by Justin Sloan
“Sandra?” Valerie asked. “Can’t serve me very well if she’s dead.”
She saw the realization dawn on his face.
“For a cat, you’re not too slow.” Valerie held out a hand for silence as a crew woman went running by before she whispered, “And no, she’s not a vampire.”
They emerged onto the deck, careful to stay in the shadows.
At the rear of the ship, the two sky-ships were maneuvering so that one would be on each side. Men and women were moving to their battle stations on all three of the ships.
“Prepare to be boarded,” a voice came over the loudspeaker from the ship to their left. “Resist, and you will be sucking water with the worst of them.”
“What’re our chances of outrunning them if the captain goes that route?” Valerie asked.
Diego changed back, crouching, and said, “Zero to none if we run, but in a fight she might hold up.”
“Hmm, or two to one,” Valerie suggested, doubtfully.
Diego looked over at the ship to his right, “Trust me, I’m kind of a techie nerd. Well, as far as tech goes these days. In the old days, let me tell you what I could’ve done with—Ouch!”
She’d flicked him on the ear. “Focus!”
“Right….” He shifted as if preparing to pounce, but then said, “The point is, their ships are built for speed. Like sloops in the old days, single-masted, not many cannons. But ours is more like a Man of War. Those babies had double masts and a hundred cannons.”
Valerie frowned, “None of what you just said means anything to me.”
The man sighed. “Pirate stuff. I don’t know if I have it right either, honestly. But back in those days—”
“Diego…”
“Ah, right, focusing. Let me say this in simple, even-a-vampire-can-understand terms—our ship is strong, theirs,” he pointed to the other two, “are not.”
“Okay,” Valerie said, irritation causing her voice to rise slightly. Good thing everyone around them was yelling and had no reason to come to this part of the ship just yet. “Let me say this in you-want-to-live-so-don’t-ever-talk-to-me-like-that-again terms. I will throw your ass into the ocean and see if cats like water should you speak to me like that again.”
Diego’s eye twitched. “Sorry, it’s a habit.”
Valerie paused and turned to look at him again, “Being an ass is a habit of yours?”
He nodded.
Great. She was trying to figure out how to make it out of this without being discovered and without having to slaughter every last one of them, and here she was, stuck with a sarcastic ass-cat. She laughed to herself.
“Something funny?” Diego said.
She smirked, “I just came up with a new nickname for you. Ass-cat.”
Diego stared at her, his eyes burning fiercely. “What happened to Pet? Not demeaning enough?”
“Ass-cat will grow on you,” she said, then motioned to him. “Follow me.”
“Wait, wha—”
But she was already gone, bounding up the steps to the captain’s tower. At the doorway, she paused for him to turn into a puma and leap after her to keep up. Once to the Captain’s door, he transformed back and gave her an irritated look.
“What now?” he said.
“Speaking of names, Xianliang, really?”
“What?” he hissed.
“No Chinese accent, and I don’t know…. You don’t exactly strike me as a Xianliang type.”
“Even though I was raised in Spain and don’t speak a lick of Chinese, my roots are from there.”
“Which explains your Were-cat nature,” she said, nodding to herself in understanding. “Sacred Clan?”
He instantly tensed at that, and she could tell she’d hit a nerve. “Let’s just put a pin in that conversation,” he replied.
“Deal.” She paused to look at him one more time. “But if you didn’t know, your Chinese name’s meaning is ‘worthy brightness.’”
When he looked at her inquisitively, she added, “My real parents, before I was turned… One was French, the other Chinese. I know a thing or two. Not bad for a dumb vampire, huh?”
Without waiting for a response or bothering to laugh at the way his jaw hung open, she stood. She considered knocking on the door, but then lifted her leg and kicked it in instead. The captain spun and aimed a pistol, but before he knew what was happening, she was standing over him with the pistol twisted up and facing his own temple.
“Wouldn’t squeeze that trigger, if I were you,” she told him, her breath blowing across his face.
The captain nodded but glared. “You’re one of the group attacking me?”
“Actually, no,” she said, waiting while Diego entered, back in puma form again. “But here’s the deal. My pussy-cat friend here and I are stowaways, along with one girl.”
“This isn’t the best time for a confession, and I’m not wearing my robes,” the captain snarled.
Valerie rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to pull the trigger?”
He shook his head quickly.
“I didn’t think so. Here’s what I’m proposing. I want to pay for our passage the rest of the way by saving you from these pirates.”
“You want to…?” The captain’s expression turned from hostile to confused, then amused. The yelling outside grew louder, and Valerie was becoming impatient. Every second she waited for this guy to agree was another chance their ship could be blown out of the sky.
The voice came again from the speaker outside, and then a warning shot was fired.
“Mr. Pussycat here tells me—”
Diego transformed back into a man, irritation creasing his face. “Can you stop with that?” Diego asked. “The name’s Diego, or Xianliang, if you’re feeling formal. Not Ass-cat, not Mr. Pussycat… Diego.”
“And can you stop changing back and forth?” she said. “It’s disorienting, and we’re not supposed to let their kind see.”
The captain stepped back then. His wide eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. “It’s true then…. But why should I listen to you, two Weres?”
“Wrong,” Valerie said, then showed her fangs and allowed her eyes to glow ever so slightly. “He’s a Were,” she nodded to him before looking him straight in his eyes, “I’m worse.”
The captain’s hands started shaking, but he folded his arms across his chest to try and hide it.
“A Were and a vampire on my ship… And you offer to fight off these pirates for me?” He assessed them, then nodded. “Deal. You save the ship, consider your passage covered.”
Just then, the first volley of shots went off from one of the enemy ships, and then the other followed.
“Merde,” Valerie said, with a glance outside as their ship returned fire.
“You better hurry,” the captain said. “Or all three ships will be collecting barnacles, and you’ll have to walk across the ocean floor to get to where you’re going. That is, if vampires don’t die from drowning?”
“I don’t plan on finding out,” she answered, and ran, pulling her sword as she went.
***
Diego’s heart was racing as he turned into a puma and leapt after Valerie. He’d never had much of a problem keeping up with people or Weres, but he’d never been tested against a vampire. So far, he was failing his first test, but she waited for him at key points in the shadows. It helped that she had to go around areas to avoid the sun, while he could dart across.
“You said we have the stronger ship, right?” she asked, pausing at the ropes the ship to their left had just shot over to anchor to their hull. “If that’s true, all we have to do is make sure we hit them where it hurts first, right?”
He considered changing again to answer, but was getting real tired of that, so simply nodded.
“Good, follow me, and when I say so, tell me where to hurt them.” She glanced over her shoulder as she leaped up onto the rope. “If you steer me wrong, I’ll make sure you die before me, Ass-cat.”
; He growled in response.
She smirked and said, “And if we win, I might stop calling you that.”
And then she ran across the rope.
Holy-balls, he thought, that was not something anyone should try at home. Luckily for her, she didn’t seem to have the slightest balance problem, and fortunately for him, he was a cat, and a cat’s balance is legendary. At least, he hoped that legend would still hold true after this screwed-up idea.
None of that stopped him from thinking Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap the whole way across. He only thought it faster when they saw the man at the other end pop up, apparently about to shimmy down the rope almost exactly like the pirates of old. The man’s eyes grew big, and then he lifted a rifle when he saw them coming.
“Watch out!” Diego meant to say, but it came out as a growl. Turns out, it wasn’t necessary. One moment, Valerie was running in front of him, the next she was a blur and had the pirate slammed against the far wall so forcefully that he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
Diego made it to the end of the rope and leapt down on the deck to confirm that the pirate was indeed not dead.
He changed, “You some twisted vegan vampire or something?” he asked as he pointed to the unconscious—but still breathing—pirate. “You’re serious about this?”
“I just…” she started, but then she stumbled, heading for the edge of the ship. The sudden use of energy had drained her, and now she was running dangerously low on strength.
Diego stared in surprise as she almost caught herself and then stumbled again. He looked around, and saw that two more pirates had noticed them and were coming over. Merde, he thought, and then jumped forward so that he could catch her.
The sight of a naked man catching a woman before she fell over the edge of their ship made both pirates freeze in their tracks.
Valerie squeezed her eyes shut and said, “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“You were gonna fall,” he said. “So, yeah, I did.”
“Better to have spared me this sight,” she said jokingly, with a glance at his nude body. He considered letting her go, even shoving her over the side himself, but the two pirates had recovered and were working their ways toward them.
“You need energy,” Diego said. “And fast.”
She looked at him, and then at the still-unconscious pirate on the deck. With a heavy sigh, she kneeled next to the pirate, her head bowing with her teeth on his neck. Seconds later, she stood, a trickle of blood dripping down her chin. She appeared stronger already, but her eyes were sad, and she seemed upset to have fed on the man.
Diego was surprised to find that watching her had been exciting. Not in a sexual, this-is-super-awkward-to-be-naked way, but he wanted to see her do it again, for sure. Especially if it meant saving his own neck at the expense of someone else’s!
The act caused a different reaction in the oncoming pirates, however. They were starting to back away, looking left and right to see if another vampire was about to jump out and attack them.
“Tell you what,” she said, wiping the blood from her chin, her eyes now glowing red and ravenous as they stared at the backpedaling pirates. “You change back to a pussy-cat so I don’t have to see dangling participles right now, and I’ll take care of these two.”
He didn’t even have to answer, but simply transformed and moved his tail in an I’m waiting sort of way.
She smirked as she started towards the two pirates, and called back, “Much better!”
With that, he stared, wide-eyed and amazed, as she darted forward and tore into the first man before kicking the second, sending him over the side of the ship. His screams vanished into the deep distance.
Diego was damn glad he’d somehow ended up on the right side of this fight, even if this vampire had insulted his manhood more than once.
***
Sandra couldn’t take it anymore. After the first gunshot had gone off, she ran to the door and looked up the stairs, trying to decide her best course of action.
On the one hand, her Mistress could be in trouble. On the other, a vampire in trouble was rarely a concern, and trying to help Valerie might just get them both killed.
That’s what she’d thought until last night, when her Mistress would have died if not for her.
It was an odd feeling, knowing that her Mistress was only alive because, instead of staying in her place, Sandra had gone out in search of her, and even more so that Valerie was alive right now because of Sandra’s blood.
Another shot sounded, and then the ship shook. A moment later, the screams of a man told her someone had fallen, or been tossed, overboard.
Waiting here wasn’t an option.
The stairs went by three at a time, until Sandra burst through the doors to the deck above. It was an amazing sight. The sun cast an orange glow across the ship, and the shadows danced so that the two ships now tethered to it had the impression of demons of darkness overtaking a ship of fire and light.
But there was no sign of Valerie.
The wind was crisp, almost cold if not for the warm air. Men were fighting, some with swords, others with guns, and one man had what looked like a Tesla Coil gun—the type that fired ionized gas and, while often homemade, packed a punch. She’d never seen one except in books, so couldn’t be sure.
Half the men she saw were the sailors they’d watched board the ship before sneaking on themselves. The others were coming in by the ropes that attached the smaller flying ships to this one, and they wore brightly colored silks with bandanas tied around their heads.
She knew this look well—a children’s book she’d read about pirates called Teddy Bears and the Christmas Pirates. Somehow, it had survived the massive riots and fires that had consumed the majority of stores and people’s houses in the great downfall of the world.
Apparently, these ass-clowns were doing their best to be real pirates. What they lacked in creativity, they made up for in the ability to copy from a children’s book. She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or run for her life.
PTTHHH!
A blast from the coil gun shot past her head, severing one of the ropes and sending a pirate to his death. But it also nearly took out the blimp.
“You’ll bring down all of us with that!” a man in a captain’s hat yelled. He took the pistol away from the crewman just before a pirate lunged at him with a rapier.
The captain dodged, pulled out his own knife, and was able to block another lunge and then slit the pirate’s throat before kicking him so that he fell overboard.
No screaming from that man.
“No bleeding on my ship!” the man yelled, and turned to see Sandra. She gasped and took a step back, but he moved quickly toward her, knife held at the ready, but not menacingly. He wasn’t wearing the colorful silks of the attackers, so she had to assume he was on the defending side. That helped put her at ease, if only somewhat.
“You’re with the vampire?” the Captain asked.
She blinked, unsure how to answer that. Regular people weren’t supposed to be aware of the UnknownWorld, so she had to assume Valerie had somehow, in the short amount of time since she’d ran off, let this man know about her.