by Angel Payne
“Who? Golden, who done this awful thin’ to you?”
“By the heavens, sister! Hush!”
Maya seemed to think that merely meant lowering her voice. In a rasp, she pressed, “Who is going to hear me?”
As if the question were a magical chant that summoned him, a familiar figure sprinted into the garden, jumping the hedges with feline-fluid ease. She hated the man all over again, cursing him for the breath he robbed anew just from looking at him.
The man-panther stopped as gunshots erupted from the mansion. His hair whipped in a dark tumult behind him. He started running again when a smaller shadow emerged from the mansion.
“Get back to the ship and make ready to sail, Dink. I’ll be there. Soon.” He halted again and bore his gaze into the forest—right at the spot where she and Maya crouched. “Lady Golden! Chrissake, it’s dangerous out here!”
“Oh, dear God,” she heard herself groan.
“Gollldennn.” Maya’s unquenched interest permeated her voice. “Who is he?”
Just thinking of the answer made Golden shrink further back. Confusion, terror, and a whirlwind of other unnamable feelings welled up inside. She couldn’t hold them back anymore. She couldn’t avoid speaking the horrible words. “The Moonstormer. He—he’s the Moonstormer.”
“The Moonstormer!”
“Sssshh!”
“My stars, the Moonst—”
“Lady Golden! I’m coming in there if you’re not coming out!”
“Oh, God!” Golden yanked Maya up and pulled her deeper into the rainforest. They plunged through vines and ferns, slogged through moss and mud, jumped fallen logs and cackling night creatures. Golden didn’t relent a single step. She willed herself to keep moving, anything to distance the demon now onto her scent.
Just when she thought her legs would break off from exhaustion, the silhouette of the rope bridge appeared ahead. The forest ended on the other side of the crossing. After that, it was just a scramble down the cliffs beyond to the beach. To freedom at last. And Papa.
They stopped on the rise where the bridge began. Golden heard the gulp in Maya’s throat coincide with the one in her own. The expanse of twined vines, ropes, and wood swayed on the wind like a taunting fiend from a bad dream—though forty feet below was where the real nightmare laid. The frothing rapids flowed into a waterfall that plummeted onto razor-edged rocks.
But Golden would rather take her chances on Barbe’s Falls than consider her fate from the gunfire echoing through the trees.
“Those soldiers comin’ this way,” Maya exclaimed. “And they gettin’ closer!”
“They’re following him,” Golden whispered. “And he’s getting closer.” She whirled back to the bridge. “We have to get away. We have to do it now.”
“Sister, no! We go the other way, through the cane field!”
“No. That’s too long. He’s almost here.” She looked down at the bridge’s boards as she said it, but she didn’t see the swaying planks. They were of another world now, a danger that no longer meant anything. All that mattered was escaping the doom of that midnight-dark gaze. She couldn’t endure it again. Those bottomless eyes saw her every vulnerability…all her darkest, most secret desires.
She had to get away from him. Now.
The wind rushed from the heart of the forest and moaned around her. It jeered with its eerie tune while it played havoc with the ropes beneath her hands. She clenched her teeth and held on, dragging one foot in front of the other until the crashing of the surf beyond the cliffs began to drown out the cry of the wind.
Freedom was a handful of steps away.
Maya’s shriek snapped her head up.
Golden would have matched her sister’s outcry but the air left her lungs just as her stomach dropped to her toes.
On the embankment ahead of her, hands on hips and legs braced wide, the dark embodiment of her nightmares stood waiting.
“You idiot,” Mast growled. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“Go away!”
Her snarl choked in her throat as he reached and caught her trembling chin with one hand. For the love of Christ, he’d never met anyone, much less a blasted woman, who was so bloody reckless, so damnably insane.
“Sweeting.” He forced a calmness he didn’t feel to his voice. “If those French bastards don’t get you, this farce of a bridge will.”
“So be it,” she snapped. “I’ll take any fate but you!”
He underlined an exhalation with a groan. “All right, listen, you impudent little—”
“Go to hell!”
Her words wrenched. Realizing it wrenched even more. He swore at the feeling as if it were an algae sucker on his senses, attempting to rationalize her behavior again. She was drained. She was hurt. She was subject to God-knew-what in the way of humiliation from those French fucknits.
And aye, she was still his responsibility.
Somehow and in some way, he still needed to get the exasperating chit to her father in one piece.
“Blast,” he hissed. “This has gone far enough. Come here and let me talk to you like a civilized human being. Do you even know what that means?”
The demand was like a fire under her kindling. She wrenched from him, spun on the rickety bridge, and dashed back toward the other side without a care for her balance or stepping.
Before he could think or move, she came down an older board too hard. Down it and through it.
“Golll-dennn!” the Carib screamed.
Golden’s own startled wail pierced the air as she plummeted between the slats. At the last second before her certain doom, she snapped an arm out, locking it around a thick board to her side.
Mast regained his breath in an exhilarating rush.
He expelled it in a furious one. “Stay still!” He didn’t swaddle the command in nicety this time. “Don’t brook me on this, woman. Just do it!”
Her topaz stare riveted to him with frightened intensity. Mast tore his eyes away from those glittering depths, only to notice the exhaustion already trembling in her arms.
He took a tentative step, again damning the tender emotion that threatened to overcome him. Useless frippery. Irrational nonsense. Throw the little idiot into the brine and be done with it, for God’s sake.
But Golden dropped her head as if the rushing water below appeared more inviting every second.
“Hang on,” he ordered. “Grip that board and don’t let go, damn it. Just hang on!”
She raised her head. Mast inched forward as their gazes connected—and melded. Was that uncertain amber shimmer the light of acceptance?
“I told you to go to hell, Moonstormer.”
Definitely not acceptance.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
But even if that convinced her, it was too late. A cacophony of high-pitched howls erupted from the forest. Before he knew what was happening, a gang of half-naked natives followed their war cries. Golden returned the animalistic yowl. Mast’s gut twisted just like the first time he’d heard that otherworldly sound, on the veranda at the mansion. He remembered the moment very well. A strange instinct had risen in him at that moment, a primal longing to protect…and to possess.
He ran down the bridge for her.
He never saw which board double-crossed him, but he sure as hell remembered the pain as his leg fell farther and farther, only stopping when his crotch hit the juncture.
“Ah, God!”
His crunched balls made themselves heard in his agonized groan. Somewhere beyond the blood that hammered his ears, a collective victory whoop shook the air. When he managed to open his eyes again, he watched Golden get lifted up and passed over a chain of dark-brown flesh that extended down the bridge to her. Hands and arms cradled her as a chorus began in a worshipful singsong. The tribe chanted in well-rehearsed reverence, like she was a precious ceremonial offering cup.
Or a living goddess.
The second she’d gotten back to the embankment, the
human rescue line coiled back on itself with a grace that, under other circumstances, would impress the hell out of him. Mast fleetingly wondered if any of them could be enticed to join the Athena’s crew, but that was before he tried to move again. His thigh screamed in pain, and he wondered if his cock would ever speak to him again.
Desperately, he peered into the darkness. How difficult could it be to spot such a distinctive head of amber in that sea of mahogany bodies?
Apparently, very. It was as if she’d melted into their midst. Disappeared.
“Bring her back, damn it!”
The words cut through the forest and across the sugar cane field—and stopped Golden in her tracks. The Moonstormer’s command clenched her muscles just like before.
She froze, movement as dim a concept as rational thought. On one side, her mind was held prisoner by hatred, fear, shock. On the other, she wrestled with perplexing awakenings in her blood and nerves. She battled memories of long masculine legs in black boots, of those legs pressed against her as he seared exquisite heat through to her very core.
She trembled in amazement. In the tribe, they had no secrets about things like this. She knew about things like carnal hunger and sensual desire, but had thought, as a white skin, such needs were simply not part of her blood. She’d been horridly mistaken. Her body had been given proof of it by her soul’s deepest enemy.
“Lady Golden!” His thundering bellow rode like a flame on the wind again.
“Oh, my goodness,” Maya cried. “Sister, you got to move!”
She couldn’t force her body into motion. Confusion attacked her. She wanted to stand and face the murdering beast—but doing so would mean facing his huge, beautiful body again. She’d have to stare into his blue-black eyes, and watch his long-fingered hands try to touch her. And, heaven save her, she’d want him to do just that.
Oh Papa, I need you so. You’d know what to do, wouldn’t you?
“Sister!” Maya reprimanded. “What now?”
“I must get to Papa. As soon as I can.”
“Papa?” The Carib threw her arms up. “You be a ninny? Golden, look at the sky! Look at the clouds and wind! There be a storm comin’ in, and the French, they all around the island like bees to honey. And girl, you not their favorite flavor of honey right now.”
“Bosh.” She stepped determinedly around her sister. “A few supply boats, Maya. So I burned the swine out of some new blankets and a few kegs of ale.”
“I believe you. That’s why they put you in chains until you turn blue in the fingers, ah?”
“Enough.” Golden snapped it as they reached the rise where the field ended. Ahead was the wide, white beach. From here, she surveyed the tumult from which they’d come. To the right, near the rock grotto, the torches of the tribe’s warriors darted through the night like earthbound comets. The lanterns of the pursuing French militia formed their flickering backdrop. Bellows thundered and guns crackled. Above it all, the Arawak tribal cries grew higher across the wind-whipped island.
Oddly, it was the most comforting sight in the world to her. Her people were there for her again. Once more, when the rest of the world threatened to break them apart like something trivial as a loaf of bread, these people she didn’t share a drop of blood with became more her family than any in her native England could.
“I’ve already decided,” Golden stated. “As you well said, sister, the French are everywhere. And the Moonstormer will not leave here until I do. Stop glaring at me like that, it’s true. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. You’re all in danger because of me.”
“Shush!” Maya commanded. “Golden, it is simple. The boat, it cannot go in the waves. Look. Look. You be rolled over like a turtle on the sand!”
“Who said anything about a boat?”
Maya choked. “By mighty Agwe, you not goin’ to call that dolphin now!”
Golden didn’t reply. Instead, she emitted four high-pitched squeals that emanated from the deepest part of her. She repeated the sequence as she walked down the hill toward the water, letting the sound of the sea envelope her, call to her as she called to it….
“Golden, this be crazy!”
“Ssshhh. I have to hear him over the waves.”
“There be nothin’ to hear! That porpoise won’t come in these waves!”
“No. He’ll come. He always comes when I call.”
“You’ll never make it!” Now it was a dread-filled plea.
“Pig spittle.” Golden kicked angrily at the water. “Nirvana is an excellent swimmer. You know that.”
“Not that good. The Bahamas are many suns and moons away.”
Golden laughed. That made Maya scowl but she couldn’t help it. “Sister, I’m asking my friend for a favor, not a death pact. We’ll go to Nevis for the night. Look; it’s so close you can see Powell’s Hill from here. In the morning, I’ll find passage to Nassau from there.”
“I still don’t like it. Not at—”
A riot of faraway squeaks cut her short. Golden looked to the water, just beyond the wave break. Sure enough, a gleaming gray snout bobbed with the current.
“By the moon and stars,” Maya rasped.
“I told you he’d come.” Golden beamed a huge smile, letting the joy in her heart shine through it. She ignored Maya’s eye roll and ran into the waves. When she was in to her waist, she shouted, “The water’s wonderful!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Maya groused. “Now don’t be gloatin’ about it. Go, sister…go.”
“Run, Maya. Run!”
But her horrified warning was lost in the crash of a huge wave. She could only watch, helpless and horrified, as he came further down the sand, his shirt billowing in the wind, his powerful strides eating up the sand between him and Maya. She could only let out an enraged shriek as the Moonstormer turned his bloodlust on her sister.
Chapter Four
If he lived to be a hundred, Mast would never forget her scream. So wild, intense, unnatural…aye, it had surely come only from the lungs of Wayland’s heathen-goddess of a daughter.
But the only one standing on the shore was the nervously-pacing native girl. He made his way toward the maiden through the wind, wondering which stung more: the flurries of flying sand or the panic pelting his gut.
Her wail came again, even more piercing and strident.
This time, the sound froze him in his tracks.
He warred with himself, denying seldom-wrong intuitions. It can’t be. It’s impossible. Your compass is just wrong this time. Your exhausted senses are manifesting ridiculous ideas now, Stafford.
No sooner had he finished the diatribe than the Indian whipped her head toward the sea—confirming every one of the suspicions he’d just tossed.
That unmistakable cry had come from those man-smashing, eight-foot-high waves.
“Golden!” He’d forever remember the dread beneath his shout. “Golden, damn it!” And the despair when nothing responded but the crashing surf.
He dropped his head, watching the tendons of his arms strangle each other as they powered his coiled fists. The dread was so inundating, he didn’t hear the angry bellows until they were perilously close upon him.
“Imposteur!”
“Lyeeng bastard!”
“Kill heem!”
Each was punctuated with the crack of a gunshot. De Bouille and his men.
Mast deliberated which course to take, but the Indian maid’s scream made the choice instantly easier. He ran for her. She bolted, eyes wide with terror.
He caught her elbow just in time. She writhed like a hooked fish in its death throes. Mast ignored her flailing. He hauled her close then pulled her to the sand, rolling atop her as deadly points of lead whizzed over their heads. “It’s all right.” He hoped she’d heard because he couldn’t stop for a confirmation. Again gripping her arm, he dragged her to the shelter of the trees.
They were both breathing hard when they reached the foliage. The native gaped at him, her brown eyes huge.
&nbs
p; “You,” she stammered. Mast’s throat burned as he remembered her “sister” doing the same thing. Thankfully, this outburst had a different conclusion. “You saved my life, Moonstormer.” Her voice dipped into awe. “Maya is forever in your debt. Maya must find a way to repay you!”
“No,” he countered. “There’s no time. Just tell me where she went.” He gripped her shoulders. “Please, Maya, just tell me she didn’t—” He shook his head, not enjoying that tack of thought for one damn second. Sure, Golden was an impetuous minx, but not to the point of—
“Where did she go, Maya?” he demanded through tight teeth. “Where?”
All he got in reply was the maiden’s tear-filled stare and trembling chin.
“No.” It was hard as lead on his tongue. “No, goddamnit!”
Maya drew breath in a shaking sigh. And released it on a long scream, as the gunfire started again. The bullets streaked twenty feet closer. Mast shoved Maya deeper into the foliage. “Run!” he ordered. He did the same in the opposite direction. Shots whirred past his ears as he sprinted up a familiar hill and across a jagged crest of rocks. He paused only a second before hurdling forward, making his body an arrow down the twenty-five-foot drop into the lagoon where the Athena lay in full-rigged splendor.
A rousing cheer from his crew was his greeting as he flung himself over the port side’s top rail. While accepting their jibes in good fun, he patted himself down. Divine intervention alone had kept the French bullet barrage from catching up with him. A new round of insults showered him about that, too. Cries of “lucky bugger!” and “kissed by the bleedin’ leprechauns!” punched the air.
Until a cannon boomed from the shore.
The ball made an eerie plunk as it came down just right of the starboard bow.
“Sweet Jesu!” Rico swore. Mast’s burly South American boatswain grabbed the wooden rosary hanging from his neck and crossed himself with it.
“They be a little riled, aye, cap’n?” A withered but kind-eyed seaman flashed a crooked leer.
“Aye, Ben. They’re upset.”