Page 112 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

I blinked at her, feeling a hundred different things, but mostly shame. Because I hadn’t been doing any of this for her. Or for any of the slaves.

This was a power struggle for everyone in the contest. Some wanted the power for good, some for self-aggrandizement, and some for evil. But all of us were reaching for the brass ring as hard as we could.

Except for the slaves. They were just fighting to survive without many people in their corner. Or anyone, if Enid’s take on this was right, and she knew this place better than I did.

So yes, I felt ashamed.

“Enid,” I began when Pritkin shot me a look I didn’t understand and cut me off.

“We need to get moving,” he said tersely. “We’re being hunted, and they’ll find a way in soon enough.”

“They won’t,” Æsubrand argued, blinking and returning to life. Maybe because hunting was something he knew a bit about. “They’ve lost the scent—”

“Not them.”

“—and there must be easier prey—”

“They don’t want easier prey,” Pritkin said flatly. “They want to test themselves against the strongest. It’s in their nature.”

But Æsubrand was shaking his head. “Animals don’t think like that—they don’t think at all—”

“These aren’t animals!”

“Then what else would you call them? Filthy, hideous, corrupted beasts who—”

He cut off, perhaps belatedly remembering that he was talking to someone who was half demon himself. And currently looking like it. But Pritkin didn’t press the point.

“They’ll be coming,” was all he said.

“Yeah, and Cassie’s power don’t work!” Alphonse seemed hung up on that fact. “So how do we get back? Because this ain’t our time—”

“We don’t know when it is—”

“Well, we know it’s not right!” And okay, that had been a little shrill. Which was not a sound I’d ever heard from Alphonse. But looking around the tight, dirt-filled tunnel into blackness, I understood.

“You heard her,” Pritkin said. “We wait for the portal to come around again.”

“And if it doesn’t? If it can’t?”

“Then we wait some more.”

Alphonse didn’t like that answer. But before he had a chance to explain, in detail, exactly why he didn’t, Bodil intervened. “I can make it work.”

Alphonse turned on her as if glad to have somebody new to yell at, as neither Pritkin nor I were giving him much. “It may not be a case of flipping a switch! If the portal is in the same shape as the rest of this place, we’re boned—”

“Get yourself together, vampire,” Bodil snapped.

“Get my—” Alphonse stared at her. “I’m the only one talking sense! We’re stuck in a horror movie with monsters chasing us. And I’m hanging around with the goddamned blonde!”

“What is wrong with that?” Æsubrand asked, looking confused, perhaps because I wasn’t the only one with that hair color.

“It means half of you are red shirts, and I’m starting to wonder about me!”

“Red . . . shirts?”

“Never mind,” Pritkin said, standing up. “Lady Bodil will get the portal running, and Cassie will get us home.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Alphonse demanded.

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