Captain Charles Vane Black Sails Novels & Stories

Twin orange motorized dinghies cut back and forth through the choppy debris field, their spotters leaning over the rubber gunwales with long boat hooks, pulling floating wreckage from the water. A piece of scorched teak railing. A half-melted life ring bearing the silver Vance emblem. A silk throw pillow, heavy and waterlogged, drifting like a bloated corpse. "Mr. Vance." The low, grave voice made me turn my head slowly. Captain Miller, the veteran Coast Guard commander leading the operation, stepped up beside me. His face was weathered, carved with deep lines of exhaustion, and his dark eyes held the heavy, unmistakable shadow of a man who had delivered terrible news a thousand times.

The morning after Inquisitor Vane’s ultimatum, the Blackwater River looked like a graveyard of iron. Three massive Southern warships sat anchored in the center of the flow, their steam vents huffing rhythmic clouds of grey smoke into the pristine mountain air. They were "teeth" of a different kind—not bone and sinew, but coal and steel. ​Rhea stood on the battlements, her fingers tracing the rough stone of the manor. Beside her, Elias was a statue of suppressed fury. The grey-gold veins on his neck pulsed in time with the thrumming of the ships' engines.

The burning skeleton of *The Leviathan* sank into the Pacific with a low, hissing groan that sounded like the final breath of a dying era. By 0800 hours, the black smoke from the harbor had merged with the gray morning fog, wrapping Blackridge in a heavy, protective shroud. The naval destroyer was gone, its multi-million-dollar hull broken against our concrete reefs, leaving the coast entirely under the unyielding law of the road.

"Sit. Drink?" "No thanks," I replied, dropping into the seat. My legs still felt shaky from the night with Kade, but I kept my face straight. "What is this about? We got a game tomorrow." Vance leaned back, smiling like we were old pals. "Straight to business. I like that about you, Evan. Most captains kiss ass first. But you? You carry that whole team on your back. Must be exhausting." I shrugged. "Part of the job. You called me here for a reason. Spit it out."

That wasn't going to help us much, was it? "It's not much to work with, is it?" Aiden grumbled. "That's about all I had to go on, I'm afraid," said Thorne. As I said, twenty years tends to breed theories as easily as it does anything else. However, I do know more specifically that there must be someone above Vane. That's because containing and restraining such long-standing bloodlines takes a considerably more skilled position than most assume. "What are you talking about?" I asked, my voice barely more than a murmur

Vance reached down, picked up a heavy iron marker representing his own elite personal guard—the Black-Iron Hussars—and slammed it down onto the map directly at the mouth of the Whispering Coves. "Renard!" Vance roared toward the doorway. "Sir!" the captain appeared instantly, his breath coming in short gasps. "Take two hundred of the iron-clads and every barrel of unrefined oil we have left in the reserve. We aren't going to meet them on the beach. We are going to let them climb halfway up those cliffs, and then we are going to burn the very rocks beneath their fingers. Move!" As the officers scattered to execute his commands, Vance reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, tarnished si

The war room in Blackwater Port was not a room of polished stone and ancient maps, but the Admiral's private cabin aboard his flagship, *The Sea Serpent*. The air was thick with the scent of tar, salt, and the faint, sweet smell of the rum Thorne poured into two heavy pewter mugs. The ship rocked gently at its moorings, a constant, reassuring reminder of the power that slept at their fingertips.

All of it would go down the drain. "Bella?" Chloe’s voice came through the thick panel again, light and innocent. "Is someone in there with you?" Bella opened her mouth, but her throat locked up. She couldn't speak. She couldn't even breathe. I had to fix this right now. I lifted Bella off the edge of the counter, setting her feet down quietly on the floor. I shoved my red eyes back under control, burying the demon deep inside my chest until my vision cleared. Then, before Chloe could try the handle a third time, I reached out and kicked the large metal trash bin in the corner with all my weight.

screens began to turn black. "Hello, Father," the boy’s voice whispered through the intercom. "Thank you for reopening the line of credit. I’ve been waiting in the 'Deleted Items' for a long time." The Mid-Point: The Siege of the Spire In New York, the "Re-Formatting" of the black ships hit a catastrophic snag. The ships that were turning into libraries suddenly halted, their hulls sprouting obsidian thorns. The iridescent light of Hope Thorne-Vance began to flicker as a bronze-colored signal began to broadcast from the Basement in the Suburbs.

That cruel, demonesque smirk. It spoke louder and clearer than any word could ever say. He was going to find me and when he does... I clenched my eyes shut as my thoughts clouded. Through the haze of it, I could only see one thing on the canvas of my mind. My greys intermingled with black and then I was thrown into an odyssey of darkness. A maze of questions that didn't have answers. Madeline's form that awash the canvas scarlet and beside that Marienne's beautiful Turquoise eyes that held hatred for me.