“Their faith in him is shaken,” Jack said. “I saw it. Hell, I felt it.”
“Ghost is toying with Finn,” Louis said. “He will never let him leave this ship alive. Finn knows it, and he will have to try to kill Ghost eventually. Surprise is his only chance, and a very thin one. Ghost will tear him apart. But Finn killed Johansen, and the punishment for that is clear. I have only been a loup-garou, a wolf, for three years, but the laws of the pack are taught to us in our first days. We kill each other, but face-to-face. A challenge is followed by combat, and the winner takes his place in the ranks above the loser. And if the loser should be killed, there is no retribution. It is the law.”
“But murder…,” Jack said, letting the word hang there between them, echoing with the clanging of pans and ladles swinging on their hooks.
Louis nodded. “Murder is different. The punishment is swift death. Ghost is playing a game with Finn, but the pack will see it as weakness. Might even wonder if he is getting soft.”
“Is he?” Jack asked.
The question troubled Louis—Jack could see it in his eyes—and it was precisely the reaction he had hoped for. The pack had begun to doubt Ghost. His savagery was expected, but they would obey only him as long as they respected his authority, and that had begun to deteriorate. Jack had seen it. Now he needed to push it a little further.
“He has been different since you came on board,” Louis admitted, nodding thoughtfully. “We wondered at first why he kept you apart … kept you alive. The others have all seen it before, most recently with me.”
“Seen what?” Jack asked.
Louis frowned, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “You don’t understand? Truly? Smart as you are, I am amazed.”
Irritated, forgetting that he talked with a monster, Jack leaned back and threw up his hands. “Are you going to spell it out for me or make me guess?”
Louis raised his chin, ears pricking up like a dog’s, and Jack froze, waiting to see if he had pushed the pirate too far. But Louis only gave an admonishing shake of his head.
“He’s grooming you. Just as he did me. Just as he did all the others, in their time. Making you first mate is an insult to all of us. Ghost has spit in our faces. I like you, Jack. But Ghost has marked you for death. The rest of the crew will want you dead, not only because of the insult but because of what it means for you to be first mate.”
Jack felt the ice in his gut spreading out to engulf the rest of him. “Grooming me. You mean—”
“I mean he intends to turn you. He’ll make you a wolf. And then you won’t be an insult or a joke. You’ll be a member of the pack, second only to Ghost himself because you’re first mate.”
“Never,” Jack said, bile rising in the back of his throat. “I’ll die first.”
“Aye,” Louis said, climbing to his feet, hands across the healing wounds on his chest. “That would be best for you. But if you want to live, consider this: you’ve got a much better chance of staying alive when they come for you if you’re one of us.”
Jack pushed his fingers through his hair, shaking his head, staring at Louis. “But you just said they hate Ghost now. They don’t trust him anymore. Won’t they go for him?”
“They might, if they weren’t so afraid of him. He’s the worst of us, the most formidable. Finn tried his betrayal in secret because he didn’t dare try to sway others to his side. Ghost made us, and he keeps us rich and well fed, but there is always some measure of discontent. It’s the nature of the wolf to want to move up in the pack. If Finn had tried to enlist others, it’s likely they’d have told the captain in order to curry favor. We trust each other with our lives, and yet not at all; for at any time, one might go for another’s throat, just to climb a little higher and have a larger share of the spoils.
“Mark this, Jack: I’ll speak for you, if the opportunity arises. But if it comes to it, I won’t fight for you. I won’t die for you.” He grinned. “I don’t like you that much.”
Limping slightly, Louis made his way out of the galley, leaving Jack alone in the gloom with the clanging pots and a bloodstained floor. Jack leaned against the wall, mind awhirl. At the moment, the only thing keeping him alive was Ghost. Their fates were intertwined. Even if he could add fuel to the fire of the pack’s resentment toward their captain, and turn them against him enough to mutiny, where would that leave him and Sabine?
Next to die, he suspected.
If they had any chance of survival, he would have to play Ghost and the crew against one another. And when he made his move, he would need to time it perfectly, and Sabine would need to be ready.
It was time to talk to the witch who had stolen his heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DIAMONDS AND DEATH
Jack spent the rest of that day going about his duties, keeping a low profile but attempting to fit himself into the role of first mate. It was a trying time. He had read books set at sea, and he tried to remember the mate’s duties from them. But they had been stories about high adventure and low men and had concentrated little on procedure or tradition. Still, he did his best, and when Ghost emerged on deck again and instructed him to issue an order, Jack did so with as much confidence as he could muster. Though he felt the crew’s loathing like a cool breeze on a hot day, they went about their own duties without a pause, and with no sign that they would disobey.
He knew that his new post was a sign of Ghost testing his crew, as well as Jack, and that they would take out their frustrations in darker, quieter moments.
When sunset came, he descended to his new cabin and tried to barricade himself inside. The first mate’s cabin was past the galley, next to Ghost’s cabin and across the gangway from the chart room, and Jack had ventured down only once to glance at it since being given his new rank. Much larger than his previous nook at the rear of the galley, it stank just as badly. The bare walls were scuffed and scratched, the cot was piled with bedding that might once have been white but was now the color of the sea, and the few personal belongings Johansen had left behind were broken, cracked, or torn. Occupying the cabin just made Jack feel more in danger than ever before, and he tried to slide the small chest of drawers across the doorway. But it was screwed to the floor to prevent movement during storms, and he sat on the cot and laughed at his foolishness. Even if he could move the furniture, it would not keep them out when they came for him.
For a moment hopelessness washed over him, like a tide of inevitability drowning a prisoner buried neck-deep on some alien shore. He sat on a dead man’s stinking cot and felt hatred and resentment darkening the air around him, compressing the walls and dulling his senses with their pressure. He was confident of his abilities and content in himself, but the odds stacking against him were staggering. One monster, perhaps, he could find ways to fight against. But a whole crew? An array of monsters, each horrible in its own right? What would Tree look like changed into his wolfish state? Or Ogre.
For a moment hopelessness washed over him, like a tide of inevitability drowning a prisoner buried neck-deep on some alien shore.
And what of Ghost, the worst of them all?
Jack clenched his fists on his knees, staring into the corner of the cabin. In that darkness he saw Sabine’s face, so sad and pure, yet hiding such terrible knowledge. His heart swelled, and his breathing calmed as determination once again sought to overcome the hurdles yet to leap. No one who won tremendous victories could ever let the odds grind them down. And no one who had to save someone he loved could let hopelessness divert him from his course.
“Love,” Jack said aloud, and the word seemed so pristine in these dank surroundings. He hadn’t known Sabine long enough to love her. And yet…
He stood from the cot and waited in the center of the cabin, not touching anything, trying to ignore Johansen’s stench, which he thought might be ingrained in the wood of this place. And he waited.
The ship rocked in familiar rhythm, timbers creaked, and soon he started to make out footsteps and tried t
o imagine to whom they belonged and where they might be heading. Closing his eyes, he sent his senses outward, as he had been taught in the Yukon wilderness. In his mind’s eye he built a schematic of that terrible ship, reaching out with the senses he had developed under Lesya’s tutelage and placing each of the pirates’ locations. Some were in the forecastle, ready to sleep the night through. Finn was tucked away back in the galley, shamed and vengeful where he lay in bedding that now smelled of Jack. Louis was up in the crow’s nest. Jack thought it was Demetrius who steered, and there were one or two others on deck, keeping watch and seeing to any rigging adjustments that might be necessary during the night.
Huginn and Muninn he could not place. They were an enigma, silent and oppressive wherever they stood. It was as if Ghost had created two shadows from his dark soul to guard him against attack and ill will.
From outside came footsteps and a door opening and closing. The footsteps paused for a moment outside Jack’s door, and rather than holding his breath, he breathed long and deep, as if asleep. The footsteps moved on, and Jack listened to Ghost climbing up on deck.
Now’s the time, he thought. Everything Louis had told him increased his sense of urgency. Jack had always viewed the passing of time as an expansion of his life and experience, but now each second ticked toward something terrible. He resented that theft of optimism.
He opened the door quickly, pulling it past the squeals set into its hinges by the corrosive sea air. The gangway beyond was home only to shadows. He stood in the doorway and looked left at Ghost’s closed and forbidding door. Across the gangway was the door to the chart room. This must be where Ghost kept Sabine, watching greedily as she expended her amazing abilities on finding vessels he could raid, treasures he could steal, passengers he could kill, people he could hunt and eat come full moon. Jack’s hatred burned bright as he closed his cabin door behind him.
Even as he touched the chart room door’s handle, he sensed the movement inside. There was nothing threatening about it—indeed, there was a warmth, an excitement at what was happening and what might come. Sabine is waiting for me, Jack thought, and he opened the door and pushed inside, left hand at the small of his back where the knife handle protruded from his belt.
“Jack,” a voice whispered, soft and gentle.
“Sabine.” He closed the door behind him, and the sense of this forbidden place was delicious.
She sat on a cot that hinged down from the far wall, past the table where charts lay strewn and smoothed stones held them down, safe from the ship’s movements. Her clothing was loosened, and her hair seemed wilder, as though released from clips he had not even noticed before. The room was lit by a single oil lamp, which cast soft shadows across Sabine’s sad, lovely features.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To see you, of course. To talk.”
“He’ll kill you if he finds you here.”
“Do you really think so?” Jack didn’t. He thought Ghost would beat him mercilessly, smash him about the ship like a child bouncing a ball against the walls. But he didn’t think he would kill him.
Not yet.
“I…,” Sabine said. She stood from the cot, her shirt open to reveal the hollow of her throat. Shadows dwelled there, and Jack yearned to kiss them away.
“We have to talk,” Jack said. “My arrival has changed things here, upset the balance of the crew. Ghost will change me when he thinks the time is right. And I can never become one of those things.”
“No,” she said. “You are strong, but you can never be a monster.”
“The choice will not be mine, once bitten,” he replied. “And that’s what we have to avoid. The clock is ticking, Sabine. I want away from here. And I want you to come with me.”
“Jack, I—”
He held a finger to his lips to shush her, and Sabine fell silent. He skirted around the small chart table, hand trailing across paper, never taking his eyes from hers. He moved close to the woman and her fold-out cot, and the intrusion into her personal space was obvious to both of them. Sabine did not blush—she was stronger than that, and less concerned with social niceties—but he did hear her slight intake of breath.
“I mean to save us both,” he said. “You’re trapped here even more surely than I am, because Ghost values your abilities, and he’ll do whatever he can to keep you here forever. Me? He welcomes my intellect, and how my nature is so contrary to his. And I strengthen him. He’ll argue with me till we’re butting heads, because we both know that neither of us can be swayed, until he is certain that he sees nothing of himself in me, that the last vestiges of his own humanity are gone. And then…” Jack shivered, really considering for the first time the practicalities of what Louis had told him.
“And then he will turn you,” Sabine said. “You have spoken with Louis.”
“Yes,” Jack whispered.
“He was a man, like you, when he led Ghost to me in San Francisco. Louis had heard of the man but did not know the monster. And it wasn’t long before Ghost started toying with him. He welcomed the stench of fear coming from Louis when he realized the predicament he was in. Relished the moment when Louis begged for his life and then did all he could to seek his own death. And then Ghost tied him to the mainmast and bit him, and the crew gathered around to witness his first transformation. The first is always the worst.” She turned away, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“The worst how?” Jack asked.
“Worse than death.”
Jack reached for Sabine, holding her arms and turning her to face him. She resisted initially, and then leaned into him, her arms encircling his neck and pulling him closer. They kissed. It consumed Jack, negating his surroundings, erasing pirates and werewolves and sinking ships from his mind, and for a moment he and Sabine were the whole world, and they existed only in that single kiss. His past was as vague as his future, and neither mattered when he had her.
Parting, he saw in her surprised eyes that she had felt the same.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she said.
“Why?”
“I…” She pressed her face to his shoulder, and he held her tight, wanting to soothe the truth from her.
“Sabine, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.”
“Huh!” She uttered a brief laugh and pointed at her cot. “I’ve so much to tell you. Sit here with me.”
“I think we should be planning how to—”
“This is planning,” Sabine said. “Sit down next to me, Jack. We might not have very long.” Jack did as she asked, and when she sat beside him on the cot, her arm touching his and her leg pressed close to his own, the terrible things she started to say felt so distant.
“Ghost isn’t his name. No one knows his true name, not even me. But he’s told me of his origins, and how he was made. And he’s revealed the nature of his nemesis, because he requires me to keep watch.”
“Ghost has a nemesis?”
Sabine was shaking. Jack felt it where their arms touched, and he thought to put his arm around her. But the conversation was about something unpleasant, and it forbade such contact.
“His brother,” Sabine said. “Death Nilsson. The original sea wolf, he was the first to form a pack, pull together the wild men, and work them as a functioning group. Before that, Ghost says, werewolves would meet only when chance drove them across each other’s paths, and when two met, only one would survive. Death changed that. He gave them drive and purpose, and he controlled the pack with vicious hand and merciless claw. His pack has been pirating the oceans for … many years. Even Ghost doesn’t know how long, but he suspects it to be over a century.”
“A hundred years!” Jack gasped. “That’s monstrous! Living so long as such a thing. How terrible that would be.”
“Terrible, indeed.” For a moment Jack sensed the direction of the conversation shifting. Then Sabine continued. “Ghost describes his brother with some sense of awe, which, considering what he did to Ghost, means that he must be even more monst
rous than the man we know. Even more brutal and merciless, and more certain of his own twisted place in the world. Do you see? No matter how cruel Ghost might be, his brother is worse. Death Nilsson is truly evil.”
Jack frowned. “It’s hard to imagine a creature more soulless than Ghost.”
“Ghost says he was part of Death’s crew,” Sabine said. “An honored part, as the captain’s brother, yet still someone lower down the pack. After Death was turned—and his origin is a mystery—he returned home to take Ghost and force him to sea. They plied their trade around the Pacific rim, performing hit-and-run raids on fishing communities, attacking and sinking small ships, and using desert islands as refuges when the time came to regroup, count their winnings.
“Ghost became disillusioned with Death’s direction. He calls his brother a fool and a ‘dog,’ but I suspect the pack hierarchy soon began to frustrate Ghost. He did not like being beneath his brother’s boot, thinking himself an equal or even his brother’s superior. Ghost challenged Death and lost. Beaten down, Ghost was humiliated by Death in front of his crew. A quick death was called for—they have some code, some sense of right and wrong in the dealings of their pack—but Death wanted him to suffer.” She sounded disgusted, as though ascribing even the basest morals to these monsters left a rank taste in her mouth.
“It’s the same mistake Ghost has made with Finn,” Jack said softly.
“Death tied his brother to a mast and tortured him for a day and a night. He never slept but spent the whole time devising new methods of inflicting pain and humiliation. When Ghost told me of this… I have never seen him so troubled. And even now I’m not sure whether it was the pain or the idea that it was his brother inflicting it.”
“I can’t believe family ties mean anything here,” Jack said.
The Secret Journeys of Jack London, Book Two: The Sea Wolves Page 13
