Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
HOOK
S omeone would die for this. I speared a stern look across the chaos of the deck at Anton, and the quartermaster wisely busied himself ordering the crew to jump into action. But there would be no real action when someone had failed to check the ropes. As I ordered them to. Every. Single. Week.
I lifted my chin, tension in the line of my jaw, the only outward sign of rage I would allow. The rest of it lived inside me, a tempest of murderous fury. It matched the tempest I saw on the horizon, clouds gathering in a swarm of darkest grey, edging towards black. It was a storm I really did not need right now, two days away from Feeding Day.
The ticking began in my ear, a delusion that made everything in my body seize. I fought a flinch. It’s not real, I hissed at myself. It’s all in your head.
I twisted away from the helm and strode across the deck, meeting the eyes of my crew until heads dropped and stares lowered, their fear palpable. They knew the price for dangerous mistakes like this. With frayed ropes and no way to hoist the sail on the mainmast, we couldn’t avoid the path of the storm, couldn’t sail into shelter. We couldn’t even sail into the damn thing; the winds were too volatile to rely on the mizzenmast and foremast alone, especially since they’d been shredded and patched one too many times.
It was probably time to board a ship and strip their sails for ourselves, but we were on a timeline and nothing could be done before Feeding Day.
When we cleared the deadly path of rocks that thrust from the dark blue ocean in these waters, I barked clipped instructions that had everyone running to steer us starboard. Striding back to the helm was an exercise in restraint when I wanted to explode, to tear into the men running around me in frazzled panic, their eyes either on the storm or on me. I wanted to draw my pistol and shoot them, just to bleed some of this rage from me, but a dead crew wouldn’t serve me. This crew, however blackhearted and inept, were all I had.
I closed my hand around the mahogany of the helm just as the first fat drops of rain splattered the deck, one driving into my hand, water sliding down my knuckle before it dripped to my feet. Calm, I hissed at myself, stay fucking calm.
The only thing that kept me in control was how quickly the crew jumped to follow my orders, even Wendell sprinting to secure the sail when the wind got hold of it. I narrowed my eyes on the newcomer, waiting for him to do something suspicious, but he was focused on the sail like any other crew member. But there was something about him, a glimmer in his eye, and that damn smirk. That sharp silver tongue. He was up to something.
“Drop anchor,” I roared when we were out of the direct path of the storm, the Banshee angled behind the sharp dagger of a black rock. It wouldn’t shelter us entirely, but it should keep the worst of the wind from catching the masts.
“Captain!” a rough voice yelled, and I turned, pinning the helm in place, scanning the deck until I spotted my quartermaster with a chilling note of alarm in his expression. “We’ve got another rope fraying back here.”
My nostrils flared. Incompetence—or sabotage?
“Fix it,” I barked. “Maceo!” A fast curl of satisfaction expanded in my stomach when the sailing master jumped, his fear enough to soothe my temper for the moment. “Check every damn rope on this ship. And in future, do your fucking job. One more frayed rope and I’ll be feeding you to the monster.”
The colour left Maceo’s face, even knowing the monster only accepted women, and he leapt into faster action.
“Get that anchor dropped, now!” I yelled, hairs lifting all down my arms as pressure grew in the air. It had felt like this the day I almost died.
Gripping the helm in white-knuckled hands, I watched the carefully controlled chaos, the crew scurrying like busy ants across the slick wooden deck. The air smelled electric, full of energy and warning. It was a smell that heralded death, a smell that made my blood vibrate.
“Storm’s coming, captain!” Wynton yelled from the crow’s nest, his face little more than a dark smear against the grey sky.
Even without his warning, I’d have known it was here. Darkness rolled over the ocean, clouds blotting out the grey sky, and if I hadn’t known it was just past noon I would have thought it was midnight. The temperature dropped all at once, the rain sluicing the Banshee turning to hail that battered my head, my shoulders, and whipped my knuckles where I gripped the wheel. The rock shielded some of it, but the angle of the wind meant I had to fight to keep us from tilting.
Thunder filled the ocean with roaring noise, filled my head, and the energy in the air crackled, building to a destructive end. The bolt struck the water far enough from us that I let out a small exhale of relief. In the brief reprieve that followed, I tied the helm in place, testing to make sure it wouldn’t budge, and strode for Maceo where he was frantically waving at Rolando and Lamont at the bow.
“Well, work faster!” he snapped, his eyes as fierce as the lightning.
“What’s our status?” I asked, taking sick pleasure in the way he jumped. Most people aboard were wary of Maceo’s legendary temper, but he was afraid of me. To the crew of Death’s Right Hand, I was the bogeyman, a living nightmare. I loved it.
“Just the two ropes worn,” Maceo reported, standing straighter, unflinching as rain beat down on his head, plastering brown hair to his cheeks, making his green coat black. “I swear they weren’t like that during my last checks, captain.”
“They were deliberately cut?” I demanded, rage darkening my voice, dropping its volume.
“No, it looks like wear and tear, but—I swear they were fine.”
I raised an eyebrow, leaning over his shoulder to inspect the rope, where thread after thread had frayed until a single strand held it together. That was no clean cut, no intentional slice. He was right—wear and tear. Which meant my crew weren’t doing their damn job.
“I pay you each month, do I not?” I asked, my heartbeat deepening, a shiver in my bones as electricity built in the air again. I didn’t yell over the rain but Maceo heard me. So did Rolando and Lamont, both of them becoming incredibly focused on repairing the rope.
“You do,” Maceo agreed.
“And I give you a safe place to sleep, and food to warm your belly. Do I not?”
His throat bobbed. “You do.”
I grabbed the lapel of his green jacket, wrenching him so close that I could see the individual flecks of colour in his eyes brighten with panic, every last nose hair in sharp detail. Close enough that he could see the murder in my eyes. “Then why,” I yelled, “didn’t you do your damn job?”
“I'm sorry, captain,” he rushed out. “It won’t happen again.”
I released him with a little shove. “No,” I agreed. “It won’t.”
I planned to put the fear of god into him more but the storm battered us with a sudden onslaught of hail. Wind gripped the mast, tilting us to and fro.
“Almost fixed, captain,” Rolando shouted over the sudden roar of thunder. “It’ll hold.”
It fucking better, because a storm like this was not the time for the ship to fall apart. The second a squall got hold of the sails, we were screwed. The wind had enough power that it would drag the Banshee onto her side, ripping apart the hull on the sharp rocks below water. Drowning most of us, probably.
“Tornado!” someone screamed, thready and raw, unfamiliar. I whipped around, my feet planted as the wind tore at the ship, and found the source of the voice. Wendell. The sneaky little newcomer. I could crush him like a gnat if he posed a serious problem, but for now I was plagued with a more irritating problem. His insurrection was amusing.
“Where?” I demanded, stalking to the railing where the skinny lad had wound up when the wind got hold of us. He needed more meat and muscle on his bones if he was going to survive the Banshee, his shoulders delicate, the line of his jaw equally fine. The crew would eat him up. If he wasn’t a psychopath capable of defending himself, I supposed.
He was already pointing when I reached him, the black coat he wore drenched all the way through, a flash of lightning catching on bright gold buttons. Had he killed the previous owner? “There.”
I exhaled a rough breath, catching the vicious curse before I could speak it. But fuck, that wasn’t an ordinary tornado. It was fucking massive, and gathering both power and water as it whirled across the ocean. The last tornado we encountered we’d borne out in the docks of a shitty little town on Emerald Crescent. It was half the size of the one I glared at now and it still managed to snap the mizzenmast like a matchstick.
“On a scale of one to ten, exactly how fucked are we?” Wendell asked, leaning over the railing for a closer look. No fucking sense, no survival skills. I grabbed the back of his coat and wrenched him away.
“Nine,” I growled.
His eyes brightened, a rare shade of blue-grey. “Well, that’s positive!”
I exhaled hard through my nose. No, it wasn’t fucking positive.
“Because of the one,” he elaborated very seriously. “Nine isn’t ten.”
“Anton,” I yelled.
Wendell leaned away, a hand to his ear. “God, right in my ear, Hook.”
“Captain,” I corrected in a growl.
“Someone’s obsessed with their title,” he remarked, loudly enough to be heard over the sudden howl of wind.
I decided there and then that I would destroy this cocky little shit. I’d teach him true fear. I’d enjoy watching him break. There was no fear in his eyes when he looked at me, and I took that as a challenge.
It had been so long since I’d had a pet project.
Anton appeared, out of breath, a tightness around his eyes that showed how harried he was. I shouldn’t have enjoyed his suffering. “Captain?”
“Check on our cargo. Make sure it’s secure.”
“Aye, captain,” he panted, already running away.
“I can check on the cargo,” Wendell offered, suddenly closer as he peered up at me through long-lashed eyes. “Anton seems awfully busy.”
“You,” I growled, “can keep an eye on that tornado. Tell me when it’s—”
Wind slammed into the bow of the ship, lashing us so violently across the deck that I wound up against a mast, my teeth gritted against the crack of pain through my ribs. We weren’t in the direct path of the funnel, but it was furious enough that even sheltering behind rocks, it shook the Banshee like a snow globe.
“Fucking weather,” I snapped under my breath, not particularly appreciating the shouts of advice to hold on! No shit we needed to hold on. It was easier said than done with a damn hand missing.
“Hey, asshole,” a shrill voice cut through the rough murmur of my crew. With a sigh, I looked back to the railing, groaning when I saw Wendell had been thrown over the side of the ship, hanging on by golden fingers that would weaken with every lash of wind and rain. I could let the storm take him, but I couldn’t deny the dark compulsion swelling behind my ribs.
Make him break, make him scream, make him fear you.
Dead men were afraid of nothing. Dead men were dull.
With a growling sigh, I hurled myself at the railing, teeth gritted against the icy hail that drummed my head, scratching my face as I leaned over the side of the ship and grasped Wendell’s forearm.
He screamed when I pulled him back aboard, a sound that spoke of deep pain. When he collapsed against the deck, panting, tears streamed his face. My muscles strained, protesting to overuse, but I was used to pain. Wendell however…
“You’re injured,” I realised, hooking my arm around the rail when another gust of wind hammered the Banshee. “Someone break your arm?”
“Fuck you,” Wendell hissed, pure rage contorting his face.
“That’s a fine way to speak to the man who just saved your life.” I kicked his boot. “Get below decks. You’re a liability up here.”
Wendell bared his teeth—dull, ordinary teeth, but with the way he snarled, you’d think he was a faerie of old with canines designed for shredding flesh. “I’ll show you a fucking liability,” he hissed like a threat, even if it made zero sense.
I held onto the rail, watching in amusement as he struggled to his feet. He was like a newborn foal, all leg and clumsiness. With a sigh, I held out my hand, and wondered if he’d be much of a challenge to break at all as he slipped his hand in mine—smaller, soft but roughened at the tips with callouses. It fit disconcertingly well in mine.
I didn’t miss the fact Wendell gave me his other arm, the injured one cradled carefully to his side, pain in his flared nostrils, his clenched jaw and gritted teeth.
“I should have let the storm take you,” I muttered, heaving him to his feet.
“Why didn’t you?”
Tick, tick, tick.
The noise hit me like a lance through the stomach, the noise a crack through every sense until I dropped Wendell so suddenly that he wobbled. It snapped at my ears, sliced through my brain, until I felt every tick, tick, tick like pain sawing my nerve endings.
“Maybe I’ll throw you back over,” I snarled, grabbing Wendell’s coat, wrenching him close, my heart rapid and faint. “Maybe I’ll rid myself of an annoying gnat. The sea would kill you on impact. Even if you somehow managed to survive, the dark creatures circling the ship would rip you to pieces.”
Wendell’s storm eyes widened. “Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?”
I surged forward, bending the smart-mouthed asshole backwards over the railing, letting the choppy sea serve as its own threat as waves crashed against the hull, splashing his head, ripping off the hat he perpetually wore.
And there it was. There it always was. Tick, tick, tick.
“Don’t,” I snarled. “Fucking test me. Give me your watch.”
My breathing came faster, a sickly cold sweeping up my spine that had nothing to do with the storm. I could barely hear myself think over the rush of blood in my ears.
“Piss off,” Wendell laughed, shoving me away, righting himself against the railing.
My nostrils flared. Noise roared through my head, the ceaseless ticking, the torment. “Give it to me.”
Wendell let out a sound between a scoff and a laugh, his nose wrinkled in a sneer. That was my breaking point, that damn sneer.
The monster that lurked in my blood—circling, always circling for a weakness—came over me. It happened so fast that by the time I was shouting, my voice was resonant and deafening, my eyesight sharp enough that I could see everything around me, in all directions.
“Give it to me!”
I saw the drop of sweat or rain dripping down Wendell’s throat. Saw the knot of pale gold hair he’d tied on the back of his head. Saw the widening of his eyes in true, honest fear. His breath hitched when I exploded into tentacles and suckers and rage, my legs replaced with that of a monster, my arms fighting to rip the seams of my coat. I’d had it reinforced for this reason. It didn’t give.
“God,” Wendell gasped, stumbling away, fumbling shakily at the clasp of his watch and throwing it across the deck. I grabbed it with a sucker and hauled it over the side of the Banshee and into the water, where its infernal ticking would never torment me again.
I didn’t have to remind Wendell to get belowdecks. He stared at me for another minute, cataloguing every part of my cursed form, and rushed away.
Some of the crew were staring, the ones who’d never seen me lose control before. The ones who’d been warned to never bring a single timepiece aboard my ship. The others kept their heads down, keeping the sails shut, the masts in one piece. At the stern, wood banged against wood in an erratic pattern of noise that drove me to madness.
Not quite ticking but rhythmic, repetitive. Too close, too fucking similar.
“Batten down the fucking hatches!” I yelled, my voice still monstrous, and tore myself away from the rail, the deck, the crew.