Chapter 47
“Nobody move or your captain dies!” Shaw’s shout cut the silence, but only some of the fighters looked up. All attention remained riveted to the Demon.
Because he and Nia had been gone too long. It was impossible they could’ve survived.
Something akin to horror curdled in Zanta’s gut as the Demon slowly looked up to where Shaw held his husband hostage. He dropped Nia like she meant nothing, and she crumpled to the deck with an awful, soggy thud. Unmoving.
“Nia!” Zanta croaked. She tried to stand, but blinding pain flared through her hip where Shaw had thrown her against the mizzenmast. She collapsed near the rail.
The Demon stepped over Nia’s body. Pirates and mercenaries alike parted before him.
Only a few people had seen him go into the water after Nia, but all of them had witnessed him emerge in chains.
The iron links dragged across the deck, holding everyone on board under some strange spell. No one moved but him.
The Demon stalked up the steps like a prowling wolf, seawater dripping from his hair, his coat, his fingertips. His eyes gleamed with feral darkness.
Shaw snapped out of it first.
“Stay back!” he barked, pressing the pistol tighter to Rowan’s head. “I’ll kill him!”
Rowan didn’t even flinch. Now that the Demon was back, a calmness had loosened his posture, as if there was no reality in his mind where his husband would let him come to harm. Every line of him held a self-assurance that this was not his day to die.
How could he be so sure? Not even the Demon could stop a bullet.
The Demon’s gaze sharpened, but he did not stop his ascent. He didn’t even look at Shaw. He had eyes only for his husband. His slow, measured steps thumped on the boards like a heartbeat, accompanied only by the drip of water, the clink of spurs, and the drag of chains.
Shaw stepped back, wrenching Rowan’s head back by the hair.
“I said stop!” he ordered, with the voice of a man who was used to being the most powerful in the room.
But he couldn’t hold a candle to the power of the Deep Water Demon, and pirates never obeyed.
Shaw jammed the barrel harder against Rowan’s skull. Rowan hissed. The Demon’s steps faltered.
Why hadn’t Shaw shot Rowan yet? Lingering feelings? Or was he afraid the bullet would shatter the crystal eye?
Zanta could’ve sworn the Demon’s eyes darkened, a vicious aura rolling off his soaked body. Her skin prickled in response.
“Stay back!” True fear entered Shaw’s voice for the first time. He turned the pistol on the Demon and pulled the trigger.
The Demon’s head snapped back, a perfectly round hole blooming in the middle of his forehead as the echoes of the gunshot rang between the stones. Zanta screamed. Below, pirates rushed forward.
Rowan’s body jerked, as if it was he who’d been shot.
As if his nerves were misfiring, trying to reject the lead violently lodged in his brain.
He said his husband’s name on an exhale, so quiet Zanta barely heard it, but that was the only thing he said.
He did not cry or scream or struggle. He gazed at the Demon with tearless, clear eyes.
Zanta couldn’t wrap her head around it. Weeks after the battle at Wave Harbor, she’d been the one to deliver the news to Rowan that the Deep Water Demon was dead, and the sound that had ripped from his chest still haunted her.
Now the same man was gunned down right in front of him, and he barely even flinched?
Didn’t even try to go to his fallen lover’s side?
In fact, a small, wicked smile was spreading across his lips.
Because the Demon had not fallen. There was no topple backward down the stairs as a dead man should have. He remained frozen, one foot poised above the second to last step.
Horror crackled up Zanta’s spine as the Demon’s head slowly tilted forward. Soaked onyx hair fell into his eyes, perfectly framing the bullet hole dead center in his forehead. A trail of crimson gushed down between his brows, mingling with the seawater to drip from his chin.
He was alive. Horribly. Impossibly.
And he was grinning.
Shaw’s spent pistol clattered to the deck.
He drew a dagger with shaking hands, and pressed a thin line of blood into Rowan’s throat.
The Demon’s black, inhuman gaze finally fixed on the man who held his beloved prisoner.
His jaw worked, and then his mouth yawned wide.
Seawater and blood poured from his lips, and something metallic pinged to the deck and rolled toward Zanta.
The bullet.
What the fuck was he?
Someone on the deck below screamed, and the Demon lunged, snatching Rowan away with one arm, and seizing Shaw by the throat with the other. Shaw drew half a terrified breath before the Demon snapped his neck with a flick of the wrist. Using no more effort than one would use to snap a twig.
The Demon released him, and he crumpled to the deck, as lifeless as a puppet with cut strings.
The Demon’s attention zeroed in on Rowan, brow furrowing with all the anguish he hadn’t shown with a bullet lodged in his brain.
The air thickened, choking, but Zanta couldn’t look away.
The Demon clutched Rowan to his chest, eyes roving over him possessively, and Rowan arched into the embrace.
Zanta thought, ridiculously, the Demon was about to bite him.
A drop of diluted blood dripped from the tip of his nose to Rowan’s parted lips.
The Demon’s eyelids fluttered. He bent to kiss the blood away.
A jolt ran through Zanta’s body as if she was coming out of a trance. She struggled to her feet, shock and pain making everything slow. The silence was deafening. The only movement…
A choked sob climbed up Zanta’s throat. She hobbled to the stairs, left leg dragging. Below, Nia lay sprawled where the Demon had dropped her, soaked red hair like twisted seaweed splayed around her head.