Teresa Medeiros Read Free

half-deaf mother would retire for the evening and Lucy would be spared bellowing at her over the galley dining table.
    Lucy usually found a ship by night soothing to her senses, but the peace she sought drifted just out of her reach, her solitude tainted by restlessness. Even the low-pitched music of male voices working in perfect accord seemed muted and distant.
    She frowned, licking away the sea salt that flecked her lips. In the rising mist, sound should carry with the clarity of a ringing bell, but the night was draped in silence as if the sea were holding its breath with her. She strained her eyes, seeing nothing but fog swirling up from the inky darkness and the rising moon flirting with tattered patches of clouds.
    Chill ribbons of mist coaxed their way through the gauzy muslin of her gown, dampening her bare skin with their greedy touch. The sailors’ tales of Captain Doom haunted her. On such a night it took little imagination to envision a phantom ship stalking the seas in search of prey. Lucy could almost hear the chant of its betrayed sailors vowing vengeance, the hollow bong of a bell that would seal their doom.
    She shook off a delicious shiver. She could only imagine what the Admiral would say if he caught her indulging in such whimsy.
    She was turning away from the rail to seek the more mundane comforts of her cabin when the veil of darkness parted and the ghost ship glided into view.
    Lucy’s heart slammed into her rib cage, thenseemed to stop beating altogether. She clutched the rail, her shawl falling unheeded to the deck.
    A glimmer of moonlight stole through the clouds as the sleek black bow of the phantom schooner crested the waves, its towering spars enshrouded by mist, its rigging glistening like the web of a deadly spider. Ebony sails billowed in the wind, whispering instead of flapping. The vessel sailed in eerie silence with no lanterns, no sign of life, no hint of mercy.
    Lucy stood transfixed, mesmerized by a primitive thrill of fear. Although the wind whipped her hair across her face and fed the hungry sails of the phantom ship, she seemed to be standing in a vortex of airlessness. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream.
    It was then that she saw the ship’s Jolly Roger rippling from the highest spar—a man’s hand, ivory against a sable background, squeezing scarlet drops of blood from a captive heart. Her fist flew to her breast as she battled the absurd notion that it was
her
heart, no longer beating of its own will, but thundering in accord with the dark command of the ghost ship’s master. If she was the only one to see the ship, then surely its grim message was meant for her.
    The phantom ship came about with lethal grace. Remembering the sailor’s story, Lucy pressed her eyes shut, knowing the ship would be gone when she opened them. A poignant sense of loss tightened her throat. There was no place in her neatly ordered life for such dark fantasy, yet the ship’s unearthly beauty had touched some secret corner of her soul.
    Cannonfire blazed against the night sky. Lucy’s eyes flew open in shock as the ghost ship fired a very earthly warning shot over their bow in the universal demand for surrender.



C HAPTER T WO
    I N THAT FIRST DAZZLING BURST OF LIGHT, the name carved on the phantom ship’s bow was forever emblazoned in Lucy’s memory:
Retribution
.
    Hoarse cries of alarm and the stampede of running feet shook the deck of the
Tiberius
as the panicked crew wavered between battle and surrender. Lucy was jerked from her openmouthed astonishment by a rough hand on her arm. The young sailor who had earlier jeered the mere existence of Captain Doom pulled her away from the rail with a familiarity he wouldn’t have dared only moments before.
    “You’d best take shelter in your cabin, miss. This looks to get ugly.” His bold demeanor could not hide a complexion chalky with terror.
    Lucy found herself dragged through the fray and shoved none too gently toward