Carpathia (25 page)

  Crooker stiffened his upper lip. "I know it's insane, sir, but their story makes some weird kind of sense."

  "Can you hear yourself? You're saying that the existence of real-life vampires makes sense. In what world might that be?"

  "Well, it would serve to answer a great deal of the questions for which you yourself charged me to find answers. I can't think of anything less strange that could manage it."

  Rostron closed his eyes and bent his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose between a forefinger and thumb. When he lowered his hand and reopened his eyes, he spoke in clear and gentle words.

  "We've all been under a great deal of stress here, I know." He looked at Quin and Lucy. "I'm sure that surviving the sinking of
Titanic
would have tried the sanity of all the saints, but I'm begging you to calm down and listen to reason before you make it worse."

  "I'm afraid it's already worse than we know, sir," Lucy said. "The only way you could make it even worse than that would be by refusing to listen to us until it's too late."

  Quin stared out of the windows that lined the front of the bridge. The sky to the west was still dark blue, although dawn had already broken behind the ship as it steamed toward New York. He couldn't see the sunrise from here, but it comforted Quin to know that it had come and that the day would only get brighter from here. After the horrors of the night he'd had, he clung to that thought like a lifeline.

  "The horrors we've witnessed on this ship are far darker than anything we witnessed on the
Titanic
, sir," Quin said. "The sunrise may have given us a respite, but if we fail to act before the sun sets again, we'll have sealed our doom and will have no one to blame but ourselves."

  The captain mused over this for a long moment, leaving Quin to wonder if he would grant their request for help or have them locked in their rooms for the safety of the rest of the ship. If that happened, Quin would have to figure out a way to get himself and Lucy off the
Carpathia
before night fell. Floating adrift in the middle of the ocean seemed to offer much better prospects than waiting for the vampires in the hold to wake up and devour every soul on board one by one.

  The captain tugged at his chin for a moment, then stood ramrod straight to announce his decision. Everyone in the room mirrored his motion and paid him their full attention. He cleared his throat and spoke.

  "Mr Crooker. Assemble a team of men and go with these young people to open the hatch above the aft hold."

  Lucy gasped in glee and clapped her hands together. A broad smile grew on Quin's face. Even Mr Crooker seemed relieved.

  "If there's nothing to be found, I expect our guests here to make a full apology and to refrain from making such wild accusations for the remainder of the trip. I'll be generous enough to attribute their lunacy to the stress that they've undergone on their voyage, but that will be the end of it."

  Lucy wrinkled her brow at the captain. "But if you don't believe us, sir, then what has possessed you to humor us in this way?"

  A thin smile flickered across the captain's lips. "As the man in charge of this ship, I am in a position in which I can afford to grant my guests such leeway. I don't believe you'll find anything so horrific in her hold as you claim, but I don't think that a little sunshine is likely to damage the kind of cargo the
Carpathia
carries either."

  Quin vigorously shook the captain's hand. "Thank you so much, sir!" he said.

  Captain Rostron arched an eyebrow at Quin. "It's rare for me to see someone so grateful for not having won my trust."

  "And it's just as rare for me to be pleased about such a thing," Quin said. "I'm just happy to be given a chance to prove the truth of what we say."

  The captain gave Quin a sage nod. "If what you say is true, though, I would think you'd have been happier to have been proved wrong."

 
 

 
 
 

Lucy squeezed Quin's hand as they stood on the Upper Deck and watched the sailors prepare to open the
Carpathia
's aftmost hatch. It was early still, but the sun had already risen over the eastern horizon. A small set of rooms that included the ship's laundry, among other things, sat aft of the hatch and cast long shadows across that part of the ship. Where Quin and Lucy stood, though, the sun's rays had already begun to work the night's chill from their weary bones.

  "Step lively there," Mr Crooker said to the sailors who had surrounded the hatch. They worked to remove the battens from the edges while the crane operator lowered his hook into place so that one of the other sailors could attach it to the set of ropes that ran from a central point over the hatch to each of its edges. The men moved with the surety of people who had spent years on the seas and knew their jobs well.

  Once the crane was in place and attached, the other sailors stepped back from the hatch, and the crane operator set to work. Crooker came over to stand next to Quin and Lucy. "Take care of the hatch once it comes free," he said. "We're running on smooth seas right now, but we normally don't use the cranes except when we're in port. There's rarely a need."

  "You have our undying thanks for making an exception for us, sir," Lucy said. She shivered despite the warming sun, and Quin offered her his coat.

  She declined. "It's not the temperature that's bothering me," she said. "You're very kind, but I don't think stealing your coat would help either one of us."

  Despite that, she took Quin's hand in hers and held it tight. He couldn't help the smile that came to his face.

  Crooker gave the crane operator the signal. "Bring her up!"

  The crane whined into action, taking up the slack in the line until it pulled taut against the ropes attached to the hatch. It hesitated there for a moment, and Quin held his breath. Then the hatch came free from the hole it covered.

  The hatch gave a metallic creak, and a rush of foul air came from below. The sailors nearby recoiled from it, cupping hands over faces and grunting in disgust. "Smells like a butcher's," one man said.

  Nothing came flying out of the hatch as Quin had feared might happen. Still, he hesitated to move toward the now-open hole and gaze down into the hold below. Crooker and the other sailors held back as well, and it wasn't until Lucy took the first step forward that Quin moved too.

  Crooker joined them both at the edge of the hole and peered down into it with them. Blackness beckoned.

  Crooker glanced at Quin and Lucy. "Is this what you were expecting to find?"

  "The sun's not quite high enough yet," Quin said as he pulled his borrowed flashlight out of his jacket pocket. He thumbed it on and pointed it down into the hold.

  The light's beam barely reached to the hold's distant floor. If Quin hadn't known about the smashed boxes and spilled dirt down there, he might not have been able to recognize them. Still, he'd been hoping for more.

  "Blimey!" Crooker said. "Someone's destroyed the cargo. It's like a herd of elephants got loose down there."

  Quin didn't say a word. He and Lucy knew what had done it. Now they just needed to show everyone else.

  Lucy grabbed Quin's arm with one hand and stabbed a finger down into the darkness with the other. "There," she said.

  Quin brought the flashlight in line with the direction in which Lucy was pointing. He spotted one of the vampires hanging upside down from the rafters that bordered the hold. He was barefoot and grasped onto the steel beam above him with clawlike toes. He had his arms crossed in front of him in the manner of a corpse on display, and leathery wings that sprang from the undersides of his arms wrapped around him like a blanket. He swung there with the rhythm of the ship as it rocked on the waves. He seemed thin and frail, as if his bones were hollow, and he slept there undisturbed by the light filtering down toward him.

  "God Almighty," Crooker said, his voice but a whisper. "I'd been hoping you two were bughouse insane."

  "So were we," Lucy said. "So were we."

  Quin brought the flashlight's beam around the edge of the hole and caught several more of the creatures in its light. They included both men and women of a variety of ages, all of them hanging upside-down from their deformed feet. A few of them squirmed as the flashlight's beam touched them, and Quin moved it away fast lest he bring them fully awake.

  Some of the other sailors came forward now. They spotted the vampires as well and pointed and whispered about them in horrified tones. Many of them crossed themselves, and not a few blanched in fear.

  "So what do we do now?" Crooker said. "Can't we just seal the hatch and leave them there until we reach New York?"

  "I don't think that's an option," Quin said. "Even if we sealed them in with garlic or a line of crucifixes, they might find a way to get out. Vampires are supposed to be able to turn to mist. If that's so, we'll never keep them contained in there."

  "Then what hope do we have of being able to kill them?" Crooker said. "If they can just evaporate when we come at them, we don't have a chance."

  Lucy shook her head. "They can only manage that at nighttime, when their powers are at their peak. Right now, they're stuck as they are. They're still dangerous, but they can be attacked. They can be beaten."

  "How?" Crooker asked, his voice full of disbelief.

  Quin looked up and noticed everyone on this end of the deck staring at him, hanging on his every word. He looked to Lucy and nodded. "Show them."

  Lucy reached into her pocket and produced a small compact she'd borrowed from the ship's store. She opened it and turned it over, letting the makeup powder fall out of it. It caught in the wind, which swirled it away.

  Lucy held the compact high, shoving its mirrored side into the sun. Then she angled the mirror to reflect the sunlight straight down into the hold below. As Quin watched, she aimed it at the first vampire they'd spotted.

  The sunbeam hit the vampire square in the exposed part of his legs, and the skin there burst into flames. He let go of the steel beam from which he hung and spread his wings wide, but it was too late. Once set ablaze by the sun, he couldn't put out the fire. It snaked along his flesh until it engulfed him to the waist and kept climbing.

  Howling in terror and agony, the vampire flapped around the hold, trying to escape his own blazing skin. The light he cast illuminated new parts of the hold and revealed many more vampires hiding down there, each of them cringing at the creature's distress but none of them moving to help. Some of them even stayed asleep, apparently undisturbed by the dying vampire's horrible screeching.

  The vampire let out an ear-piercing howl and came flapping straight up for the open hatch. Quin pulled Lucy back just as the thing zipped past them, striving for some means of escape. He felt the heat from its flames scorch his face.

  The sailors all fell back in horror as the vampire climbed higher. As it rose above the level of the hatch, it came fully out into the sunlight, and its entire body burst into an incinerating fire. The heat caused everyone on the deck to recoil.

  The vampire let out one last gut-wrenching scream before the blaze consumed it from head to toe, leaving nothing behind but a thin column of ash. The westerly winds caught this in midair and swept it away off the back of the ship, where Quin could only imagine it would settle into the ocean and be churned into the waters by the
Carpathia's wake.

  The vampire gone, Crooker stared at the compact in Lucy's hand with a mixture of horror and respect. He swallowed hard and spoke. "I think we're going to need a lot more mirrors."

 
 

 
 
 

At Crooker's orders, the sailors gathered every spare mirror they could find and brought them back to the open hatch. By the time they returned, a number of the passengers had been awakened by the commotion and had crept out onto any section of open deck with a view of the open hatch to see what was happening. Crooker had ordered the deck around the hatch to be roped off, and a number of people from steerage had gathered in growing ranks behind it, trying to rubberneck for a better view.

  Captain Rostron had come back from the bridge to join Crooker, Lucy, and Quin. He stood there next to them and stared at the hatch, shaking his head. "It appears I owe you good people a sincere apology." He spoke as if he couldn't believe the words were forming in his mouth.

  Quin shook off the man's request for forgiveness. "No need at all, captain," he said. "I would have felt the same way as you in such circumstances. Until I was confronted with proof myself, in fact, I did."

  "Thank you for being open minded enough to allow Mr Crooker to verify our claims, sir," Lucy said. "It would have been far too easy for you to ignore our pleas."

  "Yes, well." The captain cleared his throat. "It's to all our fortune that I didn't, and that goes down to your persistence. We owe you all a great debt."

  "We're not out of this yet, captain." Quin shuddered to think about how hard it would be to root the vampires out of the ship. "Have you seen Mr Dragomir this morning?"

  The sailors with their mirrors gathered around the edges of the hatch. The sun had risen higher in the time it had taken them to collect their supplies, which Quin knew would make their task that much easier. He wished the day would hurry up to noon so that the sun could stand directly overhead and offer them the best of its protection, but he knew that he'd then want time to stop so it could stay there forever – or at least until they reached New York.

  The captain frowned. "I'm afraid he's not turned up. I sent some men down to his cabin to rouse him, but they reported back that it was empty."