Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) (56 page)

But help was on the way. At the stern end of the battle crush, demon after demon yelped and went down like wheat at harvest time. The great mastiff, with Romulus’ three hundred pounds of muscle and bone, hit them like a runaway train. He’d latch those mighty jaws onto whatever arm, leg, or tentacle presented itself, pull and twist at the same time, and they’d hit the deck, never to rise again as their vitals were savaged by fearsome teeth. Anybody who tried to fight with blade or other weapon, be it claw, stinger, or whatever, soon found it parried by Sha’ira’s sword. That scimitar, quick as a rattlesnake, struck with just as much venom. Acting as an unstoppable team, the dreamwriter and the ancient dog cut a bloody black swath through the Obverse flank.

On the other side, nearer the bow, Ma had taken up a position beneath the foremast. Her hands glowed pale blue with a magick fire. Her eyes did the same, not unlike Sha’ira’s on the beach. Energy made her dark brown hair flow out around her head as if she were underwater. Odd as that seemed, something struck me as even stranger. For a moment I couldn’t understand what it was. Then a rat scurried right beneath her foot and I noticed that she didn’t quite touch the deck. Whatever magick she used bore her up with its power. Bullets and pikes rebounded around her, deflected by a just-visible shield that she held up with her left palm. The right hand threw balls of sparkly gold-violet light around the shield’s edge. They wouldn’t always travel in a straight line, either, but sought out whatever target she’d selected, often traveling in serpentine paths to get there. Each time one of them struck a demon he turned to what looked like pale gray stone. But in an instant the sea breeze or a bump from another fighter knocked the statue into powdery ash which blew away in an eye-blink. Just in the time I stood there beside the wheel I saw at least eight of our enemies shuffle off this mortal coil that way. My heart raced to see Ma, my ordinary shirt-stitching mother, the woman who’d raised my alone and put up with all manner of trouble to do so, dispatching monsters with magick I’d never known she could command.
Give it to ‘em, Ma!

But she might not be commanding it much longer. Her unstoppable assault had gotten the Obverse’s attention. On the foremast of the
Croatan
two or three fellows who still held mortal shape climbed into the rigging with muskets. They clearly intended to shoot down at her while her attention lay elsewhere. The shield didn’t extend high enough to block their shots if she didn’t notice them up there. She was awful busy defending herself at deck level.

My feet started moving before my brain started thinking. I ran down onto the main deck, Morphageus dissolving into a razor-toothed boomerang. My shouts to Sha’ira to use her bow on the sharpshooters were lost in the din of battle. A demon that looked like a Cyclops minotaur with four arms tried to grab me. I rolled beneath his grasp, slashed the back of his hoofed leg at the knee, and got back up and running before his first bellow began. A tentacle with ivory hooks clutched at my waist, but I spun out of it with Stone-born agility. Ahead, still a hundred feet away, the trio of musketmen had almost reached the first yardarm. That looked to be where they’d steady their barrels and fire. Hoping that my rushed aim would be good enough, I cocked my arm back and let fly.

The boomerang whoosh-whooshed up like some prehistoric bird, seeming to take a month to get to its target. As I held my breath, hoping like all get out that Jasper would guide Morphageus as he always had, the first man laid his musket across the yardarm and aimed at Ma. I yelled for joy as the wicked blades of my weapon sliced his left arm to the bone, making him drop the gun into the sea. Before he even knew what had hit him the boomerang had returned to my hand. I heaved it again, intentionally missing the next man, who raised his musket to block my attack. While he laughed at me for an errant throw, my will brought the weapon around to whack him a glancing blow on the side of the head. It kept twirling back to me as the Obverse marksman’s stunned form lost its grip and tumbled down to the
Croatan
’s deck.

I snatched the boomerang from the air, keeping my eyes on the last assassin. He ignored me, intent on sighting down his barrel at my unsuspecting mother, who kept on blasting monsters. This remaining sharpshooter knew his business. Staying calm, letting none of the battle chaos distract him, he pulled the gun’s hammer back to full-cock and eased his finger onto the trigger. Reminding myself to do the same, I cleared my mind of all the fighting, screaming, and shooting that surrounded me and raised the boomerang a third time.

My arm wouldn’t go forward. Something held it as if it’d been bolted into a vise. Looking up, I saw a pink, lumpy, sticky mess wrapped around my wrist.
What the heck?
Snapping my head back, I gasped at what had grabbed me. An enormous frog face, with a tiger’s body. Its tongue had flashed out to latch onto me like I was an unlucky fly. Despite my Stone-strength the thing started to reel me in toward its rubbery maw, intent on eating me.

“Sort of…I don’t know…what’s the word for a time like this?” Jasper said. “Ignominious. That’s it.”

“You’re not helpin’!” I growled, pulling back with all my might. But my heels slid on the bloody deck and I kept going, straight to the frog-demon’s gullet. Jasper had a point. This was no way for the Stone-Warden’s quest to end…being turned into frog poop.

“Help you want? Okay, try this. Maybe you should use both hands.”

So simple I wanted to kick myself. My left hand shot out, yanked the saw-toothed weapon from the right’s grip, and cut the horrible amphibian’s tongue in two. Roaring, the monster whipped its bloody appendage away from me. I peeled the twitching remainder off my wrist and turned back to the last musketman.

But the demon refused to give up its meal, tongue or no tongue. Those powerful tiger’s haunches launched it at me as soon as my back had turned. The wind
whoofed
out of my lungs as I crashed to the deck. I hit my jaw and saw stars, even losing my grip on Morphageus. My boomerang slid a foot away. When I tried to raise myself up to retrieve it, the four foot-wide frog mouth closed around me, black blood from the severed tongue soaking my shirt.
Oh, no you don’t!
With a burst of Stone-strength I dragged the smelly rubbery thing with me while those foul lips chewed at my shoulders. Groping wildly, unable to see the deck, my fingers just managed to touch the edge of the boomerang. That turned out to be enough, though. With a whispered wish it swelled into a shiny steel sledgehammer that only weighed about a pound to me. My wrists snapped backward over my head, thumping the demon a good one between the eyes. It hissed and let me go, backing up about five feet. Morphageus shifted back to its previous shape. I whirled to throw the boomerang and darned if that miserable demon didn’t come for me again. Forced to fend it off with the sword, which its agile tiger’s body let it avoid, I started to think that Ma was in a world of trouble.
Come on, come on, come on!

“These pesky things are always a pain in the rudder,” Roberta said from behind my ear. “Stand back. Let me take care of it, shrimp.”

Not turning, panting from the effort of fighting and panicking from worry about Ma, I screamed, “No! Sharpshooter! Foremast! Ma! Hurry!”

Her boots clattered away before I’d got all my words out. Desperate to help Ma, I willed Morphageus into a ten-foot spear and fed it to the frog’s mouth till the point came out its other end. Gurgling, the monster sagged to the deck, coughing more inky blood. Swirling the lance in a great circle to keep everything else at bay, I pivoted to see what Roberta might be able to do with just seconds to spare.

The buccaneer queen sprinted to the rail, throwing her sword end-over-end at a fox-like thing with two heads which barred her way with a pistol. Before it could fire it clutched at the hilt which had buried itself in its chest. Roberta leaped over the bow of the
Kiss
in a long graceful swan dive.
No!How’s that gonna help Ma?
But instead of falling into the sea Pitcairn’s lady rose, her form flowing into the familiar scarlet shape of the parrot I knew so well. Her curse had kicked in as soon as she’d crossed the plane of the rail. In the blink of an eye a crimson bullet shot up into the rigging of the
Croatan
. I heard the musket discharge even above all the other savage noise around me. Catching my breath, I hurried my eyes over to where Ma stood, oblivious to what happened anyplace except right in front of her. She hurled another death-bolt at a ram’s-horned snake demon. It blew away in a puff of ash.
She’s okay! Roberta did it!
Looking back up at where the third sharpshooter had been, I saw him dangling from one twisted leg, face a shredded mass of black meaty ribbons. Roberta swooped back low, claws plucking her cutlass from the fox-thing’s body. As she landed her human shape asserted itself again, expanding up and out until the long-haired lady of Commander Pitcairn stood before me again.

“Whoo!” she grinned. “That was a close one!”

I just hugged the stuffing out of her, unable to say anything, tears half-blinding me.

“Time for that later, shrimp.” She patted me on the back and peeled me off her. “Gotta go finish this. Get yourself someplace safe.” With that she yelled and waded back into the battle.

We had the upper hand now, thanks to Ma’s magick and Sha’ira’s and Romulus’ bravery. The surviving demons were being pressed back against the rail. Some stood their ground, many tried to leap over to the
Croatan
. But at that moment the ships pitched and began sliding apart. I saw Ernie climb up the netting Pitcairn had erected along the rail. He gave me a thumbs-up and a toothy smile. In his other paw he held one of the grapple ropes the Obverse had used to lash the ships together, chewed through as if by a razor. The Marines had done their work well. Mr. Bridgewater spun his wheel and steered the
Kiss
farther away from the
Croatan
. In a few moments a good hundred yards separated us. All the remaining enemies were trapped on our deck. Knowing that no quarter would be given, they fought like fiends, which seemed appropriate, considering. Staying well clear of the main battle area, since every now and then a demon would lunge for me, I helped out a little by turning Morphageus into a spring-loaded steely fist. I’d let it bound out on the spring, upend an Obverse combatant, then have it retract so I could do it again to another one of them. Ma’s magick ran low, since there was no Songline for her to use as a charge, and she slumped against the foremast. I rushed to her and shielded us both while we watched the mopping-up.

Pitcairn and the enemy captain had kept up their duel all this time. Both bore a few cuts, but nothing that looked serious. With his ship free of the
Croatan
, our captain seemed to gain new strength from imminent victory. With a neat twist the oaken belaying pin knocked the cutlass from his foe’s right hand. Before the other cutlass could react Pitcairn stepped to his left at a forward angle, cocked his sword wrist, curled his arm and body in a bow to the right, and deftly spitted the hulking Obverse commander between the shoulder blades. As neat a punto reverso as you’ll ever see. The new-slain man stared down at the six inches of steel protruding from his jabot, gave us all a grim smile, and flopped to the deck like a dead fish. In fact, it was an literal three foot long mackerel’s head that lay at Pitcairn’s feet as the human form melted away, revealing a lizard body and a possum tail.

Now that numbers were on our side and there was room to maneuver, Pitcairn’s crew finished things with an improvised firing squad, lining up and blowing the rest of the demons to kingdom-come with muskets, pistols, a blunderbuss or two, and even the pintle guns mounted at bow and stern. The limp bodies of all the dead demons fed the sharks in nothing flat, as all the sailors wasted no time in throwing every last scrap of the battle’s losers into the sea. With no fires to put out the barrels of water were upended and used to scrub the deck clean of blood and sundry monster chunks. It all ran so smooth that I had the awful suspicion this hadn’t been their first demon-boarding.

Propping Ma up on my shoulder, holding her close, I watched Sha’ira and Romulus lope over to us, followed by Ernie, Gracchus, and the proud Marines. Romulus’ muzzle dripped with black blood, as did Sha’ira’s lovely green robe. Flecks of that foul ink speckled her brown face, too. Pitcairn, arm-in-arm with Roberta, strolled up to us, smug as cats in the creamery.

“Would you care to give the order to fire, Miss Verity?” Pitcairn asked. “They’re aiming to escape before we can react. Little do they know.”

Standing up, I gazed at the
Croatan
, wanting nothing more than to see an end to her. But as she began pulling away from us, into the wind, I thought of a promise I’d made. “First things first. Can Mr. Nickleby’s guns disable her rudder first?”

They could. And that’s how I ended up in a jollyboat, rowed by eight stout sailors, well in front of the
Croatan
. Standing on the broad back of the enslaved white whale, I patted it and assured him I was his friend. Morphageus sliced off the towing harness as if the hawsers had been wet twine. My new giant friend dove out of sight, then breached the choppy surface of the water a hundred yards away, celebrating his freedom. Three times he flew into the air as if he’d fly to heaven. Circling back around our boat, surrounded by a cloud of seagulls, he raised his head so I could pat it as if he was the biggest old hound in the world. With another wink at me and a wave his flukes, he vanished. That made me the happiest girl on the sea, let me tell you.

42/ Voyage of Surprises

“If this was one of them sentimental novels that society ladies like to read,” Jasper said, “we’d call this a Sudden Unexpected Plot Development.”