Page 80 of Ocean of Sin and Starlight

I stop to see her tangled in a net while Meriw and Esmerelda swim away.

I can’t just leave her there.

She’s trying to rip the net with her claws, but to no avail. The net must be made of some kind of metal.

Larimar, she cries out frantically. I can’t get out.

I reach her, my claws coming out, and I do my best to free her from the net, trying to saw through.

Go, she says. Save yourself.

Hold on, I tell her, trying to get her to focus on me. I’m going to get one of the clams. Their shells can cut through anything we can’t.

But the moment I turn from her to dive downward, the water starts to become sliced into many squares.

It’s a net rushing toward me, as if it had already been there.

A trap that had been set.

I yelp, and before I can swim out of the way, the net rushes up around me until I’m caught the same as Vialana.

And then, the net is hauled to the surface with me inside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

PRIEST

It’s been a week since Abe and I walked the plank and had a trial decided by a shark. I’m still unsure how the shark decided anything, but I suppose if it bit our heads off, that would have meant we were guilty of something. Either way, we survived, welcomed into the crew as if nothing had happened, like we were old friends.

Well, I should say it’s that way for Abe. Even though the doctor can be awkward and strange at times, he fits in well with this band of misfits and miscreants. All of them are equally odd in their own ways; I suppose that’s why they’re pirates and not living in the upper reaches of society as normal Vampyres do. High society loves those with money, and the immortals tend to have a lot of it. Still, it takes a lot to mold yourself to seem like an ordinary yet extraordinarily successful human and not the blood-drinking, murderous deviants we all are.

When it comes to me, however, I seem to have made good progress with everyone on the ship—everyone except for Maren. I don’t possess a great deal of charm—I am far too grumpy for that—but what I have goes a long way when I’m dealing with a non-Vampyre. Yet, Maren seems immune. I don’t run into her very often, which is quite strange when you’re stuck on a ship together, but when I do cross her path, she treats me with distance and suspicion. It was her decision to make a shark the judge, but I’m not sure she agrees with the verdict.

I’m starting to wonder if perhaps she knows of my relationship with Larimar. I haven’t said anything, and so far, no one has asked for any more information about the Syrens, nor has the objective of our journey been brought up.

Well, that’s not quite true.

The other day, after we were treated to blood, Ramsay and Thane sat us down and questioned us about our true intentions. I let Abe do most of the talking. He convinced Ramsay that I need to be around my own kind for a change, that the isolation he thought would help cure me is what drove me to madness in the end.

I think they believed him. I expected them to badger me with the same questions, but they dropped the subject after that. What I really wanted was to ask about their journey to find the Syrens, but I didn’t want to call attention to myself when they seemed satisfied with Abe’s answer.

Strangely enough, our destination and mission haven’t been brought up that often. Here and there, I’ll hear a crew member talk about the island, and I assume they mean Roche Island. Some will talk about whether we’ll find trouble in the Strait of Magellan, but nothing more than that.

It’s fine with me. I can handle a strained yet cordial relationship with the lady of the ship. I’ve noticed that Ramsay is very protective of her; if I even stare at her for too long, he gets gruff with me, so I’m not about to try and win her over.

Besides, I know how to keep my place and when to bow my head. Now that we’ve been sailing for a bit, I’m getting rather used to being on the Nightwind. It reminds me of the comradery we had at the monastery, or at least in those later years when we had more humanity. After being stationed alone for so long, or with Abe’s sole company, it has been nice to actually be around others, especially blood-drinkers. I know I’m different, and there’s a bit of trepidation and curiosity from the others, but we’re all birds of a feather.

Though I suppose I’m the only one who has ever had wings.

“Mew.”

I startle and turn around to find an orange cat standing on the rack of pots and pans. I’m in the galley with the cook, Sedge, as he prepares tonight’s meal. He’s the other human here, other than Maren. A mute, but that’s fine with me; I learned some basic sign language when I was at the monastery, taught by the monk Pedro Ponce de Leon to aid us when we had to live in silence.

Who is that? I sign to Sedge, moving my hands in a clumsy manner. I’m still rusty, and Sedge hasn’t exactly learned the language I have, but the longer I’m with him, the more he’s teaching me to adapt to the way he communicates. While I could talk to him, because he’s not hard of hearing, I think he appreciates me signing.

Skip, Sedge says, spelling out the letters. Ramsay’s cat.

The cat stares at me with piercing green eyes, its tail waving back and forth.

---