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  THE BAR AT THE END OF THE SEA

  ©2020 TOM ABRAHAMS

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  Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Also by Tom Abrahams

  THE WATCHERS

  BAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  BAR AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA

  BAR IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (FORTHCOMING)

  THE SCOURGE

  UNPREPARED

  ADRIFT

  GROUNDED

  THE TRAVELER

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  HERO

  HARBOR

  A DARK WORLD: THE COMPLETE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  AFFLICTION

  POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  STAND-ALONE WORKS

  PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE

  EXTINCTION RED LINE (WITH NICHOLAS SANSBURY SMITH)

  Contents

  ALSO IN SERIES

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ALSO IN SERIES

  The Bar at the End of the World

  The Bar at the Edge of the Sea

  The Bar in the Middle of Nowhere

  To Courtney

  My compass and North Star

  “Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarter or take any from you.”

  —Edward Teach

  Chapter One

  “Where is it?”

  Desmond Branch tightened his rain-soaked grip on the bone handle of the Damascus steel blade he held at his side. He wouldn’t ask again.

  Lucius Mander stared back at him through a sheet of cold, incessant rain. The man’s eyes were wide with fear. Heavy rivulets hung on his lashes, building into thick drops before falling onto his cheeks. Branch recognized the look. It was virtually identical in everyone—men, women, even children. When their time was finished, when their final moments approached, they were all the same.

  It was a pathetic look of fear mixed with resignation, the knowledge that everything they’d ever been would cease to exist. It would evaporate and float away on the breeze, carried over the oceans, which spread endlessly in all directions. Even those who feigned defiance and pretended to steel themselves in the face of death carried the look beneath the thin surface of their welling emotions.

  Mander wasn’t a defiant one. He was pathetic and lowered his chin to shake his head. Through chattering teeth, he gave the same answer as he had countless times before. It was the answer those before him had given. It wasn’t the one Desmond Branch wanted to hear.

  “I don’t know,” said Mander. “I told you I—”

  Branch put a hand on Mander’s trembling shoulder and drove the blade up into the man. He locked eyes with Mander as the man gasped, opening and closing his mouth like a fish starved of oxygen.

  “You told me nothing,” Branch said, then withdrew the blade. It was slick with blood. He licked the front of his teeth and held his dead-eyed stare at Mander.

  Blood leaked from Mander’s nose and mixed with the rainwater draining down his long, pale face. It diluted the red color, dampening its vibrancy and making it almost pink as it rolled across the dying man’s lips and off the whiskers on his chin.

  Mander coughed. He tried to speak again. Before he could manage any words though, Branch lifted his knee, extended his leg, and kicked him with the toe of his boot.

  Falling backward, holding his wound, Mander dropped from sight. A moment later, the plunk of his weight into the water below told Branch the man was gone.

  A brisk wind drove the rain in Branch’s face as he wiped the blade on his own pants and slid it into the scabbard at his hip. With the back of his arm, he swiped the rain and sweat from his face. Then he crossed the deck of his boat toward his pilot, a trusted man named Pierre Le Grand.

  Le Grand was Branch’s best friend, if a man like Branch could have friends. The two would die for each other. At least, Branch knew Le Grand would die for him. He was undecided how loyal he might be.

  “That was the last of them,” he said above the wind, sliding alongside Le Grand. “If he knew anything, he would have told me.”

  Le Grand shrugged. “Maybe. How many before him?”

  Branch counted on his fingers. “Nine. None of them knew anything. I thought by the time I got to the last of them, somebody would have talked.”

  “Nothing?” asked Le Grand. “No clues where it is?”

  “No.”

  “One of them had to know something,” said Le Grand. “Unless the information is bad.”

  “The information isn’t bad,” said Branch. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe you weren’t convincing enough,” said Le Grand. “A knife i
s just a knife.”

  Few people could use the insolence Le Grand hurled at his captain. Most others would choke on their final words for challenging Branch’s authority. Branch rubbed his chin, studying his pilot with narrowed eyes. Anger born of a thin skin swelled for an instant and ebbed as quickly. Branch let it go but, in his mind, shortened the rope a notch.

  He put a hand on the console that framed the bridge. It was polished oak sealed in a thick lacquer that repelled the rain into large droplets, which beaded on its surface. It was slick under Branch’s fingers.

  He laughed. “What would you have me do? Nail their intestines to posts? Burn their hands to the bones? Keelhaul them? Make them walk the plank?”

  “Nobody ever made anybody walk the plank,” said Le Grand. “That’s lore.”

  “It’s not lore,” said Branch. “People did it. Some rope, a cannonball, sharks, and a plank. It could be effective.”

  “You know,” said Le Grand, “just because you steal things, kill people, and look for hidden treasure, that doesn’t make you a pirate.”

  Branch took his free hand and slapped Le Grand on the back. Water sprayed from the pilot’s soaked shirt.

  “It does,” he said through hearty laughter. “That’s the very definition of a pirate. Now, let’s get back to business.”

  Le Grand grasped the boat’s throttle lever and pushed it forward. The engine groaned, and the boat lurched before picking up speed. The water was choppy, and the vessel bounced on the waves. The faster they went, the more violent the pitch until they were on plane, riding the tops of the waves. Heavy spray crashed over the bow with each dip. The wash flooded the deck with each rise before it drained through the scuppers or into the bilge.

  The water was gunmetal gray crested with white foam. The skies above were dark and angry. A mix of salty spray and pelting rain forced Branch to turn his face to the side and raise his arm.

  A mile in the distance was the shoreline. He stole glances at it as they approached. Le Grand navigated the shallower water, steering to the rights of markers, following the rules.

  Branch wasn’t much for following the rules. He never had been. He never would be.

  Le Grand guided the vessel toward their destination. Branch watched his friend, steely eyed and stoic. The pilot didn’t say much around other people. He let Branch do the talking.

  That was why Branch was the captain and Le Grand was the first mate. The one with the personality often took the reins, even if he didn’t man the rudder.

  “Maybe the others had luck,” said Le Grand above the loud mixture of wind, spray, and the whine of the engine as it churned against the surf.

  Branch nodded at his friend and braced himself against the console. He spread his feet shoulder width apart and bent his knees to absorb the vessel’s rise and fall. They were close enough to shore he could see the gathering of people on the beach. Dozens sat in the sand, clustered into groups. Some were families. Others were groupings he and his men had mustered when they’d stormed the village hours earlier. His men stood at the edges of the crowd, stalking the villagers as they patrolled back and forth.

  “If not,” Branch said, “we’ll keep bringing them out to sea a few at a time. We’ll find out what they know.”

  “I think that’s a waste of time,” said Le Grand, “and a waste of fuel.”

  Branch stiffened. He turned his body toward his pilot, his first mate.

  “I didn’t ask what you think,” he sneered. “I can always get someone else to pilot my boat. You can go back to doing whatever it was you did to survive before I rescued you from—”

  Le Grand took his hands from the wheel, raising them in surrender. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Forget I said anything. I want to find it as much as you do, assuming it even exists.”

  Branch stepped closer to Le Grand, unassuaged by his pilot’s submission. He grabbed the collar of his shirt in his fist, wringing the rainwater from the soaked fabric, and yanked Le Grand within an inch of his face.

  “It exists,” he said. “And nobody wants it more than I do. Not a single person on this waste of a planet has spilled more blood, spent more treasure, or traveled farther than I have to find it. That includes you and every man on our crew. You understand me?”

  Le Grand nodded and jerked himself free of his captain’s grasp. He raised his hands in surrender.

  “Okay,” he muttered. “I understand.”

  The two rode to the shallows near the thin strip of the shoreline. This island was like most—small, isolated, and home to people whose ancestors had survived the polar melt a generation earlier.

  Instead of continents, archipelagos encircled planet Earth like constellations. Tribes of islanders governed themselves. They forged their own laws. They developed their own customs. Some were peaceful and egalitarian. Others were oppressive and militant.

  Those who didn’t live on islands roamed the seas in boats and ships left over from the time before the melt. Most of the seafarers moved amongst the islands, trading goods, sailing from outpost to outpost with good intentions. Others, like Desmond Branch, were marauders living for their own self-interest and in pursuit of the one thing that could ensure a position atop the food chain. It was a weapon as mythic as it was legendary. Branch was so sure that thing was close he could almost feel it in his grasp. He would wield its power and secure his future as the unrivaled king of the sunken planet.

  Branch closed his eyes and relished the sting of the cold rain on his face, the boat slow under his feet.

  “I will find it,” he said, as much to the wind as to himself. “Or I will die trying.”

  Chapter Two

  Zeke Watson weighed the balance of the dart, its barrel between his fingers. He leaned into his front leg and flicked his wrist to release it toward the target. The moment he let go, Uriel sneezed.

  The dart sailed to the right, stabbing the cork in the black ring that encircled the edge of the board, which indicated zero points.

  Uriel bumped Zeke with her hip. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Allergies.”

  “That only seem to strike when I’m about to throw,” said Zeke.

  She ran a hand along the side of her shaved head and then curled the end of her long, auburn braid around the end of her index finger. The pink bow knotted at the end of her hair looked like a ring atop her knuckle.

  “I must be allergic to the way you play the game,” she said.

  Zeke stepped back to the circular bar top table behind them and lifted his glass. He toasted her and took the last swig of his Kentucky Bourbon Ale. It had the bite of corn whiskey with the finish of sweet, full-bodied beer. Among the endless options behind the cantina’s bar, this had become his favorite.

  He scanned the saloon, noting dust dancing in the shafts of light that shone through windows and around the swinging doors at the entrance. Maybe she did have allergies.

  Uriel stepped to the line and held a dart between her thumb and forefinger.

  “I need a sixteen to win,” she said.

  “Double or nothing,” said Zeke.

  Uriel laughed. “You’ve got nothing to double.”

  She leaned into the shot and sent the dart sailing. The tip drilled into the lower left corner of the board. Sixteen.

  She spun on a heel and joined Zeke at the table. Without taking her eyes from his, she raised her hand and wagged her index finger.

  “Pedro,” she shouted above the din of conversation, music from the jukebox, and clinking glasses. “Another round, please. And this one’s on Zeke.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever beat you,” moaned Zeke.

  “I know you haven’t,” she said.

  Uriel was a study in contradictions. While fierce and hard-charging, she was also undeniably feminine. The fragility of her smile, the round curve of her jaw, and the intensity of her green eyes did little to mitigate the thick tone of her muscles and the broadness of her shoulders. Her tight leather clothing left little to the imagination. But th
e colorful ink that covered much of her body offered only a glimpse into her creative force.

  Despite his love for another woman, Zeke was drawn to her. There was chemistry. An attraction that sent snaps of electricity through his body when he was close to her.

  He looked away from her and toward the bar. Pedro, the barkeep and proprietor of the cantina, was approaching. He carried large glasses in both of his hands.

  As always, he wore a white linen shirt tucked into a pair of loose-fitting dark denim jeans. The shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows. Over his shirt was an aged, saddle-colored vest. At his waist was a large brass belt buckle.

  Age spots dotted the backs of his hands. Crow’s feet etched the edges of his ice blue eyes. They were the markings of a man who’d spent an eternity in the sun. His tanned face was covered by a wiry beard that was more salt than pepper. He had a thick head of hair to match.

  “Here you go,” Pedro said with his customary grin. “Two ales on the house.”

  He set the glasses on the table, sloshing the foamy heads over the rims and onto the wood top. Uriel gave him a side eye.

  “I said the drinks were on Zeke’s tab,” she remarked.

  Pedro leaned on the table. “He’s got enough on his tab right now.”