill which she raised for him to take.
“How did you get that?” he asked, fighting the urge to take them regardless.
“It…is mine…” she said, her voice both powerful and chilling him to the core. “I always…have…it…just like…I…will have…you.”
Ethan eyed both parchment and quill, unsure what to do. He was going to sign, he knew, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try and tailor the deal to suit his needs more, first. “Okay, fine. I’ll sign,” he said, “but I have to finish the race before we do anything else.”
The Duchess nodded slowly, keeping a wicked smile the entire time. “Very well…I…shall grant…three days…to…get…your affairs…in order.”
Knots formed in Ethan’s stomach and tightened even further as he took both the deed and quill from her hands. Its tip looked recently dipped in ink, and as he used it to sign his name at the bottom of the deed, it left scorch marks trailing across the page and sent wisps of smoke rising into the air.
The moment he finished, crossing the t in Ethan, the deed, quill, and Duchess vanished, and he was left standing there, dumbfounded for a few seconds until Zoey ran up to his side. “Finished gathering report,” she said, oblivious to everything that had just taken place. “Our cabin’s a mess. Some of our stores broke free down below, and the mainsail tore near a yardarm when they couldn’t reef it in time, but it’s been stitched already.”
The Crew (Captains & Cannons Book 2) Page 27
