“If any of you knows why I’ve come down here, you ought to say so before I come inside,” said Jack through the little window in the brig door. “If you wait until I find something to make your confession, you’ll not be traded in Bombay. Believe me, I will give up the reward for your miserable skins if only to use you as entertainment.”
By “entertainment,” Molly did not know what he meant, but she was sure it was something along the lines of what had been done to Morgan over the course of the voyage so far. She began to wonder what had become of Morgan since the stop in Zanzibar. Although she hoped he had not been left behind, she honestly did not know what to hope for her poor friend. After all, if he hadn’t been left or sold in Zanzibar, he’d be in just as heinous a condition here on Jack’s ship.
“I hate having to come in here. You lot had better be innocent or praying that I do not catch you in a lie,” Jack threatened in his hoarse, odious voice. As he opened the door and walked into the brig, nine or ten werewolves followed, all splitting up into twos and threes and ransacking the cells as Molly and the others watched quietly. Of course they all knew what Jack was looking for. Molly had warned them. They also knew that neither Jack nor all the men at his disposal would be able to find an ounce of evidence to hold against them. Molly had to repress a smile, pleased with her cunning and proud of the beautiful performance her friends put on as the Blood Moons questioned and threatened them. Molly had been most worried about Geoffrey. The boy was loyal, but he was not entirely hardened either. She was sure Jack was going to pick out whomever he sensed was the easiest prey and pummel an admission out of them, but he did not. Chera was a bit of a concern as well. She was hard enough to take some abuse, but Molly worried about the testy bounty huntress’s sharp tongue and big mouth. When the werewolves made passes at her, Chera merely rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, never saying a word, much to Molly’s relief. It was then that she felt a small guilt for not entirely believing in her crew. Chera may have been voluble, but she was certainly not stupid, and Geoffrey—though he was the only one among them unable to boast some kind of deadly skill or powerful magic—was unassuming and pretended well not to know why he was being searched.
“Nothing here, Captain,” said one of the werewolves searching Ine’s cell. Hers had been last.
“Nor ’ere,” said another.
“Naw,” added a third.
“How fortunate for you all,” said Jack, shooting icy glances at the captives. “If I hadn’t such an ache in my head and my gut I’d lash one of you anyway. But I regret I haven’t the time.” He swung his menacing blade—Quarter—around as he spoke and dragged it over the floor to appear more sinister than Molly knew he felt. “You wasted my time. No bread tonight! One bowl of water for the bunch of you! You’ll share what little I’m willing to send, and maybe you’ll find out how much you really care about one another when one of you drinks it all himself.” Jack smiled and banged Quarter up against the cell bars as his men locked everyone up again. “Off we go!” he sang as he and the others left, his heavy boots clapping the planking all the way down the corridor. “No delays, no stops! Full sail! To Bombay!”
“Well, now what are we supposed to do?” moaned Chera, slumping into one corner of her cell. “We’ll be in Bombay soon. No more stops.”
“Keep your voice down,” said Leon. “Guards are outside the door now, or did you forget?”
“Would it matter if they heard us?” whispered Chera. “We’re not leaving now.”
“Miss Bishop? Did you even find the chest? You never told us,” piped Geoffrey. “And what about the child?” He was careful with the question, since Molly hadn’t said anything about it but everyone knew.
“Yes,” said Ine, becoming concerned. “I believe I’ve felt your magic becoming weaker. Is it becoming difficult to use your power? How will we escape if—”
“First let me remind you to address me as your captain,” Molly said sternly, interrupting Ine but directing the warning at Geoffrey, who backed down with a nod. “Second, no, I do not feel weaker. In fact, I may still be able to collect the chest, which I did find, and our belongings by the time we need to act.” What she’d said about the baby and her powers was a lie. Over time, Molly knew, her child would demand more and more of her attention and strength, meaning the force of her magic would become unpredictable. It was already tiring just to perform spells that normally took little or no effort. “We’ll all be just fine,” she said, taking the edge out of her tone. “But for now your orders are to keep quiet as Leon suggested and let me think in peace.”
*
A little more than a month was not long enough to prepare for an escape. Molly had counted on two, maybe more, but when Jack said full sail, he meant full sail. The Howl, steady a vessel as it was, moved like a cat over the Indian Ocean. Normally a voyage from Zanzibar to Calcutta or Bombay demanded one stop in between at the least—perhaps in Mombasa or Muscat—but Jack’s paranoia and greed would not allow for it. Early in the warm and humid month of May, The Howl cruised into sight of the shoreline of Bombay, moving through hordes of British and Indian fishing and trade ships like a whale through a school of minnows. The bay was teeming with a fleet of British warships, some of the grandest and most powerful in the Royal Navy. Despite the Order of the Blood Moon’s bitter relationship with the English, Jack Darcy confidently and proudly sailed his floating fortress into the bay among them in the broad daylight of the early afternoon.
On any other occasion the Royal Navy would have turned their guns on his ship and battled him and his crew of fanged beasts to the death, but the navy was subject to the orders of the Bureau of Immortal Affairs during that time, and their orders were only to retrieve the valuable captives onboard The Howl and to let Jack and his pack of wolves enter the bay without bloodshed, as painful as it was for many of the commanding officers in the navy. A number of them had exchanged cannon and musket fire with Jack before, whether in the Caribbean or the American colonies. Many more were young officers who’d dreamed of becoming a legend and a hero by bringing the head of Jack Darcy to the King. Jack enjoyed his slow cruise into Bombay, looking down over the starboard and port sides from atop the quarterdeck as he passed each little warship, all of which vanished from sight in the shadow of The Howl as it neared.
From below deck Molly and the others heard the ringing of a great bell that sat atop the catwalks high in the main mast’s second yardarm. Typically it was locked and never made a sound, but the Blood Moons were ringing it to announce their presence. As though the giant bell or the size of the ship itself were not enough to intimidate personnel on the other ships, the large drums were also moved out on deck and thumped with long rods having tight wads of sail material wrapped round their ends in a ball like a drumstick.“Ship’s reached the bay! Have the prisoners ready!” a voice shouted down the corridor in the brig.
“We’re already here?” Molly said aloud, shocked at the news.
“Damn!” Leon cursed, waking Geoffrey, who had been dozing through all the fuss.
“What? What’s happening?” asked Geoffrey, wiping off his grungy spectacles and putting them on gingerly.
“We’re in Bombay,” groaned Leon.
“How is it possible?” Geoffrey burst. “This ship’s far too large to move that fast.”
“Jack has some talented magicians moving the winds and possibly the waters in his favor. That’s how,” answered Molly, standing and leaning through the bars in her cell. “I did not think he could do it.”
“What are we going to do?” Chera asked Molly from her cell.
“I am not sure,” Molly replied. “We are not ready to escape. We haven’t had a chance to recover our belongings, and I do not know whether it is day or night. Leaving my cell under any conditions now and not being found out is impossible. We have one chance, and if it is daylight, we’ll be seen before we can get away.”
“We couldn’t leave during the day anyway,” added Leon, wiping his greasy hair
from his forehead. “I can only stay out in the sun for so long, but if begins to tear at my flesh it will not stop until I am a mound of ash.”
“On your feet!” There came a voice through the window in the brig. The lock in the door turned, and in marched a line of werewolves. Opening the cells, they took each prisoner by both arms and clapped their hands in heavy, rusty irons that gnawed their wrists and ankles. “We’ll wait for the quartermaster to report the captain’s orders to us before taking the prisoners up to the main deck.” The werewolves waited quietly as their commanding officer walked down the corridor to wait by the stairs. A few of them provided Leon extra clothing—a hood and other provisions to keep him covered so he wouldn’t spoil in the daylight.
Molly hadn’t been quite so close to any of Jack’s men before, and as she studied their stubbly, scarred and tired faces, she saw little if any life left in them. They breathed heavily, behaving like trained dogs and acting as if neither Molly nor any of her friends were there. What is it that the Blood Oath does to a person, she wondered. Thomas had told her only a little about it once in London, before they left with Leon for Paris many months ago. These werewolves acted differently than others. Even in their human forms they stared quietly at things, as actual wolves might. They did not often speak. Thomas had said the Blood Oath took half of one’s life away, and that was the cost of the great power that came with becoming a Blood Moon. Molly may not have been aware, but this was why Jack Darcy was such a fearful man. He had carried the power of the Blood Moon for a long time, and he knew his days were numbered. Always looking over his shoulder and rarely sleeping, the curse took his sanity as it took his life. Not a day passed that he did not anticipate his inevitable confrontation with the Octopus.
“Return the prisoners to their cells!” The commanding officer shouted down the corridor. “The trade will take place just before sunset!” None of the werewolves asked questions; rather, they herded everyone back into their cells, removed their irons and locked the brig on their way out.
“I wonder what that was about,” said Chera.
“The authorities in Bombay were probably just as unprepared for an early arrival as we were,” Geoffrey mused.
“That or someone realized one of us can’t be moved at this time of day,” Leon remarked, thankful he was going to live a bit longer.
“I need to find Morgan before the trade. I don’t know what’s become of him,” said Molly, changing the matter at hand. Using her limited powers she shut her eyes and focused, first cloaking herself from sight.
“Wait!” said Leon. “You’re going now?”
“I haven’t much choice,” she replied before vanishing from the room.
Molly scampered through the ship like a ghost, searching every deck for Morgan, not having a clue where he would be or what had become of him. Her legs began to cramp fiercely, and she had to stop frequently to catch her breath. She still worried that Jack had left Morgan in Zanzibar, but something told her he would be aboard the ship somewhere. On the fourth deck she took her time to go through all the locked rooms, thinking that maybe Morgan had been shut in one of them. She could not know unless she looked, and she had never been in any of them before. She did not find Morgan, and the things she did find she did not understand entirely—creatures and magics that were strange and foreign. In one room, buzzing around in canisters were swarms of metal insects, chirping and clicking and trying to escape from their cages, which, oddly enough, were fitted with fuses. In another room she found jars and flasks of oils that seemed to contain magical properties. One of them held the same stuff the flask in the gardens did. It was bright, honey-colored oil that gave off a light like that which comes from the sun. One last room in particular was of great interest to Molly. When she transported herself inside it, she had to hold herself still and be especially silent, because she had not at first noticed she wasn’t alone. One of Jack’s magicians was in the room with her, chanting quietly, talking to something on a table that glowed with a familiar blue light. It was a genamite stone! Molly’s curiosity was piqued, and she listened carefully to what the magician was saying. Much of what he spoke was in an African language she could not hope to understand, but before he finished, she heard the most important part: “… and keep us hidden from the Octopus.” The words were clear as a whistle because he’d uttered them in Scriptic, the Western language of magic to which Molly was accustomed. Keep us hidden from the Octopus, Molly thought to herself. What in the world does genamite have to do with death?
She kept herself hidden and watched from a dark corner as the magician set the stone in a dish and covered it with a glass casing. Then he took a ring of keys from his hip and left the room, locking the many locks on the door. Molly could hear him speak a spell through the door, which she was sure was meant to protect the room from intrusion. The magician’s words had interested her greatly. If genamite had anything to do with death—Molly knew she was thinking hopefully at best—if the magic in genamite were as powerful as she had been told, maybe it could bring Thomas back to her. If anything, maybe it could protect her and her child. She could not just leave the stone with the Blood Moons in any case, so she snatched it out from under the glass casing and crammed it down her blouse between her breasts. Uncouth as it may have been, that hiding place had saved her a lot of trouble on more occasions than she could count. Thomas, she knew, would have most certainly had something witty and more likely vulgar to say about it, and for once she was glad he was not around.
Another habit Molly had was choosing awful times to visit the main deck. When she arrived there, just as before, the bright sun nearly fried her poor eyes. After the white, dizzying blaze left them she turned her head this way and that, trying to pick out Morgan from the droves of werewolves milling about. Much to her surprise she spotted him, and for the first time she saw him without irons on his wrists and ankles, busily scrubbing away at the planking by the foredeck stairs. It would have thrilled her to see him except it was suspicious that he was both free and behaving so subordinately.
“Morgan!” she whispered loudly and approached him. He did not look up quickly, nor did he seem surprised by her presence.
“Hello Molly,” he said, looking up in her direction before continuing to wash the deck.
“Morgan, what has been happening these past months? I was afraid they’d sold you in Zanzibar. What was that all about?” she asked.
“Jack was going to sell me. I wasn’t of any use to him. You all are the ones with bounties. I’m just another man. So Jack took me to sell, and he told me I could be a slave or—”
“Or what, Morgan?” Molly pressed, sensing she already knew the answer.
“I couldn’t be a slave again, Molly. I’m sorry,” he said. He had the same tired, distant look in his eyes as the other Blood Moons.
“Oh, Morgan, I’m so sorry.” Molly looked away, unable to accept that Morgan had given up his mortality to the Order and become a werewolf of the worst sort.
“Don’t be. None of this was your fault. It’s mine. I gave in,” he said morbidly, raking his brush over the planking, agitated and sorrowful.
“Morgan, we’re going to escape. The others are going to create a distraction while I cloak The Roatán Butterfly from sight. I’m sure in the confusion we’ll be able to slip away from—”
“No, you won’t be able,” said Morgan, shaking his head. “Jack already turned over The Roatán Butterfly and our belongings to the Bureau as proof that you are all onboard. Now he’s just waiting for them to send a boat with the treasures they promised him before he delivers you all.”
“No…” Molly held her head in her hands and fought off the urge to panic. Her plan was already ruined. What would she say to the others?
“We still have ways of getting through this, Molly. You and I.” Morgan stopped working and his eyes stared into the planks as he thought to himself. “You can keep yourself hidden from sight, and we can jump ship in Mombasa or … or I can kill Jack. I can thr
ow a mutiny.”
“What about the others? Chera and Ine and Geoffrey and—”
“Molly,” he interrupted, “sometimes things don’t go as planned. Tom and I lost many friends over the years because we needed to look out for our own skins. I can protect you, but that is all.”
“No,” Molly said firmly. “It’s all of us or none of us. I don’t know how you could think of leaving our friends.”
“Tom could. It’s the way we’ve always done things.”
“Maybe once,” said Molly, anger in her voice. “But Thomas changed. As long as I have been around, Thomas has never betrayed a friend.”
“I know you’re upset that he’s dead, but eventually you’re going to have to realize you can’t do things on your own. Not in this kind of life,” said Morgan darkly, turning his head to look toward the sound of her voice. His hazel eyes were no longer bright. “I can protect you.”
“How dare you claim to be Thomas’s friend!” she nearly shouted. “I know he once told you to watch after me in his stead, should anything happen, but I do not care. Thomas may be gone, but I still love him, and I have this child to think of now,” she said, speaking sharply, holding a hand over her middle, which had become rounder since Zanzibar.
“All I’ve ever done is what Tom commanded,” spat Morgan. “All I’ve ever done is walk in his shadow, protect his interests, his treasures, his women…” He hoped the last item would work in his favor, but Molly did not react.
“You speak of Thomas as you would a tyrant,” she replied softly and bitterly. “He defended you as well, you know, just as you defended him. He shared his wealth with you. He grew up trusting you because the brother he once trusted was lost.” Morgan grew quiet as Molly spoke. “All you have done since Barbados is wish him dead. Am I correct?”
“Molly, I love—”
“Don’t you dare say those words to me!” This time she did shout.
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