The Pirate Fairy Read Free

to stop drinking that stuff. Why would I try to have sex with somebody’s ear? I know I’m a horny git, but this is ridiculous! And the guy isn’t even handsome! I wish my bloody affliction was a figment of my imagination but it isn’t. Why me? Why the bloody hell did it happen to me?
    He ignored the answer that came to his mind. He knew why. He just couldn’t get over the reason. And, he never would. He decided to play along with his crew, though the word mutiny flittered into his mind. Nah . They would never do that. Thanks to him, they were richer men than they’d ever dreamed possible. They angled closer to the fishing boats, and Denny stared. They weren’t fishing boats.
    Holy guacamole . They were blackbirding boats!
    As in slave traders!
    “We can’t rescue all them slaves,” Denny said to Rigby, reverting to the ill-bred language of his youth. They couldn’t do it, even though he wanted to. Denny Derrick Dalton abhorred slavery, but he could see dozens of dark faces and they worried him. He couldn’t fit them all on the La-Di-Da, and some of them looked very ill.
    Rigby gave him a harsh laugh. “We’re not here to save the slaves.”
    “We’re not?” Denny stared at him.
    “No. We’ve come to sell you to the traders. Your wings are the talk of the high seas. Good luck, Captain. You great big bloody fairy, you!”
    Denny opened his mouth, but Rigby snatched the telescope out of his hand and swung it hard and close, knocking Denny so viciously, his head snapped to the left. Denny grabbed hold of the instrument to stop Rigby from hitting him again. This time, Rigby hauled back and shot Denny with a right hook to his left temple. It was the last thing he remembered. Denny sank into an instant, befuddled nightmare where the beautiful young girl who’d tried to bed him turned into an old crone when he’d confessed he preferred men.
    “You’re beautiful,” he’d said with a moan. “But I just don’t fancy you.”
    She’d gone bonkers. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her he was in love with her brother, but Denny had always prided himself on his passion for honesty. She’d run around his cabin screaming and hurling things, some of them aimed at his head and groin. She’d turned old, her hands going first. They’d looked like crooked, veined talons by the time she’d turned a long, gray finger toward him.
    “I banish you to a lifetime of shadow and light, where you will learn to use your wings. Or not.” She’d unleashed a dirty cackle. “I’m turning the fairy into a fairy.” She’d cackled again, then howled with joy.
    Denny had tried to think of it as a dream. A very, very bad one. And she’d lied. There’d been no light in his new world. Just shadows and the fearsome things he sometimes saw out of the corner of his eye. Strange specters, the ghosts of men and women. Theodore, the cat, had hissed at him and run out of the cabin.
    The witch-woman had turned back into a young beauty, but her hands had taken longer to change into their former youthful smoothness. She’d put on her cloak and hidden them under the folds, leaving him locked in his cabin. She had plunged him into perpetual night. And he couldn’t fly. His wings hurt whenever he stretched them. He always felt them, whether awake or asleep. They seemed to sense things before he did, if he allowed them to transmit messages to him.
    He didn’t have to try hard to interpret the soft, whispery words they sent him now as he came to, carried by his own men from the La-Di-Da across the wooden plank he’d built himself. They dumped him onto the deck of a blackbirder. Denny spotted the side of his beloved ship and saw that her name had once again been changed. Written in green paint were the words, The Pirate Fairy .
    Denny Derrick Dalton knew he was in trouble. Deep, dark, trouble.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    Merritt didn’t feel like much of a prince, more like his sister’s prisoner. He had no choice but to be with Fortunata,