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Then I begin the chase.

CHAPTER23

Maren

I runlike I’m running out of hell. Perhaps the thought isn’t too far off.

When Ramsay finally admitted what he was, that he wasn’t your average human being, that he wasn’t even human at all and was instead a monster like me, I suddenly knew what I was up against. While I had long suspected that he wasn’t normal or even human, I didn’t know what kind of creature he was. I figured he and the entire crew were hard to kill, that they had superhuman strength and reflexes, and that they enjoyed torturing people. I didn’t know that they actually drank people’s blood.

I think back to Daphne, the way she said they were monsters. I think about Hodges and the rest of the crew and servants who were drained of their blood. I think about how often the crew talked vaguely about rations and provisions, how many times they referred to Sedge or me as “human,” about all the chains and cages and cells. Transporting hostages across the Pacific wasn’t a normal thing for them. What was normal was to raid ships, steal their treasure, and then steal some of their crew so that they could feed from them across long voyages. They harvested humans like humans would cattle, keeping them alive in order to eat them.

The idea that the crew of theNightwindare bloodsuckers, much like the lampreys that attach themselves to poor unsuspecting fish, fills my stomach with dread. But try as I might, I can’t be disgusted by it, for I’m no different than they are in many ways. Perhaps I don’t drink the blood of a man like a mosquito would, but I do eat their organs and I suppose some might argue that’s worse. I know Aerik would.

But regardless of how I feel equal parts kinship and admiration for Ramsay and his Brethren, I also feel fear. Because I realized that though I am a Syren, I am still on land on two legs and I am not the apex predator of this world. No, that would be the Brethren. They have the brains, the strength, the appetite, and the fact that they are immortal all going for them. Until I get my fins back, until I’m fighting any of them underwater, I don’t stand much of a chance against them here. Syrens may have long lives, but we can easily be killed.

Of course, I tried to fight back. I tried to kill Ramsay. Part of me wonders if I really would have sunk my claws around his heart and pulled it out on the spot like I did to Aerik, or if I would have just maimed him, rendered him incapacitated. I don’t want to kill the captain, not if I had a choice, and yet my own Syren instincts were to do exactly that.

Perhaps he should be as afraid of me as much as I am afraid of him. Yet I am not going to stick and around and find out.

I run through the jungle, my legs stronger than they’ve ever been, but they still don’t possess the same strength as my arms and the rest of my body does. I have to be careful as I leap over fallen logs and try to dodge hanging vines and trees. The light beneath the canopy of leaves is dim despite the bright morning sun beyond and I have to keep focused or I’ll trip. It doesn’t help that around every corner I keep thinking I see a pair of glowing eyes watching me.

Could it be Nerissa? A wild animal?

But before I have the chance to contemplate it even further, suddenly my world gets turned upside down. The ground moves out from under me and I’m falling, caught by thick ropes that press roughly against my cheek, and then I’m being hauled straight up into the air.

A fishing net! I’m caught in a fishing net on land! This is exactly what we think happened to my mother, what the elders say has happened to other Syrens in other seas.

I cry out, struggling against the rope. I start trying to filet it with my claws, shredding at net until I’m almost free.

Someone lets out a holler from below. “She’s escaping!”

I look down through the net to see the skeleton crew on the ground beneath me, staring up at me through their empty skulls. Oh, blast.

I work faster now, until the rope starts to stretch and snap and I’m slipping through the hole I created, only to land directly on the skeletons, smashing their bones.

I get to my feet ready to run again for my dear life but I only get a few feet before two other intact skeletons reach out and grab me.

I snap my teeth at them hoping to scare them, but they’re made of nothing but bone and they’ll never die, no matter how hard my bite is. Thank goodness none of them seem to know I’m a mermaid or I’ll be put in the tank like my sister was.

“Look at what we have here,” one of the skeletons. “Captain Mahoney will love this.”

“Finally, a lady to join us for eternity in our curse,” says the other one. “Though she is a rather strange looking lady, isn’t she?”

“Her teeth are so pointy. Her nails too. Perhaps she’s French,” one jokes in his British accent.

Both of them start laughing at that.

I elbow one of them in the ribs, shattering the bone.

“Fucking bitch,” the skeleton growls, his hard grip tightening on my arm. “You’re a dead woman now.”

They drag me through the forest with more of their skeleton crew coming to get me. TheNightwind’screw is small and I’ve grown accustomed to it, so I’ve forgotten how large a normal ship’s crew is. Even thoughNightwindwon the battle against the cursed crew, I suppose a lot of their bones came back together after all.

Finally, the canopy opens up and we come to a white beach and their ship just off shore. They take me along to the ship’s boat on the sugary sand and shove me inside it. I take a hard fall, my reflexes not as quick as I’d hoped, though that doesn’t stop me from scrambling to my feet and attempting to dive off.

But there’s ten of the crew now surrounding me and their boney hands grab my ankles and calves, pulling me back on the boat, my teeth clacking together so hard that one of them falls out.

A skeleton laughs and picks up the pointed tooth. “I got me self a souvenir. What are ye, part shark?”