And then the four dead men silently launched themselves.
Crimson leaped past Welsh and brought her cutlass clean across the first Blutsauger’s shoulders, taking his head off with such speed that she surprised herself. There was no living muscle or tendon to slow her blade and the force of her own swing threw her off balance.
Behind her, Daphna Maycomb said, “Let me go to them.”
Using the pike, Welsh cleared a path outside the hut, pressing back two more of the Loogaroo without actually being able to touch them. The beasts were fast, when they wanted to be, but were so far removed from their former lives that they could not recall why they should defend themselves. He wheeled aside into the brush and stepped on the pommel of his own dagger. It tripped him up enough to stumble over snaking roots, and as he swung the pike around to batter at one of the creatures, another moved in from his left, his blind side.
Crimson fought the third Blutsauger, keeping it at bay with the edge of her sword and weaving a stake before its heart. She saw Welsh floundering and shouted, “Goat, left side!”
“I can smell ’em.”
“Do more than that.”
The headless dead man limped in circles, arms waving and searching. Crimson watched for an instant, entranced, wondering what it must be like to take the form of a human and have so little to do with who you might once have been. A spasm of fear worked up her back imagining Tyree down below the ocean waves, buried up to his neck in silt. Alone and as different from the man she loved as this bloodless thing groping with endless need. But it still wanted a woman.
And, as she watched, one of the beasts bit down on Welsh’s fist.
“Welsh!”
“I’m fine, he snagged his teeth on my wristlet.”
He’d backed up to the dying torch and readied himself as the two creatures dove towards him. He waited until they were so close that their fingernails brushed his belt, sensing the activity on his left side without seeing any of it. He swung around and brought the pike down into the heart of the first beast, using his momentum to carry him into the clutches of the second. Its flopping tongue slid against his eye patch as he thrust upwards with the stake, shattering ribs and piercing its heart. He fell on top of both corpses waiting for them to rise again, but neither did.
“And that’s what a near-blind old man can do in these parts! You tell ’em all your tale in Hell!”
Whirling, Crimson slashed the fourth Loogaroo across its naked chest with her cutlass. No blood welled, only a foam not unlike whitecaps in the crashing tide. She swung wide again, aiming for the critter’s heel. She hooked it and yanked, cleaving through bone and dropping the beast. With a snarl she threw herself atop it and staked the damned thing through the belly.
Welsh stepped over to finish the job, hauling’ back his arm to deliver the final stake in the heart. Crimson said, “No, wait!”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll have some answers first.”
“And what questions will ye ask?”
She kneeled over the beast that had once been a raiding pirate and draped two rings around its neck. With its lips drawn apart in anguish, she saw all those spirals of teeth leading all around its mouth. It reacted violently, choking and bringing up gobs of black fluid and hunks of bone.
“Tyree,” she said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
The Blutsauger’s mouth worked meaninglessly, chewing at the air as its fangs gnashed together and it slowly strangled on the properties of the iron. It gagged and moaned in agony. Its teeth were broken deep in the back of its throat. She needed to know what it knew about the other ghosts.
“Talk, you rotted beast, is my Tyree out there? Is he on the island elsewhere? Answer!”
It spoke only one word, pleading. “…forgive…”
“Lass,” Welsh said, “put the damnable critter out of its torment.”
“Not until I get what I’m after. You hear! I want to know about my husband and his haunting ways. Tell me, you moldy corpse or I’ll leave you here like this for all the ages.”
“…mercy…”
“None, you bugger!”
Welsh drew his arm back and slapped Crimson hard across the face. Grunting, she toppled over into the dirt and watched as Welsh used the rings to choke the beast into its final rest.
He glared at her without a word and she could do little more than force back the sobs of frustration before they escaped. Her lip was split and she sucked at it, tasting the blood as it filled her mouth.
She spat it out, knowing that some day this would be her fate.
Rising, she strode to the headless body still weaving about, fumbling at the edge of the jungle as if searching a way to escape. She staked it through the back and Welsh buried the still blinking head face down in the sand.
When they returned to the hut they found Daphna slumped forward across Villaine’s corpse. She’d taken one of the sharpened pieces of bamboo and propped it in Villaine’s cold fist, then driven herself upon it.
7
Onboard the San Muy Malo, Crimson told her story to the Maycombs. About how she’d found the village completely empty and discovered two gravestones next to each other, one for Daphna, the other for Villaine. FEVER had been scratched on both. And below that, GOD GRANT YE REST.
Beneath his sorrow, Maycomb’s rage boiled until he was almost hissing. “And the other privateers?”
“All dead or shipped off to escape the disease, I’d imagine.”
“So there was no Loogaroo? Is this what you say? You didn’t find the Boabhan Sith, the Dearg-Due?”
“No,” she said.
Instead of relief he grew only more frustrated. She understood why. It takes a great leap of faith for a man who prides himself on reason and common sense to believe in such spirits, and once the leap is made, there’s no turning back. Then he must have his proof.
Crimson considered telling him the truth, but she knew that eventually this reality would eat away at him as much as his doubts. Better he went to his grave believing his daughter to be the same pure girl he’d last seen. It served her memory that much the better.
She retrieved the pouch of diamonds and returned more than half its contents to him. “This will pay my wages.”
Elaine Maycomb did not cry. She had finished with that and now had to take her grief and make it into something else. Perhaps she would heal there on the coast of Virginia, perhaps not. “Thank you, Lady,” she said.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Crimson told her.
She left the couple then and went to hold watch in the bow with Welsh, listening to Hedrick and his men carousing a bit below decks. She couldn’t help scanning the waves to see what might be lurking within.
It was true that both Villaine and Daphna rested in the earth. Welsh himself had cut the words on the gravestones with his dagger, after hacking off all their heads and burying them face down. Then he and Crimson had built a bonfire and burned the bodies as best as they could. Let the animals of the jungle scatter those cursed bones and embers.
“We’ve a good wind pluming the sails,” he told her.
“Yes, we’ll make Port of St. Christopher’s in three days at this rate.” She caught him looking over the side. “Any mermaids?”
“They say Blackbeard himself died after twenty-five stab wounds and five bullets. His head was taken and hung on the bowsprit and his body tossed overboard. It swam around the ship thrice before finally sinking out of sight.”
“You think Blackbeard might’ve been one of those beasts?”
“Nah, he was just a pirate,” Welsh said, grinning. “Nothing special ’bout him.”
There was a great deal inside her that needed to be said but she could find no way to frame her thoughts. They had come close tonight, she and the old man. Close to death and whatever might lay beyond it. I love you, father. “Welsh—listen to me, I—”