Crap. In the water they had an edge. I reversed my course, trying to cut my way to the side.
Another pirate blocked my way. I thrust. He turned into my strike, and the blade pierced the thick hump of his neck. The dolphin screamed and smashed into me. The impact took me off my feet. I flew a bit and hit the cabin with my back with a solid thud. Ow.
The dolphin dived at me, too fast to avoid, too heavy to impale. I raised my left leg. The body hit me, the full weight landing on my leg. Crooked dolphin teeth snapped at my face. Heavy sonovabitch. I grunted, bending my knee more, and slid him right onto the point of my sword. Nice and easy.
He jerked, flailing on the blade, as if shocked with a live wire, his weight pinning my legs. I pulled my throwing knife out with my left hand and stabbed it into his side, turning his innards into mush. The dolphin convulsed. Teeth ripped at my clothes, scratching my side. I stabbed him again and again. Blood wet my hand, spraying on my face in a hot mist. The pirate screeched, the high-pitched desperate shriek turning into a gurgle, and sagged on top of me. The four-hundred-some pounds pinned me in place. I strained. The body didn’t move. Damn it.
Suddenly the weight was gone. The dolphin hovered three feet above me and was tossed unceremoniously aside. A gray monster stained with blood crouched by me.
Curran.
“You’re taking a nap? Come on, Kate, I need you for this fight. Stop lying around.”
You sonovabitch. I rolled to my feet and grabbed my sword. “You must think you’re funny.”
A weredolphin threw himself at us from the right. Curran tripped him and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back, and I sliced the pirate’s throat and punctured his heart with two quick strikes.
“Just saying, you have to pull your own weight. A hot body and flirting will only get you so far.”
Hot body and flirting, huh. When I’m done killing people . . . “Everything I do, I learned from you, boy toy.”
Another pirate rushed us. I dropped, slicing the tendons behind his knee, while Curran headbutted him and ripped out his throat. The pirate fell.
“Boy toy?” Curran asked.
“Would you prefer man candy?”
The deck was suddenly empty. Blood painted the ship. Gray corpses lay here and there, torn and savaged by claws and teeth. A huge shaggy Kodiak bear prowled the deck, his muzzle dripping gore. The last pirate still on his feet was running toward Andrea and Raphael near the bow. Andrea raised her crossbow. She was still in human form. Raphael stood next to her, light on his feet, his knives dripping red. A trail of bodies led to them, bristling with crossbow bolts. The pirate rushed her. She sank two bolts into his throat. He gurgled, his momentum carrying him forward. Raphael let him get within ten feet and cut him down in a fury of precise strikes.
Past them a black panther the size of a pony slapped a weredolphin with a huge paw. The shapeshifter’s skull split, crushed like an egg under a hammer.
On the left a humanoid creature crawled onto the deck, lean, furry, with a round head and short round ears. Disproportionately long, sharp brown claws protruded from his oversized fingers. He strained and heaved another, much larger body onto the deck. It landed in a splash of water and a shaggy pile of brown fur, turned over, and vomited salt water from a half-human half-bison muzzle. Eduardo.
The reddish beast sank next to him, baring sharp white teeth. His bright red eyes, the color of a ripe strawberry, had a horizontal pupil, like that of a goat. They made him look demonic. I knew of only one shapeshifter with eyes like that—Barabas.
“Why don’t you know how to swim?” His diction was almost perfect.
Eduardo unloaded more water on the deck. “Never needed to.”
“We are crossing an ocean. It didn’t occur to you to learn?”
“Look, I’ve tried. I walk into a pool, I thrash, and then I sink.”
Ahead the flotilla of boats fled behind the island. Bodies littered the deck. I counted. Fourteen. None of them ours. We were bloody, hurt, but alive. The pirates weren’t.
What a waste of life.
And I’d loved it. I loved every second of it: the blood, the rush, the heady satisfaction of striking and seeing the cut or thrust find its target . . . Voron had succeeded. I was raised and trained to be a killer, and nothing, not even happy peaceful weeks in the Keep with the man I loved, could change that. I’d come to terms with what I was a long time ago, but sometimes, like right now, looking over the deck strewn with corpses, I felt a quiet regret for the person I could’ve been.
Curran, naked and covered with blood, wrapped his now-human arm around me. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. “You?”
He grinned and squeezed me to him. My bones groaned.
“Congratulations,” I squeezed out. “I survived the fight, but your hug did me in.”
He grinned and let me go. We’d both made it.
“We have a live one,” Raphael called out.
We crossed the deck to where he crouched. A young man, maybe early twenties, with a mass of dark curls, laid on his back, his right leg twisted under at an odd angle, his face contorted by pain. Raphael held the point of his knife over the man’s liver.
The man’s gaze fastened on Saiman. He held up his hand and said something, his words tumbling out in a rush.
Saiman asked something. The man answered.
Saiman turned to Curran. “He has some information that would be of particular interest to you. He will tell you if you set him free, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Fine,” Curran said.
Saiman nodded at the man. The pirate said something halting and looked at me. Saiman looked at me as well.
“What?”
Saiman turned to Curran. “It appears that this is for your ears only. I believe it’s in your best interest to have this conversation in private.”
“Give us some space,” Curran said.
People moved back.
“Do you want me to stay?” I asked.
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “No.”
I moved back with the others. Saiman leaned over and whispered something to Curran. They spoke quietly. Saiman asked the man something. The man answered. Saiman relayed it back.
Curran turned, his face dark. All humor fled from his expression. He met my gaze and didn’t say anything. Not good.
“How can you stand it?” Andrea murmured next to me. “I’d be right in there.”
“I didn’t tell him about rescuing Saiman,” I murmured back. “If he needs to keep something private, I’m fine with it. When he’s ready, he’ll tell me.”
“Lock this man up,” Saiman called.
Two sailors came, picked up the pirate, and carried him off.
“Let’s get this place cleaned up,” Curran called.
People spread out. He came toward me.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Nothing we can’t handle.”
I nodded to him and we went to help scrub the gore off the deck.