Nevermor (59 page)

“You’re a
selfish bastard,” Nix told him, but he didn’t say anything more.  He stepped
around Rifter and remained sullen as he got himself prepared for the journey.

They made an
arrangement for Max to stay at the Tribal camp – with the elder’s promise that
he would be kept safe – and set out that very hour, but there was a note of
discord among them.

3

Wren waited in
the captain’s room of the old ship.  It smelled like dampness and smoke.  Was
this the scent of the dark?  There was only a single candle to light the deep
black corners where the mimics were hiding, snickering at her.  Oddly, Wren
didn’t feel nervous as she sat there, waiting in the belly of the ship.  The
vessel was groaning above her, the old boards rattling.  Heavy footsteps passed
overhead, but no one came down to her.

She didn’t
remember exactly how she had gotten here, but she knew she had come willingly. 
She wondered why, but couldn’t say.  Maybe it was because of the memories that
Whisper had shown her.  They had exhausted her mind, made her weak.  Those
visions had been heavy, and she understood why Rifter had wanted to forget
those things.

Rifter, I’m so
sorry
. 
I understand now.  I was wrong.

Behind her, she
heard the door creak open in the silence.  There was a steady clomp of boots
across the floor, though the man himself blended with the darkness.  Wren
didn’t look at him directly, afraid of what powers he might have over her.

“I hate to keep
you down here like this,” he said with the cordiality of any hospitable host. 
“You’ll have to forgive me.”

She didn’t
respond to him.  The Scourge walked behind the table that was scattered with
maps and dust and bones, and sat down in the skull chair.  She tried to ignore
the way she felt his gaze on her skin, but he was staring at her so hard she
thought she might melt like the lone candle that was suffering here.

“I wish I had
more to offer you.  I’m afraid I wasn’t quite prepared for company.”

Still, she
didn’t say anything.  She was too miserable to put on a show for him.  He
observed her for a while longer before he spoke again.

“Come now: can’t
we have a civil conversation?  Don’t you want to ask me any questions?  You
seem like the type.  An inquisitive young girl, discovering the unknown – the
forbidden.
”

She snapped up
at that, suddenly alive.  She was so used to everyone avoiding her questions
that she couldn’t believe he was offering to accommodate.  She didn’t care if
he was only going to slit her throat afterward.  This chance wouldn’t get by
her.

“Why won’t you
stay dead?” she asked.

A little smile
emerged behind his collar.  “You cut right to the heart, don’t you?  I suppose
that’s what all beautiful girls do.”

She didn’t favor
him with a response, only stared at him to prove that she wasn’t going to back
down.

“I’ve spent a
long time in the darkness,” he said finally.  “I thought it was a dream.  It
didn’t occur to me that anything was even amiss until this time.  I had no
memory of death.  I only remembered waking up with a sense of failure and a
rekindled hatred.  No one mentioned it to me, afraid of the prospect alone, I
suppose.  A man who keeps returning from the dead to seek revenge – who
wouldn’t fear that?

“Beyond all the
years I’ve been in this world, it wasn’t until this time that something
changed.”

“What
did
change?”
she asked, looking at him raptly.

“It was a
haunting vision, yet so close I thought I might touch it.  I was drifting in
the darkness and the strangest notion of an old memory came back to me.  I saw
an apparition.  It was beautiful,
ethereal
.  It was a girl in a white
dress, with long golden curls.  I couldn’t tell whether she was a child or a
woman.  She seemed stuck somewhere in between.  She led me to a door, and when
I opened it, I saw the answer to everything.”

A door?
  Yes, she had
also seen a door.  She had opened it to see Rifter’s memories.  While she could
accept that, the other part of what he said was shocking to her.  A girl in
white?  An apparition in the darkness?  He had meant to say that it was her. 
She
had led him to the door?

She didn’t want
to believe him.

“You’re lying,”
she accused.

The man shook
his head, his dark locks swaying limply.  “I can’t lie to you.  I told you
that.”

She watched his
face, trying to decide, but he was impossible to read.  He was a perfect liar
with unquestioned honesty.

“When I saw you
at the Tribal camp, I was caught,” he went on.  “You’re the reason I lost my
arm.  I was looking at you when I should have been paying attention to the
fight.”

Wren’s natural
instinct was to apologize, but she held it back.

I shouldn’t feel
sorry for that.

The Scourge
smirked as if he knew what she was thinking.  He paused and took up a pipe from
the tabletop, stuffed it with tobacco and lit it.  She watched him blankly
until she realized what she was seeing.  He had used
both
of his hands
to maintain the thing.  The question hadn’t quite formed in her mouth before he
was speaking again.

“It doesn’t
really matter,” he said as if addressing the question that was still on her
mind.  “Instead, you might ask me what’s going to happen next.  Aren’t you
concerned about that?”

“No,” she said,
holding her head a little higher.  “I know what will happen.  Rifter’s going to
come here, just like you want, and he’s going to kill you again.  This time,
it’s going to be for good.”

She wasn’t sure
where her gall had come from.  Maybe it was her anger instead of her confidence
that had led her to say this, but when the Scourge stood up from the table,
stepping around to approach her where she sat, she wondered if she had been too
bold.  Wren drew herself up a little tighter.

“I’m sorry,” he
said to her apologetically, “but you assume that Rifter is the one who deserves
to have this world.  Have you really given him much thought beyond his
attractive face?  How do you know that he isn’t the villain in this?”

“He doesn’t kill
on a whim.  He doesn’t want control just to see others suffer.”

“Is that right?”
he asked.  “I have never attacked anyone who didn’t either attack me first or
threaten me outright.  It’s true.  I’m not the ruthless and terrible man that
you think I am.”

He thought he
could fool her?  She had seen it for herself.  She had noted the way he’d attacked
the natives when everything had been so peaceful, just to cause a bit of
havoc.  He had set half the world on fire, just so that he could get at one
boy.

“This is his
world,” Wren said resolutely.

“Is it?” the
Scourge asked, then hummed thoughtfully.

He was trying to
confuse her.  She wasn’t going to fall for it, but there was a flicker of doubt
in her mind.

“Do you know
what makes Nevermor such an interesting place?  It’s tucked away.  Nothing else
has any bearing on it.  Not earth, not heaven, not hell.  The only ones who
have any sway here are the Rifter and myself.  And why?”

He didn’t give
her the chance to speculate.

“Who cares?  All
that matters is that I kill him and get it back for myself.”

Get it back? 
Had he just claimed that he was here first?  That was not what she had seen in
the memories – or had it been?  They weren’t clear in her head anymore.

“There is one
thing you ought to know above all else:
he
started this.  I’m going to
finish it.  This time, I know exactly how to do it.”

“How do you know
you can kill him?” she asked, interrupting.  “
You
always come back.  Why
won’t it happen the same way with him?”

He smiled at her
question – the humoring smile of an adult who knew so much more than the naïve
child he was listening to.

“You don’t
understand it yet, but you will.  And he will.  Then I’ll kill him and his own,
and that will be the end of it.”

“You won’t be
able to kill him,” she insisted – because she wanted to believe it.  “He’s
stronger than you are, and you know that!”

Wren felt herself
getting angry, coming alive and out of her lethargy.  No matter what Rifter had
done to her, she didn’t think he deserved death for it.  She still had faith in
him.  She wanted him to overcome his enemy whether she was at his side or not.

The Scourge gave
her that same daunting look.  “I’m sorry, my sweet,
precious
Wren, but
you’re wrong once again.  I have more than one advantage over him this time. 
He will fall.”

He considered
her regretfully, looking into her eyes as if she was a dear friend that he was
betraying by his actions.

“It’s a shame
you have to join him,” he said, “but I’ll tell you now that it isn’t personal. 
Not with you.”

He stepped
closer, and Wren didn’t like the way he was looking at her.  There was a gleam
of hunger in his eye.  Was it for her blood, or something else?  Was he going
to kill her now, not even give Rifter the chance to save her?  Show him her
corpse when he arrived?  She would never get to tell him goodbye – wouldn’t be
able to make things right with him.  Her brothers would be here without her. 
They would all
forget her
.  She’d only be a name etched on the cave wall
in the dark.

No!

With a burst of
energy, she shot up from the chair.  Wren didn’t know if she would be able to
get away from him, but she had to try, knowing that her life depended on it. 
She threw her weight into him, shoved him, and managed to dart past.

The man had let
her get by him.  He could have grabbed her, but he hadn’t even tried.  He let
her get to the door.

The door of the
cabin wasn’t locked and Wren thrust it open, pushed through and dashed up the
steps.  She didn’t stop, even when she saw that the deck outside was deserted. 
There was only one hope for her, and even though it would probably mean death,
it would be better than being the Scourge’s pawn in a fight against Rifter. 
She would dive into the sea and take her chances at swimming back to the
island.  Anything that happened beyond that would be a kinder fate.

Wren made it to
the rail and gripped the edge, preparing to pull herself over it – but froze
abruptly with her fingers digging into the side.  It was not a mass of dark
water she was about to drop down into.

Below her – far
down below – there were trees and rocks, the icecaps of a frozen mountain.  The
ship was not on the water.  It was hovering hundreds of feet
in the air
.

She couldn’t
believe it.  The ship was
flying
!  There was no possible way – and yet
it made sense.  This was how he had done it.  A flying ship had allowed him to
bomb the island.  She had seen it moving across the sky the night that the
forest burned.

Wren gasped when
she felt a hand on the back of her neck, gripping her hair.  It didn’t hurt,
but it was effective in pulling her back.  She moved with it because she had no
choice, and the Scourge tilted her face up to look into his gleaming blue eye.

“It won’t do you
any good to jump,” he said.  “Not yet.  You’ll wind up with a worse fate than
them.”

Them?
  He was looking
down over the edge and Wren followed his gaze.  Her body grew cold when she saw
what he was looking at.  There were bodies hanging from the sides of the ship,
dangling by their necks.  They were the bodies of natives and pirates, of the
Scourge’s entire crew, bloody and fresh.  It explained why he was alone on
board, but why?

He’s evil.  Must
there be a reason?  Is there such a thing as what he is?  He has no feeling –
no soul.

He turned her
around to face him, pressing her back against the railing.

“What do you
think of it?” he asked darkly.  She guessed that he was speaking of the way the
ship was floating on air.  “Unexpected, isn’t it?  Impossible?  It’s taken me a
long time, but I’ve finally learned that the impossible is not so out of reach
as it seems.”

He gripped her
shoulder to hold her in place and closed his eye.  She saw his brow furrow in
strain as if he was concentrating very hard, and then she saw the change.

Behind him, dark
puddles began to form from the shadows in the cracks of the deck, and then they
began to rise up before her eyes.  The shadowy forms turned into men, and when
he finally opened his shining blue eye once more, there was an entire crew of
featureless shadow-men on board.  He had summoned them up out of nothing, but
she knew what they were.

Nightmares
. 
Mimics
. 
He had called an inhuman army to replace his human crew.  Had he killed them to
take their shadows?  Was this how he had an advantage over Rifter?  It was
because he had learned to control the nightmares – the darkness – or was it the
flying ship?