1720, Barbados
When tide goes out at midnight, and the clouds cover the moon the full moon, they can be summoned. Do you want to know how?
It is with great hesitation that Bower uncurls his large fingers just enough that he can take another look at the symbols messily scratched on the scrap of paper concealed there. He lets his eyes fall shut to steady his nerves.
He reaches forward into the dark, damp sand and finishes the circle drawn there. In the bowl at its center, he places a piece of oiled tendercloth. He scrapes the flint. One spark, then another, then another, and whoosh. The tendercloth catches the spark and the contents of the bowl follow after. Orange flame makes the inside of the copper bowl glow.
The fire sucks air and grows, sending smoke into the air in thick, greasy butts. The grains of sand pressed into service to the sigil light up as if caught in a powerful heat from below.
Eventually the smoke becomes too much, sending Bower into spasms of coughing that wrack his body. When he waves enough smoke away to breathe and brushes the dreadlocks from his face, he sees it: the shape of a man behind the black curtain. His heart clenches, his stomach drops, his feet want to run but he roots himself to the spot and doesn't move.
The sea breeze kicks up and whisks the smoke away.
"Hello." Says the man.
Bower squints. He tries to make out the man's features, but it is as though he has none. Looking at him is like reading text in a dream, every time he tries to concentrate, the pieces of the man's face shift beneath his gaze.
"Was I summoned for a staring contest, then?"
"I want-" Bower swallows, hesitates, and then presses on, opening his throat and letting the deep timbre of his voice come out fast with a faked confidence. "I want to be the best at crossing swords of any man at sea."
"I… see." The man chuckles, a shifting tangle of sound that seems to come more from Bower's own mind than the man's mouth. "And what makes you think I can do that?"
"The woman at the inn, she-"
"And if the woman at the inn told you that covering yourself in feathers and clucking like a chicken would make you better at sword fighting, would you do it?"
"Well, no, I'm not—"
"But rather than, I don't know, practice, you'll follow an instruction to summon a demon from hell, like that's a perfectly rational thing to do? The missionaries have been, haven't they? You do know what a demon is?"
Bower feels his cheeks heat, and for once he is thankful that his face is too dark to show the flush that would glow from a paler man.
"Did she tell you," The man goes on, a dark smile spreading from the hazy place where his mouth should be, "that some demons have never taken a body?"
Bower's dense, black eyebrows furrow together. "I don't understand."
"Did she tell you how a demon takes a body for the first time?"
"No." Bower licks his suddenly-dry lips. "I don't know what you are talking about. I came here to make a deal. Do you not make deals?"
"Certainly." Says the strange man. "I'll take yours, then."
"My what?" Bower's large hands clench tight, and he feels his heart pound in his stomach.
"Your body, of course. You'll be the fiercest fighter in the Caribbean, and I'll have your body."
"I... I don't..."
The man's aggravated sigh pierces Bower's mind. "Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Your body. Mine. You. Very strong. Okay?"
He finally forces out, "If you have my body, what use is my skill to me?"
"Well I'll give it back."
"When?!"
The man thinks it over, and replies, "One year, or less."
"The woman said you would want my soul." Bower says cautiously.
"Traditionally, yes. But perhaps you can bang two neurons together long enough to take a guess at why my priorities might be… shifted. Think of it my way. My options are: One, make a deal with you to borrow your meatsuit, or two, kill you and take it. You're pretty purefor a pirate, so killing you now would be a waste of a soul. But you're a man, Thomas Bower, and a pirate at that. Once you've got your little prize, something tells me you're going to walk right off that boat and into Hell all by yourself."
"Ship." Bower corrects, oddly emboldened. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you're a terrible negotiator and I don't see you as a threat." The answer rattles through bone and brain. "And so you know what's going to happen if you suddenly get scared and decide you don't want to deal."
Bower grits his teeth. "So I have no choice?"
"You really should have done your homework about demons, mate."
"Fine." Bower says. "One year. And I want it back in one piece."
"Excellent."
Bower steps forward and extends a slightly nervous hand.
"No." Says the flickering man.
"What do you mean, no?"
The man puts his hand in Bower's, a feeling like a static shock, and pulls. He puts his hand on the back of Bower's head, bringing him in close, and then closer, to that mouth full of teeth.
It isn't yet noon when the pirate sloop Revenge docks at Carlisle Bay on the west coast of Barbados.
"There's no rush." Anne Bonny purrs, running her hands up the slight curve of her lover's sides.
But the other woman only purses her lips in an unamused grimace, slipping into a long coat and pulling tall boots up her legs.
"Mary," Anne frowns, "What's the matter? They reacted well, I think. Anyway, Calico's in charge and he'd never allow a single one of those louts to lay a finger on you. You know that. What troubles you so?"
'Mary' licks and bites her lips. She doesn't make eye contact. The first day in a new person is always the toughest.
"I dreamed of ill omens." She confesses. "Nothing more."
Sympathy crosses Anne's face, and she turns away, not watching her friend exit the darkness of the cabin.
'Mary' squints into the sun as she saunters up the pier.
Telling the friends and family, Maledictus had discovered, is simply not worth it. How many times had she tearfully confessed to a lover, a friend, a parent? I'm going to die in one year, she had said in life after life after life, but what good did it ever do?
She does it anyway, most of the time, though perhaps not right away. She wonders if she'll tell the woman that her new body's mind labels Anne Bonny. The affair doesn't seem to be a romantic one, but the friendship is strong. Maledictus riffles through the filing cabinets of her host's brain for information. A good impersonation requires proper intelligence-gathering.
Once on the island, she realizes passively that she has no destination, no direction she wants to go other than away. She always likes to get away a little in the beginning, if she can – to simply be herself, to collect the shattered fragments of personality she's managed to cling to over the eons.
She hikes inland to the far edge of Bridgetown, where the cobbles and dirt give way to deep green grass again, and it gathers into a hill that presides over the burgeoning little city. One foot in front of the other, she disregards the sweat forming beneath her hat until she's reached the rounded peak of the rise.
It's all so much cleaner from here. No faces, no names, just meandering little creatures in corsets and wigs, milling about their colony. She wonders, as she always wonders, if there are any versions of her down there, but she doesn't meet herself too often, and the likelihood seems slim.
She watches a group of men being led out to the docks in the direction of the same ship she had just left. They're mostly very dark of complexion, and she spares a moment to search Mary Read's memories of her captain. Not the sort of fellow to engage in human trafficking, Maledictus is relieved to find.
It's hard not to remember what the little town's going to look like in ten years, or one hundred, or three hundred – she can superimpose the cars, hotels, and shopping malls that will one day try desperately to seek some romanticized version of the aesthetic below her now.
They'll want it cleaner, she imagines.
It is several hours before Maledictus feels comfortable among the crowd, but when she does, she embraces it. She passes among the narrow streets and grins wide beneath the tip of her hat, letting the humanity seep back into her like a fish adapting to its new tank.
It's all going marvelously until she crests the gangplank to the Revenge and her gaze passes over the line of faces of the new recruits. Her eyes connect with the one four from the end of the line, and her heart stops. It's unmistakable: the flicker and shift beneath the skin like the reflection of sun off the water, the unique shape, a fingerprint of a distortion she learned long ago that no one else could see.
Crowley.
Crowley is not listening. He had been so simply pleased to breathe fresh air and see the sky that he hadn't given a lot of heed to what he would actually do on Earth, aside from staying away from Lilith, and finding a slightly more permanent body. He'd been discovered by some pals of Bower's and swept into a night of drunken revelry. Some of the drunkenness had had to be feigned on his part, but he had no less fun for it.
Not a lot of good parties downstairs, he muses. At least, there aren't as many as one might expect.
The companionable nature of the night had gone on to the morning, and something about the easy way they'd joked and not turned on him, not tortured him even a bit, had convinced him to being agreeable when one of them had said there was a job waiting, and was he coming?
The day had brought recruitment to what, as far as he can tell, is a fairly bog-standard pirate ship, made unique only by the not one but two women serving to the objection of apparently no one at all. He is almost certain this is supposed to be bad luck, but if a whole crew of seasoned sailors is content, he supposes he can be as well.
He reflects on the previous night. After what he calculates to be nearly four hundred years in Hell, words like trust and friend aren't really in his lexicon anymore, but he imagines that Thomas Bower must know them well. The night has taken edge off the anger he'd arrived with, and between that and the weather, it's hard to feel that demonic fury he thinks is expected of him.
When the newcomer bounces up the gangplank, the movement catches his eye. He watches her face as she makes eye contact; he doesn't miss the way her energy shifts from purposeful to stunned, like she'd been hit in the gut by some great invisible fist.
Crowley must resist the temptation to look behind him, as if he'll see something shocking there, as if it's almost difficult to believe it's really him she's looking at. He wonders if Thom Bower has perhaps wronged this woman in some way. The way her shoulders suddenly heave and her jaw tenses, it must be the case. He'll try to keep clear of her.
The sparkling sea draws his gaze as he thinks, and it's in the midst of this reverie that he is shocked by a sting across his cheek.
"Mary?" The lilting voice comes from behind the slapper, a small hand on the woman's shoulder, a tug, and he seems to be safe.
"Anne. I… He's… I can't—" The ruddy-cheeked woman who had slapped him (Mary?) sounds almost choked up.
The blonde murmurs something into Mary's ear, at which point she sucks a long breath, collects herself, and shoots a look at Crowley that freezes the blood in his veins. The captain does not interfere once, merely watching the women with the passive amusement of a man in charge of otherwise wild women. He saunters up to Crowley slowly, getting in close and managing quite well to intimidate, despite the height of Crowley's new body.
"Perhaps now would be a good time to explain something to you, and your friends." He glances back and forth.
Crowley looks him the eye and purses his lips. He doesn't have to look around to see Bower's friends starting to sweat. Is that the Caribbean sun? Or is it the fact that they suddenly see their job as at risk because of him? Perhaps it's both.
"Maybe you've heard I am a nice fellow with a more… relaxed… crew. As a man who loathes pretensions, I'll say it's largely true, with one exception: Anne and Mary. So let me explain this: Anne and Mary are not here for your entertainment and when the going gets tough I'd rather have the two of them on my ship than the ten of you – a trade I will not hesitate to make at a moment's notice. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
Whatever vestiges of drunkenness had lingered in the blood of the new crew, it's gone now, and they are sober as judges. Crowley swallows his indignation long enough to assent, an action he considers a generous gift to Bower and his friends. He tells himself that, and as he watches Mary disappear below decks, he almost believes it.
"Ssh."
Crowley had not been sleeping, but with his eyes closed, the small hand suddenly clapped over his mouth is still a bit startling. In the darkness of the sleeping quarters beneath the still-new moon, it takes him a moment to realize that this is the second time that hand has touched his face.
Mary's fingers slip away, twisting into a blurry "follow me" gesture, which kicks up sparks of mad curiosity and so he does. As quietly as he can manage, he follows her through the door and up onto the nearly empty deck. The second that he's let the trapdoor gently down behind him, she is in his space, pressing him back into a dark, shadowy alcove beneath the elevated bridge deck until his back hits the wall.
"You'll have to trust deserved that slap." She says, voice low and warm, "But you know me, I'm not about to hold a grudge."
Crowley searches Bower's memories for Mary Read, but finds nothing. Perhaps the body was drunk when they last met? He sifts through a few possible responses, but decides the best is to say nothing at all, so he keeps his mouth shut.
She answers by leaning in and pressing her lips against his. Her fingers start at his cheekbones and trail down his neck and chest, and her mouth follows, dancing kisses along the line of his neck. Crowley almost stops her, almost pushes her away, almost explains that he's not who she thinks, almost almost almost… but her hands are drifting down past his waistline and he doesn't vocalize anything. Lilith's got him trained not to resist.
She's just a human. You don't have to- But his thoughts stop there. Of course he doesn't have to do anything - she is just a human, unsuspecting as a kitten, he imagines. So why not turn a little of that fear into anger and work out his feelings? Picture Lilith's face, he thinks, and turn the tables for once.
He recovers himself enough to strike back, grasping a fistful of her hair and eliciting a grinning gasp. He spins them around and presses her against the wall. He makes sure she can feel what she's done, pressing against her hip, and when he realigns to grind strategically against her, she hisses through her bared teeth.
"Nnn, Crowley…"
All the air seems to be sucked out of his brand-new lungs and his dick deflates faster than if he'd jumped into the cold sea. He can feel his hands start to shake, can't even bring himself to speak. All this time he'd thought he was getting away from demons and Lilith and her machinations, and…
"Crowley?" She seems to shrink against the wall under his examining frown. "Listen, I just fell into this one, just today. We could have a whole year if everything goes well, I thought you'd be happy."
"Who are you?" He tries for anger but instead it comes out like a cough.
"What are you talking about?" She frowns. "It's your… it's me, just look at me."
His eyes dart around her face. He can see something faint beyond the boundary of her skin, but certainly nothing he can recognize.
She picks up on this immediately. "Crowley it's me, it's Maledictus. Last time for me was maybe eleven, twelve lives ago. Ah… 1980. You were in that Englishman I like… or rather you will be?" She looks up into the slick darkness of his eyes. "Who was I? Last time?"
There is no recognition in his face, no easing of his tension. He sucks air and lets it out slow through his nose, rather than the lips he's biting down on. With one hand on the bony center of her chest, he pins her to the wall again, much harder this time.
"I don't know what you are." He says, "But I have a pretty good idea who sent you. If this is some kind of prank or trick I advise you call it off. You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, and no matter what she told you, believe me – you want me to leave you alone."
When he releases her, she gasps for air, something he pays little attention to as he brushes off his clothes and vanishes down the hatch into the belly of the ship.
He climbs back into Thomas Bower's bunk and listens to the ship breathe until morning comes.
Crowley can recall a time when he'd wondered to himself what was worse about hell, the torture or the politics. Truly, it was a naïve question to be asking, as once he'd been there long enough, the answer was clear: they'd always been one and the same. The easy interactions and clear goals as a cog in the machine of a running pirate ship feel almost clean by comparison, and not having seen "Mary Read" (or whatever craftily-disguised thing is wearing her face) in days simplifies things even further.
He's got a plan in the back of his head to buy a few souls among the crew before he gives Bower back his lumbering form, but beneath the blue sky that had emerged after a storm; he can't quite bring himself to feel hurried.
As the only newbie who hasn't had a hint of seasickness in even the choppiest water, Crowley is volunteered by one of Bower's pals for crow's nest duty, much to the relief of the current green-faced lookout. The men chuckle at each other as he accepts without hesitation, but their smiles are replaced with brows high in surprise at how adeptly he scales his way up. For a few hours, they keep looking up, as if they're waiting for his discomfort or inexperience to become clear in the face of the deep swoops and dips of such a high point away from the ship's center of gravity. Eventually they seem to accept that he must have an iron stomach and return to their business uninterrupted
He's not up there long before he gets the idea that his peace isn't going to last. Below on decks, he can see her emerge from her quarters and gesticulate wildly at the Captain, who leans back as if genuinely intimidated, and nods along agreeably with what appears to a fairly heated rant. Once she stalks off, Captain "Calico Jack" turns his gaze upward.
Directly at Crowley.
He hasn't forgotten what they'd all been scolded about on day one – in fact it's been something he's given a lot of thought to since his little altercation. He isn't so arrogant as to imagine that Miss Mary is safe. She doesn't have the face of a demon, but that doesn't mean she's not in the employ of any of his rivals, and he wonders if the Captain is in cahoots as well. He can't think of how else she'd know his name.
The remainder of his shift up top is uneventful, but no longer relaxing. He's open to violence, but it's not in the plan, and he'd much rather stick to the plan than get even the slightest bit messy. When his feet are back on deck, he finds himself face to face with the displeased Calico Jack.
"Bower." The Captain acknowledges.
"Captain."
"I hear you and Mary had a little disagreement." He says impassively.
"Have you?" Crowley raises Bower's eyebrows.
"She told me herself. Fortunately for you, she also requested that I not push you overboard tied to a cannonball, provided you're willing to go have a talk with her and work things out. But if you don't want to, I'd be glad to—"
"Naturally." Crowley interrupts. "Where?"
"Her and Anne share quarters, you'll find her there. Oh, and Bower?"
"Hm?"
"If you piss her off, I'm the least of your worries." The Captain says with a barely-concealed smirk as he tips the corner of his hat down over his face.
Crowley trusts him on that, and can't help but analyze the whole interaction as he descends below-decks – Does Rackham know? Is he human, or is he the same as whatever strange undetectable thing has got hold of Mary Read? Crowley's steeling himself for a fight, but against what, he's got no idea. Paranoia flares in his belly as he knocks.
"Crowl—Bower?" Read's voice is muted by the shut door, but her words are clear and they make Crowley press Bower's fingernails into his palms.
"Affirmative." He calls back.
"The door's open."
He pushes it, meets resistance, then pulls and finds it open as promised. He closes it behind him.
"What happened to I leave you alone, you leave me alone?" Crowley lets her hear the edge on his voice.
"That was your idea." She reminds from where she's perched on the edge of her bed. "And it was stupid."
"Was it?" He asks.
"It was. You were always going to have to meet me eventually. I gave you my name. Did you even think about it? At all? Or are you stupider than I remember?" She tries to cover her obvious hurt with insults.
"Maledictus." He says. "Maledictus. That's Latin, for… You're cursed?"
"Light dawns over Marblehead." She declares grandly.
"What?"
"Future slang. Part of the curse. Means you're thick."
"Cursed to what, then?" Crowley pushes.
"To live the last year of a random life, die, and then do it all over again." She adds, "And when I say random, you ought to know I'm not fucking around with the word."
He nods, putting the pieces together of her formerly-perplexing remarks – eleven or twelve lives ago, she'd said, and that she'd seen him in 1980.
"I can see the gears turning." She says through a smirk.
"You're not on the same timeline as the rest of us." He says. It's not a question. "And I'm a lot friendlier in a couple hundred years."
"If it makes you feel any better, you'll get to be on my side eventually – getting to look into the eyes of someone you know, who doesn't know you." She can't make eye contact, instead examining the grain of the wood in the floor with the intensity of a carpentry enthusiast. "I'm a little relieved, actually. I dreaded this for so long, and now it's here, kind of a load-off."
"And when's that?" He's half curious, half testing the pressure points on her story, looking for cracks, for any evidence of a lie. "The part where I know you, and you don't know me?"
"Are you expecting me to coyly refuse to tell you about the future? Like it matters if you know? Because I'm not going to do that." Her voice carries a sense of gravity, of warning. "I'll tell you whether you like it or not: I meet you in 2014. A busy year for you, and you still found – or is that will find? — time to pick me up out of the dirt."
"I can't think of a reason I'd want to save any ass but my own, darling." He looks down at her hand where it rests against the bedding "You sure I'm who you're looking for?"
"I know how this goes, Crowley. You'll tell me all about it one day, when I won't have been here yet. Times change."
He remembers the warmth of her hands on his face, the way he felt alive, almost human again for a moment when she'd touched him, a quick crack in the stone wall that Hell had tortured into him. For a moment she'd almost slipped past the traps and pitfalls that Lilith had installed in her horrific way. One day the mortar will be poured anew, but for now, there's a crack and it's spreading unchecked. He wants to reach over, to trace the calluses on her palm, but the idea of any contact at all still makes him feel a little sick.
He asks, "Do they? How much, I wonder?"
She looks up at him with a face like an open book: eyes full of questions that she doesn't ask. He can practically hear her heartbeat – an unsteady flutter of indecision. So clear is her feeling that he imagines he can listen in on her thoughts. The smell of warmth and want on her is so new and different to what he's been accustomed, it's intoxicating.
Trust isn't something that comes easy, and for the moment, Crowley's not bothering to decide whether she's being honest. Instead, he's making a promise to himself to simply keep his distance. Some part of him knows he will break it, but that part remains silent for now.
She's welcoming, and interesting, and most importantly, not a demon.
"Listen, ah... this is a little..." Maledictus' brassy confidence seems to flicker. "You should stay here."
"That's-"
"For appearances' sake, Crowley. You ought to sleep here. Anne stays with the Captain most nights, she won't mind. You stay here, he'll think we're sympatico. Might help things a bit." Flimsy excuses. She wants him close, and it bleeds through in every word.
"Maledictus, I don't think..." He tries to deflect, he doesn't want to say the real reason he's pushing back against her offer.
"You think I mean...? Oh, fuck, Crowley, I know what she did to you. You haven't told me yet, but for me, that story's miles in the rear view mirror. This is why we always talk timelines. It's a risky business, ours." All at once, she sucks air through her teeth. "I can't just assume you're the you that's alright with... damn, I feel like a heel, about before."
"Don't." He tries to toss out the single word like it's nothing, he means for it to flutter out the open porthole like a handkerchief on the breeze, but instead, it's more like a lead ball.
"I won't touch you, not without your say so, even if it means I go the whole year not so much as holding your hand. Promise." What she finishes with is so soft as to be barely audible. "Please stay."
Crowley lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
The almost joking pretense of secrecy aboard the Revenge is shattered deep in the night when Crowley wakes up screaming in Mary Read's bed. His panic is amplified by Lilith gagging him, stopping his breath, and – wait. It's not a gag, but rather hands, clapped over his face-
"What in blue fuck are you doing?" Maledictus hisses into his ear.
His pupils are blown and his mind is whirling. The pain is gone, and aside from some scars that don't really belong to him, it's whole, intact, safe. He answers her with a furrowed brow and searching eyes.
"I know you're a little green at this but even you should know better." She scolds. "It's not as if you even need to sleep, you bloody idiot."
"You looked so peaceful, I thought it might feel…" He trails off with a vague gesture.
Maledictus sighs, pulling clothes on and tossing his garments to him. "I see what this is. You're fresh out of tortureland and getting nostalgic. Well don't.
She's barely dressed when the door rattles hard with the force of the knocking against it. The call is rough, throaty, and clearly drunk.
"MARY" Says a man who, as far as Maledictus can tell, never mattered to Mary Read one bit. "Who's in there? You-ntrouble?"
"No." Maledictus says through the door as she does a more detailed search for his name. "I'm fine, go away… Henry."
"Who is it then?" He slurs, all directionless anger.
The door thumps again, harder this time, and the frame cracks. The next time, it breaks, and the door tilts inward until it's hanging on by only one hinge. Through the gap, Crowley can see Henry, and Henry can see him.
"It's… Mate, it's not what you…" He tries to assuage, but his approach to the broken door is stopped by Henry's final blow that sends it toppling to the floor. Maledictus looks at the door with a sort of passive amusement, a strange recognition that Crowley doesn't understand.
"You 'eard the captain." Henry admonishes dizzily. "No bothering the ladies. You're s'posed to leave 'em all for him."
"Ex…cuse me?" Crowley takes a careful step backward, fumbling behind him around the edges of Mary Read's writing desk, hoping for a concealed weapon.
"I know it ain't fair, mate, but he's the Captain, anat's jess how it goes."
"And you're the police then, are you?" Crowley's suddenly a little indignant about the woman he has no claim on.
"I'm the guy who oughtta be in here, if anybody's gonna." Henry pulls his sword.
Maledictus pulls her own and smacks Henry's out of the way. "That's quite enough of that."
"Mary." He entreats. "I was so relieved you were a lady, I thought I… I…"
She smacks his sword of out of the way again with her own. She thinks of films that will be made in two hundred years, full of swordfighting duels with fancy footwork and clever choreography.
This isn't that. She's far from an expert, in fact she wonders if Crowley notices how clumsily she handles a blade she's never so much as lifted, but it doesn't take years of training to incapacitate a man whose few existing brain cells are drowning in liquor. The moment she sees an opening, she drops the sword and moves in close. She jams the heel of her hand into his red, greasy nose and sends him tumbling to the floor bloody. It's not graceful, but it's good enough.
Crowley watches her take a few heavy breaths, and realizes her hands are shaking.
"I thought Mary Read was a stone cold killer." He says quietly, a reference to Maledictus' clear discomfort with the situation.
"Fortunately, she is." Maledictus huffs. "Or something like that. Might have gone worse, otherwise."
"Can you learn things like that? Really learn, like take them from one life to the next?"
"A little. Not enough. And you get rusty fast." She lowers herself uneasily onto the edge of the bed.
By the time the dozing Captain finds his way to Mary's quarters, Maledictus has settled down immeasurably. Captain Rackham seems more or less unconcerned with Henry's state, nor is he so much as annoyed at Crowley's presence there, given Maledictus' assurances that it pleased her – clearly Henry'd made some kind of mistake in his assessment regarding his relationships. From Crowley's point of view, Rackham treats the woman he thinks is Mary Read more like a little sister than a lover.
He files the incident away, and in a few hundred years, he'll see the incident referenced in the more detailed history textbooks and biographies of Mary Read's life, and it will sound considerably more dramatic. He'll wonder if Maledictus had ever seen it.
"Go." Maledictus hisses, the second Rackham's out the room. "Hurry, go on. He's receptive right now, he trusts you. I can feel it."
"What?"
"His soul." She clarifies, practically shoving him past the broken door. "You don't get to be King by laying about drinking rum and singing shanties, you need practice, you need souls."
"He hasn't summoned me, or anybody." Crowley protests. "I don't even know what he wants." He's all nerves until he suddenly processes what she just said. King? Of what? Is she having a go at me?
"Details, details." She dismisses. "Just look at him. Really look. You always know. You always see it. You can read a human like a book, you've done it to me five times just today. Go."
In her eyes, he can see twisted reflections of deep pools of might befitting a demon well beyond him. And yet, it's still him, looking back. She's not joking, is she? King of… well, anything really… The thought is enough to drive him, and what do you know, the sale goes down easier than he could have imagined. Just like Maledictus had said, as soon as he'd really looked, he'd known what to offer, and he'd gotten to dip his fingers into that beautiful reservoir of dark, sweeping power that comes to the demons who close deals.
The experience buoys him, makes him feel electric, and by week's end half the ship has signed on with him for one thing or another. The wisp of guilt that had come with the first sale is gone, washed away in a flood of sparks and victory.
At first, the demon that Maledictus had seemed to know so well had seemed a million miles away from possible, more like the invention of a smitten schoolgirl with a runaway imagination than an immortal's report of something he could really become. But now? He can see the black sunset-shadow of the future stretching out before him. A seed of ambition has been planted somewhere too deep for even Lilith to pull its roots.
The day of the raid, thin clouds turn the sky white, and the wind is from the West – Crowley can almost smell the wet soil and sweet smoke from Jamaica. The Revenge is restocked, thanks to the complete annihilation of two ships in one day, something Crowley had amused himself by helping with – he's fairly sure his little interventions went unnoticed, but he doesn't mind a bit. The men have gorged themselves on food and drink, and the congenial atmosphere reminds Crowley of his first night back on Earth with Thomas Bower's friends.
Not even he is prepared when the Jonathan Barnet's infamous pirate-hunting ship is upon them. By the time the first round of canon-fire pierces the lower decks, the men are uselessly intoxicated.
Crowley follows Anne and Maledictus to the upper decks just in time to see the crisp-suited soldiers boarding the Revenge. He can already see that there's too many of them to take on in a fair fight, but that doesn't seem to stop Anne, who he stops to admire – she doesn't have the comfort of knowing she'll be back if she falls, but she battles with no less fury for it. He peers into her soul and finds it almost a pity that, should she die today, she'll wind up in Hell.
Gunshots and snapping wood fill the air with cracks and pops – one of which turns out to be Maledictus, angry that she and Anne are alone in their defense of the ship, shooting her gun down into the hold where the men are hiding, sleeping, or both.
There's too many skilled men, too little time. Maybe a thousand souls from now, he'd have the power to fight back on his own, but as of now? He'll have to get his hands dirty if he wants to do anything at all.
Thomas. He says, reaching inside to where the original owner of this body lies dormant. Thomas Bower, can you hear me?
No response, but he can feel something shifting, like a man waking slowly from a long sleep.
You're about to get your body back.
He can sense confusion.
You're on a ship, not far from shore. You're sober. You're being boarded. If you want to live, you're going to have to swim.
Alarm shocks across the invisible cord that connects Crowley to his host.
You can swim, can't you? What kind of pirate can't swim? Crowley's losing his patience and he can hear the footsteps of a soldier coming closer to his hiding place. Shouldn't that have been in your deal?
The alarm is now a steady anxiety.
Fine. I'm throwing in a perk, but if you ever tell anybody about it I'll make you wish you were never born. You also get to be a fantastic swimmer. Now, this is where we part ways.
Just as the soldier rounds the corner, Crowley wraps his fist around a glass bottle and swings it with all of Thomas Bower's considerable might directly into the man's forehead. He's not out cold, but he's solidly stunned, giving Crowley more than enough time to smoke out from Bower's body into the soldier's.
Bower looks around, sucking air fast like a scared rabbit.
"Swim."
He nods, and in mere moments, he's overboard, unbeknownst to anyone involved in the fracas.
Crowley stretches his arms and fingers – this body isn't quite as muscled as Bower's was, but it's loose and young, and more importantly, it fits in with the soldiers currently dragging handcuffed pirates, including a struggling Anne and Maledictus, aboard.
He does his best to watch with passive contempt when the pirates are sentenced on the spot, and he is able to tamp down the urge to object when a few of the men he's spent the last few weeks with are unceremoniously shot and thrown overboard. Things don't feel the same way they did when he was human, as if sensation and emotion are locked away in a heavy box. He's finding that he can look inside the box when it suits him, and put it away when it doesn't. It's nothing like the maddening tempests of humanity, and that's something to be grateful for.
Something about Maledictus, though, seems to wedge open the lid of the feelings-box more than he likes when he sees her bleeding, broken, and bound at the feet of a particularly smug officer. She's conscious, however, and it only takes one look for her to know it's him. She closes her eyes for a moment, as if concentrating, and when she opens them again, they are full of tears.
She doesn't speak, but he can read her lips as the officer begins to drag her away. There's no declaration of love, no big goodbye. What she mouths is so casual that one would think they were parting after a night at the pub. There's even a little ghost of a smile on her face when it forms the shape of the words.
Next time.
When the guards drag her down to the brig, it's tempting to follow, but he's after a bigger fish.
He follows the captain, instead.
In the future, he'll look back and see what he's missing now. He'll see that it was too easy, that he should have been more suspicious of a "renowned pirate hunter." There are puzzle pieces, and he simply isn't putting them together.
But for now, anger is slipping from the cracks of the box and he feels powerful and free of doubts. He waits tirelessly outside Captain Barnet's quarters until the man finds a reason to leave, at which point Crowley slips inside, ready to lie in wait, eagerly awaiting a body with a little more authority.
In the future, he'll cringe when he remembers the first time he stepped on a devil's trap.
He feels it the moment he steps into it – sudden prickling heat and then a chill that comes just as fast. He frowns, there's nothing on the floor; it's just blank wood. Then, and only then, he looks up. Sure enough, there it is: the star in the circle, symbols meticulously carved into the ceiling.
Shit.
"You've been such a good little thing." Lilith coos. "And I promised you a present."
"How long's it been?" Crowley sags in his restraints. Exhausted, he forgets himself for a moment, and tries to lean back on the wooden X-frame that holds him. It has, of course, been treated with holy water. "On Earth?"
"Oh, darling. If I didn't know any better, I'd be jealous."
"That would require you having feelings." Crowley grits his teeth.
Lilith barks a throaty laugh. "You've got a mouth on you today. Good thing I'm in the mood for a little resistance, or maybe I'd take this present right back where he came from."
"When you say present..."
"I sent someone to pick him out just for you, all the way from the future. 1980's, I believe. He's a publisher or something. They found him in New York but he's got an accent, I don't think he's from around there. A real fish out of water, just like you, baby."
Crowley swallows. "Why?"
She takes two steps deep into his personal space and presses her body against him. His borrowed flesh reacts unbidden, much to his irritation, and she chuckles against his neck when she feels him harden.
"I'm going to miss this body, useless as it is. I suppose this old one was more a present to myself. You'll have to let me break it one more time before you move on, of course. For old times' sake." She whispers, looking at his memories of how Maledictus had touched him, that one time, and trailing two fingers down his chest just the same way. "I know you think I hate you, sweet, but one day you'll look back on this and know the truth."
Her fingers draw circles on his inner thigh.
"Truth?" He rasps.
"That every time I see your true face, I am proud. That your soul was the hardest nut I ever cracked, and for that..." She wraps long, manicured fingers around his cock. "I love you."
She digs her nails into smooth skin until beads of blood form and spread.
"How long's this going to take?" He says, hiding his pain like a sick cat. "Before I get the… present?"
"Don't rush me, kiddo. Be a good playtoy, and maybe I'll think about checking into if anyone's seen any cursed immortals around."
Crowley closes his eyes.
He can wait.