Ethan slumped against the wall, exhaling. “Damn.” He stayed quiet for a few seconds before asking his next question. “But…but we’re okay, right? You and me?”
Zoey’s face went grim, and she shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so,” she said. “The truth is, I rolled the dice for both of us in a big way making you. I definitely can’t make any more for another fifty years or so. And you? You better not for at least a century.”
“Believe me, I have no intentions of turning anyone,” Ethan said, holding his hands up in the air.
“Good, because if you do, we’ll all be killed. You. Whoever you sired. And me, for turning you. And when they do put an end to us, it won’t be pretty, either. It’ll be long and drawn out, taking full advantage of our natural regeneration. I’d tell you specifics, but—”
“You don’t have to,” Ethan said, holding up a hand and feeling his stomach go queasy.
“Good,” she said. “So, promise me, no matter what, you won’t ever, EVER turn anyone.”
“I promise.”
“I mean it,” she said. “I don’t care what they say. What they bribe you with. Or threaten. Or whatever—”
“I get it,” Ethan said, holding up his hands. “I promise. Sheesh, you make it sound like this is going to be an ongoing problem.”
Zoey sighed. “It shouldn’t ever be, but if Katryna’s still around, she might try with you. And I really want to impress upon you just how bad of an idea that would be. Okay?”
Ethan took her hands and pulled her close. “I won’t. I swear.”
The anxious look on Zoey’s face stayed for a few seconds before fading. “Okay, good,” she said. “Now then, what say we get back to this search of ours?”
“I say that’s a good idea.”
The two dropped the conversation and continued on. After searching a few more rooms with nothing of note to be found, a thought struck Ethan as he stood a couple of feet inside the threshold of a guestroom, looking at a messy bed with its sheets tossed to the side. He nudged Zoey with an elbow to share his thoughts. “That’s not right, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, every bed we’ve come across looks as if someone flew out of it,” he said. “That’s not exactly the behavior you’d expect from a plague victim, right?”
Zoey furrowed her brow and tilted her head as she walked forward. When she was a couple of feet away from the bed, her hands found her hips, and she started drumming her fingers on her side. “The sheets aren’t soiled, either.”
“I’ll wager ten crowns none of the others are as well,” Ethan said. “In fact, I’m going to wager another ten crowns on top of that that says there’s no plague at all.”
Zoey cocked her head, and she looked at him with equal parts skepticism and amazement. “I’m really, really tempted to call. Why do you say that?”
“Because we should’ve found a makeshift ward by now,” he said. “And I don’t know what the rest of the town looks like, but if you’re overflowing with sick people, wouldn’t you convert at least the tavern to some sort of hospital?”
“Yeah…yeah, you would…”
Chest filling with pride, Ethan crossed his arms over his chest and beamed. “I suppose that’s ten points to me, then.”
Zoey bit down on her lower lip as her gaze wandered around the room. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. Why would anyone fake a quarantine?”
Ethan didn’t have an answer for that; at least, not right away. “Because you don’t want people to come,” he finally said. “Because you found something you don’t want anyone else to have or even know about.”
Zoey nodded, her eyes staring off to infinity. “True,” she said slowly. She then shook her head, snapping herself back into the moment. “Still, that’s a lot of speculating. How do we test this theory of yours?”
“That’s going to be hard unless someone was kind enough to leave us a diary,” Ethan said. “But…”
A grin spread across his face, one that spanned from one ear to another.
Ethan’s infectious smile spread to Zoey. “I trust that look means you have something brewing beyond flipping a coin and relying on luck to decide,” she said.
“No, I won’t do that,” Ethan said, laughing. “I’ve got something else in mind.”
“Awesome. Do tell.”
“I was thinking, there’s got to be a graveyard around here,” he said. “Let’s see when the most recent were buried. Even if they ended up burning bodies by the boatload, the first few people to die probably would’ve gotten their own graves dug and marked, right?”
“That, Ethan, is an outstanding idea,” she said, eyes lighting up with hope as she headed for the door. “Come on. I know right where it is.”
Ethan took a few quick steps to fall in line next to her. “You do? How?”
“Yup. It’s on the north side,” she replied before flashing an evil grin. “Put a few people in it myself.”
Moving at a fast pace, the two left the tavern and snaked through the empty streets of Lenada. Along the way, they found a few more bodies. Like the first they’d stumbled across, they’d all died by means other than the plague. Three shot in the chest, one in the head, and two more stabbed through the gut. Other than their tattered clothes, a few of which included tricorne hats clinging to weathered scalps full of stringy hair, not a one had any possessions.
The graveyard ended up being at the top of a grassy hill overlooking the bay. A wrought-iron fence encircled it all with stone columns offering support at the corners as well as every ten paces or so. The road they took from the city ended at a set of large gates, latched closed but apparently not locked. Beyond the gates, Ethan saw hundreds of plots, all slowly succumbing to encroaching vegetation to one degree or another.
“If we don’t find anyone, we could always raise a crew here,” Ethan said as Zoey swung open the gates. “I mean, there has to be plenty of material, right? And we do have Lord Belmont’s spell book.”
“I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not about to mess with it,” she said. “But if you want to risk the backfire from that kind of dark art, by all means, don’t let me stop you.”
“Yeah, I know, but I can still dream.”
“You like dreaming of the dead?” she replied. “Never really pegged you for the type.”
“Technically, you’re dead.”
“True, but I’m the hot kind of dead,” Zoey replied, not missing a beat. “What you bring up here, I promise, won’t be pretty.”
Ethan laughed and then started looking at headstones. Most were upright, nearly three feet tall and curved at the top, though some were simple rectangular slabs that were planted in the ground. He was surprised at the skill and delicacy in the letters that had been carved into each face, as well as the scrollwork etched above and below the names and dates. But more importantly, each also had a small shrine carefully put together at the base, one that reminded Ethan of the ancient temples of Rome and Greece.
“These graves took a lot of time and care to make,” Ethan said, pointing to the one he was at. “Why?”
“The people of Lenada honor their dead like no other,” Zoey explained, her voice soft with respect. “A wild group, but a respectful one to the deceased in their own ways.”
Ethan nodded before kneeling down and pulling some of the weeds away from the headstone he was at. If he was treading on such sacred ground, the least he could do, he figured, was to make it a little nicer. He could spare the moment. As he did, he looked at the date. “Eleven sixteen to eleven fifty-five. How far back is that? I guess I never bothered to look at a calendar.”
“A little over a century,” she said. “We’re in the year 1277.”
“From what?”
Zoey laughed with a shrug. “Honestly, I have no idea what the calendar is based on. I’ve always gone with it.”
“Well, this guy didn’t die of plague then. That�
�s for sure.”
“Or this one,” Zoey remarked, motioning to the grave she was at. “This girl died a decade ago.”
It took them less than ten minutes to check out each marker, and by the end of it, they had only one answer and a thousand more questions.
“No plague,” Ethan said as the two met at the final spot. It sat next to a sprawling oak tree that had a wreath made of rope and copper, and of the entire site, the marker seemed cared for the most, which wasn’t surprising, as this spot seemed to hold the most honor, being at the top of the hill. “Most recent one I found was from last year.”
“Same.”
Ethan made a slow circle, not really sure what he was looking for, but hoping something would stand out. As he did, some lingering questions on the world’s lore popped into mind. “Hey, question,” he said. “You said everyone in this world is real, right? I mean, like, they aren’t mindless NPCs. They’re alive.”
“As far as I can tell, yeah. Why?”
“Do they hear Narrator, too? Or pick levels? Or any of the game stuff we get to do?” he asked. “Or do they not know about any of that, and they’ll think we’re crazy if they heard us talking about such thing?”
Zoey laughed. “Yeah, they’ll definitely think you’re either crazy or trying to pull a worn-out, thoroughly unfunny joke on them. Sometimes you’ll get labeled as a cultist. Depends on who hears you.”
“A cultist?”
“Mh-mm,” Zoey said. “Fanatical cultist of the double seas.”
“How’s that?”
Zoey smiled, and she laughed again, shaking her head. “Whoever started that tale a few hundred years ago misunderstood whoever they got it from,” she said. “Instead of the double seas, undoubtedly, it was C&C, e.g., Captains & Cannons.”
“Ah, gotcha,” Ethan replied. “Still, you’d think someone by now would’ve managed to explain it all.”
“Why?”
Ethan shrugged. “Why not? It’s a simple concept.”
“In theory, sure,” Zoey replied. “But imagine being back in our world, and some guy ran up to you claiming you were in a giant game and whatnot. You’d never believe him. In fact, you’d probably—”
Zoey cut herself off, tilting her head to the side as if something grabbed her ear.
Ethan held his breath, sensing danger, and listened intently to everything around him. The world seemed to come alive in more vibrant detail than before. He could smell the nervousness drifting off Zoey’s skin, could see the hairs on her arms rise, taste the way her sweat left a tinge of salt in the air. And then he heard it. The crunch of grass, a couple of blades at the most, coming from behind.
Ethan whipped around with Zoey spinning at the same time, both with swords drawn. A tall, lanky man halted in place, ten feet away, dressed in worn breeches and a black open vest. A couple of gold earrings hung from his ears. One hand rested on the hilt of a cutlass, while the other stayed on the butt of a pistol tucked into his waistband.
“Easy, mates,” he said, taking a half step back. “Only looking to talk.”
The look in the man’s eyes, however, said otherwise.
Chapter Four
Standoff
Ethan adjusted his grip on his cutlass, and his gut tightened. Though he’d come a long way in a short period of time, skill and combat-wise, he knew he was hardly a master swashbuckler, and the guy who squared off with them had probably won more fights in a week than Ethan had birthdays under his belt.
“You want to talk?” Zoey asked, voice filled with skepticism.
The man nodded. “Aye. Name’s Bill. Nothing fancy with it. Just Bill.”
“Well, nothing fancy Bill,” Zoey said with a snort. “If all you want to do is talk, why not have your friends come join us?”
“Friends?”
“Don’t take me for a lass who can’t see a hole in a ladder,” she said, face hardening. “Tell them to come out, or this gets ugly.”
When the man hesitated, Ethan joined in, realizing he needed to back her. “I’d listen if I were you,” he said. “She’s not the first mate because she plays nice.”
The man grunted and threw a glance over his shoulder. “Alright, lads,” he said. “Two of you best be coming out so our guests don’t get jumpy.”
Ethan watched as from behind a couple of large, weed-infested headstones, maybe eight yards away, two men popped up and approached. They wore similar garb and tanned skin that told of life on the open seas like Bill’s, and both had swords hanging from their hips, though neither had a pistol.
“And the other,” Zoey said, narrowing her eyes.
“Afraid, miss, this is it,” the leader said, throwing up his hands with a shrug. “Your nerves are getting the best of you.”
Ethan cocked his head. His vampiric ears picked up Zoey’s heart, beating strong and true in her chest, and he quickly realized how in synch his own was with hers. He also could hear the hearts of the men before him pumping away. They sounded quicker than he would’ve expected, but he didn’t dwell on that for long. A fourth heart beat somewhere nearby.
“He’s over there,” Ethan said, hitching his thumb toward another large headstone.
The leader grunted again, this time with irritation. “They’re on you, too, Giddon,” he called out. “Might as well join the fun.”
The fourth member pushed himself up and warily made his way over. Giddon turned out to be the shortest of them all, with a pot belly and a bald head but arms that would give any blacksmith’s a run for his crowns. “Told the lot of you that was a bad spot,” he said in a rough voice.
Bill ignored the remark and instead flashed Ethan and Zoey a weaselly smile. “Can’t blame me for being too careful, yes? Not like there’s many a sane man who’d risk the plague.”
“Maybe,” Ethan said. Though he did his best to keep his affect flat, tension built in his muscles—a tension he knew the source of: Zoey. The vampire was expecting a fight. No, not expecting, looking for the opportunity to start one. How he knew that, he wasn’t sure, only that it was a deep-seated gut feeling. “You said you wanted to talk,” Ethan said, refocusing. “Talk.”
Bill nodded. “We saw your ship, wanted to tell you and your crew to get away before the black fever took you all.”
“Black fever?” Ethan repeated. “Is that what swept through here?”
“Aye, it is,” he said. “Came two months ago on the morrow. Stole half the town in a week.”
“I assume you burned the town, then?” Ethan asked.
“Aye, we did,” he said. “Dying at the time, or thought as much. Seems we’ve recovered a bit, but even I’m not such a scoundrel to say being ’round us is safe, if you know my meaning.”
Ethan didn’t believe a word he said, or at least, he didn’t believe they were being given the whole truth. Inside his heart of hearts, he knew Zoey felt the same. It was like her soul whispered to him on a deep, intrinsic level. A glance to the vampire only confirmed the thought. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think we should leave the same way Han did.”
Ethan cocked his head. “Han?”
“When he was at Mos Eisley.”
The words had barely registered in Ethan’s head when Zoey whipped out her pistol and fired. The shot hit the lead man square in the chest, and he fell to the ground, lifeless.
“Cleave her to the brisket, lads!” Giddon shouted, drawing his sword.
Instinctively, Ethan yanked his pistol free and fired as the three men attacked. The magical weapon kicked hard in his hand, and with a deafening rapport, it shot a lead ball straight at the closest attacker. Unfortunately, his aim wasn’t nearly as lethal as hers had been. The bullet ripped through the man’s left shoulder, much to Ethan’s dismay.
Corsair hit!
Corsair lightly wounded!
Ethan, having not heard Narrator’s voice in his head for a few days now (that he could remember, at least, as the blood hunger h
ad made things extremely fuzzy), had his attention focused on what he was saying so much that he barely had time to react when the melee was upon him.
The first pirate to reach them issued a straight thrust for Ethan’s heart, which he barely parried, catching the sword with the strong part of his own blade and deflecting it to the side with the handguard. However, he overcompensated on his move, swinging his hand far too wide so that when the man dripped his blade under Ethan’s guard and slashed it back across, Ethan couldn’t defend against it.
A searing pain erupted across his collarbone as sword cut through fiber and flesh.
A corsair hits you!
You are lightly wounded!
A second attack came, this one from the next pirate to join the fray. He issued a backhanded chop, intent on taking Ethan’s head from his shoulders. As the blade flashed through the air, Zoey yanked him to the side and used her own blade to defend Ethan.
Ethan, somehow having anticipated the yank, moved with the momentum and let his body spin completely around. His blade clashed against the last pirate’s weapon when the man took a stab at Zoey and knocked it aside.
The pirates pressed their attack, only this time, they fanned out and spent a half second to coordinate their attacks. Steel cut through the air, steel from vampire and pirate alike, and Ethan found himself moving out of pure instinct. But he wasn’t merely reacting to parry attacks against himself or even those that went for Zoey as well. He was moving alongside her in tandem as if they’d been given a dance to master together.
Their hands found each other’s in concert, offering support or a well-timed pull to safety, while their weapons kept their attackers at bay. At first, the ballet they entered seemed to only keep them safe, but when one of the corsairs came in too close, Ethan trapped the man’s blade as Zoey thrust hers straight through the pirate’s heart.
The Crew (Captains & Cannons Book 2) Page 3