Shadows of the Deep (Wicked Tides #2)

Beginning

Those who seek chaos

will find chaos

~Unknown

“You are hereby sentenced to death by hanging.”

Not the best words to hear on a Thursday afternoon. Lucky for me, I wasn’t the one receiving the sentence. It was the poor fool at the gallows in the square we were passing.

Gilly Pine was an uninteresting port town that thrived on creating petty drama to entertain their bored masses.

It wasn’t good for much besides fish, which meant their governor was keen on keeping business flowing.

If fishermen couldn’t go out and fish the waters, they couldn’t sell anything.

Their shores weren’t pretty enough. Their whores weren’t exotic enough.

Their food was shit. The fish trade was all they had.

Now, the water wasn’t just plagued with man-eating sirens.

A new enemy had risen from the depths. One we’d never seen before.

Dahlia called them “xhoth.” The sons of Akareth.

They were grotesque, toothy, slimy creatures taller than me with fins, talons, and their taste for siren meat was just as prominent as their taste for humans.

But, if nothing else, more enemies in the water meant a greater need for hunters like myself and my crew.

Returning to Treson Harbor was out of the question, though.

None of us in our right mind wanted to return to working with Governor Whitton.

He had been insisting that killing sirens was not as lucrative as keeping them alive and selling them as exotic pets, more or less.

And to ensure they could not use their voices to sway men, their tongues were cut out and sold to buyers who were no longer content eating things as generic as pork or fish.

I tasted bile just thinking about consuming the tongue of a siren. But despite my disgust, the noble population had taken to it and made it into a delicacy. They were paying absurd amounts for tongues and more for sirens without them.

That was far too dangerous and foolish a game for me to play. I knew better than anyone what a siren was capable of. Until very recently, I thought the only good siren was a dead and dismembered one.

So, I cut a deal with Governor Gregory Mancel in Gilly Pine. I was to bring him heads, siren or xhoth, and he paid my crew.

And business had become worthwhile over the past few months. Worthwhile enough to hold us over so we didn’t have to return to Treson Harbor and conform to the new way of things.

Glancing to my right, I was reminded just how dangerous a siren, with or without her tongue, could be.

Dahlia was the perfect example of pure lethality.

She strode beside me holding a sack over her shoulder.

Inside were two ugly xhoth heads on the verge of rotting.

I had a sack of my own with an additional two heads and the head of a siren.

The creatures were aggressive. They came to us more often than we pursued them.

Over the months, my ship had accumulated more scars on her hull than she had in the last five years with all the creatures hacking at her with their spears and knives in an effort to climb the slick exterior or sink her.

I looked at Dahlia again. On land, she kept her hair pushed up into a floppy leather hat and she wore my oversized shirts, keeping her gender more-or-less hidden to avoid questions.

Women weren’t a normal part of a hunter’s crew, or any crew for that matter.

For all anyone knew, she was a young man, either my assistant or a deck hand.

She looked up at me with her storm-gray eyes and I winked, trudging up the dirt path to collect our payment.

It was all quite familiar. I’d walked to Whitton’s mansion up the hill from the docks in Treson Harbor countless times to deliver my spoils.

Gregory’s home wasn’t quite as extravagant and unlike Whitton, he hated me bringing the heads into his house.

Instead, I always dealt with his associate, Jon, just on the edge of the markets.

He had a small office and since I’d been hunting for them, they’d set up a table outside to make our deals so none of the gore made it indoors.

Gilly Pine was a squeamish place. They weren’t used to the kind of violence other ports had gotten accustomed to over the years.

I walked up to find Jon outside already talking with a couple of men in navy officer’s uniforms.

Behind us, Mullins and James were tailing like they always did while the rest of the men replenished the supplies for my ship.

I turned and whistled quietly, getting their attention.

When they spotted the officers, they both veered to one side of the path, pretending to look at the goods at the closest vendor.

“Ah! Captain Woelfson,” Jon said, causing both officers to turn and look at us. “So it was your red sails in the harbor. I’ve been expecting you.”

Dahlia kept her head down as I approached the men.

“Jon,” I greeted, tossing my sack on the table, not minding how the still-wet black blood from the bottom of the burlap splashed on the officers. I reached over and took Dahlia’s sack, putting that down as well. “There are five less beasts in your waters.”

“Ahh,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the sacks. He could have opened them and counted, but instead, he waved a hand at a young servant boy, who then swiped them off the table into a metal basin. “Very good.”

I leaned forward, fists on the table, and stared at the older man in his yellowed great coat that looked to have once been white. He looked back at me, a bushy gray brow raised, and then blinked like he didn’t know why I was still standing there.

“The payment, Jon,” I said in a slow, steady tone.

He cleared his throat and then straightened the tiny glasses on his hooked nose. His head lowered a bit and he stepped to his right, sighing.

“Sorry, Woelfson,” he muttered. “It’s been a pleasure working with you.”

Behind him, the wooden post near his office door was decorated with a wanted poster. A very pristine, new wanted poster with my face sketched right on the front of it. I squinted, staring for a moment in awe at how dashingly accurate it was.

It was a very good sketch. It looked very much like me… unfortunately.

“Wonderful,” I huffed, straightening off the table just for the officers to step in and grab both of my arms.

From the office emerged three more men to detain me.

And, as expected, Dahlia wasn’t having any of it.

She lunged forward, pulling her bone knife from her belt, and jammed it into the nearest officer’s shoulder.

He yelped in complaint, backhanding her across the face.

Her hat went flying off her head and into the dirt, letting her hair spill out like black silk.

She had so many tricks up her sleeve. To the untrained eye, she was nothing but a woman.

She could put color in her cheeks if she wanted and hide her fangs.

It was enough to fool simple men provided we didn’t make a scene.

Of course… we were making a scene, but at least they didn’t know she was a siren.

I glimpsed two men pulling out their pistols and one of them wore a bronze cutlass on his belt. Fear gripped me and as Dahlia lunged for another one of my captors, I kicked my foot out, knocking one man’s hand up toward the sky so he fired away from us.

“Don’t!” I shouted. Not at the men. At Dahlia.

There were too many of them and far too much bronze for comfort. In any other instance, I knew the two of us could take all five officers and come out with only a couple scratches. But pistols and bronze were too risky. A siren could survive most injuries, but those made by bronze were lethal.

At my word, Dahlia turned to look at me, her eyes on the verge of change.

If they found out what she was, it would make things a thousand times more complicated.

She saw the look in my eyes and immediately, she put a leash on her anger.

She feigned tripping on herself and went to one knee, dropping her knife.

The men quickly moved in and seized her.

Glancing to my left, I saw Mullins and James still at the shop, both reaching for their pistols. Their eyes were bloodthirsty and ready for a fight. I subtly shook my head at them and they stopped, sinking into an alley where they could not be seen.

As the men cuffed my wrists in irons, a slow clap echoed from inside Jon’s little office.

A mass of color caught my eye in my peripheral, and I glanced toward it to see a hefty man dressed in fancy, sea foam green clothes and ruffles.

I could recognize that face anywhere. That big nose and those heavy, full cheeks.

Fucking Whitton.

So, he’d dragged himself to the shit town of Gilly Pine himself just to get his own grimy hands on me.

I was both flattered and disgusted. The last time I saw him was in a horrendous nightmare.

He was eating Dahlia’s tongue while all manner of other vile things were happening to her and I was chained and helpless to do anything about it.

He was fond of siren tongues. It seemed almost like an addiction for the pig.

“Whitton,” I greeted. “Nice day for a walk in your fancy shoes, is it?”

He was still clapping his hands together slowly, but the moment I spoke, he stopped.

“What are the odds, Woelfson, that I stop in this piss-smelling town for a drink and find you here?”

“Stopped for a drink, did you?” I glimpsed my wanted poster. “You weren’t hanging my pretty face all over town yourself with your dainty hands?” I winked at him. “Miss me?”

His plump lips were pursing at my every word. I’d always been good at aggravating the man just by existing.

“What you did to the Widow’s Smile, to Collin, has reached my ears.”

“Course it has,” I muttered.