The dial tone signaled the end of the world.

  Frankie sat in her car, the phone still pressed to her ear, the dead silence on the other end a roaring abyss. Dee Dee was gone. The journal was gone. And Blackmane had laid his perfect, centuries-old trap. Her blood for her friend's life. An impossible choice designed to break her.

  And for a moment, it did.

  Pure, undiluted panic seized her. A cold, black terror worse than the hunger, worse than the pain. She could not breathe. The inside of the car became a coffin, the rain on the windshield like dirt shoveled onto the lid. Her mind, a chaotic storm of self-blame. This is my fault. I led her into this. I let this happen.

  She had to obey. She had to go to him. Alone. The only way to save Dee Dee.

  Just as she was about to put the car in drive and head toward the cove, toward her execution, her phone buzzed again. A text from Damon.

  Jax and his crew are gone. A fake-out. They just wanted to keep me pinned down. What happened? Is everyone okay?

  The words sliced through her panic, a tiny sliver of logic in the emotional hurricane. A fake-out. A coordinated attack. Smart. Strategic. And that meant Blackmane was not just a rampaging monster. He was a general. A tactician.

  He had made one mistake. He had shown them his hand. He had revealed his reliance on a certain set of rules.

  Her panic did not vanish, but it receded, replaced by something else. Something cold and hard and furious.

  Rage.

  She drove, not toward the cove, but toward the one place that now felt like home. The one place they could think. The cannery.

  She called Ted and Damon, her voice a low, clipped monotone that betrayed none of the terror she felt. “Meet me at the cannery. Now. Dee Dee’s been taken.”

  By the time they arrived, the storm outside was matched by the storm of frantic energy inside the decaying factory.

  “A frontal assault is suicide,” Damon said immediately, pacing the concrete floor like a caged wolf. A nasty bruise formed on his jaw from where one of Jax’s goons had landed a lucky punch. “He’ll have the whole crew there. He’s expecting Frankie to walk right in.”

  “We can’t just give her to him!” Ted shouted, his voice cracking with a mixture of fear and fury. “The eclipse is tomorrow night! If he gets her blood…” He did not have to finish the sentence. The end of the world.

  They were trapped. Out of time. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Despair began to settle over the room again, a cold, heavy fog.

  It was Frankie who broke through it.

  She was not crying. She was not panicking. The initial shock had been burned away, leaving behind a core of pure, unadulterated rage. The monster inside her was not cowering anymore. It wanted to hunt.

  “We’re thinking about this all wrong,” she said, her voice quiet but ringing with a new, hard authority. “We’re trying to figure out how to fight his army. We’re trying to win his game.”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  She looked at them, her eyes burning with an intense, almost feral light. “So we change the game.”

  She walked over to the table where they had left their pathetic collection of research. She picked up the priest’s diary, its pages still holding the faint scent of mildew and secrets.

  “Henry Rivera,” she said. “How did he beat him?”

  “He didn’t beat him,” Ted corrected. “He just trapped him. He sank the ship.”

  “Exactly,” Frankie said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across her face. “He didn’t fight the monster. He took away the monster’s home.”

  She pointed to the crude, hand-drawn map. “Henry’s journal said it. Blackmane’s power is tied to his ship. The Crimson Thirst isn’t just his prison; it’s his anchor. It’s his heart.”

  A new idea, a desperate, insane, beautiful idea, began to dawn in the room.

  Damon stopped pacing. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying a frontal assault is suicide,” Frankie repeated. “But a stealth mission… sabotage… that might just work.” Her eyes glittered. “Our goal isn’t to fight Blackmane and his crew. Our goal is to finish what my ancestor started. We have to destroy the ship.”

  The plan was a spark in the darkness. A tiny, flickering flame of hope against an ocean of despair. If they could sink The Crimson Thirst, they could sever Blackmane’s connection to this world. They could weaken him. Maybe even destroy him.

  A long shot. A Hail Mary pass based on a cryptic entry in a centuries-old journal. But it was the only shot they had.

  The energy in the room shifted. The frantic, helpless panic was replaced by a surge of grim, focused resolve. The mission was no longer about surrender or a suicidal charge. It was about stealth. It was about sabotage.

  And it was about explosives.

  All eyes turned to Ted.

  “Can you do it?” Frankie asked.

  Ted, the son of a doctor, the boy who got B+’s in chemistry, looked terrified. He thought of the household chemicals in his garage. He thought of the questionable but extensive knowledge he’d gleaned from years of browsing amateur rocketry and chemistry forums online. He thought of Leo’s body, crumpled and broken on the library floor.

  He took a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah,” he said, a new, hard glint in his eye. “Yeah, I think I can.”

  The plan came together in a frantic, whispered rush. It was half-insane, relying on precise timing, a heavy dose of luck, and Ted’s ability to create a homemade bomb powerful enough to breach the hull of a massive, supernatural pirate ship.

  Damon, who knew the bay’s currents and coastline better than anyone, would plot their approach, a stealth run by sea, using his father’s small fishing boat.

  They would approach the sea cave under the cover of the storm. Damon and Ted would plant the charges on the ship’s hull below the waterline. Frankie, using her speed and strength, would create a diversion, rescue Dee Dee, and get them all out before the whole place came down.

  It was a desperate, almost suicidal plan.

  But it was a plan.

  And it was better than no plan at all.

  As the moon began its slow, inexorable crawl across the sky, its edge already beginning to darken with the first shadow of the coming eclipse, they began their work.

  Ted, with a focus he’d never known, started mixing chemicals. The pungent aroma of sulfur filled the air, acrid and metallic, making his eyes water. He carefully measured out a dark, viscous liquid, its surface shimmering faintly under the dim lab light. The faint clink of glassware echoed in the otherwise silent room as he meticulously poured the solution from one beaker to another. A faint warmth radiated from the bubbling mixture as he stirred, the stirring rod grating softly against the glass.

  He knew the risks. He wasn’t a fool. This wasn’t like his chemistry class where mistakes just meant a bad grade. This was real. These chemicals, mixed incorrectly, could blind him, burn him, or worse. The thought of it, of the explosion, made his hands clammy. But then he thought of Dee Dee, trapped. He thought of Leo. He thought of Frankie, her desperate, determined face. This was it. There was no other way.

  Damon drew maps in the dust on the factory floor. And Frankie… Frankie began to sharpen a long, thick piece of splintered wood into a very, very large stake.

  The war for Norchester Bay was about to begin.