Carpathia (27 page)

  "You judged our actions by a rogue member of our family," Dushko said. He pointed at Quin. "You killed Elisabetta. By the same criteria, I should bathe in the blood of every last one of you."

  Quin felt every eye in the room turn on him. The people who had just been singing his praises as their hero stood ready to turn against him now, to condemn him for exposing them to this horrible threat. "Isn't that what you plan to do anyhow?" he asked.

  Dushko flashed a broad, even smile. "Why of course it is."

  "But you can't invite those creatures into here," Quin said. "Only someone who legitimately lives on the ship – who belongs here – can do that."

  "Exactly right," Dushko said, but the smile never left his lips. "And exactly wrong. You're right that only someone who belongs on the ship can invite a vampire into its rooms. Fortunately, I'm not just a passenger on the Cunard Line. I'm also its largest stockholder."

  Quin felt his heart skip a beat.

  Dushko took advantage of the shock running through the diners to turn toward the windows and speak to the vampires standing beyond them, glaring with vicious hatred at the men and women inside the well-lit dining room, just beyond their reach. "Come in, my friends! Enter and be welcome! You may treat this ship as your own!"

  As one, the vampires leaped into the air and smashed into the windows before them. Glass panes shattered all around as the creatures cascaded into the room, emerging unharmed and exposing their angry fangs at the screaming passengers they stalked.

  The vampires halted there, though, just steps inside the windows. The passengers cowered before them, unsure as to what they could do from that point forward to save themselves. A woman near the edge of the room fainted, and her husband failed to catch her before she toppled into the chair behind her.

  "You don't have to do this," Captain Rostron said.

  "Wrong again!" Dushko said. "As long as our existence could have been kept a secret, I might have agreed with you, but how many of you saw our friends being slaughtered today? How many people will they tell if they are allowed to leave this ship?"

  He grabbed the edge of the captain's table and tossed it aside as if it were little more than a child's toy.

  "I bought this shipping line to avoid this trouble. I was going to bring my people back to my homeland on this voyage, to remove them from the temptations and the dangers of the New World. We had no intention of harming anyone on this trip."

  Dushko stalked up to the captain and stood there, glaring into the man's face. He was so close that Quin could smell the rotten air of the breath escaping from his undead lungs.

  "We would have slipped away in the night and never bothered you again. But now you've forced my hand. Because of what you have done, every living person on this ship must die."

 
 

 
 
 

Quin reached into his pocket and drew out the crucifix he still had hidden there. The moment he did so, Lucy did the same. They both thrust them at Dushko, who flinched at the sight of them.

  "You two and your damned trinkets," he said, glowering at Quin and Lucy as he backed away, keeping them at a safe distance. "I'll make sure you're buried with them."

  Quin glanced around at the other passengers. Some of them had their own crosses or crucifixes or rosaries with them, he saw, and they were fishing them out of their pockets or from the chains around their necks as well. "We might not be such easy prey as you think."

  The vampires lining the outside of the room looked to Dushko for instruction, but the man stood there, frozen for the moment. Perhaps he'd hoped that the passengers had given up all religion after destroying the vampires trapped in the hold. Either way, he seemed utterly unprepared for the appearance of these things, and Quin wondered how such a man would have made such a terrible oversight.

  Then he realized that Dushko wasn't glaring at him any longer. He was staring at something behind him.

  Quin snapped his neck around to see Brody Murtagh standing along the room's fore wall, grinning at him. He spoke one word in a soft and easy voice. "Boo."

  Lucy let out a little scream she couldn't manage to entirely stifle. Quin reached out and held her hand, and she clutched it hard enough that he feared for his fingers. "Quin," she said as she gaped at the man. "He has a gun."

  Quin's gaze fell to Murtagh's hands, and he spotted the pistol stuffed in the man's fist. It was a hunk of black metal, polished and deadly, and it was pointed straight at his heart.

  "Just like an Englishman," Murtagh said with a sneer. "bringing a crucifix to a gunfight. You're always fighting your last war, and you never realize when the game has changed."

  Quin stepped in front of Lucy, putting himself between her and Murtagh. The man laughed.

  "You should worry about yourself more than your lass there, boyo. I won't harm a hair on her head. She saved my life, didn't she?" Murtagh winked at Lucy. "Or at least you tried to. Too bad I didn't have a life to save."

  Lucy scowled at the man as she stepped in front of Quin. "You leave him alone," she said, holding her crucifix before her.

  Murtagh winced at the sight of the crucifix and readjusted his grip on his pistol. "Now don't go getting any fancy ideas in that head of yours, fair Lucy. I'd much rather not shoot you." He licked his lips, running his tongue past his exposed fangs, long and white. "I've much more entertaining plans for you."

  Quin stepped up next to Lucy, his crucifix held before him, forming a wall past which Murtagh could not pass.

  The man rolled his eyes at them both. "Yes, yes, very cute, but you misunderstand my intentions here, folks. I'm not here for you." He pointed the gun over Quin's shoulder. "I'm here to kill him."

  Quin glanced back to see Dushko standing in Murtagh's sights and glaring at him with utter indignity and defiance. The vampire spat on the floor between them, the spittle a thick red, and said. "So it's like that now, is it, Brody? Do your worst."

  Murtagh spoke to everyone in the room then. "You people here in the room – you breathers. This man proposed killing every last one of you. If you help me kill him instead, I'll let you live."

  "You're a damned liar!" Dushko said. "You'll keep them as cattle and feed on them at will."

  Murtagh winked at Dushko. "And what's so wrong with giving their lives a purpose?"

  "Death would be a finer mercy."

  Quin couldn't believe the two vampires were arguing over which of them offered a better deal: death or domination? He started to edge away from the line between the two of them and pulled Lucy along with him. He tried to catch Abe's eye, but his friend wouldn't take his attention off of Murtagh.

  "This is an abomination!" Captain Rostron said. "I order the two of you off my ship immediately. None of us have any intention of complying with either one of you, and we will fight you for both our freedom and our lives to our very last breaths."

  "How excellent," Murtagh said with a wild gleam in his eye. "And here I was thinking you weren't going to be any fun at all."

  Dushko spoke to the other vampires. "It's time for us to put an end to this."

  Murtagh appealed to them as well. "Damn right it is. Stick with me, boyos, and we'll end all this nonsense about going back to the old country and burying ourselves deep. Once we take the ship, I'm going to drive it straight into New York harbor – and then we start to feed. The entire city will be ours!"

  Dushko's jaw dropped open. "You can't be serious. You would jeopardize us all for the sake of sating your appetite?"

  "It's not us I'm planning to jeopardize, friend. It's time for the vampires to step from the shadows. We're at the top of the food chain, and it's time the human race found out."

  Dushko threw back his head, and his fangs jutted out from his mouth like those of a howling wolf. His hands formed into horrible claws, and his eyes filled up with a crimson red. "No. It's time to put you down like the rabid beast you are!"

  With that, Dushko launched himself at Murtagh. Quin pushed Lucy out of the way, and the older vampire hurtled past them, straight at his prey. Murtagh had time to squeeze off a single shot with his pistol before Dushko was on him.

 
 

 
 
 

The first class dining room erupted into a riot. As Murtagh and Dushko crashed into each other, the other vampires began attacking everything in the room that moved. Some of them seemed to have chosen to back either one of their leaders or the other, and these found foes on the opposite side and brawled amongst themselves. Others took advantage of the chaos to attack the nearest humans, tearing into them and feeding with horrifying abandon.

  Screams of terror rang throughout the room. Men and women fought for their lives and for those of their loved ones. Children scrambled under tables or joined the few adults able to flee, screeching and crying as they went. Blood flew everywhere and spattered everything.

  "Grab the captain," Quin said to Lucy. She did just that, reaching for the man and holding her crucifix before her to ward off the vampires who dared to venture in their direction.

  Most of the vampires seemed to give the fight between Murtagh and Dushko a wide berth. While they might be willing to pick a side in the battle, they didn't wish to get involved in the actual fight, perhaps for fear that they'd be ripped apart in the melee. From the vicious way in which the two leaders clashed, Quin could sympathize.

  Quin darted past Lucy and the captain and grabbed Abe by the arm. His friend had sat there, watching the fight with interest but showing no concern for his own safety. Quin hauled him to his feet and dragged him after Lucy and the captain, who were racing for the smashed-open windows on the dining room's starboard side. As he went, he held the crucifix before him like a shield, and the few vampires who veered in his direction moved off in search of easier prey.

  The captain climbed through the busted window first and then helped Lucy out after him. Quin pushed Abe out after her and then joined them on the Boat Deck. Sounds of mayhem trailed behind them as they charged forward up the open deck, weaving their way past the lifeboats from the
Titanic
that lay scattered there.

  "We need to get to the bridge," Captain Rostron said.

  "Why?" Lucy said. "What good will that do us? They can find us there as easily as anywhere."

  "True enough, Miss Seward," he said, "but it's not our own lives I'm worried about any longer. As far as I'm concerned, every man, woman, and child aboard this ship is already doomed."

  Quin sprinted forward and grabbed the officer by his shoulder, hauling him to a halt as they reached the bottom of the stairs that led down to the Bridge Deck. "I don't like to hear that kind of talk, sir," he said. "As long as any one of us is still breathing, there's hope. If surviving the
Titanic
taught me anything, it's that."

  Rostron shrugged off Quin's hand. "Yes, well, I suppose that's very comforting to all the people who went down with her, isn't it?"

  "They're not here to argue with you, captain," Lucy said. "So we'll just have to stand in their place."

  The captain put up his hands. "We are no longer on a passenger ship. These vampires have declared war on the human race, and there's only one way for us to win it."

  "What?" Quin felt a horrible chill shoot through him. A new round of screams erupted from the dining room they'd left behind. He gave the captain a hard look. "What do you have planned, sir?"

  Captain Rostron grimaced. "I thought we'd finished them all," he said. "You witnessed how many of them we ripped out of the Number Nine Hold and destroyed. But they seem to have infested the entire ship like rats."

  "But how, sir?" Lucy asked. "Where else could so many of them hide, even on a ship this large. They have to have slept through the day somewhere."

  The captain shook his head. "That's not the point now. It's clear that it's impossible for us to ferret out every last one of them. Even if we somehow manage to survive to the morning, they'll just crawl out of the woodwork the very next night. There aren't many solutions to a problem like this. Not many damn options at all."

  Quin and Lucy gaped at the man. Abe stared at him without a hint of expression on his face.

  Captain Rostron straightened his jacket and stared back at them with his chin stuck out. "I know my duty. I will do what must be done."

  Abe spoke then for the first time since the troubles had begun. Until now, he'd seemed to be sleepwalking through the disaster, a mere observer at the most horrible point of his life. "You're going to scuttle this ship." He seemed to be surprised to hear the words leaving his lips, as if he hadn't thought of them until he spoke them. "You're going to kill us all."

  The captain stiffened at this. "You heard those creatures in there. No matter which one of them wins, we're already dead. The best we can hope for is to take them down with us."

  "You can't do that," Lucy said. "We– we can't die like that."

  "You can't stop me," the captain said. Lines of weariness appeared on his face, and he loosed a deep sigh. "Yes, you two young men might be able to wrestle me to the ground and hold on to me until the vampires come to kill us all. What good will that do any of us?"

  "How do you plan to do it?" Quin asked.

  "I'll order the boilers blown." The captain spoke in a grim, clipped tone, as if reporting the fact that the deed had already been done. "It will take some time for the steam to build up until it creates enough pressure to explode, but when they go, the boilers will blast holes in the bottom of the ship. She'll founder soon after that."