Page 4 of The Pirate Queen of Ruin
“Don’t tease us, our heart,”they rumble, their voices echoing through my mediation.
I can think of nothing more satisfying right now. It’s certainly better than slogging through another boring meeting at Our Lady of Mercy. I could be in my quarters on the ship, grinding on Love’s slick tentacles while they tease me. They could take me into their abyss and wrap their tentacle around me until there is no part of me visible. There I could suck and worship them as they choose.
“She is still alive, but unaware of it.”
No sooner are the words out of the pretentious sandbag’s mouth, do I lose my meditative state. The pleasure of my Love is yanked from my grasp, and I’m brought back to this horrid present. This group, this network of monsters, surrounds me and I want nothing but the waters of the Paspawa River to rise up and wash me away from this grotesque basement.
Augustine Ravenscroft is a founding member, a dream-eating monster many wouldn’t dare to question or even look at the wrong way. He is controlling, overly fancy, and fucking nosy. While I stay clear of nearly everyone outside of these meetings, he knows more about my life than most. He knows where my moral compass points and that these meetings are nothing but a formality for me. I show up to keep the others away from my docks and to keep their noses from sniffing around more of my business than necessary.
For the first time in months, my focus lasers in on the conversation happening around me. Last time Ravenscroft did anything even worthy of note was seven years ago when he finally snapped at some creature obsessed with Milson Bushwhipper. Sandy ripped the guy to shreds and a new door had to be fitted in that precious library. That had been a meeting filled with shouting and demands for his expulsion from the city. He hadn’t exposed his true nature to any humans though, so he simply got away with it and earned a further reputation for being one of our deadliest members.
His words make my insides quake and writhe until I’m moving without my control. The tentacles beneath my skin squirm and threaten to burst out. Love swallows my consciousness, swallows my rage, and feasts on it until they can take control of my body. I hear the words they speak, and it soothes me.
“What do you mean unaware?”
Lights flicker. Their voice shakes the tiled ceiling. Pleasure swells in me at the sight of so many creatures scattering like ants afraid of being squashed.Cower, you so-called monsters.Run from the thing that will truly end all of you. Words, muted as if by the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore, filter through me.Ritual, control, ichor, forever. Augustine has claimed a woman without her knowledge.
An innocent monster is unaware that anything has changed. He has taken away her choice.
The rage that burns in my dead heart swells. My fists shake, and suddenly, I am back in my body. There has been no feeding. We have followed the rules and have waited for Love’s insatiable hunger to reach a peak before hunting for more souls. Now, I don’t possess the strength to bring forth my Love to ruin this gluttonous twat.
The others sit in silence, the weaker monsters huddling in fear. Nora, the member of this group I am closest with, looks ready to play the peacemaking queen she is. The Fae haven’t been to war in centuries because of her family’s lineage. But I will not be placated by platitudes now.
Augustine looks as if he has more to say to me, but I can’t listen. Before my body betrays me more than I can allow it, I storm out of the parish centre, the courtyard of Our Lady of Mercy, and through the main streets of Gwenmore. I’m not worried about others following me. They know that to intercept me outside of that basement means blood. In there, we are safe from each other, but out here, they make the wrong move against a fellow monster, which is a death sentence.
If I can’t have that pile of sand, I will find another scumbag. I will hunt them down for my Love, for my own twisted pleasure. The burn of power that comes with a hunt is what I crave now more than anything. A ghost of Love’s tentacles settles around my shoulder, a familiar weight that doesn’t slow me down but steers me in the right direction.
I will kill any man who thinks to harm another. And for one of our own to take away the choice of a woman, there is nothing lower. A plan begins to form in my head of all the ways I shall ruin Augustine Ravenscroft. It will take time, and the power I need to feed Love will take a long while to gather. But it will be oh so worth it.
This bar is way too nice.
My outfit doesn’t necessarily meet the dress code here, as my usual hunting grounds on the south side of the river are less savoury. Greasy overalls and steel toes don’t mix with the white-collar crowds. Heavy bass music pumps through the sound system as people push their way to and from the bar. There is an even mix of university students and older office workers here. The board outside the bar had proudly displayed a two-for-one on shooters and free entry for ladies. Tuesday night was the night to be here, I suppose.
Then again, the Northbank would have a thriving nightlife even if the oceans had dried and the sun fell to the earth. I watch the crowd. My eyes move from loud frat bros absorbed in a drinking contest, to a booth of women dressed in Pancake Parlour polos, to a pair of girls just down the bar from me. A man in a plain suit approaches them and the hunt begins.
There is a pattern in men, human or monster, that can be picked up the longer they are studied as prey, rather than as predators. The way they prepare for their own hunt, the way their body language portrays their true intentions, it is all predictable. He leans into one of the girls, making sure he buys them both expensive cocktails while they giggle at some bullshit he said. He moves with a practised ease that comes from having done this before and that’s how I know. If they had turned him down for a drink, he’d have moved on to the next prey he spotted until he found one he could take.
It’s a disgusting exchange that I have seen happen for centuries. Men are all the same when they believe they are the apex predators. Bars may have changed styles and gotten fancier with alcohol, but they are all the same. I take a sip of the gin and tonic the barkeep served me an hour ago and wait for him to make his final move, the one where he chooses a girl and she is somehow convinced to leave her friend behind.
Bad personal safety. There is a reason women are taught to travel in groups, and he is undoubtedly one of them. It takes two more rounds of cocktails, both girls giggling without concern. One shift in the music has one of them shimming and running off to the dance floor. Fate has decided which girl he will prey upon tonight.
If only he knew.
They leave the bar quickly after that. One brush of his hand on her exposed thigh and a whisper in her ear has her nodding along. Whatever he promised her will be a lie. A good man wouldn’t get a woman drunk and try to initiate such contact. But good men don’t exist, not really, not since they realised that pregnancy wasn’t magic from the gods.
I follow them out of the bar. He is barely able to drag her down a side street before he shoves her against one of the trees that line the pavement. They are supposed to help keep the air clean and lower street noise, but in the dark of the night, these trees are nothing except hiding spots for real monsters.
“No.” I hear her say the words loud and clear, but he ignores them.
The final nail in his coffin has been hammered in. I dig into the pocket of my overalls and pull out an old, short pocket knife that a crew member gave me before she left to travel west at the turn of the twentieth century to dig for gold. This is less ostentatious than carrying my old dagger strapped to my torso. I flick the blade open before grabbing the man’s shoulder. Both of them jump when they realise they aren’t alone, but it is too late for him. Chills race up my arm as I hold onto him. He tries to fight me when I rip him away from her, but even as short as I am, I am stronger than he could ever dream of being. When I kick in the back of his knees, he crumbles like they all do.
“Look, I don’t have money or a phone.” He starts, hand presented and visible. In what fucking reality do adults not have a phone?
“You’re lying,” I say, pressing my blade into his gullet. “Are you okay?”
The girl looks at me when she realises I am speaking to her. She nods slowly.
“Go back to the bar and ask the bouncer to phone you a cab. Go home and forget about tonight,” I command.
