PORT ROYAL. Or so they’d begun calling it since stealing it from the Spaniards. T’was the year of our lord sixteen hundred and fifty-seven, near as I could conjure, and the exporting of Jamaica’s abundant sugar cane was beginning to not be the major reason for the city’s being. City. Hah! You could fit the whole of it into a corner of Dublin and lose the lot.
The trades had begun to pick up with evening’s approach and were having a start at clearing the worst of the stench and most of the mosquitoes from the portside hovel in which I languished. The flies were hardier.
The setting sun cast the sky in a rose tint, bouncing it about the lovely blue of the bay, toying with the rigging of the motley score and a half of ships gathered in an unruly mob along the wharf, and I was drunk as a lord.
T’was not me custom, of course. I’d not had more than a pint at a go in the whole of the five years I’d been chasing the thing. Five years? Had it really been that long?
I toyed with the lumpy clay mug before me, regarding its speckled contents blearily as I struggled to bring the journey to mind without dwelling on its catalyst. Aye, five years and a bit since....
T’wasn’t working a lick, and so I threw what was left of the rum-laced ale against the back of me throat and waved unsteadily for the bar wench to bring me another.
* * *
Western Ireland, 1652
I held me horse’s head close, me cloak shielding his nose lest he make a noise to give the riders a hint we were there. The thicket was dense, and I could no more see who they might be than they, I most sincerely hoped, could see me.
T’was mid-May, and the land all about was emerald green and blooming, not that any of the life of it found its way to me bleak heart.
Galway had fallen, and it was the last of the cities we’d held. Ireland was lost to us. The New Model Army and their bloody traitorous Covenanter lapdogs had thrown us down in the end. We were exiles in our own land. Or outlaws as our natures decided.
Lord Thomas Preston and the bulk of the lads they’d let to flee into exile — back into the service of the Spaniards, who were at the least not bloody Protestants. The rest of us had fled into the hills and glens to avoid their patrols and so-called justice.
He’d invited me along, of course, had Lord Thomas, for I’d been following him for more than a bit. I’d business elsewhere, however. I’d me home to the east, and me family to see to lest they fall victim to the minions of that bloody Monroe and his thugs. What I’d do to stop such a thing, I’d no idea, but it wasn’t in me not to try.
The hoof beats had faded, so I left the bay in the thicket and edged me way out to the road to assure meself that whoever it had been was well gone before resuming me journey. Home was still two days off at best, and that best counted on me not being waylaid by Covenanters or any of Cromwell’s dogs. Or yet any of those things I’d begun seeing haunting the guts of Galway once the plague had begun to have its way. Those things I did not ever want to see again.
* * *
Port Royal, Jamaica, 1657
Me stomach started in turning over and I fought the bile rising in me throat. Knowing it for not the brew before me, foul though that be, I looked up in time to see the thing take seat across from me, sweeping its grand velvet cape about itself with a gaudy flourish as it dropped into the barrel chair across the plank table from mine.
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It looked a grand fine gentleman of some stature, but I knew that for not the case. It tasted of vomit and blood, and smelt of old rot, and by that I knew it to be one of them.
I’ve been told that most folk don’t perceive them as I do — that to the average clod, they’re no different than any man or woman you’d be like to meet. I’ve no idea why they reveal themselves to me, nor if it’s even their intent to do so. Perhaps it’s just something in me blood. Me nana had always told me I was different. Perhaps this was a part of that.
I looked into its eyes, and that seemed to surprise it. I laughed, a hoarse bark of a thing, all contempt and hatred. “Your lot hold no terror for me, spawn,” I informed it coldly.
A sly smile crept across the mask it wore of humanness, and I felt the eyes focus — felt the tickle that told me it was trying that compulsion thing they so love. I hawked up a grand fine dollop of whatever remained in me gob and let fly, straight into its yap.
“That fer you, ye make believe grandee!” I laughed. “Your nonsense is naught to me but clouds in the sky or the buzzin’ of flies. Now, what have ye come for? Why seek me out after the spendin’ of so much time skittering about in the dark to hide from me eye?”
It had gone rigid, me spittle running down its fine-boned face, and the look in the eyes was no longer sly nor confident. Rage, I saw in those hell-black orbs. Rage and hunger.
“My master,” it hissed as it drew forth a lace handkerchief to dab at its pale face. “Has grown weary of your antics.”
“Has it now?” I leaned back in me seat, me head back for to look down me nose at it. “Antics, are they?” a small dab of a smile pulled at me cheeks.
“And yet it is full the way across Britain and halfway the breadth of Europe I’ve chased you lot as ye fled. Aye, and now across the great, wet ocean to this fine, loverly Island beneath the sun with the lot of ye ever melting away before me. Antics indeed. And how many of ye has perished of me antics, do ye conjure?”
“My master wishes an end to this,” the beast ignored me.
I tugged at me sash and leaned far over the table, fighting the gorge as it rose in me with the nearness of the demon lurking within the dead skin. “And how, pray tell, does it plan such a thing?” I peered into the blackness of its eyes, for I knew that such discomfited them greatly.
It shifted backward, a scowl growing across its fleshy mask. “I have been instructed to convey you to him,” it said, its voice betraying the faintest quiver. “That is what you desire, is it not?”
I smiled, though I doubt me not t’was not a good thing to see. “Indeed, indeed,” I admitted, me voice iron. “And yet, here before me, I see not me quarry, but merely some half-formed toady of no particular standing and less power.”
It was growing angrier by the heartbeat, I could see, not that the hearts within the things beat at all, at all. That was good. That was me goal.
They were faster than men, and far more nimble. They were stronger. They knew it — relied on it. Steel didn’t harm them like it did us, nor lead. You could shoot them full of holes all the day long, and they’d scarce notice. They were superior in every way. Or so they thought.
Anger drew the beast out, though. Gave it more control, and the puppet less. This I’d learned at some great cost. And while the beast might be fast, it hadn’t the finesse of the puppet.
“I am, you worm,” it hissed venomously, “far more fully formed than the common mud from which you are so poorly cobbled.”
It rose up in the chair, squaring its shoulders and puffing itself up as it glared down at me, its eyes beginning to glow. “You are less than food to me,” it continued. “You are offal. You are less than vermin.”
“And yet your master quails in some manure-filled hole out in the jungle with the crawlies scampering about upon it, sending forth lackeys—”
“My master resides in a palace!” spittle sprayed from its mouth. “A great planta—!”
“Thankee,” I smiled and put a pistol ball into its guts.
Smoke was already beginning to boil from the wound as I worked the lever of the pistol’s action back and forth. Sickly green and oily, the smoke began issuing forth from its spasming maw as it clawed at the wound and struggled to curse me.
Me pistol once more charged, I lay the barrel against the fine brocaded doublet of the thing and pulled the trigger. The spelled ball tore through the shriveled heart and, with an imploding puff that near drew the breath from me lungs, I was sitting across from a mound of dust dribbling down the sides of the faded chair.
The whole encounter had lasted less than half a minute, from the time I’d goaded it into its disclosure until the second ball had sent it back to hell.
I doubted that anybody had even noticed. Not in Port Royal. Not on the waterfront. Gunshots were near as commonplace as arguments or stabbings, and were paid scantly more attention. Nevertheless, I raised me eyes and swept the plaza.
That was when I spied the big Dutchman leaning against the bar. He was looking straight at me. Then, while still I was working to decide what I might do about it, he winked.