Carpathia (29 page)

  Murtagh leaped up onto the foremost railing, then jumped down to the Bridge Deck to land mere feet away from Lucy, Abe, and Quin. Spatters of blood covered his face, and it had soaked through parts of his jacket on the side where he'd been carrying the body. He smiled at them with an insane gleam in his eyes. To Quin, he seemed like a blood-mad wolf who'd already killed and eaten his fill but couldn't stop from gorging himself again.

  Quin and Lucy held up their crucifixes before them. It seemed ridiculous to trust the small and fragile icons as a defense against such a powerful creature, but they had nothing else at hand. Quin's gaze darted about and fell upon the wooden oars resting inside the lifeboat. They were too long and unwieldy to be of any use there on the promenade on which they stood, but it comforted him to have something nearby that he might be able to break into a stake.

  Murtagh came to a halt a respectful distance from the crucifixes. He wiped his crimson-covered chin on the sleeve of his jacket and favored Lucy, Abe, and Quin with a lopsided grin. It seemed to acknowledge that they were safe for now, but that wouldn't last long.

  "I owe you three a debt of gratitude." Murtagh spoke with a slur, like he was drunk on the blood that trickled from his fang-filled mouth. "If you hadn't meddled about in Dushko's business, I'd probably be dead by now."

  "How's that?" Quin said. He tried to step between the vampire and Lucy, but she would have none of it. She clasped his hand instead and held him to her side. Abe joined them, standing on Lucy's other side.

  "Sure, you set him on me in the first place, spotting me tossing that bloke's body overboard, but that was my fault, wasn't it? I was being sloppy. And Dushko wanted to kill me for it."

  Murtagh leaned in, and Quin could smell the blood on the man's breath. "But then you got his attention, didn't you? Went and killed so many of his pack. He couldn't ignore it anymore. Couldn't pretend to be hiding any longer. You forced his hand."

  A new round of screams rang out from the exposed forward section of the Shelter Deck, behind Quin. If he turned around, he could have seen down there from where he stood on the Bridge Deck, but he didn't dare take his eyes off Murtagh. Abe had no such compunctions, though, and he twisted about to gaze down over the railing that separated them from the deck below.

  Abe didn't gasp in horror or sympathy. He just stared down at the tableau on the Shelter Deck and frowned so deep that Quin wondered if the lines on his face might be made permanent. "They must have finished up in our dining room," Abe said, his voice flat and emotionless. "They've moved on to the second class now."

  Quin recalled that the second class dining room sat directly below them. He'd passed through it before while searching for Lucy, and he could imagine the vampires bursting in and continuing their blood-drenched rampage. It would only be a matter of time before they completed their grisly work and turned their attention to the masses of people in steerage. And when they were done with them, they'd come for anyone else still living.

  "You might as well toss your little trinkets there into the deep blue sea," Murtagh said. "Why delay things? Make it easy on me, and return the favor."

  "You have no power over these so-called trinkets," Lucy said defiantly, "just as you have no power over us. We'll not hand that over to you willingly. Not ever."

  "What's more," Abe added, "all we have to do is wait you out. Once the captain scuttles the ship, you'll be as doomed as us."

  Quin and Lucy goggled at Abe. Murtagh glowered at him with the full hatred of a man who can see his dream being plucked from his grasp. Abe looked back at them both with a blank stare.

  "How?" Murtagh said. "Where?"

  "You don't care about who, when, or why?" A hint of a smile curled Abe's lips. "I suppose you think you've figured all that out on your own."

  Murtagh pounced at Abe, his hands out like a wolf's slashing claws. Quin stabbed his crucifix between them, and slapped the vampire on the hand with it. He didn't have time to think about what he was doing or why. He only knew he had to keep Murtagh away from his friend.

  Murtagh snatched his hand away and leaped back out of Quin's reach, howling in pain the entire time. He stared down at his hand to see where the crucifix had touched it, and he saw the skin there begin to boil away.

  "How is he going to do it?" Murtagh screeched. "Tell me, damn you, or I'll kill everyone aboard this ship!"

  "You were already going to do that," Abe said. "At least this way, we're taking you with us."

  Still cradling his burning hand, Murtagh bellowed his frustration at them, then turned and dove overboard. Lucy, Quin, and Abe rushed to the railing to watch him fall. He hit the waves with a rough splash and was gone.

 
 

 
 
 

Brody dove deep beneath the ocean's surface, trying to put an end to the horrible burning on his skin. At first he had feared that the bubbling destruction of his hand might work its way up his arm until it reached his body and put an end to him, but it seemed to stop as soon as he got far enough away from the damned crucifix that had caused it. Perhaps the waters of the North Atlantic had quenched the destruction instead. Either way, it still hurt like he had stuffed his fist into a blazing bed of hot coals.

  Once he was sure he would survive, Brody swam back to the surface as fast as he could. The moment he broke through the waves from beneath, he transformed into a bat and flapped his way back up toward the ship. It seemed to be slowing down now, which made it easier to catch it, but only served to confirm Brody's suspicions that those fools on the Bridge Deck hadn't been lying to him.

  A part of him had hoped that Lucy and her friends had only been trying to bluff him into heading off on a desperate hunt through the ship, trying to figure out how the captain planned to sink it. Now it seemed he would have to do just that. He would have to act fast. If he failed to stop the crew from scuttling the ship, it might mean the end of them all.

  The breathers could survive the end of the
Carpathia
. All they had to do was find their way into a lifeboat and wait for help to arrive. The vampires didn't have that luxury.

  If they couldn't make it to land in time, the chances that they would find some sort of shelter from the sunlight when it rose the next day was small. Most of them would wind up roasting with the coming of the new day. Failing that, they might sink to the bottom of the sea. While vampires didn't need to breathe, Brody knew of the horrible pressures at such depths, and even one of the undead might be crushed permanently under such incredible circumstances.

  Brody flew up and landed on the rear railing of the Shelter Deck, right where he'd leaped from after Lucy and her damned friend Quin had spotted him dumping that body over it the night before. Unlike that night, the deck did not stand empty. Scores of people filled it now, having been herded there by a force of hungry vampires blood-drunk on their earlier kills and heads swimming with the thought that the time for hiding in the shadows of humanity had finally come to an end.

  As he watched, a man stepped up to protect some of the others. Brody recognized him as Doctor Cherryman, and he saw that he held a rosary in his hand and swung it before him like a lantern against the vampires' darkness. He had gathered a group of people behind them, and they huddled together, pressing against his back for protection.

  Furious about the injury that Quin had done him, Brody let loose a ferocious growl that froze everyone on the open deck in their tracks. Both vampires and humans stopped to stare up at him, some in shock and terror, others in anticipation of what he might say next. Brody leaped from the railing and landed before the doctor, just out of reach of his rosary.

  The vampires who had been standing there cleared out of the way for him before his feet hit the ground. Cherryman's charges gasped in horror, but the doctor himself thrust his rosary forward. "Stay back, you beasts! You've had enough blood for tonight!"

  Brody sneered at the man. "You think because you keep bits of heaven about you that they can protect you from hell? So educated, and yet so naïve."

  "The power of God protects us!" The doctor stepped forward, using the rosary as a shield. "I command you and your kind to leave this ship!"

  Brody arched his eyebrows at the man and then started to laugh. "You're a precious one, aren't you?"

  The doctor's eyes went to Brody's injured hand. "You've already witnessed the power of God," he said. "Do not dare to tempt His wrath again!"

  "His wrath?" Brody couldn't believe what the man had said to him. "
His
wrath? Seems to me you ought to be a lot more terrified of mine!"

  Brody reached back into the crowd of people behind him and grabbed a steward by his white jacket. The man had been cowering among a group of his fellows, hoping that someone wouldn't notice him, and Brody relished the horror awakening in the man as he realized his impending doom. He lifted the man up off his feet and presented him to the doctor so that he could hear the steward whimper.

  "That rosary might be a shield against me," Brody said, "but I'm hardly the only dangerous thing aboard this ship."

  With that, Brody whirled the man in a circle around him and hurled him at Doctor Cherryman as fast as he could. The steward slammed into the man, and the impact sent both of them sprawling back into the small crowd of hopefuls who'd taken shelter behind the doctor. The rosary flew out of the doctor's grasp and skittered along the deck until it came to a rest near the railing.

  Brody lunged forward and grabbed the doctor by the lapels of his jacket. He hauled him out of the pile of people and snarled into his face. "Where's your God now, doctor?"

  Before the doctor could muster an answer, Brody's head darted forward, and he sank his fangs into the man's exposed neck. Rather than bite and drink, though, he savaged the man's throat and tore it apart.

  As Doctor Cherryman's blood flooded from his body and onto the screaming people he'd tried to save, Brody howled in triumph. Then he brought the doctor back with one hand and used his body to sweep the rosary right off the deck and into the sea.

  A roar of approval went up from the vampires, drowning out the whimpers and cries of the humans forced to bear witness to this awful display of deadly power. Brody turned to them and said, "You are now my people, and this ship is ours! But the people here are scheming to take it from us. They want to kill us all!"

  Every voice but Brody's fell silent at his words. "The damned captain is trying to scuttle this ship. We need to stop him. Leave these cattle be, and help me save the
Carpathia!"

 
 

 
 
 

"We need to leave," Quin said to Lucy and Abe. "There's nothing we can do to stop Brody and his vampires. We have to trust to the captain and his men to succeed."

  Lucy nodded in agreement. "We can't do anything else here. Our only chance to survive is to get off this ship as soon as possible."

  Abe gave his friends a weak smile. His face was deathly pale. "I'm in total agreement with the two of you. I only wish I could come with you."

  Quin stared at Abe. "What are you talking about? There's nothing keeping you here. Get in the boat with Lucy. I'll lower it down and then jump in after you."

  "I was the one who made that offer to you, Quin," Abe said. "Did you believe me when I said it?"

  "Why wouldn't I?" Quin didn't like the turn this conversation had just taken.

  Abe grimaced and glanced at his friends. "I lied, to both of you. I have no intention of leaving this ship. At least not yet. I can't."

  "You're ill," said Lucy. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "Right and wrong. I am ill, worse than I have ever been, so much so that death holds out the attractive possibility of an easy release. But I'm afraid I know exactly what I'm talking about. I can't leave here without her."

  "Without who?"

  "Without me."

  Quin whipped about, startled, and found Elisabetta Ecsed standing there next to them. He hadn't heard her walking toward them, not a single step or breath. She looked much like she had before Abe and he had struggled with her in her cabin – all except for the black patch she wore over her eye, the one that he'd stabbed through with a pencil.

  "I saw you… turn to dust." Quin's voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears.

  "I got better." Elisabetta smiled at him without a hint of warmth, exposing the fangs jutting from her gums. She waved off Quin's disbelief. "It was after dark. I had just fed. I was in the full of my powers. What makes you think you could kill me with a pencil to the eye?"

  Quin stared at her. "It seemed to have done just that."

  "What do you want?" Lucy stepped forward, her crucifix held to her chest in what Quin could only interpret as a gesture of respect. She hadn't fought with the woman in her cabin, hadn't seen her bite into Abe's throat. In her gut, she didn't understand what Elisabetta could do.

  "What I already have," Elisabetta said. "Your friend here is mine. I would like to leave with him."

  "You can't come with us," Quin said.

  Elisabetta laughed, an honest laugh of surprise and delight. "Oh, darling, I have no plans to put myself in a boat with the two of you. Not under the worst of circumstances. But my Abraham here can row away with me and keep me safe until we find a suitable haven."

  "You can't go with her," Quin said to Abe. His friend only gave him a reluctant shrug, as if he'd signed a bad contract with the woman and now no longer could imagine any means of getting out of it.

  Elisabetta reached out and slashed one of the ropes holding the lifeboat in its davit. The ship pitched over, hanging only from the rope attached to its prow. Dirt and supplies spilled out of it and into the still ocean below. Moving fast enough that Quin found her actions hard to follow, Elisabetta slashed at the other rope holding up the lifeboat, and the whole thing splashed down into the water.