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“Shit. She’s crazy,” Wheeler gushed out. “Crazy beautiful.”
“She did it,” Isaiah murmured.
As if she heard him, green eyes flitted his way and connected. A grin erupted from her lips and reached for his heart, and he could only stand there in his little sheen cage and grin back. Then she was gone, and he was worrying again as he searched for her repeatedly in between the bumping, writhing bodies.
“Being that far sucked. I hate that I couldn’t see half of what I was doing.”
Ruby impatiently pushed Isaiah out of the way with Maddox in tow. Then she cracked her knuckles and stepped out of the sheen.
“I will be back. Let me talk to them first.”
As it turned out, the witch’s idea of talking involved putting enough magic into her hands so she could pat the creatures to sleep. One by one, the vicious ones were snoring while the injured ones were shimmying toward her to ask for help. She soothed them with more magic hands, then spun to face a pirate sneaking up on her.
“Were you about to kill me?”
One of the injured creatures nuzzled her shoulder and bared its sharp teeth to the man. The man paled, gulped, and turned—only to be met with Maddox’s bared fangs and Isaiah’s drawn sword.
“You can try,” Maddox dared.
“Chill, mate,” Isaiah said. “How about it, man?”
The man dropped his knife and held up his hands in defeat. The rest of Isaiah’s crew filed out of the disintegrating sheen to capture the man, then more who stumbled forward and voluntarily surrendered. Isaiah left them to the task, wandering around and hopping in between enchanted sleeping creatures as he expanded his search. But Nicola was nowhere to be found, a ghost in the thrum of their successful takeover.
“Where are you, darling?” he murmured, letting the wind carry his voice. “Why aren’t you up here with us?”
And just like that, Isaiah knew where she was.
Chapter 17
Nicola estimated about an hour or two before the sun peeked out and she could no longer leave the ship. It didn’t matter. The deck above would teem with Isaiah’s crew and the surrendering party, and Ruby would take charge to ensure the creatures and crew were safe. The witch would probably even go a step further and use the creatures on anyone who attempted to ambush them again, which cemented Nicola’s decision to move before she could change her mind.
I need to do this. I’m the one with no emotions attached. I can do this quickly.
It didn’t feel like it now, with how her emotions were all over the place, but she calmed them down easily as she cleared the cage area and wandered elsewhere. One by one, she cleared the rest of the rooms, then lingered a bit in the ship’s West wing to eavesdrop on the pirates who had retreated there.
“We have to get out of the ship. Are there any boats around?”
“We have to burn the ship down.”
“And die with it? Are you an idiot? Surrendering is the only option. Then we beg for our lives, and maybe we don’t have to die.”
“Where’s the captain? Why isn’t he dealing with this?”
The words went back and forth, but the consensus was either the pirate lord was dead or just didn’t care enough to protect them. Either way, there were no plans to attack with their small number, so she took care not to be seen and went in the other direction.
Unlike the main ship’s fancy structure, this one was all sturdy material built to house even more rooms with cages. A slow-burning fury spread over her when she discovered cages with dried blood and skeletal bones, signaling that she had been too late to rescue those. Then she was in the steam room, where every pipe ticked and every opening hissed.
Extra careful with her steps, Nicola scoured the large area, her heart beating with the rhythm of the sounds. Instinct warned that she was close as there would have been no other place for Ven to go, but a man who owned something this crazy and managed to hide it from the world would know where to hide. She had to draw him out.
“I know you are here, pirate lord. Or should I just say Ven? I don’t think your title will hold for long after everything that happened.”
Silence met her call. She walked around and allowed her voice to carry over the emptiness.
“Your second-in-command is gone. Your loyal men are gone, too, and the ones left behind think you abandoned them. Your main ship is ransacked, and this ship won’t sustain your ambition. What’s the point of hiding? What’s the point of dying like a coward after all that effort you took to build your reputation up?”
A hiss rang louder beside her as the ship turned. When it swayed, she stopped walking and wondered what was happening above.
“Come on, now. I can’t say I’m unfamiliar with ambition, considering where I come from. We can talk about it. I might be a vampire but you saw how I spared your men.”
