“You look familiar,” the pirate captain said. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Liam Lynch. You killed my parents eleven years ago.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the pirate cocking his head slightly, his lips pursed in thought as he considered Liam. “You were the niño who hid under the rocks where we couldn’t get you.”
“After you tried scratching off my face, aye.”
That made the captain throw his head back with laughter. “And all these years later you lose your mate to me, too. I love it.”
Brigid finally closed her hand around the hilt of a knife at the captain’s belt. She jerked it free, ducking down at the same time to give Liam a clear shot at the man. A shot rang out, but it hit one of the men next to the captain instead. She stabbed a pirate in front of her, twisting the blade and jerking it up before she pulled it free and spun to attack the captain. He shouted something to his men and they surged forward toward Liam. As they moved, she saw a dark ripple cross their faces like stones had been thrown into calm waters. As the ripples passed, their faces had twisted and changed. Fur sprouted where before had been skin. Their mouths were full of fangs; their eyes had gone yellow with slit pupils.
The cat monsters surged toward Liam. She thought she might be going mad, but she could still cling to one rational thought: she had to save Liam. Brigid threw herself on the back of one of the monsters as she attacked with the knife. Liam was struggling with two of the monsters, slowly being backed up toward the the side of the ship.
The last shot in the pistol was fired, killing one of the creatures, but at the same time Liam and the remaining cat monster went tumbling over the side of the ship.
“Liam!” she screamed. Once she could free herself from the monster she’d been fighting, she ran to the rail to look over. The monster that had gone overboard with Liam had reverted to a man once again and was floating face up, dead from having his throat slit. There was no sign of Liam, though.
“Cesar is dead,” one of the pirates called back to the captain.
“And the rat?”
“I can’t see him.”
“Take the girl. Kill the crew.”
When hands took hold of her again to drag her back toward the pirate ship, Brigid was too numb to put up a fight. He couldn’t be dead, she told herself. He’d stabbed that man after they went overboard. Bodies floated. Only a living man could have hidden himself from view. She kept trying to convince herself, repeating the thoughts over and over again.
Yet whatever the pirates could do to her—whatever monstrous powers they possessed—paled in comparison to the fear that she was wrong and Liam was truly gone.
CHAPTER NINE
LUCKY
THE plan had seemed straightforward enough, but Liam hadn’t counted on Brigid’s reaction. The shock and confusion on her face was plain to see even from where he was clinging to the side of the ship. Instead of diving overboard with him as he’d expected, she only watched and cried out to him. Considering that he’d seen her kill one of the pirates and he was fairly confident she had mortally wounded another, it had seemed safe to assume she wasn’t panicking. He had thought she would have the presence of mind to grab the bag and dive with him.
But she hadn’t and all he could do was watch helplessly as the crew of the Gato del Diablo dragged her away. He immediately began climbing up the side of the ship, tormented the entire way by the sounds of the merchant crew being slaughtered. Whether they were being killed because of Liam’s resistance or because they had seen the half-form of the cat shifters, he couldn’t say. What Donovan had taught him and what he’d seen with his own two eyes pointed to them killing simply for the joy of it. They may well have planned on murdering everyone they could find from the moment they had spotted the ship.
They wouldn’t kill Brigid if they could help it, though. He was fairly certain of that, even if he didn’t like why he was certain of it.
All he could do was climb.
Most ships did everything they could to keep rats off of them. It was never entirely successful, but it could make things more difficult. Donny had taught him how to identify ships that were rat friendly, either by happy accident or because ratkin had made them so. As a rule, he never stepped foot on a ship that wasn’t already well-suited for rats or that he couldn’t alter himself. Luckily for him, Brigid must have received the same lessons from Donny, as she’d chosen a good rat ship out of Tortuga.
Liam had lost his clothing when he shifted, as his present form was much smaller than he normally was. He made for a good sized rat buck at just over a pound, but he could still fit his entire animal form inside of one of his own boots. He’d planned on having to shift as soon as he’d seen the Gato, though. The clothes could easily be replaced. His mother’s ring was in the bag where he’d put it and could be retrieved once he’d rescued Brigid.
And that meant climbing. The wood was rough enough that there was good purchase for his claws. Having spent nearly half his life at sea, the rocking of the waves did little to slow him down. A rope to scurry up would have been ideal, but the slower climb over the hull of the ship wasn’t bad.
His whiskers twitched, ears perking as he came close to the deck. The scent of blood was thick in the air and he could still hear the pirates collecting their prizes. Though the ship had its own population of rats, they would know he wasn’t one of them as soon as they laid eyes on him, so he would have to wait. The small ship rats were darker and had larger ears than Liam’s animal form. The type of wild rat he resembled was larger and tended toward brown coats, though white wasn’t uncommon. His own fur was largely white, with a brown hood over his head and down his spine. The brown fur was actually agouti, made up of banded colors on each hair. The brown rats hadn’t yet made it to the New World and so any that the cat shifters saw would be assumed to be ratkin.
Once he finally heard the pirates leaving, he crawled over the side of the ship and perched on the rail. Cocking his head to the side, he looked over toward the Gato del Diablo. Though his eyes were incredibly sensitive when it came to seeing in dim lighting in his animal form, they were largely useless at a distance. Everything was blurry once it was out of his immediate reach and his color perception was different. The sun was setting, casting the sea in twilight. Luckily, it was the time when his eyes were at their most sensitive. Though he was blind to the color red in his rat form, his eyes could pick out ultraviolet light, which was at its most abundant at twilight and dawn. Brigid’s red hair would just look like a dark blob to him and blend in with her surroundings.
He spotted her quickly despite that and his heart leaped with relief. Across the distance, there was a faint magenta glow that highlighted her face. Tears were running down it. There was always a faint pink tint to them in their animal forms, just as there was in true rats, but it grew more intense the more distraught or ill they were. Enough stress could even make it occur in their human forms. To human eyes, there would just be a hint of pink that would likely be lost in the flush on her cheeks. To Liam’s eyes, her suffering shone from the other ship like a beacon. She was still alive, but terrified.
He climbed down from his perch to pick his way across the deck, skirting the dead bodies of the crew and the expanding pools of blood around them. The bag was gone, which he had expected. There was no room for guilt. He had seen and done too much in his twenty-three years to let himself be bogged down with that particular emotion. His focus could only remain on retrieving Brigid, his mother’s ring and the map.
The door to the captain’s cabin was still ajar from the ransacking by the pirates. He made his way inside, then shifted into his human form, rising up on his feet as he did. The captain had been roughly the same size as Liam and he didn’t relish the idea of trying to rescue Brigid naked. Any currency, precious metals or valuable trinkets had been taken from the cabin, but he found a pair of boots that would fit and a change of clothes that more or less did. He dressed himself quickly, then start
ed rifling through the dead man’s belongings for weapons.
“I thought I recognized the type when you came on board, but I wasn’t sure until I heard the pirates talking. Is your wife a rat as well?”
Liam turned sharply, raising the flintlock pistol he’d just found. The cook was standing in the doorway, looking somewhat disheveled but perfectly healthy. He raised his hands to show that he was harmless and Liam lowered the pistol again. The man was short with a round stomach and thinning hair that had gone prematurely gray, his skin dark and leathery from a lifetime at sea.
“How’d you escape their blades?” Liam asked before he turned back to continue his pillaging of the cabin.
“Hid behind the hardtack. I thought they wouldn’t go looking there.”
Liam nodded. “Aye. She’s kin. How’d you know?” The older man’s questions set him to wondering what Brigid’s rat form looked like. That he hadn’t seen her shift yet wasn’t so strange, since it had only been a few days since he found out who she was. Still, he lamented that she hadn’t shifted and escaped with him.
“My father was a Lascar. He told me stories.”
Liam glanced at the cook again over his shoulder. The older man did have the look of the Indian Subcontinent to him, so that fit. The number of sailors hired from the Orient—dubbed Lascars—had grown over the last century and they often took European or British brides. The ratkin were far more numerous throughout Asia and eastern Europe than they were in the west. Their histories traced the origins of the ratkin back to China, having slowly spread since from intermarriage. If any ordinary people had heard legends about the ratkin, Liam supposed they’d be from a place where their population was greater.
“I only came back on the ship so I wouldn’t have to face the Gato crew naked and unarmed,” Liam said as he strapped on a cutlass. “If you want to help, you’re welcome to. If you don’t, I have no use for you.”
Armed as well as he could manage, Liam turned from the cabin and headed for the deck. With the sun now set, he kept to the darkest shadows and crept over to check the longboat. Feline eyes could see well in the dark, but were almost as nearsighted as those of rats. In the shadows, their human eyes wouldn’t see him at all. Regardless of how they watched, he could stay hidden. If there was one thing ratkin were good at, it was sneaking.
Following close behind him, he could hear the movements of the cook. “If you’re going after the girl, I’ll help,” he said quietly, though Liam doubted his voice would carry far enough for the pirates to hear across the water. “She seemed sweet and it’s supposed to be good luck to sail with cuhom.”
From the context, Liam could guess that the word meant ratkin. It nearly made him laugh. He paused, then turned to gesture toward the dead bodies strewn across the deck. “Oh, aye. We’re the best of luck.”
CHAPTER TEN
A HINT OF LIES
THE creature was still roughly shaped like a man, though some of his bodily proportions had changed. His hands and face were the most readily identifiable changes. His hands were clawed, looking something like the paws that Brigid had seen on the skin of a jaguar brought back from the mainland. His face had a slight feline muzzle to it; his pupils were slit like those of a house cat. The fur that had sprouted from his skin was gray with darker stripes through it, as though the devil himself had blended a demonic tabby with a man.
Brigid did her best not to look at the monster, but it was difficult. After they had dragged her off of her ship, her hands were tied behind her back and she was shoved into a cabin where the half-feline, half-man creature now stood guard over her. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall, her head turned to the side to avoid looking at him. He hovered nearby as though he expected her to somehow magically escape from the ropes binding her.
The other pirates had returned to their human faces after Liam’s fall, but her guard remained looking inhuman. She wasn’t sure if she would live through the night, but she was certain that if she did she’d have nightmares about those cat eyes staring at her and the deaths of everyone on board her ship.
One of the other pirates called into the cabin in an unfamiliar language. Being exposed to several different cultures in the busy ports of Jamaica, she knew English, Irish, French, a bit of Spanish and a few words in other languages. This one sounded nothing like any language she had ever heard before.
The creature responded to the other pirate. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him move back from her. She turned her head to watch as the cat-man stepped over to the door, where the captain now stood. They had a brief conversation in the unfamiliar language before the captain waved his hand dismissively. The creature seemed to shrink before Brigid’s eyes as the fur receded and his body settled back into a human form. He spared a glance toward her, smirking, then stepped out of the cabin.
“You killed two of my men. Your mate killed three of them and wounded another,” the captain said as he locked the door behind him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have attacked us, then,” she said tightly, fighting against the rising nausea of fear. Later—if she survived—she could take the luxury of being horrified by what she had done. Killing two men wasn’t something she took lightly, but there was little room to dwell on it when her own death seemed so likely.
“What’s your name?”
She lowered her eyes for a moment, wondering if there was any sense in lying. “Brigid O’Cullane.”
“My name is Elazar de Rostegui y Iturrigaray.”
She raised her eyes to look at him again, her brows drawing together. Living in an English colony, her exposure to the Spanish had been somewhat limited, but she knew what their names sounded like. “You’re not Spanish.”
Elazar’s own eyes narrowed slightly. “Basque. Your mate didn’t tell you about us?”
It was an odd way to refer to Liam, but not a completely unknown reference in English. She could see no benefit in ending their ruse and admitting he wasn’t her husband. “I don’t even know what you are.”
The man was quiet for a moment, considering her with a look of baffled amusement. Watching him from her spot on the floor, she could see that he was older than she had first guessed. His hair still had a great deal of black in it, but his face was weathered far beyond youth. She thought he might be close to sixty, which seemed a remarkable age for a man to still be pirating. None of his crew had looked particularly young, either.
“You’ve never heard of—” The word he said next sounded incomprehensible to her ears. She shook her head and he shot her an annoyed look. “Catkind?” he tried again in English.
“I’ve heard stories that witches can turn into cats,” she reluctantly offered, “but they were all women.”
The captain picked up a heavy book from his desk and flung it toward her with a sudden, violent rage. She yipped in shock and ducked down, but it struck the window above her. There was a crack and she looked up to see it had broken through the glass and gone tumbling out into the sea beyond. Night had set in while she had been left waiting in the cabin and with it had come a storm. Wind whistled through the broken window.
“Yes, they were women. There were a lot of them. They’re all dead now.” He was shouting and coming closer to her. She shrank back against the wall, struggling with the ropes behind her back. “Killed by the Spanish and the French and most especially the English.”
He gave her such a look of withering hatred with that last bit that her Celtic pride automatically rebelled. She had to bite back informing him that an Irish colonist was no more English than he was Spanish.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unsure of what else she could do to soothe his rage.
He said nothing to her apology, simply giving his head a shake. “Our women were burned as witches. There are a few old women left, but not many. Without them, all of catkind will die out and it’s all the fault of you disgusting vermin.”
Vermin. Rats. She’d heard several references like that since the pirates had appeared
, but couldn’t make sense as to what it had to do with her. All the bits of salty wisdom her father had given her that revolved around rodents came to mind, but that seemed absurd. Her father couldn’t have had anything to do with shape-shifting creatures, could he?
“What did…the vermin do?” she asked haltingly.
Elazar finally stepped away from her, much to her relief. He crossed the cabin to pluck a bottle of rum from a bag she hadn’t noticed before, but recognized from the merchant ship. Beside that bag sat Liam’s. Her heart quickened. Surely he had put the map in there. Had he hidden her pistol as well?
“Their atrocity meant so little to them?” Elazar asked, before he scoffed and took a swig from the rum. “They don’t even bother to teach their young that we exist at all. Your kin identified us as witches to the Church and have nearly destroyed us as a result. The few Basque catkind I could find came with me here and we’ve managed to find some Spanish and French of our kind as well, but no women young enough to still bear children.”
Brigid shifted her weight and moved her bound arms behind her. There was something sharp projecting from the wall. A nail perhaps? She worked the ropes back and forth over it, hope surging. As long as she could keep him talking, she could work at her escape.
“Why did my kin do that?” she asked.
Elazar shrugged and took another long pull off of his rum before he settled into the chair at his desk. He slouched down, staring at her in a distant sort of way. “There was another breed of ratkin. Smaller, weaker, darker. Not quite so clever. We’d hunted them nearly to extinction before your kind arrived. Your kin bred with them and took on the war between us as their own.” The aging pirate curled his upper lip in a sneer. “We underestimated you.”
The story had to be a lie or a misunderstanding, but she still felt an illogical pleasure at the thought of turning the tables on such monsters. “If we’re so awful, why bother taking me at all?”
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