by Stead, Nick
The lighting was designed so as not to disturb other crew members who might be resting, but it was still filtering through the curtains round his bunk and preventing Gwyn’s form from returning to its true incorporeal state.
“What the fuck are you doing with lights on down here?” I shouted. “Turn it off, now!”
“All right, no need to shout. I was only reading,” he said, calmer than most people probably would have been at my sudden outburst. But I didn’t care about potentially hurting the feelings of someone I’d only just met that night. Gwyn had been starting to feel like part of the pack since I’d rescued him from the Slayers. I couldn’t let Death take that from me, not when I’d lost so much already.
The knocker looked even worse in the artificial glow of the cabin. Some of his burns formed a pattern where he’d been touched by fingers of electricity, branding him with a kind of grotesque beauty. It looked like a red plant was growing out of his skin, its stalk twisting round his arms and branching off into leaves which glistened in the light with a bloody sheen. The raw flesh was in stark contrast to his deathly pale skin. Thankfully his eyes were closed – I don’t think I could have handled them staring unseeing and lifeless. He was already too corpse-like as it was.
Brendan was grumbling to himself but I took little notice of the words. I was about to yell at him again (how long does it take just to flip a switch?!) when the light winked out and darkness enveloped us. My heart thundered as I strained my senses for some hint it had worked.
It took me a moment to realise the weight in my arms was gone. Something brushed against my cheek and made Brendan scream. A chuckle slid through the air and my fear began to recede, melting away in a flood of relief. Gwyn was back.
Light returned to the inside of the cabin, revealing the knocker in his human form. You’d never have guessed he’d just been clinically dead from being struck by lightning. His skin had returned to its normal pallor, unmarred and coloured with the hue of life. The mischief was back in his eyes and he was standing unaided, holding himself upright – no longer a limp and lifeless corpse but a conscious being, very much alive and in apparent good health.
“All right, chummers?”
“You bastard, what did you have to go and scare us like that for?” I roared, grabbing him in a rough hug.
“You mean Ulfarr didn’t hit you guys with lightning bolts as well?”
“No, why would you think that?”
“The look of shock on your face.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed him away in mock disgust. “I still don’t know why I keep saving you.”
“Oh I don’t know, it’s not like I just took one for the team or anything. Next time Ulfarr shows up, you can face him yourself, Mr Ungrateful.”
“I never said I wasn’t grateful for your sacrifice. It’s just a shame it didn’t improve your bad jokes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my jokes. It’s you younger undead races who have no sense of humour. What is it about dying that means you have to become so serious for all eternity? I just died and it’s not damaged my ability to laugh.”
Brendan’s eyebrows were raised slightly, his gaze roaming from me to Gwyn. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m glad to see you’re okay and back on board the ship, mate.”
“Thank you, Brendan,” Gwyn said. “See, Brendan appreciates me. What am I doing back here anyway?”
I gave him a quick run through of what had happened after Ulfarr had brought the lightning bolt down on him.
“Damn this curse. I would have had him if it wasn’t for this weakness to light crap.”
“Would you have killed him?”
Gwyn shrugged. “I was trying not to make it such a final end to the fight, but maybe he would have pushed me that far, who knows? Maybe we’ll find out, some day.”
“If we ever go back. He basically banished us all from the country.”
Gwyn rolled his eyes. “See, this is exactly what I was talking about. Vampires. Think they rule everything just because they get more power than other corporeal undead.”
“What about the female vampire, did you kill her?”
“Nah, she just needs a drop of blood to revive her. Well, several drops. Maybe a whole gallon.”
“Good. Arrogant bastards they might be but I agree with you on one thing – we shouldn’t be doing the Slayers’ job for them. Fighting among ourselves is only going to make us extinct quicker.”
“So you do have some brains under all that fur. I’m impressed.”
“Cheeky bastard,” I growled. “Come on, before you get killed a second time tonight. We should leave Brendan to sleep, and the others will be wondering what’s happening.”
“Right you are, fluffy.”
We emerged back on deck to find Selina and the two vampires waiting in the wheelhouse. Zee occupied the only chair in there, at the wheel.
“Evening, all,” Gwyn said. “I’m alive.”
Lady Sarah’s face was its usual impassive mask. “So we gathered.”
Selina gave him one of her warm smiles. “You had us worried there. I’d like to talk to you about your curse at some point, if I may. If I can work out what method the witch used, I might be able to break it for you.”
“Sure. If there’s a chance you can free me of it, I’m not going to say no.”
“I’ll do everything I can.”
Gwyn turned to Zee. “And what about you, Captain. Are you not pleased to see me back in one piece?”
“Yes, it is good to have you back. Where else would we find a never-ending blood supply out here?”
“It’s the middle of the ocean, not the middle of space. There’s plenty of sea creatures you could feed on.”
Lady Sarah’s nose wrinkled. “I hate fish.”
Gwyn shook his head. “You lot really know how to make a chap feel welcome.”
“We love you really,” I said.
Zee nodded. “You did a good thing out there. None of us could have withstood an Elder’s wrath for so long. It gave us the time we needed to get away safely, and I am glad we didn’t have to lose you in the process.”
I glanced out of the window while they talked. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness, the water made so black by the night that we might as well have been in space. The constant sound of it lapping against the sides of the boat was going to take some getting used to, as well as the motion of the waves rocking beneath our feet. I’d been on a ferry once or twice when I was younger but that felt like a lifetime ago now, and it was far from the natural habitat for a wolf.
The same cold wind from earlier continued to harry the coastline. Bitter air slid over sensitive skin, raising goosebumps and driving muscles to shiver and shake. Selina started pulling out more clothes from the stolen backpack. They were different to the ones she’d taken from the house we’d raided on the way to Wales, and I guessed these must be among the supplies they’d been gathering in preparation for our voyage.
“Here,” she said, handing a bundle to Gwyn. He had to be feeling the cold the most in nothing but the bare skin of his human form.
“Much appreciated, chummers.” He accepted the garments and dressed.
“There’s some for you as well if you want them, Nick,” Selina said. “You’re going to be spending most of your time as a wolf for the foreseeable future, so it might be an idea to transform back to human for the journey there. We don’t want you losing your humanity too soon.”
“I suppose,” I growled, letting go of my lupine features with great reluctance. The full force of the cold air hit me the moment my fur withdrew. We were sheltered from the wind in the wheelhouse and the ship did have heating, but it was far from cosy in there. The wind’s chill slithered inside, and the technology to combat it hadn’t been on long enough to reach its full potential. The warm layers she passed me were almost as good as my pelt, and there was a set of waterproof clothing for each of us to pull over everything else to help keep dry. “Do you still have that
map in there?”
She nodded and handed it to me.
“Want to show me the route we’re taking now, Zee?” I asked, spreading the map out in front of him. “Are we just going straight across to this area marked Newfoundland and Labrador?”
“Not quite,” he said, taking his eyes off the various monitors meant for aiding navigation to study the map. He traced a line north with his finger. “That area of Canada is far too populated for what we need so we’re going this way, through the Arctic. The Slayers have less chance of following if we stick to the oceans than if we were to land on the nearest coast and run the rest of the way to the Northern provinces.”
“So we’re sailing the whole way there?”
“Not quite,” he said again, with a laugh this time as he pointed at the Arctic Ocean.
“It’s the Arctic, Nick,” Gwyn said. “The North Pole. Think about it for a minute.”
I stared for a moment, then it hit me. “Oh, right. The ice. So we can’t just sail round Greenland and land on one of these little islands?”
Zee shook his head. “The furthest we can go by sea is Svalbard. We land on Spitsbergen, then from there we will have to cross the ice on foot, all the way to the Beaufort Sea. Once we reach the edge of the ice, Lady Sarah and I can fly you and Selina across to the Yukon coastline. That last part will only be about two hundred miles. We should be able to cover it in just over two hours.”
“Why can’t we just go to Greenland and make our way on foot from there? And why set sail from Wales when you want to take us north? Going round Ireland must be adding extra miles onto the journey. Why not go from the other side of the country, or even Scotland?”
“Trust me, this route was the one with the lowest risk. It brings us into contact with the least number of people and we’ll be steering well clear of unnavigable waters. We don’t want to be dodging icebergs if we can help it. Plus I know the Welsh coast better than any other.” He gave me a reassuring smile, a glint in his eye. “I’ve sailed north before – I know what I’m doing.”
“Okay. Well at least the Slayers didn’t make an appearance tonight. I take it all went to plan with keeping the area clear of them?”
Zee nodded. “Now we’ve left, it probably won’t be long before they discover what we did to their base and the people in it, but while you were off with Will our ruse worked. They believed the reports that all was well, and we had no more run-ins with any other members who weren’t in the base that night.”
“So I didn’t miss much while I was gone?”
“No. But what of your adventures with Will? Now we’ve made it out onto the open sea, we have nothing but time. There’s not much to do other than while it away sharing stories.”
So I finally gave them the full version of everything that had happened since leaving the base with Will. Well, the nearly full version. I still left out the parts about Jaken and being bound to Hell. None of them had seemed to know much on demons when I’d asked in the dungeon, so I doubted the name Jaken would mean anything to them. Except maybe to Selina, since she’d made the deal, and there was a chance she’d confessed as much to her sister. But I’d discuss that with her when I was ready.
Gwyn also told them his story – the same one he’d given me while we’d stopped for a rest that morning.
“There is something I find myself struggling to understand,” Lady Sarah said. “Why would the Slayers be so interested in keeping you alive when you are the last of your kind and have no hope of making any more knockers? They could have killed your human body just as Ulfarr did this very night. They could have locked away your corpse in a lit room, then even if darkness could revive you, there would have been less risk of you escaping for as long as they could keep you in the light. So why take that risk?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “They don’t need to research more effective ways to kill your kind when you’re the last one, unless they’re hoping to find something other than magic that works on all spirit creatures?”
Gwyn shook his head. “The research their scientists are doing is about way more than killing us efficiently. They’re still humans at the end of the day, with all the same flaws and desires as the rest of humanity. And what is it that most people crave?”
I shrugged. “Wealth? Power? Fame?”
“More than any of those. What is it that people fear?”
“Mortality,” Lady Sarah answered.
“Got it in one,” Gwyn said.
Zee’s eyebrows shot up. “They’re searching for the secret to eternal life?”
“Yup. They want all the benefits of vampirism and lycanthropy, with none of what they consider to be the downsides. Super speed and strength and everlasting life? Sure. A hunger for blood and human flesh? Nope, they don’t want any of that. Turning into a monster and losing the ability to walk around in sunlight? Forget it, they’re not willing to make that sacrifice. So they study our biology in the hopes of finding a way to replicate all the benefits of being an undead, without any of the negatives. And, you know, the actual undead part.”
Silence followed that latest revelation. No doubt the Slayers believed their cause was a noble one and the horrific experiments taking place in their labs were for the greater good. What was the suffering of a few monsters compared to the next evolutionary step for the entire human race? But the implications of that were terrifying.
The world was already overpopulated with more humans than the earth could sustain. If the Reaper no longer had a claim to them, what would that mean for other species? Would the cost of immortality for all mankind be the death of the natural world and all its beautiful creatures?
And a race of superhumans – what would that mean for the last of we undead? If they gained our powers, we lost all our current advantages over them. Not just that, we’d be at a disadvantage when you considered all the technology they had to use against us and the greater resources and firepower at their disposal. We’d have to learn to use firearms to even the odds and even that might not be enough. Not when they had nuclear warheads already in place and god knows what else.
“They will not succeed,” Lady Sarah said, after a few minutes. “Both lycanthropy and vampirism kill their victims as part of the transformation process. There is no way they can replicate some of the changes without dying themselves.”
“They certainly haven’t succeeded yet or they wouldn’t have been so interested in what keeps me ticking,” Gwyn answered.
But I wasn’t so sure. I knew how determined humanity could be and I was well aware of how science was continually taking leaps and bounds towards uncovering all the mysteries of the universe. They may well find a way to unlock the secret to immortality if we didn’t put a stop to it quick enough.
“What about this food you mentioned?” I asked, changing the subject. “I could do with something after shifting again.”
“There’s a kitchen you probably didn’t notice when you were running round below deck with Gwyn,” Zee said. “The galley, in nautical terms. We stored the food down there.”
“I’ll show you,” Selina volunteered.
“I suppose you two vampires will be wanting a drink as well?” Gwyn said.
The hunger in their eyes was all the answer he needed. We left them to feed on the knocker’s blood, Selina taking the lead down the stairs, into the ship’s cabin and through to the galley. I noticed Brendan still had his light on as we passed.
When Zee had first said he would find us a ship, I’m not sure what I expected. I knew it wouldn’t be the same kind of grand vessel he’d have captained in his days of piracy, back in the eighteenth century. But with my limited knowledge about modern ships, I was surprised to find this one so well kitted out with appliances like an oven, a fridge and a washing machine. We even had a TV!
A flick of another light switch revealed all these modern conveniences most people take for granted. There was plenty of storage space in the galley as well. I opened one of the cupboards and immediatel
y regretted it, packets of things like microwavable noodles and pasta sliding off of the mountain my friends had piled within. They fell to the floor, looking only vaguely appetising. What I really wanted was meat.
“I think this is what you’re looking for,” Selina said, opening the fridge and tossing me a raw steak.
I sat myself at the little table in there and ripped the packaging off, not bothering with cooking it. Selina did some noodles for herself and sat across from me.
It would have been the perfect opportunity to ask her about the deal she’d made with Hell, but I was too emotionally drained by that point. I was still processing what Gwyn had just told us, as well as Ulfarr’s parting words. If Canada was all my dream had promised then maybe it wouldn’t make a difference – maybe I’d live out the rest of my unnaturally long life in the wilderness with generation after generation of my mortal cousins. But what if I did ever have need to return to the UK? Would Ulfarr call another meeting and name the five of us enemies of all undead? So far it had mostly been the vampires he’d turned against me, but I wondered then if he’d make the most of my absence to spread more hatred for my kind and lay the blame on me for more than just the murders I’d already been accused of. There’d be nobody left to defend me, or my friends. I was pretty sure he’d name each of them traitors as well, who’d aided and abetted me. And most would probably believe him without question. We really wouldn’t be welcome if we ever went back, a saddening thought which threatened to lower my mood for the night. Canada might be my future, but Britain would always be my past. It had been my beginning, my birthplace, and it would forever be my home country, exiled or not. I didn’t like to think of being banished from its shores.
Selina seemed to sense I wasn’t in the mood to talk. She kept quiet while she ate, staring off into space as though she were also deep in thought.
Gwyn appeared just as I was finishing my steak. He was back to looking pale, staggering into the cabin on legs weak with blood loss. We switched the lights off for a few moments so he could heal, then he dressed again and joined us at the table.