Paradise Island (6 page)

There was a keening cry from Claire. She held out her hand to Estelle just as the canon ball ripped through the mast of the
Wanderlust
. Wood shattered in all directions. A thunderous cracking followed and the mast tilted and fell towards them. Dalia's chant echoed loudly from all directions, seeming to coming from inside and outside of her head at the same time.

Estelle grabbed Gregory's arm, pulling him. Gregory rolled with her as the mast ripped through the railing. The deck shattered into a million shards and crumbled beneath her body, and suddenly she was falling through a gaping opening in the side of the ship.

She felt like she was pushing against a membrane. It stretched. Snapped. She plummeted downwards until she was embraced by the cold, hard ocean waters, all thoughts of Paradise lost.

He tumbled through the crumbling deck. Frigid water. Gasp air. Skin numb in an instant. He somersaulted, disoriented. Open eyes. Blank darkness.

His hands were pinned together, heavy in iron. He stifled his first reaction to panic, knowing it would eat up his oxygen quicker than if he let his mind work and found sense in his surroundings. Then he relaxed his limbs, letting his arms and legs become heavy, concentrating on which way his body moved in the water. Gravity would take effect. He would sink and then be able to work out which way was up.

A bubble of air leaked upwards from between his lips. The black churning of the surface was above him. He kicked, feet cumbersome in leather boots, lungs screaming for air.

His arms burned with the pressure of being cuffed. If only he had his hands. He was an excellent swimmer, but it was a struggle in the heavy chains. He kicked and broke through the surface. His searing lungs opened and tore air down his throat.

His body dropped, the surface licked past his chin and water spilled down his throat. He gasped, coughing it up. He struggled to keep his head above water while his water-filled boots and drenched clothes acted as weights. He treaded water as best he could, but it was not enough to keep him buoyant, and water closed over his head.

He watched the surface as he sunk, tantalizingly close, but unreachable. Drowning was meant to be one of the more peaceful ways of dying. There was no pain, only oxygen eating panic.

Gregory decided to cling onto life with the few remaining seconds he had and relaxed into the water. It would gain him precious moments more of life and if it was only moments he had then he would take as many as he could. His breath slipped between his lips and he closed his eyes, ready for the inevitable.

Abruptly, he was hooked beneath his arms and pulled upwards. His head broke through the surface and he sucked in air with a noisy gasp. He kicked clumsily, fighting his leaden body, and twisted to see what had brought him upwards.

“Lay back and relax, you stupid ox, otherwise you'll have us both drowned,” a sultry voice whispered.

Her breath was hot in his ear. It wove through his mind and connected with the primitive insides of his body. His mind filled with a vision of autumn oak trees and blazing chestnut eyes. Soft breasts pressed into his back and he relaxed into them. She wound her cold arms beneath his chin, tilting his head back to keep the water from entering his mouth. She was a strong woman, toned and fit. Her powerful strokes had them gliding through the water in long easy slides.

He focused on the night sky above him, rather than the body beneath. What he saw didn't make the faintest sense at all. Where moments before it had been bright sun, now there was nothing more than glittering stars polka-dotting an ink black sky. He turned his gaze across the waves, looked as hard as he could, but there was no ship, no crew, nothing but the dark swell of the ocean.

“How can it be night? Have I been unconscious?” he gasped.

“No. I … don't know,” she replied breathlessly.

“Can you see land?” he asked.

“I'm swimming towards a shore,” Estelle gasped.

“How did we get here?”

“Will you stop talking, I'm trying to swim.”

“If I didn't have my hands manacled like a common criminal, I could swim for myself.”

“If you don't stop complaining, I'll let you try. The last time I looked you weren't doing so well at it.”

Gregory had to content himself with being at Estelle's mercy, which, judging by the softness his head rested on, wasn't such a bad prospect for the moment. As she kicked, he felt her lithe body strain full length beneath him. Her curves, although toned, were still soft. Her thighs brushed against his buttocks in sure, repetitive strokes. Her movements were strong, calculated. If she were getting tired, she didn't show it. She breathed in time with her movements, her ribs rising and falling beneath his head.

He'd learnt survival from a young age and being helpless did not sit well with him. He strained against the cuffs, hating the fact that he was bound and she didn't seem to have a concern about it.

Something unexplained had just happened to them. They had been under attack and he was thrown to all corners of the tiny brig. The ship had tilted alarmingly and he was sure they were going to sink. Then one of the female crew members took him on deck and he was squinting at an army of ships bearing down on them with an otherworldly speed. There was reigning confusion, and now they were struggling for survival in the middle of the night in freezing water.

On board, just before they had fallen into the water, he had felt an unexpected burst of energy, like a lightning bolt had speared though his body. For a split moment he was connected to everything and nothing at the same time. There was an element of extreme terror that seared right through his gut. He was glad when that had ended. But there was another emotion, a strong, defiant, simmering anger, which had touched him the most. It seemed so much a part of him, yet he knew it to come from an outside source. He didn't know how or why he could have felt it so keenly.

Estelle's body tilted abruptly and brought his recollections to an end. “Stand,” she gasped.

His feet touched the ground and he stood, chest deep in water. Waves broke against his back, swirling around his body with fingers that wanted to drag him back into the depths of the ocean. There was a stretch of black shore marked by the peaked white caps of crashing sea water. Beyond that a cliff line stretched endlessly. There were no houses, no pinpricks of light, no hope of civilization. They were on their own.

Estelle strode towards the shore. There was no mistaking her svelte form merging from the darker shadows of the waves. She strode purposefully out of the water, and fell to her knees in the sand and fisted her hands in her hair. She seemed like a woman that could go forever but in this moment she looked totally lost.

Gregory strode towards her and sunk onto the sand next to her. His own limbs were numb, exhausted from fighting the surge of freezing waves against cuffed hands. He tipped his head back, opening his lungs to fill them with the sweet, fresh air of the ocean, thankful that he was still able to do it. Eventually his heart pounded some strength back into his limbs, but his mind was still blank, lost in the question of what had just happened to them.

“My crew. My ship!” Estelle cried softly to herself. Her tormented face was lit by the silvery, translucent moonlight.

“Do you have any idea what the hell just happened to us?” Gregory asked.

She kept her eyes trained on the ocean. “The worst just happened to us.” Her voice was a husky flat tone.

The frustration that burst in him was palpable. He needed answers and she was the only one that could provide them. She knew damn well what had happened to them and she was going to tell him. He forced his voice out in a calm tone. “We were being chased by an army of ships. They fired on us. The mast broke and we fell from the ship, and now we are not in the same waters, indeed not in the same part of the world, it seems.” He drew a breath, held it and made his mind work in the logical fashion for which he was renowned. Maybe if they pieced back the moments before, they would discover what had happened.

Estelle softly gasped. Gregory slid a glance at her. She looked like she had been struck by a flash of insight. “Dalia,” Estelle whispered.

“Who is Dalia?” Gregory asked.

“She was frightened. She didn't want to use her gift. I told her to do it. It was the only way to save everyone. If it wasn't for those ships attacking us, if I didn't ask it of her, she wouldn't have done it.”

A cold lump grew in the pit of his stomach. “What exactly did she do, Estelle?”

“She did something I asked of her, against her better judgment. What if this happened to everyone aboard the
Wanderlust
? What if all my crew is scattered who knows where, or worse, what if they all perished?” She sunk her face into her hands. She shook her head and her body trembled. “They could be all gone. Claire. Dalia. There's no way of knowing where they are.” She let out an anguished moan.

A pulse ticked in his temple. “Estelle, you need to tell me more.”

She lifted her head and regarded him silently, assessing him. He held her gaze evenly, measuring up her consideration. The wind picked at her wet hair. Thick, wavy strands tossed about her shoulders. The light from the moon made her skin translucent, her features soft, feminine. She wiped away an errant tear from the corner of her eye, but held his gaze steadily.

“Dalia is a dear friend of mine. I have known her for years. She was treated miserably at the hands of her slave master and was often beaten up. Have I shocked you?”

Gregory shook his head and was careful to hold her gaze. “Go on.”

“After one such session she discovered she had a special ability: she was able to
hide
things. If she concentrated, she could hide objects around her and remain out of sight of her master, even if she was right in front of him. After a while she got very good at it, and often was able to help other slaves hide from that master. But she could not hide from every beating, or keep other slaves safe all the time. I found her on board one of the worst slave ships I have ever laid eyes on. I helped her to health and she has been my good friend since.”

“How does she …
hide
… things?” Gregory asked.

“She told me once she weaves pathways around the object and mirrors back the surroundings, so that although it is there, no one can see it,” Estelle said.

“And she hid the ship?”

Estelle nodded. “And everyone on board. I asked her to do it. It was the only way I could think of to protect everyone from … the advancing ships.”

Gregory could see her motivation for asking her friend. If they looked like they weren't there, the ships would have nothing to fire on. “Then how could this have happened?”

“She never hides people. Only objects. She said once she had a premonition that if she used her ability on people, it would ask too much from the gods. She trusted me so much that against her better judgment, she did it. She was right. I did incur the wrath of her gods and now my crew and my ship are gone.”

She stood abruptly and walked away from him through the frothy ankle deep waves. He cursed under his breath, clambered to his feet and dashed to catch up with her.

“We need to work out where we are. We don't know if this happened to the rest of the crew. There's still no knowing what happened to my ship. It may have been blasted apart by those approaching warships.” Estelle slowed, in thought. “They came at us so fast,” she said.

“They were not the Navy,” Gregory said.

Estelle faced him. “No, it was not Navy. It was Jack Cutlass. Are you in league with him?”

“I abhor the man,” Gregory said.

“I'm sure there is more about this matter than you are telling me.”

“I'm telling you everything I know.”

“That is something I will find out for myself.” She straightened her shoulders and hitched her chin upwards. “But now there is nothing I can do in the middle of the night. We need to find shelter and wait for the cool reason of daylight.”

She strode towards the heavy, dark cliffs. He could escape, now was definitely the time to try. But he couldn't chance it with his wrists manacled together, and not knowing where he was. He would have limited chance of survival. He tested the manacles and suppressed a surge of helpless anger when the iron bit into his wrists. An angry hiss left his mouth before he followed her.

He could draw no logical conclusion about what had happened, and her story of her friend's ability was surely imagination. To think that a woman could
hide
a ship and her crew with the power of her mind was preposterous. Yet, she seemed to believe it as though it were the truth. It made him question the state of her mind. He hoped he was not dealing with a madwoman bent of a path of revenge, as well as dealing with the mystery of where in the world he was.

However, now they were stranded together and she was right about one thing. They needed to find shelter. Even a wolf would have trouble negotiating this area on a bleak, dark night such as this, and he had to get these manacles off. Without his hands free, he was at her mercy which was not a state that sat easily on his shoulders. He was used to being the man in charge, having his own ship under his command, not to be at the whim of a female who had an obvious distrust of men and the world around her, and who also had the audacity to kidnap him on a hair-brained, illogical whim.

He watched her seductive hips sway as she walked in the silken moonlight, and felt his involuntary internal response stir. She was the sexiest guard he ever had the misfortune to be kidnapped by, and when he had sorted out this mess she had gotten him in, he would make her pay dearly for her bad choices.

Her clothes were stitched on with the chilled fingers of the sea breeze. This was an arctic night. And she had no idea in the world where they might be. There was definitely no sign of the
Wanderlust
.