Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
WENDY
“ N ice doggies,” I tried, holding out my hand, my knife pointing down in what I hoped was a non-threatening move. Clearly these guys were humans in jackal suits; if they were real canines, that remark would have gotten tails wagging and tongues lolling out of their mouths. Instead, they bared sharp, silver teeth, the masks unsettlingly realistic. “We’re not a threat to you. We won’t get in your way.”
The jackals tightened their ring around us, penning us in with the cave at our backs. I tried not to stiffen, keeping my muscles relaxed and ready. I had no idea how to fight jackals, but I was optimistic about our chances. Assuming the others came out of the cave to back us up and didn’t just leave us to be slaughtered. That would be annoying.
The tallest, beefiest jackal flowed forward a step, the motion more feline than I expected. My stomach dropped. A single step, yet it was all I needed to see these weren’t just seasoned fighters but damn good ones.
“The gold is ours.”
“Ah but!” I held up a finger. “Have you by chance heard of the sacred, noble art of finders keepers?”
“The gold is ours,” he repeated in a throaty snarl. He didn’t come any closer, but the threat was clear in his voice. Sun baked the top of my head. It would be awful to fight under this brutal sun. “It belongs to the island. You will relinquish it.”
“And then you’ll let us go?” I asked, batting my eyelashes at him to no effect. He didn’t reply, which confirmed what I’d already known. They wouldn’t let us take the gold, and they didn’t plan to let us go. I had forty-something crew members, enough to take these jackals, but as much as I loved 1 the Banshee’s crew, I doubted they’d had the same training as these guys.
I sighed, shifting my weight slightly, bracing myself to fight. “I understand stealing is bad and you want to keep your stuff,” I said, glancing at Maceo and Sterling on either side of me, both sizing up the jackals but letting me be the spokesperson. “But see these guys? And the guys in the cave behind me? They looove stealing stuff. And we kinda need the gold. So here we are.”
I spread my hands, my grip on my knife loose and easy.
“The gold is ours,” the jackal rumbled.
“You know, I had a record like you when I was little. It kept getting stuck on this one groove and it’d just play the same part over and over.”
“Captain,” Sterling sighed. I rolled my eyes.
“Last chance,” I told the jackals, sweeping my stare over all of us. Our backs were to the cave, but at least we had allies there. Back up should come running the second they heard any noise. “Back off, let us pass with our gold, and we won’t hurt you.”
A low, unnerving rumble went through the ranks of jackals. Laughter, but like none I’d heard before. A little shiver went down my spine.
“Make as much noise as possible,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, drawing a second knife. “We need backup ASAP.”
“We’re screwed,” Maceo muttered.
“Not just yet, my grumpy friend,” I said, watching jackal bodies shift ever so slightly into readiness. “Not just yet.”
There was no obvious signal, no shouted command. The jackals stood in the sand one moment and leapt across the beach towards us in the next.
“Shoot as many as you can,” I yelled, diving right to avoid the path of a broadsword. Damn, where had the jackal been hiding that thing? Their outfits were sleek and unforgiving. 2
Maceo whipped out his pistol 3 and began firing loud, noisy shots. The scent of gunpowder hit my nose, familiar and reassuring, a moment before a jackal slammed into me, sending me crashing into the sand.
“Oof,” I grunted, driving my knife into the jackal’s arm as he pinned me to the beach floor. A fist crashed into my still-healing ribs. My eyes watered at the pain. “You know, you’d think sand was a softer landing looking at it.”
“What is wrong with you?” the jackal demanded through clenched teeth, drilling his fingers into my sore ribs.
“Lots,” I replied with a tight grin and surged up off the sand. A laugh of disbelief tumbled from my lips when I actually managed to flip the jackal. It died the next second when a blade punctured my shoulder blade, ripping a howl of rage and pain from me.
This wasn’t how I died. No fucking way. I had a pirate ship now; I would go down in a blaze of glory, tentacles, and storm clouds. Maybe cannon fire. Maybe a sprinkling of gunpowder. Not stabbed by jerks in freaky masks on an island I’d never really heard of.
No. Fucking. Way.
Teeth gritted against a scream of pain, I angled my knife, inch by inch, my hand shaking the whole way, into the throat of the asshole below me. I exhaled a rough groan when it punctured skin, quite pleased to find these jackals pumped out arterial spray like any man.
Stumbling to my feet and leaving the corpse at my feet, I fought for balance as sand shifted under me, determined to drop me back to my ass. The last thing I needed was sand in my stab wound or— ooh, light bulb!
Ugh, another huge jackal circled me, his knife dripping blood like a declaration. Typical, I can’t even get a second to catch my breath. When he surged closer, I kicked sand into his eyes with a sweep of my leg and dove low, driving my knife into his groin.
His howl was loud enough to wake the dead; it shivered through my blood. God, I’d missed people screaming at the end of my knives. It just wasn’t the same when it was crew members who pissed me off. I flicked sweat off my brow as he dropped, and jolted left just in time to intercept a tall, rake-thin jackal who came at me with two long daggers both aimed at my chest. I liked my chest intact, thank you very much.
A kick to the knee didn’t take him down. Stupid fucker with his stupidly perfect balance. Judging by Maceo’s constant growling to my left, he was dealing with the same issue. Sterling was silent. I took that as a good omen, not a sign the man had died.
A roar of noise preceded the rest of my uncouth crew swarming out of the cave. I exhaled a breath of relief I immediately sucked back in when the tall, well-balanced bastard in front of me slashed long daggers at me in a dizzying whirl. I leapt to avoid the wicked edge of one blade, only succeeded in driving the other into my hip. A growl of pain tore from me, but I gritted my teeth and shaped it into a scream of fury.
“You’re dead, buddy,” I spat, jumping back a clear step, trying to get enough range to throw my dagger. But he pursued slowly and predatory enough that my blood quickened, adrenaline joining the thump of nerves and excitement in my body, and I grinned despite myself. I was bleeding from multiple places, but I felt awake, alive in a way I hadn’t since I took over the Banshee. Being captain was great, and I loved the title, but there was always a problem to solve, always someone wanting something from me, always commands to give, and I was bored.
This jackal wasn’t talkative. He didn’t even growl at me, just kept coming with slash after dancing slash of his daggers, pressing me back across the beach, further and further from the cave. Every time I launched at him, he evaded with a quick flourish of his daggers, and it didn’t take me long to realise he was herding me.
“I am not,” I said very seriously, “a sheep.”
I must have stunned him for a second, because I managed to dart out of reach, scanning my surroundings—and hissing out a curse when I saw five others closing in around me. This was what I got for being captain. I was a hot commodity now; everyone wanted me.
I flipped back to the tall jackal and threw one of my daggers, watching it flip end over end, so fast I mentally patted myself on the back. I’d already drawn another knife by the time it drove into the base of his throat.
“Ha! Take that, shepherd dick.” I paused. “Not that I have anything against shepherds, obviously. It’s an ancient and respectable occu— PATION,” I screeched when a body drove into mine, knocking me to the ground so hard my head rattled on my neck.
“I literally just got out of this sand,” I slurred, throwing my hands up on instinct, teeth gritted against the sudden fire of blades cutting up my forearms. Warm blood dripped down my arms onto my face as I grappled with the bastard. I tasted it on my tongue, copper dominating all my senses.
It took five attempts to grab his wrists, forcing the sharp edges away from my skin. “Bastard,” I spat, gritting my teeth against the deep, scalding throb of the new cuts. “All this because we wanted to take a few trinkets.”
“They’re not yours to take,” this jackal snarled, spittle flying through teeth too sharp and silver in his dark face.
“Clearly you don’t live in the real world. Anything is anyone’s to take. If you don’t take, you don’t eat, you don’t have clean water, and you don’t have a roof over your head.” Right now I had sails and a mast over my head, not a roof, but that wasn’t the point. “I get that you want to keep your gold, but so do I. Oh! How about we split it?”
I thought that was a magnanimous offer, but judging by the furious growl that poured from the jackal’s chest, we had a slight difference in opinion.
“I’m a pirate, mate,” I laughed, locking my elbows to keep the sharp edge of the knife away from me. “Splitting the treasure is the best option you’re gonna get.”
“You will die for your nerve and disrespect,” he growled, pushing more weight into the blow. I didn’t know what happened to his other knife, but I was glad to only have one to contend with. One was plenty enough.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But I don’t fancy dying today. Sorry, buddy.”
I heaved my weight against the knife, hoping to redirect it towards the jackal, but my breath stopped when the opposite happened, sharp silver teeth bared in my face as he drove closer. A sharp prick at my neck had my heart drumming against my ribs. Death neared, close enough that I felt his bony hands at my throat.
“Hear that?” he gloated when screams began to ripple across the beach, a wave of sound louder each second, closer, distant cries turning into piercing howls that pierced my heart and made me jump. “That’s your people dying, one by one.”
If he thought that would make me weak, he’d misread me as a person. I ground my teeth and renewed my effort to push his hands away, my palm both sweaty and gritty with sand. “You’re the one going to die,” I snarled, bringing my knee up under him in a sad attempt to unseat him.
The jackal laughed, my movement only forcing him closer, until the tip of his dagger bit into my throat. Pain welled with warm blood in the hollow of my throat, and everything went icy and still. I was really going to die here, killed by some dick in a mask.
My ears hollowed out as the knife bit deeper, but even with blood whooshing in my ears I heard the screams get louder, visceral, my crew terrified. My breath caught, and I stopped breathing entirely when the jackal pinning me to the sand looked at something beyond me and gasped. It was a small intake of breath, a catch of fear, but it made me frantic with fear.
I fought harder, pushing the knife away, my bones shivery all the way up my arms, but it was no relief when the jackal scrambled off me, surrendering his knife to me without a second thought, his breaths choppy.
I didn’t look behind myself. Didn’t dare to.
So it came as a bit of a shock when a monster of fury, tentacles, and a really great brown leather coat erupted across the beach and unleashed itself on the jackal. The jackal’s head was ripped off his neck in a spray of blood and gore. A rope of blood landed on my stunned face, startling me into motion. I hauled my screaming body to my feet, staring in shock as the jackal was ripped limb from limb.
I froze when the tentacled monster turned to face me, arms and suckers waving in apparent rage. And instead of a scream, it was an irritated sigh that left me.
“You’re dead,” I grumbled, crossing my bleeding arms over my chest, immediately flinging them out, palms forward, when Hook surged towards me, spraying sand everywhere, those massive suckered limbs reaching for me.
My whole body rooted in place when the slimy tip brushed my throat, coming away with blood. And retreated.
“You’re uh, not going to finish the job? Rip my pretty head off my shoulders?”
Hook’s expression was rife with icy fury, a kind of violence I so rarely saw in anyone. “That’s too easy,” he replied in a voice so gravelly and deep that I shuddered. “I’m going to make you suffer, darling.”
My eyes narrowed at the name, and I opened my mouth to speak when a cheerful voice called across the beach, “Captain!”
“Yes?” I asked, whipping my head around at the same time Hook snapped, “Yes?”
Sterling looked between us, eyes widening.
“He was talking to me,” I bit out, slapping Hook’s tentacle away from me.
He laughed, a low rolling sound that covered my pained body in goosebumps. “He was clearly speaking to me.”
“I’m the captain,” I argued, anger quickening my heart, or maybe that was a healthy dose of fear from those suckered arms waving around his lower half. I tilted my head, trying to see if he still had legs under there.
Hook snorted, a sound that lit a spark to my anger. “You’ll never be the captain, Wendy.”
“I already am, asshole.” My nostrils flared, anger making blood rush in my ears. I might have only been thinking about how dull the job of captain was minutes ago, and I might have already been tired of the constant demands on my time, but that wasn’t the point. He was challenging my title. My reign. And I would not stand for it.
“Holy shit,” Joanna cried out, her voice cutting through the tense rumble coming from Hook’s chest. “Who’s the octopus man?”
“That’s our captain,” Wynton replied.
“Hey!” I snarled, flinging a glare in his direction, fully ignoring Hook’s insufferable smirk. “Traitor.”
My moment of distraction cost me. One moment my feet were planted in the sand, the next rough arms 4 grabbed my middle and my stomach slammed into hard muscle. Hook threw me over his shoulder and strode for the water.
“Bring the gold,” he barked.
“Hey, put my sister down you slimy mothersucker!” Joanna yelled, her voice surging closer.
“Ha!” I laughed, trying to find her even though the whole cove was blurring and upside down. “Good one, Jo.”
“Grab her,” Hook ordered. “Put them both in the hold.”
“Belay that order!” I yelled, but my crew were mutinous bastards. They did nothing to stop Hook carrying me to the rowboat, hauling me up onto my own ship, and then locking me in my own hold.
“I’m going to kill him,” I promised Joanna.
“Or fuck him,” she remarked, and ignored the death glare I pinned her with.