Page 40 of Wicked Tides #1

Vidar

Vengeance is more blinding than the sun

Yet darker than the night

~Unknown

“What the fuck?” I growled, shoving David outside as the rest of Collin’s rotten crew filtered into the tavern. David stumbled onto the street, tossing me a disdainful look. “What in the hell are you doing with Collin Jones?”

“He offered me work and I needed work,” he said.

“I told you to take care of your mother. Have you left her all alone, then? You left her for your selfish and foolish pursuit of coin and excitement. Is that it?”

“She is dead!” he barked. “The day after you left, she saw fit to leave me alone in this world just like you left me alone in this world. Jumped off Roger’s Point right in front of me, so fuck Treson and fuck you. Collin needed a deckhand and I needed work.”

The news of Agnes’s suicide was a knife to my heart.

I had always suspected her mind was not right.

I’d suspected it never would be right after everything.

I didn’t know how to fix her and a part of me didn’t want to carry the burden of trying.

Perhaps it was selfish, but I was not the right man.

I was too broken to mend her the way she needed.

Still… knowing how badly I’d failed at taking care of David and his mother had never been more blatantly clear than at that moment.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Your mother… she was not right. I couldn’t replace your father. I—”

“You didn’t have to replace him. You just had to be there.”

There was bitterness in David’s voice, but the sorrow had long passed.

He’d expected her to do something drastic, too, even if he never spoke of it.

It pained me to know he had been preparing to be alone for so long and I’d left him to that task like a coward.

Guilt stabbed me as I tried to contend with the news, but I was no stranger to the feeling.

“Leave Collin’s crew and join me on the Rose,” I offered.

His jaw ticked as if he was considering it, but he didn’t have time to say anything before I heard Mullins raise his voice inside. Collin’s crew had never been the civil type. Knowing they were inside with my men was an uneasy thought. I sighed sharply and shook my head.

“This discussion isn’t over,” I said, walking back toward the doors. “If you’re going to be on the water, you should be on my ship. Not his.”

I walked back inside to see a face-off between a few of my men and Collin’s crew.

The damn shits couldn’t be in a space together for two seconds without someone getting hurt.

Upon my reentry, eyes flicked in my direction, but near the back, one of Collin’s men stepped up behind the young woman Mullins had brought into the tavern and picked her up in a maliciously playful manner that she clearly did not like.

“Hey!” I barked.

And all hell broke loose.

Dahlia was still at the bar, but as soon as the man assaulted the girl, she rushed him, leaping onto his back and sinking her teeth into the side of his neck. I saw it happen, but it didn’t really become real until the man was toppling to the floor, blood spurting from his open throat .

“Fuckin’ hell!” someone shouted.

Pistols were being aimed. Blades were being drawn.

The music stopped and was replaced by madness.

Mullins tried to get the girl out of the fight, but he was knocked onto a table and she was left having to fend for himself.

Gus threw a mug at a man’s head. James was shoving a man into the wall, pushing his pistol hand upward so it fired into the ceiling.

I spun around and drew my pistol from my belt, grabbing David by the back of the neck and throwing him behind an overturned table for cover.

“Collin!” I roared, grabbing his wild gaze from across the room.

I was ready to blow his brains out, laws be damned. I lifted my pistol and watched him duck behind a few of his men. I fired, grazing the man’s cheek and hitting a pillar behind his head.

“Fuck!”

Someone rushed me with a blade and I grabbed hold of his wrist, pulling him in and slamming my head into his. For a moment, my sinuses exploded with pain, but the man was knocked to his knees and that was good enough.

“Can’t get one night of peace, can we, cap’n!” James shouted over the noise.

“Fuckin’ siren!” someone yelped.

I whipped my head toward the other side of the tavern to see Dahlia in binds, practically being carried through the crowd. Behind her was the girl in a similar state of restraint.

I rushed to intervene, shoving men aside. I was ready to gut every one of them. I’d been waiting for an excuse to end Collin since the day he became the captain of his own vessel.

“Take them both!” Collin shouted over the ruckus. “Could both be sirens!”

I turned toward his voice to see a man beside him with his pistol trained on me.

I stooped just as he fired it. The wall behind me splintered when the bullet hit it.

When I recovered, Collin had David beside him, the barrel of his gun pressed to the side of his head.

David’s eyes were wide with shock and I was rendered useless at the sight.

“Stop!” he ordered, malice in his conniving eyes.

“Now, we came here for a nice, quiet night of drink, but looks like I’ve found a rather unexpected bounty.

Sirens mingling with your crew. Either you didn’t notice, which is highly unlikely, or something very sinister is going on here. Either way, I’m taking them.”

“She’s not a siren,” Mullins spoke up, pointing at the girl just as she and Dahlia were dragged kicking and thrashing out of the tavern, a knife at her tender throat.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. These creatures come in so many shades and in so many innocent masks. In’t that right, wolf cub?”

I cringed at the name.

“He’s telling the truth. She is not,” Gus intervened. “She is simply a worker here at the inn.”

“I very much doubt that with the way the other one protected her. But either way, I’m taking them. And when Whitton finds out what strange dealings you’ve been engaging in… well… perhaps it will not be worth it for you to return to Treson Harbor at all.”

I had no words. I looked Collin in his putrid, yellowing eyes and ground my teeth to keep from rushing at him.

Honor was a foreign concept to him and I knew he was more than willing to pull the trigger on David.

The boy meant nothing to him. I was inclined to believe he only absorbed him into his crew as a way to use him against me in the first place.

Looking at me, Collin smiled. He was always smiling, but I suspected it was because he had no idea the thoughts he’d stirred in my head.

Before me, I did not see a man. I saw a corpse, gutted and lifeless.

That was all he was to me and I was going to make it so.

The hell he suffered in my head was limitless the moment he put that pistol to David’s temple.

My hand squeezed the hilt of my cutlass, eager to drive it through his gut.

“Nothing to say?” Collin said, shrugging as he shoved David toward the door.

“Perhaps you’ve come to your senses. Perhaps this game on the seas does not suit you anymore, Bone Heart.

It appears you’ve gone a bit soft.” The rest of his men filtered out of the tavern, backing through the door so their eyes could remain on my crew.

Those who’d been slaughtered were left on the floors, already forgotten.

When Collin’s crew had gone and the tavern was left in disarray, my eyes remained on the doors.

I could feel my heart hammering in my chest and heat rising in my gut.

Hate had a distinct feeling. It was overwhelming and somehow sickening.

It was a psychosis that I knew all too well and seeing Collin take from me in the manner he did, all cocky and derisive, teased a monster in me.

“Cap’n!” someone shouted.

I spun on my heels to see Uther knelt over Brom’s bleeding body. I rushed to their side, grabbing Brom’s hand as he reached up. Blood pooled in his gasping mouth.

“Brom,” I said.

“Got shot, cap’n,” he coughed.

“Looks that way, you crazy bastard.”

Scanning his body, I found his hand cupped over his stomach. Slowly, I pulled it away to see streams of blood pouring from his abdomen.

“Ahh, you’ll be fine,” I said.

“Aye,” he shuddered. “Been shot worse.”

When our eyes met, the truth of it bounced between us.

We both knew he was dying. I squeezed his hand and by the mercy of the gods, I watched the life fade from his green eyes, taking his suffering with it.

Uther was still kneeling on the other side of his friend’s corpse, his eyes reddened with sadness.

The two were like brothers and they’d both joined my crew at the same time.

I ground my teeth together and gently placed Brom’s hand on his chest.

“Those weren’t sirens,” Uther said. “Those were men. Are we fighting men, now? ”

I glanced up at him from the crest of my low brows. “I’ll fight whoever I have to fucking fight,” I snarled, standing.

The silence in the tavern grew as the men came to terms with Brom’s sudden death until finally, Mullins stepped up beside me.

“We really going to let him do this, Cap’n?”

“Not a chance,” Gus said.

My jaw clenched and slowly, I slid Lady Mary back into my belt.

“Gus,” I said calmly, staring at the door where Collin had disappeared with my things. “Gather the girls. Stay with them. Thelasa will help you.”

“I know where to take them,” the woman said from behind the bar, shaking as she stood.

“Everyone else,” I continued. “Return to the ship.”

“What will happen when he tells Whitton about all this?” someone asked.

I cracked my neck to one side, relieving some tension as I marched toward the door.

“Whitton won’t hear a damn thing about this.”