Claim The Tide 1
(2026)(The first book in the Claim The Tide series)
A novel by C L Dempsey and Sam Ward
Skylar ‘Storm’ Dannon died over eleven hundred dollars. Ninety seconds of gunfire outside a prison gate, and the getaway driver was done.
Then Death offered him a deal: hunt down the twelve Keys of a drowned alchemist's vault and destroy every one, and his mother's file goes missing from Death's ledger. Cancer and all.
Mortis drops Storm into black water off a monster-ridden coast with a cutlass that cuts what's owed, two Keys on loan (one of them eats the talents of every man he kills), and a supervisor: Death's own shadow, stitched to his heels, who narrates his failures like a stand-up act only Storm understands. No other explanation. Death doesn't answer questions.
Storm barely learns to swing a sword before a pretty navigator drugs his drink. He wakes barefoot on broken glass in the hold of a slave ship bound for the flesh markets of Valdris, chained beside a pit champion who's forgotten what free feels like. An engineer who knows every plank of the ship by name.
The slavers should have checked their cargo. Every guard who dies below deck teaches Storm the sea. Every bond he severs frees a woman who owes him nothing and stays anyway. And Captain Gask wears a Key to the greatest treasure the ocean ever swallowed.
Storm isn't planning a mutiny. He's planning an acquisition.
Genre: Thriller
Then Death offered him a deal: hunt down the twelve Keys of a drowned alchemist's vault and destroy every one, and his mother's file goes missing from Death's ledger. Cancer and all.
Mortis drops Storm into black water off a monster-ridden coast with a cutlass that cuts what's owed, two Keys on loan (one of them eats the talents of every man he kills), and a supervisor: Death's own shadow, stitched to his heels, who narrates his failures like a stand-up act only Storm understands. No other explanation. Death doesn't answer questions.
Storm barely learns to swing a sword before a pretty navigator drugs his drink. He wakes barefoot on broken glass in the hold of a slave ship bound for the flesh markets of Valdris, chained beside a pit champion who's forgotten what free feels like. An engineer who knows every plank of the ship by name.
The slavers should have checked their cargo. Every guard who dies below deck teaches Storm the sea. Every bond he severs frees a woman who owes him nothing and stays anyway. And Captain Gask wears a Key to the greatest treasure the ocean ever swallowed.
Storm isn't planning a mutiny. He's planning an acquisition.
Genre: Thriller