Warning for this chapter: some potentially disturbing horror elements.


Dying shrieks filled the air as one by one, they stepped back to watch the thing breathe its last.

"So," said Jack, his chest heaving and his bite-wound aching sharply. "That was a demon."

Skin tinted slightly grayish, Aiden mopped his brow with a handkerchief and nodded. Claire canted her head to the side as she watched the demon's final throes.

"Bigger than we thought," she remarked.

"At least it's raining," said Jack as he followed her out of the tiny hovel in which Nuts and his demon had made their nest. "Can get this filth off easy enough." He plucked distastefully at his shirt, which was sprayed with dark green blood. Finding his sword likewise sullied, he wiped it as best he could and imagined what a swoon Will would go into at seeing his blade like this. The wet, cool air outside was a welcome relief after the scent of old blood and unwashed man, not to mention the stink the demon had let off when they pierced its innards.

He realized that Claire had stopped to stare up at the sky, blinking against the raindrops lashing into her eyes.

Aiden put a hand on her elbow. "Claire?"

"It's nothing," she said quietly, still peering at the gloom. "For a moment I thought I felt..." She shook her head, braid whipping damply over her shoulder. "But it's just the storm."


Elizabeth was a light sleeper in the best of cases, and tonight she was kept half-awake listening for the sounds of Billy in discomfort. Yet for some reason she slept through the sound of the bedroom door opening, not waking until James was standing over the cradle with the boy in his arms.

She woke when her son did, hearing him make small, fretful noises at being disturbed. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she sat up in bed and started to ask James what he was doing, but the words froze in her mouth when she caught sight of him.

He was humming something in a low voice, cradling Billy against his chest, rocking him slightly. Nothing appeared to be amiss in his outward appearance, but there was – something off, something about his body's movements that struck her as utterly wrong. As she watched, his shoulders twitched violently and he nearly dropped the baby. A gasp tore from Elizabeth's throat.

He looked up at the sound.

And it was not James looking out through his eyes.

"Elizabeth," he said in a rough, hoarse voice – it was his own, but she'd never heard him sound like that in all the years she'd known him, and he pronounced her name very deliberately as if testing it out. "What a beautiful child you have." He turned his attention back to Billy, whose noises were beginning to grow louder and more alarmed.

Blindly, not daring to take her eyes off the sight in front of her, she reached out to her husband. He was not so easy to rouse, but a pinch to the inside of his arm did the trick. He jerked awake, grumbling, and she pressed her fingers over his mouth.

"Will," she breathed. He went still, then slowly sat up in bed. The heat of him beside her was a comfort, if a small one.

She could hear him swallow hard. "James," he said, as carefully as he could, "is there something the matter?"

James brushed his fingertips over Billy's face. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the baby's cries. "This should have been my child, am I correct?"

Every nerve in her body was screaming danger, but she didn't dare move, not when he could so easily –

He lifted the squalling baby, holding his body with one hand and his head with the other. He lifted him like a blood offering at a heathen temple.

Will was trembling with the force of keeping himself still, for she knew he wanted to rush forward as badly as she did.

Billy wailed louder at the loss of support, flailing his arms.

"Men and their weaknesses," said the voice that was and was not James's. Elizabeth rose to her knees as she watched his fingers tighten at the base of her son's skull. He faltered as she and Will both bolted up, his head whipping to the side and his arms falling. Somewhere in the back of her mind she blessed her poor blacksmith's home with its tiny rooms, because she was near enough to catch Billy as he dropped.

James cried out in some kind of pain even before Will barreled past her to knock him to the floor.


It released him so that it could watch. He lay passive beneath the other man, convulsive with the shock of its withdrawal. The younger one's searing anger began to cool as he picked himself up and stared down.

He was afraid. They all were. It was pleased. Feeling gracious, it gave them a moment to themselves.


Never in his life had Will so wanted to lash out at a man, and never before had he felt a greater right.

But even as he drew his arm back, even as Elizabeth burst out "Don't!", he halted.

James's entire body was shaking, his eyes rolling back in his head. Will had once seen a sick calf go into a fatal seizure and it had looked much the same.

Clutching Billy to her breast, Elizabeth tossed him a pillow. Her eyes were wide with horror. Will fought down his own panic and propped the pillow under James's head to stop it knocking against the wood floor.

As the baby's cries subsided into whimpers, so did James's spasms. He subsided, staring up at the ceiling, and didn't respond to Will passing a hand over his eyes. His hand, when Will grasped it, was cool to the touch.

"James?" He felt for a pulse and was relieved to find it steady, if alarmingly slow. "Can you hear me?"

Fingers twitched. James's eyes tried to focus on his face, without success. "Jack?" he whispered, his voice scratchy but a thousand times removed from its unearthly cadence of before.

He exchanged an uneasy look with Elizabeth. "No, it's Will," Squeezing his hand, Will watched in dismay as James closed his eyes.

"Jack," he said again before he fell silent. After a moment, Will shook his shoulder gently, then with greater urgency. "James!" He got no response.

"Will -"

"He's breathing," said Will over his shoulder, "but I can't wake him." He rose from his crouch, laying James's hand at his side. "We've got to fetch Dr. Marbury."

Elizabeth handed the baby over mechanically, her eyes locked on James. He recognized the little wrinkle she got between her brows when she was turning something over and over in her mind. "I...I don't think so."

Holding his hand protectively over Billy's head, Will shot her an incredulous look. "What do you mean? There's clearly something wrong with him – if he's ill –"

"I don't believe he is ill," she said slowly. "Or gone mad. Will – when I looked into his eyes just then, I saw..." She trailed off with a shudder.

"What? What did you see, darling?" He wrapped his free arm around her waist, feeling the tenseness in her muscles.

"Not James," she replied. "I agree that there is something very wrong, but I don't think it's something the doctor could help."

Will remembered the shadow haunting James's face when he'd had his hand around Billy's neck. He looked down at the commodore now in his unnatural slumber, and knew that she was right. What he did not know – nor did Elizabeth, as he could see from the way she bit her lip – was what to do.

"All right," he said in a heavy voice. "I can accept that there is something – something blasphemous happening here. It wouldn't be the first time, after all."

"No,"Elizabeth agreed with a snort, "it would not."

"But as the moonlight's shining directly on him and he is still made of flesh, I'm at a loss."

She took the baby, blissfully asleep once more, and settled him in his crib. "The first thing I propose we do is find the few people he trusts."

Will raised his eyebrows. "That would be the two of us, your father, his lieutenants...and Jack," he finished soberly, hearing James ask for him all over again.

"Right." She was dressing quickly, in a faded pink gown simple enough that she didn't need help. "I'm off to find whomever I can."

At this, Will frowned. "On your own? Surely it would be best if I went."

Fastening a cloak around her shoulders, Elizabeth glanced up at him, her eyes grave. "If he wakes up, who would have the better shot at restraining him?" Her steady hands faltered for a moment and she shook her head. "I cannot believe I just said that."

"It wasn't a pleasant thing to say, but it was necessary," said Will. "We should get him off the floor."

He hooked his arms beneath James's shoulders, Elizabeth took his feet, and they managed to lift him onto the bed. The move didn't disturb his slumber. Elizabeth tucked the covers around him with a tenderness she would never dare show in public, wiping the flecks of saliva from the corners of his mouth. Will was ashamed to admit it, but for a moment he felt an old wound reopen.

Then she bent over the cradle to kiss their son, and he worried no longer. When she straightened, he took her face in both hands and kissed her more deeply than he'd meant to, the sort of kiss they had neither time nor privacy for. She curved against him and met him with equal passion.

Their mouths broke apart and Elizabeth swatted him on the arm. "Let me go, Will. I won't be long."

For a moment he could not make himself release her; his instinct when danger was near was still to keep her in his sight at all costs. But she was right, and besides which, this was one of the battles he knew he couldn't win. Marriage to Elizabeth had brought him more than his fair share of them.

She pecked him on the cheek, smiled to reassure him, and turned away.

"It's still raining," he called through the door, "don't forget your hood."

Elizabeth made a faint sound of assent and then she was gone.

Checking on Billy one last time, Will dragged a chair in from the hallway and settled himself beside the bed. He drew Elizabeth's silk dressing gown onto his lap and stroked the rich fabric.

"I know I thanked you once," he said to James's still form, glancing around the room with an irrational fear that someone would hear him speaking to a man who could not hear his words. "But I – I would like to do so again, when you wake up. So don't..." His throat closed and his completed thought fled his mind. Jack would know what to say, but Will wasn't Jack, and he certainly couldn't be what Jack had become to James.

But he could keep James safe until Jack arrived – it was the most, and the least, he could do.


She'd gone right past worry, right past impatience, all the way to surging fury. It was bad enough that Jack was forever lingering with the commodore on land. She was going to make him pay for this time, in Tortuga of all places. He knew very well how she felt about Tortuga.

Restless in her displeasure, she suddenly felt something...tug. It was not the cry of the wind through her sails, although it felt similar. If she had been human, it might have been a prickling on the back of her neck, goose pimples rising on her arms, something seen out of the corner of one eye and then gone when she whirled about to look.

Although Jack heard her call, because he always did, he was distracted. She loved him, but she could curse him too, and she railed at him with all the curses of wind and wave and wood and sun – a language richer than any man's vocabulary.

There were older words, too, ancient words she would never dare speak, but in her sudden fear she came closer to them than she liked.


James woke in the Turners' bedchamber with blood on his hands and the sound of weeping in his ears.

Kneeling on the floor, he stared at the bright stains. It was still wet, dripping onto his pristine white shirt.

What had happened? Had he blacked out like he'd done with Elizabeth this afternoon? Was someone hurt?

He went to the door, hearing the sounds of grief grow louder at its threshold. When he tried to open it, fingers slick against the brass handle, he found it locked.

"Elizabeth?" he called. "Elizabeth, what's happened?"

The voice cut off in the middle of a sob. It had sounded like her, but he couldn't be sure because he'd never heard her crying before.

"Will?" He raised his voice in his second try, knocking sharply. A high-pitched scream from the other side made him leap back. Then the weeping sound started up again, only this time it was a man. His hollow, anguished cries faded as James backed away to the opposite wall.

He ran his fingertips over the flower-sprigged wallpaper, leaving bloody prints. There should be a window here – he was almost certain there would be, but again, he had never seen it firsthand.

Decided to try the door again, he strode forward and nearly stumbled over the cradle. It swayed as if there was something inside, but surely Billy would have been awakened by the noise.

He pulled frothy white lace aside, reached in – and immediately drew his arm back, had to lean over and fight back heaves.

"It's not true, it's not true, I'm not well, I am seeing things," he whispered, raking his dirty hands through his hair. When he had gotten his stomach back under control, he crept forward and made himself look.

This time, he could not keep his supper down.

"Is there anyone here?" he shouted after spitting out the last of the bile. Something heavy thumped outside the door and he ran to it, pounded on it with both fists until his knuckles split and some of the blood flowing to the floor was his own. "Answer me, damn you! Please!" He pressed his face to the immovable wood, repeating it, the word a piercing pain in his chest: "Please."

He had to go back. There was no one else to do this. Locking his knees to keep them from shaking, he leaned over the cradle once more. He held a hand over his nose and mouth, wondering how he had missed the stench before, breathing in the scent of iron instead, and he pulled the knife out.

When he recognized the weapon beneath the rusty stains, his hand jerked and he sliced his fingers to the bone.

"Oh God," he breathed, shutting his eyes before they could fall upon the engraving on the pearl-inlaid hilt. J.R.N. on one side – his own initials – and on the other, so minute one might mistake them for a chip, C.J.S. Also a tiny, perfect evergreen tree, as it had been a Christmas gift.

The blade fell from his hand, thunking dully on the floorboards.


Elizabeth remembered numbers, not names. She knew Theodore Groves lived at 1705, but had to canvas Stonemason Road and Rosewood Lane before the sign for Holly Court jogged her memory.

She rapped on the door for a good ten minutes, muttering about bachelors who couldn't be bothered to hire a maid, and threw a handful of stones at his window before finally deciding he wasn't at home. Collapsing on his stoop, she propped her chin on her knees and thought. In no way was she prepared to admit defeat. James was far too important to her for that. She simply had to regroup and think of where he could be.

He had no family in Port Royal, nor was he ill, because she had politely asked after the good doctor's other patients while he was looking Billy over. As far as she knew, he didn't have a sweetheart –

An offhand comment Jack had once made caused her to brighten before her head drooped again. Well, it wasn't going to be enjoyable, but her choices were few.

A quarter of an hour later, Andrew Gillette opened his front door, badly hiding a scowl when he saw who had knocked. "Miss Sw – Mrs. Turner, whatever could you be doing out at this hour?"

Elizabeth squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. "Lieutenant Gillette, you do not like me and I do not like you. However, our differences of opinion are of no consequence at the moment. James is at my house, and there is something wrong with him."

"What? Is he sick?" Groves poked his head over Gillette's shoulder, gray eyes worried. Gillette's pale skin flushed deeply, but Elizabeth could not have cared less about the impropriety.

"He's..." She paused. "You'd better come see for yourselves."


It watched him in his agony, taking note of the girl's flight but disregarding it.

It had him now. And She would be here soon.