The Huntress ✓

15. Blood Brothers

Lanterns, wicks drowning in oil from seal blubber, lay dark. Blackness couldn't have swallowed Bronte more completely, and yet, images, images refusing to be blotted out, played vividly across her memory.

Moonlight caught the red liquid sloshing in the glass Bronte held, reminding her too much of blood. With distaste she threw it against the bulkhead where it shattered.

Instead, Bronte raised the bottle directly to her lips and choked down the bitter wine. It was already half-empty but, when she closed her eyes, the inhuman images were still clear.

Hundreds of bodies strewn over sand red with blood.

And the cries.

Endless wailing that pierced the silence of her mind.

Bronte shook her head, trying to dislodge them, and took yet another long pull on the bottle.

Someone knocked tentatively on the door.

She didn't answer.

"Cap'n Farrow?" asked an uncertain voice. It was Cuthbert.

She didn't want to talk to Cuthbert.

"Sir, jus' wan'ed ya ta know we got the name o' that ship—Matilda—and we're on 'er tail." Cuthbert offered through the opaque barrier.

A moment of silence followed as he waited for a response. When none was forthcoming he gave up and his footsteps receded, gradually fading.

Matilda.

Bronte emptied the bottle.

The ship whose captain led a party of sailors to a cove; a cove filled with West Indian Monk Seals hauled up on the beach to care for newborn pups.

And killed them.

Sealing. Legal employment. For the pod of seals, the loss of a few males wouldn't be detrimental. And there were great numbers of females, surely some could be spared. But that wasn't what happened.

They killed them all.

Hundreds.

Seal blubber was a common source of lamp oil, and, here in the West Indies, also in high demand as a fuel and lubricant for the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica. Bronte had never before felt any discord with its use—and thousands of seals dwelled in the Caribbean. The blubber from one seal could produce as much as twenty gallons of oil. But, she'd never seen the operation firsthand. And why—why, in heaven's name—anyone could be so ignorant as to wipe out an entire colony, she couldn't comprehend. Didn't they realize if none were alive to breed they'd soon be left without a harvest?

This she didn't understand, but it wasn't why she felt compelled to hunt down the ship they'd seen slip away from the island.

The reason she wanted to literally skin them alive, especially the captain, the man in charge, was that after they killed the males and females, they left dozens of pups to slowly starve to death, surrounded by the corpses of their kin.

It was beyond cruel.

Bronte raised the bottle to her lips, and when only a drop came out she hurled it too against the bulkhead where it smashed with pleasing resonance. It pleased her so much she hooked the footstool with her boot and sent it flying as well, its splinters mixing nicely with the shards of glass on the cabin floor.

The distraction was only too temporary.

Another knock.

This time it was Sam's voice. "Bronte?"