As the wind increased, so did the amplitude of the waves, and the small ship was nowhere near as able to crush through the turmoil as the Grand Paradise had been. The vessel was battered, and when it slammed bow-first into the rising waves, the spray fractured into foam and coated everything on board in slippery, unpleasant slime.
Then came the rain, hammering in sheets that felt like needles. Josue's crew broke out battered rain slickers. I ignored the offer, and stood at the bow, watching the storm's progress. I could feel its blind menace, its anger, but it wasn't directed downward at me, not even as the rain intensified into a heavy, strangely hot downpour. The wind speed increased, and the clouds rotated faster. It intensified as the ship crashed and fell through the waves. I tethered myself to the rail and resisted the waves that crested the bow and washed the decks, trying to pull me over.
Something wild inside me broke free as we rode through the storm, and in the blaze of lightning and pounding surf, I felt at home. Finally, completely at home. All those years of fighting the storms, and I'd never realized how much a part of them I was. How complete I was when I was with them.
I was almost sorry when we hit the eye of the storm and calm fell over us - but I looked up into the primal heart of the enemy, and it looked back at me with a kind of affectionate recognition.
Good dog.
When we hit the trailing side, the winds lashed us so viciously that we lost two of the crew, even though they'd been tethered. The seas swamped the decks, shattered glass, woke terror from seasoned pirates who picked their teeth and yawned at the idea of a normal tempest.
After a white-knuckled eternity, the storm was past us, and heading for its real victim.
The ship closing in on us from behind.
The seas continued heavy against us, and Josue wanted to slow our pace. The engines were laboring, and the crew was exhausted and sick.
"No," I said. I didn't need them anymore. They'd served their purpose, both ship and crew, and I no longer had to worry about their breaking points. "Just keep the throttle open.
We'll be fine."
I wrapped energy around the straining pumps and valves and increased their speed. It wouldn't last long, but it would give us more of a lead against our pursuer, who had the full weight of the storm to deal with now. I looked back to see its forward progress stalling, as if it had met cooler air to slow it. The storm was lashing that other ship with all its supernatural fury.
Josue, also watching, crossed himself.
The moon rose, but it was quickly veiled by clouds. As night descended on us, it was thick and black and claustrophobic. Only the shattered reflections of our running lights spoiled the illusion of sailing through empty, limitless space.
"Mãe de Deus,"Josue murmured. "It's still coming, that ship. Like a ghost out of the grave." It was a ghost.
The Grand Paradise had gone down, I'd seen it. It had been too badly damaged and too thoroughly flooded to float, and yet there it was, gaining on our tail. The running lights were all working, blazing merrily in the darkness, and it was charging at a speed that didn't seem natural for such an enormous ship.
It was trying to get to me before I reached my destination.
"Hold on," I told Josue, and opened the throttles even more on our nameless little pirate ship, sending it leaping and slamming through the waves like an oversized, wallowing speedboat. The hull wouldn't take it for long, but it didn't have to.
Out there in the darkness was my destination.
I felt a Warden grabbing for control of our engines, and whipped a black scythe of power across the lines of force. It must have hurt, and badly. "Do it again, and you'll pull back a stump," I muttered, and gripped the rail tighter. "Back off." I didn't think they would. If they were strong and confident enough to make it through the hurricane, they'd be more than competent enough to tackle me.
A Djinn breathed into focus on the deck a few feet away, and I prepared for the fight of my life but it was David.
David.
MyDavid, perfect in every line. Not Kevin's incarnation of him.
He didn't say anything. Neither did I. Josue drew a knife and stabbed at him, but David didn't even bother to cast him a look, just flicked his fingers and sent him flying across the deck.
"Are you here to stop me?" I asked.
"No," my husband said, and took a step toward me. Then another. I was in the V-shaped well of the bow, pressed against the rails - nowhere to go but over the side, into the black waters. "I'm not here to stop you."
"Then what?"
He took another step, risking a full attack. I could feel the urge, the need vibrating through me like plucked strings. Don't let him fool you. Don't let him stop you. You need to reach Bad Bob. If this goes badly, you know what will happen. The two of you will be responsible for destroying the world.
In the ripping light of a lightning strike on the cruise ship looming slowly up behind us, David's face was serious and very calm.
"I'm here to help you," he said.
He opened his hand, and in it were fragments of glass.
The broken pieces of his bottle.
I stared at them for a moment, into his eyes. "How - ?"
"Cherise," he said. "She wants you to live. So do I. She got the bottle away from Kevin. She - trusts me."
Cherise was a romantic idiot, in this one sense: She simply didn't understand how dangerous David really was. I wasn't even sure I understood... although I was starting to get a really good idea.
I tightened my grip on the rail as the ship pounded into a particularly deep trough, then painfully plowed up the leading edge of the next wave. "I see. And did you stop for anything else along the way?"
"You mean, did I kill Lewis?" he asked. "Not yet." He took one more step, and we were body to body, soaked with rain, blinded by lightning. Sealed together by storms. "That doesn't mean I've forgotten him. Don't ask me to do that."
I couldn't begin to try. "How did they raise the ship?"
"Who says they did?" David's smile was knowing, and a little bitter. "It's not the Grand Paradise. Lewis lied to you from the beginning. The Grand Paradise was a decoy, designed to lure Bad Bob into showing his hand. He sent the other Wardens out of Fort Lauderdale, aboard the Grand Horizon. It's a sister ship - a little smaller, a little faster. Crewed entirely with Wardens and Djinn. It's been making good time and staying off of Bad Bob's radar. Until now."
That son of a bitch. Lewis really had suckered me, every step of the way. He'd known I was a risk, if not a ready-made traitor. He'd used me as a stalking horse, although I had to admit he'd put himself on the line, too.
But he'd also exposed Cherise and dozens of other innocents who had no place in this. And an unforgivably large number of Wardens, although I supposed for any kind of a feint to work, he had to commit himself to it.
I would never forgive him for risking so much, no more than David would be able to forgive him for the kill switch that Lewis had put in my brain.
"So by suckering Bad Bob into kicking the living crap out of us, the Grand Horizon got a virtually free ride," I said. "Right?"
"As far as I know."
"How could you not know?"
"It's crewed by Ashan's Djinn. Everything was compartmentalized from me. Deliberately so."
We'd both been cut out. Well, I'd been hoping Lewis had fallback positions, in the beginning, and it looked like he'd done a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less than I'd have managed in his place.
"They're in for it now," I noted, as three lightning strikes crawled the Grand Horizon 's deck, searching for something to destroy. "But we're still going to get there ahead of them."
"I know." He cupped my face in both hands, and he studied me closely. I knew what he was looking for.
"I'm all right," I said. "Seventy-five percent all right, anyway." He seemed to calculate me at about the same rate.
"If we succeed," he said, "we will have another problem to consider." I hadn't actually thought past the consequences of failure, which were fairly horrific. "Like what?"
"You may inherit his power. And you may be tempted to use it."
"I could use it for good."
"So did he. Once. It isn't a power you can use, Jo. It's a power you must destroy." I looked back at him. "So if I grab it from Bad Bob, you're going to take it away from me. Or die trying."
"Maybe," David said. "But first we have to live to get there, don't we?" I turned to face him. The next lurching drop sent him into me. Our lips found each other, hot and hungry and damp, tasting of salt and desperation. For a moment even the storm seemed to stop, suspended between heartbeats.
I felt the darkness in me trying to reach out to him, and slapped it down hard. No. Not yet.
David might be here, he might be with me, but he wasn't with me. And I wasn't going to be the one to enslave him yet again, not until I had no other choice.
I turned to face south, toward the empty horizon. "He's not far now," I said. "One thing at a time, right?"
David's arms gripped the railing on either side of me, bracing me against the violent bucking of the ship as we plunged toward the darkness. "Right."
Chapter Ten
The Wardens on the Grand Horizon had learned from our mistakes, it appeared; we saw them break through the storm, and they must have set up a series of Djinn/ Warden cooperative alliances to maintain their bubble shield, because I could see the glistening curve of it from the deck of our ship as the waves broke and foamed over the smooth round surface.
I wished them luck in keeping that up. It was brutal, soul-shredding work. "How long until they catch up?"
David handed me a plate. Our pirate cook had made some kind of meat, finely chopped and spiced, with spongy bread. It was delicious, and surprising; I'd somehow expected wormy crusts and rum. I gobbled down the lunch with gratitude.
"Good?" David asked, amused, and shook his head at my garbled reply. "They're gaining.
They'll catch up to us by midday."
"Can't let that happen," I mumbled. "Lewis was very clear. This needs to be me. Not them."
"Bad Bob and his storm didn't slow them down. How do you propose either of us stops them, short of destroying them?"
I chewed and swallowed. "Ask them."
He evidently hadn't thought of that. I winked and carried my plate to the wheelhouse, where Josue was dozing on a stained old cot at the back while his navigator did the hard work of steering the tough little vessel on the course I'd set. I asked about the radio and was pointed belowdecks, to a small, claustrophobic closet of a room with bad ventilation and a crew member who evidently liked beans and hated baths. I evicted him from his battered chair and rolled up to check out the radio. It was old, but highly complicated.
"Hey!" I yelled through the closed door. David opened it. "Help me out a little. I'm not Sparky the Wonder Horse."
That earned me a full, warm smile. "I wouldn't say that. "
"Watch it." I meant that; he was looking at me like I was the old Joanne. The less demented one. "Keep your guard up. I mean it, David. Bad Bob can be funny, too. That doesn't make him any less of a monster. Don't you dare trust me. I can't trust myself, not anymore."
The smile faded, and the sparks in his eyes turned ash-dark. "Yes. I understand." David looked at the radio, and the dials turned. "There. That should put you in touch with the Grand Horizon 's bridge."
"Thanks." I slipped on the headphones as he shut the door between us - less to provide me with privacy than to give me elbow room. There wasn't enough space in here to breathe.
"Merchant vessel - " Oh, hell, what was this ship's name? "Merchant vessel Sparrow for the cruise vessel Grand Horizon. Please respond, over." I expected I'd have to repeat myself, but instead I got an immediate crackle of connection.
" Sparrow,this is Grand Horizon." I knew that voice. "You made it."
"Lewis." I kept my voice neutral, although I was glad he'd made it, too. Even if he had tried to kill me. "You're lucky David hasn't made a lampshade out of you."
"Time will tell." Lewis obviously knew all about how much trouble he was in on that front.
"You're heading straight for Bad Bob."
"I have a plan. Obviously, it won't be as good as yours," I said, "but I make one hell of a good distraction, right? So I go in, do as much damage as possible, and you guys land for the cleanup."
"That would be great - if I thought for a second we could actually trust you." Lewis's voice was bleak and dry, even through the distortion of the radio waves. "You brought us this close. That's enough, Jo. Break it off. Whatever happens, don't let him finish what he started in destroying you."
"What makes you think he can't do it from a distance?" I asked. "I'd rather go down fighting for you than against you."
"Jo - "
"Maybe you didn't get that I wasn't asking your permission. I was informing you, that's all.
You can not love it all you want, but it's what's going to happen, and - " I felt the laboring engines of my little ship begin to struggle. "Don't you even think about it, man. You start screwing with me and you are in a world of trouble." He covered the mike, presumably to warn off the Earth Warden or Djinn who was trying to shut me down. "I'm not interfering," he said. "I'm just advising, and I advise you very strongly to break this off and run, Jo. Now."