by Rachel Caine
I gave him a very slow smile. “If you take me where I want to go, I promise you, I’ll fill your ship so full of dollars you won’t be able to sleep without restacking bundles of cash.”
“Then give me your account number and PIN code. I’ll check it out.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t have a computer.”
“That’s not what I said.” He laughed. “You give me the information and I’ll verify that you’re not a lying whore. That seems fair.”
“Sorry. It’s all I have to bargain with. Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
“I was born at night, mermaid. Not last night,” he said. I didn’t like the confidence of his smile. “You show me cash, and then I believe you. Not before. Thiago, take her below.”
The guy who’d copped to being a comic book geek grabbed my arm and hustled me down the narrow space between the wheelhouse and the railing, toward the stern of the boat. “Hey, Thiago?” I asked. “I could use some help here. Talk to your boss, would you?”
“Shut up,” he said. “You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
So much for geek solidarity.
Two hatches later, I was shoved across a rusty threshold and into some kind of ship’s hold. It was nothing like the vast, spacious warehouse of the Grand Paradise; this was a cramped, hot, stinking metal box that gave mute evidence that the ship had once been a fishing vessel.
I swore I’d never eat tuna again.
“Hey!” I yelled, as the hatch banged shut behind me. “You’re really going to regret this!”
And that sounded so stock B-movie that I shut up and found a place to sit and rest my aching head on my aching crossed arms.
The burning torch on my back throbbed in time with my heartbeat, and I could feel it stretching back through the aetheric, a slimy tether that kept pulling on me, trying to drag me to the dark side.
“Keep your shirt on, Bob,” I murmured to the dead fish. “A girl’s got to sleep sometime.”
I curled up in a nest of burlap and old packing material from one of the crates, and fell completely unconscious.
Not a care in the world, strangely enough. Too tired to have one.
When I woke up, my whole body ached less, but that only meant the alert level had gone down from red to orange, damage-wise. No way could I swim far in my current state. I needed the ship if I intended to stay alive.
Well, if I couldn’t buy it, there were other ways. They were as dangerous to me as to the captain, though.
I banged on the hatch until I got attention, and was dragged back up on deck. It was midday, and the sun was dazzling on the water. I blinked against the glare.
Josue was once again lounging at the rail. “Don’t you ever work?” I asked him.
“Don’t you ever shut up?” He nodded to the crew-man holding my arm, and another gun dug into my ribs. “Now, maybe you’re willing to tell me the account number of all this mythical money you have to share?”
I shook my head.
“Wrong answer.” He turned to Thiago, who was holding me. “Shoot her and put her over the side. Do it in the stomach. That way she has time to change her mind before the sharks come.”
Damn. I was glad this guy wasn’t a Warden.
Thiago tried to follow orders, but when he pulled the trigger, it resulted in a dry click. He tried again, frowning.
“Here, let me see,” I said. I took the pistol from him, held it in my hand, and melted the barrel into dripping slag that ran through my glowing fingers and in streams across the deck. “Oh, there’s your problem. Man, they really don’t make these things like they used to.”
I heard more clicks as other pirates joined the hunting party, but I’d disrupted the firing mechanisms of every single gun aboard the ship in one fast burst. So many delicate parts to a gun, really. Not like a good blunt object. “Don’t make me blow up your ammunition,” I said. “It’ll take your hands off with it when it goes up. Classic choice, though. Who wants a hook to complete the whole pirate image?”
Guns hit the deck and tumbled, metal on metal.Weapons skidded from side to side in the pitch and roll of the waves, and an Uzi nudged my foot. I kicked it to the rail, where it hesitated on the edge, then tipped over.
“Good boys,” I said. The captain—no coward, even if he didn’t understand what was happening—pulled his knife, the better to fillet me. “Okay, not you, obviously, and I’m voting you off the island. Thank you for playing. Say hello to the sharks.”
I blew him over the side of the ship, out into the water. He hit with a tremendous splash and came up screaming.
I ignored him. “Right,” I said. “Your captain had an attention problem. Who wants to be in charge now?”
They all looked at each other. Nobody dared make a move to rescue Josue, who was flailing like a gaffed fish, although their gazes frequently cut in his direction. One man stepped forward—Thiago, who I suspected was the second in command anyway. “You are,” he said. “Miss.”
I smiled at him—my best, most winning smile, fueled by a wild edge. “You’re a smart guy. Thiago, do you want to make some money?”
“Sure.”
“Same deal I tried to make with your ex-boss. You take me in that direction”—I pointed toward where I knew Bad Bob was, as the torch on my back throbbed when I faced that way; no clue what the nautical course was, and I didn’t much care—“and I can promise you that you’ll get one hell of a great payday out of it. Better than holding up unlucky pleasure boaters, anyway.”
He exchanged looks with his fellow scavengers—okay, pirates—and one by one, they nodded. The sound of their captain’s increasingly desperate calls for rescue off the port bow probably had something to do with their quorum.
“Can we pick him up, please?” Thiago asked, like it was an afterthought, and pointed toward their captain. I turned my head and looked at him. The dawn wind blew my damp hair over my face, but I was pretty sure he could see my expression even at that distance, with that concealment.
“If he points so much as a dirty look in my direction, I’ll shoot him in the stomach and let him tell it to the sharks,” I said. “Make sure he knows that. I don’t feel like giving second chances right now.”
Thiago nodded. He had a good poker face, but there was a shadow of uneasiness in his dark eyes. “What do you want us to call you, miss?”
I smiled. “You can call me whatever you want, buddy. This isn’t going to be a long-term relationship. Believe me.”
Thiago gave some orders, the content of which was lost on me, but the ten or so men that crewed this rusty scow snapped to it. Somebody fished the captain out of the ocean and got him safely out of my sight. I felt the engines growl, shift, and surge beneath my feet as we got under way. The bow turned, heading toward a destination that wasn’t visible in any way on the horizon—except to me.
After enjoying the view for a while, I went down to the hold, where I found the captain enjoying the hospitality of the rotting tuna. I pulled up an empty crate. “So,” I said. “How about you tell me who hired you to fish me out of the water, Josue?”
“Vai pro Inferno,” he said. “Foda-se.”
“Want to see a magic trick?” I asked, and put my hand out, palm up. Nothing in it. I turned it palm down, then over again.
Lightning danced along the skin, clung to my fingertips, and dangled from my knuckles like a handful of tangled string.
Josue sat back.
“You know anything about Tasers? This is the same thing, only without the delivery system. Oh, and the batteries. And you know the best thing?” I leaned forward and smiled. “It never runs out of juice.”
There’s no such thing as a loyal pirate. “He was a man,” Josue said.
“Name?”
“I don’t ask names. He gave me cash money.”
“White hair? Big, blue eyes? Red nose? About this tall?” I indicated Bad Bob’s height, but Josue was shaking his head.
“No, never seen that o
ne. This one, he was weird. Shaved head. Wearing leather like out of some motorcycle movie. Scary.”
My heart took a running leap. “How’d he pay you?”
“You won’t believe it: gold. Sunken treasure. He said he’d just found some.” Josue laughed and shook his head. “Crazy people out here. All crazy. I thought I’d find you, see if you were worth keeping. He shows up again, I shoot him if I like you and keep the money anyway.”
Josue had no idea what a bad idea that would have been. “Did he say what to do with me when you found me?”
“Yeah.” Josue’s smile was a model of impish delight. “He said tell you Kevin said hello. And to take you back to port and let you go. Crazy. Like I said.”
I let out a slow sigh. “And you figured you’d threaten me into giving you something else? Or just rape and kill me?”
Josue shrugged. “It’s the way things are.”
“You are such a lucky man that things didn’t work out your way,” I said. “If they had, you’d be screaming your way to hell right about now, along with everybody else on this ship.”
He didn’t believe me, but he should have. I was in no mood to be Ms. Nice Guy, but compared to the fury that David would have unleashed on them if they’d hurt me, there was literally nothing I could do to them that would be anywhere near as horrible.
“My offer’s still open,” I said. “You take me where I want to go, and I’ll pay you enough money to make you king of the pirates forever.”
He tried not to look interested. “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”
I turned my hand over again. Lightning flashed and crawled. “You know I’ll keep this one.”
Josue sat up straighter, his eyes flicking around as if he was trying to figure out an exit strategy. He finally nodded. “It’s a deal,” he said. “Just—put that away, bruxa.”
“Hey, Josue? Call me a witch again, I will Taser the holy shit out of you.” I felt the black exhilaration creep over me once more, the stealthy march of Bad Bob’s influence running through my veins. “Oh, hell, maybe I’ll just do it anyway.”
I didn’t, but it was fun watching him think I would.
I paced the bridge as Josue ordered the crew around. I had nothing to do, really, except wait and think.
Think about Kevin sneaking around behind Lewis’s back to let David out of his bottle, sending him to pluck me out of the ocean.
Why?
Cherise, I thought. I couldn’t imagine Kevin getting the initiative to come running to my rescue any other way. We’d always cordially hated each other.
I was even more surprised that David hadn’t tricked his way out of the bottle again by now. It wouldn’t take much slack for him to snap the rope that bound him; Djinn had been doing it for millennia, and they were very, very good at finding loopholes to exploit. Either Kevin had been very specific about what he wanted him to do, or David didn’t really want to get free just now.
Maybe because he knew that if he did, he might end up fighting me, and neither of us wanted that. He’d wanted to save me. Kevin had allowed him to do it.
Kevin, you’re a romantic. That made me smile. I supposed I’d have to thank him some way.
Maybe by not killing him. That was a gift that kept on giving, right?
The sun was putting on a spectacular evening display, all clouds and blood, when the lookout called a warning. At least, I thought it was a warning—Portuguese wasn’t exactly my strong suit, but the tone definitely sounded urgent.
“What is it?” I asked Josue, as he left the bow rail to head toward the stern.
“A ship,” he said. “Coming up behind us, and moving fast. Big, maybe a military ship or a tanker.”
“Tankers don’t move that fast,” I said.
Josue continued to stare over the stern rail, frowning. “Could be more trouble than you’re worth, mermaid. I’m thinking I throw you back.”
“You want to go downstairs again, talk it over?”
He gave me a scornful sneer. “You can’t sail the ship alone. My men won’t work for you.”
“Want to bet? Just do what I tell you, Josue. If I feel this ship slow down, you’re over the side, and your crew goes with you. That’s a promise.”
He knew I meant it. He nodded. I had no doubt that later on, he’d try to stab me in the back, maroon me, or otherwise screw me over, but for now he was treading carefully—partly because I was a potential payday, but equally out of sheer morbid fear. He’d seen a sample of what I could do, and he didn’t want to see more.
I didn’t really blame him for that. I wasn’t wild to see it, either.
I locked my hands behind my back and kept my legs spread wide, riding the bucking of the waves with the ease of a long-practiced sailor. We both watched the dim shape on the horizon take on edges and definition.
Definitely a ship. Big.
The lookout called another warning. Josue looked up, frowning, and blinked. He cursed in Portuguese—no, I didn’t recognize the words, but the flavor’s the same in any language. “Storm,” he said. “Coming on fast from the south.”
My friend the storm had hung back, content to let me run; I wasn’t sure anymore whether I was holding its leash or it was holding mine. But something had changed. Maybe it sensed that the containment around the mark on my back was fading again, or that I wasn’t following my approved script.
It was heading our way. Fast.
The blood sunset had disappeared behind a boiling, rising mass of clouds—iron gray ones, with greenish-black underpinnings. It was already crawling with lightning inside. Power had been poured into it—an awful lot of power.
“Hold course,” I said. I didn’t think all that effort Bad Bob was putting out was meant solely for us. We weren’t that hard to sink, frankly.
As we sailed steadily toward it, the storm spread out, flattened, swirled, consolidated, gained density and deeper color.
Then it started to spin around a center axis—slowly, majestically, unevenly at first, then spiraling out like a deadly galaxy. The blender of the gods, taking shape right in front of me.
“We need to get out of its way!” Josue shouted. I felt the first breath of wind sweep over us, vivid with the smell of rain. The clouds were whipping toward us. He cursed me in Portuguese, and ordered his men to follow his instructions.
I locked the rudder in place with a burst of Earth power. They worked frantically to free it, but they weren’t getting anywhere.
As the wind increased, so did the amplitude of the waves, and the small ship was nowhere near as able to crush through the turmoil as the Grand Paradise had been. The vessel was battered, and when it slammed bow-first into the rising waves, the spray fractured into foam and coated everything on board in slippery, unpleasant slime.
Then came the rain, hammering in sheets that felt like needles. Josue’s crew broke out battered rain slickers. I ignored the offer, and stood at the bow, watching the storm’s progress. I could feel its blind menace, its anger, but it wasn’t directed downward at me, not even as the rain intensified into a heavy, strangely hot downpour. The wind speed increased, and the clouds rotated faster. It intensified as the ship crashed and fell through the waves. I tethered myself to the rail and resisted the waves that crested the bow and washed the decks, trying to pull me over.
Something wild inside me broke free as we rode through the storm, and in the blaze of lightning and pounding surf, I felt at home. Finally, completely at home. All those years of fighting the storms, and I’d never realized how much a part of them I was. How complete I was when I was with them.
I was almost sorry when we hit the eye of the storm and calm fell over us—but I looked up into the primal heart of the enemy, and it looked back at me with a kind of affectionate recognition.
Good dog.
When we hit the trailing side, the winds lashed us so viciously that we lost two of the crew, even though they’d been tethered. The seas swamped the decks, shattered glass, woke terror from seaso
ned pirates who picked their teeth and yawned at the idea of a normal tempest.
After a white-knuckled eternity, the storm was past us, and heading for its real victim.
The ship closing in on us from behind.
The seas continued heavy against us, and Josue wanted to slow our pace. The engines were laboring, and the crew was exhausted and sick.
“No,” I said. I didn’t need them anymore. They’d served their purpose, both ship and crew, and I no longer had to worry about their breaking points. “Just keep the throttle open. We’ll be fine.”
I wrapped energy around the straining pumps and valves and increased their speed. It wouldn’t last long, but it would give us more of a lead against our pursuer, who had the full weight of the storm to deal with now. I looked back to see its forward progress stalling, as if it had met cooler air to slow it. The storm was lashing that other ship with all its supernatural fury.
Josue, also watching, crossed himself.
The moon rose, but it was quickly veiled by clouds. As night descended on us, it was thick and black and claustrophobic. Only the shattered reflections of our running lights spoiled the illusion of sailing through empty, limitless space.
“Mãe de Deus,” Josue murmured. “It’s still coming, that ship. Like a ghost out of the grave.”
It was a ghost.
The Grand Paradise had gone down, I’d seen it. It had been too badly damaged and too thoroughly flooded to float, and yet there it was, gaining on our tail. The running lights were all working, blazing merrily in the darkness, and it was charging at a speed that didn’t seem natural for such an enormous ship.
It was trying to get to me before I reached my destination.
“Hold on,” I told Josue, and opened the throttles even more on our nameless little pirate ship, sending it leaping and slamming through the waves like an oversized, wallowing speedboat. The hull wouldn’t take it for long, but it didn’t have to.
Out there in the darkness was my destination.
I felt a Warden grabbing for control of our engines, and whipped a black scythe of power across the lines of force. It must have hurt, and badly. “Do it again, and you’ll pull back a stump,” I muttered, and gripped the rail tighter. “Back off.”
