Killer Cruise (Project 26 Book 11)

by Mark Woods

  He told them that in the panic and the frenzy of the battle, he must have hit his head and become confused and that was the only reason why he had believed them to be werewolves

  But in truth, Wilfred didn’t really believe that.

  Wilfred knew the truth.

  He knew what he had seen.

  The War-Wolves hadn’t just been men in skins – they had been werewolves; something he had told himself time and time again whilst he and his men had been tracking them, could not possibly exist.

  And yet…he had seen them with his own eyes; hell, he had seen them for himself up close and personal; had fought them and barely escaped with his life.

  Wilfred wasn’t stupid, he knew the difference between what was real and what wasn’t.

  And he knew the truth.

  The real truth.

  Werewolves existed, they were real…

  And armed with that knowledge, Wilfred knew, from now on his life would never be the same…

  ***

  When the hospital finally released him and he eventually returned back to England - about a year later, after the war was over - Wilfred began researching everything he could find on the preternatural.

  He became obsessed – not just with werewolves, but with vampires too, for if one existed then why not the other?

  He began tracking down case studies, reading up eye witness reports and started trying to learn everything he could so that if either creature ever again crossed his path, next time he would be better prepared.

  But Wilfred’s research did not go unnoticed.

  His investigations began drawing attention.

  Finally, in June of that year, Wilfred was approached by someone claiming to represent a group that called themselves simply ‘The Hunters’.

  They were, the man told him, a secret organisation – an ancient order – created specifically to hunt down creatures such as Vampyre and Lycanthropes. They had learnt of Wilfred and his investigations, the man said, and had begun watching him and gone out of their way to learn everything about him - including all that had happened to him during the war. Now, the man told him, they wanted him to join them. They wanted to recruit him and enlist his services in a new war; to aid them and to help them fight against the forces of darkness in a battle that, unbeknownst to the rest of humanity, was constantly going on all around them.

  They could help him, the man told him, teach him and train him in everything he would ever need to know about hunting down not just Lycanthropes – or werewolves as they were better known – but Vampyre and other preternatural creatures and in return, all they asked was that he help keep their secret.

  That Lycanthropes were real.

  That Vampyre were real.

  And that there was much more to be afraid of, out there in the dark, than most people could ever possibly imagine.

  It was, Wilfred thought, an offer he simply could not refuse and so, without a second thought, he agreed to join them. But only on the understanding that as part of their deal, they would help him track down and kill those same monsters that had cost him his hand – the monsters formerly known as The War-Wolves.

  He knew, he told them, that they must have files on The Wolves, and that they must have kept tabs on what happened to them and where they might have gone after the war. All he wanted in exchange for his loyalty, he told them, was for them to share any information they had.

  The Hunters agreed to his terms.

  They fitted him with a replacement hand – a prosthetic made entirely of silver – and in return, Wilfred began to kill for them.

  For obvious reasons, he became known as The Silver Fox and amongst his prey, as well as his fellow Hunters, in time, his reputation soon started to precede him. To his enemies, he was known as The Silent Assassin – so called because of his tendency to never leave behind any witnesses who might identify him after a kill - and as time moved on and the years passed by, he soon became one of The Hunters’ best killers, his time in the army obviously having paid him in good stead.

  If he ever felt any guilt at what he did, what he had become, Wilfred refused to acknowledge it. Instead, he justified what he did by continuing to think of himself as a soldier – just one now fighting a very different war than the one he had previously fought in before.

  ***

  The first time Wilfred ever heard The Bellastaria mentioned, he was hunting down a lead on one of The War-Wolves.

  The lead, as it turned out, ended up being a bust, no more than yet another in a long line of dead-ends, but then Wilfred suddenly started hearing rumours of a cruise ship, crewed almost entirely of werewolves, allegedly due to set sail for England in just a few days.

  According to his sources, the cruise was actually a cover; a clever way of hiding a series of peace talks between The Lycanthropes and The Vampyre who, he was told, were hoping to broker some kind of peace deal between their two species – the two having long having been at war with each other for as far back as anyone could remember – but when Wilfred approached his superiors, he was surprised to discover they already knew everything about it.

  Having heard all about the cruise several weeks beforehand, they told him, they were already in the middle of putting into place a plan to blow up the ship with all the Lycanthropes and Vampyre aboard -– believing there would never be a better opportunity than this for them to take out so many of their enemy all at once.

  Wilfred demanded to be involved.

  With his investigation into the whereabouts of the last remaining War-Wolves temporarily on hold, with no further leads, Wilfred insisted he be allowed to join the group of Hunters assigned to secretly board The Bellastaria and blow up the ship with explosives and though his employers were initially reluctant, eventually they agreed.

  But Wilfred’s decision to volunteer had less to do with the fact that he wanted to be involved, and more to do with the fact he had learned a number of innocent civilians would also be on-board.

  Invited onto the ship as guests to act not just as bait, to help provide a little incentive for the Vampyre to help keep them sweet and get them to agree to the talks in the first place, but also to give them something to feed upon, and hunt, during the course of the cruise.

  When Wilfred raised his concerns with his employers, and tried to talk to them about the potential loss of innocent life should they go ahead with their plan to blow up the ship, his superiors did their best to blow him off. They told him that the human passengers on-board were not his concern, should be considered as collateral damage, and tried to defend their decision by explaining how, ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.’

  But Wilfred didn’t agree.

  He refused to accept their point of view and thought the cost of innocent lives was too high of a price to pay. When he tried to argue his case, however, his employers refused to listen.

  In the end, eventually realising that he was fighting a losing battle - and that, no matter what he said, his employers would not be swayed, that the mission would still go on ahead, with or without him - Wilfred pretended to give in.

  He told his employers what he thought they wanted to hear, pretended they had managed to convince him, and agreed to be a good soldier and follow his orders to the letter.

  But deep down inside, right there and then, Wilfred made himself a vow.

  He would carry out his mission, he told himself, and follow his orders to the letter, do exactly as he was told, but once the explosives were set, he decided, at the first opportunity, he would also attempt to save as many innocent lives as he could.

  Which is how he’d ended up on The Bellastaria…

  Now…

  When the first explosion came, it arrived totally unexpected – even for Wilfred.

  As he felt himself thrown half-way across the top deck, another of the bombs he’d helped set exploded, somewhere far below, several floors beneath him, and, just as quickly, Wilfred found himself being thrown just as hard the other wa
y, as the ship rocked violently in a desperate attempt to try and right itself.

  What the actual fuck? He thought.

  The bombs were going off too early – something must have gone wrong.

  None of the bombs were supposed to go off until much later during the evening, and even then, not until the Halloween ball was fully underway and all The Vampyre and Lycanthrope were distracted.

  Shit, Wilfred thought. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

  As a third bomb went off, again somewhere far below him, Wilfred felt the ship rock violently once more – sending him flying back the other way yet again as he failed to maintain his balance.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought to himself.

  This wasn’t the way things had been supposed to go.

  This wasn’t the way things had been meant to happen.

  As Wilfred tried to pull himself back to his feet, he saw several werewolves, mid-change, breaking out onto the top deck and start running around after the other passengers. Slaughtering them left, right and centre - seemingly caught up in some kind of mad, rabid frenzy, no doubt brought on and triggered by the mass panic occurring all around them.

  Even as he watched, more creatures that he recognised as Vampyre, also now began attacking; emerging out on the top deck, jumping onto peoples’ backs, and opening up their throats so they could drink of their blood, seemingly caught up in some kind of frenzy of their own.

  The whole ship was already starting to descend into complete and utter chaos – people running around, screaming, not knowing what the hell was going on, even as those on-board found themselves being attacked by those they had previously thought were their fellow passengers and crew – and Wilfred knew time was against him if he were to have any possible chance of surviving.

  If he didn’t get off the ship, and quick, Wilfred thought, he would end up becoming trapped here, with no hope of escape, and with the bombs going off it was only a matter of time before the integrity of the hull became compromised and the ship began to sink.

  No, he had to try and make it to one of the lifeboats…

  But first, there was something he needed to do.

  Someone he needed to get to – to help get off the ship so she could escape alongside him.

  Jaqueline, he thought.

  He had made her a promise – that when everything all kicked off, as he had known it would, he would try and help her to safety and get her off of the ship – and considering how many other promises he had broken just lately, too many to count in fact, this was one he was determined not to break.

  All of his plans, all of his ideas about how he would try and help all of the other human passengers’ on-board escape, were all redundant now. Those plans had all been blown all to hell and back, quite literally, the very second the explosives he’d set earlier had all begun going off prematurely.

  Now, all that mattered was getting himself and Jaqueline off the ship, he thought. All the other passengers, all the others he had originally been intending to try and rescue too, would just have to fend for themselves…

  Jaqueline, he thought, don’t panic, I’m coming for you!

  Wilfred opened a door that led back into the ship, and started to rush down the corridor inside. He thought he remembered roughly where Jaqueline’s cabin was – having followed her there earlier, unbeknownst to her, whilst trying to keep an eye on her and make sure she was safe – but found himself now starting to struggle to remember how to get there from where he currently was.

  This way, he thought, and took a sharp turn to his right. This way, I’m sure of it.

  The bloody ship was like some kind of maze, he thought.

  He only hoped he wasn’t already too late…

  Jaqueline’s Tale…

  Earlier…

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Jaqueline Rose McQueen looked up from where she was sitting, alone at the bar, nursing a club soda and took in the man standing before her.

  The guy was dressed in a loud, gaudy shirt, was wearing what looked like an expensive suit, and smelled heavily of money.

  That, and terribly over-priced cologne.

  She had no idea who he was, or who exactly he thought he was, but he obviously considered himself to be God’s gift to women and right about now, was the last kind of person she really wanted to be socialising with.

  All Jaqueline wanted was to be left alone.

  “I’m all good, thanks,” she said, trying her best to be polite. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes,” replied the man, and then ore slowly, “Yes, you are.”

  He began looking her up and down, no doubt mentally undressing her with his eyes, but Jaqueline really wasn’t interested.

  “My eyes are up here,” she said, trying to draw his gaze away from her ample breasts, pushed up by the shape of her glittery, shiny dress to make it look like she was better endowed than she actually was. It wasn’t exactly what she would have chosen to wear, had she any choice, but it was what had been chosen for her and the sooner she got used to wearing it the better, she supposed.

  “Yes,” the man said, finally drawing his gaze away after continuing to stare for a few seconds more, pushing his luck, “they are, and beautiful eyes they are too; the kind a man could almost drown in, should he have a mind to.

  “Bruce Anthony Clarkson, the third,” he said, reaching for her hand and bringing it to his lips so he could kiss it before she could even think to try and stop him. “I’m very big in media. I own several newspapers in fact. Maybe you might have heard of me?”

  She shook her head.

  “And you are?”

  “Jaqueline Rose,” she said, pulling back her hand and doing her level best to try and resist the very strong urge she had to rub it on her dress as she did so.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” the man said, and smiled a leering, great big smile that, just for a second, made her think of the big bad wolf in that fairy story about Little Red Riding Hood. In the story, she remembered, the wolf had eaten up the little girl’s grandma, and then dressed up in her clothes so he could fool the little girl into thinking he was her grandma. Right about now, Jaqueline could well imagine the man sitting beside her as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  There was something about him, Jaqueline thought.

  Something about him that really didn’t sit quite right.

  “So, tell me,” the man said. “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing up here on your own? Sitting here all by yourself, here at the bar, with no-one to keep you company? You here on the cruise by yourself? Maybe looking for love? Or maybe you’re just here looking for a little bit of fun?”

  He winked at her cheekily and then suddenly, there was that leering smile again.

  “You know, I can be lots of fun, if you know what I mean. Maybe I could help keep you entertained…”

  Jaqueline shuddered, and did her best to try and hide her revulsion.

  This guy was seriously starting to creep her out, she thought.

  “I don’t need entertaining,” Jaqueline said, trying to put him off. “I am the entertainment. On the ship, I mean. I work here. I’m a singer - a little bit of cabaret, a few show tunes - you name it, and I sing it. I’m supposed to be doing a few numbers later, you know – during the Halloween Ball – and just wanted a couple of quiet drinks before I have to perform later.”

  “Well, right about now you’re certainly entertaining me,” said Bruce, and leered at her again. “And all just by sitting here. So, what do you think? How about we take this down to my cabin, what do you say? Have a couple of drinks, have ourselves a little fun, just the two of us, you know? Just two consenting adults enjoying each other’s company, if you know what I mean? That is…unless…you have something else in mind perhaps?”

  He leered at her again, his wolfish grin even bigger this time.

  The guy was over-confident, too sure of himself and had obviously convinced himself he was on to a good thing. Unwittingly, without realising it, he had
given her an escape route, she suddenly realised, never thinking for a moment she might say no. Jaqueline saw an opportunity to get herself out of this situation and just like that, she quickly decided to take it.

  “I don’t think so,” Jaqueline said. She made to get up and leave. “I’m very flattered you find me attractive, and if the situation was different, maybe I might even have said yes, but I’m sorry – I’m not supposed to fraternise with passengers and if I came down to your cabin with you, it could very well cost me my job.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” Bruce said, that same leering grin still on his face, and took a hold of her arm to try and prevent her from going. “C’mon, what do you say? It’ll just be between us… I promise, I won’t tell if you won’t...”

  Jaqueline looked to the barman to help her extract herself from this situation, but suddenly and conveniently the man seemed to be busy elsewhere, just as she needed him the most. She saw him briefly glance in her direction from the other end of the bar, and then just as swiftly look away as though seeing what was happening but not wanting to get involved.

  “Is this guy bothering you, Miss?”

  Jaqueline looked up as a tall, imposing figure interjected and forced his way between them.

  “We’re just having a little conversation,” Bruce said. He stood up from his seat. “You might want to consider butting out pal, and minding your own fucking business.”

  “Well it didn’t look to me like the lady here was all that enamoured with your attention,” Wilfred said, squaring his shoulders and preparing himself for trouble. “So maybe you should be the one to butt out and leave the lady alone, what do you say?” Wilfred took a hold of the man’s arm and gently pushed him back down onto his seat.

  The man glanced down and looked at Wilfred’s hand like it was dirty or something.

  “I think, you should take your fucking hands off me, that’s what I think,” he said. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” He hissed at Wilfred through his teeth. “Do you know who I am?”