by Angel Payne
Her nausea swelled. Golden shook with the effort to battle the bile down. “You—and Ben—plotted against Mast—”
“Ben has nothing to do with this anymore!”
Nanchez lurched to his feet on a strange burst of rage. “If you are bestowing acclaim for my work, it goes to me. All of it.”
She swallowed again. The Spaniard’s words echoed with finality. “Wh-What did you do with—oh, dear God.” She’d found her answer in the sight of Ben’s blood-stained body, crumpled against the far wall of the cave.
As Nanchez followed her stare, he broke into a small chuckle. He burst into a full laugh. And another. He seemed to swell and dominate the cave. His shadow bounced larger than life on the rock walls.
“You’re insane,” Golden rasped.
“Insane?” His slow snarl made her yearn for the gloating laughs again. “Dear lady, who is the insane, the pied piper or the vermin that follow him? Don’t you know it’s jungle brats like you that made me into the legend I am today? Oh sí, all of you, with your island ways and your stubborn native pride. I merely milked you fools for what all your blind superstition was worth.”
She was really going to throw up now. In a horrible way, Nanchez was right, and his gleaming glare was the horrific evidence. Sparks from the fire popped into the air as remorse and shame exploded through her soul.
She thought of the hell she’d put Mast through, all the suspicions and doubts and the glares of half-belief, even the night she’d tried to kill him in his own cabin with his own bedding. How could she have mistaken his courage and patience for the raw evil she beheld now?
“Why?” she finally blurted. “Dear God, why?”
The Spaniard stopped. His smile dropped. “Why, indeed.”
She forced herself to keep looking as he crouched low to the fire. Nanchez took a stick and shoved at the logs. His arm jerked more violently with each spark he set free, as if the blaze were a manifestation of his thoughts.
“The first time I boarded the Athena was Mast’s first time, too,” he suddenly stated. Golden’s eyes widened in eerie surprise. Nanchez smiled smoothly at that before continuing. “We looked at each other and laughed—it was a bit like peering in the mirror, you see. We were both very arrogant and very young. We both wanted it all, too. So we both worked very, very hard.”
His lips contorted into that angry twist again. His hands trembled and curled into fists. “But who do you think always got all the praise? All the promotions? All the honors?”
His bitter snort blended with the fire’s acrid smoke from the fire. “Our bastard of a captain even assigned us to a duty together, so I could ‘learn’ from Mast. Do you imagine that? Me learn from him? All that concerned our good and fine Mast was doing it ‘the right way.’ Basura! To hell with his right way! I’ll do it my way or no way at all!”
He jerked up and started to pace again, swiveling his head nervously. His black eyes darted into the leaping shadows. “Well, Captain Thompson didn’t like that. Not at all. Carlos’s independent thinking wasn’t appreciated at all by good Captain Thompson. From the start, it was always, ‘Mast, the Magnificent,’ or, ‘Mast, Wayland Gaverly’s miracle man.’ Soon it was, ‘Mast, the boatswain,’ and, ‘Mast, the first officer.’” A loud pop from the fire marked a weighted moment of silence. “You know what came next, don’t you?” He emitted a growl of anguish. “Mast, the new captain of the Athena, that’s what.”
Clay clumps flew as Nanchez suddenly stopped. “Mast, the gringo glory-robber. Mast, the bastard who ruined my life.”
“But—but you became a captain, as well.” Golden took heart-stopping care to “forget” his commission was purely in the pirates’ navy. “You lead a hundred men on one of the fastest frigates in the Main—”
“But not the Athena!” The Spaniard whirled furiously on her. “Dios, don’t you understand, either? It was never good enough! None of it, not after the Athena. Not after the humiliation I suffered. Not after the shame. I had to prove them all wrong; all of them! No, no. No other compensation would be enough.”
“So you left when Mast became captain, with the clear intent to plot against him.” She didn’t bother to hide the accusation in her tone anymore. Her strange aspiration to even remotely understand this lunatic now crystalized as the hopeless cause it was. “You committed larceny and murder and planned to let your friend take the punishment all along. You created your beast the Moonstormer in his image—”
Nanchez’s laughter, almost sensuous this time, cut her off. “Oh amada, that was the sweet beauty of it,” he drawled. “I created not a thing. Your amor precioso did it all for me.”
Golden leveled a glare at him. It only seemed to make the pirate happier. Indignant fury writhed up her spine and embedded into the locked teeth beneath her raised chin.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“Have your attention now, do I?”
“Stop it!” she yelled. “What the hell are you saying?”
Nanchez didn’t laugh anymore, but the return of his self-pleased leer was just as intimidating. “What I am saying, my dear Lady Golden, is that your strong and mighty Mast isn’t who you think he is.”
She struggled to rise to her knees despite the weights on her ankles. “You bastard. How dare you imply Mast had any part of your madness!”
“But I insist, my lady, he did. I have him to thank for my quite spectacular career, if I might be so bold to say. You see, Ben was helpful, in his own little way. The gambling debts he owed me were a wise investment in exchange for his helpful ‘journeys’ into his captain’s files regarding shipments, cargoes, and the like. But my true allies were Mast and Dinky themselves. If they hadn’t said yes to King George all those years ago and created the Moonstormer to begin with, my vengeance wouldn’t have been half the pleasure—”
“Stop!” Golden’s mind finally found its way to her voice through her stormburst of astonishment. “King George? I…I don’t understand. Mast said yes to what? Created the Moonstormer himself?”
Nanchez chuckled as he sauntered around the fire toward her. “My little fuego de pasion,” he crooned, “it matters not now.” He stooped to her, lifting the back of his fingers to her cheek. “You see, you are my helper now. You are the grand finale of my plan. Imagine that! Nobody else can say they were able to help the Moonstormer but you…”
Golden dipped her head away from him. Every beat of her heart screamed in repugnance and hatred, and an urge to strike out despite her bindings. But she ordered herself to stay calm, no matter how impossible the feat seemed.
“H-Help you?” she barely stammered.
“Sí. In the most wonderful way possible.” He forced her head up again. His soulless black eyes were match by his lethally calm voice. “Imagine this, amada…the glory of knowing, without a doubt, the person you hate most on this earth is finally dead. I know you have had such fantasies before; I can see it in your beautiful eyes now. Then how about”—he sidled to her on both knees, lifting a hand and wrapping it around her neck—“how about following it with the death of the one woman that bastard loved? How about watching all her dreams, her hopes, the seed she could be carrying in her belly, all be destroyed, too? How about that!”
Oh God, let this be a dream, and oh God, let me wake up now.
“Does it not sound maravilloso? Oh love, would you not like to die for me today?”
Golden didn’t say a single word.
She jumped up and ran for everything she was worth.
But she’d clunked only five or six steps when his laughter engulfed her again, surrounding her from behind. His arms came next. He hoisted her off the ground, boulders and all. Golden threw her head back and shrieked.
She was conscious that they passed Maya and the fire ring, and started to traverse a wet tunnel. The sound of the surf grew louder. Blue-gray light cast a ghastly glow to the rocks and puddled mud floor.
She discovered the light was the breaking sheen of dawn. The surf
, crashing against the steep rocks of the cove below them, was directly opposite the deserted Abaco dock. The Athena was still tethered there, now empty and dark.
“Mast,” she exclaimed toward the magnificent brigantine. “Oh, Mast.”
“Shut up, bruja,” Nanchez growled at her ear. “I’ve had enough of you.”
“Mast.” She repeated it with horror. “Oh my God, the sun’s coming up! Mast!”
“I said shut up!”
“Nay! Don’t kill him!” She cried it toward the people emerging from their homes, some carrying picnic baskets—picnic baskets!—as they hurried not to miss the day’s “grand event.” It seemed no matter that the execution would be private; the crowds merely jostled for the best “listening spots” along the yard’s looming walls. She faintly heard hawkers shouting prices for the very best seats—the positions along the wall Mast would fall against.
“Nooo! You’ve got the wrong man! God, please! Up here! Listen to me!”
Something wet and dirty-tasting was shoved into her mouth. Nanchez bound it there with a strip of cloth he tore from her skirt. But the true atrocity was having her head pinned as the monster secured the bonds around her skull. She was forced to look at his calm brown face. To endure the callous laughter slithering from his lips.
“You stay just like that, amada precioso. I truly cannot wait to see your face when—”
A barrage of gunfire reverberated through the hills and across the bay.
Every muscle in Golden’s body stiffened in horror.
Another crackling round echoed the first.
Every inch of her heart shattered in grief.
Her sobs surged from the most complete and agonizing pain she’d ever known. Backed by the Moonstormer’s howling cackles, the torment sliced through her, sharper and harder and deeper, until it slammed her into black, blissful nothingness.
Mast…
I’ll be joining you soon, my love.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Golll-den!”
She rolled over, deeply perturbed. She was having a lovely dream. There was a waterfall, sparkling and clean, and her own smooth and sinewy god was emerging from the white foam at the bottom of it. He held out a hand to her and murmured, “Come here, hellion.”
“Golll-den,” Maya continued to prod, urgency lifting the tone. “Golden, wake up!”
“Mmmmph.” She burrowed into a deeper ball. Why was Maya so agitated? She listened and heard all the sounds of home. The laughing rainforest stream. The whisper of the Saint Kitts wind. The snapping of the village fire. Everything was normal. The world was right.
“Golden, please—”
“Wake up, bruja.”
The hand cracking across her face coincided with the gruff command that replaced Maya’s pleas.
Her eyes flew open. Memory returned in a harsh rush. The rushing water wasn’t the rainforest stream, but the ocean against nearby rocks. The fire illuminated jagged cave walls, not a canopy of trees and vines. The wind didn’t waft with the tang of poinciana, but blew with the stench of rotting things.
Dead things.
Mast!
Nay. The world wasn’t right. It would never be right again.
“Up here, amada,” the low voice directed again. “Look up here at me.” Fingers gripped her chin with iron force, forcing her obeisance before she could even think about defiance.
She gasped into her gag at the sight that filled her eyes. Not one deranged face leered down at her now, but two. Above her and next to Carlos Nanchez was a scraggle-haired, grubby-bearded mess of a scoundrel. He winked at her from the eye that wasn’t covered with a tattered patch.
“Well, my amigo, did I not tell you right?”
“Ye did!” The scoundrel’s voice was the manifestation of his appearance: gritty, grimy, lewd. “She’s very perty. A comely wench, indeed.”
“You’d like to kill her while I watch, then?”
“Oh, aye! I’d like that very much!”
Maya wailed sharply somewhere behind Golden, but only Nanchez rose and went to her. “Mind yourself, wench, or I’ll silence you, too!” Golden heard him snarl.
The new face stayed and continued its disgusting stare on her. The wretch cocked his eye one way and then the next in a thorough perusal of her features, even lifting a thumb to the welt on her cheek and wincing when she flinched in pain.
“I’m sorry,” came the gravely apology. “So sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you, dearie. I just want you to trust me, all right? Trust me. I’ll make it all better; you’ll see. It’ll be all over in a while. Trust me.”
His words were nearly a lullaby. The perfect entrance into death. Aye, she could just give up, go to sleep, and she’d open her eyes and be with Mast again.
So why did her lungs heave with terror? Why did she wrench her arms, trying to slide free of the ropes? Why were her feet churning into the dirt to push free of the weird-staring pirate who couldn’t stop touching her?
Realization beamed into her consciousness like sun bursting through clouds. Because I want to live. Because I need to live!
Aye, she needed to live—for the very man she’d yearned to die for.
For Mast, who’d taken her hate and turned it into love—and because of that, given her the greatest weapon of all to defy the Moonstormer with. Her own life, lived in freedom from the hate that had given Nanchez his power to begin with.
She’d fight to survive now, but not as a weapon. As a gift, to the man who’d given it back to her. For you, Mast…my love.
Though it was undoubtedly the force of her exhausted imagination, a presence wrapped around her then. It smelled of spice and blew through her like the stars—and it was as achingly close as the one-eyed pirate. As perfectly near as her soul.
As if the force of that thought brought him right here to the cave to help her, the rope around her right arm began to slip then fall. Golden bit back her gasp of elation. A few more squirms…if Nanchez only stayed occupied with Maya a moment longer…
Ignoring the rope burns of the last hard yank, Golden pulled her right arm free.
Pure instinct took over. Her first thought was to secure the nearest weapon: the dagger tucked at the scraggly scoundrel’s side. He watched her pull it free with a wide gawk. Thank the stars he was a bit of an addlepate. Before he think about what to do after that, she thrust her knee up into the space between his thighs.
“Aaarrgh!”
Nanchez whirled around. “What?”
“I. Can’t. Move!”
She knew she had only a few tiny seconds. She raced to sever the remainder of her bonds. She had both ankles and her other arm free when Nanchez rammed her. They tumbled to the ground close to the fire. Maya’s shrieks pealed through the cave while Nanchez rolled her over and over in the mud. The air was crushed from her chest each time she landed on the bottom. When she was on top, hunger-induced dizziness attacked. The heat of the fire menaced closer and closer.
Nanchez halted their gyrations by straddling her. His thighs clamped her legs to the ground. His hands locked around her wrists and slammed them to the ground on either side of her head. Golden gripped the dagger harder, straining every muscle to resist the filthy traitor.
“Come, come, my lady.” Nanchez grabbed her throbbing wrist and pounded it down again, “Why don’t you be a good little niña, and let us get this done?”
Golden spat a feral scream past the cloths still binding her mouth.
Nanchez ground her arm into the pebble-strewn dirt. Curiously, Golden barely felt any pain. She flashed up a glare that was fired from a radiant heat deep inside. She actually smiled as the warmth spread through her body. It felt beautiful.
It felt like an angel had touched her.
I love you, Mast.
Until Nanchez began to laugh again.
“Oh, little bruja,” the chuckling monster said. “You must know, I’m secretly smitten with your feist and fire. If we had the time, I’d be sampling your sweet pussy myself. But
ahhh, it’s enough to know I’ll be putting you down like the bitch to Stafford’s mutt. When I lingered at Braziliano’s auction long enough to see him enter and look at you, it was one of the best moments of my life. ‘Ah, Dios,’ I said to myself, ‘the wench who has finally put a fire in Mast’s groin again.’ And when Ben told me what he’d heard between Mast and Dinky one morning on the Athena, that you were a survivor of the Gabrielle’s Hope—ohhh, little Golden, you cannot know my ecstasy, my delight at envisioning this moment!”
Gabrielle’s Hope.
The words emblazoned themselves across Golden’s mind as the face above her slithered into a wide grin. “Nnnuhhh!” she heard herself plea through the gag. Her mind whirled, lost again to the horror, the fear, the helplessness. Her palms stung again, surrendering to the memory of clinging to a ravaged piece of driftwood painted with the words.
Gabrielle’s Hope.
Mast…be my driftwood now. Keep me afloat. Fill me with your love. Help me.
But the pirate beast above continued mercilessly. “That was my very first victory, you know. I was extremely proud of it. I remember how obsessed I was about ‘doing it right,’ as my amigo Mast would say—about burning it all, you see. And I thought I did, but”—his grin deepened—“but you lovely little vixen, you proved me wrong, didn’t you? Showed those idiots aboard that tub just how it was done. Watched them go screaming to their death while you escaped without a trace. Magnifico!”
Until that moment, Golden didn’t realize how much pain a person could withstand and still live. Images collided one atop another before her eyes. The leering face above her melded with impressions of burning bodies falling through the air, with the silhouette of a ruined ship sinking against a smoke-hazed moon. A new terror came with it all now, too: the image of Mast’s blindfolded face, plummeting to the ground. His body, lifeless and twisted. His clothes, riddled with bullet holes and oozing blood.
The gates of her heart ripped off their hinges as the anguish laid full siege to her soul. She let the familiar fury enter her bloodstream, her muscles, her bones. Her limbs obeyed the primal call, lashing out, kicking, writhing. She thrashed again and again, yearning only to release the seething monster inside of her, needing only to appease this blinding, exploding frenzy of grief.