Burn The Boats Novels & Stories

Thinking he’d like nothing better than to stave the dandy fucker’s head in when this was over, he smacked the shillelagh against his leg. From the tug’s wheelhouse, George Fish watched the city burn. Flames licked from waterfront roofs, spread block to block, warehouse to warehouse, the smoke boiling up to meet the low-hanging clouds. Through the alternating ribbons of darkness and glare, the river cut a serpentine path. The scene was biblical, and with the dead rising from the water and swarming the dry land, apocalyptic. “Hell of a sight,” tug Captain Ernst Heppel observed.

Soft, dark curls tousled around the face of a pouty, sleepy angel. “It’s all right, Little Bit,” Jonah told her, his voice as gruff as always, but with a thread of love running through it. “You go on back to bed now.” “Pawpaw, look,” she said, her eyes growing wider as she came more awake. She pointed past him, at the glow of the fire. The boathouse was a skeleton now, the roof gone and the vertical boards that had comprised the walls nothing more than a row of burning spears, like a black spiked fence, holding the fire within them. One by one, they were collapsing and falling in on themselves.

His striking looks were even more pronounced against the backdrop of the endless ocean. Lost in thought, Shawn's attention was abruptly pulled away by a sudden uproar from inside the ship. Distant shouts pierced the air. "Fire! There's a fire!" Shawn spun around as his aide rushed to him, panic-stricken. "Mr. Stewart! Disaster! The ship's been set ablaze!" Flames spread with frightening speed, and soon three ships were engulfed, their fiery glow reminiscent of a legendary battle where ships were chained and set on fire, then creating a fiery spectacle on the water's surface.

“Then we make the river a wall.” He looked up. “Burn the crossings. Flood the fields if you have to. We make them fight the land itself.” By nightfall, fires glowed along the riverbanks. Emma and a group of younger wolves stacked oil barrels beneath the old bridge while Adrian directed them from above. The smell of pitch hung heavy in the damp air. Emma glanced up as Adrian descended the slope, torch in hand. The light caught the sharp lines of his face, the exhaustion in his eyes. “Once this burns, there’s no turning back,” she said quietly.

Flames swallowed the entire side of the boat, fire climbing fast, hungry, devouring everything in seconds. Thick black smoke poured into the sky, and the sound of burning wood and small secondary explosions echoed across the water. “LANCE!” Ragnar shouted, louder this time, his voice rough, almost desperate.

Then he stopped, breathless, and beat the fire out of his coat and trousers. While he worked, the thought had continually hammered at his brain that this certainly meant the end of Burnam’s turpentine business, and of his own investment in it. The still was destroyed. A copper retort is extremely expensive. Even if money were forthcoming to buy another, it would take time to get it, and to set it up, and the best of the season’s run of gum would be lost. It looked as if these barrels of turpentine would be about all the salvage from the wreck. Then he noticed with consternation that the water was brimming to the top of his dam, and that burning rosin was beginning to flow over it. He built i

I cringed as his axe blazed to life, the glow so intense it seemed inconceivable no one would notice. But the gaze of the men defending the ship remained riveted on the Mystic Rune pack. Seconds later, the crackle of flames reached my ears. I lifted the burning stick and I crawled toward the lowering sails. One eye on the guards, I held the flames to the folds of fabric, smirking as they caught fire. My eyes wandered to the ship next to the one I knelt in. What if Cassius’s troops refused to relinquish the fight for a ship or two? What if they needed additional incentives? I sprang to the next ship as flames climbed up the mast behind me.

“The moon is perched high, and the path has been illuminated.” With a heavy heart, I gently lower my hand, allowing the flame to kiss the fragile bed of hay where Azra lies. It ignites with a fierce intensity, and Roman propels the boat upstream, guiding Azra on his last voyage. In mere moments, the flames consume the boat, illuminating the darkness as our alphas' form is reduced to nothing but ash.

Turned to Rafe. “Burn it. All of it. Tonight Lisbon remembers my name.” Rafe’s grin was sharp enough to draw blood. “Thought you’d never ask.” Outside, the Lisbon boys moved fast, accelerants poured, crates cracked, matches flicked. I stood by the dock entrance, coat collar turned up against the cold wind, and watched the first flames lick at the roof. Orange and red in the glass panes. Somewhere in the dark, a ship horn moaned, distant and stupid to think it could outcry me tonight.

“We take it, we ram their backup tender coming from the north, we disappear before the coast guard even wakes up.” Jeffrey’s voice was hoarse. “And then?” Mark’s eyes found mine. “Then we burn their entire fucking empire to the waterline,” I answered for him. Jeffrey reached for my hand, fingers trembling, covered in blood and salt, but steady. “Together,” he said. Mark nodded once. I squeezed Jeffrey’s fingers, then Mark’s when he offered his. Three monsters who had spent years tearing each other apart suddenly pointed in the same direction. The Cigarette boat roared to life beneath us.