Carpathia (13 page)

  "It won't. I might not be able to give you my blessing over this, but can I offer you something else?" Abe stuck out his hand.

  Quin stood tall and shook it. "What's that?"

  "My best wishes. No matter what."

 
 

 
 
 

When Quin and Abe reached the first class dining room, it had already been returned to its original purpose after having served as a makeshift hospital for most of the day. The place had not half the luxuriance of the
Titanic
's dining room, but it was warm and dry, and – most importantly – not sitting on the bottom of the ocean. The service was enthusiastic, and the food came hot and in large helpings.

  Lucy looked angelic in a borrowed dress that fit her like a tailored glove. The deep blue of it brought out the color in her eyes, and Quin had to think hard to find a time he remembered her appearing so lovely. This had the unfortunate effect of tying his tongue as he took the seat next to her while Abe took the one at her other side.

  "I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to sit down to a meal with you two again." Lucy spoke with a sparkle in her eye as she reached out and patted both of the young men on the hands closest to her.

  Abe grinned at this. "I don't think I'd be wrong to say that we both looked forward to this as much as you." He gave Quin a meaningful glance, but when Lucy turned toward him, the other man discovered that his lips didn't seem to want to work for him.

  "You're not usually so silent, Quin." Lucy flashed a smile that dazzled him. "Don't tell me the doctor forgot to check your tongue for frostbite too."

  Quin offered up a weak smile. "Doctor Griffiths has pronounced me in good health, all the way from my head down to my maltreated toes."

  "Wonderful!" Lucy grinned, showing her perfect teeth.

  "Yes," said Abe, "he'll be out there tripping around Manhattan in no time at all, and without a cane, no less." He turned to Quin. "Now that you've regained the use of your tongue, what plans do you have for it?"

  Quin blushed. Having made the decision to confess his love to Lucy, he wanted nothing more than to do so and throw his heart at her mercy, but he hadn't planned to do so over dinner. "I'm sure I'll find something worthy of it," he said. "In the right place and at the right time."

  Abe threw his hands wide. "But what better place than here? What better time than now? You're safe and sound and among friends once more. Why wait?"

  Quin nodded. He seemed to have annoyed his friend more than Abe cared to admit straight out. Quin would have preferred to chat with Lucy in private rather than risk making a scene in front of the entire dining room, but if Abe wanted to press the issue, then Quin wasn't about to back down.

  He turned to Lucy and took her hand in his. "Abe is a wise man."

  "I think you mean 'wise guy'," Lucy said with a smile.

  "Forgive me, lady and sirs." A steward walked up to their table and gave a little bow. "Because of our recent influx of passengers, we're a bit tighter for space than we normally are. I wonder if you might be willing to make room here for some of our other passengers?"

  The steward stepped aside to reveal a handsome older man and his gorgeous young companion. He was dressed in a black tuxedo in a classic cut, while she wore a dress of shimmering red that Quin thought might have been more appropriate for a nightclub than dinner aboard a trans-Atlantic liner. They each wore a thin smile that showed none of their teeth.

  "Only if they're willing to forgive us for causing them so much trouble," Abe said. "After all, we didn't pay for our passage aboard the
Carpathia
."

  "You have to admit, though," Lucy said, "they do treat their stowaways awfully well."

  "Please." Quin had given up on talking with Lucy for now. He gestured to the open chairs across the table from them. "Join us. We would be most delighted."

  "You have our gratitude," the man said, as he pulled one of the chairs out for the woman. Once she was seated, he introduced them both. "My name is Dushko Dragomir, and my lovely companion here is Miss Elisabetta Ecsed."

  "Charmed." Elisabetta spoke in a forced tone that made Quin wonder just how much of an imposition she and the rest of the passengers on the ship must see the survivors of the
Titanic
. Her accent matched that of Dushko, which Quin placed as being influenced by some Slavic tongue.

  "I am Abe Holmwood, and my friends here are Lucy Seward and Quin Harker." As Abe spoke, a wine steward supplied each of them with a glass of merlot.

  "We really must apologize to you," Lucy said. "I'm sure this disaster has disrupted your travel plans dreadfully."

  "Not nearly as much as yours, I am sure," said Dushko. "And our lives have not been in peril for the entire voyage so far."

  "I understand the
Carpathia
made such good time to reach us that it might not delay you too much in the end," Quin said.

  "That would be true, I'm sure," said Elisabetta, "had the captain not ordered the boat turned around and headed back for New York."

  "Seriously?" Quin hadn't heard news of this yet. Looking back, he probably should have realized from the sun's position on the port side of the ship that they were heading west, but he'd been too tired and distracted to make the connection. "I thought they would bring us back to England to start over again rather than complete our trip for us."

  "Do not worry yourself about it," Dushko said. "It is a small inconvenience to us compared to the horrible event that has befallen you."

  "We were among the fortunate ones on the
Titanic
," Quin said. "It's hard to believe that we deserve any more luck in our lives."

  Elisabetta picked up her wine glass and raised it for a toast. "Then here's to the survivors of the
Titanic
," she said. "May they never need any more luck until their dying days."

 
 

 
 
 

Brody hadn't wanted to get back on board the
Carpathia
, but he didn't see as how he had a choice. Fergus had watched Dushko destroy Trevor, and after he'd reported the event, Brody had realized just how much trouble he was in. If Dushko was willing to administer the true death to someone like Trevor, who'd only become caught up in Brody's plot to gorge himself on the
Titanic
's victims, how much worse would it be for the man who'd instigated the scheme in the first place?

  The alternative, though, would be to hole up on a lonely iceberg somewhere nearby and hope that another ship would pass by close enough that he could reach it. He might have been able to manage it. It would take a lot for him to starve to death, he knew, but he disliked hunger more than risking any threats from Dushko, so he had to get back on the ship.

  It was then that he came up with the idea of sneaking back onto the ship by posing as a survivor of the wreck of the
Titanic
. All he had to do was wait for someone to rescue him, and that lifeboat full of women had come along before his joints had frozen too stiff for him to move. There was nothing he enjoyed more than taking advantage of the kindness of strangers.

  He'd given the stewards a fake name once he'd gotten on board, and he'd managed to avoid the doctor altogether. The last thing he needed was for some nosy physician in a white coat using a stethoscope to try to find a beat in a heart that hadn't budged for years. Fortunately, the man had been too busy with the real survivors to worry about him.

  Brody had spent the rest of the day hiding out in his private cabin. Now that the sun had set, he found himself getting anxious and – worse yet – hungry. He fought his urges for as long as he could, but eventually they became too great for him to ignore.

  He slipped out of his cabin and tried to decide which way to go. The only part of the ship he knew well was the cargo hold, where Dushko had tried to keep him and the others cooped up for the entire voyage. If he returned there, though, chances were good that Dushko – or someone loyal to him, which would be just as bad – might spot him and try to take him down.

  After the night he'd had, Brody wasn't in the mood for a fight. He rubbed his forehead and felt the edge of the flap of skin that had come off when that desperate young man had kicked him in the face. That wouldn't have put him off most nights, but he'd been so gorged on blood already that he had to let it go rather than slaughtering the man on the spot just to prove a point.

  Having ruled out the lower decks, Brody decided to move upward instead. He soon found himself up on the Shelter Deck. He moved to the aftmost part of the ship, where nothing more than a railing separated him from the blackness beyond, and he gazed out at the darkened sea and took the night air deep into his lungs. It didn't do him any physical good any longer, but he liked the way it smelled.

  He noticed a pale, long-haired woman standing alone near the railing a bit to the port of where he stood. She wore a thick coat that was too large for her, but she still managed to shiver in the chill breeze that wafted over the back of the ship. As he watched, she wiped her face and sniffled.

  Brody edged his way along the railing closer to her. "I don't mean to be too forward, ma'am, but are you all right?"

  His voice startled the woman, and for an instant he feared she might bolt back along the length of the ship, screaming for help the entire way. She steeled herself then and responded to him. "No. No, I'm not."

  "You were on board the
Titanic
, weren't you?" Brody said. "You lost someone close to you."

  The woman nodded. "My husband and my son. They said that Edward was no longer a child. They wouldn't let him get onto the boat with me."

  "How old was he?"

  "Only fifteen! Tell me, does that sound like an adult to you?"

  Brody stifled a snicker. At fifteen, he'd been on his own for a year already, and he'd made his way from Ireland over to the States. He couldn't say he'd been the most mature man back then, but he'd never doubted that he was a man.

  "Of course not," he said, hoping he sounded sincere. It was so hard to tell. "When did you last see him?"

  "He and his father brought me up to the lifeboats. I didn't want to get into one of them, but they both insisted. They promised me that they'd get onto one of the next ones and meet me later."

  Brody reached out and put a hand on one of the woman's icy fingers, right where it rested on the railing. "And you never saw them again?"

  "They promised." Tears flowed freely down the woman's face, down her twisted mask of emotional turmoil. "They
promised
!"

  She turned toward Brody then, and he took her in his arms and did his best to comfort her, which even he had to admit wasn't much. She was too distraught to notice how half-hearted his attempt at exhibiting sympathy went.

  "I don't know how I'm going to make it without them," she said. "How am I going to live without my husband to support me? Without my son, what is there to live for?"

  Brody glanced around to confirm that there was no one else hanging around. Just about everyone on the ship must have been at dinner right then. Perhaps some of the survivors had remained in their cabins, too exhausted or ill from their experiences to venture forth that evening. Either way, this poor woman here was the only one who'd come up onto the open deck to stare back in the direction of the disaster they'd left behind earlier that day.

  "What is it with this 'women and children first' policy?" the woman asked. "Is it supposed to be humane to make sure that we survive without any means of support? Now here I am without a husband or a child. I have nothing left and no reason to go on."

  "Perhaps I can help you with that," Brody said. He looked down at her. He could see her pulse pounding in her neck.

  "I don't see how," she said. "It's impossible!"

  "Nothing's impossible, ma'am. We live in an amazing world filled with things far more amazing than your imagination allows for."

  "Sometimes," the woman said, "sometimes I think they were the lucky ones. The dead have no troubles. Not any more."

  Brody smirked at this. "For the most part, sure, but not even the dead are created equal."

  She stared up at him then, confused at how little sense he must be making to her. He reached down and held her chin so he could stare into her eyes. Tears flowed down her cheeks like rivers.

  "Let me help you," he said. "Let me make everything all right."

  "How?" the woman said. "Nothing can ever make me right again."

  "Let me show you," he said. With that, he bent his head until he could reach her throat, and he covered her mouth with his hand.

  She began to struggle then, realizing that she'd made a horrible mistake in confiding in this stranger, in letting him find her by herself. She tried to pull away from him as he drank the life pouring out of her severed carotid, but it was too little effort to prevail against him, and it had come far too late. Scant moments later, Brody had fulfilled his promise to her by ensuring that she would never have to worry about anything else ever again.

  When he was done with her, Brody wiped his mouth clean on her clothes and then dumped her over the
Carpathia's rear railing. He watched her corpse splash straight
through the ship's wake and disappear. Then he cocked his head to see if he could hear anyone else wandering the ship alone and forlorn and in desperate need of the gift he'd just given that sad woman whose blood was still on his breath.

  The night was still young, after all, and they had many miles to go.

 
 

 
 
 

Quin awoke late the next morning, his head sore and his mouth as dry as a desert. He groaned at the weak sunlight streaming in through the porthole and buried his head beneath his pillow. He found little comfort there, and soon he resolved to leave the bed and from there the room.