by Darren Shan
“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.
Larten spent most of that last night on deck, watching by the light of the stars as they drew closer to land, thinking of what he’d done, numbly considering what he must do next. He didn’t know much about Greenland, but he knew it was an ice-covered, sparsely populated country. Many cold, lonely, unforgiving places where a vampire could pass quietly from this world. He would find a suitably desolate spot and let the snow and ice finish him off. A fittingly meek finale for a vampire who had lost the right to die a noble death.
The mate approached late the following evening, as Larten was feeding the baby. “We’re almost there,” he noted.
“Aye,” Larten murmured.
“We should make port not long after sunset, if the wind’s fair.”
“I will disembark before that,” Larten said.
The mate frowned. “Disembark?”
“I will take a scow and sail ashore by myself.”
“Are ye sure?” the mate asked. “There’s nothing much along this stretch and the weather’s fierce inhospitable.”
“Good,” Larten said shortly.
A wave of joy swept through the sailor. He had tried not to think about what would happen when they docked, but whenever he did, he saw no way that the vampire would let them live. They were witnesses to the massacre. He surely could not spare them if he wanted to escape.
But now the mate saw that Larten didn’t care. He was going ashore to die. For the first time in a week, the sailor faced the future with real hope. He almost cried, he was so relieved.
“You will take care of the child when I go?” Larten asked.
“Of course. I’ll take him home with me. I have six already, so one more won’t make much difference.”
“Thank you,” Larten said softly. “And,” he added as the mate returned to the wheel, “you will keep him away from vampires?”
The sailor nodded grimly. “Aye, sir. That I most definitely will.”
The mate helped Larten ready and lower the scow. Before he departed, Larten went down to the locked room one last time, to release the prisoners. He could have left that job to the mate, but he wanted to do it himself, so they could come up, see him leave and know for certain that they had nothing to fear from this night on.
“Come, gentlemen,” Larten said as he opened the door. “Your time of captivity is over. You are free to…”
He came to a stunned, horrified stop.
Daniel Abrams was sitting on the floor, hands and lips as red with blood as Larten’s had been a week before. The boy had torn open the throats of the two men while they were unconscious and drank as much of their blood as he could stomach. He’d even bitten chunks out of their flesh and eaten it. He was chewing a sliver of cheek, pausing every so often to spit out blood, when Larten entered.
Daniel’s face lit up crazily when he spotted the vampire, and he staggered to his feet. “I’m one o’ yer lot now,” he cackled, waving the strip of flesh at Larten as if it was a flag. “Ye don’t have t’ kill me. Ye can take me with ye. I’m a bloodsucker too, see? We’re the same.”
Larten stared at the boy, first with shock, then disgust. “You think that you are the same as me?” he snarled.
“Aye,” the boy hooted. “We both kill and drink blood. What’s the difference?”
And the awful thing was, he was right. When you put the two of them side by side, there was no real difference at all. A pair of well-matched monsters.
Larten backed out of the room, away from the blinking, spitting, blood-smeared boy. He glanced at the murdered sailors, then bolted for the deck, where he raced to the side and threw up over the railing. Before Daniel Abrams could climb the steps and ask again to travel with him, Larten ducked into the captain’s cabin and picked up the baby.
He had meant to bid the child farewell, but as he stared at the chubby babe, he decided he couldn’t leave the boy behind. Not with a beast like Daniel Abrams on the prowl. Maybe they were cut from the same cloth, but at least Larten wouldn’t feed on the innocent baby. If Larten took him from the ship, the boy was doomed, but death in the wilds was preferable to what might happen to the infant if he remained.
Larten never considered the possibility of simply killing Daniel. In a mindless panic, he thought that there were only two options — take the baby or leave him to be bled and devoured.
Larten wrapped the child up warmly and staggered across the deck to the scow. The mate was bewildered when he saw the wild-eyed vampire climb in with the baby. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “I thought you were leaving him.”
But Larten would neither listen nor respond. Before the mate could stop him, he cast off and rowed madly towards the icy shore. Understanding would come to the sailor later, when he discovered the young cannibal below, but for the time being he could only stand on deck and stare dumbly at the swiftly receding boat.
* * *
Larten thrust ahead without pause, muscles aching, neck bent stiffly, never looking up. If he’d gone in the wrong direction and missed land, perhaps he would have rowed until he weakened and died. But the mate had pointed the scow true, and before long he struck shore and ground to a halt.
Larten stood in a daze and gazed at a giant sheet of ice that seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. For a moment he was overwhelmed and thought about returning to the ship. Then he grinned darkly, seeing the obstacle for what any true vampire would have judged it — a challenge to be met.
Picking up the baby, Larten strapped the silent, shivering boy to his back and made sure he was secure. Then, with a cry of total abandon, he leapt from the boat and cut a path towards the glittering wall of ice. Dragging his way through mounds of thigh-high snow, Larten laughed manically at the moon and stars as he pushed on in delirious pursuit of his place in that other, eternal, always freezing night.
To be continued…
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