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Click here to read Prologue—The Bloody Wake
Norfolk, Virginia
Time is getting weird
Devin looked around. His world was blurry. The beer. The concussion. The story. He stared closely at the old man, whose previously gentle eyes now glinted with hints of greed and bloodlust. He glanced at the nearby table, where the beautiful woman sat. She didn’t look up, but the slightest hint of a smile graced her dark lips.
The old man pulled out a long-stemmed pipe from a satchel. He eyed Devin as he prepared the carcinogenic treat. Eventually, through an aromatic haze, he said, “There are a lot of things going through your head right now, Mister Cole.”
That was a hell of an understatement. Even in a clear state of mind, Devin wouldn’t have known how to process the old man’s story. As he was now, it was too much. It was obviously bullshit, but why did it somehow ring so true?
“I’ve heard of Henry Avery. Famous pirate. Vanished or something.” Devin glared and leaned forward. “Fine, so you’re telling some kind of fake historic story as though you were in it. I can handle that. I can play that little game too. My story starts with a sword in a stone and an unlucky little page boy named Newt. Want me to tell you more?”
The old man smiled. “In due time. How about I finish telling mine?”
Devin swigged from the again-full mug. “Sure. Whatever floats your little pirate boat.”
The old man took a long puff. “Helping you understand the most important choice of your life does, as you say, float my little pirate boat. Perhaps understanding what the Countess and the Captain found will help you with that.”
“Most important choice of my life? Uh huh.”
The tavern door slammed open. A wave of cold air poured over the patrons and briefly dampened the fire. Devin’s concussed, inebriated brain processed somewhere that cold air didn’t make sense, but the thought sloughed away somewhere dark and painful. An elegantly robed man stood in the doorway, then quickly stumbled inside as a woman in shorts and a t-shirt shoved in behind him.
“Cold as a tauntaun’s dick out there!” the woman gasped as she rushed in and slammed the door behind her.
The robed man scowled at her. “If you want to maintain my protective magics, perhaps next time you will maintain a gentler tone.”
“I’ll gentler tone up your ass, Saf.”
“That’s a meaningless statement.”
“You’re a meaningless… statement.”
Captain Avery turned to the door and the new patrons. “Quartermaster, Magician. You’re interrupting a story.”
The robed man held up his hands defensively. “My apologies, Captain.”
The woman was already at the bar, sidled up next to a giant redhead in a lumberjack shirt, ordering a drink. Devin didn’t recall that man entering. And there were other people in here now, too. When had they arrived?
“Mister Cole, I’d like to introduce you to two members of my crew. The meticulously coifed gentleman is Saf ibn Sayyad, our ship’s Magician.” The robed man tapped his forehead and offered a slight bow. “That wonderfully foul mouthed lass is Nancy Wold, my Quartermaster.”
Devin’s neck muscles tensed. The idea of a magician didn’t trouble him much. Meadow has been a witch, a real witch. And the shit Sammy and his thugs had dragged Devin, and eventually Lisa, into would never pass for anything other than supernatural. But Devin didn’t like the way this coincidental meeting was turning out. He looked the woman up and down. “I recognize you.”
Nancy Wold approached the table with a full beer. The same faded t-shirt above worn cargo shirts and bright green shoes he had seen earlier that day.
“You were at the cannery today,” Devin said. ”Snooping around in the parking lot.”
Nancy grinned. “I wasn’t fucking snooping, dork. I was looking for you.” She dragged a chair across the floor and plopped down on it, facing Devin. “And hey, I found you.”
So this definitely wasn’t some coincidental meeting. Someone planned this. What the fuck?
Devin pushed his chair back and sat up straight, ready to move. “What’s going on? What the hell do you want with me?”
“Oh, I’m sure the captain’s getting there. Reading Rainbow story-time I take it?” Nancy said.
“Pray do not let us interfere.” The Magician pulled a chair close to the table and sat, somehow in the shadows despite the light from the fire.
“For reals. I love hearing this shit.” Nancy took a big swig to lubricate her grin.
“Bullshit.” Devin looked back at the old man. “You guys some kind of community college theater group? You the captain?”
The old man sighed. “No, we aren’t a college theater group. But yes, I am the captain. My name is Captain Henry Avery, and I am the most famous pirate of all time.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Devin pushed the chair back further and began to stand.
Before his knees were fully uncoiled, a steel-hard hand clasped his shoulder and pressed him back down into his chair.
Devin spun his head. The huge red-headed man in the button-down lumberjack shirt towered above him. The man’s leather-gloved hand rested on Devin’s shoulder with a pressure that was a shiver from splintering the collarbone.
Devin tried to twist out of the man’s grip but couldn’t move.
“The Captain is telling you a story, Mister Cole,” the redhead said. His voice sounded mechanical, like the human version of his buddy Jimmy’s RX-7 engine when it was whirring up to speed. “You should listen.”
Devin looked frantically around. The bar had quietly filled with at least a dozen people, most sitting at the bar or nearby tables, but all looking at him. He hadn’t heard them enter, distracted by the story and the drink, but now their presence felt as crushing as the giant red-head’s iron-hard hand.
You drank too much. Got stupid.
And now here he was. Trapped.
“What the fuck is going on?”
The old man, the Captain, leaned forward. “Just listen to my story, son.” The flickering oil lamp behind him dimmed and the man’s beard appeared noticeably darker, almost black. The deep lines on his face relaxed, sun lines but not age lines.
The pressure of inspection, of being watched and assessed and judged, moved over Devin, entrapping as the steel grip of the hand on his shoulder.
“Let me go,” he said, with ice. Devin didn’t fear confrontation–those days of passivity were far behind him. His face bore the scars of a dozen fights and worse. Broken bones and cuts would heal, and who cared if they didn’t? “You might hurt me, but I will mess you up on my way down.”
“Nobody will hurt you. We’re all family here,” said the Captain. “McGee, that is unnecessary.”
The giant redhead released his grip.
“Mister Cole,” the old man continued. “I ask that you let me finish my story.”
Devin stayed seated as he watched the redhead saunter back to the bar to join the others. “Do I have a choice?”
“We always have choices, but we rarely make the best of them.”
“Tell your story, old man. But when this is done, I’m fucking gone.”
“You need us, and we need you, Mister Cole. After this, you won’t want to leave.” Captain Henry Avery continued his tale.
TO BE CONTINUED… Chapter 6—Light From Dark coming June 17, 2024
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