A Dawn Most Wicked (Something Strange and Deadly 0.5)(4)

White panic exploded in my brain.

“Blood,” she hissed again. Then her voice had changed, shifted into the voice of my mother. The raspy, rattling voice she’d had just before she coughed her last breath. . . . “You left me, Danny Boy. It’s your fault I died.”

Bile burned up my throat at those words, at that voice. How this ghost could speak with my mother’s tongue, I didn’t know . . . but I didn’t care. It was too real.

I had left my mother. It had been nine years, but I would never forget that wet, blood-filled sound of her final breaths. . . .

“You must pay, Danny Boy. You left me, and you must—”

Without thinking, I pitched my hammer at the ghost’s face.

It went right through her. She reached for me with spirit fingers, but her hand slipped through my chest with nothing more than a cold stab.

She yanked her arms back, and that’s when I started hollering—really shrieking—for someone to get me the hell out of the boiler.

And ever since then, even if it sometimes interrupted the Sadie Queen’s schedule, I had never, ever again cleaned the boilers at night.

And no one had really blamed me—not even Captain Cochran.

When I crawled from the eighth boiler almost nine hours later, it was to the sound of boisterous hollers and the hum of other steamboats. The volume had been gradually growing until almost all of my senses were overcome by sound. All the tobacco and cotton would be loaded by now, and our new deckhands—the men who kept the ship running—would be hunkering down for the journey. Cochran couldn’t keep any deckhands longer than a trip or two—the nightmares and ghosts always scared ’em off. These days he was having to offer double wages to hire enough crew to get us to New Orleans and back.

It was then, as I sat there wiping my sweat and watching the deckhands get organized for departure, that I heard the familiar slow, scraping shuffle of an old man. “Striker,” Chief Engineer Murry shouted as he came toward me. I turned and looked at him. His eyes were permanently coated with a white film, and one was half closed—almost sewn shut by scar tissue. The skin was puckered and shiny on his forehead and beneath his eyes.

It sure looked as if Cochran had shoved Murry’s face in the furnace.

Murry’s half-blind eyes squinted, then he smiled. “Just who I was lookin’ for.” He beckoned me over, so biting back a sigh, I went.

“Sir?”

“Cap’n wants to see you.” The edge of his lip curled up. “You shouldn’t have done that, Striker. Mighty stupid of you.”

“Huh?” I reared back slightly. When Murry wore a smile like that, it only meant bad things ahead. “What did I do?”

“You know damned well.” He snickered, almost gleefully. “And by the Shadow of Death, it was stupid. Ha!” He gave a guttural laugh and clapped his big gnarled hands. “It’s nice to see someone else feel the captain’s wrath for a change.”

Then, faster than I knew the old man could move, his hand snapped out and grabbed my collar. He yanked. “Come on, then, Striker. Don’t wanna keep Captain Cochran waitin’ no longer—it’ll only make this worse, and I need you alive t’work the engine. Or”—he towed me into a walk, throwing me a milky-eyed glare—“I need you mostly alive.”

Moments later I found myself in the blacksmith’s office, the tiny room beside the engine room where we mended broken parts and made new ones. Chains and hatchets and screws gleamed at me from all corners of the tiny room, building terror in my chest.

I’d insisted I could walk myself, but Murry had, in turn, insisted he didn’t trust me. So he’d dragged me by the collar the whole way before shoving me inside with a cackle that was still ringing in my ears.

And then he’d left me. To wait. And with each passing second, my fear ratcheted up another notch. I had no idea what I’d done, but it had to be bad if the captain wanted to see me . . .

When Cochran finally slammed inside, my panic boiled straight into my skull. With his huge shoulders tensed straight to his ears and his eyes on fire, I knew I was in for it.

Shit. I scooted backward until my legs hit the low anvil in the center of the room.

“As soon as we reach New Orleans,” Cochran said in a voice lethal and low, “you are off this ship.”

My jaw sagged, surprise briefly stifling my fear. “What?”

“What, sir,” he snapped. “And you heard me. As soon as we hit New Orleans, you’re gone.”

“Why?” I asked—but when his face turned even darker red, I quickly added, “Sir. Why, sir?”

“I ain’t blind, Striker.” He took a long step toward me. “I know damned well how you feel about my daughter, and if you think you can kiss”—spittle flew with the word—“then you’re wrong. Murry saw the two of you, and there’s no way in hell I’ll stand for it. When we hit New Orleans, I’m turning you in.”

“But I haven’t kissed her.” I gaped at him. “I swear, Cap’n. I didn’t t—”

His fist hit my eye faster than I could blink. I crumpled to the floor—just in time for his boot to smash into my ribs. My back hit the anvil with a crunch, and I toppled onto my stomach. My skull was on fire. My ribs screamed.

“You think I don’t know who you are?” he snarled, towering over me. “I have news for you, Sure Hands. I’ve known about your past for quite a while now.” He smiled, clearly pleased with himself, and it took all my self-control to keep my face blank as he went on.