Edge of Control: (Viking Dystopian Romance)

by Megan Crane

  They hit a pack of rabid-ass wharf bandits as the first rays of the sun began to peek over the horizon, subduing the little cell of pierced-faced weirdos with ease. That was what happened when you slept out on the docks like dumbasses, Riordan thought. You offered yourself up as an easy target.

  Eiryn kept watch over the little band of savages while Riordan inspected their boats. He picked the best one they had, a refurbished little pleasure craft that Riordan ordinarily would have laughed at. It was like a block of concrete with a dim cabin that smelled like mildew. But it had a ratty motor plus some relatively decent sails and no obvious, gaping holes in the hull, and it was the best of their bad choices unless they wanted to venture farther into Lincoln and really stir up some shit.

  He raised his brows at Eiryn. She shrugged.

  “It’s the end of September,” she said.

  Meaning, Riordan knew, that the boat would have to do. A good raider ship would take two weeks from Lincoln, give or take, to reach the eastern islands. He figured it would take this clunky boat three if they were very, very lucky and the weather wasn’t too bad. And if he and Eiryn took the helm in grueling shifts, without a real rest, for the whole of the trip.

  But the alternative was grim. The further into October they got, the less likely it was they’d make it home at all. It was already a slim chance. That meant that if they didn’t drown, they’d have to hole up somewhere until spring and hope they beat King Athenian’s forces to the raider city. If they did, the clan would have, what, a few days to prepare?

  They had to make the crossing now. Wulf deserved the whole of the winter to figure out his countermove.

  The concrete block of a boat would have to work. There was no alternative.

  “That piece of shit will sink to the bottom of the Mississippi in the first decent storm,” the snarling, metal-faced leader of the bandits told them, blood staining his few teeth red. “And I’ll still swim down and carve your ass to pieces.”

  Eiryn smiled broadly at him. “Sounds like a date.”

  Then she knocked him out with the hilt of her blade.

  They took off from Lincoln later that morning. The previous day’s rain was gone and the air was clear and crisp. The Mississippi was deceptively calm. Soft, rolling waves and good wind, and the not displeasing sounds of filthy curses being rained on their heads by the bandits they’d left tied up on the docks. The easy weather gave them time to figure out the boat’s eccentricities. The helm was outfitted with wheels on the starboard and leeward side and a system of winches to trim the sails and keep the deck free of coiling lines. The boat was wholly lacking in oars, which raiders preferred to access the most treacherous of coves and remote rivers. But the time the shore of the western mainland disappeared, both Riordan and Eiryn were, if not exactly excited about sailing a boat with diminished handling capabilities, resigned to it.

  Riordan was tempted to believe that the worst was behind them. Highwaymen and a few bandits sleeping off the equinox party. Child’s play to a couple of brothers, but the kind of hassle they didn’t need. Maybe out on the sea, with the salt air in his face and the wind in their sails, it would all be okay.

  But the oceans that had kicked the world’s ass so completely were nothing if not vicious, crafty whores bent on total annihilation, especially this time of year. Eiryn was at the helm when they hit a little squall rounding Cape Chattahoochee, but she fought to keep them on course even when they almost lost their jib. Riordan had his own little dance with some crazy winds a little higher up the eastern coast. They got blown a little bit out of their way and had to do a series of hard tacks back, but still. It was fine.

  This is intense, he told himself every time he made it through another shift at the helm in one piece. But fine.

  The serious rain started off the coast of Gettysburg.

  “We could try to find a harbor somewhere,” Riordan shouted when the storm got rougher.

  Eiryn made her way down from between the masts and joined him at the helm. She shook her head, confirming what he already knew. Visibility was shot. The risk of going too far inland was that they might get caught up in a shitty current and tossed up on rocks they couldn’t see.

  Still. “We could wait it out.”

  Eiryn huddled beside him at the helm, keeping out of his way as he fought to keep the wheel steady. The rain coursed over them in sheets, far beyond the point where it was worth bothering to wipe it away. She braced herself so she wouldn’t be thrown every time the boat made it over a tall-ass swell and then slammed down in a bone-jolting whack on the other side.

  “We could,” she agreed, but she was shaking her head as she said it, her hair plastered to her face but her dark eyes as shrewd as ever. “But it’s already October.”

  What she didn’t say was, it was already too late. They were already fucked. Any delay took their slim chance of getting home to none.

  The storm lasted three days. It was an agonizing fight to keep the boat from flipping, to hit the towering waves right so they didn’t swamp, to ride out the weather rather than letting it toss them miles upon miles off course or sink them to the bottom of the sea.

  And on the morning of the fourth day, when the storm had finally blown itself out and the day was calm enough to use the shitty little motor to navigate the fall swells for a while and let them enjoy being alive, they saw sails on the horizon behind them.

  Big, black sails. Sails that were a dead match for the ones on this boat.

  Which could mean only one thing, as little as Riordan wanted to imagine it was possible, this far from Lincoln and after a storm that had nearly taken two experienced raiders down.

  But black sails were black sails.

  Bandits.

  14

  Shit got real after they spotted the bandits. And fast.

  Eiryn slept in wacked-out, barely restorative bursts when it was her turn to crawl belowdeck and pretend she couldn’t smell the sharp mildew scent that seemed to get stuck in her nose either way. They had nothing to eat but dried strips of something that she fervently doubted had ever been meat, and questionable, desiccated pieces of fruit. But at least it was food. Everything else was soaking wet or eternally damp. Dry was a memory, and one she didn’t dwell on when there was so little chance she’d experience that state again.

  And the black sails haunted them. They were always there, sitting back on the horizon like that metal-faced bandit’s promise to sink them. They’d disappear for half a day, and Eiryn would dare to feel a little stab of relief—but they always came back.

  The bandits chased them up the coast of the eastern mainland, from Virginia to New York. They didn’t ever seem to gain much—but they also didn’t disappear.

  “It’s all fun and games now,” Eiryn said one chilly, uneasy afternoon off the New York coast. October was far more gray and moody the further north and east they traveled. And much, much colder. “But what happens if they chase us all the way back to the Lodge?”

  “It’s fine.” Riordan was hunkered down on the stretch of smooth, built-in bench next to her, his eyes fixed on the mountains on the shore, all of them wreathed in mist and capped with fall snow. “We’re all going to die in the middle of the Atlantic.”

  “That’s a cheery thought. Way to up the morale.” She eyed him. “Maybe you should get some sleep, brother.”

  He threw her a look that was more violence and mayhem than not, but he got up. She heard him slam his way into the mildewy cabin and she wrapped her hands a little bit tighter around the wheel that was as hard to control as the sea sometimes, yanking and pulling like it had a mind of its own.

  The weather looked iffy at best, with a good chance of straight-up shitty out there on the eastern horizon, like it was hunkering down and waiting for them to attempt crossing over to the eastern islands.

  The sea was a bitch. But then, Eiryn was too. So with a glance over her shoulder to confirm that their black-sailed shadow was still trailing back there behind them, she tacked u
p and headed home. Three days across the seething gray Atlantic that she, too, thought would probably kill them. Or at least try.

  But what the hell.

  She pointed their boat straight into that storm brewing in the east.

  After a peaceful night—or what passed for peaceful at this point—Eiryn was at the helm again early the next morning. She noticed the wind first, eerie and wrong. Then the clouds came in, black and oily.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  She stamped her feet on the deck until Riordan emerged, blearily eyed, without having bothered to put on a shirt. And that was how serious this was—she couldn’t even pause to admire the man’s glorious chest.

  He scowled at her. She jerked her chin toward the sky. He stood there a minute, his hands on his hips.

  “Shit,” he gritted out.

  The storm hit hard within the hour. And this one wasn’t fucking around. The swells were the size of ancient buildings, tall and wide and built to destroy. The wind was a banshee whore. The rain pummeled them, coming from all sides and actually hurting a little when it hit.

  Riordan lashed himself to the side of the boat so he couldn’t be blown over. Then he did the same for Eiryn because she couldn’t take her hands off the bastard wheel that seemed hell-bent on spinning out of control and feeding them to the monster.

  And the world narrowed down to nothing but survival. Making it over the wave in front of her, that was all. Over and over again, until she was too exhausted to concentrate and her arms were shaking, and Riordan took over.

  They went back and forth, over and over. One day into the next. There was a brief let up on the third day, just long enough to see that the bandits were still back there, down a jib but not drowning the way they deserved to be after all that pummeling.

  “I can’t tell if we’re close to home or not,” she said.

  “I think we might be.” Riordan scowled at the gray waves and the gray sky. “But we also might be delivering bandits to the clan’s door.”

  Eiryn couldn’t even muster up an appropriate curse word. Only a baleful glare at the black sail on the far horizon.

  But bandits were the least of their problems once the storm kicked in again, howling and spitting and doing its best to crack them into a thousand pieces and feed them to the sharks.

  And they were doing okay. Or not dying, which Eiryn thought was pretty much the same thing.

  Until they lost their rudder.

  It cracked off with a shuddering that rocked the whole boat. They side-slipped like a bitch, nearly getting rolled over by the next swell.

  Riordan threw himself against the gunwale and Eiryn followed him, trying to steer with their weight. He grabbed the mainsheet, fighting the wind and the waves while Eiryn braced herself and tried to figure out what the hell they were going to do now they were totally screwed.

  That was when the great, gray cliffs that Eiryn knew as well as she knew the contours of Riordan’s body loomed before them, rising out of the churning sea off their bow. If they’d still had a rudder she’d have steered them into the narrow little opening, so easily missed, that led through the cliffs and into the raider city at the end of the long, hidden bay. But they were out of control and unable to steer.

  They were fucked.

  Riordan threw his weight again and Eiryn went with him, but they couldn’t get the boat around. They flew past the entrance to their island-studded bay, heading on a collision course for the tall, rocky cliffs instead.

  If they hit the cliffs head on, they would die in the crash. Or if they somehow made it through the crash, they would get caught in the current and slammed against the base of the cliffs again and again, with the same result. Eiryn braced herself against the side of the boat, as if that would help.

  Then something occurred to her.

  “Jailhouse Beach!” she shouted, her voice raw against the storm.

  But Riordan heard her. His jaw set. He nodded once, hard.

  And they tried like hell to make it happen. They both moved quickly, trying to steer the boat—not with any precision, but just enough to keep them at their current diagonal approach to the island. Because if they hit just right, there was an isolated beach tucked into the cliffs, accessible only by a ladder down from the cliffs or by a kamikaze boat.

  Any kind of landing would hurt. But Eiryn could live through hurt on the beach. There was no living through a crash against the cliffs.

  So she held on. And together, she and Riordan fought.

  And it seemed to her it went on forever. Her muscles screamed with strain. Her eyes smarted from too much saltwater. She was beyond wet and far past cold. The wind tried to knock them over, the waves batted them this way and that, but they stayed upright. They kept to their course.

  Straight on into the cliffs, dark and forbidding and with their death written all over them—

  “Now!” Riordan shouted, and they threw themselves across the boat, pulling the mainsheet with them, forcing the bow of the boat to shift with them across that banshee wind—

  Eiryn had only a split second, and she knew it. There was no time. There was only the sea all around, and the storm kicking their ass, and Riordan’s tough, strong arms next to hers, his body a solid wall, as they both hung on to the mainsheet and tried to control the sail.

  If this was it, she told herself, she was fine. They’d made it home. They’d tried.

  It would have to be enough.

  It didn’t feel like enough.

  The raging sea seemed to reach down and pick them up, grabbing the boat like the water had hands and an evil plan.

  Then that sullen, seething bitch threw them straight into the rocks.

  * * *

  When Riordan woke up, nothing made sense.

  His head was ringing. He could taste salt and copper. He was cold as fuck. The sea was everywhere, he could hear it pounding and rushing all around him, but it took him longer than it should have to realize he wasn’t in it. Not exactly. Though he thought he was wet enough that maybe that was only a matter of interpretation.

  He was on a beach, maybe. It was gloomy, but it wasn’t night. Rain fell on him, pooling on his back and running in little rivers on the pebbly sand next to his face.

  The storm came back to him then. The bitch of a rudder that snapped off at the worst possible moment. The towering waves. The cliffs. Jailhouse Beach, where raiders had rounded up would-be attackers and clan dissidents for centuries and left them to rot, down those slippery cliffs on a tiny-ass rocky stretch of sand with no way out. Men either fell to their deaths after trying to make the impossible climb, or they braved the fearsome Atlantic only to be slammed into pieces against the cliff walls.

  Eiryn.

  Riordan pulled his face out of the sand and rolled over, hauling himself into sitting position. He was instantly aware that he was hurt. He grunted at that, blinking down at the source of the pain, which emanated from his leg. Sure enough, there was a vicious hunk of what had once been part of the boat’s hull stuck into his thigh. It was bleeding, but not too badly. He poked around the site of impact, wincing as more pain flashed through him. Riordan lifted his leg, hissing at another electric surge of agony. But it didn’t make him throw up or pass out. Which meant he could get used to it, if necessary. He tested that theory, easing himself up to a standing position. Then he tried to put weight on that leg.

  He could do it. Briefly. It sucked, but he could do it.

  He was tempted to pull the shard out, but didn’t, because wounds like this one were often bleeders and the last thing he needed was to bleed out on Jailhouse Beach, three miles away from the Lodge. That would only add insult to injury.

  Riordan took stock of the situation, refusing to react to the fact he didn’t see Eiryn immediately. He squinted down the length of the curved beach, seeing a good portion of the gleaming hull of the shipwrecked boat lying half out of the water. Every time the waves crashed over it, it wobbled slightly, which likely meant it wouldn’t make it t
hrough the next high tide.

  He shouted her name, but he didn’t hear anything but wind and surf. And his own heartbeat, a little too loud and a little too fast. His leg felt like it was on fire, but he ignored that. Years ago, the old war chief had told him that pain was weakness, and it was his job as a brother to beat it back.

  He’d done it then. He did it now.

  The first step was a bright hot agony. The second was the same, then numbing. By the fourth he was used to the kick of it, and by the sixth or seventh step he could walk well enough—if he ignored the pain—with only a limp for his trouble.

  He reached the hull and rounded it, ready to flip the fucking thing over—

  But there she was. Facedown in the sand and her hair like seaweed all around her. Too damned still. He limped toward her, moving faster than he should on that leg.

  Eiryn coughed then. Once. Again. She spat out sand and saltwater, and shifted against the cold beach.

  Riordan felt weak for a moment. Just a moment.

  He told himself it was his leg, but he knew better. It was sheer relief. It was more than relief. He rubbed his hands over his face, not exactly surprised to find they were shaking. Adrenaline was still pumping through him like a mother.

  Adrenaline and all that other shit he didn’t want to deal with right then.

  Eiryn moved slowly. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees and stayed there a moment. Above them, the rain started to ease. Then, like it was a cue, the winds began to calm the hell down. She climbed to her feet as if she’d been waiting for that very sign, straightened as if she was stiff, then turned.

  And when she saw him, her dark eyes lit up. Her mouth cracked into a smile. Bright and real, relief and something else, and it hit him like a sucker punch. Straight into his gut. It made his ears ring.