Page 5

Chapter 4

DON’T BOATS NEED WATER?

U nfamiliar voices pulled me from sleep.

“She’s coming around,” someone said.

“Thank fuck for that. Thought she was dead for a minute,” another voice said. Female like the first, but not as soft or lilting.

“We established that she was breathing when they brought her in.” This voice was gruffer but still feminine.

What were people doing in my bedroom?

Memories of horrific, impossible things filled my head, and my eyes popped open to low lamplight and two women crowded around me.

They looked to be around the same age as me and were watching me with varying degrees of a frown.

“You took a nasty bump to your head,” the redhead with the soft lilt to her voice said.

The room we were in was shrouded in gloom, the light cast by an old-fashioned lantern hanging off a rafter the only source of illumination. I was propped against a beam, and we were surrounded by crates.

“Who are you and where are we?”

“Oh, great.” The gruff voice came from the shadows beyond the two women. “Another clueless damsel.”

“Hey!” the redhead admonished. “Just because I didn’t know what was happening doesn’t make me clueless.”

I looked from the figure hidden in shadows to the redhead. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

The redhead took my hand, wide eyes filled with shadows and compassion. “We’ve been taken because of our blood.”

Blood…

There’d been so much blood.

Nani…Hot tears burned my vision as the full impact of what had happened to Nani hit me in force, knocking the breath from my lungs so that each sob was a desperate gasp for breath.

“Shit. Hey. Okay,” the redhead crooned.

She hugged me and rocked me. Words were said that I couldn’t decipher past my own sobs and the buzz of bees in my head as the image of my grandmother’s final moments played over and over in my mind.

“That’s right. Just breathe. Calm down,” another voice, soft with kindness, said.

The horror slowly abated enough for me to get my emotions under control and register the gentle rocking motion of the cabin housing us. “Are we on a boat?”

“Bingo,” gruff voice said. “Give the doll a prize.”

Anger starburst in my chest. “What the fuck is your problem?”

The gruff-voiced woman sat forward so the lamplight illuminated her harsh, angular features. “I don’t have time for cry-babies.”

I worked to stop my lip trembling, to stop the tears from rising. “And I don’t have time for insensitive bitches. I just watched my grandmother get eaten by a fucking shadow monster and then had my ass kidnapped by some midget monster men, so give me a fucking moment to process, okay?”

She blinked sharply and sat back so that she was hidden in the gloom once more.

Silence reigned for several long seconds before Redhead broke it. “Shadow monster? Wait, there are shadow monsters now?”

I swallowed the knots of emotion in my throat and took a few grounding breaths because I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Nani had sacrificed herself to whatever that fucking thing had been to make sure I escaped.

She’d blasted me away…somehow.

The word magic filled my mind.

She’d truly been magic…It was the only explanation. Why hadn’t she made me believe? Shown me? What did all of this mean?

“Hey? Are you okay?” the third woman with the kind voice asked.

Dark curls clung to her forehead, and freckles dusted her brown skin. I’d wanted freckles so badly when I was younger.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

Focus, woman. “I’m Leela, and I’m fine. I just…I need a minute.” I couldn’t allow grief to take hold right now. I needed to keep my shit together and figure out a way off this boat. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“About half an hour,” the redhead said.

“And you guys? How long have you been on this boat?”

“Look, if you’re planning to try and escape, forget it,” the gruff-voiced woman said. “We tried. The only exit is the one up those stairs.” She pointed at the staircase. “It’s locked. The door is too sturdy to break. No other way out. We’re stuck until the bastard who nabbed us opens the door.”

“Then what?” the woman with the dark curls demanded. “There is nowhere to run. You know what Dadi told us.”

“Doesn’t make it true,” the gruff woman retorted.

“Really? We’re here, aren’t we? So it must be true.”

Dadi was a term reserved for a paternal grandmother in most Indian families, just like Nani meant maternal grandmother, which told me that these two were of a similar cultural background to mine .

“Priti, maybe we should explain what we know to Leela,” the redhead said to the curly-haired woman.

Priti sighed. “Yes. Good idea.” She turned to me. “Right now, I believe that we’re below deck on a spectral ship that can pass through the veil between worlds.” The words came out in a rush, after which she simply stared at me, waiting for my reaction.

If I hadn’t seen and experienced some crazy shit in the past hour, then I’d probably be freaking out about now. “Go on.”

“Okay, so my family are super religious, and according to my dadi, we were blessed by a god and have divine blood in our veins. I thought it was cool when I was a kid, even told my friends, who looked at me like I was a freak, and then…well then, I thought it was bullshit until my mother showed me her mark, identical to mine. She told me that everyone in our family who has a strong element of divine blood has this mark.”

She rucked up her top and lifted the edge of her bra to show me a mark. A figure eight on its side. “My mother’s was on her ass,” Priti said with a shrug.

“Mine is on my inner thigh,” Red said. “Although I was never told anything about divine blood. I mean, my family isn’t even religious. I just thought it was a cool birthmark.”

Inner thigh? Like the one that was now on mine. The pain after Nani made me eat herbs had been in the exact same spot…Had she put it there or…no, she’d sa id she was doing a reveal spell. She’d revealed my mark after having hidden it somehow.

“We all have it,” Priti said. “The chosen bloodlines. It means we belong to the gods, to be claimed whenever they wish.”

And Nani had known about it. She’d been trying to hide me from them. From…gods? The amulet, the herbs were all protection to hide you so you could lead a normal life…

“Where’s yours?” Red asked me.

I licked my suddenly dry lips and slowly pulled up my skirt, bunching it up until the mark glared up at me. A mark I’d never had before, but it was real. Pressed beneath my skin. A forever brand.

“You look like it’s the first time you’re seeing it,” Priti said.

I smoothed down my skirt. “What does it all mean? Why do these gods want us?”

“Fuck knows,” Gruff Voice said.

“That grumpy ass in the corner is Dharma,” Priti said with an eye roll, but there was genuine warmth in her voice. “She’s my older sister, and this is Remi.” She pointed at Red. “We met a little while before they picked you up.”

I didn’t want introductions. I wanted out. “We need to get off this boat.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Priti said. “Dadi said that?—”

“We can make them take us back!” Dharma ground out.

I was so confused. Nani had hidden my mark for years, which meant she hadn’t wanted this Rathor guy and his scary little minions to find me. But then tonight she’d revealed it, making it easy for him to find me. But why? It had to be related to the shadow monster somehow.

Nani’s demeanor had changed when I told her about my dream. A dream that came true and killed her. I didn’t understand it all, but I knew one thing: Nani had wanted Rathor to find me. The shadow monster, however, was an outlier I needed to learn more about.

Priti and Dharma were still arguing when I dropped out of my thoughts.

“We can’t simply comply,” Dharma said. “We have no idea what they plan to do to us.”

“And you think we can go up against this Rathor guy with his supernatural abilities?” Priti snapped back. “All he has to do is breathe on us to knock us out.”

Dharma made a sound of exasperation.

Silence reigned for a moment before Priti broke it.

“Leela, did your family not tell you anything at all?” she asked.

Dharma answered for me. “Maybe her family didn’t know. Dadi said that the gods have been sowing their divine seed in our world for eons, so some bloodlines might have fractured. The knowledge lost. Remi had no clue either.”

But Nani had known. She’d just chosen not to tell me.

“Whatever this is, we need to survive it,” Priti said.

“Or escape it,” Dharma added.

“I want to get back to my life,” Remi said. “I have a fiancé. I have a wedding planned.”

“You said your grandmother was…killed?” Priti’s gaze was probing, searching for answers. “Tell us about the shadow monster.”

When I spoke, my voice was flat and almost emotionless because if I connected with the words too much, then I’d fall apart. “A shadow monster killed her. She knew about all of this but never told me. I think she was protecting me. Hiding me. Whether from Rathor or the shadow monster thing, I’m not sure. But I think she knew that the monster was coming and chose to reveal my mark and have Rathor save me, although at the time I thought he was the bad guy. I mean, he still could be, but the evidence… I don’t know.”

“Maybe the monster thing came because she was hiding you?” Remi said.

A bubble of panic swelled in my chest at the thought that protecting me was the reason Nani had died, but logic asserted itself. “No, she’s been hiding me for years. I think that my not being hidden is what drew it to us.” My amulet…it must have been more than an heirloom…

Dharma shuffled out of the gloom. “The shadow monster might not have anything to do with what’s happening to us right now. Dadi never mentioned such a creature.”

“Maybe we’ll get answers on the other side.” Priti patted my shoulder. “Wherever that is.”

“Or we attack now, on the ship, and get answers here. If we don’t like the responses, we get Rathor to take us back. He can’t breathe on us all at the same time to knock us all out, right? A blow to the head to stun him would give us time to tie him up. We can question him down here.” She crawled into the shadows and returned with a coil of thick rope. “We can use this.”

“We have no idea how many minions he has up deck,” Remi pointed out. “What if they come down and attack us?”

“We make sure they can’t get in,” Dharma said. “There is a bolt inside the door too. We lock it.”

“It’s too risky.” Remi wrung her hands. “If we fail, then he could hurt us.”

But Dharma was right. We needed answers before we stepped off this boat, and her plan was a good one. “I don’t think that they’ll hurt us. I mean, we’re valuable, right? We must be if we have divine blood.”

The thump of boots on wood had my pulse spiking. Someone was coming. Remi pressed herself to my side and grabbed my arm.

I shrugged her off, my gaze clashing with Dharma in silent communication. I nodded, and a slow grin spread across her face.

“Fuck,” Priti muttered. “Fine, let’s do this.”

Thud, thud, thud.

“Remi? Are you in?” Dharma whispered.

She whimpered but nodded.

We waited, holding our collective breath.

Thud, thud, thud .

The ruby-eyed man appeared at the bottom of the steps.

We attacked.