Jack and several other werewolves were pulled from the water, half-drowned and pockmarked with silver bullets. A few died soon after, but the rest lived long enough to be thrown into the darkest prison cells available on shore, in the nether regions of a converted English fort. Here Jack and his last loyal men pondered their fates for days while the Spanish leisurely arranged their executions. It was during this time that the humiliated werewolves talked about their greatest adventures and cursed their failures and their enemies. In their last hours, Jack proposed an oath. He did not say what oath, but his men knew which one he meant: the Oath of the Blood Moon. The Oath is not a set of words or agreements; it is the name given to a communal frenzy that can be begun by three or more werewolves, during which curses are invoked to their limits. The Oath unchains the most reckless and violent spirits inside werewolves, granting great strength and impossible bodily resilience. If performed during a lunar eclipse, such as in this case, the evil curse is made even stronger. With it, Jack knew he and the others could escape effortlessly; however, the Oath would take their lives and their souls in return. Forever after, they would be something less than werewolves and more like devils. Not one man refused to join in the Oath. Each agreed that he would rather spend his time in hell on earth than in the next life. With a crooked smile, Jack obliged them.
When their executioners came for them, Jack and the others were gone. The walls of their cells were knocked out, the iron bars twisted and stretched apart. Several prison guards were missing, but the watch reported they had heard no sound coming from the fort. The grounds outside the fort shone red by the light of the bloody moon peeking in from outside. Not a soul dared to search for Jack, and the sentries were brought inside until sunrise.
The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Jack and his men had not been resolved quickly. In fact, Jack Darcy was presumed dead after a few decades had passed and no one had heard anything about him. Jack vanished long enough for ghost stories to grow up around the sites of his supposed death, which was everywhere from Cuba to South Africa. His escape became a legend, and then just as the wild parts of the world seemed to quiet down and the Europeans settled in, The Howl was spotted off the coast near Mombasa in the Indian Ocean. Did it belong to England? Spain? Perhaps the Ottomans? Everyone questioned; no one knew the answer, but the great ship was universally feared and caused much anxiety for the great nations of the world. Who had built this fortress on the sea? Of what was it capable? Then The Howl vanished again. The next time it was seen, Jack Darcy began to make a new name for himself and began an unending reign of terror. No sea or ocean was safe. The Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Indian—nowhere would anyone be out of the reach of the Order of the Blood Moon.
While the rest of Thomas Crowe’s crew soaked their minds in the misery of their condition or slept, Molly Bishop was awake, and her mind was at work. A few well-kept secrets were going to come in handy, and she hoped they would save her and the others. Jack Darcy had taken Molly’s rings and other jewelry, not because they were valuable, she knew, but because they were dangerous instruments. It was clever of Jack, thought Molly, but what Captain Darcy did not know was that Molly did not need gems to perform spells. She was a special class of sorceress—something she’d begun to understand in Romania, when she managed to escape harm by instantly traveling across short distances or disappearing from sight without speaking an incantation.
In the cell all alone, Molly concentrated on what she might be able to do, discovering that she could manipulate things—make them move or change shape or appearance—without anything but a simple thought and a bit of focus. She practiced on the guards Jack sent into the brig to keep an eye on her and the others. When they dozed off, she would manage to get their keys to fall from their belts, and she could also induce them to shut their eyes and fall asleep. Using magic in this way was much like speaking one’s native language, requiring little thought and occurring naturally and smoothly. It gave Molly ideas and, more importantly, hope. But she did not hurry. She didn’t have the necessary control over her powers to plot an escape, nor did she know where the ship was. She knew if she jumped overboard at that moment, she might well land square in the mid-Atlantic. She needed to know where the ship was, where it was going, and how much time she had. Whatever Jack was planning for them, it would most likely be the end of them, and Molly wasn’t ready to shift this assumption.
Another problem Molly faced was the question of Morgan. Where was he and what had happened to him since Molly had seen him under Jack’s boot on the beach? Was he alive? That question disturbed her greatly, bringing tears to her eyes. Morgan had done so much to protect Tom and the others. He had defied and angered Jack. She had to first be sure Morgan was all right, and that couldn’t wait.
Looking around, Molly saw only one lamp swinging overhead. She guessed it was night because there was less activity in the brig than usual and only one werewolf standing watch. His eyes had been creeping shut over and over for some time. Hiding her right hand behind her back, Molly twisted her wrist and bent her fingers, speaking quietly and moving her lips as little as possible. As she hoped, the light from the lantern slowly died until the brig was nearly dark. She then turned her eyes on the guard, barely able to see him. Staring in his direction, she spoke to him. Her spell coaxed him to sleep, his eyes rolling up and his jaw hanging stupidly as he slumped to the floor. Crawling to the cell door, Molly reached through the bars and gave him a jab in the face with her foot. When he didn’t react, Molly stood up and shut her eyes, focusing on another incantation. She did not speak it aloud, but rather she envisioned it in her mind. Geoffrey noticed the guard toppling over and moved across his cell closer to Molly’s.
“Molly!” he whispered loudly. “Molly, what’s going on?”
When Geoffrey spoke, the others turned to look as well. Leon and Ine said nothing, but Chera made a noise like “huh,” sleepily getting up and shaking her hair. Before anyone knew what was happening, Molly was outside her cell, and in the next moment she vanished before their eyes, slipping away into the darkness of the ship.
Blindly feeling her way down the dark corridors of the ship’s innards, Molly made her way out of the brig. Many of the other cells were full of captives either moaning with hunger or from sickness. Most of them were in sorrier shape than Molly and her crew, which confirmed Molly’s fears. If Jack Darcy had no immediate plans for them, they were going to waste away down there. Quietly and softly she passed cells packed with men who had been taken from other ships, probably rival werewolves or just common pirates who had refused to join Jack’s crew. One man in particular caught Molly’s eye. He was not a pirate; he was too well dressed, though he looked pale and thin. Who was he? A governor? A noble? More questions came to Molly than answers. Putting the mysteries of the brig out of mind, she managed to find an iron door that would let her out. To her dismay it was locked. Of course, she thought. In case of a breakout, there was almost certainly going to be one more obstacle put in place to contain prisoners, especially on a ship like The Howl.
As she became frustrated, thinking of turning back, a guard approached from outside the iron door. Molly heard the jingling of keys in the lock on the door. She couldn’t stand too close, but she couldn’t hurry back to her cell fast enough without making noise. The iron door squeaked open and the guard’s footsteps approached. Molly put her back to the wall and made herself smaller. The footsteps came nearer, until Molly could see the guard’s face in the dark. By the time he stood in front of her, she was invisible. He stopped right in front of her, turning around in place. Tilting up his head he smelled the air. Down the corridor a prisoner was making a commotion.
“Quiet!” the guard yelled.
Molly flinched and let out a quiet gasp. This startled the guard, who quickly spun around and looked back at the iron door through which he had come.
“Who’s there?” he barked. “What idiot didn’t put a light in these lamps?” he thought aloud. Hi
s suspicions rose, and he began to think something was awry. “Who’s in here? If you’re out of your cell, the captain is going to cut you in half!” he threatened, turning around in the dark. His eyes looked right into Molly’s face.
The hair on Molly’s arms stood up. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed the guard’s face, shoving him backward and into the door of a prison cell. His head rang loudly against the iron bars, and he shouted in pain. Before he could react, Molly focused on his eyes and used her sleeping spell to send him to the floor. She took one key from the ring on his belt, locked him in a cell and, after going through the door and locking it behind her, hurried out of the brig.
On and on Molly crept through the now partially lit passages of the crew deck. Much of the lower ship, she found, was living quarters—hundreds of cabins, each meant to not-so-comfortably house four or five crew apiece. The crew deck was endless. Molly hadn’t felt so overwhelmed since she’d had to learn her way around Hainburg Castle. The Howl was just as large and just as difficult to navigate. More and more Molly felt fortunate that it was nighttime. Any of the crew who were awake would probably be on deck, and there would be little activity below.
Just when she thought she would never find her way out of the crew deck, Molly came across a stairway that climbed straight up through all seven decks toward the main deck. Thinking she might not have many chances to sneak around, Molly committed to memory the order in which the decks were stacked, noting what was on each. The bilge, brig and some crew living quarters were what made up most of the lowest two decks. On the third she found the galley and a number of locked rooms that she supposed housed valuables or belonged to the quartermaster and higher officers.
The fourth deck was a strange place. Molly heard and saw the signs of magical phenomena occurring behind tightly locked doors. Buzzes, flashes and snaps, bursts of blue, white and green light followed her down each corridor. In one cabin, at which the door was not shut all the way, barrels and jars were stacked to the ceiling and bound in rope or chains, each humming or glowing with magical energy. Molly could not discern what they held. In another room, which she dared not enter, she heard loud growls and the chittering of some kind of animals. Very quickly Molly was discovering that The Howl was a zoo of exotic magic and creatures, and there was no way of telling what Jack Darcy and the Blood Moons meant to do with them.
When she reached the end of the fourth deck, by the stern, Molly found a great open room that had been set aside for a special purpose. As she entered, bright daylight made her shield her eyes and turn her head away. It was coming from the ceiling and bathing the entire room in warm sunlight. Long rows of wooden garden boxes ran the length of the room. From each there grew a different kind of vegetable or fruit tree, some bearing large quantities of ripe foods and others appearing newly planted or bare. Molly marveled at the magical ingenuity of the room. For a moment she forgot her mission and wondered how the Blood Moons had managed to create daylight from gems. How was it possible? Were they even using gem magic, or was there some other kind unknown to her? All she could tell was that the light came from a large glass flask hanging from the ceiling. It was filled with a liquid that looked like honey and glowed golden like the sun. Molly needed to leave, but she didn’t want to. She hadn’t seen the sun in so long, and this was as close as she would get for a long time to come. The warm light made her happy and reminded her of the way she used to feel when she was with Thomas. Molly remained invisible, carefully walking through the ship’s garden, admiring the greenery and the smell of the blooms on the trees not yet laden with fruit. The profusion of food around her made her hungry, and her stomach whined. It pained her that she had to leave. Before she walked out, she took some fruits for the others in the brig. They were all suffering from hunger. Worried that someone would notice, she took one fruit from each of five different orange trees. Even then, taking the fruit presented problems. That’s the last thing you need, she thought to herself, someone spotting a bunch of oranges floating through the air and shooting you dead. Molly stuffed the oranges into her blouse, which was cloaked, and to her delight it hid the fruits beneath. Before she left the garden she waited by the door, listening for anyone who may have been outside. She heard nothing and slipped into the hallway.
On the fifth and sixth decks, Molly discovered The Howl’s armaments. Both decks were actually joined, sharing multiple sets of ladders and catwalks, along which there were hundreds of cannons. The floor of the fifth deck itself was much thicker than the other decks, many layers of planking deep, each layer laid opposite the direction of the one before and after it. There was no ceiling on the fifth deck and for the same reason, no floor on the sixth. The double-tall gun deck also had two abnormally large sliding doors that opened to the air outside. At the time, they were shut. They were special doors, meant for four behemoth cannons that rested in the center of the gun deck, aimed opposite one another. The two pairs of giant cannons were in fact closely designed after the Great Turkish Bombard, an Ottoman invention. Jack had seized them and relied on the skill of his personal magesmiths to refit them for The Howl’s purposes. In addition they had been made capable of firing many magically empowered shots at once, each weighing near one hundred and fifty pounds. These were Jack’s secret weapon, used to ransack large cities without ever having to come ashore. If the Blood Moons wished, they could even fire single shots weighing up to one-and-a-half thousand pounds. The guns amazed and frightened Molly. Each was longer than a normal sized ship, bigger around than a bundle of tree trunks, and each had an ornamental cap on the end of the barrel, cast in a polished metal and shaped like the head and mouth of a screaming eagle. Several Blood Moons were walking back and forth along scaffolding next to the great cannons, which Jack called the Raptors, cleaning and maintaining them. Knowing better than to linger, Molly headed back to the main stairway and climbed toward what she prayed would finally be the main deck.
A cool, fresh rush of air pulled at Molly’s hair and chilled her face when she reached the top of the stairway. Her lungs awoke from weeks of suffocation in the dank, filthy pits of the brig. The rocking of the great ship was far more noticeable on the main deck, higher from the ocean’s surface than the decks of ordinary vessels. Molly swayed as she walked, sometimes having to spread her arms to balance herself. As she had thought, the deck was alive with the clomping of feet and the occasional drone of voices. All around her wind slapped mighty sails, and clanky rigging banged against wood and iron. Confident she was undetectable, Molly strode across the deck every which way, memorizing the layout—where the captain’s quarters were, the arrangement of the masts, everything she could see. She paused below the quarterdeck where around a flickering lamp a group of werewolves sat, propped up on barrels or slumped into coils of rope. They were singing in a West African language Molly did not recognize. One of the men, quite young, stood out among them, his face painted white. He drummed the end of a staff against the deck, keeping time for the other singers. Every now and again he would shut his eyes and crane his head back in a particularly loud chorus, then lean forward again and drum the staff. Molly watched as the staff created little whirlwinds that blew the beards of the men, the coils of rope and the little flame in the lantern sitting inside their circle. The knob atop the painted man’s staff was carved into the likeness of a long-necked bird, which sat with its head turned backward. Molly watched quietly, eventually concluding that the singers must be conjuring a steady wind to power The Howl forward.
An odd thing occurred to her as she watched the magicians singing. Most of the crew on deck were like the singers, in the sense that they were African. Molly had never seen so many of them in one place, even on a ship. She wondered where they had come from and why so many Africans were Blood Moons. As she cautiously crossed the deck, watching the crew carefully and taking heed not to cause a disturbance, she saw Morgan. Ragged and beaten, he hung against one of the ship’s masts, seated, his ankles and wrists locked in irons. Left out in t
he weather since the day Jack had captured Tom’s crew, Morgan looked to be in ghastly shape. Stifling a gasp, Molly walked faster, moving from mast to mast and pausing next to each one to look around and over her shoulder. When she reached Morgan, he twitched in surprise as she knelt and laid a hand on his arm.
“Morgan! What have they done to you?” she whispered.
“Who’s that?” he asked weakly. “Curse my ears, I’m going mad,” he lamented, his head rolling to one side.
“It’s Molly. I’ve bewitched myself so no one will see me,” Molly explained to him. “Morgan, look here, what has happened to you?” Molly held his face and turned it toward her, studying the emptiness of his eyes.
“Oranges,” he whispered. “Now I’m smelling things as well as hearing them?”
“You haven’t eaten anything in days, have you? Morgan, I’m so sorry.” Molly took one of the oranges from her blouse and hid it from sight. Pulling the fruit apart, she fed pieces to Morgan, who started to realize he was not imagining it.
“Jack’s got plans for you all,” said Morgan, chewing and talking at the same time. “He’s going to take you to Bombay. Someone there has put bounties on all of you.”
“Please eat some more,” said Molly, offering him more of the orange. “Now what do you mean, Bombay? I’ve never been anywhere near there. Who would know of us in Bombay?”
“Doesn’t matter that you’ve never been. England’s colonizing India. One of those folks in the white uniforms is probably there—the ones Tom’s been talking about.” Morgan swallowed the last of the fruit and sighed. “Something bad’s gonna happen to you all, Molly. You have got to get off the ship. They’re going to stop in Mombasa, but I dunno where you’d go from there—”
“Slow down, Morgan,” Molly pleaded with him. “We’ll figure out something. Don’t talk so fast, you’re in no condition.”
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