He will know me #2
The inky mist enveloped the shark and from the blackness came tentacles, long and thick.
I struggled to move away from them, but they were around me in seconds, coiling like ropes until I was unable to move.
They squeezed, twisting me in their unbreakable grip until I felt my ribs cracking.
I opened my mouth in a silent scream as my lungs collapsed under the weight.
Then my arms. My spine stretched and separated, cracking and bending.
Blood filled the water around me. Then my insides.
My guts and stomach and the shards of bone that had been ripped from me all floated around me like debris from a sunken ship.
And all I could hear in that hellscape was his slow laughter filling the dense water.
Until other voices joined his. Screams. Agonized, tortured screams, all calling out desperately.
Vidar. Meridan. Mullins. Suddenly the pain of my body being crushed inside tightening tendrils seemed a relief compared to the pain of having to listen to them die.
I knew it was not real, but it felt more real than even my severed limbs or my shorn insides.
The way Vidar cried out. The way Merdian’s screams were cut short like a blade had sliced her throat. The way Mullins wept for mercy.
That same burning rage hugged me like a mother wolf nurtured her pups. It fed me. Held me together.
I was not my mother and I was not Lyla.
Akareth could try to claim me all he wanted, but I already belonged to another.
And he needed me. They all did.
The father did not know me at all.
I opened my eyes with a labored gasp like it was the first breath I’d taken in days.
The orange light of a swinging lantern was bright above me and the familiar sway of a ship almost rolled me off whatever hard surface I was lying on.
My skin felt tight. I burned like I’d been kissed by fire all over and my muscles felt like heavy bags full of glass.
I whimpered, attempting to move my hands only to feel a sharp tug on my wrists.
I lifted my head to look down at myself and noticed I was bound by chains to a wooden table already soaked with old blood that smelled of rotting fish.
Lower, I could see that I had no legs. My fin exceeded the length of the table and hung limply onto the floor, my dark flesh dull and peeling, absent the luster I was used to seeing.
A door slammed to my right. I whipped my head toward it to see Vidar stepping out of the shadows.
“Thank Lune,” I rasped, my voice dry and brittle.
He walked into the room, but the shadows seemed to follow him, always keeping his eyes shrouded.
The air cracked with a dryness that reached my bones as he pulled a rusty butcher knife from his belt.
I watched the lantern light gleam off the newly sharpened edge and tugged on my chains, my heart lurching.
“Vidar,” I breathed.
He didn’t hear me and I could not see his eyes to know whether he cared.
Vidar “Bone Heart” Woelfson.
Son of the Wolf.
Captain of the Burning Rose.
A ruthless hunter full of hate.
He’ll slice you to bits, he will.
A hundred voices echoed in my head, warning me of the man. The hunter. Bone Heart.
How was I on his ship? I could not remember how I’d gotten caught, but I knew no begging would save me. Bone Heart left no victims alive.
I thrashed, struggling against my restraints only to rub the skin of my wrists raw until they bled.
My tail was a useless appendage, too heavy without water.
I watched Bone Heart trace my tail with his hand, prodding with his fingers until he found a notch in my bones.
I opened my mouth to demand he stop only to find my mouth suddenly absent a tongue.
I only screamed, but no words came out as he raised the butcher knife.
No struggling could have saved me from the impact of the blade.
It hacked through me, one swing after another.
Once. Twice. Thrice. Until my tail slid off the table like a large, dead fish.
I screamed again, eyes wide as I stared up at the swinging lantern.
Not Bone Heart. Vidar. I need him.
Why are you doing this?
Words and questions whirled in my head and made no sense. Confusion infected me like a disease, weakening me.
I should have been in pain, but I wasn’t.
Vidar… no, Bone Heart, hovered over me with the same, bloody butcher knife. I saw empty sockets where eyes should have been.
My Vidar has eyes the color of rain-soaked soil.
This wasn’t right.
He raised the blade up again, one hand grasping a thick lock of my hair and tugging until my head hung off the edge of the table.
I diverted my eyes back toward the lantern, watching it swing like a pendulum in a clock, counting down the seconds before the knife came down on my throat.
The impact jarred my entire body, but still, there was no pain.
Only the knowledge that I was being cut to pieces.
One more hit and I felt my spine splinter and my flesh tear as he pulled my head from my body.
I looked down as he lifted me and saw myself lying there, my hands flexing as I continued to struggle against my bonds, headless and without a tail.
Blood drained down onto the soggy floor as I was carried across the room to a barrel that smelled of salt and filth.
The shadow of the captain, Bone Heart, tossed me into the brine-filled barrel.
I floated on a salty bed as he closed the top over me, robbing me of what little light I could see.
I opened my mouth and screamed again, my throat filling with acrid saltwater until I was silenced by it.
I peeled my eyes open to almost complete darkness. Nothing was around me but the night-like ocean and the flat, rocky bed of the ocean floor littered with the bones of those passed. I was lying on my back, one of them, waiting to decay and be forgotten.
A better fate than most.
“Take a moment to breathe,” a deep, rumbling voice spoke, creating ripples in the watery walls around me. “We have plenty of other fears to explore. Or, we can stop. Simply beg me.”
I rose to my knees, my body stiff with the chill of the deep. The chill of death. I was a corpse, days dead, trying to breathe.
“No,” I muttered.