The Devil's Fire

by Matt Tomerlin

  However, his vision had been irrevocably altered. He no longer saw children laughing and running about the green hills of his plantation. He wanted to believe that it was a lie, but he had seen truth in Katherine's eyes. She would never bear him children. As terrible as that was, he felt worse for his mistreatment of her. It was not her fault, merely an unfortunate stroke of fate. How dreadful of him to blame her for something she had no control of.

  I must tell her I’m sorry. Beg her forgiveness. She is everything.

  And with a surge of confidence he affirmed that he would march back into the cabin and offer his sincerest apology. If necessary, he would prostrate himself before her.

  He straightened his shirt and raked his fingers through his raven hair. As he started on his way, a chill born of enlightenment ran through him. Captain Jonathon Griffith, bane of the North Atlantic and Caribbean combined, had fallen madly in love.

  Livingston intersected his path, face darkened by twilight. "It’s the woman, isn’t it?" he said, voice flat and lacking the usual respect afforded a captain. "Who else could paint such a foolish grin on your face?"

  "Watch your tone, Edward."

  "We’re pirates," Livingston replied with a shrug, "and our captain makes an ass of hisself, prancing about the deck with a queer grin."

  Griffith felt his teeth grinding.

  "Am I wrong?" Livingston persisted, glancing around. He snatched a passing pirate by his arm and drew him near and asked, "Am I wrong?"

  "No sir," the pirate replied instantly, not having the slightest clue what the quartermaster was going on about. Livingston released the man and watched him scurry off.

  "You see?" Livingston said. "They all know. Women belong on land, not on a bloody ship, and certainly not in a captain’s bed."

  "You want one of your own?" Griffith said, hoping to calm Livingston’s nerves with humor.

  "No! I was always smarter in that regard. Never let a whore cloud me judgment."

  "Is my judgment truly clouded?" Griffith demanded. "Have I led us astray? Have we not plucked our fortune from the sea, as I always said we would?"

  "A boy lost his arm."

  "And you murdered a doctor."

  "Thatcher!" Griffith spat, tossing a dismissive hand at the sky. "He weren’t no proper doctor!"

  "And Henry is?"

  "Thatch would’ve taken his arm just as quick. Would’ve smiled as he did it, that fat bastard."

  "Perhaps. We’ll never know."

  "Thatch would be alive if he hadn’t murdered one of our crew in the first place!"

  "True," Griffith conceded with a heavy sigh. "Everything we do comes at a price. Was that never clear to you? Did you think there would be no casualties? At least the boy is alive and will see his arm compensated for. Thatcher, he’s just dead."

  "Excuse me while I weep," Livingston snickered. He turned away, setting his palms on the bulwark and chewing his lip.

  Griffith moved beside him. "What do you care about some boy, anyway? Compassion does not suit you, Edward."

  "No more than marriage suits you," Livingston shot back. He paused to skim Griffith with his eyes. He came forward suddenly, feeling about the captain’s waist. "Where is it!?"

  "What in the world are you doing?" Griffith said, slapping Livingston’s hands away.

  "Where’s your bloody pistol?"

  "Dunno. Suppose it’s in my cabin."

  "With her!? You bloody idiot!"

  Griffith’s hand balled into a fist involuntarily. He smashed Livingston in the nose, feeling a satisfying crack of cartilage behind the blow. Blood spurted from both nostrils, dribbling down Livingston’s mouth and chin. He clasped a hand over his face, eyes wide in disbelief. Griffith looked down at his fist, which had seemed to move of its own accord. His blood-soaked knuckles had already started to throb.

  "You broke me nose," Livingston declared stupidly, black droplets of blood collecting on the deck.

  Griffith resisted a second blow while the man was stunned. "Consider yourself fortunate I’m absent my pistol."

  KATHERINE

  Her hands trembled as she pressed the cold ring of the barrel to the underside of her chin. It would be so easy.

  Griffith had forgotten the pistol on his desk, and it was loaded. It was the first time she had known him to do something so careless. She had waited for this moment for so long, and had nearly given up hope that it would ever come. He had been so careful until now.

  Her finger hugged the trigger, but she did not squeeze it just yet. It seemed the easy and sensible choice. She would never be free of Griffith. There was no love in her heart for him. Whatever physical attraction she held for him had dissolved, and now she saw nothing more than a wraith of a man, desperately clinging to a future that had long since eluded him.

  She was bound to a man she abhorred, and only death would release her. Tiny beads of sweat collected at the edge of her jaw and dripped onto the barrel of the pistol. Her chin quivered and her teeth clacked. She licked her lips and swallowed. Her finger was moist on the trigger.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the aft windows. She looked positively idiotic aiming a gun at herself. Morbidly, she wondered what her head would look like after the deed was done. Would the gawking gentlemen in London find her so attractive then? She pictured Griffith stumbling in on her corpse, with her skull yawning and her brains splattered across the bed.

  She saw a smile spread across the pretty face of the woman reflected in the window; the first genuine smile in what seemed an age. She was pretty, she realized suddenly. She was beautiful, in fact.

  She tapped the trigger repeatedly, her finger refusing further commitment. This is stupid, she realized. Only a man could concoct so silly a notion as suicide. Better I should use the gun on Griffith. The image was so vivid in her mind that she could see the blood running down his nose from a neat, smoking hole between his eyes.

  Of course, killing Griffith would only be another form of suicide, and she would endure prolonged torture before being allowed to meet her maker.

  Before she could govern these clashing thoughts, the door opened and Griffith stepped in. His eyes went wide in horror at the sight of the gun in her hands. "Katherine? What are you doing?"

  She looked down and realized she was still pointing the gun at herself. She resisted chuckling. "What does it look like?" she replied as casually as possible. Pulling the trigger had proved more difficult that she imagined, but she wasn’t about to let Griffith know that.

  "It looks like you’re about to do something stupid."

  "If only an intelligent option would present itself," she sighed, "I would seize it as eagerly as I seized this gun, which you so graciously left behind."

  Griffith paused for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth, searching frantically for the correct approach. He raised his hands slightly, letting her know he intended no sudden intervention. "Let’s talk about this," he said calmly.

  "We are talking," she said.

  "Why don’t you point the gun at the floor?"

  "So you can leap at me and wrestle it from my grasp? I think not, Captain."

  He winced at the formality.

  "I either point this at myself," she continued, "or you. Which do you prefer?"

  He was clearly at a loss for words. She liked him this way. Unfortunately, he always found something to say eventually. "I prefer neither."

  "You must have one or the other."

  "Is your life so terrible here?"

  "Not always," she admitted. "But I despise myself for thinking it anything but."

  "You think too much," he said, rubbing his temples and closing his eyes in exasperation.

  She kept the gun level, for she knew he might spring to life at any moment. His lazy gestures could easily be part of a ruse. "If only I could turn off my brain as easily as you and your crew." She was enjoying this banter, despite knowing it was the last they would ever have. That notion did not sadden her; it empowered he
r.

  "You think you don’t deserve happiness, but you do!" Griffith droned on.

  "I deserve every happiness except this one," she said, jerking the gun accusingly.

  He raised his hands defensively, and she wondered briefly if the bullet would pass right through his palm. "Be careful with that," he begged. "You would kill us both with a single shot."

  She snickered bitterly. The implication was clear: shoot me and you’ll seal your own fate. "What does it matter? If I can’t live with myself, why shouldn’t I take you with me?"

  "Because the men outside will kill you slowly."

  "Point taken," she said, returning the nozzle to the underside of her chin.

  "I can’t lose you now," Griffith pleaded. "You’ve given my life purpose."

  "So predictable," she said with an extravagant roll of her eyes. "I’ve given you nothing. You’ve taken everything I have. You care nothing for me. You care only for the way I make you feel. You expect me to continue living like this? This isn’t living. It’s a long and slow death."

  "Life is never what we expect it to be," he said, spreading his arms wide in an encompassing gesture. She thought he looked rather silly. "It is never the ideal we pictured as children."

  Her arm was quivering from the weight of the weapon. She allowed it to fall slightly. Griffith misinterpreted this as an opening and took a step forward. She tensed her arm and pressed the nozzle into her chin. He halted, but stayed exactly where he had advanced. He was making progress.

  "If you truly care for me," she said, choosing her words carefully, "you will release me at Nassau. Tell Governor Rogers that you rescued me from the last pirate ship you plundered. I will corroborate your story. No one need know otherwise. Take the reward for yourself."

  "I will do no such thing," he said. "I do care for you, but that very concern prevents me from releasing you. I’m sorry. I know you don’t understand right now. I hope that one day you will."

  "You speak boldly to a woman with a loaded weapon."

  "A woman who possesses no intention of using it."

  "What makes you so certain?"

  "You would have pulled the trigger by now."

  She blinked, and her vision was blurred with tears. The gun was shaking in her grasp, its weight tugging at her arms. She wanted nothing more than to let it fall to the floor.

  Griffith took another cautious step forward. He smiled softly and outstretched a hand, fingers slowly uncurling. His hand resembled an overturned spider, slowly waking. "Let me have that," he said.

  "No," she said. "There’s no other way out of this."

  "There’s always a way," he hissed, abandoning tact. "You just have to look a little deeper. This ship will not be our lives forever, don’t you see that? We’re so close now. So very close. If you end it now, you’ll rob yourself of what might have been."

  She pictured Nassau port, with its lush trees, and its pirate-hating governor. So close.

  "Yes," he said, his eyes gleaming hungrily, hand outstretched and beckoning her. "There is always another way."

  "You’re right," she nodded. She aimed the gun squarely at his head.

  The gleam instantly left his eyes and his cheeks went a shade paler than his heavily sunned skin normally permitted. "What are you doing?"

  "You’ve convinced me."

  "Convinced you?"

  "Only one of us will leave this cabin, Captain. Sweet of you to bargain so diligently for my life over your own. You see, I don’t really want to die. I never wanted to die. But I cannot suffer another minute of this world with you in it. In order for me to live, I must kill you."

  "My crew will slaughter you."

  "Maybe," she shrugged. "Whatever happens to me, that silly expression on your face is more than worth the trouble. When I am reunited with my husband in the next life, I’ll relate to him just how pathetic you looked when I killed you."

  All kindness vacated his face. His features contorted, clenched teeth showing behind snarling lips, cheeks blooming a homicidal shade of red, a single vein bulging from his forehead. "You ungrateful little whore!"

  She squeezed the trigger, but it required more pressure than she was prepared for. It didn’t budge, and Griffith saw his opening and lunged at her. The next few seconds seemed to stretch into long, sluggish minutes in which she viewed the events distinctly and without distortion. Griffith was no longer pathetically comical; he had twisted into some kind of merciless animal. She finally glimpsed what his enemies must have seen before he killed them. Muscles rippled beneath his clothes as he thrust himself at her. His face was bright red now, his bulging eyes threatening to explode from his skull, saliva frothing from his mouth. His hands stretched before him, fingers splayed and gnarled like claws.

  He had advanced within two feet when she heard a metallic snap, followed at once by a deafening blast. Something stung her eyes, forcing them closed. She blinked rapidly, cleansing her eyes with tears. An impenetrable cloud of white smoke was suspended before her, obscuring Griffith.

  And then, over the ringing in her ears, she heard his bloodcurdling shriek. A pair of clammy hands grasped her arms. His face passed through the smoke. She gasped and dropped the gun. It landed with a distant clunk on the wooden floor. The bullet had ruptured his left cheek and exited behind the ear she had bitten on their first meeting. Blood spewed from each end. The gaping, smoldering hole revealed shattered molars. He tried to say something, but only blood spilled out of his mouth, like water from a faucet.

  Katherine tore herself away from him. He staggered after her with frenzied desperation in his eyes, wailing and clasping at his cheek. She moved around the table as he followed. His arm swept over his liquor cabinet, toppling bottles of rum and wine. In her hectic retreat, the backs of Katherine's legs touched the foot of the bed and she nearly collapsed. She rolled out of the way as Griffith advanced, his blood-soaked hands pleading to her. He loosed a final, mournful wail, and then he collapsed face first onto the bed and lay still. Smoke wafted from the hole in his ear and blood soaked into the sheets.

  Katherine moved without thinking. She snatched the smoking pistol from the floor and threw it onto the bed beside Griffith. Not a split second later, Livingston, One-Eyed Henry, and five other crewmen piled into the cabin. They gawked in silence, slowly approaching the bed. Thick smoke collected above them, trailing steadily from Griffith’s head.

  Katherine sat on the desk, staring at the corpse, hoping desperately that the joy welling inside her was not written plainly across her face. Fortunately, she still had a few tears in her eyes, facilitated by the stinging smoke.

  Livingston loomed over the bed for a long while, like a statue. When he finally turned, she was surprised to see him smiling. "Tell me he shot hisself," he said calmly.

  "He shot himself," she replied in a shaky voice. When she looked at Griffith again, the little plume of smoke seemed to be thickening. The hole in his cheek was illuminated orange from within and dimly flickering.

  Livingston’s teeth showed as he grinned. "I'm glad you said that, Katherine."

  "What's to be glad about?" cried One-Eyed Henry. "He's bloody dead, he is! Don't make no difference how it happened! He's dead, and dead is dead! That's the end of it! Oh, bloody hell!"

  "He shot hisself," Livingston sarcastically as he moved slowly toward Katherine. "Our dear captain, what just made his life's fortune, shot hisself. I suppose our dear captain weren’t known for his smarts in recent months. Truth be told, there be more brains spread over those sheets than I would have wagered he had in his skull."

  As she gazed into Livingston's abhorred face, a strange calm swept over her. "He shot himself," she repeated.

  "And that might very well be the truth of it, strange though it be!" Henry wailed. He was crouched over Griffith, closely examining the hole.

  Livingston guffawed, slapping his thigh. "Henry fancies hisself a doctor now," he informed Katherine in a conspiratorial tone. "Probably thinks he can patch up that hole and send
Griff on his way."

  Henry’s cheeks bulged and he covered his mouth, convulsing over the smoking corpse. "Oh Christ, someone get a bucket of water. His tongue is on fire."

  In spite of herself, Katherine started to chuckle. The absurdity of the situation, of these pirates, of life in general, had overwhelmed her. The tremors in her belly gave to laughter, and soon she was cackling hysterically. Livingston scowled, and that made her laugh all the harder. She pointed at him and laughed, and then she pointed at the corpse of Griffith and howled. Livingston seized her by the hair and shook her violently to make her stop, but she couldn't have stopped if she’d wanted to. Laughter flowed out of her until she was at a loss for breath. And even then she didn't stop. She laughed until her face was bright red and her voice was broken.

  One of the crewman said, "Somebody plug that bitch's hole!"

  Out of sheer exhaustion her laughter finally died, but still she chuckled like a little girl who has stayed up far past her bedtime.

  "Feel better?" Livingston said with an arched brow.

  "I really do," Katherine admitted with a luxurious sigh.

  Livingston shook his head in bewilderment and said, "We'll do this on the main deck, where everyone can see."

  LIVINGSTON

  Livingston straddled her waist and, with cutlass drawn, spread his arms to the gathering crowd. "No guns for this bitch!" he bellowed. "Not till the very end! She's taken from us our dear Captain Griffith!"

  There was a collective gasp from the many that did not yet know.

  "Very convincing," Katherine said. "Even I almost believe you care."

  Livingston had to admit, this woman impressed him. There was not a hint of fear in those pretty eyes. But he knew better. "I know what you want, Lady Katherine. You won’t have it. In the end you’ll beg me to do it. And even then, I’ll keep you alive a little longer."