What Waits in the Dark
You’ve been fooled by a shadow of me.
I left that cabin with too many words unsaid. My hands balled tightly as I walked back to the clearing. I was tired, but I had far too much on my mind to give in to sleep just yet.
Looking far across the camp, I could see Lyla’s covered cage and felt my jaw tick at the thought of maiming the bitch.
There was no reason for her to be alive other than to torment Dahlia, but if Dahlia wanted her to stay that way, I couldn’t deliver a finishing blow. I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place.
Disappointment in her small betrayal made me grind my teeth, though. In her position, I would have likely done the same thing in a foolish attempt to spare her the trouble and keep her out of danger, but it still did not make it sit any easier.
“James,” I said as I passed him and his sister at one of the campfires. “Mind taking the first shift?”
“First shift for what?”
I pointed at the cage near the tree. “Make sure she doesn’t fall asleep. I don’t want her and Dahlia resting at the same time.”
He glanced at the cage and then at me with renewed focus. “You got it, cap’n.”
I lightly slapped his shoulder as he stood to take on his new duties.
“I’ll go with,” Addison said, glaring at the prisoner. “Might as well keep busy.”
I nodded and continued on to one of the fires where Nazario, Aeris, Cathal, Mullins, and Meridan were sitting around, all deep in slow conversation. When I slumped on a barrel to relax, all eyes were on me. I wasn’t exactly subtle about being vexed.
“Hard night, my friend?” Nazario said.
“Sounded fun from out here,” Cathal shrugged.
Nazario hit him on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Is she sleeping?” Meridan asked.
“For a bit,” I answered.
“What about you?”
“We can’t sleep together. That’s what she said. She’ll only be asleep for a couple hours.”
“Why can’t ye sleep together?” Cathal asked, chewing on a dried strip of meat.
“Because that bitch in the cage there,” I said, pointing with a stick. “Bit her back in Dornwich.”
“Kroans can do this thing,” Mullins explained, gesturing with his hands. “They can take a chunk of you and if you don’t die, they can get in your head.”
Cathal stopped chewing, his eyes going wide. “And control ye?”
“No, not like that,” I said. “We share dreams now and then, but neither of us remembers most of them.”
“Most sirens can do it,” Meridan corrected. “In their own way. Kroans are a bit more… extreme.”
Nazario nodded. “Aeris has a certain sense as well. After she tasted my blood, that is.”
“It only enhances what I already have,” she said humbly.
“And what is it you have?” I asked.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I feel what others feel if they’re near enough. Now, I can feel him from afar.”
“She ate some of ye, then?” Cathal asked me. “Yer siren, I mean.”
I slid my leather glove and bracer off my hand, taking the two wooden fingers with it.
“Christ. She did that?”
“When we were kids,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
“And ye ended up together?”
“Not just together,” Mullins said. “Cap’n here destroyed a whole ship and its crew for takin’ her. That’s why his face is all over every town. And her? Killed her own sister, she did. And plenty of others for threatenin’ him.”
“Sounds familiar,” Nazario added, poking the flames.
“Aye,” I glanced at Aeris, wondering what secrets a pretty, deceivingly helpless woman like her harbored. “I imagine you have similar stories. Perhaps we’re under their spell after all.”
“I would not argue that.”
Looking around, I could see my men starting to surrender to their exhaustion and rum. They lay scattered on blankets or on the bare sand, sleeping under the moonlight and by the fires. Glancing around the camp, I wondered why the clearing did not look more crowded and turned to Nazario again.
“You have a small crew,” I said.
“Aye,” he sighed. “Not all of my men agreed with Aeris being on my ship with her tongue. Some men left. Others died. Some, including my doctor, thought to defy me and tried to harm her against my wishes.”
“Shame,” Cathal said. “The doctor was a madman, but he was a sorcerer, that one. I swear it. Taught Aleksi some kind of trick that brought Gale right back to life before our eyes after he drowned years ago. It was witchcraft.”
“It wasn’t magic,” Nazario chuckled. “It’s the breath of life.”
“Sounds like magic to me.”
I laughed at their friendly argument, curious what the hell they were talking about.
“With all that we’ve seen, I would not doubt magic exists,” I continued. “Do you have enough men to sail after everything, though?”
“It is difficult. We were planning on leaving it all behind, if you recall.”
“And now?”
He turned to Aeris as if searching for reassurance. The way they seemed to say a thousand things with their eyes alone was enough to prove their feelings were genuine. As genuine as mine were for Dahlia.
“I think we are going to see this through with you,” he said. “I might be a pirate, but there is some honor left in me. And a desire to give Aeris back her waters.”
“My crew is a bit small at the moment as well,” I pointed out. “How attached are you to your ship?”
He blinked, slowly looking down the path leading to the beach as if he could see the Amanacer. Then he raised a brow at his quartermaster. The two shrugged and Cathal continued chewing on the strip of meat like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“She’s old. Perhaps she can do with a break on these peaceful shores.”
I chuckled. “Nowhere is peaceful, but she’d be certainly get a rest.”
“I’ll tell Aleksi and Nikolai,” Cathal groaned as he stood. “See to it they’re not too attached to her.”
“Nikolai is the best helmsman I’ve ever known. And Aleksi likes the crow’s nest. The rest of my men, they’re hard workers.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Mullins smiled, extending his hand to Nazario. “Welcome to the Burning… I mean, the Storm Weaver.”
He and Nazario shook hands and to offer my respect, I did the same.
“I’m captain of the Storm Weaver,” I said. “But no one’s voice goes unheard.”
“Understood,” he said with a nod. “I think I can stand a break from the role, my friend.”
I turned my eyes to Aeris again. She was a bit difficult to read. Dahlia’s face constantly changed, betraying her emotions, to me at least, but Aeris donned a mask that kept her hidden from prying eyes.
“I know Dahlia might seem a menace, and she is, but she won’t hurt anyone on my crew, including you,” I assured.
“We spoke. I understand now.”
“Do you?”
“I think all three of us defy your previous views on sirens. It stands to reason that Dahlia would defy my previous views on Kroans.”
“Oh, no,” Mullins cut in. “Kroans are still the bane of all our existence. But Dahlia’s special. That one there?” he pointed at Lyla’s cage. “She ain’t part of this crew. I’m just waiting for the word.”
“Dahlia’s the one who will give that word,” I said. “No one else.”
“She’s hardly Kroan,” Meridan said under her breath.
“What’s that?”
“Lyla. She’s hardly Kroan.”
“Dahlia said they were sisters.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean she’s anything like her. She’s a mimic. Like the Kraal.”
“What’s the Kraal?”
“Another myth come to life. A scary story all sirens know. They don’t have a voice like Kroans do.
Not anymore. They have other tricks that lure unwilling victims. They can mimic any voice they hear.
Make you think a loved one is calling for help or a child is dying. Anything to make you bend for them.”
She scanned all our eyes and when she realized we were waiting for more, she took a deep breath as if preparing for something taxing.
“Dahlia was meant to explain all this,” she sighed. “I only know what she’s told me.”
“She explained the voices,” I said. “But where did they come from, these Kraal? How are they different?”
“How do we kill them?” Nazario asked.
“They can die like any of us, but you’ll need sharper blades. Their skin is thick and their bones dense. They live in the trenches alongside the sons.”
She looked over all of us again, her face lit up by the orange fire like she was a gorgeous demon standing over the flames of Hell.
She was beautiful in the same, otherworldly sense that most sirens were, but the pale monotone of her features set her apart.
It made her appealingly horrifying. It was no wonder the Naros relied on their appearance to attract victims.
“You all think Kroans are the worst,” she continued. “They’re vicious and they’re committed to an entity that demands obedience and sacrifice and violence. But there is yet one other clan more fiercely loyal to a father we cannot see and the elders always said that they would return one day.”
“A people more terrifying than the Kroans?” Mullins asked with a gulp.
“They were Kroan. Long before I was born. Before any of us were born. They declared themselves more loyal—more suited for the depths and the father’s affection—than any other clan.
They believed themselves so worthy that they did not wait for a summons.
They willingly descended into Akareth’s trenches to be near him and they bred, not with the father, for he chooses his brides.
They were not chosen, so they bred with his sons.
For decades, they remained, breeding… feeding.
What they became was grotesque. They were never accepted back into the clans so they became their own.
The Kraal, they called themselves. It means ‘hand.’ It is what they believe they are.
The hand of Akareth. Wicked creatures who went so mad in their search for him that they even resorted to cannibalizing each other when the next generations thought the prior were too weak.
Too unworthy. All the feeding and mating with monsters made them what they are today.
What we saw glimpses of near Dornwich. Creatures bare of hair.
Of reason. And we heard them. Their voices are familiar, but they’re a lie. ”
Despite the humid warmth of the island, it felt as if someone had poured ice water down my back and I could tell by the faces of those around me that they were feeling it, too.
I glanced at the moonlit water of the stream nearby.
The way the night had turned it black like glass slate only reminded me of the sea where the fiends prowled beneath the tides.
“Nothing about the water can be trusted,” Nazario muttered, taking a small sip of rum. “Even the waves these days sound like whispers luring us closer.”
“It goes without saying that we will be sleeping in shifts from now on,” I sighed. “Half the crew awake while the other half rests. We might be inland, but we cannot let our guards down.”
“There’s no need to fear Kraal this far from the water,” Meridan added. “They have lost their ability to shift.”
“Lyla shifts.”
“Lyla is not Kraal. Nor is she Kroan. I am not sure what she is.”
“Wonderful,” I grumbled. “And she is contained by a mere set of bars. My order stands. Someone will always be keeping watch.”