Page 57 of Wicked Tides
Neither woman reacted, but I knew they understood. Dahlia gave Merilyn a slow glance before walking toward the open gate. Mere inches from me, she took a deep breath, smelling the air.
“Interesting place to anchor,” she said.
“You’re taking the bitch?” Gus said.
“I’m taking the bitch,” I said.
I reached out and pulled Dahlia out of the cell by her arm before I shut the gate behind her, locked it, and tossed Gus the keys.
Gus groaned a sigh. “Don’t know why they call you ‘Bone Heart.’ Should be calling you the ‘Mad Cap’n’ or something.”
Pulling up a little stool, Gus sat himself down in front of the cell gate and propped his feet on a barrel. Before he leaned back against the wall, he pulled his pistol from his belt and laid it in his lap, keeping his eyes on the siren still caged.
“Vidar,” Gus said before I was out of earshot. “You see any ghosts, you shoot them in the heart.”
Dahlia said nothing as we climbed the steps onto the deck. Mullins and the others had the ladder uncurled and two of my men were already in the jolly boat waiting. Uther and Tor were two of my best fighters and sometimes I wondered if they were wishing for death every time we set sail. They certainly risked themselves as if they were asking for it.
“Taking her?” Mullins asked, pointing a finger. “Cap’n—”
“Get in the boat, Mullins, or say you’re too chicken shit to go so someone else can volunteer.”
He grumbled and shook his head, climbing over the edge of the railing to descend. Uther followed, eyeing Dahlia like she was a leper. I released her arm and she looked up at me, her expression stony and dark. Her eyes narrowed and she canted her head as if trying to read me.
“You enjoy hell, Vidar,” she said. “There is no other reason we’re visiting this island together after eighteen years. Do you plan to bury me here with the rest of them?”
“I plan to use you.”
“For what?”
“Whatever I can. It’s in your best interest to be useful to me.”
“Perhaps it’s inyourbest interest to be useful tome.” She stepped forward, leaving barely a breath between us. “I have not begun to show you who I am,” she whispered.
I reached slowly toward my hip where Lady Mary hung, thirsting to spill some blood. She didn’t look at it, but I knew she was aware of it and my intentions. I stepped forward until my chest met her breasts and looked down my nose at her.
“Today, we cooperate with each other and prolongue these lives we so lazily cling to. Perhaps you’ll get the chance to kill me yet.”
She reasoned with my statement for a moment before stepping away and pulling up the skirts of the clothes she very obviously hated wearing. Then she slung one leg over the railing and descended the ladder. I half expected her to strip and dive into the water, but she was afraid of something below. We all were now. Or perhaps she was playing another game.
Before I followed, I turned to Smalls. He was one of the most level-headed on my crew and with Gus below looking after the other prisoner, he was a good acting captain.
“Any sign of danger,” I emphasized. “Ring the bell.”
He nodded, resting a hand on his belt where a pistol and a bronze blade hung, ready for anything. He was anything but small, but he’d gotten the name after losing half his cock in a drunken brawl and now he wore the title with a twisted sense of pride.
I climbed down toward the boat and stepped to the front as Mullins and James began to row. My men already knew what to do. We’d done similar things so many times, it was almost routine. There were three harpoons, one on each side of the ship, and nets. They were ready for sirens. I hoped they’d be ready for anything else, too.
The fog was thick and the smells even thicker. It was like a soggy graveyard. I knew the volcano on that black, cursed island smelled of sulfur, but there was more to it. I knew the smell of dead bodies well and the island was surrounded by the stench.
My men pulled scarves over their mouths and noses, but the odor of rotting flesh only familiarized me with what I’d be one day. I never shied from the scent. Glancing back at Dahlia sitting on the other end of the boat, I saw her expression unchanged.
When something bumped the boat, I glanced over the edge to see a bloated corpse full of holes where crabs and seagulls had gnawed at the rotting flesh. The men maneuvered the oars around it just as another drifted by, the stomach hollowed out. I wrinkled my nose at the sour stink as I reached for the man’s coat to pull him closer. He was a captain. Foreign by the looks of the beading and embroidery on his collar, but his face was too rotted and peeled to get an accurate idea of what he once looked like.
“Guess we found the crews from those ships,” Mullins said.
We finally hit the sand and let the waves push us up the shore before everyone hopped into the knee-deep water. We hauled the boat up onto the black sand beach and then went silent, listening to the too-quiet island. Sounds came back to me from deep within my memories. Wailing voices. Cries of agony. The ripping of skin. The damn pleasured moans of feeding sirens as they ate their fill of a crew that was once like family.
My eyes found Dahlia again as she walked up onto the beach. The way she was staring into the haze made me think she was going through those same memories. But she and I saw that day from different sides of the same coin.
