Page 56 of Wicked Tides
It was a dangerous choice to cut through the fog, but anchoring the Rose in that place would have been twice as foolish. The Black Water was a place of death and had birthed countless horror stories. Some of which were my own. Somewhere in that misty void was the island that made me. The island that took my father. It was a battleground filled with terrors.
Gus joined me at the wheel, arms crossed. His aged face was hardened with suspicion.
“Some say even the bitches themselves think this place too cursed to hunt around,” he muttered. “Especially since that night.”
“Hunters have died here,” I said. “But so did many of their kind.”
“What do you make of this endless fog?”
I took a breath and caught faint hints of smoke.
“I don’t think it’s all fog. Steam and smoke, maybe. There is a volcano in this chain.”
“I haven’t forgotten that. That added week of travel time is looking mighty good about now.”
I almost laughed, but I was far too focused to allow it.
Just beneath us sitting on the deck were two of the girls wrapped in furs. The others had chosen to stay below and I couldn’t blame them. Not seeing the surroundings could create an illusion of safety that all humans longed for. Even me, at times.
“Captain!” Jesse called from the crow’s nest. I peered up, barely able to see his silhouette pointing starboard.
I followed his gesture toward a faint shadow looming in the white expanse.
“What the hell is that?” Gus said.
I watched the strange shadow grow nearer until I felt certain I knew what I was looking at.
“Drop anchor!” I ordered.
Quickly, two of my men abandoned their posts at the railings to do as I commanded while others filtered out from below deck to see what was going on. The girls, on edge now, scurried downstairs.
“Blade out, Gus,” I said as I abandoned the wheel to approach the railing.
The loud unraveling of chains filled my ears as the anchor splashed into the water. Mullins and James were by my side in a blink, watching as the Rose inched ever closer to what was now very clearly another ship. One that had not been there for very long. One that was not sailable and perhaps not even occupied. The wood was blackened, kissed by fire, and the sails were bent and splintered, burned to nothing but bare poles.
“Can still smell the smoke,” Mullins mentioned softly as if speaking louder would wake some hidden monster from the fog.
“Uh, should we be anchored here, cap’n?” James asked from my left.
No
“We’re not runners or merchants, James,” I said with a smirk. “When we smell danger, we follow it.”
A small gust of wind passed by the ship and I watched as the fog swirled, giving us a brief glimpse of another large shape further out.
“Fuck me,” Mullins muttered.
“Another ship,” Gus added, tapping the spent tobacco from his pipe onto the railing. “This hellhole hasn’t changed.”
“So, why we stopped, cap’n?”
“Because something about all this isn’t right and I don’t think anyone is going to get to the bottom of it but us,” I said, sliding my coat off my shoulders and draping it over a crate. “Mullins, James, Uther, and Tor, lower a boat.”
I turned and headed below deck. Gus, always looking after me, followed.
“What about me?” he asked.
“You’re to stay on the ship with the others.” We came to the cell where Dahlia and her companion were standing alert, sensingeverything that was happening. I looked Dahlia right in the eyes as I told Gus, “The pale one stays here. Dahlia comes with me.” I pulled the keys from my belt and unlocked the gate. “If Dahlia returns without me, you’re to kill her.”
