Carpathia (32 page)

  "Abe."

  Murtagh's eyes flung wide in surprise as he heard Abe's form land in the lifeboat, behind him. Quin renewed his grip on the man's ankle, trying to make sure that Murtagh couldn't escape. He wasn't sure if it would do any good, but if he had any means of making what was left of Murtagh's existence short and brutal, he meant to take advantage of it.

  Abe lunged at Murtagh and hit him so hard that the entire lifeboat capsized from the impact. It toppled over in its davit, dumping the three men out of it to land on the roof of the
Carpathia
's bridge.

  Quin landed on top of Murtagh, which cushioned the fall, but only a little. The pain in his leg flared in protest, and he would have cried out in agony had the sensation not come so close to making him pass out. His hand went to the fragment of wood still spearing through his leg, and he found it soaked with his own warm blood.

  The first thing Quin saw as the black blotches vanished from his vision was Lucy still standing there with the crucifix in her hand. She'd somehow managed to keep the other vampires at bay until now, and she returned to that purpose again with renewed vigor. The fact that she not only still lived but continued to fight on gave Quin new hope. If she refused to give up on them, how could he?

  Abe had landed a few feet away from Murtagh and rolled toward the other vampires. They surged toward him now, sensing perhaps that he would be easy prey. Lucy leaped between Abe and them and slapped one overeager bloodsucker with the front of her crucifix.

  The skin on the vampire's face began to boil away immediately, curling away from the bones beneath like newspaper in a raging fire. He howled in horror and leaped into the air as his flesh continued to fall away from his frame. He disappeared into the night, his pitiful screams cut off only with the merciful sound of a splash.

  The other vampires hauled back then. They'd been getting braver about approaching Lucy, knowing that she couldn't hold out against all of them, not forever. The vivid display of her crucifix's power against them put caution back into their cold, still hearts.

  Murtagh shoved Quin off and scrambled to his feet, snarling like a rabid wolf and ready to meet Abe face to face. Abe leaped up, his arms spread wide and his fingers flexing out into claws. Lucy wavered between joining Abe in his scrap with Murtagh and keeping the other vampires off his back. Quin pushed himself to his knees and groaned in pain as he pulled at the length of wood still caught in his leg.

  A deafening explosion rang out in the night, and the entire ship shook.

 
 

 
 
 

A fireball erupted near the middle of the
Carpathia
, spouting from the starboard side. The ship rocked to the port from the force of it, knocking everyone on top of the bridge's roof from their feet. A few of the vampires panicked and transformed into bats as they fell, then fluttered away into the night.

  The roar of the explosion echoed like thunder across the water. As it faded, the ship rocked back toward starboard, already heavier from the untold gallons of seawater that Quin knew must be flowing into the gaping hole the explosion had produced in the steel-sided ship. He hoped that the men who'd overtaxed the boilers to the point that they could produce such a blast had managed to escape the engine room before their fevered labors had borne fruit.

  Murtagh stood on the listing roof and gaped at Quin, Abe, and Lucy in naked outrage. "What have you done?"

  Abe helped Quin to his feet with a clawed hand that Quin didn't hesitate to accept. He could put a little weight on his injured leg without it giving way beneath him, but only just.

  "It was the captain," Quin said. Despite the chilly air, the pain from his leg sent sweat running down his face. "He blew the boilers, just as he threatened. The
Carpathia
is doomed."

  "You bloody, damned fools!" Murtagh raged at them, his fists formed into white-knuckled balls. "Going down with one ship wasn't enough for you? You've killed us all!"

  The other vampires on the roof – as well as others throughout the ship – threw back their heads and howled in dismay. The sun would be up in a few hours, Quin knew, and they would have no protection from it at all. They did the only thing they could in such circumstances.

  They fled.

  One by one at first, and then in larger groups, the vampires ran for the edge of the roof and hurled themselves off of it and into the frigid night. Quin listened for the splashes, but not one of them hit the water as they went. Instead, they changed themselves into bats and flapped away into the starry sky.

  "Come back!" Murtagh shouted after them. "You think there's a place out there for you to hide on the water? We have to make our stand here! We have to make it now!"

  Lucy crowed in triumph, and Abe slapped Quin on the back. Quin couldn't help but grin at the captain's success, but he never once took his eyes off Murtagh, whose fury grew with every second.

  Elsewhere on the ship, people screamed, cried, and bellowed for help. The sounds reminded Quin so much of that fateful night aboard the
Titanic
that they caused him to shiver.

  Even if the ship went down faster than the
Titanic
– and by the way it was already listing so hard, Quin suspected that it would – at least the
Carpathia
was sure to have enough lifeboats for the people aboard. She not only had all of her own, but many of the ones taken from the
Titanic
as well. Even if the captain hadn't had the Marconi operator radio for help, they were in a busy shipping lane off close to the coast of the United States. The people fortunate enough to become stuck on a lifeboat wouldn't be trapped there for long.

  "You did this," Murtagh said, turning on Lucy, Abe, and Quin with a nasty snarl. "The three of you spiteful little human cattle."

  "We were defending ourselves, and everyone else aboard this ship too," said Quin. His voice sounded shakier than he would have liked, but the words rang true.

  "And we'd do it again," Lucy said, her chin stuck out in defiance, the crucifix still in her hand.

  With the departure of the vampires, she'd regained much of her composure, far more than Quin, he had to admit. And in the middle of it all, she'd told him she loved him. The memory of that brought a smile to his lips as he gazed at her. He took her free hand in his, and she smiled back.

  Abe nodded. "I gave my life to stop you." He let go of Quin and looked down at his hands. "I allowed myself to be turned into this abomination." He looked up into Murtagh's eyes. "It was worth it."

  "If you don't like this shadowy life of ours, boyo, then allow me to relieve you of it!"

  When Abe had released Quin, he'd moved just far enough away from Lucy to be out of reach of her crucifix. Having seen what it could do to a vampire, Quin didn't blame him for being uncomfortable around it. Staying well away from it, though, gave any other vampire a clean shot at Abe too.

  Murtagh charged at Abe like an enraged bull and bowled them both clean over the edge of the roof. Quin tried to reach out for his friend, but he was gone and past him before he had a real chance. Lucy shouted out Abe's name, but that did as little as Quin's effort to keep the two vampires from tumbling away. They landed on the open section of the Shelter Deck fore of the bridge with a sickening thud.

 
 

 
 
 

Quin glanced around for the fastest way to drop the two levels to where the vampires wrestled with each other. He didn't know how he could be of any help to Abe, but he was determined to try. He spotted a rope hanging down from one of the cranes on the forward deck that hung attached to the edge of the bridge's roof, and he went to unhook it from its mooring.

  "What are you doing?" Lucy asked as she knelt to help him with the hook.

  "I have to get down there." Quin freed the hook and pulled on the rope. It had a little give to it, but not much. He hoped that once it took his weight it wouldn't just play out freely and let him fall.

  Down below them, Murtagh had sprung to his feet. He'd picked up a deck chair and hurled it at Abe, knocking him flat. That having succeeded, he threw everything else he could find at Abe: tables, lifebuoys, and more. He finished up with a cover he tore off a hatch and flung it at Abe, spinning it like a buzzsaw blade.

  Abe withered under the assault. He'd never been much for brawling outside of an occasional bout in the ring, and even during those rare matches he'd fought like a gentleman. Murtagh, on the other hand, scrapped like a back-alley stray. There was no blow too low for him to strike, and he was happy to try them all.

  Quin hefted the heavy steel hook in his hand and stepped up to the edge of the bridge's roof. As he did, the ship tilted at an even sharper angle. The
Titanic
had taken hours to sink, but she'd only been holed near her prow. She was supposed to be unsinkable too.

  While a good ship, the
Carpathia
had never had that term applied to it, and the hole blown in its side meant that the entire ship could fill up with water that much faster. Quin also suspected the captain had purposefully left the bulkheads unsealed. If so, that would leave the ship with little in the way of defenses against the incoming sea.

  All that meant to Quin was he had less time than ever. He took a deep breath to steel himself and then leaped out into the open to swing out over the Shelter Deck.

  Lucy sprinted up and leaped onto Quin just as his feet left the bridge's roof. "You're not leaving without me!" she said.

  Delighted as he might have been to hear that under other circumstances, Quin hollered out in pain and dismay as Lucy grabbed onto him. He felt like his arms might give out at any second, but he knew that if he let go too early he would drop them from too high up and risk killing them both, so he held on not only for his own life but for Lucy's as well.

  Abe gritted his teeth and held on until they reached the low point of their swing. This put them only a few feet above the deck but did nothing to affect their momentum. Quin let go, and they fell the last little bit to the deck and went tumbling along it.

  The wood in Quin's leg stabbed even farther into his flesh, and he howled out in pain. As Lucy extricated herself from the jumble of limbs they'd created, she looked down at his wound and let fly an unladylike curse.

  "You're not going anywhere with that leg of yours," she said. She pulled her crucifix from where she'd stuffed it inside the collar of her dress before she'd hopped on board him for the ride down to the Shelter Deck. As she did, she knelt down and kissed him on the lips. "I have to help Abe. I'll be back as soon as I can."

  Quin put a hand to his mouth and stared after her for an instant as she turned and left. Of all the things that had happened to him today, the kiss might have been the most shocking. He knew, though, that he couldn't let her join the fight against Murtagh without him. She and Abe would need all the help they could get.

  He tried to get to his feet, but the wood lodged in his leg made it impossible. It just hurt too much every time he moved. He had to remove the gigantic splinter from his flesh as soon as possible.

  Gritting his teeth, Quin reached down and grabbed the splinter of wood with both hands and pulled with all his might. It slid out of his flesh far more easily than he had hoped, but he still screamed through every inch of its withdrawal. It hurt like hell, but removing the wood also gave him an odd kind of relief.

  It also allowed him to move again. He shoved himself to his feet, the splinter – which was as long as his forearm – still grasped in his fist. At first he thought that he'd taken a concussion and that it had thrown off his balance, but then he realized it had to do with how badly the ship was listing instead. Waves lapped at the starboard rail, showing how hungry the sea was for the entire ship.

  Quin staggered across the canted deck on unsteady feet and spotted Lucy standing between Murtagh and an injured Abe near the ship's prow. The edge of the fragment of the hatch that Murtagh had hurled at Abe had caught him in the chest and tore through his jacket and flesh. It seemed to have stopped shy of his heart, but Quin could see even from here that such a blow would have killed any still-living man.

  "You stay away from him!" Lucy said to Murtagh. "It's over, Brody! You lost!"

  "True," Murtagh said, "but that doesn't mean you can't lose too."

  Murtagh had a length of railing in his hand that he had torn from somewhere, and he cocked back his arm to hurl it straight at Lucy. Knowing he had run out of time, Quin lunged at the man, screaming from the pain he felt with every movement of his injured leg. He held the splinter he'd yanked from his leg up above his head in a twohanded grip, ready to drive it down into Murtagh's heart.

 
 

 
 
 

Murtagh heard Quin lumbering up behind him and turned to meet his charge. Too late for him to stop, Quin kept moving forward and brought the splinter down toward Murtagh with every bit of strength he had left. He only had one last chance left to save Abe and Lucy, and no matter how slim it might seem, he meant to take it.

  Murtagh swung out with the pipe in his hand and caught the splinter with it, knocking it clear out of Quin's grasp. It tumbled out over the starboard railing and landed in the Atlantic with a splash.

  "You idiots. How dare you?" Murtagh spoke with such menace in his voice that it made Quin want to curl up into a ball and cover his ears to escape it. "You've ruined everything. And for what? Your short, pathetic lives?"

  Quin tried to scramble away, but his leg betrayed him, buckling underneath. He might have still managed to stay on his feet, but Murtagh backhanded him to the deck. Blood flowed from his mouth, and the vampire loomed over him as he stared up in horror with waterfilled eyes.