Текст книги "Cape Storm"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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“Name?”

“I don’t ask names. He gave me cash money.”

“White hair? Big, blue eyes? Red nose? About this tall?” I indicated Bad Bob’s height, but Josue was shaking his head.

“No, never seen that one. This one, he was weird. Shaved head. Wearing leather like out of some motorcycle movie. Scary.”

My heart took a running leap. “How’d he pay you?”

“You won’t believe it: gold. Sunken treasure. He said he’d just found some.” Josue laughed and shook his head. “Crazy people out here. All crazy. I thought I’d find you, see if you were worth keeping. He shows up again, I shoot him if I like you and keep the money anyway.”

Josue had no idea what a bad idea that would have been. “Did he say what to do with me when you found me?”

“Yeah.” Josue’s smile was a model of impish delight. “He said tell you Kevin said hello. And to take you back to port and let you go. Crazy. Like I said.”

I let out a slow sigh. “And you figured you’d threaten me into giving you something else? Or just rape and kill me?”

Josue shrugged. “It’s the way things are.”

“You are such a lucky man that things didn’t work out your way,” I said. “If they had, you’d be screaming your way to hell right about now, along with everybody else on this ship.”

He didn’t believe me, but he should have. I was in no mood to be Ms. Nice Guy, but compared to the fury that David would have unleashed on them if they’d hurt me, there was literally nothing I could do to them that would be anywhere near as horrible.

“My offer’s still open,” I said. “You take me where I want to go, and I’ll pay you enough money to make you king of the pirates forever.”

He tried not to look interested. “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”

I turned my hand over again. Lightning flashed and crawled. “You know I’ll keep this one.”

Josue sat up straighter, his eyes flicking around as if he was trying to figure out an exit strategy. He finally nodded. “It’s a deal,” he said. “Just—put that away, bruxa.”

“Hey, Josue? Call me a witch again, I willTaser the holy shit out of you.” I felt the black exhilaration creep over me once more, the stealthy march of Bad Bob’s influence running through my veins. “Oh, hell, maybe I’ll just do it anyway.”

I didn’t, but it was fun watching him think I would.

I paced the bridge as Josue ordered the crew around. I had nothing to do, really, except wait and think.

Think about Kevin sneaking around behind Lewis’s back to let David out of his bottle, sending him to pluck me out of the ocean.

Why?

Cherise,I thought. I couldn’t imagine Kevin getting the initiative to come running to my rescue any other way. We’d always cordially hated each other.

I was even more surprised that David hadn’t tricked his way out of the bottle again by now. It wouldn’t take much slack for him to snap the rope that bound him; Djinn had been doing it for millennia, and they were very, very good at finding loopholes to exploit. Either Kevin had been very specific about what he wanted him to do, or David didn’t really want to get free just now.

Maybe because he knew that if he did, he might end up fighting me, and neither of us wanted that. He’d wanted to save me. Kevin had allowed him to do it.

Kevin, you’re a romantic.That made me smile. I supposed I’d have to thank him some way.

Maybe by not killing him. That was a gift that kept on giving, right?

The sun was putting on a spectacular evening display, all clouds and blood, when the lookout called a warning. At least, I thought it was a warning—Portuguese wasn’t exactly my strong suit, but the tone definitely sounded urgent.

“What is it?” I asked Josue, as he left the bow rail to head toward the stern.

“A ship,” he said. “Coming up behind us, and moving fast. Big, maybe a military ship or a tanker.”

“Tankers don’t move that fast,” I said.

Josue continued to stare over the stern rail, frowning. “Could be more trouble than you’re worth, mermaid. I’m thinking I throw you back.”

“You want to go downstairs again, talk it over?”

He gave me a scornful sneer. “You can’t sail the ship alone. My men won’t work for you.”

“Want to bet? Just do what I tell you, Josue. If I feel this ship slow down, you’re over the side, and your crew goes with you. That’s a promise.”

He knew I meant it. He nodded. I had no doubt that later on, he’d try to stab me in the back, maroon me, or otherwise screw me over, but for now he was treading carefully—partly because I was a potential payday, but equally out of sheer morbid fear. He’d seen a sample of what I could do, and he didn’t want to see more.

I didn’t really blame him for that. I wasn’t wild to see it, either.

I locked my hands behind my back and kept my legs spread wide, riding the bucking of the waves with the ease of a long-practiced sailor. We both watched the dim shape on the horizon take on edges and definition.

Definitely a ship. Big.

The lookout called another warning. Josue looked up, frowning, and blinked. He cursed in Portuguese—no, I didn’t recognize the words, but the flavor’s the same in any language. “Storm,” he said. “Coming on fast from the south.”

My friend the storm had hung back, content to let me run; I wasn’t sure anymore whether I was holding its leash or it was holding mine. But something had changed. Maybe it sensed that the containment around the mark on my back was fading again, or that I wasn’t following my approved script.

It was heading our way. Fast.

The blood sunset had disappeared behind a boiling, rising mass of clouds—iron gray ones, with greenish-black underpinnings. It was already crawling with lightning inside. Power had been poured into it—an awful lot of power.

“Hold course,” I said. I didn’t think all that effort Bad Bob was putting out was meant solely for us. We weren’t that hard to sink, frankly.

As we sailed steadily toward it, the storm spread out, flattened, swirled, consolidated, gained density and deeper color.

Then it started to spin around a center axis—slowly, majestically, unevenly at first, then spiraling out like a deadly galaxy. The blender of the gods, taking shape right in front of me.

“We need to get out of its way!” Josue shouted. I felt the first breath of wind sweep over us, vivid with the smell of rain. The clouds were whipping toward us. He cursed me in Portuguese, and ordered his men to follow his instructions.

I locked the rudder in place with a burst of Earth power. They worked frantically to free it, but they weren’t getting anywhere.

As the wind increased, so did the amplitude of the waves, and the small ship was nowhere near as able to crush through the turmoil as the Grand Paradisehad been. The vessel was battered, and when it slammed bow-first into the rising waves, the spray fractured into foam and coated everything on board in slippery, unpleasant slime.

Then came the rain, hammering in sheets that felt like needles. Josue’s crew broke out battered rain slickers. I ignored the offer, and stood at the bow, watching the storm’s progress. I could feel its blind menace, its anger, but it wasn’t directed downward at me, not even as the rain intensified into a heavy, strangely hot downpour. The wind speed increased, and the clouds rotated faster. It intensified as the ship crashed and fell through the waves. I tethered myself to the rail and resisted the waves that crested the bow and washed the decks, trying to pull me over.

Something wild inside me broke free as we rode through the storm, and in the blaze of lightning and pounding surf, I felt at home. Finally, completely at home. All those years of fighting the storms, and I’d never realized how much a part of them I was. How complete I was when I was with them.

I was almost sorry when we hit the eye of the storm and calm fell over us—but I looked up into the primal heart of the enemy, and it looked back at me with a kind of affectionate recognition.

Good dog.

When we hit the trailing side, the winds lashed us so viciously that we lost two of the crew, even though they’d been tethered. The seas swamped the decks, shattered glass, woke terror from seasoned pirates who picked their teeth and yawned at the idea of a normal tempest.

After a white-knuckled eternity, the storm was past us, and heading for its realvictim.

The ship closing in on us from behind.

The seas continued heavy against us, and Josue wanted to slow our pace. The engines were laboring, and the crew was exhausted and sick.

“No,” I said. I didn’t need them anymore. They’d served their purpose, both ship and crew, and I no longer had to worry about their breaking points. “Just keep the throttle open. We’ll be fine.”

I wrapped energy around the straining pumps and valves and increased their speed. It wouldn’t last long, but it would give us more of a lead against our pursuer, who had the full weight of the storm to deal with now. I looked back to see its forward progress stalling, as if it had met cooler air to slow it. The storm was lashing that other ship with all its supernatural fury.

Josue, also watching, crossed himself.

The moon rose, but it was quickly veiled by clouds. As night descended on us, it was thick and black and claustrophobic. Only the shattered reflections of our running lights spoiled the illusion of sailing through empty, limitless space.

“Mãe de Deus,”Josue murmured. “It’s still coming, that ship. Like a ghost out of the grave.”

It wasa ghost.

The Grand Paradisehad gone down, I’d seen it. It had been too badly damaged and too thoroughly flooded to float, and yet there it was, gaining on our tail. The running lights were all working, blazing merrily in the darkness, and it was charging at a speed that didn’t seem natural for such an enormous ship.

It was trying to get to me before I reached my destination.

“Hold on,” I told Josue, and opened the throttles even more on our nameless little pirate ship, sending it leaping and slamming through the waves like an oversized, wallowing speedboat. The hull wouldn’t take it for long, but it didn’t have to.

Out there in the darkness was my destination.

I felt a Warden grabbing for control of our engines, and whipped a black scythe of power across the lines of force. It must have hurt, and badly. “Do it again, and you’ll pull back a stump,” I muttered, and gripped the rail tighter. “Back off.”

I didn’t think they would. If they were strong and confident enough to make it through the hurricane, they’d be more than competent enough to tackle me.

A Djinn breathed into focus on the deck a few feet away, and I prepared for the fight of my life . . .

. . . but it was David.

David.

MyDavid, perfect in every line. Not Kevin’s incarnation of him.

He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. Josue drew a knife and stabbed at him, but David didn’t even bother to cast him a look, just flicked his fingers and sent him flying across the deck.

“Are you here to stop me?” I asked.

“No,” my husband said, and took a step toward me. Then another. I was in the V-shaped well of the bow, pressed against the rails—nowhere to go but over the side, into the black waters. “I’m not here to stop you.”

“Then what?”

He took another step, risking a full attack. I could feel the urge, the needvibrating through me like plucked strings. Don’t let him fool you. Don’t let him stop you. You need to reach Bad Bob. If this goes badly, you know what will happen. The two of you will be responsible for destroying the world.

In the ripping light of a lightning strike on the cruise ship looming slowly up behind us, David’s face was serious and very calm.

“I’m here to help you,” he said.

He opened his hand, and in it were fragments of glass.

The broken pieces of his bottle.

I stared at them for a moment, into his eyes. “How—?”

“Cherise,” he said. “She wants you to live. So do I. She got the bottle away from Kevin. She—trusts me.”

Cherise was a romantic idiot, in this one sense: She simply didn’t understand how dangerous David really was. I wasn’t even sure I understood . . . although I was starting to get a really good idea.

I tightened my grip on the rail as the ship pounded into a particularly deep trough, then painfully plowed up the leading edge of the next wave. “I see. And did you stop for anything else along the way?”

“You mean, did I kill Lewis?” he asked. “Not yet.” He took one more step, and we were body to body, soaked with rain, blinded by lightning. Sealed together by storms. “That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten him. Don’t ask me to do that.”

I couldn’t begin to try. “How did they raise the ship?”

“Who says they did?” David’s smile was knowing, and a little bitter. “It’s not the Grand Paradise.Lewis lied to you from the beginning. The Grand Paradisewas a decoy, designed to lure Bad Bob into showing his hand. He sent the other Wardens out of Fort Lauderdale, aboard the Grand Horizon.It’s a sister ship—a little smaller, a little faster. Crewed entirely with Wardens and Djinn. It’s been making good time and staying off of Bad Bob’s radar. Until now.”

That son of a bitch. Lewis really had suckered me, every step of the way. He’d known I was a risk, if not a ready-made traitor. He’d used me as a stalking horse, although I had to admit he’d put himself on the line, too.

But he’d also exposed Cherise and dozens of other innocents who had no place in this. And an unforgivably large number of Wardens, although I supposed for any kind of a feint to work, he had to commit himself to it.

I would never forgive him for risking so much, no more than David would be able to forgive him for the kill switch that Lewis had put in my brain.

“So by suckering Bad Bob into kicking the living crap out of us, the Grand Horizongot a virtually free ride,” I said. “Right?”

“As far as I know.”

“How could you not know?”

“It’s crewed by Ashan’s Djinn. Everything was compartmentalized from me. Deliberately so.”

We’d both been cut out. Well, I’d been hoping Lewis had fallback positions, in the beginning, and it looked like he’d done a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less than I’d have managed in his place.

“They’re in for it now,” I noted, as three lightning strikes crawled the Grand Horizon’s deck, searching for something to destroy. “But we’re still going to get there ahead of them.”

“I know.” He cupped my face in both hands, and he studied me closely. I knew what he was looking for.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Seventy-five percent all right, anyway.”

He seemed to calculate me at about the same rate.

“If we succeed,” he said, “we will have another problem to consider.”

I hadn’t actually thought past the consequences of failure, which were fairly horrific. “Like what?”

“You may inherit his power. And you may be tempted to use it.”

“I could use it for good.”

“So did he. Once. It isn’t a power you can use, Jo. It’s a power you must destroy.”

I looked back at him. “So if I grab it from Bad Bob, you’re going to take it away from me. Or die trying.”

“Maybe,” David said. “But first we have to live to get there, don’t we?”

I turned to face him. The next lurching drop sent him into me. Our lips found each other, hot and hungry and damp, tasting of salt and desperation. For a moment even the storm seemed to stop, suspended between heartbeats.

I felt the darkness in me trying to reach out to him, and slapped it down hard. No. Not yet.David might be here, he might be with me, but he wasn’t withme. And I wasn’t going to be the one to enslave him yet again, not until I had no other choice.

I turned to face south, toward the empty horizon. “He’s not far now,” I said. “One thing at a time, right?”

David’s arms gripped the railing on either side of me, bracing me against the violent bucking of the ship as we plunged toward the darkness. “Right.”

Chapter Ten

The Wardens on the Grand Horizonhad learned from our mistakes, it appeared; we saw them break through the storm, and they must have set up a series of Djinn/ Warden cooperative alliances to maintain their bubble shield, because I could see the glistening curve of it from the deck of our ship as the waves broke and foamed over the smooth round surface.

I wished them luck in keeping that up. It was brutal, soul-shredding work. “How long until they catch up?”

David handed me a plate. Our pirate cook had made some kind of meat, finely chopped and spiced, with spongy bread. It was delicious, and surprising; I’d somehow expected wormy crusts and rum. I gobbled down the lunch with gratitude.

“Good?” David asked, amused, and shook his head at my garbled reply. “They’re gaining. They’ll catch up to us by midday.”

“Can’t let that happen,” I mumbled. “Lewis was very clear. This needs to be me. Not them.”

“Bad Bob and his storm didn’t slow them down. How do you propose either of us stops them, short of destroying them?”

I chewed and swallowed. “Ask them.”

He evidently hadn’t thought of that. I winked and carried my plate to the wheelhouse, where Josue was dozing on a stained old cot at the back while his navigator did the hard work of steering the tough little vessel on the course I’d set. I asked about the radio and was pointed belowdecks, to a small, claustrophobic closet of a room with bad ventilation and a crew member who evidently liked beans and hated baths. I evicted him from his battered chair and rolled up to check out the radio. It was old, but highly complicated.

“Hey!” I yelled through the closed door. David opened it. “Help me out a little. I’m not Sparky the Wonder Horse.”

That earned me a full, warm smile. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Watch it.” I meant that; he was looking at me like I was the old Joanne. The less demented one. “Keep your guard up. I mean it, David. Bad Bob can be funny, too. That doesn’t make him any less of a monster. Don’t you dare trust me. I can’t trust myself, not anymore.”

The smile faded, and the sparks in his eyes turned ash-dark. “Yes. I understand.” David looked at the radio, and the dials turned. “There. That should put you in touch with the Grand Horizon’s bridge.”

“Thanks.” I slipped on the headphones as he shut the door between us—less to provide me with privacy than to give me elbow room. There wasn’t enough space in here to breathe. “Merchant vessel—” Oh, hell, what was this ship’s name? “Merchant vessel Sparrowfor the cruise vessel Grand Horizon.Please respond, over.” I expected I’d have to repeat myself, but instead I got an immediate crackle of connection.

“ Sparrow,this is Grand Horizon.”I knew that voice. “You made it.”

“Lewis.” I kept my voice neutral, although I was glad he’d made it, too. Even if he had tried to kill me. “You’re lucky David hasn’t made a lampshade out of you.”

“Time will tell.” Lewis obviously knew all about how much trouble he was in on that front. “You’re heading straight for Bad Bob.”

“I have a plan. Obviously, it won’t be as good as yours,” I said, “but I make one hell of a good distraction, right? So I go in, do as much damage as possible, and you guys land for the cleanup.”

“That would be great—if I thought for a second we could actually trust you.” Lewis’s voice was bleak and dry, even through the distortion of the radio waves. “You brought us this close. That’s enough, Jo. Break it off. Whatever happens, don’t let him finish what he started in destroying you.”

“What makes you think he can’t do it from a distance?” I asked. “I’d rather go down fighting for you than against you.”

“Jo—”

“Maybe you didn’t get that I wasn’t asking your permission. I was informing you, that’s all. You can not love it all you want, but it’s what’s going to happen, and—” I felt the laboring engines of my little ship begin to struggle. “Don’t you even thinkabout it, man. You start screwing with me and you are in a world of trouble.”

He covered the mike, presumably to warn off the Earth Warden or Djinn who was trying to shut me down. “I’m not interfering,” he said. “I’m just advising, and I advise you very strongly to break this off and run, Jo. Now.”

“You sent me out here,” I said. “You put me on the hook for bait. Let me do this.” No answer but static. “Fine. Joanne Baldwin Prince, signing off—”

“Wait,” he snapped. I did. “Don’t take David with you. We’re not allowing any of the Djinn to make landfall. Too dangerous for them.”

I was a bit unclear on the concept of how one stopped Djinn from doing something, if they weren’t bound to a bottle, but I didn’t bring it up. “And what do you suppose I’m going to do about stopping David?”

His sigh rattled the speaker. “You’re not going to love the idea.”

“Try me.”

He did. I heard him out, although my first impulse was to blow the radio up in a satisfying shower of sparks. I thought about it.

After a long, quiet moment, I agreed.

“Jo?” I was so deep in thought that Lewis’s voice startled me. “Still there?”

“More or less. Look, I can’t trust anyone on this ship, not with what you’re asking. Send me someone.” I thought about that for a second. “Send me someone who isn’t going to take shit from some fairly scary pirates.”

“I’ve got just the guy,” Lewis said. “We’re going to slow down, to give you time to get to the island ahead of us. But we’ll be coming when you need us.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Let’s not say our good-byes this time. Last time was a real bitch.”

He seemed to think so, too. “ Grand Horizon,signing off.”

“ Sparrow,signing off.” I put the old click-to-talk mike down and sat for a moment in silence, staring at the equipment.

Then I rummaged around in the desk drawers. It was a battered old thing, looked like it had seen service in the First World War, and I surprised a long-tailed rat in the top drawer, who stared at me with beady little eyes and an entire lack of alarm. A pet, maybe. Or maybe this was his ship, and I was the infestation.

I shut that drawer and tried the next one. The rats had made nests of the paperwork that had once been in there; it was nothing but shreds.

The third drawer yielded an almost empty bottle of Cutty Sark.

“Score,” I said. I unscrewed the cap, wiped the lip of the bottle with my shirt, and threw back the rest of the booze in one long, thirsty pull. When there were no more threads of amber snaking their way down the glass to my mouth, I lowered the bottle and set it on the desk.

“David?”

He opened the door.

It’s not that easy to catch a Djinn who’s alert for treachery, and David—even though he loved me—knew better. I’d just told him not to trust me.

But he gave me the benefit of the doubt, even with the empty bottle open on the desk in front of me.

I looked up at him and said, “We need to talk, honey.”

Lewis sent Brett Jones, Fire Warden, former Special Forces. He was bigger than Josue, and after a dick-measuring initial meeting, Josue evidently accepted that Brett was meaner as well. I didn’t know Brett that well, but Lewis did, and if Lewis sent him to take care of us, then we could trust him.

“Watch your back,” I whispered to Brett as I passed him. He’d come armed to the teeth, which made him fit right in with all my pirate crewmates; on him, though, it looked like professional accessories. He nodded to me. It seemed like a thousand years since we’d sat in the movie theater on the Grand Paradise,watching as our colleagues were carried off in body bags after that first clash with Bad Bob’s storm.

Brett looked as hard and tired as I felt. He also looked very alone, standing at the bow with his arms folded, watching the speedboat head back to the distant cruise ship. The weather was still foul over in that direction. The storm just wasn’t about to give up its prize, no matter how hopeless it was.

Standing in the filthy confines of Josue’s tiny captain’s cabin, I brushed the worst of the tangles out of my hair, and used a burst of power to clean my clothes and remove the worst of the grime from my skin. As accommodations went, even temporary accommodations, these earned zero stars; the bed was filthy, the floor was littered with toenail clippings, and the walls were pasted over with hard-core porn actresses in action shots.

David opened the cabin door and stepped in. He watched me in silence, not touching me. We’d talked about all this, but convincing him was another matter altogether. And even when he bowed to necessity, he did it grudgingly.

I wished I could really tell what he was thinking, but then, he probably was wishing the same thing.

“One good thing about this,” I said. “This time, we get to do it right.”

He shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, the first time was good enough for eternity.”

That made me smile. “You mustbe a romantic. I mean, what with all the mayhem and the chaos and the not finishing the ceremony—”

“If I wasn’t a romantic, I wouldn’t be here.”

He had an excellent point. I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I put down Josue’s comb and did another critical review. I looked . . . surprisingly good, actually. The sun and sea had given me a blush of bronze, and my eyes seemed clear and cool as the Caribbean waters. My hair had, for a change, taken its glossy curls to a style, instead of to a mess.

David slid his hands over my shoulders, and I looked up at him. “It’s time,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to keep the guests waiting.”

The guests were, of course, the assembled pirates of the ship I’d recently, and randomly, named the Sparrow.None of them had made any effort to change clothes, splash water on their faces, or brush their teeth, but they were seated cross-legged on the deck, clearly happy with slack-off time.

Josue had donned a ridiculous coat. A tuxedo jacket, obviously ripped off from some prior victim on a yacht. I hoped I wouldn’t notice any bloodstains.

“Hurry your asses up,” he said. “We don’t have long.”

Not exactly the wedding march, but it would do. I exchanged a look with David, and he gave me his hand, and we walked the short length of the deck to the bow, where Josue was standing. The sun was behind clouds again, and the air smelled heavy with brewing storms. David’s best man—and, I supposed, standing in for my maid of honor—was the Fire Warden, Brett Jones. Big and foreboding as a Djinn, only armed like a pirate and watching Josue and everybody else, including me, with smart, cold focus.

I felt both protected and unsettled.

“I don’t have no holy books,” Josue said. “So I make it up as I go along. You don’t like it, you go get married in hell.”

“As long as you get the important stuff right,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“I get paid first.”

There was a brief pause, and then David reached into his pocket and brought out a small handful of very large bills. Josue grabbed them and flashed a highly inappropriate smile, then asked, “What’s your name?”

“David Prince.”

“David Prince, you come here with this woman to be married. Right?”

I didn’t dare throw a glance at David, because there was something so weirdly hilarious about this that I was already choking on it. After a beat, he said, “Obviously.”

I coughed.

“You sure you want to do that?” Josue said. “Because you got to take care of her, love her, never look at another woman. Even if she’s sick or gets old and fat.”

My coughing turned into a full-fledged fit.

“If you mean will I stand by her in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for all the days of our lives—yes, I will,” David said, very quietly. The urge to laugh left me suddenly, and I squeezed his hand. “I vow that I will.”

I felt no corresponding surge from the aetheric, the way I had the first time we’d done this, but then, David had completed his side of the vows the last time we’d done this.

I hadn’t, not officially. Which was why Lewis and I had decided to go through with this. It was an experiment—probably doomed to failure—to see whether or not it would make any difference in the way Djinn and humans were bound together . . . if wewere bound together by ritual, completely.

“You’re sure about this,” Josue said. He continued to stare at David. “I give you some time to think.”

David didn’t smile. “I’m sure. Move along.”

“Well, okay.” He turned to face me. “How about you?”

“You suck at this,” I told him. I got a slow leer in return. “Come on, at least make an effort!”

“You dump this guy, come back to my cabin, I’ll make an effort.”

“To clean up the toenails off the floor?” I asked sweetly. “Come on, Josue. Today.”

He clasped his hands, and tried for a pious expression. I doubted he’d ever seen one, except maybe in the DVD collection belowdecks. “Do you—what’s your name again?”

“Joanne Baldwin.”

“Joanne Balderwin, take this—uh, Prince David, to be your husband? Do you swear to honor and obey him, and to never look at another man, even if this one gets—”

“Sick, old, and fat, yes, I know.”

“What would that matter? He’s a man, yes? It is the prerogative of a man to get sick and old and fat.” The crew laughed raucously behind us. “Do you swear to honor and obey him, even if this one gets poor and lazy?”

I closed my eyes and fought a cage match with my temper. “Ask it right.”He heard the echo of darkness in my voice, and the laughter of the crew died away. “I mean it.”

Josue cleared his throat. When he spoke again, the mocking tone was gone. “Do you take this man as your husband, forsaking all others as long as you both live?”

Close enough. I felt something happening, a stirring in the aetheric like a soft breeze. It swirled around me, lazy and gentle, and then solidified into a silver mist.

“Yes,” I said. “I vow it.”

The mist fell like soft silver rain on the aetheric, and I felt it sliding over my skin in warm threads.

And then it hit the black torch, and all hell broke loose.

“Jo!” David grabbed me as my knees folded. “What—?”

I had to make this work. Had to.Holy crap, Lewis had been right the whole time. Because our wedding vows hadn’t been finished, I’d made myself vulnerable to the invasion by Bad Bob. The equations had been out of balance, and on the aetheric that was a very bad thing.

We were setting it right.

The connection between us went wild, power flooding from him into me in a silver torrent. Power straight from the bloodstream of the aetheric, pure and white-hot.

“Take it out of me,” I panted. “Hurry. Hurry!”

David rolled me over on my stomach and ripped my shirt open, exposing the rippling, angry tattoo on my back. The thing under there was being forced to the surface.