The Selkie Ch. 03

Eventually, she pulled off her shiny black leather boots, doused the oil lamp, and crawled beneath the heavy covers with me. One arm wrapped around me possessively, as though I might try to scamper off in the night. The other gripped a sheathed dirk as she slept.

The warmth of sunshine trickling in the cracks between the slatted wall woke me in her embrace hours later. Happy with that state, I laid still and breathed in her feminine smell beneath all her outwardly masculine scents of alcohol, tobacco, leather, and salt.

"Come to sea with me." The alluring Spaniard invited me without making it a question. She'd apparently been watching me pretend to sleep, because she asked as I opened my eyes.

"I'm afraid I'm already spoken for by Styrimaðr Hjalmarr. He's rather enamored of my capabilities." My captain's title and name with norse pronunciation sounded extremely incongruous inserted into a cantonese conversation.

"My darling," She answered condescendingly, "I'm sure I can pay off your Kaptan. How useful is a translator to a savage Northman? And I'm sure he'll find another to warm his bed."

I bristled at that, both the implications that I was merely a multilingual sea-whore and that my people were barbarians incapable of valuing their crew and broad trading superiority. Whatever else I am, at my core I'm norse.

"I'm not his companion or any other man's companion. I'm his navigator and his accountant along with being his translator. I can traverse the northern seas by sunstone, maintain his store and cargo with precise efficiency, and ensure that he's never cheated in any currency."

"Can you?" She asked slyly.

"I can." My innate stubborn pride gets me into more pointless trouble than any other trait or habit that I've developed over millennia. "There's none better."

"There's a simpler solution then, since you really are valuable." She rolled onto me and pinned me on my back with one arm, the upper body strength I'd enjoyed so greatly in the night now being used - presumably - against me in the morning. I can't say that I didn't like her display of brawn in holding me down so handily, but I played along and writhed under her.

She held a sponge over my nose and mouth with her free hand. A soporific sponge.

The inhalants hit me immediately and gave my brain a warm fuzziness, but my instincts fought through with relative ease and I continued trying to wrestle away her pinning arm. My physical struggling didn't deter her at all, but my movements did alert the much larger and stronger woman to the fact that drugging me was failing.

She dropped the ineffectual sponge and used both arms to hold me in place. At no point did I scream for help, both because I knew the kind of place I was in and because I didn't necessarily object to feeling of the powerful kaptan holding me down, just the implications.

"How are you not passed out?!" She asked, incredulously.

"Maybe us 'savages' are made of stronger stuff than you southern dandies." I spat up at her.

She grinned down and kissed me, hard. Once again, she pinned me with one arm. This time, her free hand went to my snatch. Her deft fingers were inside me again, powerfully forcing me to ecstasy. I did scream then. Repeatedly.

We still weren't interrupted.

Her lips roughly assailed my neck as she plundered me with her fingers. Between the headiness of the drugs and the effective forcefulness of her approach, I didn't last more than few minutes under her assault.

As I exploded beneath her, my decision was all but made.

She grabbed the half empty bottle of dark rum off the floor and took a stout swig, then passed it to me.

"You'll get a cut of our takings and sleep in the captain's quarters with me. You'll also be fucked by me exclusively. And frequently." Her offer was voiced as a demand. I found myself impressed into her service in both senses of the word.

I took a swig too and a moment to consider nonetheless, not one to sell myself without some negotiation first. "The cut's not important, as long as I get enough to keep my kit and nav tools in order. The exclusivity is a must, but I have two more stipulations."

She took the bottle back. "Lay it on me."

"First, I like to go for a long swim under the full moon. I promise to always find my way back to the ship though."

Most ships at the time sailed slower than I swam in my seal form, unless they caught a particularly good wind. I rigged a rope net to drag me along while I slept or flagged as well. Still, that was more than I wanted to tell, so I gave the impression that I was an exceptional swimmer to my shipmates.

She frowned. "Okay. We can try it. What else?"

"I need to be able to touch you, too. At least sometimes." I demanded back, firmly.

She smiled. "In my cabin, dove, yes."

My new captain gave the old a hefty bag of gold - worth far far less than me - to assuage his pride. Her privateer crew stood behind her, I was clearly going willingly, and he was close to retiring from the sea anyway, so no fight was put up on my behalf.

Privateers are essentially pirates with a Letter of Marque legitimizing their piracy of vessels from other countries. They tended to be less bloodthirsty than actual pirates though and, after taking a vessel, captured sailors were usually either ransomed, recruited, put ashore, or left on their stripped vessel. The thinking being that you'd want the same treatment yourself if you were captured and that there's no money in corpses.

We sailed, took vessels mostly from England and France, reaped the rewards, and had sex in her cabin and endless ports along the coast of continental Europe. Already a good sailor, I became a decent gunner (a now useless skill) and an exceptional shot with a pistol (which has served me well.) I adjusted my swordplay techniques to master the cutlass and parrying dagger combination, but never liked for myself the arrogance of the rapier that my Kaptan favored, I loved the freedom of the seas, the thrill of the hunt, and going to bed with her.

But a day came during the Anglo-Spanish War when we were beset by too many warships, all flying the flag of England. She called me and her first mate into her cabin, ostensively to plan our strategy until we were boarded, but there was really nothing to do but run until we were inevitably overtaken. She sent the first mate back to strike colors in hopes that the crew would be better treated if the surrender were voluntary and early.

Then she turned to me.

"I won't order it, my lady of the northern snows." She pulled a pistol from her belt. "But I'd advise that you not let yourself be taken alive either."

She then put the muzzle to her temple and fired.

I felt deep sadness at the sudden death of my companion of over 15 years, but not the debilitating madness I felt at my lovely Ina's loss. With a clear head, I took my Kaptan's advice.

Of course, her way out wouldn't serve as a solution for me. I disrobed and returned topside where I took a running dive off the bowsprit and into the deep, abandoning the ship and her crew to the English. At about 20 feet under, I shifted and swam north as a seal to use my Oslo stash.

Walking down the streets of Oslo, the talk centered around the "New World." Not as many Norwegians were going, but some joined the intrepid Swedes and Danes in establishing or joining trading colonies across the Atlantic.

The last time I'd been to Vinland, Hellundland, and to a lesser degree even Iceland, the population simply didn't support the anonymity I required to stay. But the sailor's life was losing its flavor without my Kaptan and I'd begun sensing vampires more and more frequently in ports.

More than anything, the vampires made my decision. In 1763, I took passage on a vessel to Greenland and swam from there to what is now Canada, beginning my life in the New World like so many other Europeans.

I don't regret my choice, but - now that the vampires that drove me to the decision were here in the New World in force as well - I had to reevaluate. I couldn't think of a community or country that would suit my concealment needs and not theirs in the modern world. Maybe somewhere true north, so cold and/or rural that vampires would eschew it naturally?

As I mused over how fun life at sea had been those many years ago, I wondered if I could find a way back. Maybe a cruise ship or a fishing vessel? Neither would allow me to hide my condition in this age though. The best I could honestly hope for was to take short trips as a passenger or a solitary life sailing a small vessel on my own. Neither appealed to me.

Nor did I want to live primarily as a ringed seal again. For one, I'd still need a sanctuary for the 10% of my time necessarily spent as a human. For another, it was lonely.

The sun had long set. I'd finished dinner and a good deal of the wine while sitting on the balcony quietly watching the last few fingers of blazing light die on the waters of the bay.

The moon rose steadily, its glow muted by the lights of the city and ships. The stars were all but invisible over Houston, their twinkling blotted out by the urban sprawl. I poured myself another glass, lit another cigarette, and resolved myself to my brooding mood and dark humor, still undecided beyond returning in some way to my native Scandinavia.

Aud greatly exceeded my expectations as we played "The Most Dangerous Game." She wisely hid behind two locked doors, yet still in open view of the public on a balcony over a crowded street. Despite her high visibility location, I could not afford to wait for a better opportunity and risk my little selkie reaching the sea with the dawn.

I smelled her red wine and clove cigarettes wafting to me on the roof. Beneath, I smelled her hot sui generis blood. Unlike Zaroff, I had no intention of allowing true fairplay to my prey once I'd discovered Aud's ingenuity. I waited for the deep of night to either trap her indoors or provide her fewer witnesses, When the night would grow no more dark and the streets no more deserted, I pounced.

I felt the whoosh of air as she dropped onto the balcony behind me. Her arms wrapped around me in the standard vampire embrace even as I stood to my feet.

"Easy, easy." Her voice confirmed her identity, but I already knew. Disinterested vampires wouldn't hunt a random girl on an open balcony or risk the public drop from a rooftop being seen in the brightly lit city.

I ripped my knife loose from the outer seam of my shorts and jammed the blade into her thigh with all the force I could muster into such a short stab. Like all vampires, she instinctively shoved me away from her forcefully to briefly check her wound.

My hips bruised with the impact of hitting the railing, but I caught myself. Then I had a fraction of a second to make a choice.

The scenario wasn't one that I could talk my way out of without rolling a crit, not with the determination this particular vampire had shown in hunting me. I had no gun, and had literally brought a knife to a vampire fight. (In hindsight, I probably should have stolen another gun or kept the compromised one, but any road not taken would have come with a different set of risks that might have turned out just as poorly.) At that moment, all that really mattered was that neither reasoning nor fighting were viable options.

The only potentially successful solution that occurred to me was to jump. To engage my flight instinct, so to speak. I knew that I wouldn't walk away from the fall, but thought maybe I'd either land on a vehicle driving too fast for her to catch or that I'd draw enough public attention in my action and sustained injuries to scare her off temporarily.

In that partial second, I saw a semi truck passing below. I knew it was several stories down and driving fast. I decided that even a slim chance is better than none.

I leapt.

That moment I spent suspended in the air was pretty fucking awesome. Adrenaline hammered through me. The cool night air rushed over my skin and through my hair, drowning my defiant scream from even my own ears. The world rushed back up at me as well, beautiful with the softening blurring of great speed.

Then I landed on my right leg and arm on the trailer of the semi truck. Bones crushed in my limbs and my spine jammed. I rolled with the momentum onto the following car, snapping my ribcage and collarbone into my organs and crushing my pelvis on impact. From the hood of that little grey car, I was knocked onto the sidewalk by the hotel.

Dazed, but feeling every bit of the damage, I was trapped like a turtle on my back. I'd too many broken bones and ruptured organs to move of my own volition.

I don't recommend the experience overall.

Unfortunately, I retained consciousness as I lay not dying on my back on the sidewalk. I saw her take the same leap with apparent ease, a long black gabardine coat and beautiful long black hair unfurling behind her. She landed gracefully on her feet and sprinted to me.

She gazed down at me, not allowing me even the small escape of averting her prepossessing eyes. The vampire wore soft black boots with the leather cracked by age, another dark tee shirt emblazoned this time with an eight-pointed star inside a circle, and tight jeans that - while serviceable - screamed vanity over utility.

"You don't lack for courage at least, my little selkie." The vampire bent down smoothly and snapped my neck with her strong hands, ending my miserable consciousness for the moment.