BENEATH; part 6
Slight change of plans. I had intended this to be the last part, but it looks like there will be just one more. I hit one of those pauses that sometimes jump up unexpectedly and say “Post Here”.
A quick word prior to this section: there’s something wrong with me. There is simply something wrong with my mind. I didn’t originally intend to do what I did in this part, but then Honorat made a comment about wanting to see certain parties get what was coming to them, and my imagination went off down its “What’s the Most Appalling Thing I Can Come Up With” path, and I always figure that when I’ve horrified myself I’ve found the right note. And here we are. Don’t read this while you’re eating pizza. Also, there’s swearing, but I reckon you all know that by now.
Jack and Bill aren’t mine. The crew of the Northern Beacon is. Though right about now they’re probably wishing otherwise.
virgo79
The rags he’d lit were burning out, and Jack hadn’t tried to light any more, because he’d have to put the knife down to do it.
He wasn’t putting the knife down.
Her eyes were on him as the last of the meager firelight guttered, her scythe-tipped fingers twined through the crossbars.
Jack flexed his own cramping fingers, one hand at a time, only willing to loosen half the hold he had on his weapon, and glared up at her, sinking his teeth into his lower lip viciously when he felt it threaten to tremble. He was struck with the sudden urge to spit in that horrid, hungry face, but his mouth was sand-dry.
“Ugly bitch,” he croaked out instead.
Then the last of the cloth smoldered, and the dark swallowed him up, leaving him only the spent odor of smoke and the rasp of scales on wood.
………………………….
As he descended through the Beacon, Downey at his back, Bill struggled to ignore the feeling that he was plunging into dark water he couldn’t judge the depth of. It was a strangling feeling, a fear that would be debilitating if it was given too much rein, because come shoal or open water, Bill had no choice but to dive.
“Bootstrap, I think some o’the other men ought to follow us down,” Downey was pressing. “Even if you don’t want to wait for ‘em.”
“No,” Bill curtailed, flatly.
“Why the hell not?”
“’Cause I’m not going to pack us in like a picnic in a basket for this thing to rip through while we’re trippin’ over each other,” Bill shot back. “Those poor bastards on that boat had numbers, and it didn’t do ‘em a lick of good.” He hooked his lantern over his forearm as he made the treacherous climb down to the orlop deck. “We either kill it down here, or we make damn sure that by the time it gets past us, we’ve done enough damage it won’t be much good in a tangle once it gets up to the rest of the lads.”
“Aren’t we sure of ourselves?” Downey snorted as he climbed down after Bill. “You did get a look at those fishermen, Bootstrap? What makes you think either one of us will be doin’ any damage to this monster o’ yours?”
Bill turned a slow circle, throwing lantern light around the low-ceilinged space, and stopped, eyes narrowing against the shadows, to peer at something. He made his way over to the object and knelt down, picking it up. “Last I checked, Harry,” he said coldly, swiping one thumb through the red droplets splattered across the flask he recognized as Parks’, “neither one of us was a fisherman.” He rose, putting the flask in a coat pocket. “If we can’t draw a little blood between the two of us, Yearwood’s payin’ us too much.” He moved forward, eyeing the hatch.
“Funny you should mention that,” Downey groused, following. “I was just thinkin’ that if this bloody job’s goin’ to include shit like this, I want a bigger cut of the profits.”
Bill knelt, braced against the ship’s pitching, and gestured to Downey to do the same. “Get your light down here,” he ordered quietly, and they both lowered their lanterns just below the lip of the hatch.
“We s’posed to whistle for ‘er now, or wha--” Downey broke off, squinting, and leaned over more. Bill sucked his breath in.
“That’s blood,” Downey said. “That’s a lot of soddin’ blood.”
“Christ. Move. Move!” Bill growled, shoving Downey’s lantern back.
“Bootstrap, you can’t just--”
But Bill was already lowering himself down.
…………………….
Others were coming.
The sound of movement and voices drew her attention away from the young one, who had, for the most part, ceased to stir. She turned, and saw new light spilling down into her keep.
She dropped to her belly and crawled into one of the narrow crevices between the great heaps of hoarded, scentless possessions, abandoning her perch outside the young one’s refuge, and moved through the damp darkness. She propelled herself slowly and almost soundlessly, the faint scratch of her scales beneath her masked by the drumming of the sea outside, making her way back towards the place where she’d climbed up, ventured out, and found prey waiting with its back turned. When she was within sight of the high opening to the world above and perhaps twice her own length out of striking distance from the bloody ground beneath it, she went still, watching.
Two of them came down, large and slow-moving, bringing the scent of surf and storm with them. They had been speaking to each other before, but now they were quiet, kneeling in the blood she’d spilled. Their fear spiced the air, sharp and acidic, and the muscles of her tail and her arms coiled in preparation for a forward rush, her mouth watering.
Then the one that had come first raised its head, peering into the surrounding shadows, and she drew up short, hesitating, her lips twitching back from her teeth in agitation. The weak light gleamed along the dull silver surface of the thing it held in one hand, and though she had encountered such objects before and understood something of the concept of weapons, it was not the object, but the purpose and movement of the body behind it that gave pause to her attack. This one moved differently, and there was something about its eyes, as they searched her lair, that she hadn’t seen in its kind before.
This one didn’t smell like food.
…………………………..
The first thing Jack realized, as his mind made a small space for thought in the middle of numb terror, was that he could suddenly see the dark crisscross of the brig bars between him and the rest of the hold.
There was light in the belly of the Beacon.
The realization came several heartbeats before comprehension of what it meant, and even as he watched the shadows at the other end of the hold leap and shift as that light moved, he didn’t stir from his small, cramped, knife-wielding ball until he heard his name for the second time, and understood the first hadn’t been in his imagination.
Jack lifted his head, held his breath, and willed the sea’s latest barrage on the hull to end.
“Jack, answer me this bloody second!”
He almost dropped the dagger, queasy with relief, and then, immediately, with a new fear: Bill was out there with her.
“Bill, she’s here!” Jack shouted, shoving himself off the bulkhead. “Don’t come any further, she’s here by--”
And then he went dumb, staring through those brig bars he could now see clearly, at the empty space just beyond them.
The mermaid wasn’t there.
He launched himself at the bars hard enough to make the door rattle. “Bill, watch for her! She’s coming!”
…………………………
When Jack shouted back to him, Bill drew the first full breath he’d had since laying eyes on the frightful mess on the planking of the hold, whirling in the direction of the boy’s voice.
“Brig,” Downey supplied, with a jerk of his head, and Bill nodded, falling into step behind him. The sea exploded around them deafeningly, and when the roar faded, Jack’s voice was screaming a warning.
Without even a missed step, Bill spun, putting his back to Downey, moving in reverse along the path Downey found for them through the cargo, his eyes and his blade both sweeping the dark that yawned in their wake.
Downey set their pace, slow enough that the gap between their backs stayed small, slow enough that he would have a chance to see something moving to intercept them as they approached without tripping over it, but steady, never stopping, never holding them halted in one spot.
All the while, Bill covered the darkness behind them with a sharp blade and sharper eyes, wanting with all his heart to shove past Downey and run towards Jack’s voice, which had, admittedly, sounded too strong to let Bill believe any of the blood pooled beneath the ladder from the orlop was the boy’s.
In the quiet pauses between the hammering of waves on the hull, Bill strained his ears for any sound that wasn’t the creak of the Beacon’s timbers, or their own deliberate footfalls.
“Bill, do you see her?” Jack’s tense cry came just as the waves died back.
“Quiet, Jack!” Bill barked quickly, cursing the loss of even those few seconds of silence. She wouldn’t make much noise as she came, he was certain.
Step by step, they made their way to the brig, and when Bill felt Downey stop behind him, he risked a look back towards Jack, who was white-faced, but on his feet.
“God damned door’s locked,” Downey growled, grabbing at his belt for his keys. “Hold on.”
Bill moved from his place immediately behind Downey, stepping back until he came up against the bars. “Jack, are you hurt?” he asked, quietly.
“Not really. Just a - a scratch.”
Bill bit the inside of his cheek, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Downey,” he growled urgently.
“Got it,” the other man announced, a key clicking sweetly in the lock, and Bill was sliding sideways, stepping back into the open brig.
“Keep on that door!” Bill ordered as he sheathed his weapon, whirling at last to face Jack. “Mother of God,” he breathed, grabbing the younger man by the shoulders, stricken as he took his first good look at him.
“It’s not mine,” Jack said, in what was probably intended to be a reassuring tone. “I fell. Off the ladder.” He swallowed hard. “She killed Parks.”
“I know.”
“I think she killed Hennesee, too.”
“I know, lad.”
Jack’s arms felt cold through the long sleeves of his shirt, which had never fully dried after its turn in the storm earlier, and was now damp with more than rain, anyway. Bill chaffed his hands briskly up and down the younger man’s arms, knowing all too keenly that sodden clothing and the temperature in the brig were only part of the source of Jack’s chills.
“Jack, look at me.” The boy’s gaze was unfocused, drifting to some spot just past Bill’s shoulder, and Bill took hold of Jack’s jaw in one hand, giving the gentlest of squeezes, the slightest of shakes. “Jack.” Jack’s eyes came back to Bill’s, but they were dim, unanchored. Bill tightened his hold, his thumb and fingers pressing into Jack’s cheeks with just enough force to draw a startled flinch. “Look at me,” Bill repeated, letting an edge creep into the words that he knew from experience would bring either obedience or rebellion. Either one would do.
Those brown eyes cleared, lit enough that Bill knew Jack was listening.
“You’re going to show me where you’re hurt,” he said calmly, “and then we’re going to get the hell out of here, all right?” Bill waited until Jack responded with a nod to let him go.
“It’s just a scratch,” Jack echoed. “Back of my right leg. She tried to grab me there.”
“Turn around,” Bill instructed as he crouched down, managing to keep his voice steady in light of the realization that the creature had been close enough to Jack to touch him. He moved the lantern closer and caught his breath, carefully slipping his fingers into one of the two bloodied, tattered tears in the calf of Jack’s breeches, parting the material enough to see the flesh underneath.
It wasn’t bad. Jack was right; the two wounds were little more than scratches, and were already clotting. The leather of his boot had kept the mermaid’s claws from inflicting anything worse, but despite the superficiality of the injury, Bill’s stomach turned over.
She hadn’t grabbed him. She’d tried to hamstring him, and she’d missed. If Jack had been even a step slower…if she’d had inches more ground oh him when she struck…
Bill shook off the thought and cut a thick strip from one end of the faded blue sash at his waist. “Pull your foot out of your boot a bit for me,” he said, folding the soft, weathered fabric over on itself once before wrapping it around Jack’s leg. Jack winced as Bill tied it off, and hissed softly as he pushed his foot back down into his boot afterwards, but the sting of the action seemed at least to have made him a little more alert.
“Downey, how are we lookin’ out there?” Bill asked as he stood up, clasping one hand on Jack’s shoulder and leaving it there.
“We’re lookin’ dark and full of a lot o’shit that’s goin’ to get in our bloody way,” the other man replied.
“Anything moving?” Bill stepped up to the bars, his hand going to the hilt of the machete in his belt as he searched the shadows. Behind them, Jack knelt quickly to retrieve his second dagger, shaking the charred remains of his torch off of it, and came to hover at Bill’s elbow.
“Doesn’t appear to be,” Downey replied, still crouched with his sword at his side, point to the floor, and his weight against the brig door, held open a mere crack by his pistol barrel. He could have a shot off and yank the gun free in seconds if need arose to close the door hastily. His sword he’d drawn early, and left unsheathed.
Bill stroked his thumb over the machete’s hilt, lightly. The sea outside surged, and receded, and in the lapses of its fury the hold was still.
“Maybe she went back to her supper,” Downey suggested. His gun barrel didn’t so much as twitch as he spoke.
“No,” Jack said softly, shaking his head. “If she was eating you’d hear her.”
That turned both Bill and Downey to give him long looks. “Christ,” Downey muttered, as Bill reached out and brushed Jack’s ever-quarrelsome hair back from his eyes. “So if she ain’t eating, maybe she ain’t hungry. Maybe we just walk our asses out of here.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Meanin’ no disrespect to the dead, maybe she had her fill with Hen and Parks.”
The machete’s hilt was warming under Bill’s touch, the tiny irregularities in the leather becoming familiar to the pads of his fingers. He gave the heavy blade a gentle pull, testing the resistance as it came free of its sheath, then pushed it home again. “That’s a few too many maybe’s, Harry.”
“I’m thinkin’ optimistically.”
“And I’m thinkin’ that she stayed on the Charybdis and tore up every last man aboard instead of divin’ back to the drink first chance she got,” Bill said, surveying the black space stretching between the brig and the orlop ladder. “Went after Jack when she had two kills waitin’ for her.” He shook his head. “I don’t like the odds on maybe.”
Downey’s breath huffed out in a drawn-out exhalation between rounded lips. “Always got to be a bleedin’ disagreeable bastard, don’t ye, Turner?” he shot, and hoisted his sword to his side.
“All right,” Bill breathed. “Here’s how we do this. I want you two to stay put while I cross back.” He saw the order blanch the color from Jack’s face, and he hurried on as the younger man started to shake his head. “You two stay here until I get to the ladder, and then you come. She can’t be in two places at once, and she’s a lot more likely to move on one person.”
“No, Bill. No.”
“If she moves on me, we’ll know where she’s at. Downey.”
“Aye?”
“You get him across quick once I give the word.”
“Bill, no!” Panic threatened, tightening Jack until he nearly vibrated with it, and Bill took him once more by the shoulders.
“Jack, you need to listen to me now, all right? You need to do what I tell you.”
“I’m going with you.”
“You and Downey are comin’ right after me. You’re going to wait just a minute, all right? Just a minute.”
“No. No.” There were cracks spreading, pieces threatening to splinter off. Bill could hear it in Jack’s voice, feel it in the rigidity of the boy’s arms, and it made his heart bob sickeningly in his chest.
“Jack, I’m going to be all right. You need to trust me, you hear? I’ll be all right. And the two of you will come right after. I just want you to wait a minute. Just a minute, to be safe.” Jack shook his head wildly, his eyes over-bright, and when his hand swiped at the tickle of sweat-sticky hair on his brow, it left behind the dark smear of someone else’s blood.
“No, Bill, I’m not staying in here.”
“Just calm down and listen, Jack--”
“No, you listen!” Jack ignited suddenly, shoving hard at Bill’s chest with one hand and wrenching loose from the older man’s grip. “I’m not staying in here anymore!” Terror heaved up, and Jack’s long-strained control buckled and broke, but there was anger now, too, finding its way through those widening cracks.
Breastbone smarting, Bill remembered the blood-flavored air and choking silence they had found on the Charybdis. How long would it take for the hours to lose their meaning, to bleed one into another into another until days went sliding by, dragging at your mind as they went, trying to pull it loose from its moorings? How long could you hide before a haven became hell?
“I’m not staying,” Jack repeated. “I’m not, Bill.” He didn’t flinch away when Bill’s hands came up to the sides of his face, but the touch didn’t stop him shaking his head defiantly. “I’m going with you.”
“All right,” Bill surrendered, shame quieting any further arguments he might have made, thumbs stroking over the boy’s cheeks. “All right. You don’t have to stay. I’m sorry, lad. I’m sorry.” He tugged his shirt cuff half over his palm and wiped at the blood-smear on Jack’s forehead. “I’m not goin’ to make you stay in here anymore. We’ll go together, aye? We’ll go together.”
It was a hell of a thing to take comfort in, heading unhindered into darkness that wanted your blood, but as Bill curled his hand gently around the back of Jack’s neck he felt the younger man uncoil. Not all the way; fear was still thick in the brig with them, and Jack made no move to step away from that touch, the same one that had been waiting at the waking end of all his nightmares. But enough to let his breath come slower. Enough for him to draw his knives with hands that didn’t shake.
Bill smiled grimly and released him then, liberating the machete with one hand and his pistol with the other. “Jack, behind me,” he ordered. “Right behind me, you hear?”
Jack nodded rapidly, already looking past Bill, past the bars of the brig, into the void of the hold.
“Downey, you’re watchin’ our arses, mate.”
“Gladly,” Downey replied, rising with a spring that belied his bulk. “Let’s just get the soddin’ hell out of here.” He kicked the door open and stepped aside to let Bill and Jack through. “After you, lads.”
……………………………
They were coming back towards her now, and she twitched, claws digging furrows in the wood she lay on, her body quivering; caught between the overwhelming urge to rush, to follow her jaws where they wanted to take her, and an unfamiliar sensation that held her back, tangled her as infuriatingly as any net.
It had been a long time since she’d feared anything. It was a feeling that returned slowly, burning and insistent as restored circulation, and it maddened her; too strong to be shaken off, but not enough to overcome the throb and the thirst deep inside her.
Every step of their approach drummed on the planking, up through her belly, and the scent of blood was thick enough now that she had only to open her mouth and suck it in on the air. She shuddered with want, and watched the three move closer, her mouth twisting in a silent snarl at the one that led them, the one that confused her, that wore the skin of prey but not the eyes.
Cocooned in shadows, she watched them come, her every muscle tight and death-ready.
……………………………..
He had to give conscious effort to each step, to force his legs through their motions, and his palms were sweating so badly he was sure his knives were going to slip like fish from his grip any second. In front of him, Bill moved slowly by necessity, and with every other breath, Jack reminded himself that the torturous pace was safer and smarter than running, no matter how wildly his mind screamed otherwise.
There no longer seemed to be enough room in his chest for both his heart to beat and his lungs to expand, and he let in the thought that one or the other might give way before they made it all the way across the hold.
Not that there weren’t worse ways to go.
“Still with me, Jack?” Bill spared little volume for the words, too aware of the precious seconds a stray sound might buy them, but the hushed question carried as far as it needed to.
“Aye.”
Their lanterns, secured to their belts to leave all hands free, swayed as they walked, so that the light cast through the hold was never still. Neither were the shadows - with every move they made and every pitch of the Beacon in the storm, the labyrinth the space had become shifted and spun before their eyes, light and dark crawling over each other, creating the illusion of movement where there was none.
And all the while hung the knowledge that those pale eyes watched them. Jack’s skin itched and shivered with it.
Halfway across, and then a little more. He could see the ladder to the hatch now, a sanctuary and a taunt all at once. Parks’ blood glistened on the rungs in the approaching light, and Jack looked away, locked his eyes on the back of Bill’s shirt and kept them there.
Parks was already up the ladder when she killed him. The thought struck abruptly, and turned his guts cold. She’ll be able to follow us.
They couldn’t climb and fight at the same time. They wouldn’t be able to watch for her on the way up. And no matter how swiftly they went, someone would be the last one up.
What if that’s what she’s waiting for? “Bill--”
“Hush!” They were almost there; close now to-
-- the place Parks’ body would still be lying, torn and twisted-
-- their way out, and still the path remained clear. It wasn’t a comfort; she was fast enough, Jack knew, to be upon them easily anywhere in this last distance between where they were and where they needed to be. The paces separating them from safety dwindled, and Jack searched the flanking shadows at knee-height, waiting for some mass of them to animate and lunge.
He didn’t realize Bill had stopped until he collided with the man’s broad back, and he couldn’t stifle a cry of surprise. This time, though, the sound brought no reprimand; Bill was utterly still, riveted on something off to their left, and Jack had no chance to see what it was before he and Downey were being ordered on.
“Go, both of you, now, now, now!” Bill barked, and then Jack felt Downey’s hand clamp hard on his arm and propel him towards the ladder, even as he tried to twist back and see what Bill saw, what he was leveling his gun at.
“No, Harry, we can’t just--”
“Get your ass up that ladder, boy!” Downey snapped, giving Jack one last push forward, but then his grip on Jack’s arm was gone, and he was turning his back, raising his sword.
Jack hadn’t managed to get his feet under him enough to stop his momentum when another body suddenly stepped into his path and caught hold of him, roughly enough to momentarily snag his breath in his throat.
Ned Rudolphs glared furiously, drunkenly down at him. “Where you in such a hurry to get to, Sparrow?” he snarled, before shoving Jack hard back into the hold.
……………………………
It was her eyes, reflecting back the light of the lanterns as she raised her head, that had betrayed her, and Bill had his gun aimed at the spot just between them.
Rudy’s voice wasn’t enough of a distraction to sway his focus, but Jack’s stumbling weight hit him in the same second he took his shot, and those gleaming eyes disappeared as the corner of the crate above them exploded in splinters.
“Shit! No!” Bill raged, horrified, as he righted both Jack and himself.
“Where’d she go?” Downey demanded frantically, backed against the ladder. “Bootstrap, where the hell did she go?”
“Rudy, turn around and get your pissed arse out of here!” Bill growled, putting Jack behind his right shoulder and backing away from the place he’d just fired at.
“You cost me my berth, Turner,” Rudolphs slurred, advancing on them. “You and that fuckin’ brat.”
“Rudolphs, we need to get out of this hold.” Bill said tightly. “Now I can go behind you, or I can go through you, but believe me when I tell you I’m goin’.”
“Dammit, Bootstrap, where is she?”
“Nobody’s goin’ no place ‘til we get few things settled, right? We got a few things to settle!”
“Bill…”
Bill whirled on Rudolphs, keeping Jack at the lee of his back. “Rudy, get the fuck out of the way!”
The movement, when it came, was swift. Downey lurched sideways with a yelp of pain and fright, his cutlass lashing out as he fell. “Downey!” Jack cried, and Bill was moving them backwards almost before the shout escaped, but it took Rudolphs a few seconds longer to react to the shape that was rising up behind him.
Slowed by alcohol, incomprehension, or a combination of both, Rudolphs swayed as he turned, feeling the brush of another body against his, as the mermaid slithered up to come face-to-face with him, kiss-close, near enough that he could smell the blood on her breath.
His mouth worked without sound as he stared down the few inches into her white-green corpse eyes. She sniffed at his face, at his throat, dark lips parting, unsheathing stained rows of serrated teeth.
Bill slid his discharged pistol back into his belt and brought both hands to the machete’s hilt, urging Jack further backwards. He had no way to reach her from this angle; Rudolphs was in between them. He could hear Downey’s groaned cursing, but the other man had pulled himself out of sight.
Rudolph’s mouth opened wider, and a croak found its way out. Others joined it, haltingly, and then the croaks attempted to become words.
“Oh…oh, Jesus…oh Jesus…oh God…”
The mermaid pressed closer to him, a hiss bubbling up out of her throat, and the end of her long, dark-scaled tail rippled up off the deck between Rudy’s feet, moving up the back of his leg.
“Oh God. Oh God.” The words were gaining speed and losing volume.
Jack’s fingers clutched the back of Bill’s shirt without letting go of the knives.
Her tail wound its way up, coil to thigh, and higher, until all the serpentine length of it lay in a hideous caress against the back of Rudy’s body, and Rudy’s words gave way to uncontrolled wheezing.
Then the fan of her fins folded in on itself, closing like the petals of a flower, and brought a quiver of barbs to hover at the small of Rudy’s back, at the base of his spine.
She seemed to pulse, barely moving at all, and then Rudy was screaming, shrieking as his legs collapsed nervelessly beneath him, spilling him in a limp heap to the deck. She followed him down, crawling up the length of his body as he tried to drag himself away. He raised his hands in front of his face, trying to hold her off, and she swatted one aside, pinioned to the planking with two of her talons through the palm, catching the other between her teeth.
Bill yanked Jack against him, holding Jack’s face almost forcibly into his chest as the boy started to keen and the mermaid started to thrash, with the rending violence of a shark, whipping her head and shoulders side to side, shaking the screaming man beneath her like a doll. Bill buried his fingers in Jack’s hair and propelled the two of them sideways, between rows of cargo, his hand convulsing on the hilt of the machete when the thrashing ended and Rudolphs’ arm flopped to the deck, the mermaid pushing herself up, spine bowed and head flung back, her throat working ravenously. The sounds coming out of Rudolphs had transcended screams, become something else entirely, making the very air of the hold vibrate, and he was still making them when her mouth closed over his.
TBC
A quick word prior to this section: there’s something wrong with me. There is simply something wrong with my mind. I didn’t originally intend to do what I did in this part, but then Honorat made a comment about wanting to see certain parties get what was coming to them, and my imagination went off down its “What’s the Most Appalling Thing I Can Come Up With” path, and I always figure that when I’ve horrified myself I’ve found the right note. And here we are. Don’t read this while you’re eating pizza. Also, there’s swearing, but I reckon you all know that by now.
Jack and Bill aren’t mine. The crew of the Northern Beacon is. Though right about now they’re probably wishing otherwise.
virgo79
The rags he’d lit were burning out, and Jack hadn’t tried to light any more, because he’d have to put the knife down to do it.
He wasn’t putting the knife down.
Her eyes were on him as the last of the meager firelight guttered, her scythe-tipped fingers twined through the crossbars.
Jack flexed his own cramping fingers, one hand at a time, only willing to loosen half the hold he had on his weapon, and glared up at her, sinking his teeth into his lower lip viciously when he felt it threaten to tremble. He was struck with the sudden urge to spit in that horrid, hungry face, but his mouth was sand-dry.
“Ugly bitch,” he croaked out instead.
Then the last of the cloth smoldered, and the dark swallowed him up, leaving him only the spent odor of smoke and the rasp of scales on wood.
………………………….
As he descended through the Beacon, Downey at his back, Bill struggled to ignore the feeling that he was plunging into dark water he couldn’t judge the depth of. It was a strangling feeling, a fear that would be debilitating if it was given too much rein, because come shoal or open water, Bill had no choice but to dive.
“Bootstrap, I think some o’the other men ought to follow us down,” Downey was pressing. “Even if you don’t want to wait for ‘em.”
“No,” Bill curtailed, flatly.
“Why the hell not?”
“’Cause I’m not going to pack us in like a picnic in a basket for this thing to rip through while we’re trippin’ over each other,” Bill shot back. “Those poor bastards on that boat had numbers, and it didn’t do ‘em a lick of good.” He hooked his lantern over his forearm as he made the treacherous climb down to the orlop deck. “We either kill it down here, or we make damn sure that by the time it gets past us, we’ve done enough damage it won’t be much good in a tangle once it gets up to the rest of the lads.”
“Aren’t we sure of ourselves?” Downey snorted as he climbed down after Bill. “You did get a look at those fishermen, Bootstrap? What makes you think either one of us will be doin’ any damage to this monster o’ yours?”
Bill turned a slow circle, throwing lantern light around the low-ceilinged space, and stopped, eyes narrowing against the shadows, to peer at something. He made his way over to the object and knelt down, picking it up. “Last I checked, Harry,” he said coldly, swiping one thumb through the red droplets splattered across the flask he recognized as Parks’, “neither one of us was a fisherman.” He rose, putting the flask in a coat pocket. “If we can’t draw a little blood between the two of us, Yearwood’s payin’ us too much.” He moved forward, eyeing the hatch.
“Funny you should mention that,” Downey groused, following. “I was just thinkin’ that if this bloody job’s goin’ to include shit like this, I want a bigger cut of the profits.”
Bill knelt, braced against the ship’s pitching, and gestured to Downey to do the same. “Get your light down here,” he ordered quietly, and they both lowered their lanterns just below the lip of the hatch.
“We s’posed to whistle for ‘er now, or wha--” Downey broke off, squinting, and leaned over more. Bill sucked his breath in.
“That’s blood,” Downey said. “That’s a lot of soddin’ blood.”
“Christ. Move. Move!” Bill growled, shoving Downey’s lantern back.
“Bootstrap, you can’t just--”
But Bill was already lowering himself down.
…………………….
Others were coming.
The sound of movement and voices drew her attention away from the young one, who had, for the most part, ceased to stir. She turned, and saw new light spilling down into her keep.
She dropped to her belly and crawled into one of the narrow crevices between the great heaps of hoarded, scentless possessions, abandoning her perch outside the young one’s refuge, and moved through the damp darkness. She propelled herself slowly and almost soundlessly, the faint scratch of her scales beneath her masked by the drumming of the sea outside, making her way back towards the place where she’d climbed up, ventured out, and found prey waiting with its back turned. When she was within sight of the high opening to the world above and perhaps twice her own length out of striking distance from the bloody ground beneath it, she went still, watching.
Two of them came down, large and slow-moving, bringing the scent of surf and storm with them. They had been speaking to each other before, but now they were quiet, kneeling in the blood she’d spilled. Their fear spiced the air, sharp and acidic, and the muscles of her tail and her arms coiled in preparation for a forward rush, her mouth watering.
Then the one that had come first raised its head, peering into the surrounding shadows, and she drew up short, hesitating, her lips twitching back from her teeth in agitation. The weak light gleamed along the dull silver surface of the thing it held in one hand, and though she had encountered such objects before and understood something of the concept of weapons, it was not the object, but the purpose and movement of the body behind it that gave pause to her attack. This one moved differently, and there was something about its eyes, as they searched her lair, that she hadn’t seen in its kind before.
This one didn’t smell like food.
…………………………..
The first thing Jack realized, as his mind made a small space for thought in the middle of numb terror, was that he could suddenly see the dark crisscross of the brig bars between him and the rest of the hold.
There was light in the belly of the Beacon.
The realization came several heartbeats before comprehension of what it meant, and even as he watched the shadows at the other end of the hold leap and shift as that light moved, he didn’t stir from his small, cramped, knife-wielding ball until he heard his name for the second time, and understood the first hadn’t been in his imagination.
Jack lifted his head, held his breath, and willed the sea’s latest barrage on the hull to end.
“Jack, answer me this bloody second!”
He almost dropped the dagger, queasy with relief, and then, immediately, with a new fear: Bill was out there with her.
“Bill, she’s here!” Jack shouted, shoving himself off the bulkhead. “Don’t come any further, she’s here by--”
And then he went dumb, staring through those brig bars he could now see clearly, at the empty space just beyond them.
The mermaid wasn’t there.
He launched himself at the bars hard enough to make the door rattle. “Bill, watch for her! She’s coming!”
…………………………
When Jack shouted back to him, Bill drew the first full breath he’d had since laying eyes on the frightful mess on the planking of the hold, whirling in the direction of the boy’s voice.
“Brig,” Downey supplied, with a jerk of his head, and Bill nodded, falling into step behind him. The sea exploded around them deafeningly, and when the roar faded, Jack’s voice was screaming a warning.
Without even a missed step, Bill spun, putting his back to Downey, moving in reverse along the path Downey found for them through the cargo, his eyes and his blade both sweeping the dark that yawned in their wake.
Downey set their pace, slow enough that the gap between their backs stayed small, slow enough that he would have a chance to see something moving to intercept them as they approached without tripping over it, but steady, never stopping, never holding them halted in one spot.
All the while, Bill covered the darkness behind them with a sharp blade and sharper eyes, wanting with all his heart to shove past Downey and run towards Jack’s voice, which had, admittedly, sounded too strong to let Bill believe any of the blood pooled beneath the ladder from the orlop was the boy’s.
In the quiet pauses between the hammering of waves on the hull, Bill strained his ears for any sound that wasn’t the creak of the Beacon’s timbers, or their own deliberate footfalls.
“Bill, do you see her?” Jack’s tense cry came just as the waves died back.
“Quiet, Jack!” Bill barked quickly, cursing the loss of even those few seconds of silence. She wouldn’t make much noise as she came, he was certain.
Step by step, they made their way to the brig, and when Bill felt Downey stop behind him, he risked a look back towards Jack, who was white-faced, but on his feet.
“God damned door’s locked,” Downey growled, grabbing at his belt for his keys. “Hold on.”
Bill moved from his place immediately behind Downey, stepping back until he came up against the bars. “Jack, are you hurt?” he asked, quietly.
“Not really. Just a - a scratch.”
Bill bit the inside of his cheek, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Downey,” he growled urgently.
“Got it,” the other man announced, a key clicking sweetly in the lock, and Bill was sliding sideways, stepping back into the open brig.
“Keep on that door!” Bill ordered as he sheathed his weapon, whirling at last to face Jack. “Mother of God,” he breathed, grabbing the younger man by the shoulders, stricken as he took his first good look at him.
“It’s not mine,” Jack said, in what was probably intended to be a reassuring tone. “I fell. Off the ladder.” He swallowed hard. “She killed Parks.”
“I know.”
“I think she killed Hennesee, too.”
“I know, lad.”
Jack’s arms felt cold through the long sleeves of his shirt, which had never fully dried after its turn in the storm earlier, and was now damp with more than rain, anyway. Bill chaffed his hands briskly up and down the younger man’s arms, knowing all too keenly that sodden clothing and the temperature in the brig were only part of the source of Jack’s chills.
“Jack, look at me.” The boy’s gaze was unfocused, drifting to some spot just past Bill’s shoulder, and Bill took hold of Jack’s jaw in one hand, giving the gentlest of squeezes, the slightest of shakes. “Jack.” Jack’s eyes came back to Bill’s, but they were dim, unanchored. Bill tightened his hold, his thumb and fingers pressing into Jack’s cheeks with just enough force to draw a startled flinch. “Look at me,” Bill repeated, letting an edge creep into the words that he knew from experience would bring either obedience or rebellion. Either one would do.
Those brown eyes cleared, lit enough that Bill knew Jack was listening.
“You’re going to show me where you’re hurt,” he said calmly, “and then we’re going to get the hell out of here, all right?” Bill waited until Jack responded with a nod to let him go.
“It’s just a scratch,” Jack echoed. “Back of my right leg. She tried to grab me there.”
“Turn around,” Bill instructed as he crouched down, managing to keep his voice steady in light of the realization that the creature had been close enough to Jack to touch him. He moved the lantern closer and caught his breath, carefully slipping his fingers into one of the two bloodied, tattered tears in the calf of Jack’s breeches, parting the material enough to see the flesh underneath.
It wasn’t bad. Jack was right; the two wounds were little more than scratches, and were already clotting. The leather of his boot had kept the mermaid’s claws from inflicting anything worse, but despite the superficiality of the injury, Bill’s stomach turned over.
She hadn’t grabbed him. She’d tried to hamstring him, and she’d missed. If Jack had been even a step slower…if she’d had inches more ground oh him when she struck…
Bill shook off the thought and cut a thick strip from one end of the faded blue sash at his waist. “Pull your foot out of your boot a bit for me,” he said, folding the soft, weathered fabric over on itself once before wrapping it around Jack’s leg. Jack winced as Bill tied it off, and hissed softly as he pushed his foot back down into his boot afterwards, but the sting of the action seemed at least to have made him a little more alert.
“Downey, how are we lookin’ out there?” Bill asked as he stood up, clasping one hand on Jack’s shoulder and leaving it there.
“We’re lookin’ dark and full of a lot o’shit that’s goin’ to get in our bloody way,” the other man replied.
“Anything moving?” Bill stepped up to the bars, his hand going to the hilt of the machete in his belt as he searched the shadows. Behind them, Jack knelt quickly to retrieve his second dagger, shaking the charred remains of his torch off of it, and came to hover at Bill’s elbow.
“Doesn’t appear to be,” Downey replied, still crouched with his sword at his side, point to the floor, and his weight against the brig door, held open a mere crack by his pistol barrel. He could have a shot off and yank the gun free in seconds if need arose to close the door hastily. His sword he’d drawn early, and left unsheathed.
Bill stroked his thumb over the machete’s hilt, lightly. The sea outside surged, and receded, and in the lapses of its fury the hold was still.
“Maybe she went back to her supper,” Downey suggested. His gun barrel didn’t so much as twitch as he spoke.
“No,” Jack said softly, shaking his head. “If she was eating you’d hear her.”
That turned both Bill and Downey to give him long looks. “Christ,” Downey muttered, as Bill reached out and brushed Jack’s ever-quarrelsome hair back from his eyes. “So if she ain’t eating, maybe she ain’t hungry. Maybe we just walk our asses out of here.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Meanin’ no disrespect to the dead, maybe she had her fill with Hen and Parks.”
The machete’s hilt was warming under Bill’s touch, the tiny irregularities in the leather becoming familiar to the pads of his fingers. He gave the heavy blade a gentle pull, testing the resistance as it came free of its sheath, then pushed it home again. “That’s a few too many maybe’s, Harry.”
“I’m thinkin’ optimistically.”
“And I’m thinkin’ that she stayed on the Charybdis and tore up every last man aboard instead of divin’ back to the drink first chance she got,” Bill said, surveying the black space stretching between the brig and the orlop ladder. “Went after Jack when she had two kills waitin’ for her.” He shook his head. “I don’t like the odds on maybe.”
Downey’s breath huffed out in a drawn-out exhalation between rounded lips. “Always got to be a bleedin’ disagreeable bastard, don’t ye, Turner?” he shot, and hoisted his sword to his side.
“All right,” Bill breathed. “Here’s how we do this. I want you two to stay put while I cross back.” He saw the order blanch the color from Jack’s face, and he hurried on as the younger man started to shake his head. “You two stay here until I get to the ladder, and then you come. She can’t be in two places at once, and she’s a lot more likely to move on one person.”
“No, Bill. No.”
“If she moves on me, we’ll know where she’s at. Downey.”
“Aye?”
“You get him across quick once I give the word.”
“Bill, no!” Panic threatened, tightening Jack until he nearly vibrated with it, and Bill took him once more by the shoulders.
“Jack, you need to listen to me now, all right? You need to do what I tell you.”
“I’m going with you.”
“You and Downey are comin’ right after me. You’re going to wait just a minute, all right? Just a minute.”
“No. No.” There were cracks spreading, pieces threatening to splinter off. Bill could hear it in Jack’s voice, feel it in the rigidity of the boy’s arms, and it made his heart bob sickeningly in his chest.
“Jack, I’m going to be all right. You need to trust me, you hear? I’ll be all right. And the two of you will come right after. I just want you to wait a minute. Just a minute, to be safe.” Jack shook his head wildly, his eyes over-bright, and when his hand swiped at the tickle of sweat-sticky hair on his brow, it left behind the dark smear of someone else’s blood.
“No, Bill, I’m not staying in here.”
“Just calm down and listen, Jack--”
“No, you listen!” Jack ignited suddenly, shoving hard at Bill’s chest with one hand and wrenching loose from the older man’s grip. “I’m not staying in here anymore!” Terror heaved up, and Jack’s long-strained control buckled and broke, but there was anger now, too, finding its way through those widening cracks.
Breastbone smarting, Bill remembered the blood-flavored air and choking silence they had found on the Charybdis. How long would it take for the hours to lose their meaning, to bleed one into another into another until days went sliding by, dragging at your mind as they went, trying to pull it loose from its moorings? How long could you hide before a haven became hell?
“I’m not staying,” Jack repeated. “I’m not, Bill.” He didn’t flinch away when Bill’s hands came up to the sides of his face, but the touch didn’t stop him shaking his head defiantly. “I’m going with you.”
“All right,” Bill surrendered, shame quieting any further arguments he might have made, thumbs stroking over the boy’s cheeks. “All right. You don’t have to stay. I’m sorry, lad. I’m sorry.” He tugged his shirt cuff half over his palm and wiped at the blood-smear on Jack’s forehead. “I’m not goin’ to make you stay in here anymore. We’ll go together, aye? We’ll go together.”
It was a hell of a thing to take comfort in, heading unhindered into darkness that wanted your blood, but as Bill curled his hand gently around the back of Jack’s neck he felt the younger man uncoil. Not all the way; fear was still thick in the brig with them, and Jack made no move to step away from that touch, the same one that had been waiting at the waking end of all his nightmares. But enough to let his breath come slower. Enough for him to draw his knives with hands that didn’t shake.
Bill smiled grimly and released him then, liberating the machete with one hand and his pistol with the other. “Jack, behind me,” he ordered. “Right behind me, you hear?”
Jack nodded rapidly, already looking past Bill, past the bars of the brig, into the void of the hold.
“Downey, you’re watchin’ our arses, mate.”
“Gladly,” Downey replied, rising with a spring that belied his bulk. “Let’s just get the soddin’ hell out of here.” He kicked the door open and stepped aside to let Bill and Jack through. “After you, lads.”
……………………………
They were coming back towards her now, and she twitched, claws digging furrows in the wood she lay on, her body quivering; caught between the overwhelming urge to rush, to follow her jaws where they wanted to take her, and an unfamiliar sensation that held her back, tangled her as infuriatingly as any net.
It had been a long time since she’d feared anything. It was a feeling that returned slowly, burning and insistent as restored circulation, and it maddened her; too strong to be shaken off, but not enough to overcome the throb and the thirst deep inside her.
Every step of their approach drummed on the planking, up through her belly, and the scent of blood was thick enough now that she had only to open her mouth and suck it in on the air. She shuddered with want, and watched the three move closer, her mouth twisting in a silent snarl at the one that led them, the one that confused her, that wore the skin of prey but not the eyes.
Cocooned in shadows, she watched them come, her every muscle tight and death-ready.
……………………………..
He had to give conscious effort to each step, to force his legs through their motions, and his palms were sweating so badly he was sure his knives were going to slip like fish from his grip any second. In front of him, Bill moved slowly by necessity, and with every other breath, Jack reminded himself that the torturous pace was safer and smarter than running, no matter how wildly his mind screamed otherwise.
There no longer seemed to be enough room in his chest for both his heart to beat and his lungs to expand, and he let in the thought that one or the other might give way before they made it all the way across the hold.
Not that there weren’t worse ways to go.
“Still with me, Jack?” Bill spared little volume for the words, too aware of the precious seconds a stray sound might buy them, but the hushed question carried as far as it needed to.
“Aye.”
Their lanterns, secured to their belts to leave all hands free, swayed as they walked, so that the light cast through the hold was never still. Neither were the shadows - with every move they made and every pitch of the Beacon in the storm, the labyrinth the space had become shifted and spun before their eyes, light and dark crawling over each other, creating the illusion of movement where there was none.
And all the while hung the knowledge that those pale eyes watched them. Jack’s skin itched and shivered with it.
Halfway across, and then a little more. He could see the ladder to the hatch now, a sanctuary and a taunt all at once. Parks’ blood glistened on the rungs in the approaching light, and Jack looked away, locked his eyes on the back of Bill’s shirt and kept them there.
Parks was already up the ladder when she killed him. The thought struck abruptly, and turned his guts cold. She’ll be able to follow us.
They couldn’t climb and fight at the same time. They wouldn’t be able to watch for her on the way up. And no matter how swiftly they went, someone would be the last one up.
What if that’s what she’s waiting for? “Bill--”
“Hush!” They were almost there; close now to-
-- the place Parks’ body would still be lying, torn and twisted-
-- their way out, and still the path remained clear. It wasn’t a comfort; she was fast enough, Jack knew, to be upon them easily anywhere in this last distance between where they were and where they needed to be. The paces separating them from safety dwindled, and Jack searched the flanking shadows at knee-height, waiting for some mass of them to animate and lunge.
He didn’t realize Bill had stopped until he collided with the man’s broad back, and he couldn’t stifle a cry of surprise. This time, though, the sound brought no reprimand; Bill was utterly still, riveted on something off to their left, and Jack had no chance to see what it was before he and Downey were being ordered on.
“Go, both of you, now, now, now!” Bill barked, and then Jack felt Downey’s hand clamp hard on his arm and propel him towards the ladder, even as he tried to twist back and see what Bill saw, what he was leveling his gun at.
“No, Harry, we can’t just--”
“Get your ass up that ladder, boy!” Downey snapped, giving Jack one last push forward, but then his grip on Jack’s arm was gone, and he was turning his back, raising his sword.
Jack hadn’t managed to get his feet under him enough to stop his momentum when another body suddenly stepped into his path and caught hold of him, roughly enough to momentarily snag his breath in his throat.
Ned Rudolphs glared furiously, drunkenly down at him. “Where you in such a hurry to get to, Sparrow?” he snarled, before shoving Jack hard back into the hold.
……………………………
It was her eyes, reflecting back the light of the lanterns as she raised her head, that had betrayed her, and Bill had his gun aimed at the spot just between them.
Rudy’s voice wasn’t enough of a distraction to sway his focus, but Jack’s stumbling weight hit him in the same second he took his shot, and those gleaming eyes disappeared as the corner of the crate above them exploded in splinters.
“Shit! No!” Bill raged, horrified, as he righted both Jack and himself.
“Where’d she go?” Downey demanded frantically, backed against the ladder. “Bootstrap, where the hell did she go?”
“Rudy, turn around and get your pissed arse out of here!” Bill growled, putting Jack behind his right shoulder and backing away from the place he’d just fired at.
“You cost me my berth, Turner,” Rudolphs slurred, advancing on them. “You and that fuckin’ brat.”
“Rudolphs, we need to get out of this hold.” Bill said tightly. “Now I can go behind you, or I can go through you, but believe me when I tell you I’m goin’.”
“Dammit, Bootstrap, where is she?”
“Nobody’s goin’ no place ‘til we get few things settled, right? We got a few things to settle!”
“Bill…”
Bill whirled on Rudolphs, keeping Jack at the lee of his back. “Rudy, get the fuck out of the way!”
The movement, when it came, was swift. Downey lurched sideways with a yelp of pain and fright, his cutlass lashing out as he fell. “Downey!” Jack cried, and Bill was moving them backwards almost before the shout escaped, but it took Rudolphs a few seconds longer to react to the shape that was rising up behind him.
Slowed by alcohol, incomprehension, or a combination of both, Rudolphs swayed as he turned, feeling the brush of another body against his, as the mermaid slithered up to come face-to-face with him, kiss-close, near enough that he could smell the blood on her breath.
His mouth worked without sound as he stared down the few inches into her white-green corpse eyes. She sniffed at his face, at his throat, dark lips parting, unsheathing stained rows of serrated teeth.
Bill slid his discharged pistol back into his belt and brought both hands to the machete’s hilt, urging Jack further backwards. He had no way to reach her from this angle; Rudolphs was in between them. He could hear Downey’s groaned cursing, but the other man had pulled himself out of sight.
Rudolph’s mouth opened wider, and a croak found its way out. Others joined it, haltingly, and then the croaks attempted to become words.
“Oh…oh, Jesus…oh Jesus…oh God…”
The mermaid pressed closer to him, a hiss bubbling up out of her throat, and the end of her long, dark-scaled tail rippled up off the deck between Rudy’s feet, moving up the back of his leg.
“Oh God. Oh God.” The words were gaining speed and losing volume.
Jack’s fingers clutched the back of Bill’s shirt without letting go of the knives.
Her tail wound its way up, coil to thigh, and higher, until all the serpentine length of it lay in a hideous caress against the back of Rudy’s body, and Rudy’s words gave way to uncontrolled wheezing.
Then the fan of her fins folded in on itself, closing like the petals of a flower, and brought a quiver of barbs to hover at the small of Rudy’s back, at the base of his spine.
She seemed to pulse, barely moving at all, and then Rudy was screaming, shrieking as his legs collapsed nervelessly beneath him, spilling him in a limp heap to the deck. She followed him down, crawling up the length of his body as he tried to drag himself away. He raised his hands in front of his face, trying to hold her off, and she swatted one aside, pinioned to the planking with two of her talons through the palm, catching the other between her teeth.
Bill yanked Jack against him, holding Jack’s face almost forcibly into his chest as the boy started to keen and the mermaid started to thrash, with the rending violence of a shark, whipping her head and shoulders side to side, shaking the screaming man beneath her like a doll. Bill buried his fingers in Jack’s hair and propelled the two of them sideways, between rows of cargo, his hand convulsing on the hilt of the machete when the thrashing ended and Rudolphs’ arm flopped to the deck, the mermaid pushing herself up, spine bowed and head flung back, her throat working ravenously. The sounds coming out of Rudolphs had transcended screams, become something else entirely, making the very air of the hold vibrate, and he was still making them when her mouth closed over his.
TBC