Josue shrugged. “It’s the way things are.”
“You are such a lucky man that things didn’t work out your way,” I said. “If they had, you’d be screaming your way to hell right about now, along with everybody else on this ship.”
He didn’t believe me, but he should have. I was in no mood to be Ms. Nice Guy, but compared to the fury that David would have unleashed on them if they’d hurt me, there was literally nothing I could do to them that would be anywhere near as horrible.
“My offer’s still open,” I said. “You take me where I want to go, and I’ll pay you enough money to make you king of the pirates forever.”
He tried not to look interested. “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”
I turned my hand over again. Lightning flashed and crawled. “You know I’ll keep this one.”
Josue sat up straighter, his eyes flicking around as if he was trying to figure out an exit strategy. He finally nodded. “It’s a deal,” he said. “Just—put that away,
bruxa.
”
“Hey, Josue? Call me a witch again, I
will
Taser the holy shit out of you.” I felt the black exhilaration creep over me once more, the stealthy march of Bad Bob’s influence running through my veins. “Oh, hell, maybe I’ll just do it anyway.”
I didn’t, but it was fun watching him think I would.
I paced the bridge as Josue ordered the crew around. I had nothing to do, really, except wait and think.
Think about Kevin sneaking around behind Lewis’s back to let David out of his bottle, sending him to pluck me out of the ocean.
Why?
Cherise,
I thought. I couldn’t imagine Kevin getting the initiative to come running to my rescue any other way. We’d always cordially hated each other.
I was even more surprised that David hadn’t tricked his way out of the bottle again by now. It wouldn’t take much slack for him to snap the rope that bound him; Djinn had been doing it for millennia, and they were very, very good at finding loopholes to exploit. Either Kevin had been very specific about what he wanted him to do, or David didn’t really want to get free just now.
Maybe because he knew that if he did, he might end up fighting me, and neither of us wanted that. He’d wanted to save me. Kevin had allowed him to do it.
Kevin, you’re a romantic.
That made me smile. I supposed I’d have to thank him some way.
Maybe by not killing him. That was a gift that kept on giving, right?
The sun was putting on a spectacular evening display, all clouds and blood, when the lookout called a warning. At least, I thought it was a warning—Portuguese wasn’t exactly my strong suit, but the tone definitely sounded urgent.
“What is it?” I asked Josue, as he left the bow rail to head toward the stern.
“A ship,” he said. “Coming up behind us, and moving fast. Big, maybe a military ship or a tanker.”
“Tankers don’t move that fast,” I said.
Josue continued to stare over the stern rail, frowning. “Could be more trouble than you’re worth, mermaid. I’m thinking I throw you back.”
“You want to go downstairs again, talk it over?”
He gave me a scornful sneer. “You can’t sail the ship alone. My men won’t work for you.”
“Want to bet? Just do what I tell you, Josue. If I feel this ship slow down, you’re over the side, and your crew goes with you. That’s a promise.”
He knew I meant it. He nodded. I had no doubt that later on, he’d try to stab me in the back, maroon me, or otherwise screw me over, but for now he was treading carefully—partly because I was a potential payday, but equally out of sheer morbid fear. He’d seen a sample of what I could do, and he didn’t want to see more.
I didn’t really blame him for that. I wasn’t wild to see it, either.
I locked my hands behind my back and kept my legs spread wide, riding the bucking of the waves with the ease of a long-practiced sailor. We both watched the dim shape on the horizon take on edges and definition.
Definitely a ship. Big.
The lookout called another warning. Josue looked up, frowning, and blinked. He cursed in Portuguese—no, I didn’t recognize the words, but the flavor’s the same in any language. “Storm,” he said. “Coming on fast from the south.”
My friend the storm had hung back, content to let me run; I wasn’t sure anymore whether I was holding its leash or it was holding mine. But something had changed. Maybe it sensed that the containment around the mark on my back was fading again, or that I wasn’t following my approved script.
It was heading our way. Fast.
The blood sunset had disappeared behind a boiling, rising mass of clouds—iron gray ones, with greenish-black underpinnings. It was already crawling with lightning inside. Power had been poured into it—an awful lot of power.
“Hold course,” I said. I didn’t think all that effort Bad Bob was putting out was meant solely for us. We weren’t that hard to sink, frankly.
As we sailed steadily toward it, the storm spread out, flattened, swirled, consolidated, gained density and deeper color.
Then it started to spin around a center axis—slowly, majestically, unevenly at first, then spiraling out like a deadly galaxy. The blender of the gods, taking shape right in front of me.
“We need to get out of its way!” Josue shouted. I felt the first breath of wind sweep over us, vivid with the smell of rain. The clouds were whipping toward us. He cursed me in Portuguese, and ordered his men to follow his instructions.
I locked the rudder in place with a burst of Earth power. They worked frantically to free it, but they weren’t getting anywhere.
As the wind increased, so did the amplitude of the waves, and the small ship was nowhere near as able to crush through the turmoil as the
Grand Paradise
had been. The vessel was battered, and when it slammed bow-first into the rising waves, the spray fractured into foam and coated everything on board in slippery, unpleasant slime.
Then came the rain, hammering in sheets that felt like needles. Josue’s crew broke out battered rain slickers. I ignored the offer, and stood at the bow, watching the storm’s progress. I could feel its blind menace, its anger, but it wasn’t directed downward at me, not even as the rain intensified into a heavy, strangely hot downpour. The wind speed increased, and the clouds rotated faster. It intensified as the ship crashed and fell through the waves. I tethered myself to the rail and resisted the waves that crested the bow and washed the decks, trying to pull me over.
Something wild inside me broke free as we rode through the storm, and in the blaze of lightning and pounding surf, I felt at home. Finally, completely at home. All those years of fighting the storms, and I’d never realized how much a part of them I was. How complete I was when I was with them.
I was almost sorry when we hit the eye of the storm and calm fell over us—but I looked up into the primal heart of the enemy, and it looked back at me with a kind of affectionate recognition.
Good dog.
When we hit the trailing side, the winds lashed us so viciously that we lost two of the crew, even though they’d been tethered. The seas swamped the decks, shattered glass, woke terror from seasoned pirates who picked their teeth and yawned at the idea of a normal tempest.
After a white-knuckled eternity, the storm was past us, and heading for its
real
victim.
The ship closing in on us from behind.
The seas continued heavy against us, and Josue wanted to slow our pace. The engines were laboring, and the crew was exhausted and sick.
“No,” I said. I didn’t need them anymore. They’d served their purpose, both ship and crew, and I no longer had to worry about their breaking points. “Just keep the throttle open. We’ll be fine.”
I wrapped energy around the straining pumps and valves and increased their speed. It wouldn’t last long, but it would give us more of a lead against our pursuer, who had the full weight of the storm to deal with now. I looked back to see its forward progress stalling, as if it had met cooler air to slow it. The storm was lashing that other ship with all its supernatural fury.
Josue, also watching, crossed himself.
The moon rose, but it was quickly veiled by clouds. As night descended on us, it was thick and black and claustrophobic. Only the shattered reflections of our running lights spoiled the illusion of sailing through empty, limitless space.
“Mãe de Deus,”
Josue murmured. “It’s still coming, that ship. Like a ghost out of the grave.”
It
was
a ghost.
The
Grand Paradise
had gone down, I’d seen it. It had been too badly damaged and too thoroughly flooded to float, and yet there it was, gaining on our tail. The running lights were all working, blazing merrily in the darkness, and it was charging at a speed that didn’t seem natural for such an enormous ship.
It was trying to get to me before I reached my destination.
“Hold on,” I told Josue, and opened the throttles even more on our nameless little pirate ship, sending it leaping and slamming through the waves like an oversized, wallowing speedboat. The hull wouldn’t take it for long, but it didn’t have to.
Out there in the darkness was my destination.
I felt a Warden grabbing for control of our engines, and whipped a black scythe of power across the lines of force. It must have hurt, and badly. “Do it again, and you’ll pull back a stump,” I muttered, and gripped the rail tighter. “Back off.”
I didn’t think they would. If they were strong and confident enough to make it through the hurricane, they’d be more than competent enough to tackle me.
A Djinn breathed into focus on the deck a few feet away, and I prepared for the fight of my life . . .
. . . but it was David.
David.
My
David, perfect in every line. Not Kevin’s incarnation of him.
He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. Josue drew a knife and stabbed at him, but David didn’t even bother to cast him a look, just flicked his fingers and sent him flying across the deck.
“Are you here to stop me?” I asked.
“No,” my husband said, and took a step toward me. Then another. I was in the V-shaped well of the bow, pressed against the rails—nowhere to go but over the side, into the black waters. “I’m not here to stop you.”
“Then what?”
He took another step, risking a full attack. I could feel the urge, the
need
vibrating through me like plucked strings.
Don’t let him fool you. Don’t let him stop you. You need to reach Bad Bob. If this goes badly, you know what will happen. The two of you will be responsible for destroying the world.
In the ripping light of a lightning strike on the cruise ship looming slowly up behind us, David’s face was serious and very calm.
“I’m here to help you,” he said.
He opened his hand, and in it were fragments of glass.
The broken pieces of his bottle.
I stared at them for a moment, into his eyes. “How—?”
“Cherise,” he said. “She wants you to live. So do I. She got the bottle away from Kevin. She—trusts me.”
Cherise was a romantic idiot, in this one sense: She simply didn’t understand how dangerous David really was. I wasn’t even sure I understood . . . although I was starting to get a really good idea.
I tightened my grip on the rail as the ship pounded into a particularly deep trough, then painfully plowed up the leading edge of the next wave. “I see. And did you stop for anything else along the way?”
“You mean, did I kill Lewis?” he asked. “Not yet.” He took one more step, and we were body to body, soaked with rain, blinded by lightning. Sealed together by storms. “That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten him. Don’t ask me to do that.”
I couldn’t begin to try. “How did they raise the ship?”
“Who says they did?” David’s smile was knowing, and a little bitter. “It’s not the
Grand Paradise.
Lewis lied to you from the beginning. The
Grand Paradise
was a decoy, designed to lure Bad Bob into showing his hand. He sent the other Wardens out of Fort Lauderdale, aboard the
Grand Horizon.
It’s a sister ship—a little smaller, a little faster. Crewed entirely with Wardens and Djinn. It’s been making good time and staying off of Bad Bob’s radar. Until now.”
That son of a bitch. Lewis really had suckered me, every step of the way. He’d known I was a risk, if not a ready-made traitor. He’d used me as a stalking horse, although I had to admit he’d put himself on the line, too.
But he’d also exposed Cherise and dozens of other innocents who had no place in this. And an unforgivably large number of Wardens, although I supposed for any kind of a feint to work, he had to commit himself to it.
I would never forgive him for risking so much, no more than David would be able to forgive him for the kill switch that Lewis had put in my brain.
“So by suckering Bad Bob into kicking the living crap out of us, the
Grand Horizon
got a virtually free ride,” I said. “Right?”
“As far as I know.”
“How could you not know?”
“It’s crewed by Ashan’s Djinn. Everything was compartmentalized from me. Deliberately so.”
We’d both been cut out. Well, I’d been hoping Lewis had fallback positions, in the beginning, and it looked like he’d done a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less than I’d have managed in his place.
“They’re in for it now,” I noted, as three lightning strikes crawled the
Grand Horizon
’s deck, searching for something to destroy. “But we’re still going to get there ahead of them.”
“I know.” He cupped my face in both hands, and he studied me closely. I knew what he was looking for.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Seventy-five percent all right, anyway.”
He seemed to calculate me at about the same rate.
“If we succeed,” he said, “we will have another problem to consider.”