Sail
Chapter Twenty

Total and complete darkness squeezed my breath into gasps. Whatever prowled this room was probably skulking up to me to deliver the final smash that would end me right then.

I wasn’t ready, for death or for attempting to communicate with ghosts. This had been a stupid idea.

“Fuck,” I moaned and fluttered my hand over my pocket. I could end this now. The idea of snatching up the iron made me salivate but I resisted. I wasn’t dead yet.

A light in the center of the ceiling snapped on, and I blinked into the brightness, my stomach tightening at what I might see. Rusted red walls wrapped around the small room. Heart pounding, I scooted closer to the one at my back.

My fingers grazed short ruts, about two inches long, and I traced each one in a long line. They grooved all four walls and the floor, all in a continuous row. They were a darker red than the rust color, and bits of orange flecked the edges like they’d been carved by something sharp.

A faint hissing sounded from across the room. It grew louder, slithering across the floor toward me. “Absssssssss.”

I jerked my knees to my chest with a gasp and squeezed my eyes shut at whatever came at me. But nothing did. I let my breath out in short bursts, waiting, just to be sure.

“Absssssssidy,” the room whispered, like an echo through a long tunnel with a voice scraped raw. It was like it was trying to roll my name around in it to see if it fit.

“What do you want?” I forced out. “Who are you? What does Ellison know?” The words tumbled out fast, and between that and my trembling voice, nothing alive or dead would likely understand me. I pulled in a blast of arctic air, coughed it back out, and tried again, this time a little slower. “I’ll try to help you like you helped me, but just… There’s no reason to try to kill me.”

The red-haired woman appeared on the other side of the room.

I whimpered and shrank back, my fingers scratching at the wall as if they could dig a hole I could vanish through.

She stepped toward me, her head listing to the side. Her boots thudded with each step forward, and the rope burn around her neck oozed a black necklace. She jerked her head like a dying bird, then an audible crack popped it into place so she could stare at me straight-on with dead, black eyes.

I gagged on an attempted scream. Terror sawed at my frayed nerves, but I willed them not to snap. I had to do this. This was the only way. I would not look away from the inky darkness in the ghost’s eyes that gripped my gaze.

Half a dozen monsters materialized behind her. Their gray scales, fangs, and long claws miniaturized the woman with their size. The stink of rotten death and tobacco choked the air from my lungs. More and more creatures appeared behind the woman, crowding the entire room, until she’d crossed it and stood toe-to-toe with me.

A wintry chill swept bone-shaking shudders up and down my spine. Instinct told me to run, but I needed to stay. Instinct told me to close my eyes, but I needed to keep them open to stare all the ghosts down. The instincts I’d lived with forever warred inside me, weakening me. But what if my instincts had been wrong? Could I accept who the universe wanted me to be? I had to find out. I stood and faced them.

“I’m in control,” I said, and I wanted so badly to believe it. “You won’t kill me.”

The light sputtered, throwing the room into darkness before flickering wildly. The woman bared her teeth and leaned toward my face as if she was going to eat her way into my mouth and through the other side.

I clamped my lips shut and turned away, another whimper seeping out. She wasn’t listening to me. Didn’t she believe I was in control? Did I believe I was? How could I convince us both?

With stiff, jerky movements, I turned my head back to her and let my mouth fall open a fraction to demand one thing: “Help me.”

My feet lifted from the ground, and my body dragged up the wall behind me within seconds. “No,” I screamed but the ghosts below just stared with dark eyes.

They had complete control over me. Whatever made them want to help ward off Nesbit in the kitchen had been forgotten. With all of them wanting to go to the other side, my chances of surviving were nil.

I scratched at the wall to try to stop my ascent, but the invisible force that held me was too strong. My head bent at an odd angle at the ceiling, then my body was shoved along it so I stared straight down. I pressed my fists to my eyes, not wanting to see, not wanting to believe this was really happening.

Hot tears seeped out at the thought of Ellison’s face, so like mine. Something had happened to her, and now I couldn’t do anything to help. I’d die on this ship while she suffered somewhere without me.

My body lurched to a stop in the middle of the ceiling, jarring my hands loose from my face. The light flickered next to my head and darkened the ghosts below with leaping shadows.

The light. It didn’t hang from cords like those in the hallway. It had screws.

I gasped. Hope blossomed inside my chest, but I immediately quashed it. The light flickered. I stared at it until spots flecked my vision. My arms were the only thing not pressed into the ceiling, as if for a reason. I shot one out to work a screw loose. Whatever happened next would happen, but not before I tried everything I could to live.

My heartbeat marked the seconds in triple time while I waited. I ticked my gaze around the sea of black eyes below and clutched the screw like it was the key to Feozva’s heaven. I would likely find out soon enough if the key worked.

“Do it then,” I whispered.

A black pair of eyes met mine as I said it, and they belonged to the tallest monster in the room. It dissolved into black smoke. Dark wisps rolled up with my next inhale. Pain seared down my throat.

I clutched at my neck while my body bucked against the ceiling because I couldn’t breathe around the awful pain. I couldn’t do this, not if it felt like I was being torn in half.

The room shifted and changed underneath me, and as it did, my body seemed to fade into the ceiling. The pain dulled enough so the screaming stopped. Had that been me? I couldn’t be sure.

Instead of the rusted red color, the room matched the silver of the rest of the ship. Creatures huddled in corners with their heads bowed. One scraped a long claw down the wall beside a long line of marks. Another traced each one as if it was counting them.

The door flew open, and a man with a pudgy face leaking with sweat staggered inside. He threw an armload of various sized scrap iron onto the floor where it clanked loudly. Some creatures jumped at the noise. Others pointed luminous green eyes at the man. One flashed an arm out toward the pile and crammed metal into its mouth.

“It’s seven o’clock,” the man said, slurring. “You know what that means. Who’s it gonna be tonight? You.” He snapped his fingers at the creature who’d just eaten. “Get up. You try anything funny and I’ll paint the room with your blood.”

The creature stood slowly since its legs were shackled together. It raised four claw-tipped palms to the man who peered down at them like they held handfuls of precious metal through some kind of scanner. But after looking at them for several minutes, he swatted them away.

“This one’s all dried up,” the man announced. “Red? String this one up with the others.”

A black woman with cropped, bright red hair entered the room with a cigar plugged into her mouth. “Find someone else to do it,” she said and puffed a roll of smoke into the man’s face.

The man snatched a knife from his waistband and slashed the buttons from her shirt. It fell open to reveal her bra while the buttons bounced around her brown boots.

“You’ll do what I tell you,” he shouted. “Saelis are useless to the Ring Guild if they don’t have the whatchamacallits for their space rings, so string it up and get the hell out of my way.” He shouldered past her roughly and barged out of the room.

Hatred sparked bright in Red’s eyes as she glared after him through a cloud of smoke. She yanked her shirt closed and rested a hand on the coiled rope at her side.

The room below changed again, and the pain sharpened to a jagged tip as I breathed in. More and more creatures evaporated into dark smoke and funneled inside me with each inhale. It burned my throat raw, or was that the screaming reverberating the room?

All feeling melted away once again while a woman I’d never seen before entered a laboratory below. The walls were stark white, the linoleum below her squeaky white shoes gleaming. High shelves full of test tubes and machinery lined one wall. In the middle, lay two of the creatures strapped to beds, but one was much larger than the other. Tufts of long white hair bushed out behind its pointed ears and the top of its head and fell all the way down its back to its middle. Bristly hair grew around the black scales on its arms and legs. Kind of like a man’s hair. Was this a male and the other a female? More creatures hunkered down in cages along the opposite wall.

The woman poked a needle between the female’s gray scales and filled a vial with blood. She taped up the wound, and as she turned with the vial in hand, she tripped over a bed wheel. The vial shattered on the floor.

The male screeched, loud and terrifying, and broke itself free. I wanted to shout out to warn the woman, but my voice wouldn’t work.

Blood splattered everywhere, and half of the woman gazed up at me with her last dying breaths.

The male crept out of the lab, and the room faded after a cacophony of screams.

The scene switched to me standing protectively in front of Mase in the hallway of the Vicio while he pushed iron into my mouth, then altered back to my reality: white-hot pain.

Could Mase’s theory about taking iron to chase them through to the other side really work? With a shaky hand, I tipped the screw from the light into my mouth where it dissolved instantly. The pain subsided almost at once. I sucked air, trembling from head to foot, while I stared down at an empty room scarred from Saelis marks and their memories. But they were all gone.

I’d done it. They passed through me, and I was still here, pressed to the ceiling but alive, relatively unhurt, and with a headful of Saelis flashbacks.

The Saelis, the destroyers of Earth, had haunted this ship. But if they were so evil, then why hadn’t they killed me? Did the Vicious crew send them to slaughter before or after Earth had been wiped from existence? Was this what Ellison knew? They’d answered a few questions, but had opened a galaxy of new ones.

My legs dangled off the ceiling. The rest of me unstuck itself and I fell. Weakness buckled my legs out from under me while lightning bolted through my ankles. At least I hadn’t landed on my head.

Something metallic plinked next to me. The other screw to the light. I snatched it up just as glass smashed at my feet and drowned me in darkness once again. Could that be Red? My body felt too wasted to stick around and find out.

“Crew.” The captain’s voice came over the ship’s telecom, rough and whispered. “We are about to be boarded.”

All my insides plummeted to my feet. The ship that followed us was the police, and the captain and Mase contacted them to collect the bounty. They were here right now to arrest me.

I shot for the door toward the rest of the horrors on this ship. I had to hide somewhere where they’d never find me.

The captain gave a long exhale. “It’s the Saelis.”

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