The Devil's Fire (30 page)

"Jesus Bloody Christ!" he heard Nathan exclaim.

"Leave him to it, boy," came One-Eyed Henry’s voice. "He’ll kill you. He’ll kill us all."

No one was cheering now, and that annoyed him. He sat up long enough to scowl at them. "I don’t hear any bloody—"

A shot rang out. The crowd split apart at the center, revealing the tallest of the Seven. He held his pistol high, barrel smoking. He fixed Livingston with a deadly glare that would have chilled lesser men into humble grovelers. In harsh, tentative English, he managed to utter, "End this now."

Livingston was in awe. He hadn’t expected any real opposition, and certainly not from one of the blacks. "What is your name?" he asked, condescendingly sounding out each word.

"My name," the huge black man said, "is Minkah."

Livingston scoffed. "Someone shoot this oversized monkey."

There was a long, awkward silence. Just when Livingston was about to take matters into his own hands, a bullet struck Minkah in the forehead. He stiffened, was frozen in place for a moment, and then collapsed to the deck with the weight of a boulder.

In an instant,
Harbinger
was hurled irrevocably into chaos. Another of the Seven, who were now four, loosed a deep-voiced cry of protest. Pistols fired, cutlasses clanged, and feet hammered the deck. Pirates fell dead and wounded, howling in pain.

Livingston shrugged and returned his attention to Lindsay, "Where were we?"

Something exploded behind him, and a wave of heat seared his back. He fell over Lindsay, who remained limp and lifeless. The sounds of battle had ceased, for the moment anyway. Livingston looked up and saw the crowd’s slack-jawed faces lit in amber hues. He peered over his shoulder, shifting his weight atop Lindsay but not allowing her to weasel out from under him. A fiery blaze had ripped through the door of the captain’s cabin, clinging to the ceiling and rolling under the top of the doorway. Embers ascended into the night sky to join the stars. There was nothing beyond the door but blinding yellow light, as though the sun had materialized within.

Livingston remembered Griffith’s smoking corpse and cursed. No one had put him out. "Get in there and douse that blaze!" he ordered the crowd. Only five of them obliged, while the majority resumed their fighting. The water only fueled the fire, which was growing steadily, burning through the roof and walls.

Livingston returned his attention to Lindsay, who was gazing curiously at the blaze, as though she welcomed it. She looked at Livingston and grinned, her teeth glinting from the fire, her red, blood-streaked hair shimmering vibrantly. Livingston could have sworn he was staring down at Satan himself. His cock felt like it was going to burst in his trousers. He fumbled at the laces, tugging them away. "I’ll have you right here," he said, nodding self-assuredly. He looked down, and even he was impressed at his current size. He shoved a hand down her pants, fingers squirming. "Is your cunnie hair red too?"

"Ask Griffith," she sneered.

"Would that I could," Livingston replied. "I’ll just have to find out for meself. Maybe I’ll flip you on your belly and go in the back way, how does that sound?"

She was still smiling, which both excited and frustrated him. But she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking slightly past him again. He saw the reflection of a man in her eyes, standing over him. He turned too late. A plank cracked the side of his head, splintering. The impact sent him tumbling off of Lindsay, and the world tilted dizzyingly until his back crashed against the deck.

Nathan stood over him, brandishing in his remaining hand a smoldering plank of wood that had probably been part of the captain’s cabin door. "I said that’s enough!" he exclaimed through heavy gasps.

Before Livingston’s mind could register what had happened, Lindsay crawled on top of him and straddled his waist with surprisingly strong thighs. She brought the blade of his cutlass to his throat and grinned triumphantly. A line of cold steel pressed against his Adam’s apple.

"Nathan," Livingston muttered. His head felt as though it was filled with tar. The stars twirled in the night sky, leaving white, arcing trails. "Nathan, get this bitch off me, lad."

Nathan didn’t move. He dropped the plank.

"Nathan," Livingston pleaded. "I forgive you. You’re a good lad, I know that. I’ll give you first go."

Nathan said nothing. His face was an indistinguishable blur.

The captain’s cabin ruptured violently, a massive ball of fire rolling out of it and taking several dueling pirates with it. The blaze engulfed them, and only their shrieks were heard from within. They emerged burning and flailing madly, until one by one they collapsed to the deck. The fire spread swiftly from their bodies.

Katherine Lindsay was silhouetted in flame, the edges of her face highlighted orange as she looked down at Livingston. "You’ve pissed yourself," she said, nodding downward indicatively. Livingston glanced down and saw his manhood hanging limp, and a yellow pool spreading about his waist.

"Please," was all Livingston could think to say.

Lindsay took a deep breath, her exposed breasts rising. She lifted the cutlass into the air, aiming its tip downward, and brought it down slowly. The tip touched his belly and he drew in his breath to prolong the inevitable. The tip punctured the skin and sank into him. His belly expanded as he convulsed and gasped for air. Lindsay leaned on the pommel. The blade sheared through him like a bolt of lightning, exiting his back and sticking him to the deck like a pig on a spit. He grasped at the sharp steel, struggling to wrench it from his body, but only succeeded in slicing his fingers. He sucked for air, but something caught in his throat. He tried to scream and a bubble of blood erupted from his mouth, bursting in his face.

Lindsay stood, leaving the cutlass in its place. "The fire comes for you," she said, aiming a finger at the blaze. He looked to the left and saw the flames lapping along the deck, sliding toward him. The pirates were in frenzied, screaming and running about. Some of them were scrambling over the bulwark and leaping off. Distantly, between tremors of pain that surged unremittingly from his belly, Livingston wondered how things had gone so wrong so quickly.

This bitch killed us all.

He attempted another scream and failed, sucking blood into his lungs. His arms flailed, fists banging the deck at his sides. His abdomen slid up and down along the blade, fluids seeping out of him.

"It comes for you," Lindsay repeated, her voice hideously broken. "You will pass into the sea nothing more than a blackened scaffold, and your dark mistress will not recall your name, for she has swallowed a million of your lecherous kind before you, and she will swallow a million more before she’s done."

Her hair was a translucent meridian, wreathing her head in fire. Her shadowed expression was impossible to see, but he knew she was smiling.

The slithering fire touched his legs first, and Edward Livingston found his scream at last.

Livingston was stubborn even in dying. His violent throes lasted far longer than she could have hoped, even after the flames encased his body and licked at his face. His lips shriveled and peeled away from his teeth, blackening his gums. One of his eyes burst in the socket and liquid flowed out, sizzling as it ran down a smoldering cheek. His skin sank into the hollows of his skull until nothing was left but a charred, grimacing death’s-head.

"We have to go," Nathan insisted, pawing at her shoulder. "There’s an HMS on the starboard beam, no doubt spied the fire from Nassau. If we swim ashore, they might not see us."

Katherine, satisfied that Livingston was thoroughly deceased, faced Nathan. She set a hand on his shoulder and said, "Thank you," as genuinely as she could manage, despite her ravaged voice and throbbing skull.

Nathan nodded humbly. "What was I to do?"

Katherine clutched her shirt over her breasts and took in her surroundings. She looked aft and saw the cabin bursting with flames. Several men who had been dueling on the quarterdeck were suddenly consumed as the planking gave way beneath them. Whites and blacks alike sunk to their deaths, claimed by billowing flames that fed off of fresh oxygen.

"It’s Hell," Nathan said.

"It’s beautiful," Katherine heard herself say, in a voice barely recognizable to her.

The fore-and-aft sail caught fire. The blaze leapt to the mainmast and quickly took the main topsail.

"We have to go," Nathan said again, tugging at her. He pointed starboard. There she saw the massive sails of a steadily approaching HMS ship. It was a man-of-war.

"Can you swim?" she asked, staring at the space where his arm had been.

"Maybe in circles," he admitted.

She allowed herself a small chuckle.

"I don’t care much for fire," he said, glancing nervously about. "Given a choice of deaths, I’d just as soon try my hand at drowning, if it’s all the same to you."

"Water is the easier death," she said, watching a man slap at the flames ascending his shirt.

"Aye."

It was just then that two pirates, one white and one black, both engaged in duel, smashed into Katherine and Nathan. Katherine was hurtled a good distance away and quickly overtaken by a rolling cloud of smoke. She covered her mouth to keep from coughing. Bits of ash singed the fresh hole in her head. The roaring of fire and the wails of dying men overpowered her agonized shriek.

Swords clanged and feet thumped the planking. She could see nothing through the smoke. She moved carefully, pirouetting and sweeping her perimeter, trying to take in all directions at once. Her fingers brushed the cold steel of a cannon barrel. She followed the barrel to the bulwark, where the smoke was pouring over the side like mist over a waterfall.

"Nathan!" she called, making her way around the cannon.

She crashed into someone. Hands seized her arms and steadied her. The man smiled broadly. "So happy you’re quit of Livingston!" One-Eyed Henry exclaimed. He was drenched in sweat from head to toe, clothes matted to his skin.

Katherine slipped from his grasp and regarded him incredulously. "Thanks to Nathan," she said coldly.

"Yes, well, I was just as imprudent as he in my youth. Age makes cowards of us all."

She glanced down, eyeing the pistol fastened in Henry’s belt. "What was it you said, Henry?"

"Beg pardon?"

She moved closer, fully aware that her shirt had come open and her left breast was exposed. The pain surging through her skull invigorated her. "‘Leave him to it, boy.’ That’s what you said.

Henry gave a timid chuckle that sounded like the squeak of a dying mouse Katherine had come across as a little girl. "It all happened so fast," he said. "Who knows what came out of my mouth?"

"I know," she replied. "Lately, I just can’t forget little things like that."

"What was I to do? Livingston would have murdered every last one of us, given the chance."

"And yet he’s dead by a woman’s hand."

"Eternally grateful for that, I am," Henry laughed. "I ought build you a house, when we get to Nassau."

She continued her advance until her breast grazed Henry’s chest. He tittered nervously, his lone eye transfixed on her chest. She slipped the gun from his belt and backed away, aiming it at him. "Nice of you to reload it for me."

"Don’t shoot!" He thrust his hands skyward. "I done nothing!"

"That’s no lie, Henry. You’ve done nothing. You and nearly every other pirate on this damned ship, with the exception of Minkah."

"Who?"

"A black man. The one you shot, in point of fact."

"What!? I shot no one!" A bead of sweat trailed the middle of his nose and hung at the tip, expanding in size.

"Livingston didn’t see who did it, even though you were trying so hard to impress him, but I saw you. You smiled when you did it."

The bead of sweat fell. "Fine," Henry sighed, dropping the innocent act. "You saw me shoot a nigger."

She lowered the gun a few notches and Henry breathed a sigh of relief, mistaking her intent. She squeezed the trigger. Henry’s right kneecap was blasted into a fine crimson mist. He crumpled to the deck and shrieked like a little girl.

She tossed the gun at his side and left him there. "If the fire doesn’t take you," she called back, "the gallows will."

She finally found Nathan crouched and coughing at the starboard bulwark near the forecastle. "Thought I’d lost you," she said as she helped him up.

So thick were the flames and smoke that she couldn't see to the stern. Only a few dueling pirates remained, scattered here and there. Why they continued to fight when clearly they should have been swimming for their lives was beyond her. Men had their priorities, and she supposed pride stood taller than all the rest.

She shook her head and purged her thoughts of them. "It's time to go," she said.

"Aye," said Nathan.

She helped him onto the rail. He struggled out of his shirt, which would only hinder him in the water. It proved difficult to remove with a single arm, and she helped get it over his head. He nodded his thanks and she pushed him off. She watched him touch down with a quiet splash. He immediately started swimming.

Katherine followed, not sparing another glance at
Harbinger
or the folly of its crew.

The shouts of pirates and the cracks of gunshots and the clashing of swords grew fainter and more intermittent as Nathan paddled toward the beach. The ache in his remaining arm had given to a pleasant numbness. He had quickly developed an effective method for paddling, swishing his arm beneath his body, rather than to the side, and relying heavily on his legs. Adrenaline carried him further than he would have thought possible.

He inhaled deeply as often as he could, his head bobbing above and beneath the water. The waves surged him forward as he neared land. He swept his arm below for another stroke and his fingers raked sand. His legs lifted suddenly into the air and he was thrust forward with startling velocity. The massive wave deposited him carelessly onto the beach like an oversized fish, bits of gritty sand filling his mouth. He rolled onto his back, panting heavily. Water swept onto the beach around him. Silhouetted palm leaves fluttered gently in the breeze, partially obscuring the starry sky.