Fire on the Water

[Devlin]

Perhaps it was the chill. It was the damp air of the river that seeped down into the bones that made the darkness feel more ominous than most nights, or maybe it was the questionable nature of their cargo, or, maybe even the recent war that had raged through Harper Rock’s criminal underbelly and the violence that had stained the river red and it had made them all uneasy about hauling anything on those waters again. He couldn’t say for certain, but he knew that, in spite of their brave face, many of the crew were jumpy, either in spite of, or, more likely, because of their new shipmates that Chevalier had assigned to the Maria Klimt. They were shady, and worse, they were vampires. The undead and the rumors that had surrounded their presence in Harper Rock was only fractionally as unsettling as those that lived off the essence of the living. It was a terrifying thing for most of the crew, even if Chevalier assured them that the new crewmen were vetted carefully, and that none of them were in any danger.

Many of his old crew had left, leaving Captain Devereaux undermanned and without an experienced hand on deck, as well as a mostly untried and untrusted crew. He could strangle the company executive that thought that this had been a good idea. They were pushing too hard, asking for too much from these average folk, asking them to simply set aside fear and to just deal with the consequence of having such creatures on board this old rust bucket with them day and night, laden to the brim with contraband firearms that would land even the janitor a decade behind bars if they were found out.

Fortunate for them, the financial muscle behind Chevalier had proven on point up until now, able to bribe even the most straight-laced of officials into letting them operate without incident. Something about tonight, though, made Devlin uneasy. Even with all of the precautions he had taken, the pain he had endured to ensure the safety of his crew, the excruciating process of gaining power over their undead shipmates, something deep in his bones told him that tonight, something far more sinister than the undead stalked the old wooden decks of his ship.

The old boat groaned on the water, the steel plating that covered the half-rotted old barge scraping across a shallow bar of earth beneath the river’s black surface, the flexibility of the old ship’s wooden bones proving their worth as they warped and bent along the obstacle until it was clear, the steel only taking minor damage, though, with as many trips as Chevalier had them making these past months, they were looking at a much earlier dry dock than their typical maintenance called for. He was doubtful that the old nag could handle much more abuse. He would probably have the rust bucket docked after this trip, and tell Chevalier to kiss his ***. He wasn’t going to have his ship sunk to turn some faceless corporate puppet master that had probably never even set eyes on his ship.

It was easy to never fall in love with something you had never seen. He sighed as the ship slowly rocked on the water, pulling past the old, weathered stone that marked the halfway point of their nightly crawl when he heard scuffling below deck. The new men were prone to wagering on tests of strength between one another often turning into a bloody fight that, more often than not, ended up with one or more of these new crewmates dead. Though, he supposed, it was difficult to think of something that was already dead as being murdered. Especially when they showed up for duty inside of a week, sometimes sporting a new scar or some sort of ghastly wound, and sometimes not. He didn’t understand the process, and he didn’t ask for the gristly details. He was fine with his ignorance, so long as their aggressions didn’t turn on the few mortals he had left in his band of sailors.

He sighed, and rubbed at his stubbled cheek as he watched the black water drift by below, his sky blue eyes turning to find his first mate, the vampire that called herself Contessa, sent by Chevalier to be a sort of liaison between the mortal and immortal members of the crew and management. He found her to be less abrasive company than most of her compatriots, though they often butt heads. He found her draped across the wheel of the ship, locking eyes with the helmsman as he tried to navigate the shallow river. Devlin sighed, and pushed his fingers into his eyes.

The whore is going to get us all killed.

“[color= #2E9AFE]Contessa. Let the man navigate. Go satisfy yourself with one of the men down in the cargo holds and leave the work up here to run as smoothly as it may.[/color]” The sharp bark of his command brooked no contest, and his gaze turned away from the ebon haired Latina, even as she lifted herself from the wheel to shoot him a glare. She hissed beneath her breath, a string of Spanish flowing from her sinful lips as she disappeared into the sound of the scuffling below, the last sight of her was the shimmering moonlight in the inky black of her hair, just before she shot him a deathly glare, and disappeared into the dark. Devlin sighed, and glanced back to his helmsman.

“Carlton, if I have to tell your old lady about the witch, do you think she’s going to be happy about letting you leave port again?” The man visibly paled, and he wildly shook his head as he gripped the wheel tightly. “No sir, Captain. My hands never left his wheel, sir.” Devlin smirked at the man and pat his shoulder. “Oh, I know that. And you know that. And Contessa knows that. But do you think that Molly will believe any of us?” He laughed when the man looked like he might faint from fear of his woman at home, and pat the man’s shoulder. “Just do your job, sailor, and get us to port, and we won’t talk about the witch again.” The man visibly eased, and Devlin chuckled as he stepped from the wheelhouse, and down onto the main deck, where he began to check a piece of equipment here, or some mooring there, hand passing over the rusty steel of his old ship.

It won’t be much longer before she’ll need to retire, and Chevalier will have to replace the old girl entirely. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear that.

He sighed, the sound wistful and almost sad as he let his fingers pass along the railing, a lover’s touch for a woman long at his side. A woman he knew that, before he was ready, he would have to part ways with. He shook his head, hand passing back through his sandy hair as his gaze swept to where the scuffle of the action below deck had grown most raucous, making its way to the mouth of the hatch, where he was sure to see a mass of flailing flesh and blood make its way onto his deck. There was a fire in his eyes as he prepared to tear into the men he saw breaching the code of conduct out on the main deck of his ship.

[Quinn]

She was dead – or, at the very least, a few minutes away from it.

Digging her boot into the rotted floor beneath her, she tried to push against one of the heavier boxes that surrounded her, thighs screaming with the exertion it took to shift her position a mere centimeter. Trapped as she was within the cargo hold, the lack of air circulation had her clothing sticking to her damp skin, the rough denim of her button-down chafing against the soft skin of her torso. By the time she made her way out of this death trap, her skin would be completely raw. Not that it would matter, of course, seeing as she was now a handful of seconds away from a certain gruesome, violent death.

“****,” she breathed as a lock of blonde fell against her cheek, the damp weight causing the plastic of her glasses to slip down the bridge of her nose. As she heard the shuffle of feet just a few feet away, she resigned herself to the small irritation as wiggled her nose. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to try and move her hand. She had taken a big enough risk in the subtle shift of her body – anything more and she would sign her fate far quicker than desired. Even as she thought she was safe, even as she took the precaution to keep herself as still as stone, the shuffle of feet came closer. There was an almost uncertain rhythm to the steps, as though whoever dared to venture into the dark unknown of the cargo hold hadn’t found their sea-legs.

Or, they were drunk.

In the hours that she had found herself trapped in this self-made prison, she had overheard at least three intoxicated brawls break-out above deck, and two drunken attempts and picking up one of the few women that dared to try their hand at manning the ship before all went silent. It hadn’t taken long for the rise and fall of the waves to lull her into a false blanket of safety, but even that had been short lived when one of the crewmen had slammed open the hold’s doors and stumbled down the stairs. As the thud of his boots came closer, the sound of his heavy, uneven breathing echoing off the walls, she closed her eyes and tried to scoot further down into the small alcove she had made for herself.

This can’t be it. I can’t die like this! I have so much more to say, so much more to learn. I can’t go out like this.

‘Become a journalist,’ her father had urged, his weathered green eyes bright with excitement as he waved a hand across the grassy expanse of their Alabama farm, ‘it’ll be a great adventure. You were destined for better things, baby girl.’ She had taken those words to heart, and now, she wondered if he was turning over in his grave for the predicament she had found herself in. If he had known it was going to turn out like this, he was have locked her in the damp darkness of their cellar, only feeding her scraps to keep her from becoming malnourished. It was certainly safer than… this.

Mentally cursing the choices she had made in the past forty-eight hours, she stilled her breathing as a massive shadow loomed over the wooden crate to her left, before a meaty hand fell on the lid. For a second, just a brief moment in time, she thought she was safe. There wasn’t a sudden evil laugh, and the man wasn’t pointing a gun at her head, but… then she heard his sharp intake of breath. Before she could so much as make a sound, to begin to plead her case, that large hand twisted into her hair, and with a sharp tug, the giant of a man heaved her to her feet. The pain that screamed through her scalp had her crying out, the sound causing the man to slam his other hand against her mouth, filling her tongue with the taste of sweat, dirt and sea. “Well, well, well. What do we have here? A little stow-a-way, hm? I wonder what the Captain will think of this,” he grinned, his words breathed against her face, bringing with them the scent of stale whiskey and tobacco.


Turning her head away – or trying to – she lashed out, her boot connecting with his knee with a sharp crack. The sudden pain had the crewman dropping her, and she quickly scrambled around him, her feet pounding against the wood as she rushed for the stairs. She hadn’t the slightest clue where she was headed – hell, each step she took lead her closer to the shark’s waiting mouth – but self-preservation had kicked in. Maybe, if she was lucky, they were close enough to land that she could throw herself overboard before they did. At least then, she’d be whole – and not in the pieces she was certain these criminals had planned for her. Just as she reached the top of the stairwell, however, a meaty paw curled around her thigh and with a sharp pull, sent her falling down, her back slamming into a sweaty, expansive chest. As the musky, almost rotten odor of his skin reached her nose, she bowed her head.

There was no escaping him.

“You play nice now, and I’ll tell the Captain to make your death quick, little pet,” her captive sneered, his hand crushing around her windpipe with a bruising force as he lifted her from her feet and carried her up the stairs, whistling a off-beat sailors tune.

[Devlin]

Fingers closing into a tight fist, Devlin flexed his fingers, stretching the tense muscles of his arm as he prepared to plant a fist into someone’s jaw. They were clearly up to no good, the way that boots and flesh banged and scuffed against the stairs sounding like a rowdy bunch of schoolyard boys trying to gain dominance over one another in a bout of fisticuffs. He only hoped that, once Chevalier was done with all of their changes that he had enough of his nerves left to whip the ragtag group into shape. Perhaps that was why he was left with the less than desirables on his crew, because the corporate monkeys knew that there wasn’t a captain on this river that could chew up the iron nails they tossed at him and spit out silver like he could.

He sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose with his unoccupied hand when the group burst from the hatch, all but throwing a tall, thin woman onto the deck with much more force than was apparently needed, the woman’s golden mane caught in the brisk river wind as it whipped at her face, nearly ripping the glasses right off of her face. He grimaced, and turned his glance to the big man that had tossed her from belowdeck. He took a long, steadying breath and shook his head before he wheeled on the man and caught him in the chin with his fist. The big man lifted off the deck with the force of the blow that threatened to shatter his jaw, the open hand catching the man’s coat and hauling him over the railing and tossing him into the dark water below.

Without another thought, Devlin reached for the hand of a woman that stood behind the group, having brought herself aboveboard to see the commotion, her thin figure wrapped in a towel, even as soap dripped from her otherwise naked, wet figure, and swiped the bar of soap clutched in her slender fingers. He cut off her complaint with a sharp look, and tossed the bar overboard with the man, the bar thunking him hard over the head as Devlin leaned over the railing to call down to him.

“You know where we dock, Marigold. I expect you cleaned and there to greet us by the time we arrive, with a damn lesson learned about the proper way to treat a lady by the time I see your face again. Or perhaps I can speak with our friends at Chevalier about your employment opportunities elsewhere.” The man in the water vanished into the dark without a word of complaint as he wheeled around on the small knot of his new crew that stood around the stowaway. He arched a brow, then, and cocked his head to the railing. “Anyone else care to join Marigold? Feel free to join him, if you want. No? Good. Then get back to your posts or I’ll spike each of you to the deck, understood?”

A varied chorus of yes, captain rose up from half a dozen throats, man and woman alike, as the bodies scrambled for the hatch to make their way below again, one of the small women launching herself onto the tall mast to make her way up to the iron-wrought crow’s nest, the mast an antiquated piece of the ship, but still vital in the event of engine failure. The barge was too huge to be rowed by the small crew he kept aboard, and so a set of sails were always stowed, in case of being stranded in the shallow waters. The man that had come just behind Marigold stood for a moment, his eyes moving from the disheveled stowaway to Devlin, before he nodded cryptically, and turned to make his way below deck.

The gesture could have meant any number of things and, without knowing the man as well as he would have liked before bringing him aboard, he could only hope that it was a gesture of approval as Devlin moved to offer the tall blonde woman his hand in assisting her to her feet again. The moonlight being their only guide, he could make out her features much better than she could his own, having spent most of the dark hours on deck with only the aid of the moon all night, where she had been below, surrounded by the fluorescent light that made the whole of the decks below glow with artificial light. She was beautiful, far more so than she emphasized or cared to highlight, but he could see the angelic features hidden beneath her plain dress and unkempt appearance, though a lot of that could be from the stowing away, or the rough treatment of Marigold and his cohorts. He only hoped that was the extent of her mistreatment on his ship.

Any stowaway in a civilized country would still merit common decency, but a woman with her beauty wasn’t just any stowaway. He felt like this might have been the source of his misgivings earlier, his unease only growing into a tight knot in the pit of his stomach as he hoisted her upright. “You will have to forgive the crew, I haven’t had time to teach them proper manners. I… honestly never expected to have to worry about a stowaway on such a short river route… I suppose I should start with the obvious question, but… who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?”