Reapers: A dystopian gay romance (The Reapers Series Book 1) by Vicki Tharp

Author:Vicki Tharp [Tharp, Vicki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JPC Publishing
Published: 2024-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

18

Toorin

A boat. And it’s coming fast.

Those hairs on the back of my neck felt justified. I grabbed my binoculars from the helm. The cracked lenses made their use troublesome, but if you held them right, you could see well enough.

“What is it?” Darwin asked.

That familiar cold dread lodged in my stomach. I’d been in this position before. It usually never ended well.

Pirates.

And by the looks of it, we’d never get the sails hoisted and the anchor weighed in time to outrun them.

But I couldn’t not try. These people, my crew, this ragtag group of friends that had become more like family, were under my protection, and I would do everything in my power to keep them safe.

“Pirates.” I kept the cold chill out of my voice. Barely. “Make ready,” I called out to my skeleton crew.

Darwin glanced at the boat heading straight for us. It didn’t have sails. No doubt, it was powered by camel oil and steam, so the lack of wind didn’t affect it.

Not the way it would us.

I saw the mental calculations in Darwin’s head, and the second he knew the same thing I did… we couldn’t outrun them.

He nodded once. He knew the risks and the danger. “Aye, Captain.”

“Lyric, you’re with Darwin on the mainsail.” I needed my best men on it, hoping they could unfurl the sail and get it hoisted as fast as possible.

“You’re with me,” Bodie said to Juniper. “We’ll get the jib.”

With the sails being seen to, that left the anchor to Marc and me.

Marc climbed down and sprinted for the anchor. I ran after him. That left the helm unattended, but with the wind direction coming off the land, it would keep us from drifting ashore until one of us could man it.

Even with the windlass that helped us raise the anchor, it took all of Marc’s and my combined strength to manage it. It wouldn’t budge.

The wind had the bow pointing toward the land, making it impossible for me to see the pirates approaching. But those tell-tale hairs on the back of my neck wouldn’t let me forget the danger steaming toward us.

The whirring in my chest and my rasping breath nearly deafened me. “Harder,” I managed, though I didn’t know where we would draw more strength.

Marc’s face reddened, the veins standing out on his forehead and neck until I feared they might rupture. We pushed harder on the windlass’s wheel, our boots slipping on the deck, fighting for purchase. My shoulders and arms ached, my thighs burned, my legs shook.

From somewhere down deep—desperation maybe—Marc called up the extra strength I didn’t for the life of me possess. It came with a skin-prickling howl, a bone-chilling shout from his marrow.

The anchor budged. The wheel turned a fraction.

“Again,” I said, even as my strength waned. We needed another person, but everyone else was manning the sails. They would need to be ready to hoist as soon as the anchor broke free.

With another mighty grunt, we shoved on the wheel, and the anchor gave.

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