~~~
Charlotte squinted through the binoculars. In her dinghy, she had stayed a distance—close but safe—away from the dual battles, but had tracked progress on both boats like a hawk, ready to jump in if needed.
She also had kept a wary eye on the middle platform, and the half-breed in the center of it. The round platform was completely lined with Malefics that, other than bending their legs against the waves from the explosions, showed no reaction when the two boats blew up. They also appeared oblivious to the battles happening on the remaining two boats.
At this distance, Charlotte could now see that the platform had an open middle, and that was where the half-breed knelt, hands in the turbulent water. Triaten had said the half-breed was a she, but the slight form was covered head-to-toe in a long blue cloak, and Charlotte couldn’t see her face.
The half-breed did jerk upright at the explosions, but was immediately prodded in the back with a long stick by a beastly Malefic standing behind her. Charlotte thought she saw a spark at the end of the stick, and wondered if it was a cattle prod. The half-breed jerked violently, then sank back down and put her hands in the water.
The half-breed did not look up from the water again.
Charlotte’s eyes went from Triaten’s boat to Aiden’s boat over and over, and she saw nothing out of the ordinary in their battles. She even figured they would both be moving inward to the center platform within minutes.
Nothing out of the ordinary, until she noticed two figures breaking through the floating wreckage near Aiden and Skye’s boat. The figures reached the front of the boat, finding the same rope Aiden and Skye scaled, and the first figure climbed up onto the boat. It was a female, slight, but solidly built. She was getting considerable help up the rope by the male under her.
Charlotte locked the binoculars at the pair. There was something oddly familiar about the shoulders of the male that pushed the female up and out of the water onto the deck. His movements long and swift, he easily scaled the rope, then gripped the railing and lifted himself over the edge.
It wasn’t until the male stood on deck, and turned back to the still fiery wreckage, that Charlotte saw who it was. Damen.
A rage so pure exploded through her body, that Charlotte had the dinghy bumping into the side of the fishing boat, before she even realized she had set the motor this way. And once she did realize where she was, what she had done without thinking, she didn’t pause in continuing on the course.
She followed suit up the dangling rope.
The female Damen had helped disappeared along the wheelhouse, removing herself from the fray, but Charlotte barely noted her. All her rage was directed laser-like at one target. Damen. She needed to destroy him.
First strike, and she didn’t care if his back was to her. Didn’t care if he had no weapon on him. Her sword sank into his arm, sending him spinning. Spinning away from her, unfortunately.
He turned, intense fury on his face as he searched for his attacker. She had only seen such a brutal look on him once, in the bowels of his castle when he was torturing.
“Fuck, Charlotte?” His face turned into confusion as he searched around her for someone else with a sword. As if it wasn’t even a possibility in his mind that Charlotte would dare attack him.
But there was no one else, and his eyes narrowed on her.
“You don’t want to do this, Charlotte.”
“Like hell I do.” She spat out as she lunged at him.
He jerked out of the line of her sword, and Charlotte’s blade sank into the wood of the wheelhouse wall.
He kicked the side of her knee, hard, and it sent her hobbling onto her other leg. She yanked her blade from the wood.
He disappeared along the corridor on the side of the boat, and she followed, until he spun, sword now in hand. Past him, she could see Skye and Aiden fully engaged.
He charged at her hard, the thick sword he had picked up high above his head and coming down at her skull. Charlotte blocked, stumbling backward as the boat lurched on a wave, and sent her onto her bad leg.
She caught herself on the railing, and managed to slide backward again to avoid his next blow.
Four more swings at her body, and Charlotte blocked each, sending his steel into the next arc. But now she was cornered into the point of the bow, with no escape.
Damen’s steel went high, and Charlotte got her sword up for the block, one hand on the handle, the other flat on her blade tip, just before his blade landed on her forehead.
He didn’t let his sword slip away from hers, instead, bearing down on her metal with his height and muscle. Charlotte wedged her foot into the corner of the boat, and gritting, shaking, pushed with every ounce of strength she could conjure.
It was at that moment he ducked his head down to her ear.
“You need to kill her.” His voice was a harsh whisper.
Charlotte’s face went to shock and the pressure of his blade on hers lessened.
“The half-breed in the middle of the platform,” he continued. “You need to get in there and kill her. Find a way. I tried. I couldn’t do it. She’s my child.”
Even though he still had a blade above her head, and his stance was ready to kill, Charlotte paused, debating.
He read her face. “Trust me, Charlotte. Fall back into the water on my next strike, and kill her. It has to be done.”
He pulled his blade away, and her eyes met his. She snapped out of her frozen state and gave him a scarcely perceptible nod. He returned it, and stepped back, quickly leveling his sword at her chest. He thrust it forward, and slid it right between her arm and ribcage.
Charlotte fell back, toppling herself over the railing and into the water.
~~~
Triaten didn’t even know Charlotte had boarded the other boat until he saw her falling limply from Damen’s blade into the water. He had been too engaged with three brethren of the Folotto clan.
Triaten and Horace had climbed aboard their boat and sliced through half the crew before the rest on the boat knew they were under attack. At the explosions of the other two boats, the Malefics had been scrambling about, trying to figure out where the threat had come from.
Even though Horace was a half-step slower than in his prime, it was obvious where Triaten had gotten his brutal skill with a blade from. Horace and Triaten had attacked the boat from the bow to the back, splitting at the wheelhouse and making way to stern. Horace shifted the winds repeatedly to keep his opponents teetering on the deck as he attacked.
From the back of the boat, Triaten could see that they hadn’t been wrong about the middle floating platform. They needed to get onto it and destroy that half-breed. The guard surrounding her was shoulder-to-shoulder, at the ready, and unmoved since the explosions.
On the boat deck, Triaten and Horace were staring down the triad of the Folotto brothers. Triaten had had countless run-ins with these brothers throughout the last eighty years, but they were notoriously slippery eels that always seemed to escape death. Which is how they put themselves in the position to rule the Malefics. They were both elusive and vicious.
Triaten could feel the hair on the back of his neck twitch, and that meant Horace was building a great gust of wind to blow past him. He shifted his feet on the boat for stability, watching the cagey brothers for a moment of attack.
Just as he leaned backward into the blast of wind, a fireball appeared above the boat across the way. Aiden was standing underneath it. Triaten scanned the deck to find Skye. But instead, his eyes stopped at a large figure at the bow of their boat.
Damen. Triaten knew he was going to be here, but he was surprised to see him with blade in hand. Damen pulled a sword backward for thrusting, but Triaten couldn’t see who he was battling. He hoped it wasn’t Skye.
In the next instant, Charlotte was flung back over the railing, falling off of Damen’s blade.
Time slowed as Charlotte’s body sank through the air, sword falling from her hand.
Charlotte. Hi
s baby.
Dear god, what had he put in motion?
And then her body smacked into the water, disappearing under the dark waves.
Triaten moved without his eyes breaking contact with the exact spot on the water where Charlotte disappeared. He ran and dove off the side of the boat. What he didn’t see coming, was the blade that shot up at him from below, slicing down into his shoulder, and cutting his heart in half.
His body flipped over mid-air, and crashed into the water, sinking.
~~~
Flat on her stomach, Skye opened her eyes after blacking out and immediately panicked. She knew she was only out for a few seconds—but shit. Where the hell did that fireball above Aiden come from?
Sparks of fire rained down on her husband, the embers sizzling as they hit his wet hair.
“Edmund.” Aiden seethed. The fireball, six feet wide, hovered mid-air over his head, and Edmund smirked as his feeble legs carried him down the steep metal stairs from the bridge. Edmund’s left hand remained high in the air, hand cupped, holding the fire ball in its place.
“A valiant effort. But we would like no more disruptions.” Edmund’s voice snaked through the air, cutting through the sounds of crashing waves and cracking fire.
“Aiden, no,” Skye screamed the second the residual electrical shards left her stomach and she could suck air. Wedging a knee under her, she pushed up, gripping her belly as her hand reached for the railing. She pulled herself up from her knees.
The Malefic on the bridge raised her hand again, ready to send Skye into blackness once more.
Edmund held up his free hand to the electric Malefic, motioning her to cease. A safe distance from Aiden’s striking arm, Edmund watched Skye get to her shaky feet. “I am pleased you are already crying out against what can happen, were I to drop my hand. It means you have a good sense of how badly this can go for your husband.”
Skye remained locked onto the railing, fighting for control of her legs. “Edmund. Whatever you want. Whatever, it’s yours. Just don’t drop that fire.”
“What I want, you little half-breed, is for you to make the decision.”
“Decision?” Skye watched in desperation as the fire ball ticked lower above Aiden’s head. “What are you talking about, Edmund? What decision?”
Edmund pointed far off into the distance at lights twinkling on the coast. “What you have back there, on shore, are millions of lives just minutes from extinction.” His words were painfully slow in coming, each syllable drawn out, and exasperating Skye’s despair. “Make no mistake, half-breed, millions. Millions of souls.” He smiled. “And what we have here on this boat, is your husband’s life.”
Skye wasn’t sure if it was the twitches left over from the electrical shock in her belly, or the deep foreboding at Edmunds words, that threatened to collapse her knees. She fought the jelly in her legs, trying to remain upright. “To the point, Edmund. To the point.”
Edmund sighed. “I want you to join us, half-breed. I want your power at my disposal. I want you to be a god with us. But this business is not for the faint of heart. So here is my deal. You can refuse me, watch Aiden burn to death, try to save the lives of millions on shore, and then die yourself.”
“Or?”
“Or you can decide your husband’s life is more important than millions of others, choose him, and join us.”
Skye’s eyes flew to Aiden’s, and he shook his head, his eyes moving pointedly to the middle platform. She knew he was telling her to dive off and take out the half-breed. She knew he was telling her to let him die.
She looked away from him. She couldn’t bear to watch his disappointment at what she was about to do. But this was Aiden’s life. His life. She knew she didn’t have the spine to watch him die right in front of her.
“Skye, you know what you need to do,” Aiden said, his voice not wavering under the hot flames of certain death. “You know I am not worth this.”
The fire ball crackled down, closer to his head.
“It’s an easy decision, Skye,” Edmund interjected. “You will be revered. You will be rich. You will be powerful. Aiden will be alive. All you have to do is say you’ll join us. Say those millions can die with your blessing. I know it is in you. I know half of you—the half you seem determined to deny—wants this. Let that half overcome. Let that half step up, and save your husband.”
Her head sank, and she stared at water sloshing on the deck. He had her. She was going to say it. Because she couldn’t watch Aiden die before her eyes.
But then Edmund’s voice turned into a sneer. “All you have to do is say you want the power. Say you want to be a god.”
It was the way he said “god.” The way he knew what she was going to choose. The pleasure he was going to take in her choice. In decimating her life. He believed her existence was an abomination, and the gleam in his eye told her he was going to revel in her pain.
Every ounce of heartache, and pain, and loss she had felt her whole life welled up inside. Welled up, and solidified the backbone Aiden always knew she had.
Skye tilted her head up slightly, her green eyes staring Edmund down through dark lashes.
“I don’t deal with the devil, Edmund. I choose the people. I won’t join you. And damn the rest of us.”
And she jumped over the side of the boat.
The last thing she saw before blackness hit, was another shard of electricity coming from the Malefic on the bridge, passing right in front of the ball of fire dropping onto Aiden’s head.
{ Chapter 25 }
From the side of the boat, hidden by the structure of the wheelhouse, Shiv watched her sister’s body light up with a bolt of electricity, then crash and sink into the dark ocean.
How Damen had convinced her to come along on this disaster was laughable. He had said they were going boating, a fun pleasure cruise. She should have hijacked their speedboat and gone back to shore in those first minutes after they boarded the fishing boat and she met his family. His brothers not only defined, but must have invented the word “asshole.”
And now this. Boats blowing up. Sword fights. Fire balls. Shiv kept looking around, waiting to see cameras filming the ridiculousness around her.
But any sense of skepticism at the situation dissipated the instant Skye’s body hit the water. Shiv watched in horror as Skye slipped below the froth of the waves. No matter what had happened between the two of them. No matter what Skye now thought of her, or she of Skye. This was her sister.
Shiv dove off the boat.
The swirling murky waters swallowed Shiv, but surprisingly, after the initial twang of the saltwater, her eyes adjusted almost instantly to the darkness. She could clearly see the bottoms of the boats above her, the large floating platform with the eerie green light flowing downward in a column from the middle, and the debris of the destroyed boats. Eerily, she could see even better than she could on land in the middle of a sunny day.
And as she began to swim downward, fighting the churn of the water, her body stumbled upon the elusive power that had been granted to her by the Malefic blood in her veins.
She could swim. Fast. Really fast.
And she could easily see Skye in the water, her lifeless body sinking into the depths.
Shiv was down to Skye, grabbing her arm, and pulling her to the surface in less than a minute. She didn’t know how her body was gliding through the water with such ease, why she wasn’t gasping for breath, but she wasn’t going to question it. Not at this moment.
On her way back up to the break of the water, Shiv saw kicking legs that looked attached to someone holding onto a large chunk of floating wood. From the distance, and what she had seen happen on the boat, those had to be Charlotte’s legs. Shiv aimed for them.
A dagger was swinging at Shiv’s head before she took her first breath of air. The blade stopped an inch from her neck, and she saw Charlotte’s face change from delivering death, to shock at what Shiv hauled up in front of her.
“Oh, shit. Ge
t her up here.” Charlotte grabbed Skye’s arm and pulled her chest onto the shred of floating wood, while Shiv heaved Skye’s body from below.
“Where the hell was she? What’s wrong with her? No—shit—I see it.” Charlotte had found the gaping hole through Skye’s belly. “You’re her sister, aren’t you? Shiv?”
“I am. Damen said you were a healer,” Shiv said. “Can you help her?”
“Yes.” Holding onto the wood with one hand, Charlotte ran her free fingers along Skye’s body. Her hand dipped under the water to check Skye’s legs, and then came back up. “I was on the other side of the boat. I only saw Aiden—” Charlotte stopped, momentarily choked. She coughed it out and continued on. “Did you see what happened? How did she get this hole?”
“I…I don’t know. I thought…”
“Quick. Think. What went through her?”
“I’m not sure. It was bright.” Shiv shook her head. “It looked like, I don’t know, a weird blast of electricity.”
Charlotte nodded. “Was that it? Only the blast? Nothing more?”
“I didn’t see anything else. She was under the water for a while before I got to her.”
Charlotte was already sliding her hand between Skye’s belly and the plank of wood. A wave hit, and Skye slid down the board away from Charlotte.
“Hold her steady.”
Shiv nodded and bobbed through the water around the board to be opposite Skye. She grabbed her sister’s limp arms and pulled them tight to hold her solid on the wood.
“Good. Keep her steady while I do this.”
Charlotte wedged her right arm on the wood with her hand under Skye, and her left hand on Skye’s back, covering the bloody hole. Her hands slowly took on a red glow, and Skye’s flesh began to mend.
“Holy shit, you’re actually fixing her, aren’t you?”
Charlotte didn’t look up to see the wonderment in Shiv’s face, her concentration so solid on Skye’s body. She did give a slight nod.
Flux Flame (A Flame Moon Novel Page 25
