35. Carol
35
Carol
Adrian Fairchild’s guards unlocked the chain from the floor, pulled her upright, and half-led, half-dragged her to a cabin so luxurious it felt like she’d teleported to a different world from the one that contained a partially submerged metal cage.
To the Fairchilds, those worlds were one and the same. Their power, and the cruelty that power let them play with.
She still couldn’t believe it was him.
“Eloise—” she began, uncertainly, staring unseeing around the room.
“Isn’t here. Oh, no, not my girl, sharing a boat with her old dad.” She dragged her eyes back into focus in time to see him smile, a thin, loveless crease across his face. “She has her own little venture keeping her busy. This will be a lesson for her, too, if she isn’t careful. And you know my Elly, Miss Zhang. Careful and her are like water and oil.” He chuckled like he’d made a joke.
“Then… why am I here?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I’m doing my fatherly duty. Cleaning up her messes, starting with the worst.” He held out one hand in a gesture that took in her entire body, then nodded at a chair. “Make yourself at home.”
She was still in chains. She was wet, and cold, and some of the metal taste in her mouth was her own blood.
Make herself at home. Right.
“I’d rather stand.”
“I’d prefer you sit.”
And if I don’t, we’re in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles from anywhere, and I’m chained up in a way that specifically prevents me from shifting.
She staggered to the chair and lowered herself into it. Her knee started to bounce nervously, making her chains clink. Mr. Fairchild gave her a look that told her it would be a good idea for them not to do that.
I can be still, she told the empty waters inside her where her shark’s voice ought to be. I can. I always used to. Remember? So still, it would freak people out.
She took a deep breath and didn’t choke. Good start.
“I never had the opportunity to apologize for what my daughter made you into.” Mr. Fairchild sat opposite her. His expression of concern made her feel sick. It was the first real emotion she’d seen on him. “After the accident, you disappeared. I kept tabs on your location, of course, but I didn’t want to intrude. Not until I had a solution.”
“And this is your solution? Feeding me to the Soul-Eater?”
Mr. Fairchild’s eyebrows went up again. “Now, how do you know that name? Don’t tell me MacInnis and his band of merry men know about the ancient divinities. He’s a thug, not a historian.”
Carol swallowed back bile at his description of her boss. “It came up recently.”
“Is that so? How interesting. So many things seem to be coming to light these days. Almost as though fate itself is paving the way for us. First poor old Gerald stumbled upon the shadow dragons—not that he had any idea what he’d found. Then our winged friends emerged from their long slumber. With a little help, of course.” He made a vague gesture, like bowing for applause. “And now—no.”
He paused, long enough for cold fingers of anxiety to creep around Carol’s throat, then smiled. “I was going to say ‘now, you,’ but that isn’t quite right, is it? You should have been first on the list. A herald of what was to come, as the old world cracks open beneath the new. The spark that warns of a wildfire. A monster for a time of monsters.”
Carol forced the words past the lump in her throat. “I’m not—”
“No, no. You won’t be. Once he returns and fixes what centuries of uncontrolled magic have led astray.”
“You’re going to free the Soul-Eater.”
Mr. Fairchild’s eyes dropped to his lap in a perfect imitation of piety. “He has been imprisoned too long. There is a great deal of work for him to do out here in the world, and I regret that my Elly is the cause of some of it. Which is why I am so pleased my little rescue mission was a success.”
“Rescue?! You think you rescued me?”
“I understand if it doesn’t feel that way right now. You must have built yourself quite the protective self-delusion, to survive with that face for so long. But you don’t need to hide from the truth anymore. Pretending that you can exist in the same world as the rest of us shifters, working for idiots like MacInnis, who act as though your face is something that should be ignored. Soon, it will all be over. You will be the beautiful young woman you were meant to be.”
I’m going to be sick.
She waited for the horror to rise to a crest inside her, for her shark to loom up, strong and relentless and—
Nothing.
Her anger, her horror, her disgust, anything she could have chained into strength and defiance, all drained away, leaving only the fear behind. Only the thing that made her weaker. Not stronger. Never stronger.
Just a broken girl, clinging to false hope. Believing the world would be better to her than it had ever given her reason to think it would be.
Even Moss—
She squeezed her eyes tight. She couldn’t think about him. Not now.
He wasn’t coming to save her.
No one was. The closest thing to a hero she had right now was Adrian Fairchild. Who wanted to save her from… herself.
Her monstrous, unwanted self.
Blood burst from her lip. For the first time in years, she’d forgotten to be wary of her teeth.
Mr. Fairchild made a noise of polite distress. “Oh, dear. One of you—get something for her, will you?” A guard handed him a bottle of water and a packet of wipes, and he passed them to her, pulling his hand back quickly. “It will all be over soon. I have other business to attend to, but my offer stands. Make yourself at home. Eat something. Drink. Keep your strength up. I’ll return you to your parents a whole person, not a starved urchin.”
He really believed it. That was what shook her, as he smiled at her and ordered two guards to stay with her before he disappeared out the door. He believed everything he said.
He thought he was being kind to her.
She looked down at the makeshift first-aid kit. The metal birds had trusted him, and he had put them in a cage. She was still manacled to the chain. Fairchild’s kindness was of a sort specific to his creepy little mind. Which… helped.
Because if he hadn’t thrown her into a half-swamped cage and chained her like a dog, she might have believed him.
A whole person. The beautiful young woman you were meant to be.
Would Moss like her better, if she wasn’t like this?
She stood, gathering up the trailing chain like some sort of kinky accessory, and let her feet take her around the cabin. It was carpeted; even with the chain, she didn’t make a noise.
The guards stationed at the door tensed in the way that meant something in their brains had transferred her from the small and helpless category to the freaky and dangerous category. Which might be helpful. Even though stuck like this, there wasn’t much she could do other than creep them out.
The cabin was decked out with heavy wooden furniture and lots of brass fittings. Glass-fronted bookshelves lined the walls, full of leatherbound books that looked like they hadn’t been touched since they were put there. The desk down the far end had a sepia-toned globe on it.
The whole room was playing at being a Victorian gentleman’s study, the same way Fairchild was playing at being a gentle man.
And people think I’m creepy. She trailed one finger along the desk. The globe was positioned so that if you were sitting in the big, winged armchair behind it, you would see Antarctica. Which had a red-topped pin in it, because of course it did. How did you even get a pin into a globe? Weren’t they made of solid plastic?
She looked closer. Metal globe, magnetic pin. Pins, plural. A series of smaller silver magnetic dots made a line across the ocean, from the tip of South America to the frozen continent. Was he plotting a route?
“He—he makes us move them each day. When the tracking updates come through?”
Carol looked up. The guard who’d spoken went pale, while his partner made shut-up-shut-up gestures. “What?”
“He-he-he wants it kept up to date, so we—”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
Carol stared at the two men’s white, terrified faces. She was still moving, of course, but slowly, controlled, like a well-oiled machine. Predatory.
This was the point where she would normally collapse into nervous chit-chat or get flustered and knock things off the table in her hurry to get away or, in more cases than she liked to admit even to herself, start crying.
Instead, she kept her eyes locked on the sweating guard and prowled slowly around the desk.
“What tracking updates?”
“Th-the other boats?”
“What other boats?”
“Th-the rest of the—”
“Shut up !” the other guard hissed.
Carol stalked closer, her steps so oil-smooth that one rolled into the next without stopping, but slow enough that she could almost hear the guards’ heartbeats race with anticipation.
Which she could. If she let herself. And there was no one else here except two assholes who were literally guarding her for the guy who’d kidnapped her, so why the hell not? Why make herself small and inoffensive and hide everything that people feared about her, for people like this ?
She smiled, slow and wide, and both guards’ eyes dropped, horrified, to her teeth. “What are you both?”
“Hngt,” the first guard said.
She looked deeper. Their lives pulsed, vivid and terrified. She couldn’t see their animal sides like this—she wasn’t Irina Diaz, peering into strangers’ souls—but hey, if she could freak them out enough, maybe they’d break. Like she always did.
She felt powerful, and awful, like she was fully stepping into her own body at last. Being herself.
Or being someone else.
Maybe that was better.
“We’re rats! Rat shifters. That’s all. Most of the crew are.”
“Stop talking to her!” The second guard raised his weapon in a way that told Carol he had no idea what he was doing. Plus, he was backing away. “You’re not meant to talk to her! We’re just going to do this job and go, that’s what you said!”
“What job?”
“Oh god ,” he whimpered. His back hit the door.
“ What job ?” Carol repeated. She wasn’t even sure why she was asking. But the question seemed effective.
“I thought it was going to be coke and babes! Crewing a cruise ship? We’ve seen Below Deck ! It’s meant to be all drugs and fucking and weird rich people! Not—fucking—we’re rats! And we can’t even ditch this fucking ship because we’re in the fuck end of nowhere and we’ll freeze !”
“…Huh.” Carol put her teeth away. “You’re not in on this with him?”
“In on what ? Creepy bird people with knives on their wings? You? No offense. I didn’t mean you. I mean—I’m sure you’re, like, you’re a great person, not an actual vampire, and you’re not going to rip my throat out or eat my heart or—”
“Geez, okay.” She put her hands up and took a step back, reconsidered, then grabbed his gun off him. He let it go with a whimper. “You’re not even trained to deal with someone like me ? I thought I had no idea, but you… Is this even loaded?”
“I really hope not.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
It’s all fake. The fancy-ass library, the guards, Fairchild’s kindness… No. His kindness wasn’t kind , but what he thought he was doing? That was all real. And he believed in it.
So why fill a ship with guards who didn’t know what the hell they were doing?
“What about the rest of the ship?”
“Look, lady—miss—ma’am…”
“No one else knows what’s going on,” the other guard admitted in a wary undertone. “I’ve asked around. We’re all shifters. None of us can swim good, or fly, so we’re all stuck with the job until it’s over, so fucking do your job , Joe , and stop telling her all this shit!”
Big words from someone who’d just spilled the beans about his colleagues.
Everyone on the boat was a shifter. But in a world of people who could turn into fish, or marine mammals, or birds, Fairchild had hired a crew with no way of getting off the ship.
They were all trapped. Carol swore.
“He’s going to feed you to this thing too, isn’t he?”
“N-no—”
“What thing?”
“Get your gun back off her, you dipshit!”
Carol raised one eyebrow and held out the gun. “Joe” took it with shaking hands. “Where’s the getaway ride?”
The two guards exchanged nervous glances. She sighed.
It turned out the downside to embracing your terrifying, nightmarish self… was that sometimes you terrified a pair of dumbasses who were as much victims of the situation as you were.
“Just—guard me from outside, okay?”
When the door closed behind them, she went back to the desk. She rested her hands on it and let her head hang, just for a moment.
The pieces were starting to come together. Most of them were still missing, but it wasn’t like they could make the picture any prettier.
There was one piece specifically she needed to know about. Was it missing, or was it not part of the puzzle?
She closed her eyes and concentrated. Her senses stretched out through the ship, a hum building beneath her skin as she counted dozens of life-pulses.
Human, human, human. Part-human, part-bird. A few rats and other small creatures, lurking in the bowels of the ship. Real animals, or shifter crewmates hiding in animal form?
No dragons.
No Maggie. No faint glow of her unborn siblings in their eggs.
They were after me. The whole time… they were after me.
Fairchild wanted to free the Soul-Eater. The way he’d talked was sickly familiar, though she’d never heard it about shifters before. Cleansing the population. Fixing people who weren’t the right sort of people, and by fixing, he meant wiping out.
She and the bird shifters in the cages below decks were his offering to the Soul-Eater. An initial distraction to keep him occupied after they freed him.
But Fairchild didn’t strike her as the sort to include himself among the list of freaks. He wouldn’t want to risk losing his lion, so he must have a way out. Something fast and reliable. A helicopter, maybe.
Let’s face it. I’m one supervillain monologue away from imagining he has a submarine hidden away somewhere. She rubbed her face, letting her mind circle around the next thought before she had to face it directly.
Fairchild wouldn’t rely on just a helicopter to ensure his escape. He’d want to keep something in between him and the Soul-Eater.
And now she knew what it was. A meat shield made of a crew of shifters who couldn’t flee under their own power, and who were cheaper to hire than real mercs would have been.
He probably had the real ones waiting offstage. She wasn’t going to fool herself that the ship was staffed only by bargain- basement goons who had been lured aboard with promises of beer and titties.
If Lance were here, or any of the others who’d been doing this longer than she had and had any experience at this sort of thing, what would they do?
If Moss were here—
She clenched every muscle in her body until the thought went away. Moss wasn’t here. And if he was right about losing control over the kraken, then that was a good thing. These people deserved better than a violent death at sea.
She needed to stop this ship before it got to that red pin on the map.
On her own.
Just her and the lurking nothing that was her shark.
So, on her own, then.