Carpathia

by Matt Forbeck

  A few of the others hissed at this. Some of them had been careless about their exposure to the sun before and still bore the burn scars from it.

  "This should not be me bringing down the hammer on that damned bastard Brody! It should be all of us. Every one of us!"

  The others nodded along with Dushko now, the fear he had put into them transforming into something darker, something hateful, directed not at him but at the target he'd placed before them.

  "There is only one solution to this. We stick together! Against Brody and against the rest of the world. The next time that he comes crawling back here, you must do the right thing for all of us. You kill him on the spot, if you can!"

  A rough cheer of approval went up among the others, and hope rose in Dushko's heart for the first time since he'd heard about Elisabetta and her fate. Maybe he couldn't bring her back, but he could use her death as a stick to beat his people back into line. Otherwise, they would all be doomed for sure.

  "But what if he never comes back?" a woman said, speaking to Dushko for the first time in the entire trip. "What do we do then?"

  Dushko nodded at her, recognizing her courage. He spoke in low, harsh tones now, his voice a whisper compared to the bellowing he'd given himself over to before. In the silence that followed his stormy rage, though, his words carried to every part of the hold.

  "There are people out there looking for us now. Looking for Brody. If they cannot find him on their own, then I will feed the jackass to them."

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  "I don't have a good feeling about this," Lucy said.

  Quin looked back at her, a rope of garlic strung over her shoulders like a necklace. With Doctor Cherryman's help, they'd raided the ship's kitchen for it, taking one for her and for Quin too. Then he'd given them his keys, a set that he claimed would open every door on the ship, shoved a flashlight into Quin's hand, and sent them on their way while he returned to the ship's hospital to look after Abe.

  Before heading out to look for Murtagh, though, they'd stopped by their own quarters for supplies. Each of them had a crucifix in their luggage, something their parents had insisted they bring along on their journey with them. Thinking back, Quin had thought it an innocent enough request, and he'd been happy to humor his mother by complying with it. Now he wondered just how much they might have known.

  Quin had also grabbed the Bowie knife his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday. Then he'd smashed apart a chair in his cabin and used the knife's oversized blade to trim two of the legs into wooden stakes that he hoped they would never have to use. He'd attached the knife's sheath to his belt, and they'd set off, each carrying a crucifix in one hand and a stake in the other.

  He had to admit, they looked ridiculous. He was far beyond caring about that, though, and Lucy appeared to have given up any lingering sense of decorum too – other than her occasional comments.

  "This is madness," Lucy said as she and Quin made their way deeper into the ship.

  Quin did his best to ignore the sentiment, tempting as it was to share it. She was right, after all. What was madder than searching through the rooms of an ocean liner in the middle of the night, hoping that they might find a vampire they could slay?

  "It's been a hell of a few days," Quin said.

  Lucy snorted at this. "Are you sure we didn't die on the Titanic? That we didn't go down with all the rest of those poor souls on the ship?"

  "What?" Quin shot her a curious look. "You think this is all some sort of purgatory that we've entered? That God's sent us here to rot rather than ushering us along?"

  Lucy shook her head. "No. I'm afraid it's our own particular kind of hell."

  Quin stopped and put his hands on Lucy's shoulders. She looked so beautiful – and terrified but ready for whatever might be thrown at them by this world or the next.

  "I might believe that for myself, Luce," he said with every bit of earnestness he could summon. "But I could never imagine that for you."

  "You're far too kind, Quin," she said. "I've done plenty of wrong things in my life."

  "But never anything evil."

  She peered into his eyes. "How can you be so sure?"

  He smiled. "I know you, Luce, better than anyone. Maybe better than you know yourself. You're as good as they come."

  "Really?" A guilty look crossed her face. "I don't think the feelings I've had for you are all that pure."

  Quin blushed. He found himself unable to summon a reply.

  "Oh, that's not what I meant!" Lucy blushed too then. "It's just that I should be with Abe, shouldn't I? He's my beau, the one I'm expected to marry someday. That's the way it is. The way it's been."

  Quin reached out and took her hand. "It doesn't have to stay that way."

  "But Abe's your best friend," she said. "You two have been inseparable since we were kids. I can't come between you."

  "We've all been that way, Luce. All three of us."

  "You say that, Quin, but that was when we were kids. When we went away to different schools, we did drift apart. Especially you and me."

  Quin knew this to be true. Lucy was a few years younger than he, and when he'd gone away to study Law, she was still in secondary school. She'd blossomed into such a beautiful woman by the time he'd graduated, but she'd somehow wound up dating Abe in the meantime.

  "I know," he said. "It was just timing, I suppose. And I guess that favored Abe."

  "I thought you'd decided to ignore me."

  Quin looked at Lucy and put his hand on her cheek. "Not that," he said. "Never that."

  Quin found himself drawn to Lucy's lips with a hunger he'd rarely known. They moved closer to each other in a tender way, and he could feel the heat of her breath on him. He leaned in to kiss her, but she froze at the sound of a horrible thumping reverberating through the ship.

  "What is that?" she said. "You don't think we've hit another iceberg, do you?"

  For an instant, Quin wanted to laugh at the thought that the Carpathia might meet the same fate at the Titanic. It struck him though that there wasn't anything humorous about that notion at all.

  Quin backed off from Lucy, the moment that had passed between them already evaporating so fast it seemed as insubstantial and yet beautiful as the Northern Lights. He cocked his ear and concentrated on listening for the sound that had interrupted them. He'd heard it too – or felt it in his shoes at least.

  It came again, a tremor that reverberated through the floor. It came so soft that he was sure he would have missed it entirely had he not been listening for it. In fact, if he and Lucy had not stopped chatting at the right moment, he was sure they'd never have heard it.

  "Where is that coming from?" Lucy asked, her face a porcelain mask of concentration.

  "From the aft of the ship, I think. Maybe toward the bottom." Quin moved down the hall in that direction. The sound came again and seemed just a little bit stronger now. "Maybe it's just a fault in the engines. They lie in that direction."

  Lucy curled a lip at that. "After everything we've been through tonight, do you really believe that?"

  Quin shook his head. "Of course not. But a man can always hope."

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Quin led Lucy deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. They passed through the empty halls that snaked through the steerage cabins, creeping along as silently as they could manage. It was late now, in the wee hours of the morning, and if anyone else were awake in this part of the ship, they didn't show themselves to prove it.

  Soon they reached the end of the long hallway and met up with a door labeled CREW ONLY. Quin looked about in all directions, but the halls that led to the door still stood empty. He tried the handle, and the door was locked.

  Quin pulled Doctor Cherryman's keys from his pocket and tried them. He had no idea which of the keys might work for this particular lock, but there weren't too many of them. In no time at all, he felt the lock turn, and with a twist of its knob the door opened wide.

  Befo
re he opened the door, Quin turned to Lucy. "You should go back to your cabin," he said. "I can handle this."

  "Don't be a twit." Lucy screwed up her face at him. "We've known each other far too long for you to become chivalrous for me now. As a suffragette, I find it insulting."

  "I know, Luce, and I'm sorry, but–"

  "But what? What's there to 'but' about? I'm no wallflower you need to protect from the brutal realities of the real world. Now open that door, and let's get on with it."

  Quin wanted to explain to her that he knew she was right but still couldn't stomach the idea of walking with her into danger. No matter how capable she might be, the thought that she might be hurt or killed rattled him to his core. Part of that came from his growing sense of how much he truly loved her. The rest came from just having watched their best friend Abe torn apart by a vampire that very night. He didn't think he could bear watching the same thing happen to Lucy.

  He left all of this unvoiced though. He knew the exact arguments she would lay out for her side of the case, and he knew that she wouldn't allow him to get rid of her. In the end, he had to admit to himself that he wanted her there with him anyhow, and allowing himself just that small bit of selfishness was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.

  "All right," he said to her. "If you want to come along, I won't try to stop you. I just want you to realize exactly how stupid an idea this is."

  "If it's not too stupid for you to get involved, how can it be too stupid for me?"

  Quin permitted himself a soft smile. "If that's your only criteria, then I'm afraid you're doomed. From what I can tell from my actions over the past week, there's very little that's too stupid for me to become involved with it."

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Abe awakened with a horrible pain in his throat. At first, he flashed back to leaping off the Titanic and spending that long, terrifying night trying to balance atop an overturned lifeboat with Quin at his side, and he wondered if his memories of being rescued had been little more than a fevered dream. Then he tried to swallow, and the agony that caused reminded him of Elisabetta and pain and blood.

  He opened his eyes to find himself reclining in a hospital bed curtained off from the rest of what he assumed was a larger room. Although he could see no portholes from his bed, he could feel the slow motion of the ocean liner rocking back and forth on the waves beneath him, and by this he knew he was on a ship. It had to be the Carpathia, he felt sure, although he had no means of confirming it at the moment.

  "Ah, you're awake," a man in a doctor's white coat said as he pulled aside the curtain and strolled up to Abe's bed. Abe recognized the man as Doctor Cherryman, the one who'd helped Quin and him out after they'd been pulled from the freezing water and into the Carpathia's warmth.

  "What happened…?" Abe couldn't finish before his throat ran painfully dry, reducing him to a painful cough.

  The doctor waited for the coughing fit to pass, then gave Abe a cup of water that had been sitting on the table by his bedside. Abe gulped at it like a man who'd been dragged in from the desert, then stopped when the pain started again. He switched to sipping tiny mouthfuls of water from it, and soon the awful tickle subsided.

  "Don't you remember what happened to you, Mr Holmwood?" the doctor asked. "You've had one hell of a night."

  Abe shook his head as he felt the patch of gauze that had been taped to the wound in his throat. He'd thought he'd been dead, that Quin would never have been able to find help before he bled to death. He thanked Fate, Fortune, and God that he'd been wrong.

  "I remember." Abe spoke with a slow and distinct purpose now, endeavoring to avoid aggravating his injured throat. "I want to know what happened to Quin."

  "Your friend?" Abe wouldn't have thought it possible, but the doctor's face grew even more serious. "He helped bring you here, and he sat with your young lady. Lucy, I think?"

  "She's not mine," Abe said. "Lucy's her own girl."

  The doctor grimaced and stared at Abe close-mouthed. He looked as if he had to tell Abe that everyone else on the ship had been killed in the most gruesome way conceivable.

  "Out with it, sir," Abe finally said. "What is it?"

  "Your two friends believe you were attacked by a vampire. While your friend Quin claims that the creature who injured you is dead. They went hunting for others."

  Abe breathed through his nose and looked at the doctor for a long moment. "And what do you believe?"

  The doctor glanced at his feet before he answered. "I helped set them up with supplies and gave them both my blessing and my keys."

  Abe granted himself a smile for the first time since he'd awakened in this bed. "For this, you have my utmost thanks, sir." He gestured toward his injured throat. "As well as for the services you've performed for me tonight."

  The doctor waved off Abe's gratitude. "Were I truly heroic, I'd have accompanied your friends on their hunt. Instead, I opted to play nursemaid for you."

  "I find that extremely heroic," Abe said. He tried to sit up, but his head swam so hard he had to lie back down.

  "You're stable," Doctor Cherryman said, "but you're far from well. You should remain in that bed until we return to New York."

  Abe frowned at the thought of being stuck in this room for the rest of the journey. "And just how long might that be?"

  The doctor checked his watch. "The sun will soon rise on Wednesday, April 17. The captain tells me that with luck we should reach port by tomorrow night. We might be forced to wait until the following morning to actually dock, but my guess is we'll be allowed to do so whenever we arrive, due to the circumstances. By which I mean the rescue of the Titanic's survivors."

  Abe nodded. He hadn't been out for more than a few hours, it seemed, and he could manage being holed up here for another couple days if need be. "All right," he said. Exhaustion overcame him then, and his head fell back against his pillow once more.

  "Get as much rest as you can between now and then," the doctor said. "Once the press gets their hands on you, you'll need it. I'll check in on you from time to time to determine your condition."

  Abe nodded again, his eyes drooping as he did. It seemed to him that he had only blinked, but when he opened his eyes, the doctor was gone. The curtain had been drawn once more, and he was alone.

  Abe blinked once more, and this time when he opened his eyes, she was there, standing by the side of his bed: Elisabetta Ecsed, the woman he'd seen crumble to dust. He opened his mouth to scream, but she placed a firm hand over it, cutting him off. Her palm was soft and delicate, but cold, as if she'd been the one who'd gone into the water with the Titanic and never quite managed to warm herself up again.

  He goggled at her in terror and tried to pull her hand from his face, but he was too weak to manage it. He stared at the ruin of her eye, the one Quin had stabbed through. The eyelid drooped over the punctured globe that sagged loose in its socket, but she paid it no heed.

  The woman put a finger to her lips and shushed Abe until what energy he still had left him. He sagged against the bed then and fought the urge to weep in frustration and shame. She clucked her tongue at him until he blinked the welling tears away.

  She gazed deep into his eyes with her one good orb, an enchanting color he couldn't quite place. Even with her injury, her beauty took his breath away. She seemed younger and more vibrant than he'd ever seen her before.

  As Abe's fear drained from him, he found a strange hunger for her flowing into its place. He knew then that she'd taken far more from him than his blood with her bite. She'd stolen his will to resist her as well.

  "Can I trust you not to shout?" Elisabetta said.

  He nodded, certain that she already knew the answer to her question before she'd asked it. She hadn't left it to chance. Whatever she wanted, he would give her. All she had to do was ask.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  "Where do you think you're going?"

  Quin had dreaded hearing someone say those words since he'd led Lucy through th
at labeled door in steerage and into the engine room beyond. He'd managed to avoid using the flashlight, sure that would only draw attention to them. They'd had enough light so far to make their way by, but only just.

  Dressed as Quin was, he knew it would be clear to anyone who spotted him that he didn't belong below decks on the Carpathia. At least he was a man striding about in a man's world and might be able to pass as an off-duty officer or steward, maybe one from the Titanic. No women worked in the underbelly of the ship, though, and Lucy stuck out there like a beacon in the night. It would only be a matter of time before someone became suspicious, he knew, and it had finally happened.