Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (18 page)

Compared to her
teenage fumbling, it was both passionate and frightening. Esther acted on
impulse, kissing and holding, moving in time with David but also in opposition
to him. She felt angry with herself, even as she pulled him around the
partition and pushed him toward the bed. She let him push his hands underneath
her red silk skirt. She felt an urgency that she could only compare to moments
when she put herself in dangerous situations, risking being crushed to fix a
piece of machinery or climbing down the hull with no guarantee that the rail
she’d tied herself to would hold. Her stomach might drop away into the sea; her
head might fly up to meet the clouds. David’s nihilistic attitude and
aristocratic mannerisms were infuriating, but she couldn’t resist the elegant
certainty in his movements, the arrogant quirk of his mouth. She didn’t think
about the
Catalina
or the water system or the time, focusing only on the
tangles in David’s hair and the muscles in his back. He teased her and laughed
at her urgency, but he was careful too, supporting her head so she wouldn’t hit
it against the wall, and moving slowly when she cried out.

Afterward, he
remembered to move his glasses to the nightstand. He laid his head on her chest
as they fell asleep. The room rocked in the waves.

Chapter 18—The Sleeper Storm

Esther hit the floor
with
a thump. Disoriented, she clawed her way out of the tangle of blankets. The
room lurched again. She grabbed the bed frame to keep from smacking into the
partition, ducking as David tumbled out of the bed, almost on top of her. He
rolled to his feet, naked as a fish, and pressed both hands against the wall.
The ship rocked violently, and the mattress crashed into Esther’s head from
behind.

“What’s going on?”
she said.

She shoved the
mattress back, feeling a surge in her stomach, and looked frantically around
the darkened cabin.

“I haven’t felt a
storm like this in years.”

David slid to sit
on the floor in front of her as the room tipped again. He felt around blindly
for his glasses.

“Oh my god. A
storm,” Esther said, panic seizing her. “I need to get to the engine room.
Shit! What time is it?”

“You can’t go to
the
Catalina
when it’s like this,” David said. “Where are my pants? I
have a watch.”

Esther wrapped
herself in a sheet and crawled across the floor. She grabbed David’s trousers
as they tumbled past and pulled the fancy watch from the folds. “It’s after
six! Rust, we slept all night. I need to get back to my ship.” She reached for
her own clothes, ducking to avoid the sliding mattress. At least the bed itself
was bolted down. Her fingers met the smooth plastic of David’s glasses on the
floor, and she handed them to him.

One of the
pictures on the wall fell with a crash.

“Esther, wait.
It’s not safe,” David said urgently. “We need to figure out the condition of
the
Galaxy
.”

“Fuck the
Galaxy
,”
Esther snapped. “The
Catalina
is not equipped to handle a storm like
this. Why didn’t we have any warning? We should have run for it.”

She pulled on her
clothes, catching her hair in the folds of her shirt as she yanked it on. Her
head ached, and her body felt strange, like she was more fully aware of it than
normal.

Esther dove for
her bowling shoes, which were rolling across the floor in a jumble with David’s
boots. She tossed them over to him.

“Get dressed. I
need you to show me how to get out of here.”

She held on to the
wall partition and staggered over to the chair, which was still firmly attached
to the floor. A sharp pain stung her foot.

“Damn it. There’s
glass on the floor from the cups.”

“Are you all
right?”

David had already
pulled on his own shoes. He worked his way around to her, coordinating his
movements with the violent lurching of the ship.

“I don’t know.
Ouch, one of these pieces is in deep.”

“Esther, you can’t
go out like this. Don’t put your shoes on. You’ll make it worse.”

He took her foot
in both hands and looked closely at her heel. “I’ll have to pull this out. Let
me get some bandages. I don’t have anything to clean it with besides water.
Wait here.”

He began the
laborious journey across the stateroom.

Esther squeezed
her foot just above the glass.
Salt, it
hurts!

“Hurry. I need to
make sure everyone’s okay. I can’t believe we slept for so long. I never should
have come here.”

David looked back
at her, his expression cloaked. “Don’t say that. Last night was—”

“You can celebrate
your conquest later,
Hawthorne
. I
need to get out of here,” Esther snapped.

David returned
from the bathroom with a small water bottle and a T-shirt in his hand. He
lurched back to the chair and took her foot again.

“Esther, it wasn’t
a conquest.” His voice was quiet. He pulled the shard out of her foot and
poured water over the cut.

She winced. “I
don’t have time to worry about that right now. You knew I had to get back to
the
Catalina
last night. I shouldn’t have had that whiskey.”

She shouldn’t have
let her guard down, shouldn’t have responded to him just because he’d been
sweet and she’d felt . . . something.

“I didn’t mean to
take advantage of you. I thought we’d both sobered up by the time we—”

“Just finish what
you’re doing.”

Esther clenched
her teeth against the stabbing pain in her foot. The ship pitched back and
forth.

“Can we talk
later?” he said, a slight tic in his jaw.

“With any luck,
later I’ll be back on my own ship and we’ll be on our way away from here.”

She was already
thinking through her options for getting back to the
Catalina
, which was
moored awfully far from the
Mist
. David bent low over her foot, wrapping
it carefully in fabric he’d ripped from his T-shirt. When her foot was fully
swathed, he slid it gently into her bowling shoe and tied the laces for her.

“All set.”

He looked up at
her. There was a crack in his glasses. For an instant she pictured the night
before when she’d pushed his glasses off, kissed his face, wrapped her legs
around him.

She opened her
mouth to speak, hesitated, and changed her mind. “Let’s go.”

The lights in the
passageway flickered violently. Esther and David held on to the paneling on the
wall in order to remain upright. It was slow going as they made their way down
the corridor. Pain shot through Esther’s foot with every step. David tried to
help her, but he had to steady himself too. Panicked shouts came from some of
the cabins. A baby let out a high-pitched wail. The sound of breaking glass
reverberated through the walls. The tossing of the ship was unlike anything
Esther had experienced. Each roll changed her center of gravity. It was nearly
impossible to find her balance, as she had to rely on only one foot. She was
used to storms, but this was different. This was worse.

At the staircase,
Esther pulled herself up each step, trying to stay on the pad of her foot and
off her heel as much as possible. David offered to help, but she shrugged him
off. A man clattered down the steps past them.

“What’s going on
up there?” David asked.

“Hell if I know.
Didn’t get any warning about the storm. Did you?”

“No. Are the
bridges up?”

“Couldn’t tell
you. Gotta see if my kids are okay.”

Esther glanced
back at David before continuing up the stairs. At the top, he moved forward to
lead the way.

“We’ll try the
deck first.”

They ran along a
wider corridor to the atrium. The doors to the big theater swung back and forth
on their hinges, crashing against each other.

On the deck, the
full force of the storm greeted them. The wind screeched, and powerful waves
burst against the ship. Rain and sea spray soaked them immediately. The crew
ran back and forth, narrowly avoiding running into each other.

David grabbed
one’s arm as he hurtled past. “Are the bridges up?”

The man’s thick
beard dripped with water. “The bridges are gone, mate,” he said. “Storm came
out of nowhere, just like the old days. We’re hightailing it as far away from
the other ships as we can get. I heard the
Luxe
and one of the cargo
giants already had a bad collision. Don’t know about anyone else.”

“I need to get
back to my ship,” Esther broke in. Worry stabbed through her gut.

“You’re not going
anywhere. We’ll be lucky if we survive this ourselves.”

The man pulled
free from David’s grip and ran to help a group of seamen tie down a lifeboat
that had just pulled loose. They shouted as it careened over their heads. Water
poured through the gap between the lifeboat and the deck. The sea howled around
them. The ship rolled to the side, and Esther couldn’t tell if she was looking
at a colossal wave or the bottom of the sea itself.

“Hawthorne, what
are our other options?” she shouted over the gale.

He reached out an
arm to steady her. “We can’t do anything now. We have to wait for the storm to
pass.”

She shrugged him
off. “That’s not good enough. What about the radio? Gotta talk to Neal.”

David nodded. “We
can try that. Follow me.”

They stumbled past
dozens of others running to their duties, asking after family members. Many
sported cuts and bruises, evidence of the violent tempest. Wide eyes and teeth
bared in fear showed in each flash of lightning.

By the time they
made it to the external entrance to the bridge, Esther’s arms were exhausted
from pulling herself along the railings. Her foot ached, and she could barely
keep up with David as he climbed the steep staircase. The final stretch was a
vertical ladder like the one she used to get into Neal’s Tower. She could
barely pull herself onto the first rung.

“Let me carry you,
Esther,” David said. “You’re injured.”

“No. Just go up
there and get some answers.”

The ship lurched,
knocking Esther off the ladder. She tumbled into the bulkhead. David leapt back
down and tried to pick her up.

“You can’t do
this. Let me help.”

“Don’t tell me
what I can and can’t do.”

Esther knocked
away his hands and pushed herself back to the ladder. Her muscles screamed in
pain as she pulled herself slowly upward. She braced against the violent
movement, her bowling shoes slipping, and forced herself to take each step.
David followed closely behind, but he didn’t touch her as she traveled up the
last few rungs. At the top, she banged on the hatch until it swung open, and
hauled herself into the bridge. Black spots floated in front of her eyes, but
she shook them clear.

The bridge
stretched the full width of the ship. Panels of knobs and computer terminals
sat beneath a wall of windows. Outside, the sky was pitch-black despite the
hour.

Suddenly,
lightning flashed, illuminating the bridge for a split second. The light
fractured through the drops of rain clinging angrily to the outside of the
window. Within the tower, four operators clung to their chairs, shouting coordinates
and questions into their headphones over the sound of the wind.

David tapped the
closest one on the shoulder. “Reuben, we need information.”

“A little busy
right now, Hawthorne.”

Reuben had a
square jaw and close-cropped hair. Beneath the headphones, he was missing part
of his left earlobe.

“We mobile?” David
asked.

“Yeah, engines
full throttle. Didn’t see this one coming at all.”

Reuben swiveled to
another control panel and pressed a button repeatedly. His voice was blunt,
like a chisel.

“Why not?”

“Figure that out
later. What do you need?”

“Status of the
other ships.”

Reuben shook his
head. “
Luxe
is listing badly, but we’re too far away to do anything
about it. They got some of the smaller craft doing what they can. At least one
of the cargo ships is gone.”

“Did they save
many of the little boats?”

“Doubt it. Can’t
say for sure, but I’m betting the water taxis took a hit. We still have at
least one of the oilers, so that’s something. Bridges are gone.”

“All of them?”

“Near enough. Most
of ’em would have been in use, wouldn’t they? Probably did some major damage on
their way down.” Reuben turned his head away to curse.

“You know anything
about the
Catalina
?”

“The little
floater? Haven’t heard anything.”

“Can you ask
around? This girl belongs with them.”

Reuben swiveled in
his chair to look at Esther, who was still sitting on the floor beside the
hatch. From her angle, she could see water pounding the windows. If it was
possible, the sky grew blacker.

“I can try. Don’t
have high hopes,” Reuben grunted, but he flicked a switch on the control panel.
“
Galaxy
Mist
to
Catalina
.
Catalina
,
do you copy? Anyone out there know
the status of
Catalina
?
Emerald
? Any news?” Esther waited, tense,
as Reuben shouted his request into the mic. She wished she could hear what was
going on inside his headphones. “Copy that. Thanks,
Crystal
. Keep us
posted there.” He looked over his shoulder at Esther. “Can’t raise anyone in
their broadcast center or on the bridge. You guys have a radio chief?”

“Yeah, Neal.”

“Oh right.
Marianna’s friend. Can’t get ahold of him. Maybe he’s out helping the crew.”

“No, he’d be in
the tower.” Esther’s stomach clenched like a tightening screw.

“Sorry,
sweetheart. Now’s not the time to get your answers. Have to wait till the storm
clears.”

Reuben swung back
to his work, and his hands flew across the control panel.

David sat beside
Esther on the floor. His pale hair glowed in a lightning strike. “I’m sorry,
Esther.”