Page 29 of Wicked Tides #1

Vidar

Beware the silence.

Beware the words not spoken.

Beware the stares not seen.

~ Clea Roberts

Dahlia had been on my ship for two days and the tension was only building.

My crew had remained loyal through the worst of times, but there were a few among them who were questioning my decisions.

The whispers were faint but present. Why I cared to return a bunch of girls to their home while two sirens were locked up on board with their tongues in their mouths was somewhat of a mystery, even to me.

So of course men were talking. Some wanted to return to the harbor and sell them for as much as we could get, girls be damned.

Others wanted them dead. Their arguments whispered across the Rose.

Ships and their crews were delicate things. A good captain never forgot that. And with social temperatures changing, we all needed to adapt as well.

Dahlia’s presence, though I’d been avoiding it the past couple of days, was becoming a distraction. My plan to use her would go into effect soon, but I needed to get things in order. Feel out my men’s stance on it all.

As tempting as it had been to destroy her once and for all and be done with the torment, something told me I needed her alive.

My father may have miscalculated in the end, but he always told me knowledge won every war and with new monsters haunting the tides, Dahlia’s knowledge would be crucial.

Or so I kept telling myself.

Up ahead of the ship, a giant fog bank sat over the water like a sleeping monster. I stared at it, elbows perched on the railing, and narrowed my eyes.

Beside me, Gus leaned forward, blowing out a cloud of smoke before sticking his pipe back in his mouth.

“That’s a thick fog bank,” he grunted.

“We’re near the Aisle of the Black Water,” I said flatly.

Gus took a deep breath and let it out on a long sigh. “I know. I can smell it in the air. Like blood rotting in a salty tidepool.”

“I smell it, too.”

“Been a while since we’ve been through these waters.”

“There’s no way around that doesn’t add a week to the journey. Stick to the course. Make sure shifts in the crow’s nest are short. I want everyone sharp.”

“Aye. We’ll need our senses in there.”

It didn’t take long for the Rose to become fully immersed in the fog.

Clouds above shielded the sun enough without it.

It was like sailing through a storm with no wind.

The silence was so heavy that I could hear every creak and moan within my ship as she skimmed the water.

A siren’s song would be easy to sense in that kind of deafening silence, but I prayed we would not hear one in a place where we’d been stripped of our sight .

I stood at the wheel, my wits sharp and my guard up. Four men stood at the railing on either side of the ship, watching what little they could see of the waters below for signs of unwanted guests.

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, sensing everything 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. ”

Neither woman reacted, but I knew they understood. Dahlia gave Merilyn a slow glance before walking toward the open gate. Mere inches from me, she took a deep breath, smelling the air.

“Interesting place to anchor,” she said.

“You’re taking the bitch?” Gus said.

“I’m taking the bitch,” I said.

I reached out and pulled Dahlia out of the cell by her arm before I shut the gate behind her, locked it, and tossed Gus the keys.

Gus groaned a sigh. “Don’t know why they call you ‘Bone Heart.’ Should be calling you the ‘Mad Cap’n’ or something.”

Pulling up a little stool, Gus sat himself down in front of the cell gate and propped his feet on a barrel. Before he leaned back against the wall, he pulled his pistol from his belt and laid it in his lap, keeping his eyes on the siren still caged.

“Vidar,” Gus said before I was out of earshot. “You see any ghosts, you shoot them in the heart.”

Dahlia said nothing as we climbed the steps onto the deck.

Mullins and the others had the ladder uncurled and two of my men were already in the jolly boat waiting.

Uther and Tor were two of my best fighters and sometimes I wondered if they were wishing for death every time we set sail.

They certainly risked themselves as if they were asking for it.

“Taking her?” Mullins asked, pointing a finger. “Cap’n—”

“Get in the boat, Mullins, or say you’re too chicken shit to go so someone else can volunteer.”

He grumbled and shook his head, climbing over the edge of the railing to descend. Uther followed, eyeing Dahlia like she was a leper. I released her arm and she looked up at me, her expression stony and dark. Her eyes narrowed and she canted her head as if trying to read me .

“You enjoy hell, Vidar,” she said. “There is no other reason we’re visiting this island together after eighteen years. Do you plan to bury me here with the rest of them?”

“I plan to use you.”

“For what?”

“Whatever I can. It’s in your best interest to be useful to me.”

“Perhaps it’s in your best interest to be useful to me. ” She stepped forward, leaving barely a breath between us. “I have not begun to show you who I am,” she whispered.

I reached slowly toward my hip where Lady Mary hung, thirsting to spill some blood. She didn’t look at it, but I knew she was aware of it and my intentions. I stepped forward until my chest met her breasts and looked down my nose at her.

“Today, we cooperate with each other and prolongue these lives we so lazily cling to. Perhaps you’ll get the chance to kill me yet.”

She reasoned with my statement for a moment before stepping away and pulling up the skirts of the clothes she very obviously hated wearing.

Then she slung one leg over the railing and descended the ladder.

I half expected her to strip and dive into the water, but she was afraid of something below.

We all were now. Or perhaps she was playing another game.

Before I followed, I turned to Smalls. He was one of the most level-headed on my crew and with Gus below looking after the other prisoner, he was a good acting captain.

“Any sign of danger,” I emphasized. “Ring the bell.”

He nodded, resting a hand on his belt where a pistol and a bronze blade hung, ready for anything. He was anything but small, but he’d gotten the name after losing half his cock in a drunken brawl and now he wore the title with a twisted sense of pride.