Chapter 6

When I hit the fresh, cool air of night, the sweat gathering at the back of my neck chills, and I have to brace to hide the shiver threatening to shake my entire body.

I am running from the Crocodile. Again. But this time he’s following close behind and I want him to chase me. I want him to catch me.

Bloody fucking hell.

Roc comes up beside me, a cigarette caught between his lips. He hunches, one hand cupped around the end of the cigarette while he flicks a flame to life with a lighter in his other.

The tobacco crackles.

When the cigarette is burning, Roc flicks the lighter closed on his thigh. It is a definitive snap in the night.

He eyes me as he takes a long drag, curling his finger around the end caught in his mouth.

I told him I knew a better place for food but that was just an excuse to run.

Now he’s looking at me expectantly.

I can’t breathe.

“Which way?” he asks, expelling a breath of smoke.

I start forward, directionless.

Roc is two steps behind, but the smoke of his cigarette curls around me like a taunting ghost.

I turn down a street.

He follows.

The street narrows and the din of the tavern fades behind us.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” he asks.

“Of course I do.”

I don’t.

Bloody hell I don’t. There must be something right around the next corner, surely.

Except the street gets darker, filthier.

The only sound is that of the scampering of rats and the scrap of the Crocodile’s boots on the stone.

“Captain,” he starts, but I cut him off, glancing at him over my shoulder.

“I know where I’m going!”

The glowing ember of his cigarette renders him in sinister shadows. He fills his lungs with smoke, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me.

“I would duck,” he says, holding the smoke in his lungs.

“What?”

He breathes out. “Duck, Captain.”

Behind me, there is the sound of something hard cutting through the air.

I turn around just in time to see a wooden club flying at my face.

The hit sends shockwaves through my skull, down my neck, all the way down to my feet. My bones vibrate with it.

The world spins and I can taste blood in my mouth.

Blood. Mine. I’m bleeding.

The panic is immediate.

I grasp around for something, anything, and when my vision realigns I realize I’m on the cobblestone.

Get up.

Onto all fours.

The street sways again and I squeeze my eyes shut, spit blood on the stone.

Don’t look. Can’t look.

Using the brick wall of the nearest building, I slowly climb to my feet. To my right, Roc is surrounded by three men. Two are brandishing wooden clubs, the third has an open blade, the steel finding a ray of moonlight to glint sharply like a grin.

The men circle him as he stands in the middle casually smoking his cigarette.

Does nothing ruffle him?

“Empty yer pockets.”

The hoarse voice pulls my attention away. I find the man who hit me standing to my left, club slung over his shoulder.

My ears are ringing, my head pounding.

“What?” I croak.

“Empty. Yer. Pockets, eh!”

“Captain?”

I don’t take my eyes off the man with the club even though I’m currently seeing two of him and finding it difficult to decide which one is real. “Yes?”

“Can I trust you to handle yourself?” the Crocodile asks.

“I don’t need your help,” I tell him, a little offended that he thinks I might.

“Good.”

“You think you can take us, do you?” the one with the blade says.

The Crocodile laughs. His laughter bounces off the walls. “Our meeting was actually fortuitous.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“Because I’m hungry.” The Crocodile lunges. He grabs the thief nearest him, gets his hands on the man’s bald head and twists.

The sound of his neck snapping echoes through the street and it wakes up the others.

My assailant swings again, but I duck this time. The motion throws me off balance and I slam back into the wall, the club hitting stone just a few inches above me.

I dart away, my coat flapping at my hips, revealing the pistol strapped to my side.

The man’s face falls when he spots it and he comes straight at me taking up a fistful of my jacket. We crash into the opposite wall and pain radiates through my ribcage.

I reach for the pistol, but the man swipes at me, then follows with a sharp elbow jab, knocking the wind out of me.

I cough. Sputter. Gasp for air.

Behind the man, a glowing cigarette appears, then Roc is raising his arm, my rum bottle caught in his grip.

My eyes widen. The man catches the change in my expression a second too late.

Roc brings down the liquor bottle and smashes it against the man’s knobby head. The glass shatters, rum spraying everywhere.

The man’s eyes roll back in his head and his club hits the stone with a loud clatter.

Roc catches him before he hits the stone, wrests back his head, exposing his throat, and then sinks his teeth into the meaty flesh.

Air finally trickles down my throat.

Roc drinks. And drinks. And drinks.

The man is boneless and dead within seconds and the Crocodile drops him unceremoniously, his body folding in on itself, slumped over like a forgotten doll.

The Crocodile lets out a satisfied sigh before looking over at me. “I thought you said you could handle yourself?”

Back against the wall, I straighten the lapel of my jacket. “I had it handled.”

“Looked like it.” He smiles at me, then drags his tongue through the blood clinging to his wet mouth. “He catch you with a knife?”

“What?”

He gestures at my midsection. I look down to find my shirt slowly eaten away by the spread of dark blood.

“Oh fuck.”

The world shifts again. My heart kicks up and knocks against my ribs as my stomach rolls.

I slump against the wall, gasping for air a second time within so many minutes.

“I forgot,” Roc says and comes to my side, catching me before I fall. “You can’t stand the sight of your own blood.”

White stars edge my vision. “I…can’t breathe.”

“Captain,” he says.

I claw at my neck. Everything hurts. Everything is pulled taut inside of me, ready to snap.

“Captain.”

I’m going to die. I’m going to die from panic, from my own sins.

Of course I would bleed darkest black.

Of all the nights and all the things…

The Crocodile yanks off his jacket and tosses it onto a pile of crates. Then he’s tearing into his shirt, turning it into strips.

“Arms up,” he orders me, but I can barely hear him over the loud thumping of my heart. He makes do, tying the strips of fabric around my wound while I gasp for air.

“That better?” he asks me.

I shake my head, turning red, eyes bulging. “I…can’t…”

With an impatient grumble, the Crocodile pulls me against him and suddenly his mouth is on mine.

He is hungry and insistent and I open for him without thinking. He breathes life into me, fills my lungs and the world stops swaying.

The pain fades, the panic too.

Have I already died?

When he pulls back, I blink up at him. There is blood smeared across his face and I can taste the remnants of it on the tip of my tongue.

But that’s not my blood, so it doesn’t matter.

“Better now?” the Crocodile asks.

“You kissed me,” I blurt like a drunk idiot.

He smiles. “It was a calculated distraction.”

It worked.

Except I can hear my father’s voice in my head.

Poor form, boy. Cavorting with the enemy.

I have spent the night with a beast, tempted by his mouth.

But if giving into him was so bad, why am I buzzing? Why do I finally feel alive?

I am a wayward man that’s been shoved into an empty room. Empty save for one table and on that table is a little red button that reads DO NOT PUSH.

In that room, temptation breathes the same air. It paces the same stretch of floorboards. Back and forth with me, whispering in my ear.

Push the button.

Push the button.

I am the wayward man and the Crocodile is the button.

And oh how I desire to push it.

He wipes the blood from his face with the backside of his shirtsleeve. “We should go before the Guardwatch⁠—”

I close the distance between us, crash into him and kiss him.