Sea Cursed: An Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 13 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  The Orca exploded from within, groaning and howling as timbers buckled and everything flammable burst into flame. The ravagers still on deck were caught in the conflagration, consumed by fire or impaled by flying wood. They danced like horrible lizards on two legs. I watched, cringing in horrified fascination.

  The Sea Cursed passed through the flaming rubble, planks of burning wood scraping her sides with a horrible shrieking.

  I was thrown brutally to the deck. Half the hydroponic plants toppled, and dimly, from beyond the howls of the dying ravagers and the crackle of the flames, I heard Logan’s shout.

  “Fire!” He yelled again. “Fire in the mast!”

  Rain poured down in sheets, extinguishing the flames and drenching me. Through the wall of water, I saw one of the ravagers had made it on deck and was reaching a savage claw for Logan who had his back to it as he frantically called down the rain.

  Logan whirled at the last moment and flung himself backward. The ravager’s swipe missed, but barely.

  “Over here, you bastard!” I shrieked, staggering to my feet, clinging to the railing to keep from falling overboard as the Sea Cursed tossed in the waves. The ravager whipped around, snarling. When it unhinged its jaws preparatory to leaping at me, I aimed a fireball down at is mouth. Screaming with savage glee, I watched the fireball tear down the ravager’s throat where it blasted apart. Chunks of fiery monster sprayed all over the deck. Logan’s rain put the fire out.

  Logan ran to the stern and hung over the railing, focusing on one of the swimming ravagers so he could drown it.

  That left one ravager on deck for me to deal with.

  I approached it slowly, waiting for it to open its damned mouth. Its eyeless face horrified me, filling me with an atavistic terror that threatened to overcome me. Greenish reptilian skin gleamed with rain. Grunting, it rose on two legs, looking like an alien lizard with enough human characteristics that it hurt to look at it. Hissing, it advanced on me.

  “Demetria!” Logan shouted, staring back at me.

  “I can handle this!” I screamed back through the rain and wind. “You drown the ones in the water and never mind me!”

  “Damn it!” Logan shrieked. “Damn you, earth witch! I love you! Don’t you dare get hurt or I will kill you!”

  Openmouthed, I stared at him for a dazed second. He loved me?

  The ravager growled low in its throat. A pouch in its neck ballooned out, swollen red against the greenish ooze of its skin.

  “You think you’re so scary, don’t you?” I asked it, wiping rain from my eyes. Damn, it was hard to see.

  The ravager growled again as it stalked nearer. The bastard was trying to psyche me out. And get close enough to skewer me with its claws before it opened its damned mouth. Smart damn monster.

  “You’re not so scary. You’re pathetic,” I said, taking a prudent step backward.

  It made a rattling, crooning sound and cocked its head as if it could sense something I couldn’t. A split second later I heard a second ravager – behind me.

  I threw myself to the deck in an instinctive act of self-preservation. The ravager, already in mid-leap, sailed over me, nicking me in the back with the raptor-like claws on one of its feet. The agony cut into me like a dagger coated in poison flame. Othala, it burned.

  The ravager smashed, clawed feet forward, into the first, accidentally disemboweling it. Steaming guts and black blood spilled onto the deck. Both bodies landed hard. The dead ravager disintegrated in the rain, leaving behind only a black, hissing smear.

  The remaining ravager lay stunned on the deck for a moment. I tried to move, but glassy-hot pain held me prisoner. I couldn’t even blink, and slashing rain blinded me. Something on the ravager’s claws must have been toxic. How long did the effects last? If the poison was fatal, I’d just doomed Galveteen because I’d allowed myself to be psyched out by monsters.

  The ravager on deck recovered itself in one, smooth, terrifying move from lying stunned on the deck to standing, its throat pouch ballooning.

  It lifted a foot, twelve-inch claws curled, as it prepared to skewer me.

  Even if I could have moved, the only object around I might have used to defend myself was a charred length of timber from the Orca that was about a twelve inches long. The ravager, as if it knew I was powerless, hesitated for a moment, perhaps savoring the kill.

  Powerless? Was I? Maybe I couldn’t move my body, but I could still form coherent thoughts, and yes, my link to the earth was still open. I focused on the burned piece of wood. Surely it wouldn’t crumble to dust when touched? The core was still intact. It had to be.

  I amped my connection with the wood full throttle, and it leaped to my defense, flying from the deck into the center of the ravager’s head and straight out the back of its monstrous skull.

  For one awful instant the ravager stood upright, showing me a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, then it toppled backward onto the deck, where it disintegrated into nothing as the rain pounded down.

  Logan turned away from the railing. In the torrential rain, and through the daze of my pain, he seemed so far away. I could only make out tan trousers and a billowing white shirt. I hallucinated swirling colors, and the sound of the raging sea and wind seemed to speak my name. Over and over. But I couldn’t answer back. The savage colors faded to white, darkened to charcoal, then black. Was I closing my eyes? I couldn’t tell. And wondering that, my hold on consciousness snapped.

  ***

  The steady chug of the engine accompanied by the salt tang of sea air roused me. When I opened my eyes, Logan was staring down at me, his mouth tight with grief. He held my hand – the one with the mark of Othala – between both of his, and the contact of his flesh against mine comforted me.

  My back sizzled. Had I been sunburned? No. My breath strangled in my throat as memories of the ravagers flooded back.

  “Rav –” I bolted upright on the bench, consumed with panic.

  “No, no. no, lie back. It’s okay.” Logan gently pushed me back down. Some of the wild despair faded from his eyes as he smiled at me and brushed back some hair blown across my cheek by the sea breeze. “They’re gone, Dem. I’ve taken the Sea Cursed far out to sea. We outran them, and they must have drowned. There was nowhere for them to go, and Galveteen was too far away for them to swim. You killed them.”

  “You did,” I whispered. “You’re the sea witch. You drowned them.”

  “I couldn’t drown all of them before they made it to the boat. I had to start the engine and sail away,” he told me as he stroked my cheek. He frowned and took a deep breath. “You’re the one who blew up their ship. Which one was it? Could you tell?”

  “The Orca.” When I swallowed, my parched throat scratched like sandpaper. “Can I have some water?”

  Concern tightened the muscles in his jaw. He gave my cheek one last touch before he rose. “I’ll be right back.”

  Quickly, with his sailor’s agility, he crossed the deck and disappeared into the wheelhouse.

  I dragged myself upright, still unsteady from the aftereffects of whatever had been on the ravager’s claws. I clung to the railing for support and looked out to sea. Galveteen was a tiny smudge on the horizon. We were so far away, surely we’d turn back soon. Scanning as hard as I could, I couldn’t find any ravagers. The panic scrabbling at my chest dialed down.

  I turned to survey the Sea Cursed. Soot smudged the deck in several places. Bits and pieces of green plants littered what I could see of the bow. Worst of all, the sails were tattered and blackened at the edges from fire.

  I was staring at the flapping, ruined sails when Logan returned with a glass of water.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, following my stricken gaze. “We’ve got another set in the hold. We’ll enchant them before we raise them. These actually held up pretty well. They were fully engulfed when I came on deck.” He swallowed, remembered fear flitting across his face.

  “I had to blow up the Orca. We were going to ram it,” I said,
shame burning my cheeks. “I couldn’t move the wheel. I couldn’t make us turn.”

  “That was my fault,” Logan said grimly. “My spell.” He pressed the glass between my stiff palms and watched me gulp most of it down. Even using both hands, I still sloshed water down my chin and onto my bloodstained t-shirt.

  “Dem,” he said, his jaw working. “I’m sorry I didn’t help more. I was sleeping. Frigging sleeping. If you hadn’t woken up, we would be dead right now. You saved us.”

  My heart seized. Othala, I hated seeing him look so down on himself. I carefully set aside the water glass and cupped his cheek in my palm. When he smiled, the pull of his cheek muscles brushed my skin, making me ache somewhere deep inside myself. When had this man started to matter so much to me?

  “Logan?”

  He looked at me, his eyes dark.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  His face contorted as he squeezed shut his eyes. He wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my neck. “I thought I’d lost you, earth witch. They’re poison, these goddamn ravagers. One of them scratched you, and I wasn’t there.”

  “Yes, you were,” I said fiercely. “I told you I could handle myself, and I did, didn’t I?”

  He laughed weakly against my throat, his body shaking.

  I blew out my breath, trying not to tremble. How crazy was it to love someone you’d only met days before? I didn’t know, and damn well didn’t care. Perhaps adversity deepened connections and forged bonds that might take months or years during safer, more placid times.

  Logan lifted his head, and his eyes shone, maybe with tears, or it might have been love. No one had ever looked at me the way he looked at me now.

  He had a bruise high on one cheek I hadn’t noticed before. I touched it gently.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I ran into the wheelhouse door freaking out over you,” he said gravely, and abruptly, without any warning at all, we both burst into laughter bordering on hysteria. Clinging to each other, we rocked together, so damned happy to be alive, and laughed as if we’d never, ever stop.

  Chapter 17

  I worked through my stiff joints and aching muscles by helping Logan scrub the soot and bloodstains off the deck. We took time out to eat, but I crammed the food into my mouth, barely tasting it. I wanted the deck to be as clean and pure as it had been the night before. I wanted all traces of those damned ravagers erased.

  “Slow down,” Logan advised watching me stuff half my sandwich into my mouth all at once. “You’ll choke.”

  I chewed for what seemed like forever before scowling at him. “I don’t want anything of them polluting our boat.”

  He smiled at me and reached out to touch my wrist, effectively arresting my next big bite. How goofy did I look with my cheeks bulged out like squirrel’s? This man would find me as attractive as mud if I didn’t watch it.

  “I think maybe we should hold off on the ritual tonight,” he said, his smile fading. “You were hurt, Dem, and now you’re pushing yourself to clean and barely taking time to eat. You’re on the edge, and I think we need to slow down.”

  “Three consecutive nights, Logan.” I set the uneaten half of my sandwich back on the plate. “If we don’t have the ritual tonight, last night was wasted.”

  “Was it?” He shook his head, his eyes lighting. “That’s not how I’m going to remember it.”

  I tried to ignore the butterflies of lust fluttering their passion-drenched wings in my stomach. Othala, I was so in love with this man I was thinking the most idiotic things. Lusty butterflies. Curse it.

  “I mean it won’t count toward the spell of Reutterance.” I tried to rein in the crazy metaphors in my mind and concentrate on the conversation. “We’ll be behind a whole day. And maybe the Orca is destroyed, and the Regina, but the Mary-Angela is still out there. A day’s delay could mean the difference between her landing on a beach on Galveteen and being lost forever at sea.”

  Logan gazed at me with such intensity my self-consciousness ramped up. Did I have crumbs in the corners of my mouth? Butter smeared on my lips? Or worse – something stuck in my teeth?

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Don’t lie. I’ve watched how stiffly you’ve moved. I know you’re in pain.”

  “Not anymore,” I denied. “I worked through it. Okay, I was stiff and achy at first, but I’m fine now.” I hopped off the bench and did a few jumping jacks to prove I was coordinated and not in pain.

  “Sex is a lot more intense than jumping jacks,” Logan said, and the damn butterflies of lust were back in droves in my stomach. Some of them fluttered into my throat, choking me. I wanted to fling myself over the table into his arms, screw waiting for the ritual to start.

  I stopped jumping and returned to my seat, where I made sure to brush my knees against Logan’s beneath the table. He sucked in his breath, his eyes firing with desire.

  I reached out to draw the back of my hand down his stubbly cheek. Othala, I wished he’d kiss me.

  “You are making this really difficult, Demetria.”

  “No, you are. I’m fine and I want to have the ritual tonight.” I slid around on the bench until our bodies pressed together, and I could whisper in his ear. “In fact, I think maybe we ought to practice a little before it starts.” I nibbled his lobe. He tasted tangy – like sea salt.

  “Demetria.” He groaned when I boldly put a hand in his lap and cupped his balls through his trousers.

  “You didn’t just initiate me into the secret world of ritual magic last night, Logan.” I darted out my tongue to touch the inside of his ear. He groaned again. “You made me hungry for you. Not ritual sex, sex with you. I’m not tired or in pain. The only ache I am experiencing is the one between my legs. I want your tongue in my mouth and your cock inside me. Is that clear?”

  “One question.” Logan turned his head so he could capture my mouth with his. We kissed, the heat sizzling between us until I thought the table would spontaneously combust.

  “What?” I twined my tongue with his as our kiss deepened.

  “Why not have the ritual right now? Screw waiting for later.” He slid his hand beneath my shirt so he could cup one of my breasts. He squeezed hard enough to make my heart race.

  I didn’t need to think about that one. That was easy. “You’re on,” I said, and he laughed into my mouth.

  “Then get the hell into the cabin before I take you on this damn table,” he growled.

  Table sex sounded kinky, but also uncomfortable. Maybe for my second time I should stick to a soft mattress. However, Logan wouldn’t stop kissing me, nor could I stop kissing him.

  “Talisman is in the top drawer on my side of the bed,” he said, evoking all sorts of strange tingles and sizzling snaps down my spine and through my body. “I’ll get the chalk.”

  I gulped, forgetting to kiss him back. “You want me to wear the talisman?”

  “Why not?” He cupped my face between his palms and stared into my eyes until I thought the earth was crumbling beneath my feet.

  “Because the one who wears the talisman is the leader. In everything. Not just opening the ritual, but...”

  “Being on top during sex?” Logan said, and it took me a long, scarily excited moment to realize he was teasing me.

  “I don’t have to be on top to lead in sex,” I said, and he snorted laughter out of his nose.

  “So says the woman who until last night was a virgin.”

  So maybe he hadn’t been teasing. Othala, the man mixed me up so badly I couldn’t think straight. “I’m not sure I know how to be on top during sex,” I confessed, biting my lip.

  Logan shook his head. “You are such a strange, magical mix of shy and bold.”

  “You wear the talisman,” I said.

  “No.” Logan moved around the table so he could stand. “It’s your turn. And your move. You started this. Afraid to finish it?” He grinned at me.

  I looked hard for the lusty butterflies and the wa
nton woman who had told Logan she wanted his cock inside her, and came up with a nervous girl. I actually giggled, then clapped a horrified hand to my mouth. “Yes, I am. I’m afraid.”

  Logan looked at me for a moment. “You’ll get over it.” He strode to the ladder and ascended toward the wheelhouse. Halfway up, he looked down. “Don’t just sit there. Go put on the talisman. I’m going to find the chalk. If you aren’t topside by the time I have the chalk in hand, I’ll assume you want to hold the ritual in the cabin.”

  “We can’t have sex in the middle of the day on deck!” I cried.

  Logan rolled his eyes. “Earth witches. Always wanting to do it in the dark. The sun won’t melt you. And if you’re worried about being watched, don’t worry. The fish are beneath the boat, and sea gulls would rather catch the fish than watch two witches fucking.”

  Heat burned my cheeks. How many times did I have to have sex before I could refer to it as fucking in casual conversation? Damn that man. What happened to making my transition easy? Didn’t that go for sex as well as magic?

  “You’ll be sorry, Logan Reed,” I muttered, bracing myself against the table so I could stand.

  “Promises, promises,” he called before disappearing into the wheelhouse.

  I found the talisman right where he’d said it would be. I recalled from the spell scroll that I was supposed to open it for charging before I put it on. Infuse it with some of my energy and magic somehow. Of course the scroll didn’t say how, and I hadn’t seen Logan do it the night before. Should I ask?

  “Othala curse it. You are a witch, Demetria. The most powerful earth witch on Galveteen. Stop being scared of ritual magic. You figured out how to cast spells pretty quickly when the ravagers attacked. This can’t be harder than that. You don’t even have to kill anything.” A nervous giggle escaped me, and I quickly stifled it.

  I stared at the talisman. It seemed heavier than the first time I’d touched it. From the energy Logan and I had generated last night perhaps. I closed my fingers over it, making a fist.

  I thought about being an earth witch and what that meant. Rocks, trees, dirt, growing things. The palm trees crashing down in a thunderous roar. The stone staircase reforming. Fire blossoming from my palm, flames dancing across the bow of the Orca, tangled in the mainsail of the Sea Cursed. The feel of Logan’s lips crushed against mine, the wet, sensuous curl of his tongue upon my clit, wrapping my sweaty legs around his slippery waist as he thrust into me over and over and the world trembled around us.