Carpathia (22 page)

  Brody dropped the hook in surprise. "Alive? What happened to her? What have you done, you bastard?"

  Brody launched himself at Dushko again, but this time Dushko was ready for him. He braced himself for the impact and caught the smaller Irishman in midair, snagging him by the lapels of his jacket. Then he thrust his head forward and shouted into Brody's face.

  "What did I do to her? It's you, you useless fool. You broke the rules. You were spotted. And it's Elisabetta that had to pay for it!"

  Dushko hurled Brody away from him, sending the man tumbling head over heels toward the far wall of the hold. He landed there with a sickening, satisfying crash among a stack of crates. These toppled over on top of him, burying him beneath the wood.

  Dushko wondered if he might somehow be so lucky for one of the crates to have splintered in just the right way. He imagined Brody lying there underneath the wooden boxes, a shattered plank spearing him through the heart. Despite his fury, he couldn't help but smile at that vicious image.

  "Sir?" Piotr said, his voice trembling. "How can you be sure Lady Ecsed is dead?"

  Dushko scowled at the spindly man and considered tearing him limb from limb as a demonstration to the others of just what he was capable of doing when in a state of rage like this. The lack of any movement from the crates that had crashed down on Brody, though, gave him pause. Perhaps he'd already done enough.

  "I cannot." Dushko shoved past Piotr as he stalked toward the fallen crates. "Not any more than I can be sure I just killed Brody." He lifted them up one by one, tossing them aside the way a child might root through a toy box, until he reached the bare deck beneath.

  Brody wasn't there. He'd disappeared, either turned to mist or become a bat or slipped away some by some other means. The fact was he'd got away again, and that made Dushko madder than ever.

  "And he's gone!" Dushko shouted. The others in the room scattered away, pressing themselves into the smallest, darkest, safest places they could find. They sensed what was coming next.

  Dushko picked up one of the crates he'd just tossed aside. It stretched eight feet long, three feet wide and three feet high, just like all of the others he'd paid to have brought aboard the ship for this long-planned voyage. Each of them bore the words FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE, and THIS SIDE UP on them, supposedly because they contained prized flower bulbs that he was transporting back to his native land to transplant and sell.

  Dushko took the crate and smashed it against the nearest bulkhead. It splintered into countless pieces, and the earth inside of it burst out and spilled to the floor below. He set it aside and picked up another.

  "You live in these boxes, you sleep in the dirt of your homeland, and you think because you stay silent and keep to yourself, that you are safe." He spoke not to Brody, not to himself, but to everyone else in the room. He smashed the next box to pieces and grabbed another, swinging them about as if they were as light and easy to handle as baseball bats.

  "You think because you keep your head down, that no one will notice you."

  He smashed the crate in his hands into one sitting skewed on the floor. Splintered wood and fresh-turned earth burst everywhere.

  "You forget that the actions of those around you matter."

  He grabbed another crate and hurled it against a tall stack of crates nearby. The entire tower toppled over, and people scrambled away from it in fear for their lives. Dushko knew they had little to worry about, outside of a freak accident. Like Brody and – damn them all – like Elisabetta, they were hard to kill.

  Dushko set to the remaining crates with righteous fury, shouting out epithets at the others as he went. He chased them from their hiding holes. He flushed them into the open, and then he stood there and screamed at every one of them.

  "You are dead already, you fools. You think that protects you, and you are right. But it also leaves you vulnerable – mostly to those of your own kind!"

  He stopped and stared at the destruction he'd wrought upon the hold. He'd ruined more than just his own boxes. There would be hell to pay when the ship finally made it back to port, but he'd deal with that when it happened, just like he always did. Right now, he was making a point.

  "All it takes is for one of us to make one mistake. Just one! And we are hauled out from the cover of darkness and thrust into the harshest sunlight!"

  A few of the others hissed at this. Some of them had been careless about their exposure to the sun before and still bore the burn scars from it.

  "This should not be me bringing down the hammer on that damned bastard Brody! It should be all of us. Every one of us!"

  The others nodded along with Dushko now, the fear he had put into them transforming into something darker, something hateful, directed not at him but at the target he'd placed before them.

  "There is only one solution to this. We stick together! Against Brody and against the rest of the world. The next time that he comes crawling back here, you must do the right thing for all of us. You kill him on the spot, if you can!"

  A rough cheer of approval went up among the others, and hope rose in Dushko's heart for the first time since he'd heard about Elisabetta and her fate. Maybe he couldn't bring her back, but he could use her death as a stick to beat his people back into line. Otherwise, they would all be doomed for sure.

  "But what if he never comes back?" a woman said, speaking to Dushko for the first time in the entire trip. "What do we do then?"

  Dushko nodded at her, recognizing her courage. He spoke in low, harsh tones now, his voice a whisper compared to the bellowing he'd given himself over to before. In the silence that followed his stormy rage, though, his words carried to every part of the hold.

  "There are people out there looking for us now. Looking for Brody. If they cannot find him on their own, then I will feed the jackass to them."

 
 

 
 
 

"I don't have a good feeling about this," Lucy said.

  Quin looked back at her, a rope of garlic strung over her shoulders like a necklace. With Doctor Cherryman's help, they'd raided the ship's kitchen for it, taking one for her and for Quin too. Then he'd given them his keys, a set that he claimed would open every door on the ship, shoved a flashlight into Quin's hand, and sent them on their way while he returned to the ship's hospital to look after Abe.

  Before heading out to look for Murtagh, though, they'd stopped by their own quarters for supplies. Each of them had a crucifix in their luggage, something their parents had insisted they bring along on their journey with them. Thinking back, Quin had thought it an innocent enough request, and he'd been happy to humor his mother by complying with it. Now he wondered just how much they might have known.

  Quin had also grabbed the Bowie knife his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday. Then he'd smashed apart a chair in his cabin and used the knife's oversized blade to trim two of the legs into wooden stakes that he hoped they would never have to use. He'd attached the knife's sheath to his belt, and they'd set off, each carrying a crucifix in one hand and a stake in the other.

  He had to admit, they looked ridiculous. He was far beyond caring about that, though, and Lucy appeared to have given up any lingering sense of decorum too – other than her occasional comments.

  "This is madness," Lucy said as she and Quin made their way deeper into the ship.

  Quin did his best to ignore the sentiment, tempting as it was to share it. She was right, after all. What was madder than searching through the rooms of an ocean liner in the middle of the night, hoping that they might find a vampire they could slay?

  "It's been a hell of a few days," Quin said.

  Lucy snorted at this. "Are you sure we didn't die on the
Titanic
? That we didn't go down with all the rest of those poor souls on the ship?"

  "What?" Quin shot her a curious look. "You think this is all some sort of purgatory that we've entered? That God's sent us here to rot rather than ushering us along?"

  Lucy shook her head. "No. I'm afraid it's our own particular kind of hell."

  Quin stopped and put his hands on Lucy's shoulders. She looked so beautiful – and terrified but ready for whatever might be thrown at them by this world or the next.

  "I might believe that for myself, Luce," he said with every bit of earnestness he could summon. "But I could never imagine that for you."

  "You're far too kind, Quin," she said. "I've done plenty of wrong things in my life."

  "But never anything evil."

  She peered into his eyes. "How can you be so sure?"

  He smiled. "I know you, Luce, better than anyone. Maybe better than you know yourself. You're as good as they come."

  "Really?" A guilty look crossed her face. "I don't think the feelings I've had for you are all that pure."

  Quin blushed. He found himself unable to summon a reply.

  "Oh, that's not what I meant!" Lucy blushed too then. "It's just that I should be with Abe, shouldn't I? He's my beau, the one I'm expected to marry someday. That's the way it is. The way it's been."

  Quin reached out and took her hand. "It doesn't have to stay that way."

  "But Abe's your best friend," she said. "You two have been inseparable since we were kids. I can't come between you."

  "We've all been that way, Luce. All three of us."

  "You say that, Quin, but that was when we were kids. When we went away to different schools, we did drift apart. Especially you and me."

  Quin knew this to be true. Lucy was a few years younger than he, and when he'd gone away to study Law, she was still in secondary school. She'd blossomed into such a beautiful woman by the time he'd graduated, but she'd somehow wound up dating Abe in the meantime.

  "I know," he said. "It was just timing, I suppose. And I guess that favored Abe."

  "I thought you'd decided to ignore me."

  Quin looked at Lucy and put his hand on her cheek. "Not that," he said. "Never that."

  Quin found himself drawn to Lucy's lips with a hunger he'd rarely known. They moved closer to each other in a tender way, and he could feel the heat of her breath on him. He leaned in to kiss her, but she froze at the sound of a horrible thumping reverberating through the ship.

  "What is that?" she said. "You don't think we've hit another iceberg, do you?"

  For an instant, Quin wanted to laugh at the thought that the
Carpathia
might meet the same fate at the
Titanic
. It struck him though that there wasn't anything humorous about that notion at all.

  Quin backed off from Lucy, the moment that had passed between them already evaporating so fast it seemed as insubstantial and yet beautiful as the Northern Lights. He cocked his ear and concentrated on listening for the sound that had interrupted them. He'd heard it too – or felt it in his shoes at least.

  It came again, a tremor that reverberated through the floor. It came so soft that he was sure he would have missed it entirely had he not been listening for it. In fact, if he and Lucy had not stopped chatting at the right moment, he was sure they'd never have heard it.

  "Where is that coming from?" Lucy asked, her face a porcelain mask of concentration.

  "From the aft of the ship, I think. Maybe toward the bottom." Quin moved down the hall in that direction. The sound came again and seemed just a little bit stronger now. "Maybe it's just a fault in the engines. They lie in that direction."

  Lucy curled a lip at that. "After everything we've been through tonight, do you really believe that?"

  Quin shook his head. "Of course not. But a man can always hope."

 
 

 
 
 

Quin led Lucy deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. They passed through the empty halls that snaked through the steerage cabins, creeping along as silently as they could manage. It was late now, in the wee hours of the morning, and if anyone else were awake in this part of the ship, they didn't show themselves to prove it.

  Soon they reached the end of the long hallway and met up with a door labeled CREW ONLY. Quin looked about in all directions, but the halls that led to the door still stood empty. He tried the handle, and the door was locked.

  Quin pulled Doctor Cherryman's keys from his pocket and tried them. He had no idea which of the keys might work for this particular lock, but there weren't too many of them. In no time at all, he felt the lock turn, and with a twist of its knob the door opened wide.

  Before he opened the door, Quin turned to Lucy. "You should go back to your cabin," he said. "I can handle this."

  "Don't be a twit." Lucy screwed up her face at him. "We've known each other far too long for you to become chivalrous for me now. As a suffragette, I find it insulting."

  "I know, Luce, and I'm sorry, but–"

  "But what? What's there to 'but' about? I'm no wallflower you need to protect from the brutal realities of the real world. Now open that door, and let's get on with it."

  Quin wanted to explain to her that he knew she was right but still couldn't stomach the idea of walking with her into danger. No matter how capable she might be, the thought that she might be hurt or killed rattled him to his core. Part of that came from his growing sense of how much he truly loved her. The rest came from just having watched their best friend Abe torn apart by a vampire that very night. He didn't think he could bear watching the same thing happen to Lucy.

  He left all of this unvoiced though. He knew the exact arguments she would lay out for her side of the case, and he knew that she wouldn't allow him to get rid of her. In the end, he had to admit to himself that he wanted her there with him anyhow, and allowing himself just that small bit of selfishness was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.