Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1)

by Leonard Wilson

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jenilee replied, very nearly managing to keep a straight face.

  “This way,” Axy said, using his size to force a way through the swirling crowd. Though far from the largest man there, he stood tall enough and broad-shouldered enough to at least plant his feet and anchor himself to the ground when either of the girls would simply have been buffeted helplessly in the human tide.

  So with Axy at point, they progressed in fits and starts toward the moving target of the pirate queen. Two near misses got him nearly within arm’s reach before Molly danced away, oblivious to their attempts to attract her attention. The third attempt resulted in Molly emerging out of the crowd without warning, close enough to grab Axy by the arm and swing him around.

  To Axy’s credit, the young man kept his head enough to stammer out something about joining Molly’s crew, but even knowing his intentions, Jenilee couldn’t make out half of what he was saying above the din. She couldn’t blame him, though. She could hardly stay focused on the job in this chaos herself, and she wasn’t a young man suddenly swept up in the arms of Lake Etherea’s deadliest nymph.

  Molly had to be forty by now, but for all her hard living, she didn’t look a day over thirty—even up close—and the raw energy and lust for life she radiated made it hard to remember she was even twenty. She came equipped with the curves of a nymph to go with the personality, too. And with eyes of sparkling blue. And with smiling lips, so full and sensual and…kissable? Jenilee blinked, shocked at the alien thought that had crept into her head.

  Molly also paused in surprise at about the same moment. For all of half a heartbeat, she looked up into Axy’s unfamiliar face. Then with an expressive shrug, she reached for his collar and dragged him into the undeniable proof of just how kissable those lips were. Unlike the other, passing kisses she’d been handing out, this one lasted so long that the dancers stumbling around her actually stood back and left her some room in a slowly widening circle.

  Jenilee couldn’t help but stare, mesmerized, until she realized that somewhere in that kiss the musicians had fallen silent. The whole party had fallen silent—arriving at a screeching halt while every eye in the room watched the kiss playing out.

  At last Molly came up for air and stepped away, shoving Axy back a pace and straight into the arms of Keely, who’d gone red-faced from a mix of emotions that didn’t seem to contain nearly the overwhelming percentage of jealousy that Jenilee had expected.

  “So,” Molly’s cool voice chimed like a bell in the sudden silence as she looked the three friends over, carefully sizing them up. “You want in, right?”

  The three of them nodded.

  “Can you sail?” she asked soberly.

  “Aye,” Axy answered confidently, throwing on his best nautical demeanor, while Keely and Jenilee nodded. They’d never been on any serious voyage, but a girl didn’t grow up in Hart Cove without learning her way around a sailing vessel.

  “Can you fight?” Molly asked.

  “Well enough,” Axy said.

  “I’m a fair shot with a flintlock,” Keely said.

  “I can learn,” Jenilee said, stiffening her spine despite the voice crying in her head to run home and hide.

  Molly gave a little snort that at least sounded more like mild amusement than open derision. She grabbed Axy firmly by the wrist, turned up his palm and studied it for several long seconds. Then she looked him square in the eye. “If I take you on, you’ll most likely be dead within the year. If you’re not dead within a year, you’ll most likely be dead within two.”

  Axy paled slightly, but his face remained calm. “Her father’s going to kill me anyway,” he said, giving a backward nod toward Keely, “given that I’m not going to stay away from her.”

  “Ah…the runaway-young-lovers package deal,” Molly said, turning her appraising eye on Keely. “My grandmother had a pair like you on her ship. I hear they worked out…delightfully. A threesome could be that much sweeter.” She grinned at Jenilee, who felt sure she’d just gone redder than Keely.

  “I…We’re not,” Jenilee stammered. “Just them!” she concluded with a desperate gesture toward her friends.

  “Uh-huh,” Molly said, slowly dragging the two primitive syllables out into an entire monologue of incredulity. Though she stood only two inches taller than Jenilee, the woman seemed to tower as she stepped closer and reached to tilt Jenilee’s chin up to meet her gaze. “Can you honestly tell me…”

  The touch was electric. Jenilee couldn’t begin to put words to what she felt, but from Molly’s faltering voice and widening eyes, she seemed to be feeling it too.

  “You’re in,” Molly breathed, a grin spreading across her face. “Oh, girl, you are so in.” Molly threw her head back and laughed exultantly while Jenilee blinked with astonishment. “You’re in!” Molly declared, spinning to jab a finger at Axy. “And you’re in!” She turned the finger on Keely. “Everybody’s in! Now where’s my music?!”

  Molly grabbed the two nearest bottles—without concern for their contents or who had been holding them—and shoved them into the hands of Keely and Axy. “We sail whenever I bloody well feel like it,” she declared, slapping them on the back simultaneously and shoving them on their way. “Be on the Siren’s Song with everyone else, or be left behind.”

  Jenilee started to head after them, but Molly snagged her by the collar as she passed, busting a seam along Jenilee’s shoulder in her haste. “Not you,” Molly said. “Not yet.”

  “No?” Jenilee asked, not at all certain she liked being singled out for the pirate queen’s attention.

  “No. You and I, we have to talk.”

  Jenilee added the caves beneath the cellars of the Drunken Squid to the list of things she’d never seen before tonight. In this case, she’d not even been aware of their existence, but now she sat in one of them, alone with Blackwater Molly, the adorable blond scourge of that freshwater sea that lapped at the outer entrance of the cave.

  Though they’d come down through a series of concealed stairwells, a longboat drawn up in the cave would easily have allowed them to depart straight onto the lake. The many crates and barrels piled up around the chamber lent it the air of a smuggler’s hideout, despite the fact that Molly could have done open business with any man in Hart Cove, in any commodity she chose.

  Between that and the nonchalant way Molly had led her down here, Jenilee had to conclude any secrecy was strictly for the benefit of locals like her, to allow them to plead ignorance should any more straight-laced authority figure come calling.

  Molly kicked back casually on a crate, with her feet pulled up onto it. “First things first,” she said. “Tell me about you.”

  “You…don’t know about me?” Jenilee asked cautiously. “The way you reacted…”

  Molly waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I know who you are,” she said. “And I dare say you know who I am. But just how much do you know about me? And how much of what you do know about me are you confident isn’t just silly rumors?”

  “Not much,” Jenilee admitted.

  “So tell me about you,” Molly repeated. “No lies. No false modesty. No leaving out stuff because it sounds crazy or because I just wouldn’t understand it anyway. Those are the juicy bits, and you’re talking to Blackwater Molly now. Who are you really?”

  “No one special,” Jenilee started. Then she quickly backpedaled when she saw the glare coming onto Molly’s face. “I mean, there’s nothing about me I think sounds crazy or that people wouldn’t understand. Except…”

  “Except what?” Molly asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “The Rules,” Jenilee said, shrugging sheepishly. “I keep this sort of book in my head. No one else seems to. Not like mine.”

  “A book?” Molly asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, sort of,” Jenilee admitted. “I can’t read properly. So instead of scribbles, I put other stuff in it: sights and sounds and smells…All sorts of things. When I have a memory I can’t afford to
forget, or just don’t want to ever forget, I press it into the pages of my book, and it stays crisp and new and easy to find. I call it the Rules, because that’s what’s in it mostly. My mother told me I should make my own rules, and a rule’s not a rule if you can’t keep proper track of it.”

  Molly chuckled. “She told you that, did she?”

  “Yes, ummm…Aye, Captain?” Jenilee ventured.

  Molly laughed again, merrily. “What else did your mother tell you?”

  “That’s it, really,” Jenilee said. “All I can remember. She died when I was very small.”

  Molly snorted. “She most certainly did not!”

  “She…didn’t?” Jenilee asked, guardedly studying Molly for any clues that the woman was having her on or simply misinformed. Jenilee had made peace with the death of her mother years ago, but it remained that tentative sort of peace where she simply didn’t let herself dwell on what she was missing.

  Even before her world had been turned upside down, allowing herself to start thinking she had a living mother out there somewhere, waiting to be found for a tearful reunion, would be inviting in a world of hurt when the hope of it died. Now…?

  “Who told you she’d died?” Molly asked seriously.

  “My Dad,” Jenilee said.

  Molly coughed. Then she laughed some more. She rolled her eyes. She shook her head. “Girl, we’ve got a mess to sort out. Your mother’s very much alive and kicking and taking the proverbial names. It’s your father that’s dead. Or at least I thought he was. He didn’t adopt, you, did he? Wait, no. It doesn’t make sense regardless. But here you are! We’ll let him tell his own story when I see him.”

  “He…is dead.” Jenilee managed to force the words out through her constricting throat. “Four weeks now, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said sympathetically. “Still, that’s…what? A dozen more years than I’d thought he’d had? I’ll call it a win for him.”

  “So how do you know…” Jenilee started, as an attempt to change the subject.

  “Who you are?” Molly asked. “You felt it too, when I touched you. I saw it in your eyes. I don’t know how you’re here, or why. I thought you’d died as a babe along with your father, but there’s only one person you could be.”

  “And who is that?” Jenilee asked.

  “A force of nature,” Molly grinned. “An untamed and untamable hellion to make men swoon and women tremble in fear, or whatever else you want them to tremble with.”

  “Ah. You’ve mistaken me for Keely,” Jenilee said dryly. “I’ll just go fetch her for you.”

  “No false modesty!” Molly barked, slamming her hand down with such force that it splintered the top of the barrel beside her—but her expression softened somewhat as she saw Jenilee cringing away. “Your friend seems a sweet and amusing little girl,” Molly said, not unkindly, “but she’s no niece of mine.”

  Jenilee blinked.

  “I get it,” Molly said. “But a panther raised among rabbits is still a panther. You’ll come into your own. I promise. In the meantime, I’ve got three gifts to help you on your way, okay?”

  Jenilee just nodded, not knowing what to say, not trusting herself to feel anything one way or another. Until this moment she’d hadn’t a glimmer of hope she had any family left to her at all. Daring to believe Molly would be setting herself up for a blow she wouldn’t want to recover from, should the belief prove unfounded.

  Molly unbuckled the belt from her hips and held it aloft for a moment, making sure Jenilee’s gaze fell on the dagger still dangling in a sheath on it. “First off, a real blade,” Molly said, tossing the thing to Jenilee, who caught it reflexively. “That may not look like much, but it’s tasted the lives of three men. Anyway, it’s just a little something for emergencies, when things come down to try or die. If you like, we can get you some serious steel when you’re actually learning to fight.”

  “Thank you,” Jenilee said politely, still not trusting herself to actually feel anything. She could sense the emotions, though, circling like sharks just beneath the surface of her consciousness. When they struck, they’d be going into a feeding frenzy.

  “Second…” Molly rolled off her perch and went to a battered, old chest at the back of the cave. The hinges screamed in protest as she forced it open, and she began rummaging around through old clothes and bits of other junk. Now and then she’d pause to look at Jenilee, somehow taking her measure again, until Molly arose carrying an aging pair of boots. “Try these.”

  Jenilee began to protest that she already had a perfectly serviceable pair of boots, but she stomped on the impulse and sealed it away before her mouth could form any actual words. Refusing the generosity of someone like Molly seemed like it could be a very painful mistake.

  She shut her open mouth again, and smiled as graciously as she could manage, accepting the gift. She slipped off her old boots, which had sadly been the only part of her hardened-criminal costume she’d actually liked, and pulled on the stiff old leather with a bit of effort. At least they offered a decent fit, even if they’d seen better days.

  “Again, not much of a gift, right?” Molly chuckled. “You don’t have to pretend. I know they’re dreadful.”

  “Just a bit,” Jenilee admitted, feeling scandalously daring to say as much to Blackwater Molly, even with the prompting.

  “But this time,” Molly said, a conspiratorial smile spreading across her face, “there’s a lot more to it than you’d think. Every girl should have a touch of magic at her disposal. Well…every girl in this family.”

  “You mean, magic magic?” Jenilee asked, staring down at the boots.

  “Magic magic,” Molly confirmed. “No metaphor about it. Wear those boots. Trust in those boots. Something good will happen. Don’t ask me what. Real magic doesn’t like to be predictable. That’s what makes it magic.”

  Jenilee shrugged and nodded, seeing the sense of that. A giddy feeling of excitement and anticipation surfaced briefly from out of the swirl of her lurking emotion, but she danced back away before it could sink its teeth in. She was going to sail Lake Etherea and become a notorious pirate like Aunt Molly. She was going to see real magic. She was going to be reunited with the mother she’d never known.

  She was…not going to dare to believe any of it until she saw it for herself. This was way too much, too fast. She trusted it about as far as—well, something that she trusted very little indeed, whatever that was. At the moment, she was too busy fighting down the urge to be giddy to recall a proper cliché for the occasion.

  “And third?” she asked, to give herself something to think about besides all the anticipation she was definitely not feeling.

  “Oh, nothing much.” Molly shrugged. “It’s just that I came to town to meet up with my sisters. If you’d like, you’re welcome to tag along.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Page Thirteen

  “No way!” Keely gasped.

  “It’s what she says,” Jenilee said. “Doesn’t make it true.”

  They sat on the only two chairs in the lonely little room above a cobbler’s workshop that Jenilee had always shared with her father. Spartan in the extreme, they’d never had much money available to furnish it, and her father had never been one to allow clutter to collect. Even what little there’d been when her father passed from his illness had mostly been sold already out of necessity, or else packed to leave with on short notice.

  All that remained aside from the little table, the chairs, a small cabinet full of necessities, and Jenilee’s sleeping pallet, were a single tallow candle providing the room’s only light, and the bag of things she planned on taking with her.

  “Why would she say it if she didn’t at least believe it?” Keely protested.

  “Doesn’t matter, really,” Jenilee said doing her best to believe that. “Doesn’t change anything. You’re my family now.”

  “Yeah.” Keely smiled warmly. “You and me and Axy against the world. But still! Around here, being blood
to Blackwater Molly changes everything. Jenny, you’re like a…a princess! And you’re going to meet her sisters? I didn’t even know Molly had sisters. No one talks about them.”

  “Not sure I should meet them,” Jenilee sighed. “What if they realize I’m not who Molly says? We can’t afford to have me muck this thing up.”

  “You worry too much, Jenny,” Keely said. “You’re a pirate now. Live hard, die young.”

  “I was kinda hoping for ‘live smart, retire rich’.”

  Keely shrugged. “It could happen. But how much use do you think Molly has for a timid pirate? We’ve been over this.”

  “Page eleven.” Jenilee sighed. “Thinking everything through is for people with time on their side, which won’t be us. Get impulsive or get dead,” she recited.

  “Right.” Keely nodded. “And when you set aside all the scary what-ifs, what’s the only reasonable decision left?”

  Jenilee grabbed her bag and took a last look around the place. It mightn’t be much of a home, but it had been her home, and the only one she’d ever known. The ghost of her father hung over it, too. She still couldn’t look at the door without expecting to see him walk in, shaking the rain off his cloak and hanging his battered watchman’s lantern on its peg. She didn’t even have to imagine the lantern as missing from the peg to start the scene. She’d buried him with it.

  Part of her had wanted to keep it to remember him by, but in the end she’d decided he’d need it more than her, whether he used it to guide him to Seriena’s isles or he decided to hang around here and continue his vigil over Hart Cove.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Jenilee cracked open the Rules in her mind and carefully pressed the scene before her, ghost and all, into the first blank page available, along with the sound of her father’s voice admonishing her to, “Fight for what you love,” as he’d done so many times.

  “Page twelve,” she murmured, letting out the breath, and stepped out the door after Keely. She caught herself in the middle of locking the door, and she stopped to stare at the key. After a moment’s reflection, she pushed the door back open and tossed the key into the little room, where it clattered across the floor. “Come on,” she said, and walked away, leaving the door standing ajar.