“I do, I do. You’re the wolf, aren’t you?” asked the old man.
“The wolf? Hard to say. If you mean werewolf, there are a lot more of those, in case you hadn’t heard.”
“No, no, you are the wolf who travel wit’ dat girl I speak to.”
“You’re being awfully vague,” complained Tom. “Try using names and descriptions.”
“The Octopus, did him bring you to this place?” the old man asked, rubbing his prickly head and chin.
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m the werewolf you’re looking for,” said Tom, groaning and combing his hair in frustration before resting his head in his hands.
“No, no!” The old man stopped him. “Anyone can die,” he said in a hushed voice, “But the Octopus, he do not come to take everyone. He come to get the biggest fish. They too big to catch with the thread.”
“The thread? You can see it too?” asked Tom, touching the place on his chest where his soul kept appearing and disappearing.
“That is the one. I could see it before I die. I knew when the Octopus he was a-tugging on the line. I keep him away for long, long time and he got mad. Came up to get me,” said the old man.
“He came for me, too.” Tom wondered how the old man had cheated death for as long as he had. “Why did he come for you?”
“It was the time to die. I was born. I lived and became old. I was not good for anything else, but I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay with my daughter, so she would not be alone.” He frowned and pushed the sand on the floor with one foot back and forth. “I use all the magic I could to hide from the Octopus, but he can see in the dark and is not a fool.” When he said this, the old man held up a blue gem hanging around his neck—the source of the light Tom had followed to the little house. “You’re here because you fought a demon and lived,” he said suddenly, turning the conversation back to Tom.
“That’s right.” Raising his head, Tom gave the old man a funny look. How did he know the dreigher had been the cause of all this?
“Let us see what I need to tell you.” Slowly, he sat up straight and held the blue gem loosely in one hand. From the floor to his right he picked up a handful of small animal bones and set them in front of his legs. With his free hand he smoothed the sand on the floor, picked the bones up again and cast them to the floor. Without much thought he did this again, for a third time. Tom watched the bones each time they were cast, studying the man’s face every time they fell. The old man didn’t say much, only uttering a, “Hmm,” on the fourth throw and then again on the fifth. After six or seven throws he collected up the bones and smoothed the floor.
“Well?” said Tom, knowing the man must have something to tell him if his skill as a fortune teller were worth anything.
“The Second will try to kill you, because he made you what you are,” the old man began. “You are following the footsteps of the Third. The first time, you died, the second time, you will become the Third.” Blinking once and moving his lips silently, the old man seemed to be thinking. “To be free, you must first find the way back. When you follow the thread, each time you take a step forward, the way back takes a step forward. Death’s Doorway is the way back.”
“All right, well thank you,” said Tom, standing quickly. “You’ve told me what I already knew. I’ve been following the thread, so I’ll just keep doing that.”
“You do not understand,” said the old man.
“I disagree. There is a problem with what you’re telling me,” Tom argued. “The Second can’t kill me because he’s dead. I killed him. He was my brother. I won’t be following the Third anywhere, either. He can’t be followed because he doesn’t go anywhere. He sits on a mountain.”
“The girl I speak to before you, she did as I tell her and all things come to pass as they should,” the old man said as Tom got up to leave.
“And is she dead now, too?” asked Tom, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll make sure not to repeat her mistake.” Laughing, he left the shack.
“I am sure you will do what you will.” Grinning to himself, the old man watched as Tom left.
Tom had no hard feelings toward the old man, but he was sure he knew better than the prophet. His words didn’t make any sense, except for the part about Death’s Door. That was easy enough to understand, and Tom meant to find that door and escape the afterlife. Suddenly the task didn’t seem so difficult. As he walked along the shore, the particles of night blew sideways through the air like raindrops. His hair caught the whistling wind and floated on it like seaweed. The thread, he could see, now pointed toward the sea; Tom figured the Octopus must be somewhere across the great expanse of water. Somehow he would need to find a way across. Dead or not, he was not going to attempt to swim across an ocean. If a monster like Mwuaji were roaming about on land, Tom did not want to imagine what lurked in the Chthonian seas.
Now that he had a direction and knew what lay at the end of the soul thread, Tom did not mind the eternity he spent meandering the shoreline. The cloak of shade the nocturnal coast afforded him was strangely comforting. Since he’d found a boat before, Tom thought it was not too farfetched to assume he’d come across more remnants like it. A ship would be lovely, he thought, but unlikely.
Tom’s search was never dull, even when fruitless. Odd lights and colors appeared far out at sea on occasion. The sky above never ceased pouring the night upon the earth at his feet, and when the wind changed, the particles leapt and dashed this way and that, whirling and rushing through the air in lively dances. Sometimes a wandering soul would streak overhead, across the shallow shore waves or high overhead like a shooting star. Looking out at the sea reminded Tom of a late evening view from a Caribbean beach, except the oranges and blues that clashed on the horizon were much bolder, and they crashed against a black and stormy sky above. As he walked farther and farther, a few powerful colors began to overtake the landscape. No longer was the world black and white, but vivid—too vivid to be the real world and too strange to be a painting. The bold collision of light and shadow seemed to fill the world with an emotion of sadness and peace, a beautiful combination that held Tom’s attention as he wandered.
Obsessed as he was with his surroundings, Tom did not immediately see the little seaside village ahead of him when it appeared. When the rocking sails of ships caught his eye, he first did not believe in what he had found and assumed the little town would be empty and bare. The way the village sat so quietly made him think these things were manifested by the world itself to represent memories of the dead and not to house the dead themselves. If what the old man had said were true and the Octopus rarely brought a soul here, Tom reasoned that this place was an unusual afterlife and a fairly lonely one.
As he expected, no one greeted the curious Tom as he walked into the village. The inn, the merchants’ shops, the chapel, the gunsmith’s—none appeared to be occupied. It occurred to Tom that the village was familiar, and in fact, after some thought, he realized that he had been to this village before. It was some version of Bridgetown, where he’d first met Molly. As he stepped through the front door of the inn, voices filled the air. Ghostly figures populated the tables and stairs. Chairs moved themselves around, cups and forks jumped into the air, fell back to the tables and scooted around. Knives jabbed at things on plates that couldn’t be seen. Slowly the ghosts took the form of men and women, travelers and thieves. Strangest of all, Tom saw himself sitting at a table with former crewmates, talking amongst themselves in a corner and preparing to leave.
The night he’d met Molly for the first time was not a normal night for two reasons. Molly was one strange twist of fate that night, but Tom had been busy that day being the cunning thief he was.
A British noble, a Lord Rainer Young, was in Barbados at the same time as Thomas and crew. The noble had arrived many months earlier and had been sent to take up a governing position that had been reserved for Alecandre Love before his defection and disappearance. Moreover, Lord Young was a nephew of George Ab
rams, who had recently acquired the authority to push for Young’s relocation to the Caribbean. When Thomas Crowe met Lord Young in Barbados, Thomas knew who Lord Young was without any introduction. Young, the governor of the island, harassed ships that came and went from the port. Several ships that suffered heavy taxes and unreasonable seizures belonged to captains who did business at Hutch’s Wharf in London, and this cost Tom money. At the time of their introduction, Young was in a hurry to leave for England. He hadn’t planned to leave until a week later and needed manpower to prepare his ship for departure. Taking advantage of Young’s situation, Tom devised a simple plan to exact some revenge and make money at the same time.
Tom watched as the memory of his heist unfolded. The ghostly images of himself and former crew left the inn and dispersed as soon as they left, every man disappearing into the street, which was now filled by more ghosts. Tom followed one of the crew, who slipped into the gang of sailors who were loading the governor’s ship. Casually, Tom’s crew member began handing crates to another man, who would inconspicuously walk back toward the street with it and set it down close to barrels waiting to be loaded. A third man would move a barrel toward another ship’s cargo, and eventually, several barrels would go missing. Several minutes later, all of the missing barrels made their way back to the dock and were loaded onto the governor’s ship. After being brought in, these barrels would open up from the inside, for they were carrying Tom’s men, not food or other goods. These men would separate and search the ship for locked chests, or any other small boxes that surely carried silver or gold. The men would fill a single barrel with all the smaller chests and wait until no one was watching before tossing it off the other side of the ship, where more conspirators would retrieve it and vanish.
This was not good enough, however. Tom wanted to aggravate the governor further. A small number of his men were ordered to find the governor’s second ship, one that would be carrying extra goods, and pretend to be sailors hired to load it as well. Those men snuck aboard Lord Young’s second ship, quickly and quietly took the captain hostage and sailed the ship out of port. The plan was for Tom to meet up with this ship in a week or so at another island, where the loot could be divided and the captain held for ransom.
As Tom watched his memories play out, he remembered why it hadn’t worked. First, Molly had distracted him from the ploy at the time, and second, Henry Bardow had arranged a mutiny that resulted in a wreck that stranded Tom and Molly in Isla del Sol. At that point Tom had figured the crew in control of the second ship had been in league with Bardow and were surely long gone—wealthy, imprisoned or dead. If the latter were the case, Tom now mused, he’d probably have words with them before he made it back to the living world.
The ghost of a young woman hurried past Tom, and before he saw her face he knew it was a memory of Molly. He followed the young woman through the ghost village and to the docks. She constantly looked over her shoulder and hid her face persistently. At the docks, the ghost Molly took one look at Tom’s ship and ran for it. When she did, a familiar scene played out. One of Tom’s crew stopped and questioned her. Soon after, a nervous Tom appeared and interrogated her further, only half paying attention and taking glances past her shoulder at Lord Young’s ships. Molly disappeared, and the ghost Tom followed her.
The Tom watching the whole affair stood onshore as his memory set sail and slowly crawled out to sea. As it did, several strangers in black coats were leaving the docks. Tom recognized one of them as Christopher Barnes, who had held Molly against her will in Barbados and had planned to initiate her into the local cult before Harlan became the patriarch. Tom walked closer to the figures, expecting to see his brother among them. Instead he saw many faces he did not recognize, all except for one. Walking with Christopher was none other than Corvessa. It did not add up at first. Tom knew Corvessa was close to Leon and the Black Coats—that is, until she conspired against them in Paris. But Tom thought that had been because of Corvessa’s personal goals. Now, though, he realized that Corvessa had something to do with the Caribbean Black Coats and possibly Harlan. She knows something about the Eight, he thought. If Harlan was the Second, then Corvessa would have known. She always knew the depth of everyone and everything with which she was involved, and Tom would have been baffled if she weren’t at least aware of the Eight, more likely a part of their organization. As Tom tried to work his way through the puzzle, the village of ghosts and memories faded away, and all that remained was one pale, spectral ship bobbing near shore.
Putting memories aside and remembering his quest for escape, Tom strolled to the shore and waded to the ship, grabbing hold of an untrustworthy-looking rope ladder dangling over its port side and climbing it up to the deck. Without a crew it took some time to prepare the ship to sail. Though it was not terribly large, manning any ship solo was not an easy task, not even for Tom. He had done it only once before and couldn’t remember how he’d managed. This time the strain was no trouble. Tom hadn’t felt tired or sleepy since first arriving in the afterlife. The ship’s anchor hadn’t been released, and he realized the ship hadn’t moved because there was no tide and no wind to carry it out to sea. Thinking quickly, he called upon the Uyl Talisman around his right arm and summoned up a strong wind to push the ship away from shore.
*
As large as The Howl was, it was anything but a slug. The Blood Moons worked day and night without tire to keep it moving across the Atlantic. Through calm and storm, hundreds of bare feet smacked the main deck, calloused hands climbed the rigging and restless eyes watched the horizons. Jack Darcy never slept. He couldn’t. The curse didn’t allow it, and even if it did, he would not waste one day of his forever-shortened life doing such a preposterous thing as resting. He and his men would rest when they were dead.
Jack Darcy’s name is the one most often thought of when the Order of the Blood Moon comes to mind. He was not the first, nor was he the oldest Blood Moon to have lived, but Jack had built The Howl, a ship known in every port in every country in the world. He and his werewolves were the greatest terror above the ocean’s surface. In the night or in broad daylight, The Howl could appear offshore without warning. Its mysterious tricks, its elusive nature and its destructive power struck fear in the hearts of seaside cities. Almost never did the people onshore fight back when Jack and his crew came to pillage. Wisdom in the face of a Blood Moon attack meant running for one’s life. Jack Darcy did not spare the brave. A man obsessed with fear, Jack himself was fearsome. His short temper, his brutality and his maniacal laugh disguised it, but Jack Darcy hated his curse as much as he exploited it. It was no ordinary werewolf curse, and—more than a century earlier on a dark day in the Caribbean—it had changed him and his men forever.
The 1600s had been a golden age for Jack and men like him. Pirates were kings then, especially if, like Jack, they were also werewolves—or vampires or Atlanteans. The magic trade ran wild as people came to the Caribbean as slaves, merchants, colonizers or outcasts. The only law was the law of freedom. Whoever controlled the waters controlled the wealth. Whoever controlled the wealth controlled the magic trade, and magic was what created immortals and monsters. The crowns of Europe had no power to restrict the trade. Too far away was the new world, and too short were the arms of the ruling families. During this time of freedom, violence and fortune, Jack Darcy became a king of pirates. He and his crew, mainly Scottish werewolves—former Grey-Reivers—began their quest for fame and glory by plundering Spanish ships stopping in Cuba. These ships carried the riches of New Spain and the spoils of the Aztec conquest. Spanish gold paid for more ships, and soon Jack commanded a small fleet of thieves that established a territory, leaving no room for less ambitious pirates, whom Jack and his men would attack just as readily as those on any other seafaring vessel. Jack’s infamy and fortune came with severe consequences. The golden age came to a close. Europe squabbled for control of the Caribbean, and pirates were pulled up out of the territories like helpless weeds. A particul
ar emphasis was placed on the capture or killing of Jack Darcy and his pirate clan. He had only enemies left, and when cornered, Jack made a decision that would make him a king again, at a cost.
Because he had been careless, Jack’s ships had become separated and unable to find each other. A surprise attack by the English had destroyed one of his larger ships, taking a painful toll on his crew and sinking a quarter of his wealth to the bottom of the sea. Because he still had firepower, Jack decided to escape from the port he had unsuccessfully robbed and return for a second strike when the English weren’t expecting him. What happened when he returned, Jack could not possibly have foreseen. The port he so longed to plunder was being forfeited by the English. The following morning when Jack and his ships arrived, there were no longer English ships in port. Foolishly the werewolves sailed in to investigate, finding no one to stop them from taking valuables left behind. They celebrated their good fortune and did not wonder why their expedition had been so favorable. Instead of setting sail immediately, they remained anchored and celebrated all night. The following day Jack Darcy had awakened to the rumble of cannon. He discovered that sometime during the early morning, the Spanish had come to claim the city the English had handed over to them. Their ships outnumbered and outgunned Jack’s. Even worse, the Spanish had surrounded the port and left Jack with nowhere to flee.
Because this story is Jack Darcy’s, it is tempting to believe the ensuing battle was well-fought and exciting, but in truth, Jack’s resistance was pitiful at best. Not even dressed for combat, Jack covered his head and ran across the deck of his ship away from the side facing the Spanish cannons. His shouts and orders were not clearly heard over the boom of gunpowder, and most of his men died without getting out of their beds. Jack’s ship was the first to go down in a blaze of iron and splinters, quickly followed by his support ships and his only remaining treasure ship.
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