Page 36 of Wicked Tides #1

Dahlia

Blind is not the man who cannot see.

But the man who sees and realizes nothing.

~Hector Stone

There was an incessant voice in my ears like the high-pitched ringing after getting hit in the head. It stabbed at my thoughts, causing everything around me to disappear into a blur.

Everything around me… which was nothing.

I was in a deep void. One where the echoes of that screaming noise was all-consuming. I could hardly breathe. I could not move. I only knew that I was slipping deeper into the cold, dark depths toward something awful.

I reached up toward the faintest bit of light above me. I could hardly see my own hand. Try as I might, the light was only getting further away from me and as it did, another voice rang in my thoughts. My own. It kept saying what I somehow already knew.

I was being dragged to the depths. I was being dragged to a hell I did not want to go to. A place where I knew only suffering was waiting for me. Endless suffering. Stagnancy. The slow destruction of all that I was.

I reached further, wishing for a way out. A lifeline. Anything to hold onto so I would not sink to a place I could not return from.

And then I felt it. Fingers wrapped around my wrist. Everything went dark once more, even the light above me. And then the cool kiss of wind on my wet skin shocked my eyes open. A stomach full of water was regurgitated from my mouth as if I could not breathe underwater and I nearly drowned.

Beneath me was black sand. As I pushed up on all fours, I dug my fingers through the wet grit, relieved beyond reason to be on land and not in the water.

I never imagined I’d feel that way.

“Your screaming could be heard from the heavens I imagine,” a voice said.

I rolled with a start to find a man sitting on a pile of black rocks nearby.

The ocean still massaged the shore, reaching up the beach as if trying to beckon me back.

But the ocean was no longer what occupied my thoughts.

It was the man on the rock. Vidar fucking Bone Heart.

He had one foot propped up so he could perch an elbow upon his knee.

He was in his captain’s coat, his dreadlocks tied back with a red sash.

In front of him, his bronze cutlass was standing, point in the sand, and he was twirling it slowly, but his eyes were on me.

“I did not think I would ever be pulling you out of the water like a drowning damsel.”

“You know me, then,” I blurted out.

Dreams were strange. Unpredictable. He could know my face one night and not know me the next. I was clearly unprepared to fall into his head that night. The shock had rendered me stupid.

“Of course I know you. I’ve been hunting you since we were children. I never thought this is how I’d find you.”

“And how exactly have you found me?”

I stood, black sand weighing down my wet, cotton shift.

“Calling for help. ”

“And why would you help me?”

“Curiosity, I suppose.” He stood from the rock and began pacing along the beach, running his fingers over his blade like he was caressing a lover. “I have killed you so many times in this place, you see. I’ve slit your throat on this very beach over and over and yet I find you alive over and over.”

“Perhaps you cannot kill me. Have you thought of that?”

“Many times.” He stopped and looked up at me, his expression flattening. “We make our own hells, do we not?”

“Then your hell is not being able to finish me. Is that it?”

“My hell is not knowing why it does not please me to kill you over and over again.”

We stood, staring at each other for a while as if words could no longer communicate our thoughts.

And then it occurred to me how I’d been ripped from my own nightmares and fallen into his as if I barely had control of myself anymore.

As if sleep was no longer safe now that I’d meddled with our connection.

The waves crept further up the beach, reaching for me.

I inched backward, staring at the sea foam like it was poison.

That stabbing tone needled through my head again, making my vision waver.

Whispers of the deep language tore through a deafening noise only I could hear and I recoiled, pressing my palms to my ears.

“Have you gone mad?” Vidar said.

“I believe I have. You may get your wish soon.”

I turned and began marching away from the beach to wherever the hell I was able in that strange dreamscape.

If it was distance I needed from the water, so be it.

But as soon as I gained any space at all from the beach, Vidar was beside me, the sound of his cutlass sliding into its sheath startling my senses.

I whipped my head toward him, the sudden motion amplifying the ruckus in my head.

The chorus of noise around me was a venomous thing that sunk right into my bones.

The incessant sounds pulled me off balance and I teetered, finding the ground uneven.

As I stumbled, Vidar’s arms were around me, keeping me on my feet .

My fingers gripped his coat in an effort to stay upright. Bodies pressed together, we found each other’s eyes and remained that way, unsure exactly how we’d ended up in that position.

Despite that, neither of us chose to move. Dream or not, I felt everything. His warmth. The beat of his pulse. The roughness of his salt-stiffened coat.

“Do not tell me some unseen force will best you before I have a chance to figure out how to bring about your demise.”

“Is it really so important that you are the one to deliver the killing blow?” I said with a sneer.

“If only to make sure it sticks.”

“You’ve failed at that in the past. Maybe you are not suited for the task as much as you wish you were. There are—”

I was cut off by another wave of dizzying beckons from the sea. I winced, trying my best to block them so I might figure a way out of the nightmare I’d gotten lost in.

“If it’s so important to you that you be the one to destroy me, then come up with a way to distract me,” I said.

“Should I know what it is I’m distracting you from or—”

“Just distract me. Take my mind elsewhere.”

He chuckled as if I was joking and it only angered me. I pressed my lips together just to keep from biting off his ear or some other appendage he might need. If I was dreaming, the best course of action to avoid whatever force was luring me out was to wake up.

But I couldn’t. Lune help me, something was keeping me there.

Perhaps if I hurt myself. A jolt like that would force me awake. And since Vidar was anything but helpful, I decided to abandon his company.

“You are useless,” I hissed, turning to make my way down the beach in hopes of finding a cliff to leap off of.

Suddenly, a strong hand was around my wrist. I was wrenched back and before I knew it, his fingers were around my throat.

Vidar’s face was a mix of frustration and anger as he drove me up against the rough stones.

Our eyes locked and like two stones striking to make sparks, something flashed between us.

Heat. Electricity. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it made my pulse jump.

“Useless?” he murmured. “I am all you have.”

Like a blow to my chest, those words knocked the air out of me.

When Vidar’s mouth crashed into mine, my heart ceased entirely.

His hand squeezed me tighter and his lips were desperate as if he was truly trying to suffocate me.

Hate and yearning were bitter on his tongue, but I did not fight him.

Despite every fiber of my being wanting to escape, I didn’t. I let it happen.

I wanted it to happen.

Because when he kissed me, the noises stopped.

. . .

Six days on that ship free of iron bars or chains was the strangest feeling.

Seeing men go about their business while Meridan and I stood on the foredeck of the ship, feeling the misty ocean air on our cheeks, felt unreal.

In the six days we’d been allowed to roam, the men became marginally less tense around us.

A few of them never took their eyes off of us and many of them had added excessive amounts of hemsbane to their diets. I could smell it.

Meridan and I were of different descent. Where I could change to look more “human,” she could not. Her skin remained almost translucent white. Her hair was a pale silver and her eyes never gained color. She could not pass for a human even if she dressed like one.

I was determined not to leave her side. Unlike me, she’d never been a captive of humans or hunters before. She’d never known how cruel the touch of a wanting man could be and she was just as unable to get comfortable as half the crew was.

Since we’d been let out, I saw Ahnah and the girls a couple of times in passing.

Ahnah seemed to understand that our affection for each other could not be shown so openly, but when she and I caught each other below deck with only dusty cargo around us, we snuck long hugs.

She would speak a few words I couldn’t understand and I would give her the smile I was unwilling to give anyone else.

And then we would part ways.

Why I adored the young girl was not as much of a mystery as I once thought it was. She was the innocence that was denied me. Perhaps in protecting her, I could prove that not every human was like Vidar. Not everyone was stripped of goodness.

Maybe it was a twisted sense of redemption I was after. A need to be validated.

As Vidar said, there was hope yet that she and the other girls would not end up like us. The fact that it was important for both of us to keep that darkness from them spoke volumes about our tainted souls. I couldn’t say there was any light left in me, but at least I could recognize it in others.