Pirate Wolf Trilogy (40 page)

“
Captain
Jonas Spence. He is the reason we have been stopped here and
summoned for a council. It seems he found some interesting
intelligence on board the
San Pedro
—interesting enough to have Drake hobbling about on three
legs, if you catch my meaning.”

Bloodstone
disdained the crudity with a slight curling of his lip. “This …
Jonas Spence. Does anyone know him?”

In the
brief consultations that followed, no one seemed to be acquainted
with the privateer personally but everyone had heard the buzz that
his daughter was none other than the Black Swan.

“The
cartographer? A woman, you say?”

“Ugly as the
name implies, I am told, but possessed of a skilled hand,
nonetheless.”

“
And his
ship? The
Egret
? Equally
ugly,” avowed another voice. “I am anchored off her beam and must
say, I find the notion of her taking on a Spanish carrack to be
almost fantastic.”

“What do you
think she would carry? Ten or twelve culverins at best?”

“Closer to
twenty,” said the same knowledgeable neighbor. “And she’s carrying
demis. Big bronze teeth … exactly like your own, Captain
Bloodstone.”

The stony
gaze raked over the speaker but the response came from Bloodstone’s
second, Horace Lamprey, an ugly brute with vicious eyes and a lip
half missing. “I hardly think a mere merchant’s guns could
be
exactly
like
Captain Bloodstone’s. The
Talon’s
demis were acquired by special custom through Dante de
Tourville, and there are none other like them in the
world”

The captain who
had made the comment met Lamprey’s sneer. “I could swear they are
similar—scrolled snouts with eagles on the barrels?”

“
Impossible,” Bloodstone decreed irately. “The only other
guns like mine went down with the
Virago”

“Which, of
course, you say you saw go under.”

Victor turned
his head to acknowledge the bemused voice behind him and saw Drake,
standing by a small chart table, a glass of brandy poised at his
lips.

“
I saw
her surrounded,” Bloodstone said carefully, “staggering under full
cannonades from six India guards. With the damage my own ship had
sustained in the fighting, I could not risk another pass to see if
the last board did, indeed, go under, but I daresay no ship could
have survived such a pounding as I bore witness to. I wish, with
every fiber of my being, that the
Virago
, her courageous captain, and crew could have survived, but
I know in my heart they did not.”

Drake smiled
and his bright hawk’s eyes looked past Bloodstone’s shoulder,
fixing themselves on the shadows outside the cabin door.

“Wish for
something too devoutly, too passionately, Captain Bloodstone,” he
murmured, “and it might surprise you by coming true.”

One by one the
captains turned to stare at the door. Voices tailed away and
conversations ended on unfinished words and half-formed thoughts.
Those unaccustomed to seeing tall, black-haired ghosts with white,
wolfish smiles felt the need to vent a hastily muttered expletive
before they, too, fell back and stared.

Victor
Bloodstone turned slowly on his polished heel. At first he saw
nothing ominous in the burly, bald-headed captain who beamed a
nervous greeting through the frothed red fuzz of his beard. But
then a cold chill of foreboding swept down his spine and his eyes
followed a line of shadow to where a dark, gleaming ebony head was
just straightening from having to duck to clear the lintel.

A moment later
a breathless, choking, constricting moment later, he found himself
staring into the iced, cobalt-blue eyes of the recently dead and
departed Simon Dante, Comte de Tourville.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

Dante kept his
smile firmly in place as he walked fully into the brighter light.
He advanced slowly on Victor Bloodstone, stopping only when he was
close enough to smell the shock that oozed instantly to dampen the
Englishman’s brow. Dante’s hands ached with the need to close
around the stolid, patrician neck; his arms throbbed with the
desire to channel all of his strength and power into squeezing,
tearing, choking the life out of the treacherous thief’s miserable
body.

Horace Lamprey
sent his hand instantly to the hilt of his sword, but a
white-lipped hiss of breath from his captain stopped the action
before it could be noticed by anyone other than Dante. The hazel
eyes narrowed and he managed a taut “Simon.”

Dante smiled.
“Victor. I gather, from the look on your face, you were not
forewarned?”

Bloodstone’s
jaw tightened. “No. I was not.”

Sir Francis
shrugged amiably. “For such a happy occasion I thought not to spoil
the surprise.”

“Where the
devil have you come from?” Bloodstone asked, his eyes not wavering
from Dante’s.

“Kind of you to
ask. And I suppose the devil would be the one to answer, but since
he isn’t here with us today— in his normal guise, at any rate—it
falls to me to be the bearer of bad tidings.”

Aware of every
owlish eye rapt upon them, Bloodstone made an admirable recovery of
his wits and stepped forward. “Bad tidings? I should think it is
nothing less than miraculous. Allow me to be the first to … welcome
you back to life.”

Dante could
hardly push away the hand Victor braced on his shoulder, though the
sentiment was obvious enough in his eyes to have the intrusion
swiftly withdrawn.

“
The
Virago?”
Bloodstone attempted a smile. “Did she survive as
well?”

“Alas, no. The
zabras did their job well. She lies at the bottom of the sea.”

“Then we can
only thank God you do not lie there with her. But … how did you
escape, man? The last I saw, I would have said there was no
hope.”

“Perhaps if you
had stayed around awhile longer, you would have seen more.”

A few breaths
were drawn in, a few more let go on soft whistles, but otherwise,
the cabin was as silent as a tomb.

“
I had no
steerage,” Bloodstone said in a quiet, even tone. “The main was
cracked, the rudder sloppy. I tried to follow our initial course of
action, but the wind turned gusty and I could not bring the
Talon
about.”

“I have no
doubt she handled like a bitch,” Dante agreed. “Especially with all
that added weight on board. The barrels of food and water—?”

Lamprey cut
brusquely into the conversation. “That was my doing, Captain. I did
not think we should leave what few supplies we had behind to
benefit the Spaniards in the event you did what damage you could
and escaped. They could have used the island and our stores to
refurbish and come after us.”

“Indeed,”
Bloodstone added blithely. “I had no notion you would even be so
foolhardy as to stand and fight, especially when you could see the
trouble we were in. One ship against six?” He lifted his hand in an
airy appeal to the logic of the other captains present. “Who would
have expected it?”

“And when the
wind died and your rudder was stronger, did you not think to circle
back and search for survivors?”

“
Frankly?
No. If there were six enemy ships pounding me to splinters and the
last you saw, I was leading them away so that
you might make good your
escape
, would you have
let the gesture go for naught and circle back—possibly to be
captured and killed yourself—just so you could vanquish your
conscience and say ‘We searched for survivors and found
none’?”

He was smooth
and convincing. Logical. Reasonable. And lying through his teeth,
Dante knew.

“I suppose you
thought it best to take the gold out of harm’s way as well?”

Bloodstone’s
eyes betrayed a small flicker. “After all we had gone through to
steal it from the King? Would you not think it the wisest course as
well?”

“The Queen was
pleased? I am looking closely but see no sword imprints on your
shoulder.”

Bloodstone’s
high cheekbones warmed under a flush. “She was too distraught over
the loss of her favorite Frenchman to think of aught else.”

Dante offered
up a wry laugh. “I can well imagine how she must have wept over my
untimely demise.”

Dante’s
apparent humor seemed to be the signal for others to relax and for
one brave soul actually to join in on the exchange.

“
More
likely she wept over the share of her profits that went down with
the
Virago.
For
another twenty thousand, she would have danced on Leicester’s
grave.”

“
Twenty
thousand?” Dante mused. They had easily taken six times that much;
the Crown’s share should have been closer to fifty.
So you not only
cheated me, you arrogant bastard, you landed the
Talon
before you reached England and off-loaded some of
her cargo.
“For that
much I would dance on my own grave.”

It was a
timely jest and served to break the tension with the other
captains. The shock of seeing a ghost gave way to the pleasure of
seeing the pirate wolf in their midst again and the captains
started to jostle forward, finding their voices all at once.
Dante’s back was pounded and a glass was pressed into his hand. A
flood of eager questions came from all quarters and toasts were
offered. Praise was heaped on the heads of the two valiant captains
who had dared raid the King’s treasure house at Vera Cruz, both of
whom continued to stare steadfastly at one another, seeing and
acknowledging the true way of things in each other’s
eyes.

It was
Drake who interrupted the revelry by reminding them all of a third
hero present. He hailed Spence forward and insisted he take up the
story of the rescue and the attack on the
San Pedro.
He listened and cheered as enthusiastically as the
others, so that one would think he was hearing the tale for the
first time. But Sir Francis was nothing if not a master at
manipulation, and by the time the paintings of the three Spanish
harbors were produced, the men were crowding around the table,
absorbing his every word, agreeing—nay,
insisting
—their first strike be against Cadiz.

Through it all
Dante and Bloodstone stood in opposite corners of the cabin. If
anyone noticed that the- two did not seem overly anxious to seek
out each other’s company again, it went unremarked. If anyone
noticed the frequent looks that passed across the room, laden with
promises, threats, and cutting derision, they preferred to keep
their heads bowed and their own gazes safe from accidental
interception.

The storm
rolled over the huddled fleet like a great wet blanket, smothering
lights and sounds, pounding like angry fists on the decks and
hulls, driving all but the most stalwart under cover. There was no
one to watch, no one to hear his screams, no one to see the rivers
of blood that poured from Dante’s knife as he stabbed Victor
Bloodstone. He used the traitor’s own jeweled dagger and plunged it
into the bastard’s soft underbelly, just above the pubic bone,
jerking upward on the blade until he had ripped through the groin,
stomach, chest, and eventually the heart. All the while he was
dying, Bloodstone screamed for mercy, begged for it, but Dante only
murmured the names of the men who had died much more horrible
deaths on board the
Virago
, men who
had died because of a common thief’s greed and treachery. Then he
gouged the knife deeper, giving it an added twist or taking a small
but effective detour to carve out the bowels, spleen, and
liver.

Dante smiled
and looked down into the celebratory cup of brandy he had poured
himself. He took a satisfied swallow, letting the most excellent
liquor roll to the back of his tongue and down his throat, warming
him all the way to his toes.

When he looked
across the cabin, Victor Bloodstone was still standing there,
talking in muted tones to his second, Horace Lamprey, and Dante had
the pleasure of killing him all over again.

“Simon?”

It was Drake,
with Carleill beside him, and Dante gave them his grudging
attention.

“Watching the
storm, were you? Hellish thing. Black as a maw out there.”

Dante had only
been vaguely aware of the weather and he looked now, seeing the
thick white splatters hitting the gallery windows beside him.

“I thought I
ought to ask formally if you would honor us with your presence at
Cadiz,” Drake said. “Given the nature of the hunt and your penchant
for always striving to be in the hottest part of hell at any given
time, I may have overstepped myself by presuming you would want to
accompany us. I am reminded, however, you have just come from a
particularly exhausting adventure and may feel the strain would be
too much.”

Dante smiled.
“I think I can bear up, but I thank you for your concerns over my
health. In truth”—he glanced over at Bloodstone—“I am feeling quite
invigorated.”

Drake followed
his gaze. “I thought you might.”

Dante
took a sip of brandy and pushed his shoulder away from the wall.
“You might have had a
thought
to warn me, Francis. You know how I dislike
surprises.”

“Yet you
handled yourself admirably well. Victor, on the other hand, seemed
a little uncomfortable.”

“
It
is
rather close
in here,” Dante mused. “So much rhetoric, so much damned
zeal.”