Blood in the Water (8 page)

Javier gave Araceli a long look. He didn’t like taking orders from Eric. “This your plan?”

“Strip the warehouse clean,” she confirmed. “We’ll take care of Lamar.”

Eric saw Claude’s lip curl up and he shook his head at his man. This wasn’t a time for arguments or democratic votes. “We’ll see you back at the ship.”

Javier pressed his hands together and grunted. “
Escucha
, we pair off. You two, you together, you…” Javier took control of the group and his gestures demanded their attention.

Eric and Araceli slid back into the jungle. He pointed down the hill. “A guard at the back door.”

“None on the second-floor balcony.”

“Don’t tell me you’re climbing up?” Eric slid a suspicious glance at her.

“Why not? He might be in an office or library. Second floor.”

“But… you’re…” he swallowed his words at the look she sliced his way.

“Fat?” She asked, with no discernible intonation. It sent a shiver down his spine in the way yelling couldn’t. “You think I could get this big sitting around on a boat eating pancakes?”

Eric refocused on the back door guard and didn’t reply.

“Just hope I never have cause to sit on you again, Deumont. I’ll break your matchstick ribs.”

He cleared his throat. “So, ah… you’ll take the balcony, then?”

“That’s right.”

“Good.” And a heartbeat later, he heard her move deeper into the jungle for a better approach. Like a leopard, big and deadly.

Eric shook himself of the feeling Araceli watched him. The guard at the estate shifted his weight. In the light of the setting moon, Eric saw him yawn. The jungle gave him cover for yards. Eric crawled around trees and slid low under ferns. He untangled his sword from a vine. Circling leftward gave him the closest approach without leaving jungle cover. Eric maneuvered to his feet, a crouched position only yards away. He paused there and drew his blade. The next time he saw the guard shift his weight, Eric lunged.

The guard got half a shout out. Then Eric plunged his sword into the man’s chest and smothered his cries with one hand. He tackled the man, dragging him down to the ground just as he saw Araceli slide out of the jungle, jump up for the balcony railing, and pull herself bodily over the edge.

The man below his hands died. Eric jerked his sword free and dragged the body back to the ferns. It wouldn’t fool a search, but it might delay the alarm. He yanked the door handle. Locked. Eric aimed a kick right next to the doorknob. The lock and jam splintered. He kicked again. The door slammed open. The house appeared to be empty.

Then he heard a scuffle upstairs. Eric sprinted for the stairway at the front of the house, sliding around the corner on a rug. He stormed the second floor only to find Araceli browsing the library shelves. In the center of the room, the Havana messenger with the flat cap lay hogtied and gagged.

Eric wiped the blood off his sword on a silk settee beside the door. He slid it home and crouched next to the messenger. The man huffed through his nose and continued to struggle but Araceli’s bindings didn’t budge. Eric put a finger to his lips until the man lay on the floor heaving, but still. Hopefully, he wouldn’t scream. Eric pulled the gag down with one finger. The messenger took a big breath. Eric slapped his hand down and they struggled again, wiggling on the floor while the messenger shot loathing intent through his eyes.

Eventually he had to breathe again, and that’s when Eric pulled the gag down his chin. “Where’s Lamar?”

“Not here,” the man gasped. “And you better leave before the guards swarm this place.”

“We’ve taken care of them.” The messenger blanched and Eric smiled. “So what are you doing here?” Araceli pulled a drawer from the desk and upended it onto the study carpet. She pushed papers around with the toe of her boot.

“I live here!” the messenger squeaked.

“With Lamar? Is he teaching you to submit to the spirits?” Eric leaned forward. “Are you liking it?”

“He’s my father!”

Araceli dumped another drawer of paperwork and trinkets to the floor.

“Well, that’s boring,” Eric said. “I like my theory better.” He pulled his cotton shirt free of his belt. “Have you ever seen a spirit in person?”

“Wait. Stop.” The man’s struggles renewed.

Araceli threw the curtain over the window and emptied another drawer.

Eric pulled his shirt up. “I took a chest from your father once. A chest with a spirit in it. Are you sure you don’t want to see it?”

“Stop! He’s in Saint Lucia!”

Eric paused. “Where’s the top for the puzzle jar?”

“He took it with him?” Lamar Junior’s eyes widened.

Araceli tsked from the desk side of the room, “Saint Lucia is a two month trip if you sail straight. You want to answer that question again?”

“He has it, I swear.”

“Why?” Eric shoved up to his feet.

“I don’t know!”

Araceli sighed. Eric just drew his sword and pointed the tip at Junior’s crotch. “Stop wasting my time.”

“Shit! He’s doing something with spirits, okay? I don’t understand it. He’s not letting me help with any of the good stuff. All I do is study the damn books!”

“Which books?”

“This one.” Araceli held up a leather doorstop of a reference book one handed. It bristled with bookmarks and notes.

“Please don’t take that.”

Araceli rolled her eyes and tucked it under her arm. “We’re done here.”

Eric sheathed his sword and led the way out. Araceli closed the study door behind them.

Junior screamed through the door, “Wait! …Wait, you can’t leave me tied up like this! …Come back here, you fuckers!”

****

June

Hours Later

“We’re not going after Lamar— you can barely move.”

“It’ll take two months to get there. I’ll be fine. Give me sewing repairs to do, or something.” Kyros knew his glower’s effect fell flat. It was hard to be in charge from flat on his back with new skin and scars making him pink.

Eric’s snort from the table didn’t help, either.

Araceli folded her arms and Kyros winced. There wasn’t much could budge the woman when she stood her ground. “You have a belt buckle fused to your hip and—”

“What are we doing, then? Sitting around?”

“You’re sitting around.” Eric closed the huge tome in front of him. “I need to off-load this sugar.”

“So that’s it, then? You’re just leaving?”

“Like you just left Nassau,” Eric agreed. He grunted and rose from the table to open the bottom drawer against the wall.

Even without a malicious look, Kyros winced hard. He couldn’t demand anything of this man. He was going to anyway.

“Vindex,” Eric said, bent over the empty drawer. “Where’s my jar?”

Araceli shot Kyros a hard look and huffed. If he got her any more riled up he was going to regret it.

“You’ll find it in Saint Lucia.”

Eric slammed the drawer shut so hard it warped in the space and jammed at an angle. He turned on Kyros with hot fury, pointing. “I’m going to tear this ship down to ribs looking for it—”

Kyros had to use both hands for his fingers to cooperate but he showed Eric his middle finger, then laughed when the pirate stormed toward the door. “It’s not on the boat, Deumont!”

Araceli’s eyes widened. “You sent it ahead?”

“I’m not a complete invalid—”

“Good Lord.” She spun out of the room. “Deumont!” He heard her echoing boots stomp across the crew deck. Kyros closed his eyes and tried not to laugh— that still hurt.

A half hour later Araceli growled back into the room. “He’s headed for Saint Lucia. We’re still not going.”

Kyros grunted and kept his eyes closed. All the excitement had him tired already. She left him alone.

A week after the plantation visit, Kyros sat up in his bed to take stock of himself. The demon fire had struck his chest and arms, with some additional splatters down his stomach, and the notable splash on his left hip where the buckle now resided as a part of him. His chest and arms were so much swirl of scar, awkward and tight in every direction. But he was alive.

His palms shined pinkish with new skin, sensitive to touch, so it took him a while to work open the hidden compartment in the wall beside his bed.

Araceli knocked once and entered mid-sentence, “—elling him the cost isn’t worth it, but he insists.” Bram followed her in with a log book open in his hands. “Do we have anything else that will work?”

“He’s the blacksmith, Quartermaster. If he says he needs it, he probably does. I don’t know the first thing about smithing.”

“Kyros, have… you…” She trailed off.

Kyros turned Eric’s puzzle jar over and over in his hands. The space in the wall was just large enough to hold it, and for a week, he heard it rocking against the wood, reminding him.

“Bram, leave us.”

The bosun didn’t question her order. He snapped his book closed and shut the door behind him.

Araceli stood beside his bed. “Kyros, look at me.”

He looked up.

She backhanded him. Her knuckles caught his teeth and nose. The force of her entire body snapped his head to the side. Kyros felt his teeth clip the inside of his cheek and the edge of his tongue. Blood. He saw spots.

At least she wore no rings.

Kyros held the jar up for her to take. “Set course, south by southeast,” he said. He pointed to the charts on the table that she’d refused to look at for a week. “Bring us to Saint Lucia.”

She left, taking the jar with her. Kyros tried to sleep.

****

Chapter V

August

Two months later

Eric leaned his ass against the aft railing, beside a flickering lantern. He watched Sven and the crew work like an oiled machine, singing rhythm to a new shanty song someone had picked up in the tavern. In another week they’d land in Saint Lucia. Then he could put an end to this.

The crow called down from above, and Eric rubbed his chest to calm Ghalil. “White sails on the horizon! Forward port!”

Sven half-turned to hand Eric a spyglass. He accepted it, scanning the barely discernible line of ocean and sky in the night. White sails. Riding low. Ghalil wouldn’t stay calmed. Too bad Vindex wasn’t here to gang up on the vessel. Fifty guns at least.

Then Eric remembered he was in this mess because of Vindex, and he snapped the spyglass closed to hand it back.

“Bring us in line behind them, Sven. Full sail.”

“Aye, sir.” Sven called the tack and turned his wheel. The Midnight Sun cut through the waves on her new heading.

Eric found his men below decks. He shook Otto’s heavy shoulder. “Coxswain, get your men up.” Otto grunted. “We’ve found a big merchant vessel, heavy. I need everyone on deck, guns loaded.”

“Yes, sir.” Otto pulled himself out of the hammock and shook himself awake. He barked, “Wake up!” and suddenly the crew deck swarmed with activity. Eric left him to it.

On the top deck, Eric spotted the merchant without the spyglass. They closed in, silent in the night but for an occasional creak of line on wood and the slap of water. The deck rumbled. Eric heard gun doors snap open on either side.

Ghalil twisted on his chest. Eric swung his head around and found the moon just rising behind low marine clouds. He tugged the shirt tighter under his belt. He’d had good luck with the spirit for a while now. He didn’t want to ruin that record.

The crow called five hundred yards when a lantern lit up the aft deck of their target. Then a second light. A third. The crow shouted, “They’ve spotted us, sir!”

“Keep your heading,” Eric told Sven, then he yelled across the deck, “Load the long nines with chain!”

Men echoed the order to the gun deck and the response relayed back, guns ready.

“Turning to port, three hundred yards,” the crow reported.

Eric touched Sven’s shoulder and took the wheel. He turned the Sun on a shallow port angle, not quite committing to the tack. Then he saw the port anchor drop and realized, too late, that the merchant wasn’t turning to run, they turned to fight. The anchor hit seafloor and pivoted the heavy vessel. Suddenly the Sun was there, too close to disengage.

“Fire forward guns!” Eric spun his wheel away to starboard just as the two cannon fired. “Starboard tack,” he called out, heart tight, “ready port guns!”

The merchant fired first, all twenty-five port cannon on two decks lighting up the night. The Sun shuddered and slowed, nose digging into water rather than slicing through. Eric shared a tight glance with Sven. A fifty gun ship prepared to run, they could take, but a ship willing to stand was another matter.

“All men to the oars. Give us speed!” He had to take advantage of their anchor. Men scrambled below decks. Ghalil rolled under Eric’s skin, and he smacked his own chest to keep the spirit in line. Then he heard a telltale clatter of chain. The merchant pulled up their anchor, six men around a spoked wheel in the deck running it back up.

Eric considered using the oars to run instead of fight. Then, two concussive blasts rocked the merchant. Eric ducked on instinct but nothing hit the Sun. Oars finally stroked the water but they didn’t move far.

Then, two thirty-six-inch iron balls dropped from the sky and ended the fight. They fell through Eric’s rigging and sails. One punched a hole beside the mainmast, offsetting the structure enough for the Sun to list port side. The second clipped his aft rail, tore through the captain’s cabin, and disabled the rudder.

Merchant soldiers hooked the Sun, and Eric just stood at the wheel, watching. No rudder, no mainsail, extensive damage to port side— he’d never lost a fight so completely or so fast. He wondered if Vindex would pick up the puzzle jar in Saint Lucia and try to finish it himself.

Soldiers swarmed the boat, and Eric felt the whole thing in slow motion. He didn’t fight when two men grabbed his arms and marched him across his own wrecked deck. They tangled with Orthos, smart enough to abandon ship with the crew. There was a brief argument about what to do with Eric, then the big merchant captain pointed to his own mainmast, and Eric hung his head. They strung him up facing aft so he could watch the merchant captain sail. Arms stretched out, feet tied down, heavy line wrapped, again and again, around his chest.