- 19 -

Civility and decorum hold society together, yet Allister Cain was ready to throw both away. He had told them transporting those creatures was bound to get someone killed and now he had been proved right four times over. Things had failed in exactly the way he had insisted they would, so now it was time to raise hell. He would make sure they remembered their mistake.

Allister kicked open the door to the ship's bridge. The officers inside turned to him but his attention focused solely on Thomas Tudor, the ship's captain. He stomped across the room until he had trapped the small man between himself and the helm.

"Damn it, Thomas. I've been telling you for three voyages now. Well, it's happened."

The captain straightened his posture and stared up at Allister. There wasn't an ounce of doubt in his expression. "I'm aware. Now do you intend to loom over me until we reach Eden? Step back and we can talk."

Allister clenched his fist until a sharp burning spread across his palm. He had gotten along with the captain well enough, but the man's arrogance made it hard. "We've had plenty of discussions on the matter already. Each one ending with me telling you transporting these creatures was a mistake. Four men are dead, Thomas. Not numbers on a spreadsheet or a thought experiment; real men."

The captain pressed a hand against Allister's chest and shuffled from beneath his towering frame. Most men would be terrified to even touch a man his size, but Captain Thomas knew there wouldn't be any retaliation. Allister would lose his job if there was. That made him want to slug the bastard even more.

The captain adjusted his hat and uniform, then crossed the room to look out the windows. "Come here, Allister. Let me show you something."

Allister's body shook. He focused on his breathing and began to count backward from ten, reaching one as he took a spot beside the captain. He looked down over the ship and restarted from ten again, feeling he would lose his temper if he looked the captain in the eyes. A surprising number of guests and workers roamed the deck for as late as it was.

"Tell me, Allister, what do you see?"

"Mostly old men who got too carried away with their after-dinner brandy."

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"Not there, beyond the ship."

Allister focused his attention past the bow. Large spotlights illuminated a thin blue strip. Beyond their edges lay endless miles of pitch-black oceans. If there was anything out there, he wouldn't see it until it entered the light. At that point, he thought, the ship would have little chance of avoiding a collision. Why bother with the lights anyway? The ship would happily crash whether anyone saw the collision or not. Not that there was anything out there to hit.

"I don't see a damn thing."

"Indeed. And even though it's night, don't think anything will change come daybreak. No matter how impressive its size, this ship is but a small point drifting across vast oceans."

"What's your point?"

"You come to me and expect I can change things because I am the captain, but I don't own this ship. I am a single man adrift in a vast organization. Shipping youkai across the sea was not my decision, and I have no power to stop the company from doing it."

"Shift the blame all you want, people are dead. Have you at least radioed back to Eden to let the company know their lack of a plan has finally caught up to them?"

"You and your team are the plan. They've cleared you to kill it if you have to, though there's a bonus if you can recapture it."

Fucking unbelievable, Allister thought. He meant to say it out loud as well but the sound of radio static interrupted him. He looked down at the transceiver on his belt as it crackled again. He pulled the device free, then extended the collapsible antenna hoping for a better signal.

The radio was already larger than a brick, but doubled in length once fully deployed. It approached the size of a short sword, though swinging it was only likely to kill the fragile device itself. Allister didn't have three months' salary to replace the radio so he handled it cautiously as he held down a button and spoke into the microphone.

"Say again. We didn't read you."

"Boss," cracked a voice over the radio. "We found the youkai. Come to the first class smoking room."

Allister's heart skipped a beat. The sound quality of the handheld radios was poor, but he was sure he heard screaming in the background. He pressed the radio into the hands of the captain and rushed for the door. He bounded down the stairs two at a time. In the rush, he stumbled but managed to right himself before falling to the deck. Still, he couldn't waste a second; not while people were dying.

The screams grew louder as he reached the smoking room. He had hoped he imagined the sound, but there was no such luck. He readied the sawed-off shotgun hidden under his coat and turned the corner. There, in front of the entrance to the parlor, he came face to face with a woman he recognized, if only by description. Long black hair with a gray streak and an eye patch on the left side. She was the hunter his men had found snooping around.

She wielded a shotgun affixed with a bayonet, seemingly ready for a fight. She wasn't dressed for it though. She had no coat, no shirt. Not even shoes. Only a pair of slacks, a plain bra, and a single blood vial hung around her neck.

"Return to your room. We can handle—"

Allister was cut off by an ear-wrenching screech from inside the smoking room. The unearthly cry of the youkai wreaking havoc. There was no time to worry about this woman's presence. He needed to get inside and save as many lives as possible.

"Whatever, do what you want," Allister said, kicking the door open.

The two hunters entered the room side by side.