by R. J. Blain
Abrahan leaned over the side of the ship and watched with interest while I circled.
Delaying wouldn’t help anything, so I dove, gathered momentum, and breached, concentrating on my human form. The curse broke, and the split-second transformation stripped the air out of my lungs. I smacked into the Wanderer, slid towards the waterline, and caught hold of the rail, dangling from my left hand while I shuddered and struggled to breathe without gasping.
Slapping his hands on my arm, Abrahan hauled me the rest of the way onto the ship, grunting from the effort. It took me a moment to remember how to make my feet do what I wanted, and I jammed my toes into the brackets and climbed the rest of the way up.
“We need a rope ladder,” I croaked.
“If you say so.” As soon as I hit the deck, Abrahan let me go and backed away. “What now?”
“We stay here until dawn. Too dangerous to try to take the ship out until it’s light. If the tide’s low, we’re stuck until it rises. It can get pretty shallow near the reefs at times.” I’d seen the corals mere inches below the water’s surface. The Wanderer would be fine in the deep waters of the cove, although the ship would be stuck until high tide. “Of course, after I rest, I might go to the House Lost at Sea.”
“Not without me.”
Great. It hadn’t taken long for the cabin boy to start talking back, and I wondered if Captain Louisa endured a surge of annoyance every time I’d done it to her. Probably. It explained a lot.
I got to my feet and dusted off my clothes, checking to make certain my captain’s cutlass and flintlock were still intact. Both seemed to have survived my collision with the Wanderer undamaged. “All right. I don’t know what we’ll find, so you’ll need to stay on your guard. While I don’t expect any visitors, the Black Scourge had been involved with its construction.”
“You’re expecting trouble.”
I appreciated his no-nonsense tone and ready acceptance of change. If he could handle my curse, I held hope he could handle just about anything. “I don’t know what I’m expecting, but with her involved? I expect magic.”
“Magic,” he echoed, his voice weak. “Do you think I’ll be cursed, too?”
I hoped not, but I didn’t like making promises I couldn’t keep, so I shrugged. “You can stay with the ship if you’d like.”
For a moment, I thought he would, but then Abrahan straightened his back, set his shoulders, and lifted his chin. “I’m going.”
I prayed for his sake that Captain Maritza's powers had gone to the grave with her. While I’d likely miss him when he died, I wouldn’t wish an eternity on anyone.
Twenty-Two
This is the only way up?
I waited until dawn to take Abrahan to the House Lost at Sea. After leaving the Wanderer safely anchored in the cove of my island, I permitted him to cling to my dorsal fin. The swim tired me more than I anticipated; the shifting tides woke swirling currents, and if one ripped my cabin boy into deeper waters, it was a coin toss if I’d be able to chase him down in time to save him from drowning.
The ocean could be a cruel and jealous mistress.
I avoided the shallows where the tides ripped water over the corals and rocks, guaranteeing anyone unfortunate enough to be sucked through the eddies would emerge with their bones broken and the skin flayed from their body. I cut across the waves until I reached the right island, then I angled for shore to the staircase carved into the cliff. The sandy beach lasted a few feet before ending at the rocks, a menacing spot for anyone seeking access to the manor high overhead.
Strangers and wise men would head to the other side of the island, facing a steep slope covered in ivy. They’d find boobytraps, pits, and snares for their trouble, most of them non-lethal with a few nastier surprises tossed in.
After we explored the manor, I’d have to show him the way down the hill to the beach and the sandbar blocking ships from getting too close to the island.
As soon as we reached the surf, Abrahan staggered to shore. I retreated far enough to reach my full speed and surged towards the cliff with the waves, beaching myself before fighting off the curse’s hold. It took longer than I liked, and my entire body shook.
“You’re gray.” Taking hold of my arm, he pulled me to my feet. “You all right?”
“Just need to rest a bit—and stay as a shark for a while after we go back to the Wanderer,” I mumbled, straightening in an effort to hide my weakness. “It’s a bit of a climb to the house. You’ll go first, and I’ll be right behind you. I can survive a fall. You can’t.”
Abrahan gulped. “This is the only way up?”
“Unless you like falling into pits, yes. There are a lot of them on the other slope, and I may have done too good of a job hiding them. I know where they are on the way down…”
“And you forgot where they are on the way up. Nice job, captain. That was stupid.”
Yep, of all the cabin boys to kidnap, I’d gotten the one with a mouth. After a few moments of introspection, I decided a mouthy cabin boy beat a cringing one. I hated when they whimpered. It made me want to pull out the plank, and I didn’t have one on the Wanderer yet. I needed to fix that.
At the same time, I needed to get a replacement cabin boy and promote Abrahan to a rank that put his mouthiness to good use. Cook would do.
No wise sailor pissed off the ship’s cook—or the surgeon. Or the first mate. Or the captain. Or the navigator. Pissing off Ricardo had been a bad idea, one that usually ended up with the navigator tossing the culprit overboard and letting him scream until relenting and lowering a rope. I’d enjoyed the rare times our ships had been close enough for me to watch my lover educate a wise-mouthed lesser pirate.
The list of folks I could use in my modern-day voyages went on and on, and I chuckled at the thought of building a true pirate crew in the modern world of hulking battleships and polluted seas.
Maybe Bensen’s idea of diving to scavenge from shipwrecks held more water than I wanted to give him credit for. I loved the sailing more than the plundering, and the dives would satisfy my life-long desire to hunt down treasures at sea. Maybe plastic and garbage polluted the oceans, but beneath the waters, a rich history waited to be rediscovered.
“You’re really telling me we have to climb that?”
“Stay close to the rock and you’ll be fine. I’ll survive a fall. You won’t.”
“Fallen before?”
“More times than I care to count. I carved the steps, which isn’t the safest job. The captains thought it wise to make me do it—only member of either crew who could bounce on down with any expectation of getting back up.”
“Shit job.”
I stared up at the cliff, easily over a hundred feet tall. Measuring it hadn’t occurred to me, and I’d never bothered to count the steps angling up its face. I pointed at one of the large rocks jutting out over the sand. “The steps begin there. It’s a long climb, so let’s get to it.”
Abrahan shot me a dirty look but trudged across the sand and set foot to the first step.
The House Lost at Sea overlooked the ocean, its front porch a mere twenty feet from the cliff edge. As it had for over three hundred years, my skin tingled when I approached the proud stone building, which had endured through the centuries without any evidence of its age. The glass windows remained clear, as though even nature feared Captain Maritza's wrath should her home be damaged in any way.
My throat tightened, and I stared at the only place I should have ever called home.
“It’s huge,” Abrahan whispered. “It’s a mansion.”
Instead of arguing with him, I shook my head and knelt, slipping off my boot so I could retrieve my captain’s key. I had no idea how they fit together, but I suspected Captain Maritza's magic would take care of fusing them so they’d unlock the front door, its wood as polished and clean as the day it’d been hung on its hinges.
I’d never been inside. Captain Maritza's crew—and her slaves and hostages—handled the interior while I
had worked on the steps leading up to the manor. With shaking hands, I put my boot back on and retrieved Captain Maritza's key from my bra.
It didn’t take much fiddling to figure out how the two halves of the key slid together, clicking into place. “I’ve waited three hundred years for this.”
Instead of triumph, I felt dead and empty, as though the end of the journey hadn’t really taken me anywhere, but I had nowhere else to go except to its conclusion. What could be in the manor?
Betrayal and heartbreak had left it alone for so long. Would I find gold? Treasure? What could possibly be within that I actually wanted?
My captain was gone, and not even her bones remained. I suspected Captain Maritza had shared the same fate, her and her crew’s bodies dissolved and broken apart in the sea over the centuries. Despite riding high overhead, the sun’s warmth didn’t reach me. “It was supposed to be our home.”
“But then you were betrayed, and your captain and crew died. Right?”
“Right.” I lifted the key and watched it spin on its chains. “Two captains, two crews, one house, one key.”
“So we just walk up to the front door and go on in?”
I laughed, and it was a bitter, bitter sound. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not trapped. I’ve walked up there hundreds of times.”
Maybe my count of hundreds came in a little conservatively; I’d paced every inch of the island, always returning to the House Lost at Sea time and time again, until every stone of the building was branded into my memory. If I closed my eyes, I still remembered everything, right down to where the mortar holding it all together cracked before the timelessness of the place had taken hold. Etchings, names and marks made by my fellow pirates, decorated every window on the first floor.
“Let’s go.” The first step was the hardest, and I forced one foot in front of the other, my gaze fixed on the plain door that had blocked my passage for three hundred years. How many times had I stood in front of it, my hand pressed to the wood, wondering what waited for me within?
Too many times.
Abrahan recoiled a step, and his movement caught my attention. “Abrahan?”
“There’s someone here,” he hissed.
I whirled around, scanning the front of the house before directing my attention to the slope leading down to the main beach. While the ivy rustled in the wind, its tendrils encroaching on the manor without ever touching it, I saw no sign of anyone nearby.
“Where?”
He pointed at the hill with its thick vegetation. “There.”
I drew my captain’s pistol and cocked the hammer. “All right, kid. Stay behind me. I can take a round. You can’t. If shots are fired, you find cover, wait it out, and make your way down the staircase to the beach. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I jogged to the porch, hopped up the stone steps to the portico, and pressed to the building, gesturing for Abrahan to follow. Once certain he kept close, I crept my way to the edge of the house to peek around the corner. “Keep an eye behind us. You see something, hit the deck.”
“Right.”
I thought through my options. If someone had reached the island, they had a ship somewhere nearby. Most likely, some adventure seeker had gone astray off the coast of Africa, found the island, somehow dodged the reefs, and located the beach.
Maybe it snowed in hell, too.
I curled my lip in a silent snarl. “Back towards the cliff. We’ll come back later.”
Had I been alone, I would’ve gone in with my gun blazing and my sword ready to drink the blood of the intruders. Until I had a chance to arm Abrahan with a weapon more reliable than a knife and teach him how to use it, I couldn’t afford to risk it.
A good captain didn’t put her crew in unnecessary danger, not for so little reward. I had the key. I could return—I would return.
“We’re leaving?”
“We retreat, we figure out who is here and why, and then we get what we want. Good pirates always go in with a plan.”
A plan would let me find a way to use Abrahan without putting him in harm’s way, allowing me to accomplish my goals without his blood staining my hands. Satisfied with my decision, I nodded in the direction of the staircase. The fifty feet over open ground worried me, but I’d shield him and hope for the best. Once we descended, we’d have cover from the rocks jutting out over the steps, and we’d be safe enough in the water.
As a shark, I could drag Abrahan to my island and the Wanderer, where he’d be safe. Then I could scout and find who had come to the House Lost at Sea, how they’d found it, and why they encroached on my territory.
I herded him towards the cliff, sweeping the flintlock over the rustling ivy, cursing the restless sea wind for making it difficult to spot intruders on the slope. With luck, my pits had captured or delayed my adversaries, minimizing the work I’d need to do to get rid of them. Depending on their number, I could tie them up and leave them on the South African coast to be found later.
If they touched my kid, I’d turn the ocean red with their blood.
Abrahan kept close, and when we drew within ten feet of the steps, he broke into a run.
Metal gleamed in the sunlight, and the barrel of a weapon followed my ward’s movement. Spitting a curse, I whipped the flintlock around, picked my target, and squeezed the trigger. The blast of gunfire echoed off the cliffs, and shouts rang out, but my opponent’s gun remained steady.
I couldn’t let Abrahan get hit. I couldn’t. No matter what, I had to protect him. I could take a hit. He couldn’t. I couldn’t let him get hit.
The barrel flashed.
I couldn’t—
Twenty-Three
Nothing pissed me off quite as much as someone shooting me in the face.
Why did dying always have to hurt so much?
No, that wasn’t right. Dying hadn’t hurt at all. I had no recollection of anything other than the flash of the gun discharging. Light traveled faster than sound, and I hadn’t heard—or felt—the bullet hit. Every nerve in my body burned, and bitter, long experience warned I’d either taken the round in the head or spine.
Survival came at a price, and mine was pain.
I waited it out, unable to even whimper while aware of my bones and muscles shifting under my battered skin. The cracks and pops of shattered joints fusing and returning to their rightful place was accompanied by a wet tearing.
I must have fallen from the cliff, too, a blessing, all things considered. Abrahan knew I’d get back up eventually, although I regretted I hadn’t given him more details about my inability to die.
The thought of clawing my way free of a coffin didn’t enthuse me at all. I’d done that a few times, and it always involved reviving, dying, reviving, and dying in a relentless chain while I worked towards freedom.
Water flowed around me, catching hold of my clothes and dragging me into the deeps. The sea flooded my mouth and lungs, and as my awareness extended beyond my immediate pain, I realized my heart didn’t beat nor did I breathe.
As always, the curse bound my spirit to my body when my body could no longer sustain life. I would linger until my heart resumed beating, then if I remained in the water, I would transform and discard my human skin before I sank back into the darkness.
The last time I’d been killed while in the sea, sometime before the age of pirates had come to an end, I’d woken up on the bottom of the ocean several months later, covered in a thick blanket of silt. I’d been shot in the head, although I couldn’t remember much of my execution. My deep slumber hadn’t helped my human body heal much, and once I had returned to shore, it had taken me months to recover.
It was a coin toss if I’d stay human or shark while I recovered; the curse did what the curse wanted to do, and it disliked gracing me with consistency after my death.
If I succumbed, I would leave Abrahan alone. Had he been shot, too? Had he reached the safety of the steps? Even if he had, how would he have escaped? Without me, there was nowhere
for him to go.
I’d embrace life as a shark readily enough, but I couldn’t afford to sleep. If Abrahan still lived, I needed to act. I could take him to the Wanderer. I could hunt for him, bring him fish, and protect the ship. Anyone who tried to approach without my blessings would die to my teeth.
I would become a leviathan, lurking and waiting for those who would dare threaten the kid I had claimed for my crew. If I couldn’t drive them away, I’d get rid of them one way or another. I would rip them to shreds and feed the fish with the torn remains of their lifeless bodies.
Instead of transforming into a shark, I washed up on the shore of my isle. The surf beat at my chilled body, pounding at me in a steady rhythm until a convulsion tore through me. Pressure built in my chest and head.
It burst in a coughing fit so strong I hacked out water and blood. My heart remembered it had a job to do and thudded to frantic life, each of its beats a sharp stab behind my breasts. Flashes of light bubbled and burst in front of my eyes. I blinked away the sand and salt, my vision blurring before focusing on the Wanderer, which bobbed in the water where I’d left her, safe in the deepest waters of the cove.
If I could reach my ship, I would be in a far better position to return to the House Lost at Sea and discover Abrahan’s fate. If someone had hurt him, I would abandon all pretenses of humanity, hunt them down, and take my time killing them.
The sun set long before I managed to force my battered body into motion, and every movement triggered cascading waves of nausea and pain. I gagged and lurched to my hands and knees, my fingers digging at the night-cool sand.