We slipped through a world of white and black. The fog billowed around us, eddying upon the deck to leave our ankles shrouded and senses confused, while the water thrashed at the hull beneath our feet.

  It was one of the first things a sailor learns when they leave the coast behind and pass into the jagged reefs and headlands of the Wailing Peninsula; the seas are not blue or green. They are black. Deep as the night sky and just as endless.

  I could see nothing, hear nothing, but I could feel the ship as she slipped through choppy waters like a knife through a grape – smooth and even so long as you keep the pressure just right. And I kept the pressure just right. I’d sailed these seas for nearly two decades, one of them with a crew under my command and a wheel gripped in my fists, and I wasn’t going to ruin any chances of escape now by grounding us on an errant rock.

  The Misted Straights were deadly year-round, especially so in mid-winter, but I was a deadly man too, and I reassured our vessel as we wove between rocks. Easy does it, love. Trust in your Captain, my magic whispered to the ship as we travelled. The manacles kept my power firmly contained, hence why the High-Lords in the capital had sanctioned my use for this mission, but nothing could interrupt the connection between a pirate and his ship. They might not know it yet, but she was mine, now.

  It had taken some pleading, but I’d eventually convinced Julius to lend me a young boy I’d seen ladling slop for the other sailors. He’d been mistreated, as many young boys were on vessels like this, and hadn’t needed much convincing to take my offer. He scurried up the crow’s nest like a rat in a bilge, and now sat there as my eyes.

  The lad – Micah, he’d told me – was a smart one, despite his diminutive frame. Or perhaps because of it. He’d leapt at my offer once he’d heard the terms, and now some of my own magic flowed through his veins, too. His enhanced eyes spotted dangers long before they loomed through the mists, and he relayed all he saw through our telepathic bond.

  I shouted orders to the rest of the crew, horse voice cutting through the wind with practised ease, though I hadn’t needed to give orders aloud for many a year.

  Julius headed inside to rest with the soldiers and the vampire hunter, his nerves strained by seeing death glide past our sides silently every few minutes. It was in some ways a show of trust that they stayed in the aftcastle though; far away from the skiffs and the worst place to be in a shipwreck, and no mistake.

  It was a testament to my name that even now, years since I’d helmed a vessel and lead a crew, they still trusted in my reputation. Names are funny things to pirates. We don’t use them lightly, and each of us takes a new one once we take a vessel as our own. I’d had many in my time, but Radagan was my first - my true name - and the weasels in the capital delighted in using it. A curse to spit in my face – ‘we caught you, and you are now nothing more than the boy who once left that name behind’, they seemed to say.

  We found the shipwreck no more than a few hours later. The Wailing Peninsula is riddled with coves and caves, islands and inlets. It’s a dangerous place to sail, and many a ship has lost itself in these waters. To see a galleon of such size run aground off the edge of one such island was a surprise though.

  The crew should have been able to make it to shore, but I saw the splintered remains of tenders and skiffs around the ship itself and knew they hadn’t. Sharks and worse lurked in these waters, and I again thought back to the deep-crawler marks all over the young boy’s pale body.

  Lucien confirmed that the vampire lay within through some arcane means that I had no knowledge of. Julius, champion of perseverance that he was, wanted to leave the ship and head home, confirming the death of the vampire at sea in the capital and earning their laurels with ease.

  Lucien disagreed of course. “The creature could live in that wreck for another century,” he pointed out.

  “Why not leave it to its grisly fate then?” Julius asked in a whine. “It can’t leave, surrounded by the ocean as it is, and a century in a dank, rotting hold sounds like a rather fitting punishment. We could even torch it from here! Kill the thing from a safe distance.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Need I remind you that we are on a mission from the High Omnissary herself? That creature is responsible for a string of brutal murder in the capital, and I will not allow it to escape justice. We will drag it back in chains, and present it before Her Majesty ourselves.”

  “Of course! Of course. I only meant to suggest…that is to say…” Julius trailed off, withering under the glare that Lucien levelled at him.

  “Radagan,” Lucien half-shouted as he turned to me, and I scowled at the name once more. “You will accompany me and a squad to the wreck. We may need your expertise while aboard.”

  I nodded stiffly, though privately I suspected it had more to do with him not wanting to leave me with only Lord Noxel to keep me in line and a diminished squad of soldiers to protect the ship. I grinned at the thought. He was right, after all.

  Shrugging, I agreed. “I’ll need my weapons if I’m to follow you into that dark hold though, and these manacles off my wrists besides,” I reminded the tall man. He sniffed, seeming inclined to deny me, but then he looked about at the fog-wreathed surf and needle-like rocks all around and reconsidered. It wouldn’t do for me to die out here, after all. How would they get home?

  Decision made, we soon found ourselves slipping into the looming mouth of the shipwreck on a small skiff oared by a trio of soldiers in the matching uniforms of the Cerevisian Navy. The large galleon was pitched to one side, a great rent ripped from its hull by the rocks it had ground into in its headlong rush to safety.

  “Why are you here?” Lucien asked me, and I noted with satisfaction his slightly more respectful tone. It didn’t do to antagonise a pirate lord on the open ocean, after all, even a semi-retired one like myself. Perhaps it also had something to do with the heavy cutlass at my hip and the blunderbuss strapped to the small of my back, beneath my long coat.

  “You ordered me to come,” I grunted in reply.

  “No, not that. Why are you out here?” he asked, gesturing around at the ocean. “In general?”

  I presumed he meant to ask why I wasn’t still sitting in a cell in the capital, and held up my arms to show him the marks the chains had left. He just stared at me though, and I had the unnerving feeling that he was looking through my soul for a moment.

  “I find it hard to imagine you bear any sense of responsibility to Cerevis, pirate. And I doubt even more so that you feel the fires of vengeance burn within you for the vampire that killed a dozen nobles in the capital. Why agree to come out here and risk your life chasing a Dark One? It is a dangerous thing, after all.”

  He seemed to preen at his own words, as if receiving a complement from an admirer. I supposed it was true in a way.

  I sighed. “I’m to be executed before the year's end. I’d rather die out here on the sea where I lived, than rot in a cell.” The answer seemed to satisfy the man, but I felt his gaze on me even as I turned away.

  We soon entered the bowels of the ship though, and all thoughts of me were ripped from his mind. One of the Cerevis soldiers was the first to go. He let out a wet gurgle as his arm was wrenched out of its socket, and then he was gone, down into the depths beneath the ship, clutched in the jaws of a yellowfin shark.

  That woke them up all up. Shouts and exclamations followed, and a second navyman nearly fell from the boat as he flailed in panic. I grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pulled him down to his arse once more whilst Lucien pulled his magical pistol and shot into the water three times. I scoffed, assuming he was caught up in the same panic as his men, but was surprised to see a bright gold fin pierce the water a moment later, the 15 foot shark floating on the surface where it lay dying, its heart burst from an impressively well-placed shot by the hunter.

  My eyes widened, and I reached within myself for my power even as I grabbed Lucien. “Give me control of the skiff!” I screamed directly into his face.

  He flinched, and then his eyes narrowed. “No chance, pira-” but I cut him off with a hard slap to the face. I saw rage cloud his vision and a moment later I felt a small dagger pressing into my side.

  I’d not seen the weapon on him, and a small part of me again reassessed the threat this man could pose were he to decide I’d served my purpose. The rest of me was busy flinging my arm to point at the swollen corpse of the yellowfin at our side.

  “Gas bladders! It’s gonna blow!” I shouted, and he hesitated once more. “You’ve got 15 seconds, Lucien. Give me control, or we’re all dead.”

  We lost another second before he nodded, and then two more as I screamed at him to say the words. He did, haltingly, but the moment he declared it to the world - ‘the skiff is yours’ – I felt the power in my chest unlock as it finally had somewhere to go.

  Oars, discarded and floating in the water nearby, suddenly leapt to their docks and started slashing through the water with smooth efficiency. The wooden vessel creaked and groaned as it started to drive through the water like a pack of horses chomping at the bit. White riders spilled to either side of the bow, and I looked back at the bloated corpse of the shark a dozen feet behind us.

  I winced as I saw shapes moving in the water beneath and steadied my breathing, preparing myself for a painful experience.

  We gained another dozen feet, nearly at the rocks that the ship’s hull had wrapped itself around in the wreck, and then the shark exploded.