Dracula's Demeter: The Vampire King's Stunning Sea Voyage

by Doug Lamoreux

  “I need to think about this.”

  “There's no time left fer thaat! I'll look to the wee lass. You get the gun.”

  The details of the Englishman slipping into the captain's berth to search could be stretched in the telling. But it isn't necessary. He accomplished it quickly and quietly, on his toes, without being seen. Nikilov and the mate were plainly heard, through the scuttles, at the helm, in a rousing discussion with the crew. Popescu was shouting his head off.

  * * *

  Popescu spilled the beans. The crew laid down their work and, as one, approached the con demanding – with the Romanian as their mouth piece – answers to two pointed questions. Was there a woman aboard the ship? Had she come aboard as a member of the crew?

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Constantin bawled. “Go back to your work. Or is this a mutiny?”

  “No, sir,” Popescu sneered. “Is no mutiny. Neither, sir, shall we go back to work.”

  “How dare you!” Constantin raised his hand to strike.

  And would have had Nikilov not intervened. “Belay that, Mr. Constantin.” He watched his first lower his hand, then turned to the crew. He saw anger, embarrassment, and fear in their faces – and felt it his responsibility, his failing.

  “The answers to your questions are, yes, and yes. There is a woman aboard. She came aboard in masquerade, as Rada Funar, without our knowledge. She was discovered following her injury. If any of you feel lied to, I apologize. But, understand, I was fooled, and made a fool, before the rest of you.”

  “I knew it!” Popescu turned to his shipmates. “I told you!” He crossed himself. “I told you in Varna this ship was cursed. Now it unfolds!”

  “There is no curse on this ship. There is a stowaway aboard, nothing more.”

  The men, led by Popescu, were grumbling.

  “Our problems started with that… that girl… being allowed aboard.”

  “Let me be clear about this,” Nikilov said. “The girl is not to be touched. I am responsible for her and you will leave her alone. She will be dealt with when we reach Whitby.”

  “She started it, but it does not end with her,” Popescu said. “There is a curse upon this ship. Right or wrong, those boxes must be brought up from the hold…”

  “We will not let superstition get the better of our thinking,” the captain said.

  “You have an obligation to your crew,” Popescu insisted. “We demand those boxes be thrown overboard!” He turned to Olgaren and Amramoff and raised his hands. “Do we not?”

  Olgaren and Amramoff nodded jointly.

  “You heard the captain,” Constantin shouted.

  “Aye, but!” Olgaren was a wreck. “It cannot be left there! Would it not…”

  Constantin grabbed a handspike from the deckhouse. “Damn you!” he screamed, and struck Olgaren aside his head. The big man toppled like a tree. The others backed off, the deck grew silent. The mate drew a tin of water from a rainbarrel and doused the unconscious seaman. Olgaren came to. Another moment and the stunned Russian stood with his head in his hand.

  “Evil eye or no evil eye,” the first said. “The trust of this ship's owners is in the hands of Captain Nikilov, not in the sea. If the Devil does have cargo aboard this ship, then it is consigned and will be delivered.”

  “That will do, Mr. Constantin,” the captain said. “Moisey, you are not badly hurt?”

  “No, captain,” the big man answered in a monotone.

  “Mr. Constantin has your attention,” Nikilov said, addressing the group. “Might I assume I again have your order?” He received nods all around and, a tick later, three conclusive – if disheartened – barks of, “Aye, captain”.

  “Nobody will go near the passenger's cabin or the young woman below. She is injured and in need of rest. No one will lay a hand on the boxes in the cargo hold. Is that understood? Neither are to be molested or interfered with. Now, attend to your duties.”

  The captain signaled his first mate to follow and headed below.

  * * *

  Harrington had already rifled Nikilov's book shelves, his kit locker, and had his hands in the top drawer of his desk, when he heard the unmistakable approach of footsteps. The scholar panicked. He had no legitimate excuse for his presence, and no way out save the way he'd come in. The door to the companionway was, even then, being pushed open from the outside. The Englishman took the only action available. He dropped to the floor and slid under the captain's bunk.

  Nikilov ushered the mate in and secured the door.

  Harrington would not have shown himself for the world but lay there sweating from the heat, trembling from fear of being found, and listening from curiosity – and an inability to do anything else. His search had been cut short; his opportunity to secure a gun was gone. In but a few sentences, he learned how much deeper it went, the degree to which the events lay on the captain's mind and how seriously he was taking the tensions of the frightened crew.

  Nikilov lit a lamp, illuminating their footware for their unseen guest, and cleared his throat. Before he could speak, he was interrupted by the mate.

  “I apologize, captain,” Constantin said (without sounding terribly apologetic). “For losing my temper just now.”

  “Yes,” Nikilov nodded. “I appreciate your saying so. I would appreciate also your withholding corporal punishment until I order it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “That said, I did not call you down, Iancu, to issue a reprimand.” He stooped to the bottom drawer of his desk. Harrington drew back not to be seen. From it, Nikilov withdrew a substantial wooden box. “I regret having to do this but am afraid we have no other choice.” He laid the box atop his desk and lifted the lid. Inside, unseen by Harrington in his hiding place, facing each other, lay two shining blue revolvers.

  “Captain?” Constantin asked.

  Nikilov lifted a pistol from the box. “It is my feeling you and I should arm ourselves.” He examined the cylinder to see all seven chambers were loaded, closed it and extended the weapon to his mate. “And remain armed until we discover the cause of our… tensions.”

  “We've searched the ship again and again. There's nobody aboard but the crew.”

  “Yes.” The captain nodded at the gun. “Take it, if you agree with me.”

  Under the circumstances, how could he not? Constantin pocketed the revolver.

  Under the bunk, Harrington cursed himself for not having checked that drawer first. Then again, they'd surely have been caught – before they'd had time to use it.

  Above him, neither Nikilov nor Constantin spoke again. They left the cabin and returned to the deck and their nerve-wracked crew. Harrington came out of hiding, to stare at the outline of two pistols carved in a, now empty, box.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A knock at the guest cabin put both Harrington and Swales on alert. Ekaterina had had no visitors and little intrusion since her consignment. They had no reason to expect a change. Harrington opened the door and Constantin entered with something preying on his mind.

  “Swales, you're needed on the wheel.” He hesitated, then turned to the Englishman. “The captain asks, Mr. Harrington, if you too would be willing to go up? We need someone to stand the watch and the rest of the crew are done in.”

  “I have no problem helping out, certainly,” Harrington said. “But I am concerned about Ekaterina being left alone. Can the crew be trusted to leave her?”

  “The crew?”

  “I assume, with the cat out of the bag, they are still angry? Their superstitions…”

  “I would not put it down to superstition. I am not superstitious – and I hate her presence. Would not you be angry if you'd been lied to? Thank whatever higher powers you ascribe to I do not command or you would all have been whipped. Be that as it may, the captain has ordered she not be touched. Therefore she will not be touched. It is that simple.” He spread his coat, arms akimbo, and Harrington saw the pistol in his belt. “Should anyone try,” the first
added, “I will kill them. Now, if you will, as soon as you are able, on deck.”

  * * *

  The heavy gray mist that was Count Dracula rose from his box. It hovered for a moment, in flux, then drifted forward and upward to the forehold's door to the between-decks. The cloud met the door, and its many cracks and, an instant later, was on the other side – in the companionway.

  The mist shifted and became the tall black-clad vampire. He paused a moment. All was quiet, save for creaking wood, the muffled sounds of the wind-beaten canvas, and the thump and splash of shunting water at the bow. The officers and crew not on deck were in their beds, dead to the world, as ravaged by the voyage as their ship. The tall man strode the companionway to its end. Dracula laid his hand on the door to her quarters and mentally summoned her.

  On the other side of the door, Ekaterina broke the cross off the frame of her bunk. She threw the pieces across the floor and hurried to the door. She threw it wide open. Vampire and lover stood facing one another.

  She grabbed the cross above the door frame and pulled it down. Dracula averted his eyes as she snapped the icon into pieces and threw them with the others on the floor. She raised her arms inviting her lover to her.

  Dracula smiled and stepped forward, then growled and retreated again. His eyes stung, his sinuses burned. The garlic remained still pressed into the wood around the door. Enraged, he turned on his heels and strode back to the hold. He made no attempt to slow as he approached, nor did he move to open it, but hit the door at full speed – as his body vaporized. Dracula was gone; the mist as well. The door was intact and undisturbed.

  In the hold, in a rage, Dracula threw up his hands. “Ekaterina,” he hissed, his voice dripping acid and anger. “Come to me. Here, now, come to me!”

  * * *

  “Have ye ever been to Whitby, Trevor?” Swales asked, leaning on the ship's wheel.

  “No,” answered the scholar. “The north country has always been a bit cold for me; especially on the coast. I'm a man of The Smoke.”

  Swales shook his head. “Ye can have all o' London an' then some fer what I care.”

  “Why did you ask? About Whitby, I mean.”

  “Was just thinkin' o' her, Whitby, that's all.” He stared out to sea, his eyes lost in the distance, without seeing it. “There's a great reef rises outside o' the harbor, runs out into the German Sea…”

  “The what?”

  “The North Sea t' you; I was raised by an old whaler,” Swales chuckled. “So, this reef runs from behind the south lighthouse. At its end, floats a bell buoy. It rides the waves an' swings with the weather an' puts such a mournful sound upon the wind. I heard it, in me mind, the Whitby harbor buoy, when I rang the hour just now. There's a legend says when a ship is lost – that bell buoy is heard out t' sea.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Meh. Fool-talk. That's what me dad would say. Lies for the comers and trippers, an' the like.”

  Harrington laughed. “For who?”

  “The tourists!” Swales said. “Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea.”

  * * *

  The stairway door creaked slowly open and the slim amber light of the between-decks lamp threw a shadow into the darkness of the forward hold; Ekaterina's long, thin shadow. She stood motionless, her body swamped in Swales' out-sized nightshirt, peering into the depths with unseeing eyes. Still she stared. She pushed the door to its limits and the slim light reaching around her illuminated the tall figure of her master below.

  “Come to me,” Dracula said.

  Ekaterina moved down the steps, unsteadily, but eagerly. She hurried across the hold. The wet wood chilled her feet, the odor of mold and cloistered air stung her nose, the pitch and roll of the schooner nearly flipped her to her knees. None of it mattered. She reached Dracula and fell into his arms.

  He pulled her to him and her short squeal became an extended moan. His right hand cupped her soft rear, his left pulled her shirt open and explored her small, firm breasts. He brushed her hair over her shoulder with his thin nose and great mustache and nuzzled her neck. His grip was icy cold but immeasurably powerful. His breath, a font of acrid rot, was hot and enveloping. None of Ekaterina's thoughts were her own. She had only a single driving need – to give herself body and soul to the master. The vampire was pure lust as he stroked her; pure hunger as he sank his teeth into her throat.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The morning of Friday, 30 July, arrived with Swales still at the wheel, physically exhausted and eye-sore, trying to see through the blasted fog. The sails were reefed again and the ship was going nowhere fast. In such a state, he wasn't even startled when Harrington, yet at the watch, stepped from the gray nothingness of the swirling mist like a performer in a magic act. The scholar joined him and they stood, silently, one in their weariness and melancholy.

  They'd been warned to keep a sharp eye out for land. They could barely see a hand in front of their faces. Then something came out of the fog; not a sight, but a sound, a moaning cry like the pathetic mewl of a wounded kitten. It floated aft from somewhere nearby.

  They looked at each other in frightened awe. Trembling, Harrington lifted his oil lamp. Near useless in the heavy fog, it created an amber nimbus about them but failed to illuminate anything farther than a few feet away. Moving to investigate, as was his duty, Harrington heard it again. It was a weak cry of pain and terror but this time it sounded human.

  To the Englishman's reckoning, it could only have come from the deckhouse, below deck. He approached with trepidation and, as he reached the door, turned for support from Swales. Less than twenty feet forward of the helm, and he could see nothing of the old cook through the swirling fog. On his own, Harrington opened the door and put in his lamp.

  Ekaterina lay collapsed midway down on the stairs in agony. Even in the poor flicker of his lamp, he could see her too-large night shirt torn open, her breasts exposed and spattered crimson, a stream of blood running from her throat. “Cor! Oliver!” Harrington shouted over his shoulder. “Oliver! Come quickly!”

  “What is it?” came the frightened question from the fog.

  “Come quickly, please!”

  * * *

  It would seem incongruous that later that day a celebration was held aboard Demeter. Yet that was the case.

  The girl was gotten quietly back to her quarters. Replacements were secured for both men, and Harrington and Swales disappeared below to tend to Ekaterina's injuries. Actually, beyond the understanding of the others, they fought to keep her alive, with one bright spot in the affair; they no longer had to pretend they were nursing the deck boy.

  Meanwhile, with no inkling about their undead cargo, the captain and first mate met in the commander's quarters. And, while no one knew the weighty matters discussed, rumors flew among the remaining men before the mast. They emerged soon-after, to everybody's surprise, in the most jovial of moods. A meeting of the ship's compliment was called and, with the captain's permission, Constantin made an announcement.

  “We have gone over our maps,” he said, with a rare (though still cruelly angled) smile playing on his lips. “Despite this ridiculous fog, the captain and I believe, we're certain, we are nearing England. This will be our last night at sea!” Cheers went up from all around and Constantin let them play out before he proceeded. “We have every expectation, despite the fog, of reaching port tomorrow.” The cheer went up again and, this time, he merely shouted through it. “We've neglected our rum ration for days. Captain wants to make it up to you!”

  The delighted men scurried for their mugs. The half-hogshead tapper was opened and the rum ran again. With Nikilov's permission, Popescu brought up his violin and, in a rare show of comradeship, carried up Olgaren's accordion as well. For the first time since their first week at sea, there was music, there was dancing. For the first time in as long, there was an absence of fear.

  * * *

  Away from the celebration
, Swales and Harrington had stabilized the girl and struggled to find some way to protect her from the vampire.

  Swales lifted Ekaterina's eye-lids noting their once-brilliant green had been reduced to a pale yellow that – when the light struck them – gave off a red reflection. He peeled back her upper lip and, though the change was slight, saw that her eyeteeth were longer and sharper. She was restless, in pain.

  “How is she?” Harrington asked hopefully.

  “She is changing. This thing, this vampire, is o'ertakin' her, changin' her. He is turnin' her into a creature like himsel'. Her teeth grow sharper, her eyes harder. She longs fer the dark.”

  She stirred briefly to find Harrington at her side. “Trevor…” She reached for him. Her strength failed and her hand slipped to her breast. “I've had a dream,” she managed in a whisper. “The most awful dream…”

  “Yes, dear, it was only a dream. A bad dream,” he assured her. He tucked her hand under the blanket and she was asleep again. “I do not understand this…” Harrington looked up to see a change come over Swales as well. There was something on his mind; something he was hesitant to reveal.

  “Trevor, we must talk.”

  “She doesn't remember anything,” Harrington said. “At least nothing she recognizes as having been real. Maybe we're making too much…”

  Swales shook his head. “I know, lad, ye'd like it to be a dream. But ye know better. You found her. An' I do no' need to list the evidences. The relapses. The effects o' the sun. Ye remember, I dare say better than I, her attempts to escape the room. That episode – laying abed when her whole pair-sonality changed… the ferocious look, the feral nature what o'ertook her. Ye' were here. Ye saw what I saw. That was no' yer lass layin' there.”

  “Yes.” Harrington nodded, defeated. “It was as if someone, something had possessed her.”

  “More than `possessed'…” Swales wandered, considering. “It was as if whate'er it was traded places w' her. Physically changed places; took o'er her body. Ekaterina was no' here, It was. An', fer an instant, she went - where'er It is now.”