Sail

Until these new concepts of freedom and fearlessness wrapped themselves around my brain, I couldn’t part with the little iron I had left. I’d transferred it to a napkin and tucked it inside my pants, but my mouth watered for it. Every time I patted it, my insides squirmed. Just as I attracted ghosts, iron attracted me.

But I was still alive, even without it. The ship had been strangely quiet since Mase’s brain-scrambling performance, which worried me. I wore a target on my back with no iron, and it felt like the entire ship held its breath, waiting for the right time to strike me down. Maybe it would happen at seven o’clock tonight. Maybe it would happen in minutes. Maybe I could ready myself somehow if I could stop fidgeting and pacing. Of course, if something did happen, I would throw the iron back in again.

After the captain, Mase, and Nesbit searched this floor for Randolph, the captain stuck his head in through the hallway door to say they hadn’t found him yet. It almost seemed like he’d never boarded this ship with me and was a figment of my imagination. I knew that couldn’t be true though. He had to be here somewhere, and Feozva bless him, I hoped he was okay. It’d been six days since I’d seen him.

After Captain Glenn left, I turned back toward the double doors and blinked, not quite sure what I thought I saw was real. Black handprints painted the seam between them. I stepped closer, and the unmistakable smell of engine oil wafted up my nose. Pop’s smell. But since Pop wasn’t here, it had to be Nesbit. When had he been here? Surely not when Mase and I… Because surely we would’ve heard him. He wasn’t exactly the mousy tiptoe type. Still, unease settled into my stomach, thick as a dark shadow. I kicked one of the swinging doors open so as not to touch his handprints, but no other oil slicks smudged the kitchen. It was as if the swinging doors were as far as he’d come.

Swallowing back the twist of fear in my throat, I started on dinner, because what else could I do? If he’d seen something, I couldn’t change it. I’d just have to hope with all my might that he hadn’t.

When I heard the double doors swing open behind me, the air behind my back didn’t feel charged with a certain man’s presence that I’d grown used to. Something else stood behind me, something that radiated anger in waves.

This was it. One of them finally came for me. A shudder raced across my shoulders, but I forced myself to turn around.

Nesbit. Not a ghost. His hands curled into fists at his sides. His chest heaved, and he looked at me with such hatred, I backed up a step into the table.

He squeezed his fists until his knuckles went white. “I’m hungry.”

Something about the way his mouth formed the word ‘hungry’ stitched anxiety through my chest. “Well, dinner is in an hour, so…”

“You remember that day when Mase was telling us about that underwear he found in the bathroom?”

Rusted balls, I didn’t like where this headed. “Yes,” I said, trying to keep a wobble from my voice.

“I couldn’t find it.”

“Oh.”

“Have you seen it?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t.”

“Huh,” he said as he rubbed his jaw. “Maybe that pussy Mase took it even though I told him it was mine.”

“Maybe.”

With a slow nod and a twitch of his mouth, he turned to the double doors and started through them.

A quiet exhale passed through my lips. The odd niggle he’d brought with him relaxed from my belly. If he was angry about my underwear, I could live with that.

But then he turned around. “If you’ve seen them, you would tell me, right James?”

“Of course.”

“Because I don’t like being lied to.”

“I’m not lying. I don’t know where they are.”

He took a step toward me.

My stomached tightened. I pawed the table behind me, wanting to keep the knife I’d set down in easy reach.

“But you’ve lied before, right?”

I rolled my lips together, not sure how to answer that. What kind of game was he playing?

“In fact, you lied right on that table behind you. I seen it.”

Panic squeezed my lungs as he came closer, his sour breath stealing my air. He had seen us.

“I couldn’t get through the doors earlier, but I could sure see. Mase was in here with you, sucking on your dick, wasn’t he?”

My mouth went arid.

“I have to say I was a little surprised he swung that way, but you never can tell, huh?” His fingers slid icy cold terror up my cheek to pin my head so I couldn’t move it. “You have really soft skin for a boy, James.”

I tried to shake him off, but he cupped my face harder. The need to scream unfurled inside me, but all that came out was a choked cry.

“Yeah, you do. It reminds me of a girl’s, so clean and smooth, and that smell…” He buried his nose into my neck. “I can smell the come from your pussy, James.”

Before I could deny it, before I could push him off, he wrenched my arms in front of me and locked them tight in one hand while the other smacked over my mouth. The smell of engine oil, once so comforting, now revolted me. A broken sob steamed against the pressure of his palm.

“Because when I looked closer through the door’s crack, what I’d thought was your dick, was actually a sweet, sweet pussy. And your titties flopping around while Mase was lapping you up.”

I screamed, or tried to, but the weight of his hand smothered it.

He shoved his thigh between mine and pressed against me. “Did you like Mase between your legs, James?” he asked, his sick breath heating my ear. “Because it looked like you were loving it.”

I tried to buck out from under him and squirm my wrists from his hold, but he had me trapped. He ground his erection into my thigh, making his intentions crystal clear. Bile rose up in my mouth, and I squeezed my eyes shut with the effort to force it back down.

“Do the rest of us get a chance between your legs, James?” He moved my hands closer to the bulge in his pants. But his grip on my wrists slipped.

I wrenched one hand free, pulled the ice pick from my pocket, and plunged it upward. It sank deep, but I couldn’t immediately tell where until Nesbit backed off. I swung myself around the table, deeper into the kitchen. He looked down at the blood streaming from a hole in his forearm, then back at me, stunned.

“You bitch,” he spat. With a hiss, he inched the ice pick out, blood pouring in rivulets down his arm, and came closer. He now stood between me and the table and the knife. It was even farther to the drawer of silverware, and even farther to the double doors. I’d never make it, especially now that he had the ice pick.

“Nesbit,” I said, holding up my hands to show I had nothing else to hurt him with. “I can explain.”

“Do you want to explain this fucking hole in my arm? Fuck!” He gripped his wound, blood seeping between his fingers and dripping to the floor with thick, wet splats. He lurched toward me in a burst of rage, the ice pick in his other hand raised.

I leaped to the side and ran for the double doors, but my heel hit a puddle of blood slicking the floor. I went sprawling.

Nesbit grabbed at my leg, but he was already falling too. Screams and grunts split through the kitchen. He gripped the leg of my pants and yanked me back toward him. I slid easily under him through the mess of blood, but I flipped over onto my stomach and scrambled through the slick wetness toward the door again.

A sharp pain pierced the skin just under my ankle. I cried out, but I didn’t stop crawling toward the safety of the double doors. Even when a deep, menacing growl sounded behind me.

Terror welled in my throat as my fingertips brushed the bottom of the doors. Then my whole body was yanked backward and flipped over with such force, it took several precious seconds to figure out what just happened. A great weight crushed the air from my lungs. Glowing green eyes met my stare. Strings of drool dripped onto my face.

Nesbit was no longer Nesbit. A scream ripped from my throat. I kicked and punched and clawed at his face, his hands, everywhere, but Nesbit’s only focus was tearing my clothes off. That feral growl heightened to a fevered pitch when I lay completely naked under him. Even the tape that had wrapped around my chest lay in bloodied tatters.

His weight prevented me from moving out from under him. I raked my nails across his face, gouged at his eyes, and kneed him between the legs. Nothing distracted him or made him stop.

Wherever that growl came from inside Nesbit, whatever it was, its sole purpose became vividly clear when his fingers crawled past the swell of my breasts, down my sides, to my hips to hold me in place while his erection nudged my thigh.

I screamed again, tearing my throat raw. This couldn’t be happening. I’d already lived a whole lifetime of turmoil and pain. As a child. Now, as an adult, I had to do it all again? No.

I lashed out with everything I had. My shrieks continued even as Nesbit prodded my legs open with his knees.

A great crash swept the double doors open.

“Let her go!” a raspy voice screamed.

A flash of silver, and then Nesbit no longer writhed on top of me. A gurney flung his body upward into the ceiling with a force that crumpled both the titanium above and the steel gurney.

An enormous transparent creature with lethal-looking claws on its four arms and two legs stood below him, snarling.

Tremors shocked through my body. I tried to shrink away, but my hands kept slipping on the floor.

Mase tore through the doors. One look at me, naked and screaming on the blood-soaked floor, triggered a strangled kind of gasp. He glanced up at the monstrous ghost, but looked past it to Nesbit’s limbs snaking out from over the gurney on the ceiling, and pure fury dawned all over his face.

“What did he do to you, Absidy?” he asked, his voice low and terrifying.

There were no words. Only safety underneath the table, away from Nesbit and that thing in here with us, and my stash of iron I rescued from my ripped pants. Heart smashing into my ribs, I threw it all into my mouth and slapped my hand over it to contain the precious iron and the shrill screams that kept scrambling over my tongue.

A pair of brown boots stood an arm-length away, topped with green pants, and farther up, a sagging head covered in bright red hair. She glared at the floor below Nesbit since her neck wouldn’t let her look anywhere else, her fingers curled into fists, her translucent body blocking the way between me and Nesbit.

Why hadn’t the ghosts attacked me? Why Nesbit?

The monster stepped toward the double doors, releasing the gurney, and Nesbit crashed to the floor. It drifted closer to the table, sensing, probing, because it must somehow know I was there, still trying to hide behind my iron. My naked skin went glacial as it drifted closer. Closer. Its giant gray-scaled feet stepped under the table with me. I didn’t dare breathe.

But then it floated past through the doors. I watched the spot it disappeared through so hard, I didn’t immediately feel the hand clinched around my wrist. I yelped and turned.

Nesbit lay on the floor beside the table, his grip around me tight. Mase reared back a fist that cracked on Nesbit’s jaw. Nesbit’s head snapped in my direction, the green gleam in his eyes flaring.

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Mase yelled and smashed his fist into his face again.

“It’s not dead yet. I can still smell it,” Nesbit growled. “Give it to me!”

A sharp whistle filled the kitchen. It ended abruptly when a trio of knives hit their marks—Nesbit’s arm. The blades sliced clean through flesh and bone. The slashes spurted upward and sprayed Mase in the face, who didn’t seem to notice anything except his own anger. The sound of severed bone sickened me, and I kicked at Nesbit’s amputated arm so I could wrench away.

“Abomination!” The female ghost’s rough voice echoed her fury through the kitchen. Then the double doors flew open with a bang and she vanished.

Mase hauled Nesbit up and threw him into the dining room. The sound of Mase’s rage faded into the hallway, leaving me alone in the sudden quiet, huddled underneath a table, terrified. A feeling that was all too familiar and growing old fast.

* * *

Captain Glenn clasped his hands in prayer during dinner while Nesbit’s screams echoed from somewhere on the ship. He’d been thrown into a room next to Daryl’s that locked from the outside. The captain had fashioned a tourniquet for Nesbit’s amputated arm to stop the bleeding, but Nesbit wouldn’t stop shrieking.

Mase cleared his throat. “Captain, maybe—”

“Yes. We’ll report what happened with Nesbit and Daryl, but not the rest. After we make the delivery,” Captain Glenn said without looking up. “We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”

He’d apologized profusely to me when he’d found out about Nesbit, and the guilt that weighed him down had aged him twenty years. The likable captain with a wide, easy grin had been replaced with a shell of a man.

But I didn’t know if I could trust him. Every time I bled, men went crazy. Except Mase, and I had no idea why. Would the captain attack me? He’d helped drag Daryl off me, but what if it was the initial well of blood that changed these men to violent attackers?

Time to find out because I was through with all of it. I held the knife at the ready under the table as I gathered enough courage to deal with the possible outcome. After a steadying breath, I sliced quick and deep under my glove and into my palm. I gasped at the burst of pain.

Mase’s sharp gaze shifted toward me then to the captain. His hands rested on the edge of the table, as if poised to ward off a potential enemy.

I stared hard at the plate of food I hadn’t touched, my muscles tense. Blood dripped from my hand to the floor, marking the seconds. Nesbit’s cries neither diminished nor multiplied. He must not be able to detect my blood from his quarters.

Captain Glenn looked up, his eyes red with fatigue, and sighed. “We’ll find out the cause of all this, James. And we’ll find Randolph, too.”

A small amount of relief spread through me. Mase’s shoulders relaxed. I had my answer, but it didn’t make me feel much better about the situation.

Later, I lay awake on my mattress listening to Nesbit’s shrieks while I shivered. I’d bandaged my hand in the kitchen since Mase’s attempt to bind my ankle had been sloppy, but gentle and full of concern.

Mase rustled his blankets to my right, and with a glance at Captain Glenn who’d fallen asleep at the gurney, crept toward me with one of them in tow.

“You’re cold,” he whispered, wrapping it around my thin one.

Yes, I was. Scared, too, and still in a state of shock.

Mase gently brushed his thumb over my cheeks to catch the stray tears, a pucker on his forehead drawing his eyebrows together.

“It’s what I do when I’m upset,” I reminded him.

“And then you’ll be fine,” he said with a nod. “Will you this time? Be fine?”

I cupped his hand in mine over my cheek. “I think so,” I whispered.

“If he’d…” His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. “Hurt you more than he already—”

“I’ll be okay,” I reassured him. At the moment, I wasn’t so sure, but Mase eased the fright just by being close, and that mattered more than anything. “But…just until I fall asleep, will you lay next to me? Please?”

With another glance at the captain, he slipped in underneath the blankets. I turned into him so that his familiar musky smell could wrap around me as tight as his arms. He held me close, his gaze searching my face, as if he thought cracks might appear and I might shatter. But the tears dried, and nothing but the spinning wheels inside my head remained.

I tried to sort it all out, but there was just too much to wade through. What did Nesbit, Daryl, and Vissle, the marketplace guy I’d accidentally killed, all have in common? What made them react the way they did to my blood? And maybe the most baffling question of all—why did the ghosts storm into the kitchen? To help me? If so, that was a first in a long line of nevers. What exactly haunted the Vicious, and what did it have to do with me and Ellison?

So many questions and I didn’t have a clue how to answer any of them. I gave up, for now, and memorized every sharp angle and curve of the face in front of me. Mase’s eyes had that lost, faraway look to them that probably matched the puzzlement in my own.

“We’ll see your sister’s ship tomorrow,” he whispered, his breath skimming my lips. “But try to sleep. I’ve got you.”

That he did. His hand brushed across my cheek to my back, pulling me closer, and I could feel his strength renewing my own with every gentle touch.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to sleep with Nesbit’s shrieking. But then he stopped mid-scream.