“Got it,” I said.
Joni nodded. I glanced at Shelly and Finn, who nodded in turn. I tugged the reins slightly, gave Wyrmie a tail slap, and we took off in the direction of the canyon Joni had suggested.
I sure hope she knows what she’s doing. We’re risking everything by allowing her to use herself as bait.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s Joni, right? She must know what she’s doing…”
I wasn’t sure if I believed it myself. This kind of recklessness—it wasn’t like the Joni I used to know. This plan was either a stroke of genius or a fool’s blunder—there was no in between, and there was no way to know which one it was. Only the result—all of us dead, or pulling off a victory—could determine the brilliance or idiocy of what we were attempting.
Joni and the rest of the wyrmriders had gone charging after the swarm of sharks, screaming a battle cry, clinging to their reins as Shelly, Finn, and I snuck past the rest and made our way to a deep crevice in the ocean floor.
“Is this the place?” I asked Shelly.
Shelly nodded. “This is what she had in mind. Deep and narrow. Only one way in.”
“And only one way out. This either works, or the place becomes our watery grave.”
“’Tis the life of a wyrmrider,” Shelly said, chuckling through her words.
“So casual about it…”
“Every day we’re still alive, every day our people still exist, it’s a blessing. If this is the end, so be it. At least we’ll know we died fighting.”
I shrugged. “I always hoped I’d die in my sleep. You know, peacefully.”
“There’s no glory in that. No one tells fables of peaceful deaths.”
“I’d prefer no one tells any fables about my death anytime soon. So let’s make sure we pull this off.”
I bit my lip—where the hell did Pauli go and what was he up to? Maybe he saw the stupidity of trapping ourselves in a dead end and skedaddled before he could become shark food. Nah… that’s not Pauli. One thing he isn’t is a coward. The boy risked his life at least three times, and that was just in the last several months since I first arrived at the Voodoo Academy. One thing I was sure of was that he didn’t just cut and run. He was up to something.
I heard Joni’s voice grow louder—she was hooting and hollering like some kind of banshee as she and her wyrm dove headlong into the canyon, barely squeezing past me before yanking back on her reins and spinning herself around.
“Where are the rest?” I asked.
“Guarding the city, fortifying the defenses while they have a chance. Just in case we fail.”
I grinned. “We won’t fail.”
“Easy to feel that way when you could just take your blade and cut yourself an escape route into Annwn.”
“We vodouisants call it Guinee,” I reminded her. “And I’m not about to bail and leave you guys here.”
Joni nodded. “Going there tends to set off a lot of shit anyway. At least in my experience it has.”
I huffed. “Yeah, I wish I could say my experience has been different. But you’re right. Going there always seems to come with some kind of unexpected consequence.”
“Then we make our stand here. You ready for this?”
“I am,” I said.
“Good, because here they come!”
Chapter Ten
The first shark dove into the opening of the canyon. I yanked on Wyrmie’s reins, and a barrage of flames consumed the shark, its whole body dissipating into a smoky cloud. Before I could react, a half dozen more dove in, and more behind. Wyrmie—and Beli—helped me greet all of them with an all-expense-paid trip directly to hell.
“The plan is working!” I shouted.
Joni nodded. “Be ready for something unexpected. Anne Bonny will get wise to this quickly. She was a pirate in her earthly life—she’ll respect our move, then try to one-up us. Somehow. It’s just a matter of time…”
I heard a loud thud. I felt a ripple in the water.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Guard her post,” Joni said to Shelly. “Finn, watch her flank.”
“We’re in a ravine. What could possibly…”
Bang!
“What the…”
“They’re burrowing under the seafloor,” Joni said. “Trying to either break into the ravine from the side walls or force it to collapse on top of us.”
“Sharks can… burrow?”
“She has more than sharks in her undead army,” Joni said. “It’s probably crabs creating tunnels for the sharks.”
“Must be some giant crabs,” I said.
Joni shook her head. “A few million at once might do it, too.”
I squeezed Wyrmie’s reins, unleashing torrent of green flames, dispatching another group of sharks to the land of the dead. “Maybe that’s why more aren’t coming through this way.”
“She’s seeding just enough through the gully to keep us too occupied to worry about her diggers. She has the rest waiting to come at us from different angles.”
“She’s going to ambush us down here,” I said. “There will be no way out, and I can only take them out one direction at a time.”
“Can Isabelle help?” Joni asked.
If I take the reins, I can probably cast a shell around us… protect us for a while. It’s life magic, so the sharks won’t be able to get through. But we’ll basically be stuck here and they’ll just wait us out until we either make a move or starve to death waiting.
I shook my head. “She can shield us if need be, but we’d still be surrounded. They’d just wait for us to move, and the undead have nothing but time…”
“Meanwhile they’d keep assaulting the city,” Joni said, “forcing us to try to fight our way out.”
“We have to fight our way back out of here and hope we can get into the clear before they can pin us in.”
Joni shook her head. “They’ll have our way out swarming with sharks. Our chances—”
“Are better than if we stay down here and get hemmed in on all sides,” I said.
BANG.
“They’re getting close,” Joni said. “We have to do something quick!”
I bit my lip, shrugged, and gave Wyrmie a kick. “I’ll try to clear the exit. You guys regroup and protect the city.”
A bright rainbow-colored light appeared just in front of where I was heading. I yanked hard on the reins, forcing Wyrmie to recoil backward.
“Pauli, what the…”
Pauli was there—his rainbow-colored form wrapped around a figure. She had red hair, he complexion pale. “Special delivery!” Pauli shouted. “Someone order a pirate bitch?”
“That’s Anne Bonny?” I asked.
Joni nodded.
“Let me go, you bloody snake!” Anne shouted through a thick Irish brogue.
I smirked. “Finally, there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow, even if that rainbow happens to be a snake.”
“I’m no booty!” Bonny shouted.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not the treasure… the booty. You don’t know what you’re messing with.”
I released the reins—which had been formed by Beli—and recalled him in my hand, this time in the form of a blade.
“Draw your weapon,” I demanded.
Anne Bonny smirked, extended her hand, and a massive trident formed in it, blue energies dancing around what looked like diamond-tipped daggers on each of its three forks. “All the elements, to meet at last. May the surest of us win.”
I gave my tail a kick and charged toward the pirate. She parried to the left. I might have been trained in warfare by Oggie, but compared to this undead pirate—or whatever she was—my experience in hand-to-hand battle was lacking. Staking a few vampires took skill—more like brute determination and fearlessness. This took a more refined approach.
“If you want our weapons to meet, why not allow it?” I asked, attempting another jab at her unsuccessfully.
“Like I said, you d
on’t know what you’re messing with. You don’t know what I am… how I came to be.”
“You ready to hold off your zombie army while you take your time to explain it?”
Anne Bonny raised a hand. “They’re retreating. For now.”
“What is it you want?”
“Plunder. Booty. It’s who I am.”
“And you’ll take out this city and these people just to get riches, a plunder you could never spend anyway on account of being… whatever you are?”
“I am bound by a bargain,” Anne Bonny said. “Piracy and plunder—that was my life before. It remains the purpose of my ongoing existence. If I do not persist…”
“Wait… you said a bargain. A bargain with whom?”
“Kalfu, Loa of the crossroads.”
“Fuck,” I said. “I should have known he’d be behind this, too.”
Anne Bonny cocked her head. “You know this Loa?”
“He’s attempting to raise an army on land even as we speak, an army of powerful Mambos and Hougans.”
“To assault the land of the living?”
I nodded. “Probably. Whatever he’s up to can’t be good.”
“Nay, it cannot,” Anne Bonny said. “But I must tell you, my nature compels me to attack. I am driven by my bargain, by my curse to spend an eternity as a plunderer.”
“And what do you do with whatever you plunder?” I asked.
“The master claims it as his own.”
“Kalfu?”
Anne Bonny nodded.
“To do what with it?”
The pirate shook her head. “I cannot say. But I have no choice. You must understand. It is taking all I have, all my will, to even pause a moment to tell you these things.”
“What did you receive in exchange for this curse?”
“I bargained an eternal life, an eternity as a pirate, and he demanded nothing in return but loyalty.”
“And as a pirate, you thought you were getting a deal.”
Anne Bonny nodded. “Aye. But this existence… it wearies the soul.”
“Agwe said you now inhabit a host who was once his.”
“Aye, though I’ve shifted it to resemble my earthly form.”
“Wait, you can shape-shift?”
“The trident allows it,” Anne said.
“And if you release it… if I take it from you…”
“I will lose myself, bound still to an eternity but in the form of the host whose body I claim.”
“There may be another way,” Joni interjected.
“La Sirene,” Anne Bonny said, addressing Joni. “We finally meet face-to-face.”
“Yet you have not yet attempted to strike me down.”
“Were I to do it, I know your mighty wyrm would turn against you. It would assure my victory.”
“You say that as if that’s exactly why you are not attacking her,” I said. “As if you are trying to avoid a victory.”
“My curse is an eternity in piracy, to plunder. It does not demand any definite victory. Were she to fall, and her city remain defenseless, I’d be compelled to seize upon it all at once. Once that was done, I’d be left with nothing more to plunder. Bound to an eternity seeking random seafaring vessels to assault… a dull existence.”
“So you haven’t completely destroyed these people… so you can keep toying with them?” I asked.
Anne Bonny nodded. “My curse, my bargain… it compels me to an eternity of piracy. And keeping these people alive, as they continue to amass new treasures… there is more to plunder the longer I allow them to remain.”
“But you’re assaulting our city at this very moment!” Joni said.
Anne Bonny nodded. “I would leave behind a remnant, enough that you might rebuild and I might plunder your people again.”
“But there is another way,” Joni said. “If you’ll let me help you.”
“Fuck that!” a voice from behind our position screamed.
Seconds later, a wyrm charged past me, Finn atop it. “This if for Evan, you bitch!”
“Finn, no!” Joni shouted.
Anne Bonny jabbed her trident into the belly of Finn’s wyrm, sending Finn tumbling through the waters into the wall of the canyon.
Before Anne Bonny could leap atop Finn with her trident, Shelly charged. Again, Anne Bonny dodged the assault, and struck Shelly’s wyrm.
I quickly flipped my tail and darted in between Anne Bonny and the twins—lifting my soul blade and blocking what would have been a jab of Anne Bonny’s trident directly into Shelly’s gut.
A torrent of energies exploded as her trident met my blade.
“Beli!” I shouted, hoping my blade would reform in my hand.
It did… but Anne Bonny’s trident went hurling through the air.
The elements will seek whoever is truest to themselves…
My blade reformed in my hand as before… and the trident flew at Pauli, who quickly coiled himself around it.
A blue energy consumed Pauli’s serpentine form. His scales pulled apart. I could almost hear him giggling as arms and legs sprouted from his boa constrictor body. His pointed head rounded out. He was shifting into his human body…
I couldn’t help but smile. Pauli looked like himself again! Still, there was work to do. I charged after Anne Bonny—now without a weapon—and struck her with my blade.
It did nothing. She stood there, staring at me blankly.
“You can’t send me to hell. My curse binds me… my bargain.”
I shook my head.
Joni, diving from her wyrm, swam into position and seized Anne Bonny. “There is another way,” Joni said. “I can take this burden from you.”
“Joni,” I cried. “Don’t do it.” As a siphon, Joni could absorb any kind of magical energy and amplify it. She could claim it and master it. But she’d absorbed a curse before—a curse from one bound to a dragon’s form, and she said that even after releasing it, something left a mark on her. What would this curse do to her?
Before I could intervene, Joni had placed her hand to Anne Bonny’s skull and inhaled. Red magica flowed from Anne Bonny into Joni, turning Joni’s normally blue eyes purple—a mixture of her Fomorian magica and Anne Bonny’s curse.
“No!” I shouted. The last thing anyone needed was Joni—La Sirene—commander of the wyrmriders, to be consumed by a piracy curse.
I looked at Anne Bonny—now free of her curse. Her body had begun to shift back into whatever form her host had been before. Her red hair turned gray. Her arms were beginning to swell.
“Please, whoever you are, the one with the blade…”
I nodded. I knew what she wanted. I sliced my soul blade across her shifting form—her body disintegrated in a black cloud. I’d put Anne Bonny to rest.
“Shelly, Finn, on the back of my wyrm!” Joni commanded.
They both mounted it. I hopped back onto mine, and Pauli teleported himself behind me.
Suddenly he burst out into a rap. “Guess who’s back, back again. Pauli’s back, tell a friend!”
I chuckled. “You’re a real boy again!”
“Not exactly,” Pauli said. “I’m still the snake. But now I’m a shape-shifting snake. And I like this form better!”
I laughed as I slapped Wyrmie gently with my tail. “You look exactly the same as before!”
“Almost! I made some slight modifications!”
“Do I want to ask?”
“I added an extra inch and a half. For good measure.”
“An extra inch and a half… to your height?”
“No, honey.”
“Oh.” I busted a gut laughing as soon as I realized where he’d added the extra length. I should have known. Only Pauli.
I’m worried about Joni…
I nodded. “Me, too, Isabelle.”
Joni pulled up beside me on her wyrm. She nodded at me. Her eyes still looked vaguely purple.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. “That curse… it will change you.”
&nb
sp; Joni nodded. “It is a burden I will have to bear. My Fomorian magic should be able to suppress the curse’s influence. At least for a time.”
“For a time? That doesn’t sound good. If it consumes you… you command the wyrm…”
Joni smiled calmly. “The curse is bound to Kalfu. I’m trusting you are going to defeat him.”
I shook my head. “You are putting too much faith in me. You shouldn’t have risked your people like that.”
“My people were going to fall to Anne Bonny eventually if I did nothing. At best, they’d live a perpetual existence exploited by her plunders. Now, thanks to you, we have a chance at freedom. I am not putting too much faith in you, Annabelle. The problem is that you don’t have enough faith in yourself.”
I nodded. “Well, at least Pauli has the trident. It’s an advantage we didn’t have before. Still, I don’t understand. I thought our weapons were supposed to merge.”
“Elemental magic is a mysterious thing,” Joni said. “Unpredictable. Apparently each element chose those truest to themselves—Beli already knew your heart, and remained with you. And the trident chose your friend.”
“One thing about Pauli… he’s always true to himself.”
Chapter Eleven
“I need you to put me in the brig,” Joni told Titus as we dismounted our wyrms.
“La Sirene! I must respectfully ask why. It seems you’ve scored a marvelous victory!”
Joni nodded. “But the victory has come with a burden. It is something that I must bear alone.”
A perplexed look fell on Titus’s face, but he nodded and responded affirmatively. “Of course, La Sirene.”
Joni nodded. “Thank you, Annabelle, Isabelle, Pauli.” She turned to walk away.
“Joni, wait!” I said.
Joni paused and looked back at me, her lips pressed together.
“How long will this take? Before you’re free of the curse, I mean.”
“I wish I could say. This is unlike any other curse, different than any magic I’ve ever siphoned. I may never master it fully.”
“Then you’ll be locked up here forever?”
Joni shook her head. “Just get on with kicking Kalfu’s demon ass and we won’t have anything to worry about.”
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