Page 29

Betts

Magda.

Her name strikes fear in the hearts of men twice my size and four times my strength.

She’s taller than I expected, probably a touch over six feet.

Her black hair reaches her hips, making me self-conscious about my self-hacked locks.

Of course, she’s stunning, with porcelain skin and ruby lips.

She’s a vampiress who depends on seduction and violence to survive… but doesn’t everyone on the high seas?

“Who’s in charge of this wench?” She asks the crowd. My crew mumbles to themselves, but luckily, nobody speaks up. I love each member of my crew and don’t want them in the claws of this monster.

Where is Chub when I need him? Right, at the hut of a witch doctor, welcoming his child into the world, because I lost control of my crew’s vote.

That’s the problem with depending on Chub.

Everyone needs him for a million different things at all hours of the day and night, and he is just one man.

I knew there would come a day when I would have to stand tall without him. Today is that day.

No Sabrina, no Chub, no Flint, it’s just me.

“This wench is Captain of Patricia’s Wish .”

“ Patricia’s Wish ? Patricia’s Wish ? This ragtag group of misfits is the crew sailing my boat! Where is Teeth? Where is Chub? When I find them, I’ll drain them dry for this!” She balls her fists at her sides and stomps her foot like a child.

“Teeth gave the boat to me,” I reply coolly.

“I don’t believe it,” she sneers, advancing toward me so I must crane my neck to maintain her gaze.

“He bequeathed the captaincy and the boat to me at his wedding.”

“Now I really don’t believe you,” she says with a chuckle.

It escalates to a full belly laugh that has the vampiress stumbling in a circle while folded over at the waist. Her dairy nearly tumbles from her corset in her fit.

My savvy crew steps back when she nears the edges of the circle that has gathered around us.

“You expect me to believe…Teeth, the pirate who knew the insides of everyone’s trousers in the Caribbean—the women, the men, and everyone in between—married. And at the wedding, he gave my boat, my position, my legacy, that he held in trust for me …to a slip of a girl?”

“I don’t expect anything of you—” Keep your cool, Betts. She can snap you in half. You don’t have your tentacles to defend yourself—just keep her busy until Chub returns.

“Magda? Magda, do you remember me? I’m Eze, you know, Queen Zora’s son?”

“The Eze I knew had feet he hadn’t grown into because he weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet.

Look at you.” Her lips curve to conceal her fangs as something maternal wipes away the horror her features sported a second ago.

She really does swing from sweet to violent to caring to terrifying with each blink of her strange eyes.

No wonder her crew sat on edge under her leadership.

As she holds Eze’s face in her palms, I can sense his fear from here.

It radiates from the pair like macabre sunlight.

“I grew up, ma’am, Captain, Queen, Magda, ma’am,” he stutters. My heart breaks for what this interaction cost him in pride. These crew members see him as a leader, maybe their next quartermaster, and he’s about to wet himself.

“And you will vouch for this girl’s story,” Magda says, nodding her head. “What’s she to you?”

“She’s my captain,” he says firmly.

The smile falls from Magda’s lips. She rears back and slaps him across the face. The crowd gasps, but nobody comes to his aid. They are too afraid, but Eze doesn’t flinch. He lowers his chin to stare at the she-devil.

“I said that Betts is my captain,” he repeats in a much lower voice.

“Oh, that is a manly voice. You have grown up, haven’t you?” He glares at her as she palms his chest and shoulders—the slap completely forgotten. “I’ll show you who deserves your allegiance and who is a silly little princess.”

“So, that’s the game? Put me in my place, so you can take over.

I think not. We didn’t come here looking for trouble.

We came in peace…until our boat crashed and sank.

Now we are at your mercy. There’s no need to fight over a boat that’s not seaworthy.

It’s nothing more than a legend, like the stories in your journals. ”

“Oh, but the title is worth everything to me. You see, vampires always have a pecking order. I’m always the queen, whether by vote or show of force. Haven’t you seen a vampiress before?”

“If not for your dark eyes with their bright white pupils, I’d say you were just another pretty strumpet,” I snap.

I have a million reasons not to like her.

First, I read in her journals that she committed adultery or at least cheated on Branko with my brother-in-law, placing a wedge between the best friends.

Secondly, she terrorized me hearties when she was their captain—every crew member who knew her.

Thirdly, she won’t accept anything less than a fight from me when I’ve never fought anyone to the death who knew my name.

Unless it’s in the heat of the battle, I’m a shy little church mouse…

Church mouse? When was the last time I was in a church?

When I waited for Richard while he was at the docks to greet his wife.

Where’s the old rage to boil in my belly when I need it?

My hatred for Richard and the pain of his betrayal are silent.

When did I get over losing my tentacles?

Oh, falling in love with Flint must have replaced those dark emotions in my heart…

Flint…

I look toward the sea, but now that the sun’s set, there’s no way I can spot him on the rolling waves. Instead of summoning rage, the pain of deep loss and sorrow bubbles to the surface. Tears fill my eyes.

“Am I keeping you from something? Should I wait to capture your attention before I claw your eyes out, or claw them out first to put you out of your misery?”

I face the woman who always seems to do what she wants—no matter how much it hurts others.

She wipes the tear from my cheek, leaving a scratch along its track.

Her ruby lips part as she sucks the blood-tinged tear off her nail.

Fluttering eyelashes accompany the sexy groan she emits.

She runs her hand down her leather corset to cup herself through her leather pants.

“Your sorrow tastes divine,” she whispers. “I bet your blood will be as sweet as sugarcane. Tell me, which of these men could tell me how sweet you taste, hmm?”

“None of them.” My voice is strong, but the quiver at the end raises Magda’s eyebrow until it disappears under her hair.

“Well, then, which of the women?” She turns to the crowd, giving me her back in a move that shows she doesn’t fear me. With lazy strokes, she absently finger-combs her hair as if by stim or compulsion.

“Nobody on the beach,” I say, straightening my spine. “I’m faithful to the man I claim as my own.”

“What’s with the tone?” Magda flips from flirty to suspicious as she whirls around.

“In your own words, your journals told your secrets. I know about your affairs, and while you claim to be queen, I know you share power with your husband, Branko. You threaten me, but I know stories that would get your backside paddled.”

“You do not,” she says, charging at me.

“Chub made me study the battle strategies in your journals, but Flint helped me read every word. You have no idea how many nights we spent curled around one of your journals, giggling and touching one another as we acted out your affairs.”

“You can’t spread those stories! I’ll kill you first,” she shouts, going for my throat like I knew she would.

I tuck into a ball and roll toward her. Being a foot shorter, her claws wave over my head.

She cries out when I hit her knees. The big, bad vampiress tumbles into the sand.

Am I wrong to get perverse satisfaction from the grit embedded in her hair?

Her lips and eyelashes wear a coat of sand, too.

My giggles fill the air as I sit, covered in sand myself.

I expect her to lunge at me again, but instead, she feeds me a fistful of sand.

Coughing and spitting, I blindly grab two hunks of her hair and pull her face to the ground.

Her claws rake what’s left of my shirt. It hangs from my shoulders in ribbons, exposing my dairy to everyone.

I kick at her thighs, but I can’t seem to connect.

One of her arms rests on the ground, so I sit on it.

Wrong move.

With super strength, she flips me onto my back.

The wind flies out of me in a whoosh. She plants her weight on her right knee across my thighs, pinning me to the ground.

She wrestles my right hand from her hair and pins it under her left knee.

Long black strands wave from between my fingers in a minuscule victory.

Her face descends toward my neck, with her elongated fangs leading the way.

The only barrier is my left hand, still holding her hair, pressed against her forehead.

She can’t bend my elbow without breaking my arm.

Where is her other hand? She will sneak attack me if—

It swipes across my belly. I hear my cry ring into the air as if someone else screamed it for me. Blood bubbles from my innards just below my bottom ribs. My arm shakes as she lifts her bloody claw to her extended tongue.

“Delicious,” she whispers. “I knew I’d love your taste.”

“Get away from my sister, you beast!” A red tentacle slams against Magda’s head, knocking the vampiress off me.

“Sister? The two of you? One is a kraken? Oh, you are full of surprises, aren’t you, pet?” Magda taunts Sabrina as she spits out sand.

“Pick on someone your own size,” Sabrina sneers.

Her tentacles ripple over the sand with her fury.

I nod and give her a half-smile when she flicks her gaze to me.

She came to my rescue. After all these years of my saving her, Sabrina saved me.

I’ll be okay with a few stitches, but she’s garnered Magda’s attention.

“Stop being such a bully when they came to you for help.”

“My help?” Magda says, finger-combing her hair to remove the sand. She shocks us all when she pulls a brush from her coat pocket and begins to style it.

“Didn’t you see Chub and his wife—”

“Chub’s married too? Those knuckleheads found their lady loves after all…I guess. I’m happy for them,” she says quietly to the snarl she works with the brush. “Such lies may be truth, and you may have a kraken twin, but I don’t believe you’re my replacement.”

“Nobody sought to replace you—just clean up the mess you left behind when you found your happily ever after,” Teeth says, emerging from the surf.

Magda takes in his towering form and navy-blue tentacles with a shocked countenance.

“I’m sure you will meet Catalina soon, but in the meantime, meet Sabrina…

my wife. The one you maimed is my sister-in-law, Captain Betts of Patricia’s Wish .

Let her get stitched up so that she might explain to us why our boat is in two pieces in the bay while her satyr sails on a raft made from our navigation table. ”

“Flint? He’s alive!” I yell as I attempt to stand. The pull of the skin on my belly sends darts of pain up my spine. I flop back onto the beach in defeat.

“No problem for Chevelle,” Magda says, waving her hand to dismiss Teeth. She doesn’t acknowledge Sabs, or Teeth’s announcement that she’s his wife. It’s as if Magda chooses what to believe, and the rest is beneath her.

“Chevelle delivers Chub’s baby as we speak,” replies Eze.

“Well, you are just a needy bunch of inconveniences, aren’t you?”

“Magda,” says a voice with a timbre so deep, it rattles my bones. “Behave. These are friends.”

“Branko, you have no idea what I’ve been through,” she whines. “She threatened me.”

“The one who you opened like a cask of ale? Good thing I brought my medical kit. As soon as you flew out of bed, I knew I would have to mend claw slashes, bullet holes, or both.”

“You sound tired, friend,” Teeth says, approaching him for a masculine embrace.

“Yeah, well, your wife turned you into a fish, so shut your face,” Branko replies with a smile that lights up the night.