I stopped and hid in the underbrush a few paces from the spring’s clearing, then caught the barest flash of a buckle glinting in the moonlight. A woman was moving softly and carefully. She stopped suddenly, and I knew she was aware of my presence, and I knew she was some sort of immortal.
I stepped out into the clearing with my sword drawn but by my side. “I mean you no harm,” I called in Spanish. I could see her a little more clearly in the moonlight now. She wore a black jacket, even in this tropical heat, and men’s breeches tucked into boots. I could not see her face clearly as she wore a hat low over her face. Her sword was raised in fighting position, and her crouch was defensive. “I mean you no harm,” I called again, this time in English. Then, I tried French, German, Dutch, Italian, and even Greek.
She spat in my direction. “Quite the world traveler, aren’t you?” she replied in perfect Cockney English. “There is no boat moored offshore and no skiff beached. Did you follow me by crystal? Why are you here? What do you want?” She stepped forward, leading with her sword, and it was then I saw her lean, unusually muscular frame, and that, coupled with her plentiful blonde hair, green eyes, and attitude, made me face-to-face with a female werewolf, and a beautiful one at that.
“You ask a lot of pointed questions,” I said. “Didn’t that bitch of a mother of yours ever teach you how to be nice?”
She scowled in the moonlight, and a low growl emanated from her throat. “You will answer me now, vampire, or I will take your manhood and add it to my collection.”
I laughed. “That will weigh you down mightily, my dear girl,” I said. “But, if you are nice, it is just you and me on this beautiful and romantic island, and maybe you could find another use for it, hmm?”
She reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace that indeed appeared to be made of dried phalluses. She held one of these up. “This is all that is left of the last man that tried to touch me,” she said. “Speak now, you wretch, or this will be your fate.”
I’d had just about enough of this insipid creature who was souring my relaxed tropical paradise, and her war trophy collection certainly had quashed my playful mood. “The only touch I’d like to give you is a good spanking to your bare bottom,” I said. “You need to learn some manners, and who knows, you might even like it.”
My witty banter was rewarded with a vicious thrust in the direction of my aforementioned manhood. I parried her blade easily and quickly realized she was all sound and fury with the blade. Her strength and ferocity certainly were more than a match for any mortal, and even most immortals. However, I had learned from the best and was thankful for my recent months of practice. But what I really noticed as I toyed with this howling mass of blonde hair was that Persephone’s work in the garden and the bedroom had made my strength and stamina greater than I had ever experienced before.
She stopped, her chest heaving in exertion, and wiped the sweat from her brow. She looked at the moon, now nearly full, and inhaled deeply, growing just a little bit larger and a whole lot angrier. She let forth a deep primal howl and rushed at me with uncommon speed. To be honest, before my visit to Paradise, I mean Hell, I am not sure if I would have been able to evade her blow. But now I chopped down easily on the hilt of her sword, snapping it in two, and swept her legs out from under her, sending her to the ground. She somersaulted in midair and rolled effortlessly to her feet into a defensive crouch.
“Nice trick,” I said. “Have you had enough?” I looked down and realized I was still holding my sword while this howler was weaponless. “Well, I guess this is not very gentlemanly,” I said. “I seem to have the advantage here.” I thrust my sword into the ground, sinking it into the soft island earth. “Are we done here?”
But the Howler was not done and leaped forward, not going for my sword as I expected, but directly at my manhood with a dagger she had plucked from her boot. The Howler was apparently obsessed with getting to my phallus, but not in the way I liked. I stepped to the side and caught her wrist and, using her momentum, flipped her to the ground and disarmed her in one motion. Her eyes went wide as she hit the ground heavily, unable to brace her fall. Not letting her wrist go, I ratcheted up the tension, until I could see the pain in her face, and placed a boot on her throat.
“Listen to me,” I said. “I do not want to hurt you. I do not want to kill you. I do not want to take you.” I looked down at a face that was much prettier now that the owner was not trying to make me a gelding. “I want you to tell me just where on earth I am. If I let you up, do we have a truce?” I could see her eyes widen when I admitted that I did not know where I was. She nodded as Garlic scampered into the clearing and sat down at my feet, ignoring the Howler. “Oh, did you have a nice nap, Garlic,” I admonished. “I could have been dead or worse yet, singing a few too many octaves higher!”
I had stepped back and let the Howler get to her feet. She could not take her eyes off Garlic. “Is she your pet?” the Howler asked.
Garlic now took notice of the Howler and growled in challenge. I laughed. “She is no man’s pet.”
“She is not just a dog. What is she?”
I realized the Howler’s werewolf lineage gave her a little more insight into all things canine, but I certainly was not going to share Garlic’s uniqueness with her. I shrugged, “She is just . . . Garlic.”
I retrieved my sword, and with the Howler in front of me and Garlic trailing me, we walked back to my camp. As we walked, I realized the most important thing she could tell me was what year it was. If it was after 1690, my contempt sentence would have expired, and I was free to go and do what I pleased. Ironically, I had no idea what that really was anymore.
I cooked the Howler some freshly caught rabbit over a fire and ignored her rather unladylike table manners as she made short work of the little bunny. In between her bites, I thought to ask her some questions, and decided I would offer up only vague information about myself. “My name is Sirio Sinestra,” I said. “I am a mercenary by trade and was the only immortal on a ship bound from Spain to India when a great storm came up, capsizing the ship. I was the only survivor and eventually washed up here, stranded without any crystals.” I could see from her face that she did not believe me.
She stopped chewing for a moment and pointed at Garlic. “And your dog survived the storm too?”
“She does a rather impressive dog paddle,” I said.
“Well, you both must be part merpeople, because you are on Saona Island,” she said. “That island over there is Hispaniola. You are about a month’s sail heading southwest from the Canary Islands. You are nowhere near India. This is the New World.”
I looked away for a moment, realizing the nonsense of what I had said. “All right, that is not quite the way we got here. Let me make a deal with you. Tell me what year it is, and I will tell you our real story.”
“It is 1692,” she said. I could see she had stopped eating and was now quite interested in Garlic and me. But I could barely contain my excitement. My one hundred years had passed, and I was a free man! A broke and nearly penniless man, but a free man nonetheless. “How did you get here really?” she asked. “Be honest this time, we have a deal.”
“You have never been married, have you?” I asked. She shook her head in the negative. “Well then, there is a court of law that governs the marriages of immortals, the Immortal Divorce Court. I was found in contempt of court and was banished to Hell for one hundred years. I escaped and ended up here. That is my story.”
The Howler tossed a rabbit bone to Garlic, who snapped it out of the air with an audible crunch. “I think you should have stuck to the other lie,” she said. “No matter, you are obviously a Spanish mercenary of some sort. Your sword and clothes are English, however. You could have easily left this island, crystal or no crystal, but didn’t. So, clearly you are a man in hiding or a man with something to hide.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “I was in
deed a man in hiding until you told me what year it is—assuming of course that you are not lying to me,” I said. “But I am now free of my obligation to stay here, if you were true to your word. So, what is a nice young lady like you doing skulking around this—what did you call it?—Saona Island? And does Spain control Hispaniola?” I asked the Howler.
“Spain had it all for a while, but now Santo Domingo is their only stronghold, which is on the east side of the island. On the north and west, you will find bases of English, Dutch, and French pirates,” she replied. “And even farther west you will find Jamaica and the great city of Port Royal.”
“The French?” I said. “Surely, you jest. French pirates, now you are the one telling stories.”
She laughed, “A lot has changed in one hundred years apparently. If you didn’t know, the Spanish Crown sent Columbus in search of a new route to India, but instead he discovered Saona Island and Hispaniola back in 1492.”
“Columbus, I have had enough of that wayward traveler,” I grimaced. That now long-dead explorer was following me wherever I went. To say nothing of his damned navigator.
The Howler was intent on giving me a history lesson. A lesson I had already learned the hard way. She continued, “He was looking for India but found this land, the New World instead. Mortal history does not even tell the most humorous part about that.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “His navigator, Martin, was ensorcelled by an evil bloodsucking female vampire, and he was so under her spell that he guided Columbus here not India.”
“Do not play me for a fool, Mr. Sinestra,” the Howler snapped. “If you know that, then clearly you know just where and when you are!”
“I can explain,” I said, and told her the story of Martin, Bloodsucker Number One, and the courtroom drama.
When I finished, she nodded in understanding. “All right,” she said. “That story is too farfetched for anyone to make up. I believe you. And I kind of feel sorry for you.”
“So what is your story,” I asked.
“My name is Anne Smith and I hail from Lancashire near the Irish Sea. My Pack has been sailors and merchants there for centuries, but a great crime has forced me to come here to seek a just and certain revenge,” the Howler said.
You think I would have learned that a pretty face is not immune from lying, and that a woman’s true motives are usually well concealed and known only to her own self. The Howler was lying to me, because through Harvis, I knew the names of all the families of werewolf Packs in England, and some of their members quite intimately. There was not a Smith among them. And Harvis had never mentioned that there were any werewolves in Lancashire. The Howler she would continue to be.
I feigned concern. “A great crime?”
She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes easily as if on her command. “Indeed,” she said. “I am searching for the Moon of Madrid.”
“What is the Moon of Madrid?” I asked. “It sounds like a Spanish ship.”
The Howler knew she had me as her captive audience now. “The Moon of Madrid is a white opal of mystic properties that my sister Cornelia wears on a chain around her neck. The Moon of Madrid is sacred to werewolves.”
I racked my brain, trying to think if Harvis, or any of his people, had mentioned such a gem. I sensed there was more to the Howler’s story. But was she telling me the truth about this Moon of Madrid? “Do go on,” I encouraged her.
The Howler nodded. “But the loss of the Moon is not the worst of it. My little sister, Cornelia, is as late-maturing a bitch as my Pack has ever seen, and she was born sickly and weak. My father entrusted her as the guardian of the Moon of Madrid to give her a sense of purpose. The poor thing cannot defend herself properly, or so we thought. Unbeknownst to us, she started a secret society that worshiped the Moon of Madrid. But she was betrayed by some goblins in her cult that served a different master.”
“And if you find the Moon, you will find your sister,” I surmised. “Why are you alone? Where is the rest of your Pack?”
“My three brothers went after the goblins, but . . .” The Howler put her head into her hands and sobbed.
I shook my head in disbelief. If the Howler’s tale was true, her brothers were colossal imbeciles to mess with goblins. They actually made faeries look pleasant. Goblins were shape-shifters, generally appearing human to blend in with the mortal world. But in their quest to accumulate as much wealth as possible, the most elite of their warriors could turn themselves into semihumanoid versions of sharks, tigers, bears, or whatever deadly creature served their usually nefarious purposes. “Why in the world did your brothers mess with that evil ilk?” I asked. “They started a fight they could not hope to win. What happened to them?”
The Howler just looked at me blankly. Then it hit me like a bogeyman attack—her brothers had been killed or incapacitated by the goblins when they took Cornelia. Fighting goblins required strategy and even then it was bloody and usually fatal. “Sorry,” I said. “What do they want with Cornelia, other than your father’s money?”
“Someone is willing to pay the goblins more than all the gold in my family’s coffers,” the Howler said. “She is to be sold for the most nefarious purpose.”
It was a very engaging story, I had to admit, and I felt myself drawn into the Howler’s big wet doe eyes, or more accurately big puppy dog eyes. “What purpose is that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and waiting for the big finish.
“Cornelia is going to be sold to an Aztec priest-king who is going to kill her while wearing the Moon of Madrid to complete a lunar-cycle death rite. Legend says he will get power greater than that of any mortal and be able to command the very tides to do his bidding. I have to stop him and save Cornelia!” She burst into tears, her body shaking violently with sorrow and pain. And either she was a much better actor than the faerie Pansy who had taught me a lesson so many years ago, or she was actually telling the truth. Garlic crawled over to her and licked her boot. Apparently, Garlic could not tell if the Howler was lying either.
There is nothing a man, immortal or not, hates more than a crying female of any species. “It is going to be all right,” I said. “We will help you get Cornelia back.” I ignored Garlic’s yelp of surprise at being volunteered to help the Howler. Licking a boot was one thing, but taking on a horde of goblins? Not to mention a murderous Aztec priest-king bent on world domination.
The Howler stopped crying, and since I did not have a handkerchief, I did the next best thing and handed her another rabbit leg. “Here, eat this,” I said. “You will feel better.”
I braced for the leg to be thrown back at me, but after eating it, she gradually gained her composure. “You will help me?” she said. “Do you mean that, or did you just want me to stop crying?”
I smiled. “Actually, both.” She feigned throwing the rabbit leg at me and smiled back. Yes, the Howler was quite attractive when she was smiling and not snarling, or trying to stab me in the man parts. Quite attractive indeed. Garlic growled at me again, and I realized I did not even know the Howler’s real name. My eyes took in her shapely frame. There would be time for a proper introduction later, I mused. She had her reasons for concealing her true identity. If the situation had been reversed, I certainly would have done the same as the Howler.
My mind was already working on solving the Howler’s problem. “What were you looking for on this island?”
She tossed the rabbit bone into the bushes. “Father had set me up as the captain of a crew of privateers, with the plan being to attack the goblin ship before it got to the Aztec priest. While the privateers were distracting the goblins, I was going to sneak aboard and rescue Cornelia. But once I got on board my ship, those bloody pirates, true scourges of the sea, had other ideas about who was in command. However, once I added to my necklace, they were nothing but respectful. We were on the trail of one of the goblin clan’s minions who knew where Cornelia was being hel
d, and just as we saw him land his sloop on this island, we were set upon by two Spanish warships. Outgunned, we ran and finally lost the Spaniards, but returned to find the goblin’s sloop destroyed. Not to call any more attention to my ship, I sent it to hide out at our base in Hispaniola after it dropped me here to investigate.”
“I see,” I said. Her plan to take on the goblins would never have worked as she and her crew would have been slaughtered. The Howler really did need my help, and we needed a plan. I could see the pink fingers of dawn creeping over the horizon. We had fought and talked all night, apparently. “I think I know where to find your minion.”
The Howler leaped to her feet and grabbed my arm anxiously. “Take me to him now!” she exclaimed. I was very conscious of her delightful smell of flowers with her standing so close to me. It made me want to nose her bouquet.
I shook my head for a multitude of reasons. “If it is him, don’t worry, he isn’t going anywhere, what with his head being separated from his body and all. Let us get some sleep. We will have better luck searching for clues when the sun is fully up.”
Chapter 7
I had done the gentlemanly thing and given the Howler my makeshift bed and rigged up another piece of sailcloth far enough away that both she and I would feel safe. Trust was hard to come by on our little island. I did not think she would try to kill me when I slept. She needed me and, like most women, would take full advantage of any services I could offer, as long as they advanced her agenda. Besides, with Garlic curled up next to me not even an overly aggressive ant had a chance of harming me.
My Ex-Wife Said Go to Hell Page 10
