A white hot flash of anger suffused Sebastian. “You have a plan, do you? Let’s hear it, now that you can speak. A fine trick, that. What’d you use? A lamb’s tongue? And Helm and Cook died for your ruse? Never mind. I killed seven of yours, you took two of mine. Have I got it right?”
Cat licked her lips and shifted her feet. “There is a bounty on your head. Thousands of gold.”
“And you’re the bounty hunter, Eleanor,” Sebastian said. “Or is it Cat? No, neither. I know of you. Most call you the Raven. You’ve been dogging me for years, so say the rumors, but I never thought you were real.” His lips curled in a sneer. “I guess I was wrong.”
“Now, wait just a moment,” Niven began but no one paid him any mind.
Sebastian fought to keep his control and realized he had no weapon to speak of, should Cat pose a serious threat, and he was too injured to take her bare-handed. Then Ori moved around Cat to stand beside him.
“This long, terrible night is over,” she said softly. “We must find our friends who live and bury any who do not.” She laid her hand on Sebastian’s arm. “He saved my life,” she told Cat. “Now is not the time for a reckoning. I will not permit it.”
Cat narrowed her eyes as if considering this, and Sebastian clenched his teeth at the presumption that his fate was in her hands.
“The Storm is mine,” he seethed. “Never doubt that. It’s also the only way you’re getting off this island. You can try to swim for it through dead merkind-infested waters, but the crew won’t take you anywhere without my say-so. Or you can come with me and try to find Selena. Up to you.”
He didn’t wait another second, but turned and strode along the beach, brushing dirt off his long black coat. The sun was starting to emerge in the east, bathing the sky in a faint pink light. Ori moved to walk with him. There was dirt in the sockets of her eyes. He concentrated on that particular little horror so as not to feel how her gesture touched him, and to cool the hot flush of anger that suffused him at the thought of Cat trying to take his ship.
I’ll kill Cat first, so help me…
Something bit him, deep and hard in the back of his upper arm. For half a heartbeat where he knew only a deep pressure, and then pain followed. He looked down and saw a throwing knife protruding from his flesh.
“What in the bloody fuck…?”
He turned. Cat was there, a cutlass in one hand and another throwing knife in the other. Niven stood beside her, his mouth hung open like a door with a broken hinge. His wide eyes looked between Sebastian and Cat.
“I didn’t have to miss,” Cat said. “I want you alive.” She lifted the second throwing knife. “Come quietly, Sebastian Vaas. The time for reckoning is now.”
Sebastian yanked the knife from his arm and smattering of blood stained the sand below. He’d been injured so often, he hardly felt the pain. But he pretended he did.
The knife dangled from his fingers, and he dropped to one knee, his head bowed.
“No,” Cat said, “I’ve fallen for that before. Not again. I—”
Sebastian flipped the knife in his palm and hurled in one smooth motion. Cat flinched away and while she did, the assassin rolled forward, and snatched the cutlass out of Niven’s fingers. Cat recovered and threw her other knife, followed by a quick slash with her own sword. Sebastian blocked the thrown knife and then her strike, twisting his wrist down and around. Her sword was wrenched from her fingers and then Sebastian was on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
He held her jaw in one hand, pressing down hard, while reaching back so that the point of his cutlass rested on her cheek. A drop of bright red blood welled from underneath.
“Help me!” Cat screamed, though her words came out sounding pushed together for his hand on her jaw. “Fools! He’s Bloody Bastian!”
Sebastian didn’t look at Niven or Ori. He didn’t need to. He could feel their stillness, their shock.
The bounty hunter named Cat, also known as the Raven, writhed and screamed.
“He said you changed! Marcus Bailey… Grunt. He said you weren’t the same cold-blooded killer. Lies!” She turned her panicked eyes to Niven and Ori. “Watch now! Godsdamn you, if you won’t help me then bear witness. He’ll kill me and you’ll realize I was right all along. All along!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Sebastian told her, “but the Storm is mine. I can’t allow anyone to think they can take her from me. Not ever. And I can’t have you shadowing me anymore. Your days as a bounty hunter are over.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said and then released her jaw as if he were letting her go. Instead, with one deft flick of his wrist, he slashed her left eye clean out.
Cat’s gaping mouth made a labored gasping sound, her one remaining eye staring wide, full of shock and pain and horror.
Sebastian had seen the same look in the eyes of so many of his victims as Bloody Bastian. Disgusted, he turned, tucked the cutlass into his belt, and walked down the beach without looking back. Cat sucked in a breath and then her screams chased after him in the thick, rain-choked air, accompanied by Niven’s whimpered mewlings of shock.
Above, the sun was rising, the sky lightened, but the storm lingered, gathering again for one last tempest.
Isle Calinda
The scream welled up from deep within Selena, from the place where the wound began and made everything cold, always cold so that she was astounded she hadn’t gone mad from it. But she had no voice left. She had nothing left. Her anguish was a physical pain and she turned her face up to the lightening sky; the moon was racing away from her recrimination, slipping behind gray clouds that were fat with rain, not to emerge again as the day dawned brighter. The sky tore open like Accora’s throat had, and the rain came down.
Selena collapsed onto the sand beside the dead woman, clenching and unclenching Accora’s sleeve. She sobbed hard, hoping to find an end to the pain, hoping that she could cry herself into numbness or hollowness, but more pain remained.
This pain…it will not end until the wound is gone.
The rain had soaked her through and she had begun to shiver. She sat up, her face and throat aching. Accora’s face bore a rictus in death and Selena closed the woman’s eyes with a trembling hand.