The Devil's Tide (8 page)

Everyone fell silent and looked at her.

"This is unwise," Hornigold insisted.

"Have you truly forgotten who you are?" she went on, moving past Hornigold. He grabbed her shoulder, but she shook free. One of the men giggled at that, nudging a friend.

"Are you not pirates?" she repeated.

The crew exchanged uncertain looks. Some of them were starting to smile.

"Are you not pirates??"

"I am!" someone in the back called.

"So am I," agreed another.

"Me too."

"I don't like labels, but I suppose I is."

"A vulgar term," Francois Laurent said with mock revulsion. Then he grinned. "But yes, I am."

The sporadic voices swiftly merged into a collective roar. The sailors on the merchant ship were pulling away from the railing, horror settling in. Their captain stared uncertainly from his perch. A very young first mate was jabbering nervously in his ear, but the captain was too petrified to listen.

"Look into their eyes!" Lindsay said, and everyone followed her gesture. "Look at the fear you inspire!"

The pirates stomped their feet, and the report cracked as it echoed off the sails. Many of them drew cutlasses and pistols and raised them to the sky. Hornigold couldn't believe what he was seeing. He reached for his gun, but his hands slapped at an empty belt, and then he remembered he had thrown the gun at the surgeon during the storm.

"See how they tremble before you!" Lindsay said, her voice transcending the ruckus.

"This is madness!" Hornigold started forward, but he was halted in place. Copernicus Ryan had a firm grip on his shoulders. "Unhand me right now, Ryan," Hornigold said, in as deadly a tone as he could muster.

Ryan blinked, remembering himself, and released Hornigold.

"Claim your prize!" Lindsay bellowed.

Andrew Harrow fired his pistol. The pirates loosed a deafening howl and surged forward, and the deck quaked beneath them. The crewmen on the merchant vessel stumbled over themselves to get away. Grappling hooks flew, catching in the ratlines. Ramps were spread across ships. Gunners raced to the cannons, though Hornigold knew that not a single cannon would be fired this day. Fear was the greater weapon.

Ryan was good enough to favor Hornigold with a contrite bow of his head before hurrying after his peers.

Kate Lindsay watched confidently as the pirates swept over the merchant ship like a plague of locusts. Her hair tossed in the breeze, but she didn't blink when the strands pervaded her vision. She had taken control of the crew with a few easy words.

"You realize they may kill someone on that ship?" Hornigold growled.

"I know that better than anyone," was her even reply. "When you accorded to this bargain, did you not think there would be consequences?"

He stepped into her line of sight. "Under normal circumstances this would be considered an act of mutiny."

She moved around him. "Normal circumstances? As you pointed out, captain, women are not fond of normalcy."

He glared at her, but her gaze refused to shift his way, not even when her lips curved into a smirk that was surely meant for him.

"Help me with these, would you, love?" said Edward Teach.

Annabelle stepped into the soft candlelight, hoping he would notice how nice her breasts looked in the silk robe she had discovered while rummaging through booty in the hold. Her nipples were perfectly outlined beneath the thin material.

Teach handed her four hemp cords. She sat on the desk before him, dipping the makeshift fuses in a solution of saltpeter and lime water. She worked the first fuse into Teach's thick beard. "You'll set yourself alight one day," she scorned.

"They'll amend my name to Firebeard," he said with a guttural laugh.

"Is that not the sort of end you dream of?"

"Already you know me better than I know myself."

"Oh, I don't think anyone truly knows you, Edward Teach."

"You look ravishing tonight," he said. His beard twitched, and the creases in his sun-scavenged cheeks told her there was a smile cloaked beneath that black thicket. His piercing blue eyes scaled her body up and down, halting momentarily to fixate on her breasts. Perhaps tonight would finally be the night.

"I didn't think you'd noticed," she said, starting on the second fuse.

"Of course I noticed," he said, feigning injury. "I always notice."

Annabelle merely nodded. It had been two months since her ship had been intercepted by
Queen Anne's Revenge
, and in all that time Edward Teach had done nothing more than sleep beside her in bed, fully clothed. She had tried every trick in her considerable array, but nothing worked. She was starting to wonder why Teach had taken her aboard his ship in the first place. When he first looked on her, she had been damaged goods, still suffering nightmares from a brutal rape at the hands of a loathsome pirate named Edward Livingston. When Teach brought her into his cabin, she was frightened out of her wits that he would do the same, night after night. She had heard horrible stories about the things he had done to whores, but he had done nothing of the sort to her. He didn't even touch her until she made the first move a month later, after her fear had been replaced by extreme boredom. Now she would give anything for him to tear her clothes off and ravish her. She was a strumpet, and she feared her talents were going to waste. Thus far, she had managed not to voice her distress, but she wasn't sure how much more of this she could take.

"What devious notions crowd that mind of yours?" he said. His bushy eyebrows were pinched together as he studied her, the many creases of his brow closely bunched.

"Many at once," she answered with a smile.

"I prefer to tackle each in the order it came," he said, looking to the stern window. The curtains were parted, and it was pitch black beyond the faintly lit rail of the stern gallery.

She finished the second fuse and went to work on the third, tying as fast as she could. "I'm sorry. My fingers are clumsy today."

"Don't fret," Teach said. "The longer they're made to wait, the more nervous they be when I emerge."

"Are you going to kill them?"

"Aye."

"All of them?"

"Enough to leave a mark on those I don't."

"That's good," she said, finishing the third fuse. "It's been too long since the last. I overheard John Garretty saying you'd gone soft."

"Garretty?" he said, looking puzzled.

"The cook's boy."

"Ah yes. He said that, did he?"

"Mmhmmm."

He seemed unconcerned. "Two months deprived of murder and they think me Benjamin Hornigold."

"I suppose you'll make up for it tonight," she reassured him.

Annabelle could scarcely forget Teach's last murder. He had killed Charles Martel, her employer. She held no love for Martel, who was vicious with all his whores, and he had been particularly angry with her for getting raped and bruised up, as if she'd had any say in the matter. She told Martel to take up his grievance with Edward Livingston, and Martel gave her a fresh bruise for her smart mouth. When the pirates abandoned Nassau due to the impending arrival of Woodes Rogers, Martel decided to spirit the best of his whores to Tortuga. He never made it that far. Teach killed Martel first, making an example of him, severing his head from his neck. Annabelle would never forget the sound Teach's massive cutlass made as it tore through skin and muscle in a sawing motion. "The spine be the most stubborn part," Teach had said, gritting his teeth as he worked through the bone. When Martel's limp body finally dropped away, Teach held the blank-faced head aloft for all to see. He found no quarrel with the rest of the crew after that.

Teach's crew took everything in the hold and enjoyed the company of the whores. When Teach looked on Annabelle, he allowed no other man to touch her, and he promptly escorted her to his quarters. Even in her post-Edward Livingston state, with a deep scar running down her right cheek, she knew she was far more beautiful than her sister whores. Her breasts and hips were perfectly curved, her skin was toned copper by day or by candlelight, and a mane of thick black hair ran the length of her back. Countless men had stared into her large brown eyes and told her she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, and she would not humbly deny it.

Teach said the same, nearly every night, though he had done little more than talk. She had stolen a kiss, but his lips proved less deft with kissing than they were with words.
Has he kept me here for conversation and nothing more?

She supposed it could have been worse. She reminded herself that most women would have been used by the entire crew by now until they were nothing more than a semen-crusted corpse.

She finished the final fuse and set her hands in her lap, watching him stare out the window as he often did at night. "What are you always looking at?"

"The night."

"There's nothing to see out there."

"Everywhere I look, there be something to see. The world brims with obstacles begging for notice. Out there my gaze finds no quarrel. Strike the fuses, would you?"

She set a match in the candle until it took flame and then gingerly lit each fuse, taking care not to light his beard on fire. The cabin quickly filled with smoke, and Annabelle plugged her nose.

Teach stood in the haze. "My coat," he instructed. She took his long black leather coat off its hook and dressed him. She set a black tricorn hat over his dark locks, fitting it in place. The smoke rolled up over the brim. He looked every bit a devilish wraith, blue eyes gleaming beyond the haze.

"Come out with me," Blackbeard said.

She lowered her head. "I should get dressed."

He pinched her chin. "Nay. I want them to see you like this. I want them to see what I return to after my business be resolved."

"As you wish," she said. She opened the neck of her robe enough to reveal her cleavage, and smiled. "Is that better?"

If he heard the question, he made no attempt to acknowledge it. "Follow me as far as the quarterdeck, but stray no further."

She nodded dutifully. He turned at once and threw open the door, his pace quick and deliberate. She followed him out, trying not to cough as the smoke from his beard trailed into her face. She stopped at the foot of the quarterdeck and watched him descend the stairs.

Much of the crew was gathered on the cutdown forecastle, with three prisoners lined up in front of the capstan. A small merchant ship flying Dutch colors bobbed in the water off the port of
Queen Anne's Revenge
. Blackbeard's men were presently ransacking the ship while its crew looked on in horror. A few of the merchant ship's crew had been killed, their corpses left to bloody the deck. One poor soul was face down in a puddle of his own blood with a cutlass sticking out of his back.

Queen Anne's Revenge
loomed over her prey like a giant hawk that had claimed a small bird. She was a three-hundred ton frigate, originally named
Concord
. She had been a gift from Benjamin Hornigold, who captured her near the island of Martinique. Teach had served in the Royal Navy, and he confided to Annabelle his undying respect for Queen Anne. He said her death had left him heartbroken, and he thought it especially tragic that not one of her seventeen pregnancies had resulted in a surviving child. He renamed
Concord
out of sympathy. Benjamin Hornigold was quick to point out the irony when Blackbeard set
Queen Anne's Revenge
upon every British vessel he encountered. That was the beginning of the end of their alliance.

Blackbeard's men stepped out of the way as he approached the prisoners. He stopped, allowing the smoke to roll over his face. He was very tall and very darkly dressed, and all men around him looked small and colorful by comparison. He turned to take in his surroundings, his fierce eyes meeting Annabelle's for an instant. The fuses in his beard were roused by a sudden wind, and his features kindled with hellish hues for a brief horrific moment before the smoke obscured him again. He fixated on the three prisoners, and they trembled visibly before him.

The man in the center was the Dutch vessel's captain. He was middle-aged, with long blonde hair and a short beard of the same color. It seemed to take every bit of courage he had to match Blackbeard's gaze. A teenaged girl in a spotless white dress stood at his right, with doe eyes and golden blonde curls. To the captain's left was a man who couldn't have been more than twenty. He was the spitting image of the captain, with a decade and a half removed.

"What course, men?" Blackbeard asked his crew, spreading his arms. No one offered an answer, because they knew him well enough to know he wasn't actually looking for one. "Do we leave this skullduggerous fool to an island with naught but a pistol for comfort?"

"Nay!" they shouted in unison.

"Nay, indeed!" Blackbeard agreed. "That be too kind a penance for the likes of him. Neither do I see an island on yonder horizon. It would seem fate makes the decision for us."

"Please, sir," the captain said, his lip quivering.

"Please, sir?" Blackbeard said, his tone laced with sarcasm. "If you hadn't run, I'd be encouraged to oblige your plea, and you'd already be on your way . . . minus your cargo, of course. Unfortunately, you ran, and I be encouraged to make an example of you. Did you truly think a ship such as mine outmanueverable? Have you not heard the name
Queen Anne's Revenge
?"

"I did not know this was
Queen Anne's Revenge
," the captain stammered.

Blackbeard stared at him. "Then you do not know the waters upon which you sail. Have you not heard the name Blackbeard? Did you not know who the waters of the Caribbean belonged to? Be that why you have not yet toppled to your knees in my presence?"

The captain fell to his knees, pulling the young man and young woman down with him. "Do whatever you want to me," he said, "just don't hurt my daughter, please."

The girl in the white dress whimpered softly, tears glistening on her pale white cheeks. She had the complexion of a porcelain doll and looked just as easy to break.