by S. M. Welles
“Time to kick ass again, my sea goddess.” Mido kissed Jessie on the lips then gave her fighting room.
For a moment she stood there, stunned, and then she developed a feral grin that encouraged me to sidestep away from her.
It didn’t seem like that was Jessie standing next to me anymore. She suddenly held herself like she was the most powerful woman in the world. She looked taller, even though that wasn’t literally true. This had to be Jessie with her avatar self fully at the forefront. No wonder she had the strength to overcome all the abuse on Tethys’s ship.
“Come claim me if you dare!” Jessie yelled in a voice too rich and resonant to be her own. That couldn’t be her choice of words either. I put a little more distance between us.
Mido went wide-eyed. “Jessie?”
“Amphitrite,” I said.
Jessie faced me, a sensual smile on her face. That smile made my gaze wander to her breasts tucked away in a sports bra and tank, just a bit of cleavage showing above the curve of her tank. My eyes snapped back to her face when she spoke in Amphitrite’s voice. “I look most forward to our meeting again. It’s been too long, Dyne Lavere.”
“It has, hasn’t it?” I did my best to sound casual as the shock of seeing Amphitrite take control of her avatar. I backed away one more step and brushed elbows with Jacobi. He shuffled away to compensate. “Mido, I think you need to be careful with calling her ‘sea goddess.’ Now probably wasn’t bad timing but… in the future? Yeah…”
“Echo that, Captain.” His gaze was a mix of awe and fear. “Jessie?”
Jessie gave him a feral grin, then faced me. Using two fingers, she drew me to her by my chin and pressed her mouth to mine. She kissed me long and hard while Tethys and crew argued amongst themselves. I couldn’t break away, despite having no desire to kiss either woman inhabiting that pretty body. Jessie belonged to Mido, and like hell I’d willingly kiss the one who cursed me. Jessie slowly pulled away and Amphitrite’s voice returned. “Now fight for me, my champion.”
“I’m not your champion,” I said flatly, wiping my mouth with a forearm.
“Oh, really?” Her smile contained only a twinge of anger.
“Captain?” Mido said. He looked at me with a mix of confusion and anger.
I held up my empty hand. “Divine intervention, I swear. Jessie’s all yours.”
He looked at me a moment longer before turning to Jessie and calling her name.
“I’m still here,” she said in her own voice. “Your kisses really are magic.”
“You just kissed Captain.”
She gave Mido an incredulous look. “No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you… you don’t remember?”
I said, “Like I said, Mido: divine intervention. We can discuss this later, if necessary.” Ugh, my skin was crawling after all that, but I mentally pushed aside the discomfort. The corrosion on the Rumrunner’s hull had progressed to the point where the metal was bright with rust. “Scully, now!” I waved my sword in the air.
Scully fired and the harpoon punched right through eight inches of steel as if it were made of wood. The bolt buried itself all the way to the tail. Shards of metal broke off and splashed into the water.
Tethys’s gunner fired at Scully. Right at him. Not at my hull. Not even at the Harpy. Him. The harpoon launchers were no more than thirty yards apart. Scully dived off the Harpy as the bolt lanced right through where his head had been. Fleshy-looking chunks sprayed the air as he fell onto the deck in a heap.
“Scully!” I and several others cried out. Cancer bolted to him. I wanted to do the same but I’d only get in the good doc’s way. Scully lurched to his hands and knees and shook his head, sending blood droplets everywhere. He raised a hand to the side of his face, the side that looked like one big red gaping hole, his cheek dangling from his jaw like a piece of uncooked meat. His arm went limp and he collapsed, lying facedown. Cancer knelt by his side and rolled him onto his back. I faced Tethys again.
“Come and get us, you cowards!” I sent a band of water for the gunner, knocked him from his post, and sucked him over the side like a receding wave pulls all things out to sea. Watching Scully go down like that.. it’d take so much control to keep Tethys alive long enough for his dick removal service.
Tethys’s men readied grappling hooks and zip lines, and I had a bit of deja vu as I ordered my men to back away from the railing. This was Newport all over again, but this time we were out for blood in any way we could get it. A half a dozen steel hooks clanged onto my deck. Several of my crew had to dodge out of the way, including me. At least I didn’t have to order anyone to hold back while hooks clanged against my railing and the lines drew taut. One cheap shot after another… I was so beyond pissed that I had to concentrate on not commanding water. I’d more than likely go too far and tap into demon strength.
Six toughened veterans zip-lined onto my ship, swords in hand. Their feet thudded against the side. And once they cleared the railing, the next six, including Tethys, followed. But before they got halfway, two twenty-footer great whites leapt out of the water like they were seal hunting and bit down on a pair of unfortunate men. The fish had pitch black backs and gaping jaws more than big enough to swallow an adult whole. The two men splashed into the ocean with their attackers, the men looking no bigger than toddlers in the sharks’ mouths as they turned the churning water red. Jessie wore a humorless smile as she held up her fists. The second group of men hopped onto my deck and the mountain of a man named Tethys squared off with me.
“That was a real cheap shot with the harpoon,” I said. “You fight like a coward.” I crossed swords with him as the rest of my crew entered one-on-one combat.
“Serves you right for how you treat my ship,” Tethys said in his gravely voice. “I’m taking your life and your ship before this day is done.”
“Less talk; more walk, bud.”
Tethys came at me with a powerful downward swing. Expecting the heavy blow, I dodged aside and scored a nick on his sword arm, then back out of range. Last time we’d fought, he’d thrown all his weight into each attack, leaving me unable to go on the offensive. Since he had to weigh close to twice as much as me, there was no way I could match his brute strength. I made him chase me in hopes of slowly wearing him out with his own overzealousness. I backed towards the stern as I deflected and dodged his attacks, squeezing past our crews. He barreled through them like a stampeding bull, swinging wildly at me. Sparks flew every time he hit the railing, and he didn’t even slow down when he scored deep lines in my tarp-covered lifeboats. I barely kept myself out of harm’s way. Tethys could move almost as fast as me and he wasn’t showing signs of tiring anytime soon.
Once we were alone on the stern, I angled him so his back was to the railing. In my peripheral I noticed Jessie marching towards us, uncontested. I called a large band of water to me and pulled it up over the side of the ship as fast as I could, but I couldn’t concentrate long enough to so much as touch him with it. The water spilled back into the ocean without him being any the wiser. He came at me with swing after swing, so I changed tactics and turned him so his back was to Jessie. He deserved a cheap shot from behind.
Once his girth shielded Jessie from view, Tethys suddenly turned and lashed out horizontally with his sword. Jessie went down, clutching her forehead. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, bitch.”
Tethys rounded on me as an anger-fueled band of water that went up to his knees swept his feet out from under him. He hit the deck with a splash and slid several feet as I pulled a semicircle of water around my boots. I walked up to him laying spread eagle and held my blade to his throat. “Never. Hurt. A woman. Especially in my presence.” Jessie had a curtain of blood dribbling down her face. She sat up and wiped her eyes, then just sat there, holding her forehead. Hopefully she wasn’t going into shock.
Tethys lay unarmed with hands held by his head. I stepped on one of his hands. He cried out in pain and reached for my foot, but I sliced his forearm and pushed his hand back down
with the tip of my sword, holding it over his wrist. He held still, his face red. “After all these years, why get this hostile?”
“You acquired something of mine and didn’t try to give it back.”
“So you hunted me down just for her?” I said in disbelief.
“No. I came straight here. I knew she’d try to get home. I torched it when no one would tell me where she was. She has the power to attract fish to her. I was making so much money until she escaped.”
Jessie wiped more blood from her eyes and unsteadily got to her feet. Hopefully that was a sign that her cut looked worse than it was, but she looked too pissed off to care.
“So you really are that stupid and possessive… I almost pity you.”
Tethys spat on my deck.
I sent some water over and washed it away, then held my sword on his neck again. “Jessie, I believe the opportunity to rip his dick off has arrived. Come get your trophy.” Mido walked up beside Jessie, holding his sword arm’s elbow. He was pretty dinged up, but when he saw the blood on Jessie’s face, his muscles bulged with rage. He glared at Tethys and offered his sword to Jessie. She wordlessly took it. Mido tried to examine her forehead but she gently pushed his hand away and approached Tethys, weapon held low.
Next thing I knew, I was down on one knee and Tethys was reaching in my coat. Then my brain registered the searing pain in my knee. I tried to push myself back to my feet but Tethys grabbed my coat collar. He also took my gun and dug it into the underside of my jaw. I stopped struggling, my gaze locked on Jessie’s. She stopped short. And thank goodness she did. I wouldn’t put it past Tethys to shoot her just so we wouldn’t have her if he couldn’t. “Tethys,” I said in a low, warning voice, “you do know that if you shoot me, you die, right?”
Half a dozen quasi-children manifested in a circle around us, materializing out of the air like a sudden fog. For once their black eyes were fixed on someone else. They were all crouching like they were waiting to pounce. I could suddenly see my breath and everything got dead quiet.
“It’s worth it. You’re going to Hell with me.” He switched off the safety.
I gave him a pitying frown, almost wishing he was right. “No I’m not,” I said plainly.
He fired the gun, my whole body flinched, and explosions of pain filled my jaw, neck, and back of my head. It was too much. I started tipping backwards and blacked out.
* * *
Jessie covered her mouth as Dyne toppled onto his back. The quasi-children drifted over to Tethys and placed their hands on him. He gasped and stiffened just like her father had, and then the quasis collected the gun and vanished, just like two years ago. Her heart pounded in her chest. She stood still, rooted in place with fear and bad memories. Her only saving grace was that the death of her father wasn’t nearly as psyche-shaking a memory as all the ravaging to her body. It was such a horrible thing to think but it was true. Her father’s death hadn’t been deliberate. Raping her had, and it had happened to her. Her heart ached for one of her father’s hugs.
Mido rushed to Dyne and examined his bullet wound, which was leaking blood all over his neck, coat, and the deck. Mido pulled the captain upright, slipped a shoulder under his arm, then hoisted him to his feet. Dyne’s head lolled, showing more blood down his backside. Sauna ran over and slipped under Dyne’s other arm. “Sam!” Mido cried as he and Sauna carried Dyne across the stern and to the entrance of the lockdown container. Sam limped after them, keys in hand.
The fighting was over. The last of Tethys’s men rode the zip line back to their ship, but Jacobi and Rammus cut the lines with their swords. Two great white sharks Jessie didn’t remember calling to her aid, but knew she must have, swam up to the splashes and lunged in, jaws wide. She looked away.
Jessie felt like herself again. Right after Mido had called her his sea goddess and kissed her, it’d felt like her consciousness had taken a back seat to someone else using her body. It’d felt like being half awake while her body went through the motions of regular activity. Even though the sensation had been a little scary, it had also been thrilling. She’d felt so powerful and invincible. She’d helped take down one enemy after another, going untouched until Tethys. She still had a hand over her cut. On top of that, she still had a dick to chop off.
Mido’s sword in hand, Jessie straddled Tethys’s legs and took in his pale face frozen in shock. The air was chill but it was warming back up in a hurry. “I wanted you to be alive when I did this.” She cut his belt with a jerk, then slashed a line in his pants from thigh to belly. “At least you’ll never hurt another girl ever again.” She bent over and sliced off a piece of his shirt, then used that to grab his penis and pull tight. She severed the offensive extremity in one swift cut, then rolled it up and hurled it overboard. “Rot in Hell!” She dropped the sword, then began beating on Tethys’s corpse like it was a punching bag, taking her rage out on it. This man had not only scarred her for life, but also torched her home and abused her ability to commune with fish. She pounded gash after gash into the corpse with her studded knuckles. Tears fell but their blurring her vision only made her punch harder.
At some point Mido tried to pull her away. She pushed him away with bloodied hands and resumed pounding the corpse to pulp, until she almost collapsed on top of it.
* * *
Everyone but Scully, Cancer, Dyne, and Sam were gathered in the galley. Mido was handing out tin mugs of herbal tea that would help dull pain and fight off infection. All of them battled the bitter taste with sugar, honey, rum, or vodka; just enough to avoid vomiting the concoction up and not too much to negate the tea’s effects.
Tethys’s ship had sank while they’d patched up. They’d been hoping to salvage supplies and check for imprisoned women, but who and whatever had been on there was now resting on the bottom of the Mediterranean. It was bittersweet solace. None of them doubted that any innocent lives had drowned.
Rammus stood before the table, staring into his empty mug, brooding. After dropping anchor and clearing the deck of Tethys and his dead men, the entire crew had spent the next hour suturing and bandaging each other. Right now Cancer was monitoring Scully closely. He’d suffered the worst injury of all of them—not counting Dyne. No one counted him since he’d be fine after lockdown. Memory of watching him get shot made Jessie feel sick to her stomach. She did a full-body shiver, then blocked out the disturbing image. Scully was still unconscious with half his face sewn back on but at least Cancer believed he’d make it. They had a small blood bank to dip into. On top of that, the bolt had missed his jugular.
Rammus, sporting bandaged arms and fresh sutures on the meat of his shoulder, cleared his throat. Everyone looked up from their cups. “We’ll head for Alexandria as planned and let our wounds heal there, until Captain’s next lockdown is over. Since Sam’s got a broken ankle and is now part of Jacobi’s Cripple Crew, this means we all need to chip in with keeping an eye on O’Toole. Got it?” The crew nodded their assent. “Now everyone dig deep and help the techies in the engine room too, along with Cancer keeping an eye on Scully. Jacobi, you’ll split piloting the ship with me. Everyone else work in the engine room in one-hour shifts all the way to port. All of us are pretty darn beat up. Don’t overdo it and rip yourselves back open. We’ll reach port in less than twenty four hours if we keep the engine running hot. We gotta get there as fast as we can for Scully’s sake. We’re just about out of medical supplies.” He clapped his hands together. “Now everyone get some food so we can push off.”
Chapter 23
Inner Strength
“Wakie, wakie, little soul,” a high-pitched, mischievous voice taunted. A collection of voices cackled. Their voices echoed off what sounded like a hollowed-out cavern.
Oh, god. Not this place again.
I kept my eyes closed and just floated on my back in the lukewarm water. I wanted to pretend I wasn’t here, but no amount of pretending would change the situation. The pain from my fatal injury didn’t carry over to whatever dimen
sion this was; just my soul and a physical manifestation of my body and attire. I didn’t come here during every lockdown; only when sustaining a fatal blow. I didn’t know how it all worked, but this was where my soul went, until I clawed my way back to the mortal plane. This was all part of my curse.
The creature snarled, and then I got a nose full of water as a small hand shoved me below the surface.
“Wake up!”
I popped my eyes open and flailed back to the surface. The water swirled around me as several fishy creatures darted away, laughing. I treaded water and took a moment to get my bearings, along with let it sink in that I was back in this horrible place.
I was in a deep cenote. Didn’t matter where in relation to Earth’s geography since I wasn’t anywhere near there. Hell, I wasn’t far either. All I had to do was wake up in the mortal plane and my soul would be reunited with my physical body. The only problem was, in order to do that, I had to exit the cenote via the dark, gaping hole above us. My company didn’t want me to do that. They’d do their best to keep me stuck; however, I’d escaped before, and I’d escape again. It was just a matter of time. Hopefully this escape wouldn’t take a year, like last time. My then crew from over fifty years ago had understandably taken me for dead. I had to start life over with a new boat and new crew. That had taken a lot of strength of will to get back in the saddle.
So yeah, even though I couldn’t die, this hellish place was the reason I didn’t commit suicide between lockdowns. Slogging through an unnaturally long life full of losing people I cared about was better than sending my immortal soul to Amphitrite’s vicious pets.
The cenote’s vaulted rock walls were lit by glowing plants and worms, and crawling with all sorts of mythical water monsters, mostly nereids. None of them were larger than wolves. They looked mostly like frogs with teeth and claws, and they clung to the rock and flora like lizards. They had bulbous eyes, fanged mouths like crocs, and finlike tails that packed a good smack. They were too many for me to contend with as a human, but no match versus my demon form. However, transforming was exactly what they and Amphitrite wanted.
