Witches of the Deep (The Memento Mori Witch Trilogy Book 3) (22 page)

Marlowe grinned, taking her hand, and she pressed herself against him in a slow dance. He looked down at her, licking his lips. He probably didn’t get much female attention—not when he was around men like Lir and Nod, who looked like demigods.

As he spun, she caught a glimpse of Lir’s frowning face. Ignoring him, Fiona ran a hand down Marlowe’s chest and heard his breath catch.
Just the way I want him—completely distracted.
She ran her hand lower, and Marlowe grinned. Abruptly, she grabbed the bottom of the satchel, dumping it onto the deck.

Two things clattered on the floorboards: a small, white bone, and a silver ring that rolled across the deck, glinting in the ruddy sunlight.

Rohan’s ring.

Fiona broke away from Marlowe, snatching the ring from the floorboards. As if sensing the tension in the air, Valac stopped playing his fiddle, and silence descended. All eyes were on her as she turned the silver skull ring in her hand. Her gaze met Marlowe’s. “Did you kill Rohan?”

“What made you dump out my satchel?” he demanded.

Jacques clearly hadn’t wanted to accuse one of the other Picaroons publicly, or he would have done it himself. Her body burning with fury, Fiona simply shook her head. “It was an accident. Did you kill Rohan?”

Within a second, Lir was at Marlowe’s side, tearing the satchel from his shoulder. Marlowe paled as Lir pulled out Ostap’s wristband. “Did you find these in one of the recruits’ rooms, Marlowe?”

Nod’s shoes clacked over the deck, and the sun washed over his blue velvet suit, staining it purple. “Don’t lie to us.”

“I had to kill them.” Marlowe stared at the deck. “They broke your rules, Captain.”

“What are you talking about?” Nod barked.

Marlowe’s cheeks burned. “They were insubordinate. I couldn’t allow it. Berold threatened to meddle with Fiona. Rohan openly disagreed with your choices for the sailboat assignments. And Ostap argued with you about Fiona’s desertion. The only reason she’s not dead is that you never forbade anyone to leave the ship. Otherwise I’d have killed her myself.”

Still leaning against the mainmast, Ives shot her a smug look, as if to say
I told you so.

“I forbade anyone from murdering the recruits,” Nod growled, his eyes darkening.

Marlowe met his gaze. “In your wisdom, you forbade the
recruits
from murdering each other. I’ve never broken any of your rules, Captain. I never would. I’m here to serve you, and to guard the relic in our ancient tradition.”

Fiona’s heart thudded.
Nod can’t let him get away with this.

To her horror, the Captain grinned and clapped Marlowe on the back before turning to her and Ives. “Now you see what I expect of you, if you survive. I demand unwavering loyalty. Once Dagon blesses you, you will be mine. Together, we will protect the relic from falling into the wrong hands. This is our sacred mission.”

Fiona felt sick.
Slave to a maniac.
She turned, facing the ocean, and tried to keep down her lunch.

In the next moment, Lir was beside her. “It’s not too late,” he whispered. “You can still get out of here.”

“How? Will Nod let me leave?”

He shook his head. “No. You’d have to escape with me.”

Tears of gratitude stung her eyes. “Where would we go?”

“Keep your voice down. I could take you to Mount Acidale, or Atlantis. I don’t know. But you need to decide—”

His words were cut off by a thick hand around his throat. Nod yanked him backward, choking the life out of his younger brother. “You will not steal my recruit,” he boomed.

F
iona stood in the cove
, listening to the gentle lapping of water against rock. Reaching behind her back, she touched the new tattoo, feeling the slightly raised edges where Lir had marked the wings. 

Nod had nearly murdered him as Fiona had looked on screaming. But before Lir’s heart gave out, he’d clamped the first mate in irons instead. Maybe he’d lost his humanity, but he hadn’t been able to murder his brother.

In the bay, the
Proserpine
bobbed gently and the hot-coral sun dipped lower on the horizon. Lir remained on the ship, bound to the mast.

It didn’t look like the right sort of day for plunging to the depths to meet a shadow god. Surely there should be lightning and whirlwinds, maybe the angry face of the storm god. Instead, seagulls gently swooped below pale-lavender clouds. Of course, if she was going to die a horrible death, nature really wouldn’t care. It would just get on with things.

She shot a quick glance at Ives, who hummed placidly, waiting. Jacques stood across from them, running the brim of his hat through his fingers. For the first time since she’d met him, Fiona saw him looking nervous. He obviously wanted to be anywhere but here. He must have seen more than a few of his Dogtown friends sink to their deaths in the trials.

Gently rubbing his bone necklace, Captain Nod crossed the rocky shoreline, dressed in a blue suit flecked with gold. Apparently, this was a big night for him.

Fiona closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. There was no turning back from this. She would either die, condemned to a watery afterlife, or she would emerge from the waters as a Guardian. Perhaps someone like Nod, with only lingering scraps of humanity. Her father’s darkness could overwhelm her—set in like a rot that would eat away everything good her mom had managed to instill in her. She could find herself turned into a coldblooded killer.

She swallowed hard, watching as Nod looked her up and down. “My two beautiful tributes. You’ve made it this far. As far as I know, one of you is a bit murdery. Maybe you both are. But we don’t make judgments about good and evil. It’s Dagon who decides your value. You will swim into the cove, and you must not return until you’ve retrieved the gold coin from Dagon. He will either kill you, or grant you his favor. And as much as I love to feed our god, I’m hoping for at least one more crewmember, so try not to die.”

Fiona felt numb. She had no control anymore—just a pawn in a war between the gods. Ives’ eyes swerved to hers, and he gave a curt nod. 

The Captain opened his palms. “Begin!”

Ives jumped in first, splashing frigid water all over Fiona. She glanced at Jacques, who lowered his eyes.
He doesn’t think I’m going to make it.
 

Nod glared at her. “I hope this isn’t insubordination.”

She shook her head. Her spine stiffened, and she leapt.

S
he raised
her arms above her head, letting herself sink into the murky water. Her heart was about to burst out of her chest, and her mind screamed
Run
. Her entire being told her to struggle against the current, to crawl her way out, but she forced herself to swim lower. When she closed her eyes, she almost thought she could see blood swirling through the dark water, the ocean floor covered by a bed of corpses.

If she was going to survive, she needed to see the underwater world the way Lir saw it, and she tried to remember the cathedral. Pearly light pouring through the water’s surface, kissing the undulating seagrass. She almost had the picture in her mind, when something slick grazed her arm. Adrenaline flooded her veins, but it was too dark to see. Something enveloped her in its slimy embrace, and she fought against it.
Dagon.
He was here, and she was completely powerless against him. 

Slimy appendages enveloped her, and she saw him. Lir’s father on the beach, his face missing and his flesh grayed and bloated with seawater. Her father’s work. Fiona’s entire body shook, desperate to free herself. But Dagon wasn’t finished, and the image shifted. Danny dragged a woman through the woods of Dogtown, and her arms and feet were bound. Iron hung around the woman’s neck, suppressing her magic. Danny stopped, and with a grin, he pulled a knife from his pocket. His face transformed, growing younger and more feminine. It was Fiona’s face, smiling as she held a knife over Mrs. Ranulf.

It’s not me.

She saw her mom, sitting in her kitchen in South Boston. Two men in black suits sat across from her, and as Mom’s jaw dropped open, one of the men pulled a gun and squeezed the trigger. Mom lay on the beach—her face was gone. What had done this? She couldn’t remember anymore.

Another image flashed before her. It was herself, holding a shotgun pointed at another Fiona—a phantom Fiona who didn’t know how to fight. She pulled the trigger and shot off the front of her own head. She watched as her body crumpled into the sand. Had she killed all those people? There was something wrong within her. Darkness poisoned her blood.

Dagon’s tentacles tightened around her, and she saw herself wrapping her hands around Nod’s neck and choking the life out of him. What sort of an animal—

Lir said we’re were all animals.

We’re all animals.

She couldn’t breathe. She’d run out of air, and her legs began to convulse. Her own death lay below the waves. She’d always known it, always seen her own faceless corpse.

It was all over now. Gods, she needed breath.

Mariana’s face flashed in her mind, then Mom sitting at the table, grading papers. Tobias’s dark eyes. She longed to touch his face again, to smell the rain on his neck. She’d never see him again, never hear that strange, lilting accent or run her fingers over his skin, or pull him close and feel the heat that blazed off his skin.

Seawater began to fill her lungs, and just as her throat convulsed, it hit her. If she loved anyone, she was nothing like Danny.

T
here was nothing now
—no tentacles pulling her under, no water in her lungs. No up or down. She drifted in an abyss, utterly alone. Her life had been but one quick burst of flames in the darkness, and now it was over.

She’d have given anything for one more day. If she’d really taken in every moment as she should have, she wouldn’t have spent so much time thinking about death.

Here, the isolation was painful, devouring her from the inside out. This was it. This was her death. Even the worst day of her life she would relive, if she could just live again and see the light and feel the rain on her face.

A deep, rumbling voice spoke in the chasm. “You’re not one of mine.” Dagon, rejecting her as a Guardian. “You belong to Nyxobas.”

Wait. What?

Something glimmered in the distance—a pinpoint of silvery light. And out of the glimmer, someone moved swiftly through the void. She felt so relieved at the presence of something else—anything else—she wanted to cry with joy.

The cloaked figure stalked closer, a silver scythe in hands. She couldn’t see his face, and something about him was terrifying. Still, she wanted to embrace him. Anything to pull herself from this agonizing isolation.

But as he neared her, he raised his scythe, and Fiona’s stomach clenched. He swung for her neck and she felt a flash of pain, and then coldness surrounded her.

Icy water enveloped her, and she gripped something hard in her fist. Dagon was gone, but a delicious, dark power flooded her body, ancient and cold. Only one word howled in her mind.
Nyxobas.

T
he succubus rubbed
her legs together, luxuriating in Nyxobas’s power. She whispered in Angelic, and the golden circle that bound her hands disappeared.

She sat up straight, licking her lips, and fixed her dark eyes on Jack, immobilizing him. With her prey under control, she dropped her glamour, transforming from a beautiful young woman into a shriveled hag. Edging closer, she gripped his hair and pulled his face to her dusty, cracked lips.

Every fiber of his being compelled him to run, but he could no longer control his muscles. She clamped her desiccated mouth on his, like a lamprey seeking blood. His chest filled with gnawing emptiness, and he saw Fiona leaving him behind in the burning Purgator temple. She’d left him utterly alone.

Dying from the inside out, such exquisite agony, a gaping void—this was what it would feel like to live eternally in one of the shadow hells. For mortal demons like him, death would not bring a quiet sleep. It would be an unending nightmare.

As the succubus drew his memories from him, Elizabeth’s body flashed in his mind again, walking through Salem’s streets. But this time she was tied to the back of a cart on a cold January day, stripped to the waist. Teeth chattering, her lips had turned blue. This was a different sort of nakedness, one that made his stomach clench with rage. Jack’s father had walked behind her, flaying her with a switch. Blood poured from her wounds, staining the dress that hung at her hips. Even her perfect breasts were ripped apart.

Jack had been able to do nothing but stand limply by on broken legs.

When she’d died from her wounds a week later, Jack had felt as though his soul were torn in two. He’d no longer cared about right and wrong, about heaven or hell. All he’d known was that he would do anything not to feel that crushing impotence, the exquisite agony of losing someone he’d loved. He’d crawled to his father’s chest of drawers, searching for the athame. He’d never be powerless again. At least, that was what he’d hoped.

His eyelids fluttered, and the succubus clutched him tighter. Mercifully, Druloch’s power began to surge through him once again. Amauberge’s flesh grew soft, and her lips dampened. Her hand ran under his shirt, stroking his newly smooth skin, and he curled her hair around his fist, pulling her face from his. When she looked like this, he could keep going, but the hag would drain him if he kept at it long enough. Given enough time with her, even Druloch wouldn’t be able to save him.

Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, and she moaned almost imperceptibly. “I’m not sure what’s my favorite part. Elizabeth’s fate in Salem, or when Fiona left you to be eaten by the Fury and you realized your entire existence was pointless.”

“You know, pretty as you are, I’m not really in the mood anymore.” He pulled her arms from his neck and rose, smoothing out his shirt.

“Just as well. I have a score to settle with my husband.”

Gods’ blood, he needed to get out of here. “Good luck with that. I have a flight to catch.” Crossing to the latticed window, he yanked it open and heard the hag screech as he leapt through the window to the garden below.

He raced over the grass to the riverbank, crossing the lawn in a fraction of a second.

Munroe stood in the shadows, her eyes wide. “Jack! What—”

George’s agonized voice interrupted from the house. “What have you done? Where is Jack?”

“What’s happening?” Munroe whispered. “How are we going to get out of here?”

He gripped her arm, yanking her to a copse of hemlock trees, but the idiot moved at a snail’s pace. “Hurry up!”
Damned humans.

George’s cries rumbled through the ground, shaking the trees’ leaves. “You betrayed me!”

Jack spied a small sapling, and he pulled the athame from his pocket. Whispering a spell, he sliced through the trunk, felling it.

“What are you doing?” cried Munroe, clutching the bourbon.

The smell of rotting leaves filled the air. George’s dark fury was palpable, and Jack scrambled to rub the herbs on the tree. He straddled the sapling. “Get on,” he barked.

“What?”

Jack glanced behind him, catching a glimpse of Percy Plantation. Black vines crawled over the exterior, shattering windows. George’s form loomed in one jagged window. “
Jack!
”

His ancient heart hammered. “Get on and hold on tight, or I’m leaving without you.”

She hiked up her dress, and her trembling arm slipped around his waist.

Jack uttered the ancient spell for flight. Around them, the trees groaned, their branches thickening and reaching for him as his feet left the ground. The leaves curled around his skin, the wind whispering through them,
Traitor.
With a grunt, he broke through their sylvan embrace, racing into the chilly night air. Munroe’s nails dug into his flesh, but he was free.