Passenger (Passenger, #1)(12)

“Hello?” she scratched out, surging forward on unsteady feet. She was caught again by shock, the feel of rough fabric against her arms and legs. For the first time since she’d come to, her adrenaline slowed to a complete stop.

She wasn’t wearing her black dress.

This was…it was floor-length, some kind of pale shade Etta couldn’t make out. She ran her fingers over the bodice, tracing the embroidery in disbelief. The dress had her upper arms and chest in a chokehold, making it difficult to move.

“Oh!”

A girl’s voice. The figure in the chair moved, rising to her feet. A trembling memory flickered through Etta’s mind. The girl. The girl from the concert. Etta charged forward, knocking her aside to get to the crack of light she could see just beyond her—a door.

She pushed me in the stairwell, she shoved me forward—once she had the first glimmer of memory in place, the rest fell into line behind it.

“No—no—we must stay down here!” the girl cried. “Please, listen to me—”

Etta’s fingers ran along the wall until they found a latch, and she burst out of the cramped, dark room. A thick cloud of smoke rose up to meet her, and light flooded her eyes, bleaching the world a painful white. Etta felt hands at her back again, which made her fight harder to move forward, to feel her way through the smoke until her foot caught something and she went tumbling down.

Don’t think, just go! Etta reared up, then stopped. Her wide, white skirts were spread out over a man, flat on his back.

“I’m sorry, I—” she choked out, crawling over to make sure he was all right. “You—”

His pale blue eyes stared up at the ceiling, shock and anguish twisting his features into a stiff mask. A trail of gleaming buttons on his absurdly old-fashioned coat had been torn open and the shirt beneath was splattered with—with—

Oh my God.

“Sir?” Etta’s voice cracked on the word. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t blinking. She looked down, mind blank as it took in the dark liquid coating her skin, her chest, her stomach, the dress.

Blood. Her snowy white skirt was drenched with thick, crimson blood. She was crawling through that man’s blood. I’m crawling through his blood.

What is this?

Etta was up and on her feet before her mind registered moving, and headed toward the source of the light from above. The smoke reached out to smother her, locking tight around her neck. Glass lanterns crashed around her, exploding like pale fireworks. She kept going toward the light until her knees struck something—stairs. Etta grabbed her skirt, hauled the thick layers of it up around her waist, and started to pull herself up, not caring that she was crying, just looking for fresh air and a path out of this nightmare.

Instead, she climbed into the mouth of another one.





HELL AND DAMNATION—NOT THE BLOODY BELL, TOO!

Nicholas swung around, slamming his fist into the next face that tried to block his path. The thing was in pieces—hot, smoldering fragments scattered around the deck. And, unfortunately, in various parts of the bodies that had fallen when the grenade struck.

It had been impossible, in the thick of things, to form a true assessment of how badly the Challenger’s gunners had savaged their prize. Now that he was past the initial wave of violence that followed the boarding, Nicholas had had the chance to conduct a quick survey for himself on the state of the Challenger, and now, this captured ship. He tallied up each defect in the ship’s outward perfection. All three masts were standing—holding for now, if only just, despite the thrashing they’d taken; the mizzenmast, toward the rear of ship, seemed to be shivering and swaying like a drunkard with each faint breeze. The sails had been torn and punched through, but his prize crew could make quick enough work of replacing them. Once, of course, this ship’s crew surrendered.

Nicholas moved with the ship, catching the next spray of salt water full across the face. Most importantly, he noted that the ship wasn’t taking on water insofar as he could tell. The gunners hadn’t struck her below the waterline—which meant they had managed to disable the ship without wrecking her.

Nicholas refused to give in to the flighty, half-drunk feeling that victory was within arms’ reach. Before the day was out, he’d start sailing his first ship back to port as prize master.

He would finally be able to cut himself loose from his past.

Still—the damn idiots should have struck their colors first thing. Would have saved every party involved from a bloodstained affair, not to mention an ungodly headache for the carpenters. How unfortunate that sailing was one of the few occupations where a man could be praised for failing, so long as he did it bravely.

This ship—my ship, he thought stubbornly, because it would be, once the ship’s officers admitted to themselves the inevitable fact of their defeat—was a lovely piece of work, all damage from the Challenger and boarding party aside. A three-masted vessel, the foremast square-rigged, the mainmast carrying a large fore-and-aft mainsail, with a square main-topsail and topgallant sail above it. The moment they’d spotted the sails in the distance and her British colors, the Challenger had fallen on it like a shark. A fast, sleek schooner streaking after its fat prey. With speed on their side, it had hardly mattered that they were outgunned sixteen to twelve. The merchant vessel was a plum prize for the crew of the Challenger after weeks of fruitless hunting around the waters of the West Indies, but it was also the target he had been hired to track, and capture.