Midnight Sky (Dark Sky Book 2) (12 page)

“How many more times do you want me to say it?” Riley sighed. 

“As many times as it takes to get the truth,” Sawyer bit out.

“I don’t know what he meant.”

“But you know him. He seemed really friendly toward you.”

Riley’s head snapped up and his jaw tightened. “Spend two years under someone’s fist everyday and they think you’re close. Surprised he didn’t act friendlier to you. He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

Nash moved in front of Riley, but not because he was angry. He was trying to protect Riley from Sawyer. 

“Trust me,” the captain said in a dangerous, low voice. “I know exactly what Davin is capable of. By now, so do you. Which is why I think that if you were smart, you would have made a deal with him.”

Nash tried to intervene. “Sawyer–”

“What kind of deal could I possibly make?” Riley suddenly burst. “They broke me until I was nothing.
Nothing!
They cut me to ribbons for fun and were going to use me for fuel when I lost value. I lost all hope before Claire found me. If I thought she was going to be hurt, you think I would have let her come along?”

“Nothing would have stopped her, but–”

“Exactly! If anyone’s to blame for not protecting her, it’s you.”

Sawyer went still. Even Gemma and I slowed down. I tried to pull forward and stop their argument, but Riley wasn’t finished tormenting his captain.

“You know what kind of danger she’s in, but what have you done to help her lately? Am I supposed to be enough against someone like Davin? You think I can protect her from the Vesper? Or is she a burden you just want to put on someone else?”

Nash tried to grab Sawyer, but wasn’t fast enough. The marauder captain shouldered past his first mate and rushed Riley. The soldier took a step back, but Sawyer’s fist still collided with his jaw. Riley staggered to the side, and Nash had to grab Sawyer with both hands before he could hit him again.

“Stop it!”
 

My voice was ragged and ugly, but it got their attention. Nash winced at me, and Sawyer’s eyes widened with horror. Riley turned as he rubbed is jaw, freezing his movements when he locked eyes with me. I must have looked worse than I thought.

Sawyer jerked free of Nash, but didn’t make another move for Riley. Now that I was here, he seemed to have forgotten all about the soldier. He made his way toward me, as if magnetized.

“You should be resting,” he said apprehensively.

“And you should be acting like a captain, not like a thug,” I hissed back, my voice scratching along my throat as it rose. “Riley did what he could. Stop accusing him.”

Sawyer halted, a wounded look flashing through his eyes. I thought about what I’d said. Being called a thug was something his older brother would have thrived on. Sawyer was doing everything he could to avoid the comparison. My words had cut him deeply. He lowered his eyes and backed away.
 

A twinge of guilt went through me, but I couldn’t let it show now. I needed to focus on the real problem at hand, not the torn feelings and confusion surrounding Sawyer and Riley.

I looked at everyone in turn. “Davin has the Palisade’s design plans, but he didn’t get my mother’s journal. I don’t know how useful it will be, but now we have a starting point. We need to find the
Capital Meridian
and see what’s inside it.”

“You realize there could be nothing,” Nash pointed out. “Your parents might only have gotten as far as planning it. If they didn’t put anything together, we’ll need to get the scrap, the parts, the electricity, and who knows what else. It could take months to put together.”

No one argued or added to his statement, but it was likely we were thinking the same thing.

We didn’t have months. If Gemma was right and the Hellion skiffs were returning, we might not even have weeks.

“Then it’s a good thing I woke up when I did,” I told them. 

Given how my friends nervously glanced at each other, it was clear that my answer didn’t seem to please anyone. But I was beyond caring. My gaze went up, stopping at the
Dauntless Wanderer
’s cabin. 

“Abby’s okay, Claire,” Riley assured. “Moira is up there now.”

“She said Abby was getting worse.” My hopes seemed to shrink by just speaking those words.

Riley walked toward me with pity in his eyes. “We’ve all looked after her. It doesn’t seem like the Vesper is in her mind anymore.”

Relief coursed through me, though it was short-lived and sour. It didn’t escape my notice that Riley didn’t offer me false hope by denying what Gemma had told me.

“Can other Hellions get into human minds?” Gemma asked Riley, breaking his focus on me.

He shook his head. “Only one I know capable of that is the Vesper. As far as I can tell, his mental control commands all the Hellions.” He looked at me. “You really damaged him when you crashed the
Behemoth.
”

“Forgive me for not shedding any tears,” I grumbled.

Riley smirked for a moment, the spark in his eyes fading almost instantly. “One of two things can happen now. The Vesper will order a massive search for you, or,” he held his breath, “he’ll pull back and wait for you to come to him.”

“How would he do that? He’s already breaking me with Abby.”

“I’m not sure, but it won’t be long before Davin tells him what happened at your home. He’s basically the Vesper’s personal soldier. The Vesper will think you’re in reach, and he’ll have Davin trap you as soon as he can.”

“Interesting how much you know about him,” accused Sawyer, “considering you said the Vesper’s rotting away on the other side of the Breach.” He kept the bite in his words, but I could see the rings of fatigue under his eyes. Eyes that were studiously avoiding mine.

To my surprise, Riley didn’t start another fight with Sawyer. He didn’t even look at the pirate. Instead, he sighed and shuffled back to the crates. He leaned against them and folded his arms over his chest. He looked defeated, at the end of his rope, even.

“I met him once.”

We all stared at him, not daring to breathe.
 

“A few days after they captured me, the Hellions brought me through the Breach to see the Vesper. He got into my head and stayed there for three days, pulling out slivers of my mind. It was like being a fly in the hands of a cruel child. He tore off my wings, slowly, carefully, making sure he got what he wanted, regardless of my pain.”

Riley’s eyes had become so distant that not even Sawyer bothered to argue with him. Then he blinked and returned to us.
 

“When the Vesper gets into your head, you can see into his as well. He controls himself, but I could still understand him. Or his motives, at least.”

“What did you see?” Gemma asked.

He tightened his arms around his chest. “Flashes. Things that didn’t make sense. But I understood the emotion well enough.” He looked at all of us in turn. “Rage. Complete, unfiltered hatred. I’ve never felt anything so strong in my life. The Vesper won’t stop until he takes revenge on every human he can get his hands on. Starting with you, Claire.”

“Because of my parents?” I asked tentatively.

Riley sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, when I met him, it was just emotions I was getting. Not ideas or actual thoughts. I barely understood him when he said your parents’ names. I can’t tell you what he’s planning, or what he wants. But if he’s sending Davin after you and using Abby, it’s crucial.” He paused, then added, “If I had to guess, he wants you to do something to your parents machine.”

“Why would he want that?” questioned Gemma. “It’s supposed to close the Breach, isn’t it?”

“Claire told me the machine was a conductor that used a lot of electric energy.” Sawyer’s tawny eyes looked at mine gravely. “That kind of energy could be weaponized, couldn’t it?”

The horror of his suggestion sank in. I imagined the dais perched on top of another ship like the
Behemoth,
electricity cracking through the clouds like lighting in a storm. But instead of the bolts dancing harmlessly in the sky, they would whip down onto Westraven, turning stone to dust and bones to ash. Cannon fire would force the survivors from their homes until they were dying or weakened. Then the Hellions would descend. They would leap from their skiffs, hunt anyone they could find, and butcher them on the spot until fresh blood stained the streets. Not everyone would become food, though. Some of them, like the children, would be captured. Drawn back up to a man-o’-war and stabbed with dozens of needles, each one draining their blood with agonizing slowness, shattering their minds before finally robbing them of their lives.

It would be The Storm all over again. Aon would never survive a second attack like that, and Westraven would be wiped from the map.
 

You need to survive, Claire. You can save us. Not just your sister, but everyone.

My mother’s words always seemed like a burden to me. Now that I knew what I had to do, that burden had become a motivation.

“We need to find the
Capital Meridian
,” I announced casually. “Once we do that, we can go from there. We have to trust that Davin won’t know where it is.”

“And if he does?” Sawyer countered, slowly dragging his eyes to mine. “He hasn’t been sitting on his ass twiddling his thumbs these last few months. Either he was watching us, or he was doing his own search for your parents’ ship. He was there during the Discovery, remember? He knew what their ship looked like.” Unease filled Sawyer’s eyes. “He knew what your mother looked like.”

I lowered my head quickly, my hand automatically going to my neck, a phantom burn creeping over my skin. I wondered how many nightmares I would have of him, how little I would sleep because I was afraid of seeing his face when I closed my eyes.

My eyes went to my mother’s journal, still clutched in my hands. I opened the book and flipped to the end, looking for a late entry that would hopefully hint at what my parents were doing in the last days of The Storm. I stopped at one of the last entries and skimmed through. My mother’s cursive script was rough and sharper than usual, the way it usually looked when she was under duress.
 

“ ‘Ship’s taken on too much damage. Need to land soon. Captain Arturo says we’re going to Dovercourt. Lots of open space. Hope he lands safely. Need to find Joel.’”

Lifting my eyes from the journal, I looked at the crew in turn. Almost all of them had the same blank, confused expression I had. Nash was the only one staring at his feet.

“Where the hell’s Dovercourt?” Gemma blurted. “Never heard of it.”

“I have,” Nash grimly admitted. When the rest of us looked at him, he explained. “Dovercourt’s called the Barren now.”

I cringed. The Barren was the one place in all of Westraven that I hadn’t visited since The Storm. It was a place where survivors would venture and never return, and not because of any Hellion threats. Even my former employer and tyrant Garnet, who fancied himself a king in the underground, stayed away from the Barren.
 

“How do you know?” Riley asked suspiciously.
 

Nash didn’t look up from the floor. “I used to live there.”

My jaw dropped. Sawyer and Gemma looked at each other nervously, as though they wanted to avoid this conversation.
 

“I thought the Barren was empty,” I said. “Uninhabitable.”

Nash shook his head. “Marauders took it over. It was still Dovercourt, until the riots started.”

I gulped, remembering the towers of smoke chugging from Westraven’s upper east corner. I was still ten years old at the time, struggling to keep my baby sister alive. I didn’t know what was happening in Dovercourt, and chose not to find out. A few months later, the area I watched burn became known as the Barren.

“The marauders thought they hit the jackpot,” Nash continued. “It was a militarized area. More advanced than the drafter district. After they raided it, they turned on each other. It was a bloody fight, and it drew the Hellions. After about a year, the surviving marauders divided into groups, stayed underground anywhere they wanted, and waited for the chance to strike out and kill each other. The Barren’s the heart of Clan life in Westraven. They’re still in a rivalry war against any marauder they come across, and won’t stop until every other marauder is dead.”

“How did you escape?” I asked once I found my voice again.

Nash looked at Sawyer. Unspoken words and understanding seemed to cross the distance between them.

“I had some help.” Nash turned to us. “I still know the layout and the Clans. They won’t give up their territory unless it’s taken by force. The Stray Dogs took me in when I was thirteen. They’re the biggest Clan in Westraven now. If the
Meridian
is in the Barren, they’ll be the ones looking after it.”

My eyes flicked down to the tattoo on the length of Nash’s right forearm. The dog inked to his skin snarled furiously back at me. I couldn’t look at it for very long.
 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Riley insisted. “If the marauders in the Barren recognize Sawyer as a Kendric, they’ll rip us to shreds,” he turned to regard Gemma and me, “and I don’t even want to think about what they would do to the women.”

I shifted on both my feet, but Gemma puffed out her chest and put her hands on her hips. Her fingers played along the edges of the knives and flintlocks on her belt.

“Any man that wants to lay a hand on me is welcome to try. He just won’t be leaving with that hand attached.”

Across from us, the anxiety lifted from Nash’s face. He stared at Gemma with warm, dark eyes, a steady smile raising the corners of his lips. His shoulders relaxed, as if heavy weights had been pulled off of them. Nash looked at Gemma like she was the only light in his world. The single ray of hope that kept him from drowning in his past.
 

“I’m sure I’ll kick myself for this later,” Sawyer announced miserably, “but I agree with Nash. We need to check out the Barren and see if the
Meridian
and the machine are there.” His mood darkened when he looked at me. “And we need Claire to come with us.”