Chapter Twenty-three
If the crew had stormed the cabin, Larten would not have been able to resist. He had passed out on top of his bed. It would have been a simple matter for them to turn him over, bare his left breast and drive a sharpened stake through his heart.
But superstition and fear swept through the sailors once they had dealt with Malora. Instead of rushing to finish the cruel business, they paused to debate the situation. And in that pause their doubts exploded.
“He’s a vampire,” one hissed, and explained what vampires were for those who didn’t know. It was a maelstrom of myths, theories and hysteria after that.
“He can turn into a bat.”
“He can turn into smoke and slip away.”
“He’s powerful at night, but weak in the day. We should wait for the sun.”
“A stake through the heart will destroy him.”
“So will sunlight.”
“And holy water, but we ain’t got any of that.”
“If we attack now and he wakes, he’ll be stronger than us.”
“Wait.”
“Daylight turns them to ash.”
“Aye, wait.”
“He can’t hide from the sun.”
“Wait.”
“Aye.”
“Wait.”
Larten was groggy when he awoke. He could have happily slept much longer, but something had disturbed him. Creaking noises, sharper and louder than the normal twangs of the ship, coming from directly overhead. As he listened, the sounds came again. It was as if the room was trying to rip itself apart.
As Larten sat up, confused, a couple of planks were torn loose from the ceiling and sunlight pierced the cabin. He flinched and drew back from the beams. There was laughter outside.
“There! He’s frightened o’ the light. Hurry, lads. Once we pull the rest o’ that ceiling away, he’s finished. He’ll be ash by breakfast.”
Larten stared with astonishment as a crowd of sailors hacked through the thin roof of his cabin. They were working like a team of ants. They’d tear all of the planks away in a matter of minutes and Larten would have nowhere to shelter.
He couldn’t remember much of the night before, but he swiftly worked out what had happened. They had discovered his true identity and were coming to kill him. This was serious. The sunlight wouldn’t destroy him instantly, but he couldn’t stay exposed to it for long. He would have to retreat and seek shelter in the bowels of the ship. He could barricade himself in somewhere, but it was going to be nigh impossible to keep them out. Still, he had to try.
“Malora?” he croaked, although he already knew she wasn’t there. He looked for her, to be sure, then sighed with relief. They’d either captured her or she had gone over to their side to save her own neck. He didn’t mind which, just as long as she wasn’t sucked down into the pit with him. If this was to be his end, so be it, but there was no reason why the innocent girl should suffer too.
The vampire grinned bleakly as the sailors tore the ceiling to shreds. He felt better than he had in ages, stomach still warm with Yasmin’s blood, head clearer than it had been for several days. Ironically, it seemed that he had gotten the better of the flu at last, so at least he could die in good health.
Larten washed his hands in a finger bowl, gargled from a glass of water, then drank the rest. He dusted off his clothes, brushed his hair back and blew his nose several times for good measure. Vampires didn’t fear death. Larten had already lived longer than most humans. This would be a good way to die, hunted and staked by a mob. Seba would chuckle proudly if word ever reached him in Vampire Mountain. “When you have to go,” he had often said to Larten and Wester, “try to go in style!”
As the last of the ceiling was pried away with crowbars, Larten crouched, then sprang through the gap that had been created, landing on the deck like a cat. The sailors cried out with alarm and reeled away from the freed vampire. As they scrambled over one another, shrieking with terror, Larten stood to his full height and glared at his tormentors, looking majestic despite his dirty clothes, red eyes and scraggly beard.
“Come then, humans!” he bellowed. “I am Larten Crepsley of the vampire clan and I fear no man.”
The sailors paused and gaped. They hadn’t expected a response like this. They thought he’d howl and screech and fight like a cornered rat to the bitter, bloody end. But here he stood, tall and straight, unafraid of his foes, challenging them to do their worst.
The captain recovered and pointed at Larten with a hook he’d kept over his bed for many years in case he ever faced a mutiny. “Crosses!” he barked, and six sailors pressed forward holding crucifixes.
Larten laughed. Perhaps the clan didn’t require Bram Stoker to spread silly myths about the creatures of the night. These humans had accepted the old, crazy legends without any need of a novel.
The captain scowled. He didn’t like the way the monster was laughing. The beast should be cowering, begging them to spare his worthless life. The captain was eager to finish off the vampire, but first he wanted to see that smirk wiped from the villain’s face.
“Ye think this is funny?” the captain snarled.
“I think it is pathetic,” Larten retorted.
“Ye’re a monster. A vampire. A servant o’ the devil himself.”
“You know far more about the devil than I do, sir,” Larten replied. He wouldn’t normally have played for time – it would have made more sense to make his break and seek shelter from the sun – but he was scanning the crowd for Malora. He wanted to be sure she was safe before he fled. Maybe curse her as a traitor or act as if he’d fooled her along with the rest, to make them think she hadn’t been working in league with him.
The captain saw Larten looking and realized what he was searching for. A dark flicker of a smile danced across his lips. “Are ye worried about yer wench?” he asked innocently.
Larten felt a chill form inside his stomach. “She knows nothing about me,” he said, trying to distance himself from Malora to help her as much as he could—if that was still possible. “She is just a girl I picked up and used. I do not care what you do with her.”
“That’s good,” the captain purred. “Then ye won’t be too upset when ye look up and see that.” He pointed to the rigging with his hook.
The last thing Larten wanted to do was raise his gaze. He knew what was waiting for him if he did. But a vampire of good standing never tries to hide from the truth, and Larten had been trained to always face his fears and losses.
It was a bright day and his eyes were narrow slits against the painful rays of the sun. But he could see the sails clearly enough, and the wooden rigging to which they were attached. And he could also see poor Malora hanging from one of the poles, a length of rope looped around her neck, swaying lifelessly in the breeze and from the ever-constant rise and fall of the ship.
A cold calm washed through Larten Crepsley. Many years earlier, as a boy, he had experienced a similar calmness just before he’d killed the brute of a man who had murdered his best friend. It was as if he withdrew emotionally from the world. He forgot every rule he’d lived by and every moral restraint he had ever placed upon himself.
In that moment he was neither man nor vampire, but a force, one that would not stop until it had been spent. In the factory he’d only had one man to direct his fury against. Here he had dozens. And for that he was glad.
“They used to call me Quicksilver,” he whispered, smiling hollowly. “Fastest hands in the world.”
Then the smile vanished. His eyes flashed. And like a sliver of deadly mercury, he attacked.
Chapter Twenty-four
Larten sat near the prow of the ship. He was holding the baby and absentmindedly bouncing it up and down. The baby was cooing happily. Larten’s hands were soaked with blood and the red, sticky liquid had seeped through the baby’s shawl, but neither seemed to notice or care.
He would never recall the slaughter in detail. Fragments would haunt him, both awa
ke and sleeping, for the rest of his life. Faces would flash in front of him or shimmer in the theater of his dreams. He’d see his nails, jagged and deadly, slicing open a throat as if it was a slab of butter. His fingers gripping a man’s skull, digging deep, crushing bone, sinking into brain.
Sometimes he’d get a strange taste in his mouth. It always puzzled him for a few seconds. Then he would remember biting off a sailor’s salty toes while the man was alive, leaving him awhile, then returning to finish the job like a butcher who had been momentarily sidetracked.
He had saved the captain for last, letting him bear witness to the destruction. The seasoned sailor wept and begged for his men’s lives, then for his own. Larten only grinned and pointed to the girl dangling above their heads.
In his dreams he often chased sailors into the rigging. In reality only three had tried to climb to safety, but in Larten’s nightmares there were hundreds and the poles stretched to the sky and beyond. But no matter how many fled ahead of him, he always killed every last one of them before he stirred and woke.
The baby gurgled, then started to cry hungrily. Larten bounced him a few more times, hoping to shush him, but the infant boy wasn’t to be distracted. With a sigh, Larten reluctantly turned from the prow and surveyed the deck of corpses.
He knew it would be bad, but this was even worse than he’d feared. So many hacked (bitten, chewed, torn) to pieces. Blood everywhere. Guts hanging from the ropes in the rigging. Heads set on spikes and hooks. The eyes of one were missing, two crosses rammed deep into the bloody sockets.
Larten had seen much in his time on the battlefields of the world, but nothing as vicious as this. He wanted to weep, but he could find no tears within himself. It would have been hypocritical to cry. He didn’t deserve that release.
Steeling himself, Larten stared long and hard at the bodies. This was his work. He could blame it on the flu, but that would be a lie. He had chosen to do this. Malora had been murdered and he had let himself go wild and wreak a terrible revenge. He felt shame and disgust, more than he could ever express. There was no justification and no hiding. He did this. He had become the monster these people feared. Paris had warned him of the dangers of indecision and isolation, but he had ignored the Prince’s advice. This was the result. This was what happened when vampires went bad.
Larten picked his way through the mess, holding the baby high above it, glad that the child was too young to understand any of this. Entering the boy’s cabin, he found a small bottle half full of milk. Sitting on the bed, he perched the baby on his lap and let him feed.
It was only as the baby greedily gulped the milk that Larten wondered what had happened to the boy’s mother.
When the child had his fill, Larten scoured the ship from top to bottom, praying he’d find the pretty Yasmin alive, cowering in a corner. If he could hand her baby back to her, he would have done at least that much right on this awful, notorious day.
But Yasmin was nowhere onboard. He found the body of the other woman, along with the corpses of the male passengers, mixed in with the remains of the sailors, but Yasmin must have leapt overboard, preferring the sea to death at the vampire’s wretched hands.
Or else he had thrown her off.
Until the night he died, Larten would pray a few times a week, begging the gods to reveal Yasmin’s end to him. It seemed important, a crucial missing piece of the puzzle. Until he put it in place he could never draw a line under the calamity. But as hard as he prayed, that memory would always be a mystery to him.
What he did find during his search was a sealed door. It had been locked from the outside. The key was missing, but to Larten – Quicksilver, he’d told them, as if by using a different name he could distance himself from the guilt – it was a simple thing to pick. Moments later he pushed the door open, and four terrified pairs of eyes stared out at him.
One of the four was a high-ranking mate. Larten immediately understood why he had spared this man—even in his murderous rage, he’d known that he would need someone to steer the ship. Right now Larten didn’t care if he lived or died, but a part of him had been thinking about life, even while he was dealing out death to all in sight.
But what of the others? There were two men, and the boy, Daniel Abrams. Why had he let these live? It couldn’t have been mercy or because he needed them for the ship—he would have spared another mate, not a worthless boy, if that was the case. So why…?
The answer came to him and he chuckled drily.
He’d had to keep a few alive. The deck was awash with blood, but it would soon spoil and be of no use to him. He had to assume that they were a long way from land. He might be on this ship a good while yet.
He would need to feed.
Still chuckling – edgily now, the laughter threatening to turn into a scream – he shut the door on the moaning, weeping humans, locked it, then retired to the deck with the baby, to wet his whistle before the pools of blood thickened and soured in the sun.
Having drunk his fill on deck, Larten retreated from the daylight before it burned him. He didn’t care what happened to him now, but if he gave in to bloodthirsty insanity or let himself die, the baby would perish too.
Larten cradled the boy in the shelter of the captain’s cabin, holding him gently as if he was something precious. Nothing would ever set right this dreadful wrong, but if he could protect this innocent child, that would be one less dark mark against his name when he passed from this world of hurt and shame. He felt as far from the gates of Paradise as it was possible to get, so it wasn’t redemption that he sought. He simply didn’t want to add to his crimes, even though in the greater scheme of things one more wouldn’t make any real difference.
He changed the baby’s undergarments when he realized why the boy had started crying again. Then he went below deck to find more milk and look for other food.
They slept in the cabin that night, the baby tucked between Larten and the wall. But although the boy snoozed sweetly, Larten spent most of the night staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t because he had become accustomed to sleeping in the day or because of the baby’s surprisingly deep snoring, but because after what he’d done, he couldn’t face the nightmares that were certain to be lying in wait for him.
Shortly before dawn, after feeding the baby again, Larten returned to the room with the four captives and opened the door. They thought he’d come to kill them, and they cowered against the wall. But he only pointed a finger at the senior mate and said, “You.”
The sailor crossed himself, muttered a quick prayer, then staggered out of the cabin. He was sweating and trembling, but otherwise carried himself with dignity.
Larten locked the door and led the way to the deck. The mate’s face blanched when he cast his eye around, but he didn’t try to run.
“You can sail this ship?” Larten asked wearily. If not for the baby, he’d have lowered himself over the side and gone for a swim with the sharks. But if the boy was to live, this had to be done.
“I’m no captain,” the mate said quietly.
“If we are to live, you will have to be,” Larten retorted.
“If I had a crew…”
“You do not. Can you steer it anyway?”
The mate checked the rigging and shrugged. “We’re not so far from land—a week’s sailing, I reckon. I can get us there if the weather holds. We’ll struggle t’ dock, but we can get close enough t’ set one o’ the scows down and row ashore. If the weather holds. If we hit a storm, we’re finished.”
Larten nodded. “Do your best. I will be taking care of the child. If you need me, shout. Do not try to release the others, and do not try to kill me—I will hear you coming, even in my sleep. If you can drop us ashore, I will set you free.”
“What about them?” the mate called as Larten left. He pointed a shaking finger at the corpses. “They’ll fester if we leave ’em. The stench…”
“I will dispose of them later,” Larten promised. “When the sun goes down. That is when
I am most powerful, is it not?” Smiling thinly, he went inside to play with the baby, leaving the mate to steer the ship of corpses through the waves of the ever-hungry sea that would soon receive their lifeless, bloodied hulks.
Chapter Twenty-five
Feeding the baby and prisoners became the focus of Larten’s time. Daniel and the sailors were easy to care for – he just threw them food and water a couple of times a day – but the baby was a different matter. Larten had no experience with babies and was astonished by how often the child wanted to feed. Keeping the boy content was a full-time job.
The mate in charge of the ship reported to Larten regularly. Larten had no interest in their course – he wouldn’t have cared if they’d sailed in circles forever – but it was easier to let the mate deliver his reports and nod thoughtfully while pretending to listen.
Larten was ravenous – he needed blood – but he waited until the mate said they were a day from shore. Tucking in the baby, he went below to the locked room and opened the door. Daniel and the sailors thought that he was coming to feed them, and they shuffled forward eagerly. They still feared the vampire, but had come to believe that he meant them no harm.
Not wishing to alarm them, Larten moved quickly, as he had when he’d embarked on his killing spree. Darting from one to another, he blew a sharp breath of gas in their faces, the gas of the vampires that sent humans to sleep. Once they were unconscious he drank from each of them, then refilled the vials that, unknown to him, had cost Malora her life.
Daniel stirred as Larten was leaving. The vampire had breathed on the boy last, so Daniel hadn’t been dealt as strong a blast of the gas as the others. Larten took no notice as the boy’s eyes flickered open, only closed the door and locked it, then went to feed the baby.