Skedaddle

[Soran Nightblade]

Adonis nodded grimly as she left to go below deck. The rain was blowing hard enough to sting his eyes, but the ship was riding the surf better now that the waves broke against the bow and the sails were down. That didn't improve the situation that he was surrounded by humans that were dying by his own hand. He held onto the wheel and adjusted it as necessary, guiding the ship into the winds as they shifted. It was difficult to think amidst all the chaos, which was probably for the best.

Telanis was focusing on placing warm towels from the stove over the foreheads of the suffering men surrounding him. The ward was full of the crewman that had been brought down, and more were out in the hallway. The unicorn had tied a wet towel around his face to try to avoid the scent of all the blood, but it made no difference. It wasn't the smell of blood he was weak against. It was its very presence. His hands and breath shook as he tended to the hurt men densely packed into the small infirmary, grateful there wasn't enough room for him to collapse or lose his balance amidst all the medical tables. He wondered what Laya was doing. The thought of her up on deck, reeling from black illness, was too much to handle.

[Emora Deen]

Laya went to the room she had shared with Telanis and Adonis. She closed the door behind her and grabbed up her bag, stripping off the clothes. She peeled them off and dropped them on the floor, then pulled her dry pants and green blouse over damp skin. Her hair was stringy and wet, and she pushed it out of her face when she entered the hall.

Laya went to the medical ward.

“Telanis,” she said when she entered the room, looking around. “Everyone is sick but us… Adonis thinks he accidently did it. I don’t understand though. I am the reason for his anger, why am I not affected?”

[Soran Nightblade]

Telanis turned to her, and before he could answer he just pulled her to him in a relieved embrace. Having her close to him brought him back to some level of reason. "I don't understand. I don't see why he's doing any of this," he said shakily. He'd reached the same conclusion; that Adonis must have done this. The disappointment was too heavy to endure. He breathe the scent of her hair for a moment before loosening his embrace. "There's no reason...he has no reason to do this," he murmured. He didn't even want to know why Laya was spared. Was something worse in store for her than even this?

A heavy groan came from one of the men. "I need to go talk to him. I need to make him stop," he said with sudden determination.

[Emora Deen]

Laya hugged him tightly, feeling for just a second that everything in the world was right.

Laya looked at him. “Go, I’ll watch them…. But be careful on deck Telanis… Its dangerous up there. But he will not listen to me. You are the only one who he will understand, who he will even considering hearing…”

She squeezed his hand and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Maybe you can help him fix what he has done?”

[Soran Nightblade]

Telanis brushed a gentle thumb along her cheek. It didn't feel right to leave her with all the agony in this room, even though he knew she didn't feel it in quite the same way he did. "I will be back soon," he swore. Mustering stability into his unresponsive legs, he walked mechanically to the door and out into the hall, holding on to the side of the passage to keep his balance. As he approached the deck, the heavy presence of blood sank back into his senses. He climbed the stairs to the deck and into the blasting rain and wind. Adonis was steering from the stern, so he forced himself to let go of the railing and make his way across the lurching deck.

The black unicorn made out his brother's silvery form amidst all the rain and tensed. No...the girl had promised to keep him off deck. "Telanis! Get back inside!" he swore.

Telanis couldn't hear him and wouldn't have stopped if he had. Still, he'd only gone a few steps before the tossing of the ship and the slippery wood under his feet sent the unicorn tumbling to the deck.

"Telanis!" Adonis growled. He threw the jam Laya had created back into the wheel and hoped that would hold them for a minute. He crossed the deck as swiftly as he could and knelt at his brother's side. It wasn't till he was there that he realized how much Telanis was shaking. "You need to get back inside. There are too many ill," he tried to pull his brother into a sitting position.

Telanis grabbed his wrist as if to push it away, but instead he gripped it tightly. "How could you... How could you do this!" Telanis's murmur rose to a snarl as his eyes flashed to his. "What have you done to yourself?" his voice sank off pitch, bristling with tears.


****

Downstairs, the door opened to the infirmary and healthy footsteps entered behind Laya. "Having trouble?" asked the man she'd met in the storeroom. His eyes didn't look quite right, almost like he'd been using some kind of drugs.

[Emora Deen]

Laya turned around, narrowing her eyes on the person who’d come in. That voice… She’d heard that voice somewhere before. Laya looked around the room at all the sick, and then to the man who didn’t look as sick as the others, but he didn’t look normal either.

She realized then where she had heard the voice. “You’re not ill?” she asked slowly, edging around the room.

She didn’t understand what was going on with him, but she had a strange… No a terrible feeling, that the fact he was immune too was not a good sign.

[Soran Nightblade]

The man leaned against one of the tables and sized her up. "Not ill," he said with a crafty smile. "And neither are you. How convenient."

[Emora Deen]

Laya edged close to the side of the room where the door was, a door that he was close too. She swallowed, feeling suddenly terrified. She wasn’t ill. He wasn’t ill… Telanis and Adonis weren’t ill. What was the connection here, there had to be a connection. What was it?

“What do you want?” she asked him, her voice not nearly as brave as she hoped it would be.

[Soran Nightblade]

"Pretty simple, really," the man said, sauntering into the room toward her. "I want to be in control. The big hero." He grinned at her. "Seems the ship needs one right now." His words seemed genuine one moment and subversive the next. "So, my dear," he smiled as if something were amusing, then looked abruptly serious. "Do you need help tending to these men?" His eyes seemed dilated and unfocused.

[Emora Deen]

Laya watched him carefully. Every move, every blink, analyzing. Searching. “There is nothing I can do for these men. They’ve been cursed. There is no one to tend to the ship…. Maybe you should help with that?”

Laya moved to step around him.

[Soran Nightblade]

The man stepped sideways and caught her wrist, stopping her. "Oh, but I'd love to take advantage of all this privacy first. If you're good, I can take you away with me. We have no need of this ship. The crew won't last long, anyway.

[Emora Deen]

"If I'm good?" What the hell did he mean by that? Laya met his eyes, tugging on her wrist. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and fingers and tried to pry it off. Panic consumed her in an instant. Her face drained of color. “Let me go,” she said quickly, her voice faint.

She didn’t know what he meant about having no need for a ship. They were in the middle of the ocean… She looked around the room at all the sick, the deathly ill. Telanis and Adonis were up on deck in the storm… The odds weren't looking terribly good for her.

[Soran Nightblade]

"Are you saying you'd rather be somewhere else?" the man snarled, pulling her in toward him. His eyes flashed darkly. "After that moment we shared downstairs, don't you want to know what more I'm capable of? If we're all going to die anyway, we may as well enjoy ourselves," he smirked. He shoved her backward across one of the occupied cots, stretching her back across the unconscious, sick crewman lying there. He pressed forward and leaned over her, his body flush with hers. A knife flashed beside her neck. "Besides, it's when we're surrounded by death that we feel most alive, don't you think?" he crooned next to her ear.

* * * **

"What have you done to yourself?" his brother's angry voice shot through the windy air.

Adonis looked down at his brother, avoiding the temptation to shout at him. "Whatever I did, I can reverse it. As soon as the storm settles," he said firmly, reaching to help Telanis up. His brother wouldn't take his hand.

"Every man on this ship is dying, Adonis! Everyone but you, me, and Laya."

The black unicorn frowned, knowing that if that were true, he really was the only one who could have done it. "Are you certain? Everyone is ill?" he asked, to numbed in his own thoughts to think about how dumb that question was.

But Telanis froze in response. He closed his eyes as if searching his memory very hard. His mind was in overdrive, hypersensitive to the presence of suffering humans. But one soul, one very black soul that he knew was on board, was not blasting into his mental radar in agony. Everyone else was magnified, like he could sense each one of them on the ship. But that one soul...he didn't sense it anywhere.

"Telanis! Keep it together," Adonis's cold voice snapped him out of his daze. He looked at his brother palely. "What is it?" the black unicorn asked, confusion growing in him at his brother's sudden silence.

Telanis looked at Adonis uneasily, as if weighing whether he was the enemy or an ally. Was he offering his brother another victim by saying this? A terrible feeling settled in his gut. "There's one more on board...not sick. He was with Laya in the cargo hold."

Adonis looked puzzled. "How do you know he's not sick?"

Telanis shook his head, remembering the stagnant foulness of the man's presence and his effect on Laya. "His soul..."

Adonis's eyes shot wide as he gathered the weight of his brother's words. "You said he was with Laya earlier..." he said darkly.

"He upset her," Telanis said.

The two brothers stared at each other for several seconds, then they both shot to their feet at once. Telanis immediately lost his balance again. Adonis grabbed his brother's shoulder and pushed him back to the deck. "Stay put. And hold on to something. No running around," he ordered. Before Telanis could complain, the black unicorn burst into a sprint for the stairs and down the hall below deck, knocking into walls as the ship heaved, seeking out the sense of Laya's mind amidst the chaos on board.

[Emora Deen]

Laya screamed when he pushed her over. She tried to get up off the man he’d pushed her over on, but she couldn’t move. She pushed her hands against his shoulders, unable to wiggle them between his chest and hers. He was on her, and something cold and sharp was pressed against her throat. Her body went rigid with fear to the point she couldn’t think to move.

She trembled, her eyes brimming with tears. She took several gasping panicked breaths as she listened to his words, feeling his breath on her skin. “Please,” she started, pleading with him. “No, please. Please!”

Her mind was screaming. She felt wave after wave of nausea at the realization that her nightmare was about to be replayed. She was never safe. No one ever saved her. She was alone and no one was there to hear her scream. No one could hear her over the storm…

[Soran Nightblade]

Laya's pleading only seemed to excite the man as he curved his body over hers and held one of her wrists down against the table. The knife pressed carelessly against her neck, drawing a sliver of blood. "Don't be glum, beauty, we should be making the most of this opportunity," he growled just above her face.

Adonis heard the scream like it was muffled under a mattress amidst all the weather and noise from outside. If he opened his mind, he'd be able to sense her. Sense all of it.

He thought about the girl who'd woven herself into his brother's life, about the things she'd done and said to him. “You have to be the second vilest person I have ever met in my life. You speak of weak and corrupt humans, yet you let yourself be worst than them. If you truly want to save your brother from darkness then don’t fall into it yourself.”

Only a naive fool would tell him that. You had to become part of the darkness to stand a chance against it. Someone had to make that sacrifice, to keep his brother safe. The naive and the good would always be preyed upon.

He lowered his shields, and let his black magic step back and show him what his screaming instincts were trying to get through to him. The pain and fear of the crew burst in on his senses, almost sending him to his knees. Then amidst it all, he felt a pinpoint of terror bursting out of the psychic noise. He let the instinct take over and took off in a furious sprint for the source of that fear, running down the hall as fast as he could manage without breaking anything. He swung around the doorframe as he burst into the infirmary.

He saw them immediately and stopped dead. Images leapt up in his mind, of things very similar to this that he'd witnessed secondhand through his soulmate's eyes and mind. An act he had, in a way, felt himself commit. The soul bond had burned every moment into his head. Anger rolled through him in a hot wave. "Unhand the woman," he said too quietly, eyes swimming with hate.