Vine shrieked in frustrated rage as she slammed her hand against the portal that kept her shielded from the world she was desperate to enter. And from the creature she wanted to disembowel.
The shield cracked more.
But not enough.
Only a mere fraction, teasing her like the merciless bastard who had trapped her here while the world of man loomed just beyond her reach.
Damn you, Dón-Dueli!
And damn Marcelina for her interference.
Sister or not, she wanted Mara’s heart in her fist every bit as much as she wanted his. Wanted to feel both of their organs beating against her fingers while their blood coated her flesh, until her need for vengeance was quenched.
And the world of man bowed to her feet and licked them clean.
Gathering her layered skirts, Vine turned to glare at the pathetic bastard her servants had managed to drag through the portal for her amusement a few months ago.
Weak and bleeding, he was barely recognizable as human now. While his strength had been formidable in the beginning, he was starting to fade beneath the barrage of their endless feedings from him.
Still, he refused to give them the location of the key they needed to open this damnable doorway so that she could walk the human realm again.
But the Seraph would break eventually.
They always did. No matter who or what had shat them out into this universe.
And that begged a very important question. “A Seraph sails with them, you said?” she asked the lusca.
“Aye, dearest lady. There was no doubt about it. I saw the transition myself.”
That could not be a coincidence.
She toyed with a crimson seam along the edge of her veined skirt. “Did you perchance catch a scent of its bloodline?”
“Nay, Lady Vine. I couldn’t get close enough for that.”
Growling, she flung her hand out and used her powers to drag the lusca closer to the barrier.
Its tentacles left a slimy smear across the earthen floor that smelled even worse than the sea monster itself. Or perhaps it was the piss the creature let loose in fear of her intentions for it and its realization that, though Duel’s magick kept Vine locked in, it didn’t completely protect those near the barrier from her wrath or powers.
Not that it mattered. It was good for them to fear her. Fear kept the lesser creatures in line. And they should be afraid. For, sooner or later, she would be free again and once she was …
She would rain down her wrath on all those who’d participated in locking her in here. And then she’d finish what she’d begun.
A new world order, where she reigned as queen and blood flowed freely to feed her and her blode sisters.
“Gather whatever it takes to sink that ship, and bring me the heart of the bitch it’s carved from. Do you understand? Or it’ll be your soul I drink next!”
She used her powers to knock the creature away.
Furious and determined, she returned to the man hunched on the floor. His breathing was shallow and ragged. Pain filled. They’d made good use of the Seraph bastard and still he wouldn’t give them what they asked.
His resolve and strength reminded her much of another man she’d known once. He, too, had resisted and fought against her. In the beginning, at least. To this day, she’d never met his equal. Not in face, form, or strength.
Only he had ever had the ability to fully resist her.
Only he had ever had the ability to defeat her.
It was why she’d been forced to cut out his black heart and feed it to him before he turned on her completely.
Damn you, Dón-Dueli of the Dumnonii!
But she wouldn’t think of her ex-husband. She’d deal with that devil later. Right now …
Right now, she had a Seraph to torture and a gate to crack. She was done with these games. Her patience was through.
4
“Nah! None of that, now. You’ll be bunking with us.”
Cameron paused as Valynda and Belle practically kidnapped her from her assigned cabin and dragged her off to their quarters, which they shared with Sancha and an affable Trini named Janice Smith.
Valynda twirled Cameron toward a low-lying bunk that was covered with a dark blue quilt. The peculiar design of the bed was more like a crib, so that it would keep her from being tossed about in a storm. “You can sleep between me and Janny.”
With a wealth of long, wavy black hair flowing over her shoulders, Janice looked up from the Tarot cards she had spread out across her bed to smile at Cameron. “Welcome aboard, Miss Jack. Nice to have another woman in the mix. There be too few of us here as it is. We need to stick together in this testosterone stew where we’ve been tossed.”
Cameron opened her mouth to thank her for the welcome, then scowled as she saw the Death card in her spread. “Is that not a bad omen?”
Janice wrinkled her nose, which somehow made her even more beautiful. “Bah! Nay! Only to those who don’t know the cards. Only means a change is coming. Death to one thing is the birth of another. The cards to fear are not so obvious in their meaning, and it takes more than one bad card to make a bad fate.”
“That’s good to know, and applies to more than just a reading, eh?”
Janice winked at her. “Truth to that, me girl.” She held her hand out to her. “Be nice meeting you, Miss Jack.”
She shook her hand. “And you, Miss Smith. What brings such an elegant lady to this rowdy bunch of miscreants?”
“Janny be our necromancer,” Sancha said as she offered Cameron a mug of rum. “Like Lady Belle, she has powers that are frightening beyond belief. The kind they burn the witches for.”
As Cameron took the mug, she noted the burn mark on Sancha’s wrist that was identical to the ones they all bore—a strange Celtic cross ribbon, with a circle in the center that held a skull and crossbones.
Inclining her head to the mark, Cameron scowled at it. “Might I inquire about the source of that?”
Sancha pulled her sleeve back to expose more of the mark. “Sure you want to know?”
They all seemed to hold their breath in expectation of her answer.
But Cameron wanted to understand this new place she seemed fated to call home. “Aye.”
Sancha pulled the dark wig from her head, showing that her hair beneath was snow white. The color most wore wigs or heavily powdered their hair to achieve. Cameron had never seen a human being with hair that pale before. Especially not a young person, nor one whose skin and eyes were so dark. Sancha couldn’t be more than three-and-twenty, or five-and-twenty at most.
She tossed the wig down on her own bunk before she drained her mug and spoke again. “That be the Deadman’s Cross we bear.”
“Pardon?”
“We are the dead, Miss Jack. And the damned. Every jack and molly here.” She fell against her bunk and let her insanely long legs fly up. “It’s why all who sail on this ship are known as Deadmen. The Deadman’s Cross be the mark of our bondage to a beast they say is the son of the devil himself.”
“The captain?” It would make sense, given his name.