Thoughts of hunger soon turned to thoughts of Zoey. By some strange twist, worrying about where she was, hoping and praying she’d made it out of the storm, eased the pain in his gut. That said, it put a new pain in his heart, one that grew worse and worse with every step.
The two pressed on, leaving the cliffs behind but unable to outrun the storm. The howling wind built more and more, assaulting his back and skin with a torrent of rain.
Pieces of debris whipped through the air, leaving small bruises across his body for the most part, but at times tearing open exposed skin.
“There, I see something,” Katryna said, increasing their pace. “Not much longer now. Promise.”
“Thank God,” Ethan muttered.
A couple of minutes later, Katryna led him to a single-story brick building that ended up being well shielded from the wind due to a dip in the terrain. As long as the trees remained cooperative and stayed upright, so they didn’t crush the structure, Ethan felt they ought to be fine.
He shuffled through the arched entrance and collapsed, his body sprawling out on a moss-covered, stone floor. The room, barely twelve by twelve, not including a small side alcove, smelled like soot for some reason, and other than the two of them, held nothing of note inside. While a lit hearth, an extravagant couch, and a well-mannered butler with drinks and hors d'oeuvres would’ve been right up Ethan’s alley at that point, the sheer fact that they were out of the biting rain was more than enough to raise his spirits.
Sadly, it didn’t do much to raise his body temperature.
His teeth chattered away and continued to do so even when he managed to sit up and draw his knees to his chest.
“Your lips are purple,” Katryna said, the tone in her voice sounding concerned. The woman knelt at his side, and she took his hand in hers and looked at his wrinkled fingers. “Also, your nailbeds.”
“I think that should’ve hurt,” Ethan replied.
“Why?”
He pointed to the inside of a forearm to where one of his gashes was. “Because of those.”
“I can see. You’re in bad shape,” she said, sitting next to him. “But at least you won’t get an infection—saltwater and all.”
“That’s the least of my concerns,” he said as his stomach growled. Another pang shot through his side, and he clenched a fist and drove it into the ground.
“Hungry. I know.”
Ethan nodded. He wrestled with the insatiable monster within, knowing he was only delaying the inevitable but feeling like he had to at all costs regardless. Enough of his humanity still remained that said it wasn’t a particularly nice thing to snack on someone without permission.
“I won’t let you suffer, don’t worry,” she said. “But there are two things you have to agree to first.”
Ethan sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Anything.”
“First, you stop when I say stop,” she said. “And I realize that might be a little hard, so if I clock you, don’t get mad.”
“Okay. I’ll try my best,” he said. “What’s the second?”
“After the race, you turn me.”
“I already told you, Zoey—”
“—doesn’t have to know,” she said.
A beat passed between them, and as much as Ethan knew Zoey would likely be mad about it, he had to eat one way or another. And maybe he could get Zoey to come around to the idea. Or whatever. It’s not like this need wasn’t being fulfilled under duress. And that’s what he told himself when Katryna offered him her wrist.
In a flash, Ethan lunged forward, mouth salivating, and latched on to her wrist. His fangs hungrily sank into her skin, and the moment the first drop of blood passed his lips, his body relaxed, and he relished the taste—it was something like black cherries and hints of vanilla.
“What in the blessed Lady’s name are you doing?”
Ethan opened his eyes with Katryna’s wrist firmly clamped in his mouth to find Jean Bayard standing just inside the open doorway with three skeletons at his side, eyes wide with shock, hand gripping the hilt of his blade. Zoey pushed past him a moment later, panicked at first, but when her eyes met Ethan’s, she froze in place, and tears of relief fell.
“Ethan, you—”
But that’s all she got out. Ethan released his hold on Katryna and practically trampled her to the ground as he bolted to the vampire. He threw his arms around hers, and the momentum he had carried them both into the wall.
Jean threw himself into the mix, and the only reason he didn’t stick a blade through Ethan’s ribs was because Katryna joined the fray as well. Her hand found his, keeping his sword at bay, but she couldn’t stop him from knocking Ethan to the side with his shoulder.
The four of them went down, Ethan striking his shoulder hard against the brick floor. The ensuing tussle lasted only a few seconds before Ethan and Zoey managed to back away while Jean came to his feet, cutlass at the ready, with Katryna standing between them all.
“What are you doing?” Jean yelled at Katryna. “The Captain’s lost his mind!”
“Relax. He’s fine now.”
“Relax? He just tried to eat you!”
“I nibbled her,” Ethan corrected as he stood and helped Zoey to her feet. “And she offered it willingly. No harm, no foul.” When Zoey shot him a WTF-are-you-doing look, all he could do was shrug. “Would you rather he think we’re cannibals?”
Jean inched back, the tip of his blade moving from Ethan to Zoey and back again a half dozen times. “We? What’s this ‘we’ you speak of? What are you two? Demons? Blood mages?”
Katryna sighed heavily as she wrapped her wrist in a linen bandage. “They’re vampires,” she said. “Maybe not your typical king and queen of undead looking to enslave humanity, but vampires nevertheless.”
“Vampires?” he repeated. “But how? I’ve seen them both in the sun with my own two eyes!”
“Ha!” Ethan said with a jump as he turned to Zoey. “I told you vampires are supposed to turn to ash in daylight!”
“I never said they never do,” Zoey said. “I only said most don’t around here, but that’s not something we go out of our way to correct, either. It makes it much easier to move around if the world thinks it’s always fatal.”
“Vampires?” Jean repeated as if saying it in disbelief would make it not so. It didn’t take him long to realize that wasn’t going to happen. He shook his head, and lines of pained betrayal formed in his face as he turned to Katryna. “You knew?”
“Obviously.”
“You let them mar your beautiful skin? Defile your soul? How could you?” He paused, gasped, and his jaw dropped as he faced Ethan and Zoey once again. “And the crew! You defiled them as well! Let their blood for your own sick pleasure.”
Ethan tutted and folded his arms over his chest. “Says the man knowingly sailing with a necromancer and his undead minions.”
“That is different,” Jean shot back. “That is skill, craft. This…this is an abomination, and I will not stand for it.”
Zoey took a step forward and narrowed her eyes. “Are we going to have a problem, Jean Baynard?”
“We? No,” he said. “You? Most certainly. I will protect the lady and my crew with my life if need be.”
Katryna groaned and rolled her eyes. “Stop,” she said with an exasperating sigh. “I’m no lady.”
“I shall not stop,” Jean went on. “This is not something anyone should stand for.”
Ethan squared himself up with the man, keeping his hands deliberately away from his weapons. He had a feeling he was about to need one hell of a Leadership roll, but sadly, he’d already used up his luck, and he wasn’t sure if his meager investment in the skill would be enough. Still, he had to try. Maybe his unnaturally high Charisma would see him through. “Jean, there are a couple of things you ought to keep in mind before this goes any further, aside from the fact that I have no intentions of harming anyone under my command,” he said. �
��First, we didn’t hide who we are to protect ourselves.”
Jean snorted. “Is that a fact?”
“It is,” Zoey replied, smiling like the devil and giving a curt nod. “We did it to protect you.”
Reality drained the color from Jean’s face, and then it paled even more when he saw Katryna had no intentions of coming to his defense. To the man’s credit, however, he found his backbone a couple of beats later. “And the second?”
“My plans won’t change unless you intend to cause problems,” Ethan said. “I’m going to get that bottle, get back to the ship, and win the race. And along the way, I’m going to help you get your revenge. So, the real question is: is that something you’re still agreeable to, or do you just want to part ways now before we’re at each other’s throats?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Truce
“Well?” Ethan prompted. “What’s it going to be, Jean? Do you want to sail with us, or shall we leave you to your own devices on this island?”
Despite all that had been said, done, and threatened, Jean still argued. “I don’t like any of this.”
“No one said you had to like it,” Zoey said.
The man hesitated for a few more seconds before finally capitulating. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll not say a word, provided you do a couple of things for me.”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate,” Ethan said, feeling as if he needed to keep it clear who was in charge.
Jean ignored the remark and went on. “First, the two of you won’t feast on me whatsoever,” he said. “And second, the same goes for Katryna. As for the rest of the crew, well, I can’t object to what I can’t see.”
Though Ethan was perturbed at the man’s insistence, he also realized in the end, keeping him placated would ultimately be for the best. After all, they wouldn’t be together for much longer as they neared the end of the race. “Then I guess we have an accord,” Ethan said, shaking the man’s hand. With the deal sealed, he relaxed and turned his attention to Zoey, embracing her once again. “You have no idea how worried I was about you. I thought you were dead.”
“I am dead,” she replied, leaning into him.
“Yeah, well, more dead,” he said. “What happened? We hit those rocks, and you disappeared.”
“Turned to mist to avoid going under,” Zoey replied. Her face soured right after as she went on. “Which ended up being a questionable move on my part. The wind grabbed me, and before I could get a handle on things, it whipped me away. I managed to reform somewhere down the beach, found Jean after that, and then we hiked up here through the storm, picking up our boney crew as we did.”
Ethan whistled and arched his eyebrows. “Damn.”
“Mm-hm,” she said, using two fingers to wipe the bottom of Ethan’s lower lip. “It’s still pretty rough out there, but I think we can reach the fort, still, before it reaches its worst.”
“Then I guess we better hurry,” Ethan said. “Know which way to go?”
“Uh, yeah,” she replied, grinning and sweeping an open hand off to her side. “It’s somewhere over there.”
“I figured that part out.”
“Well, I didn’t spec GPS, so that’s the best you’re going to get from me,” she said.
Ethan laughed. “Right. Guess we better get moving.”
* * *
After about ten or fifteen minutes of hiking, the group found a well-worn path that seemed to run from the beach to the fort, but it certainly wasn’t found with ease. Every step of the way, the wind knocked the group around, and debris tore at their skin and bruised their bodies. Two thoughts constantly ran through Ethan’s mind as they went. First, had he and Zoey not been vampires, blessed with unnatural abilities and luck, they both might not have made it half as far as they already had. Second, despite those unholy blessings, they might not make it through the storm alive anyway. How Jean and Katryna managed to stay alive, he had no idea, given the ferocity of the wind.
That last thought grew fivefold when a branch as long as Ethan was tall and as thick as his arm shot by his head and buried itself three feet into a nearby embankment. The only reason it didn’t take his head with it as it flew by at Mach seven (or whatever the speed equivalent was in this world) was the fact that Zoey had made a diving tackle and now lay sprawled across him while he had his back pressed into the ground.
“Holy crap, that was close,” Ethan said, his head craned up so he could gawk at what had nearly killed him.
“No kidding,” she said. “Come on. Get up. I think the fort is nearby.”
Katryna, standing a few feet away, shielded her eyes from the rain as a crack of lightning tore through the sky. “It’s right up there,” she said, pointing. “Few hundred yards at the most. I can see the tops of a wall.”
Ethan grabbed the hand Zoey offered and hoisted himself up. “Good,” he said. “Let’s move.”
On they went, and the path both narrowed and rose sharply along the way. With the rain pummeling them seemingly from all sides and gale-force winds racing through, every step felt more precarious than the last. As with the ascent off the beach, slips caused bruises and gashes, but thankfully, they reached the top of the climb in a few minutes.
The fort stood atop a hill and stretched a little over a hundred yards across on all sides. The path they’d come up put them at the southwest tower, fifty yards from the main gate. The stronghold’s walls, made from a light, moss-covered limestone filled with shells, stretched some forty feet into the air. Along the tops ran broken battlements with watchtowers at the corners.
“God, I hope somehow we managed to get here first,” Ethan said as they hurried for the entrance. “We could use the break.”
“Maybe, but it would make for a much livelier adventure if we weren’t,” Katryna said.
Ethan shot her an incredulous look. “Running through a hurricane isn’t enough?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t enough,” she replied, shaking her head. “I just said it could be even better, which it could.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still going to hope that—” Ethan cut himself off as they slipped into the gatehouse and his eyes took in the scene before him. Sprawled across the floor were five bodies. Four lay facedown, clothes stained red, while a fifth had fallen in a corner, propped up with his back against the wall.
“And it got better,” Katryna said, drawing her sword and pistol while her face lit up with excitement. She prodded the one in the corner with her weapon before kneeling close and feeling his arm. “Still has a little warmth to him,” she said. “He’s been dead maybe a half hour at the most. Hard to say, what with the wind and water and all.”
“All these men are from two different crews, too,” Jean tacked on. Though he’d been keeping his distance since Ethan’s brief dining on Katryna, that was no longer the case. The man’s concern now clearly focused on who might still be around as opposed to who he was with.
Ethan nodded. Half the men wore clothes with a black and white color scheme, while the others were olive and tan. He spent a few seconds looking at them all, or rather, looking for a specific individual among them. “None of these are the captains,” he finally said. “Which means they’re still here, I’d wager.”
“Along with a third,” said Zoey. When all eyes fell on her, she pointed to the wall left of the open gate. There, small chunks of stone had been carved out, and beneath holes, freshly fallen debris could be seen. “Missed shots that came from whoever was out there,” she said, pointing toward the center of the courtyard where yet another body could be seen, facedown in the mud.
“Damn,” Ethan said, drawing a deep breath and exhaling. “That means Azrael, Sedra, and Sir Gideon are all here, ready and willing to fight.”
Katryna eased toward the courtyard for a better view. When she got it, she swore up a storm. “Stick me on a pike and leave me to dry,” she said, shaking her head. “It is a slaughter out there.”
Ethan trotted to her side, as did the others. Despite hearing her words, he wasn’t ready for the sight before him. Nearly fifty men lay slain. “Holy snort,” he said. “How many men did each of them bring?”
“More than we did, that’s for sure,” Zoey said after a long whistle. “We should’ve brought Marcus. He could’ve animated us an entire army.”
“Guess that means we’re going to need to be careful,” Ethan replied.
Zoey nodded. “Agreed.”
“Any chance Sir Gideon is among the dead?” Jean asked.
Ethan spent a few moments straining to see details through the storm. “I don’t think so.”
Jean grunted and frowned, toying with the hilt of his blade as he did. “I wonder how many men they all have left.”
“As do I,” Ethan said. “I’m starting to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t be looking for a fight.”
“One of them probably has the bottle by now,” Katryna said. “I doubt they’ll just hand it over.”
Ethan nodded. “I’m sure they do. But we have something they don’t.”
Zoey tilted her head. “Which is?”
“You,” he replied. “The greatest vampire rogue to have ever stalked the lands.”
“Not sure if I’d call myself the greatest in the land,” she said, playfully rolling her eyes. “But thanks.”
“Well, on this island, anyway,” Ethan said with a shrug.
Zoey lightly clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “Right. I’ll scout. You follow a little bit behind. We’ll start with investigating the chapel, since that’s where it’s supposed to be, and go from there.”
Ethan bowed, making a broad sweep of the room with his hand. “Lead the way. And watch for traps. I don’t want a thousand rats to feast on our bones and all.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
Off they went, Zoey taking the lead by a dozen yards and then two. Not even the faintest of sounds could be heard from her footsteps, and more than once, even when Ethan knew he was looking right at her, when she caught the shadows just right, she vanished before his eyes, only to reappear several yards away.
The Crew (Captains & Cannons Book 2) Page 24