Page 11 of Scourge of the Shores

The Shared Determination

The flames of the hut’s hearth warmed Danna’s cheek.

She rolled in her low-slung cot and glanced up at her mother’s bed across the narrow space.

Sleep eluded her as she ran through all the repairs in her mind.

Her foot bounced in restless agitation under the lightweight blanket her Ma had made for her before Cain attacked.

“The pirates could be here half a year,” she muttered. The sudden thirst for water cracked her lips. “At least Robert wasn’t deceivin’ me.”

She shut her eyes and pinched her lips. “Jaymes, not Robert,” she corrected herself. His bare, sweaty chest lingered in memory. His scent of ocean and spiced rum lingered like a lure she couldn’t follow.

Her stomach churned beneath a tight torso. She gripped the blanket until her fingers ached.

“Get out of me mind,” she told the vision of Robert leaning against the table in the main hall and listing off all the major aspects they shared.

He was even right about never kissing a man.

There had been no time for romance between trying to safeguard food, babes, and ships from a sea dragon.

She was a Chadwick, too. That alone kept the island men at bay.

But Robert had called her beautiful. But not like Ma.

Not in the soft way a mother speaks to her daughter.

But as a man. A Pirate King. And he’d said it like it was a fact, not a pretty lie.

She rubbed her temples, but in that moment, she thought of Lucas Ervin.

Lucas had always been there. The steady weight beside her, never too close, never too far.

He’d kissed her wounds as a child. Held her when they buried her father.

Shadowed her steps in the night. Watched over her.

Protected her. Never once had he called her beautiful.

She felt safe in his arms, though. Yet, Robert dared to state they were obviously lovers.

“Ugh,” Danna gagged at the memory. It surprised her, though, as she wondered what she gagged at—the thought of Lucas in her bed or Robert’s second attempt at gathering details of her love life, or lack thereof. She rolled to her other side, away from the fire.

“Jaymes, not Robert,” she mumbled. She rolled toward the fire. Her eyes scanned the flames as their tendrils reached for breath before retreating, satisfied.

“They could be here half a year,” she repeated in a whisper. Robert’s face formed in her mind again. His broad, stubbled jaw, piercing cobalt eyes tinged with dark brown, and sculpted chest, beneath a loose white linen shirt, made her sigh and clench her teeth.

“He’d leave anyway,” she told herself and refused any more imaginings of the man, instead trying to focus on Lucas, as if that was any better. She closed her eyes and tried to envision kissing him and sweeping her fingers through his thick blonde locks, but the image never formed.

She took a sweeping breath and opened her eyes. There was no time for that anyway, as she said before. Cain would be back.

Then just as she foretold, a loud shriek came from the sea.

Danna jolted from bed and shouted, “Look alive!” at the top of her lungs as she grabbed her gear—three flintlocks, a dagger, her grandfather’s horn, and a quiver of arrows.

Ma’s scream split the air: “Danna!”

But Danna flew out the door.

“Light the torches!” Danna ordered Jim, who emerged from his hut nearby, in his sleeping shorts.

The night watch was already forming along the rock barrier shoreline. The moonlight shimmered across his scales as another shriek pierced the night veil.

“Shoot him on sight!” Danna yelled as men and women burst from their huts, ready for battle, and raced to their positions.

Musket fire thundered from the first watch, and smoke drifted before the pale half-moon’s light and dissipated over the waves.

“Switch and reload!” came Danna’s order. A new wave of fighters replaced the original watch as they retreated to reload.

“Load the harpoons!”

The clank of harpoons loaded into modified beached cannons. The hush of chatter and the small remnant of hope coursed through the island village.

“Did they gut Cain?”

“Where’s the beast?”

“Did he retreat again?”

“Is he gone?”

Danna strained to hear Cain’s rapid advance in the waves or see the glistening scales.

“Silence!” Her voice boomed over the rest. The horn bounced on her belt, not needed. Her eyes scanned the dark waves. A tumble of rocks to her right grabbed her attention.

“There!” she yelled and pointed with her flintlock.

Cain smashed through two of the beached canons, which pointed out to sea. His body slithered on the rocky barrier, and he ran over fighters as the lucky ones scrambled away from his massive weight. His roar penetrated through the screams.

“Archers!” Danna yelled as she grabbed a nearby torch off of a hut.

Her feet pounded the hard sand until she found a good vantage point.

She drove the torch stake into the sand and drew an arrow from her quiver.

Setting the arrow’s tip aflame, she released a slow breath to calm her heartbeat and focus.

“Rapid fire,” she mumbled and released the arrow toward Cain’s wriggling neck as it swallowed a goat that had somehow escaped the island’s inner pen.

Firelight replaced the moonlight on its scales as it moved inland.

Its sleek body skimmed low over the sand.

Again, she released another arrow, this time hitting it in its snout before it dived on an injured harpooner.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a wave of scales rush toward her.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet. A sudden rush of glistening scales tore through the sand.

Danna ran and leaped, twisting midair—but Cain’s massive tail slammed into her side.

Pain exploded through her leg. She hit the hut wall with bone-rattling force, the wood splintering around her like a shattered mast. Smoke and dust choked her lungs as she tumbled onto her back, staring up at the black-stained sky.

A whimper took the ringing out of her ears.

She peered to see a young mother named Isabelle with an infant and a young child wrapped in her arms.

“Hide near the graves,” Danna whispered before she rolled up and out. Danna’s leg gave way under her as Isabelle fled behind her.

“You’re hurt,” Isabelle said.

“Go,” Danna told her, and Isabelle obeyed after they both watched Cain throw another body in the air and chomp it between his spiked teeth.

Danna scanned the beach. Some limped, some lay unmoving.

Arms were missing bodies. Crimson-crested waves spilled on the beach before fleeing into the sea.

The traps were too far inland for the beast, but they had to be to hold him.

She glanced at the two palm trees that straddled her trajectory toward Cain.

If only she could get the sea dragon to come to her.

Lucas caught her attention as Cain dived toward him as he limped away. Danna’s heart stopped. “ Not Lucas,” she whispered. Out of instinct, she pulled the horn and blew as loud as she could, hoping it saved his life.

The low bellow of the horn blast paused Cain’s dive. His head twisted and centered his eye on her. Steam rose from his nostrils.

The sea demon remembered her.

His lips seemed to curl up while revealing his blood-tipped spiked teeth. Cain threw his head back and released an ear-splitting roar before barreling straight toward her.

She cocked one of her flintlocks and as soon as Cain’s head passed the threshold, she shot the release.

Chains popped up from the ground and snapped from the air, capturing its head in an iron grip.

Cain’s body coiled back as its roars turned sour, but the chains were locked into the palm trees with roots grown deep.

Steam burst from its nostrils and Danna leaped and rolled out of the way before the hot steam blasted from its mouth, browning the wooden hut’s frame.

Danna groaned, unmoving, on her back. Every bone felt broken, every muscle ripped. She blinked to steady her vision while pulling out her last two flintlock pistols. She cocked each against her chin in rapid succession as she stared at Cain struggling against the trap.

“Look at me, Cain!” she yelled, seeing the red bulge from her last bullet, swollen on the yellow just below the black iris slit.

This time, she’d blind him. Her bullet had to meet the black.

The eye slit slid to her, and Danna cracked two bullets into his eye.

The roar sent shockwaves through the air as its body yanked and pulled against the iron chain. The palm trees wiggled and loosened.

Danna shook her head. “Harpoons!” she yelled with all the air in her chest. A few went sailing and landed their target. “Cannon!”

“Cain will crush ye, Danna!” the shout came from across the way.

“Fire!” Danna said, glancing down at her bloody leg. “Kill him!”

But before the blast could run through the night, Cain ripped one palm tree from the ground, and the cannonball razed past his cheek.

Danna yelled again, “Fire!”

But Cain ripped the other tree loose of its root and howled in rage. Men’s shadows appeared from the jungle from the East, and they began blasting at Cain while another wave of harpoons flung through the night.

Slinging its head, Cain whipped the attached trees, plowing into nearby men and sweeping them across the beach. Cain threw Danna one last stare, then threw his head back and arched with a death dive, headed straight for her.

Danna drew her dagger. If she were going out, she’d slice Cain all the way down his belly. But a hand flew over hers, and soon she was in the air and back on the ground with a body atop hers, face-to-face with Robert.

“Don’t move,” he mouthed to her as Cain’s snout dug into the dirt beside them.