by Various
She placed baby Isabeau in his arms. Michel gazed down at his daughter’s face, looked into her big blue eyes. “She has her mother’s eyes,” he whispered.
“It’s no small thing, to be the child of a slayer,” the woman said reverently. “And your wife killed a village full of vampires, from what we can tell. This little girl will have a blessed future.”
The medium left Michel alone with his baby daughter, his entire family. “You will have a blessed future,” he promised Isabeau. “I will devote my life to that.”
Isabeau smiled up at her father, as if she understood his words. Then she opened her lips and spoke a word of her own, her first word:
“Demon.”
Blood and Brine
Greg Cox
THE CARIBBEAN, 1661
One-legged Jack Tyburn was a blackguard when he was alive. Dead, he was a monster.
Animal eyes, the color of Spanish gold, glared at the Slayer from the buccaneer’s transformed countenance, which now resembled that of an enraged jungle cat. Fangs jutted from his gaping jaws as he snarled at Robin Whitby from the rear of the quarterdeck. The peg-legged pirate stood aft of the tiller with one taloned hand on the eight-foot-long steering bar and the other clutching onto the scalp of the unfortunate helmsman, Jeremiah Pyle. “Help me, Cap’n!” the terrified old tar entreated Robin, unable to escape Tyburn’s demoniacally powerful grasp no matter how frantically he thrashed. “For mercy’s sake!”
Fangs like daggers dipped toward Pyle’s neck. . . .
“Avast ye!” Robin called out sharply. Her husky voice testified to considerable acquaintance with rum and tobacco. Cutlass in hand, she strode across the main deck to confront her former crewman. Her vibrant auburn hair was pigtailed in the back, sailor-style, while a blue woolen frock coat flapped open to reveal the striped linen shirt and canvas trousers beneath. A cravat of crimson silk, knotted around her neck, added a touch of color and flair to the captain’s ensemble. “Strike yer colors, Jack Tyburn, or I’ll feed yer scurvy flesh to the sharks!”
A gibbous moon silvered the sails of the double-masted schooner, Neptune’s Lady, and sharpened the argent gleam of the pirate captain’s upraised cutlass, which had once been blessed by an honest Puritan minister. A brace of pistols was slung across Robin’s chest, but she knew better than to waste good powder on hellspawn such as this. She was the Slayer after all, and this was hardly the first leech she had run alongside.
I knew it was no mere fever he caught, she thought, carousing in Port Royal with that doxy Darla. Seeing her suspicions proven all too seaworthy provided meager satisfaction at this perilous juncture, and a surfeit of opportunities to rue her own foolhardiness. I should have never set sail with him aboard, all pale and trembling below decks. Now the sun has sunk beneath the waves, and here I be, many leagues to sea, with a God-cursed leech at the tiller!
“Ye hear me, Jack Tyburn?” she challenged him. Fierce eyes, as blue as the sea, admitted no trace of fear or trepidation. Her boots pounded decisively across the tar-caulked timbers of the deck as she marched past the mainmast toward the stern, deftly avoiding the working sheets of the ship’s fore-and-aft rigging. A warm Caribbean breeze blew from the northwest, rustling her hair and filling the billowing white sails above her head. “Leave that salty old dog be, his blood’s not yers to quaff!”
Provoked by her scornful tone and cognizant of her flashing blade, the leech shoved Pyle aside and fixed a ferocious gaze on the approaching captain. A trickle of spit ran down his unshaven chin as he licked his lips in anticipation. “As ye command, Cap’n Whitby, sir,” Tyburn answered her, flashing his newly acquired fangs. His foul breath reeked of both rum and the grave. “I have a powerful thirst, I do, but a captain’s blood will suit me fine!”
Robin had not truly expected the mutinous devil to surrender, her sole intent having been to distract the leech from his intended prey by diverting his sanguinary attentions to herself. Now, meeting Tyburn’s blazing glare with a fiery broadside of her own, she watched out of the corners of her eyes as Pyle, ashen-faced and quaking, scrambled toward the bow, where he joined many of his fellow crewmen, who hung back in fear and dumbstruck awe as their captain vaulted onto the quarterdeck to face the unholy thing that Tyburn had become. Yet more seamen watched tensely from the rigging overhead or crouched anxiously behind the silent cannons mounted along the ship’s bulwarks.
Robin did not fault her men for their terror in the face of evil incarnate. They were brave enough, she knew, when squaring off against mortal foes or while daring the tempestuous caprices of the sea, but a genuine fiend, straight out of purest nightmare, was another tankard of grog altogether. Even the wildest sea-wolf might quail before Perdition’s own children, unless they were Chosen to the task—as she was.
Tyburn gave the tiller a violent yank, causing Neptune’s Lady to lurch sharply to starboard. Despite her sea legs, Robin had to grab on to the nearby taffrail to steady herself. “You’ll have to do better than that, Jack!” she called out defiantly, eager to separate the leech’s head from his shoulders. “I’m comin’ for ye, you fetid bilge-rat!”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” he mocked her. Robin braced herself for battle, anticipating that Tyburn would lunge at her like the beast he was, slashing and tearing with fangs and claws. Instead he took hold of the main boom with both hands, then shoved it with all his hellborn strength.
The swinging timber struck Robin full on, knocking her onto her back. A queue of tightly-bound red hair scarcely cushioned the blow as the back of her skull collided thunderously with the floor of the deck. Worse, her silver cutlass slipped from her fingers and went sliding athwart the deck into the scuppers. My blade! she thought in dismay, cursing her luck.
Seizing his advantage, Tyburn sprang forward, his oaken peg clattering against the planks as he moved with preternatural speed and agility, especially for one so crippled. In a heartbeat, he stood astride Robin’s supine form, ivory fangs at the ready. She reached instinctively for her sword, but found it tantalizingly out of reach.
Very well, she resolved coolly. Well make do without.
Without hesitation, she wrapped her fingers around Tyburn’s peg-leg and snapped the tapered wooden pin from its lodging beneath the one-legged buccaneer’s knee. Deprived of the peg’s support, Tyburn yelped and toppled forward. Robin swiftly turned the point of the captured peg upwards, so that the leech fell squarely upon the makeshift stake. He let out a startled cry as his own leg pierced his heart.
Jack Tyburn had spent his entire mortal life at sea; no surprise then that the grave-dust that suddenly rained down on Robin, powdering her face and hands, had a distinctly salty taste.
Argh! Robin’s face wrinkled in disgust. She clambered quickly to her feet, spitting out a mouthful of briny grit and brushing the rest of Tyburn’s disintegrated remains from her face and clothes. An enormous roar accompanied her rising, as dozens of onlooking buccaneers cheered their captain’s victory over yet another stinking leech. Their heartfelt cries, born of sheer amazement and relief, drowned out even the sound of the surging rollers crashing against the schooner’s sturdy hull.
Sailors being a superstitious lot, not one of them was troubled by the existence of such as Tyburn had become; in their voyages, she and her crew had encountered all manner of hellspawn, from Aztec mummies to flesh-eating zombies.
Jeremiah Pyle hurried to Robin’s side and tugged at her arm in grateful supplication. “Thank ye mightily, Cap’n!” he exclaimed. Admiration beamed from the old salt’s weathered, sun-baked features. “By the powers, ye’re the bravest man I ever sailed under!”
Or woman, Robin imagined, although scarcely a man aboard knew as much.
* * *
Presently, in the great cabin beneath the quarterdeck, the ship’s surgeon took an inventory of her injuries. “Your skull appears none the worse for its abrupt rendezvous with the deck,” Dr. William Henry Pratt announced sonorously. Gentle fingers probed the sore spot at the rear of her craniu
m. “The swelling already looks to be abating.”
His cultured accent betrayed his Oxford education, as surely as his sepulchral tones betokened his grave and prudent temperament, particularly where the Slayer was concerned. For the physician, whom had contrived to be taken aboard Neptune’s Lady many long voyages ago, was not just the ship’s doctor; he was also her watcher.
“Hah!” Robin laughed, reveling in the glow of her easy victory over the bloodthirsty seaman. “The day I cannot cross swords against the likes of Jack Tyburn, dead or alive, is the day the council needs must press a new slayer into service.” She grinned exuberantly. Resting her back against the chair facing the captain’s desk, she glanced at the locked door leading to the deck outside. Sunlight entered the narrow cabin through a pair of open windows at the stern, while the everyday sounds of sailors at work penetrated the varnished pine walls. “Did you hear the men a-cheerin’ for me just now?”
Although Pratt’s neatly-groomed hair was a uniform silver, his bushy eyebrows had remained black as pitch. “I wonder if they would trumpet quite so loudly,” he asked, raising one such sable brow, “were they knowledgeable of your true gender?”
His somber query dampened Robin’s high spirits. That her shipmates might discover her womanly nature was a constant worry; a pirate captain ruled only at the sufferance of her crew, and Robin lived in fear that her loyal brethren would turn against her should they learn the truth about their captain.
Mind, she ofttimes suspected that many of the men already knew the way of things, but were content to feign otherwise—a sort of willful blindness, comparable to that which allowed ordinary mortals to blithely ignore the presence of leeches and demons in their midst. And, although familiar with vampires, the crew were unacquainted with the notion of slayers; it would never occur to them to think that a female might be more proficient at battling leeches than a man.
Yet the question of how the crew would react should the exact particulars of her sex be forced upon them was one that often troubled her mind; in truth, she feared the exposure of her masquerade far more than any of the foul hellspawn that she had vanquished during her years as Slayer.
“Have no fears on that score,” she assured her watcher, with greater bravado than she genuinely felt. She reflexively reknotted the silk cravat about her throat, which served to conceal the absence of her Adam’s apple, just as her heavy coat and mannish attire conspired to hide her feminine proportions from the world. Only here, in the exclusive privacy of her cabin, did she dare shed any of her sartorial camouflage. “I’ve played the man too long and too well to let me secret slip through any chuckleheaded blunder.”
“True enough,” Pratt conceded, fully aware that Robin had posed as a boy ever since her twelfth year, when she first ran away to sea in search of adventure. He stepped away from the captain’s chair, circling around to address her face-to-face. Unlike the garish and exotic attire flaunted by the rest of the pirate ship’s crew, he preferred a conservative gray suit, always impeccably pressed and tailored. “Let us pray that circumstances never converge to give the game away.”
* * *
“Sail, ho!”
The cry from the crow’s nest brought every man jack onto the main deck or up into the rigging in search of a better look. Leaning out over the port gunwale, the balmy tropical sunlight warming her face, Robin felt her heart beat faster in anticipation. Could this be a prize worth taking, sailing near enough to catch the avaricious eye of the lookout? Neptune’s Lady had been prowling the sapphire waters off the Spanish Main in pursuit of just such an unwary vessel, laden, perhaps, with tobacco, wine, or stolen Inca gold.
“After her, me hearties!” she called out to her crew, who eagerly threw themselves into the task, trimming the sails and hauling lines. The deck of the schooner became a hubbub of activity as the avid buccaneers readied both the ship and themselves for battle. Tattooed seamen, their bodies likewise marked by scars won in bloody frays on both land and sea, scurried fore and aft. Pistols and muskets were primed and loaded, while the Lady’s eight cannons were freshly rammed with round-shot.
The sun was high and the wind was steady. Robin couldn’t have asked for better conditions.
She strained her eyes to catch a better glimpse of the ship on the horizon. Joining her at the rail, Dr. Pratt offered her a spyglass, which she gratefully accepted. The scope brought the mystery ship closer into view, showing her a vast, three-masted, square-rigged vessel nearly twice the length and perhaps five times the tonnage of Neptune’s Lady. Robin whooped excitedly as she recognized the unmistakable lines of an imposing Spanish galleon. “Look lively, lads!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “We’ve got a golden fish on the line!”
A cacophony of lusty cheers greeted her declaration, as the jubilant buccaneers realized that they had lucked upon the richest prize of all: a Spanish treasure ship transporting the plunder of the New World back to Europe.
Robin grinned wolfishly. Despite the lofty nature of her calling as Slayer, she felt no compunctions against preying on the sea-faring transports of the hated Dons. Spain was the enemy of England, after all, not to mention the oppressor of the native Indians, who had suffered greatly under the sword and lash of the merciless conquistadors. As well was Spain the bastion of the dreaded Inquisition, whose untender mercies had, according to Dr. Pratt, already claimed the lives of at least one slayer and her watcher. Robin saw nothing wrong in depriving the Spanish crown of gold and silver that the Dons themselves had savagely looted from the fallen Incan and Aztec empires.
“Congratulations, Captain,” Pratt said sincerely. A patriotic Englishman, he shared Robin’s enmity toward imperial Spain and had never objected to her piratical ways, provided they did not interfere with her duties as Slayer. Thankfully the West Indies held more than enough black magick and bloodsuckers to keep her suitably employed on mankind’s behalf. Why, the voodoo cults alone more than evidenced that Providence had been wise in placing a slayer at large in the Caribbean.
At this moment, however, Robin looked forward to business of a less eldritch sort. Peering into the spyglass, she scanned the horizon in search of any other vessels that might be escorting the slow-moving galleon; given the popularity of piracy in these parts, it was not uncommon for ships carrying large amounts of valuable cargo to sail in the company of other armed vessels, with perhaps even a man-of-war or two for added protection. Robin had no wish to lead her crew into battle against vastly unequal odds.
To her delight, she espied no such ambush. The solitary galleon appeared to be just that. A straggler, she speculated, left behind by a larger fleet? If so, then the galleon’s tardiness was the pirates’ good fortune; the ponderous treasure ship could not possibly elude the swifter and nimbler schooner.
Already, Neptune’s Lady was closing on the other ship, cracking on all sail as the warm trade winds sped the schooner toward her prey, like a wooden dagger hurled at the undead heart of a blood-gorged leech. “Raise our colors!” she shouted, and within minutes her own singular banner flapped atop the mainmast.
A skull-and-crossbones against a field of Stygian black, Robin’s flag resembled the celebrated Jolly Roger except in one respect: the bone-white death’s-head bore the fangs of a newly slain vampire, thus serving as a warning, of sorts, to the living and the living dead alike.
Soon the towering stern of the galleon loomed before them, and Robin no longer needed the spyglass to keep her prize in sight. Gleeful pirates, brandishing cutlasses and boarding axes, crowded the bow, yowling like demons and thumping their feet upon the deck in hopes of chilling the blood of all aboard the Spanish vessel. Sharp-eyed marksman peered down the barrel of their muskets, ready to pick off any gunners who might entertain notions of deploying the galleon’s own cannons against the approaching schooner. Robin caught a whiff of burning matches on the air and knew that the pirates were ready to fire the six-pounders at her command.
Much to Robin’s surprise, the galleon made no attempt to outrun
Neptune’s Lady. Was the treasure ship’s captain, she wondered, a man of uncommon good sense? She hoped as much; it would spare much bloodshed if the galleon simply surrendered without a fight, as many a cornered ship had been known to do. Indeed, what else was the Jolly Roger for, if not to frighten God-fearing captains and crews into submission? For herself, Robin was always willing to grant quarter to any mortal man or woman who wholeheartedly requested it. Leeches, of course, were another story.
“Bring ’er alongside!” Robin called to the helmsman. “Make ready the grapples!”
Infinitely more maneuverable than the bulky galleon, Neptune’s Lady came abreast of the larger vessel, whose name was emblazoned upon her starboard bow: El Dorado. A carved mahogany figurehead, in the shape of an Aztec princess, paid no heed to the pirate schooner even as Robin’s ship glided within boarding distance of her quarry. The Lady’s strakes all but scraped against the galleon’s hull.
In contrast to the schooner, whose deck was positively overcrowded with raucous buccaneers, the El Dorado appeared curiously unpeopled. Staring up at the mighty ship’s tall bulwarks, Robin expected to see human faces—frightened, fierce, or both—peering down at her, yet not a single countenance did she see, save for the painted profile of the wooden princess. “Benjamin Fancy!” she yelled to the lookout, whose lofty vantage point offered him a better view of the galleon’s upper decks. “Do ye see hide or hair of the crew?”
“Nary a soul, Cap’n!” Fancy shouted down, raising his voice over the flapping of the sails. He spit rudely onto the undefended Spanish ship. “The cowardly swabs must be hidin’ below decks!”
Perhaps, Robin thought, or perhaps not. A sense of foreboding fell upon her like a sudden squall as she eyed the galleon with the wary instincts of a slayer. Looking more closely, it was clear that the El Dorado was floating adrift upon the sea, following no particular course or compass. Her huge white sails were arrayed haphazardly, without regard to the fickle play of the winds, while her intimidating gunports remained shut and silent, like the lowered eyelids of a corpse.