Carpathia

by Matt Forbeck

  The other vampires on the roof – as well as others throughout the ship – threw back their heads and howled in dismay. The sun would be up in a few hours, Quin knew, and they would have no protection from it at all. They did the only thing they could in such circumstances.

  They fled.

  One by one at first, and then in larger groups, the vampires ran for the edge of the roof and hurled themselves off of it and into the frigid night. Quin listened for the splashes, but not one of them hit the water as they went. Instead, they changed themselves into bats and flapped away into the starry sky.

  "Come back!" Murtagh shouted after them. "You think there's a place out there for you to hide on the water? We have to make our stand here! We have to make it now!"

  Lucy crowed in triumph, and Abe slapped Quin on the back. Quin couldn't help but grin at the captain's success, but he never once took his eyes off Murtagh, whose fury grew with every second.

  Elsewhere on the ship, people screamed, cried, and bellowed for help. The sounds reminded Quin so much of that fateful night aboard the Titanic that they caused him to shiver.

  Even if the ship went down faster than the Titanic – and by the way it was already listing so hard, Quin suspected that it would – at least the Carpathia was sure to have enough lifeboats for the people aboard. She not only had all of her own, but many of the ones taken from the Titanic as well. Even if the captain hadn't had the Marconi operator radio for help, they were in a busy shipping lane off close to the coast of the United States. The people fortunate enough to become stuck on a lifeboat wouldn't be trapped there for long.

  "You did this," Murtagh said, turning on Lucy, Abe, and Quin with a nasty snarl. "The three of you spiteful little human cattle."

  "We were defending ourselves, and everyone else aboard this ship too," said Quin. His voice sounded shakier than he would have liked, but the words rang true.

  "And we'd do it again," Lucy said, her chin stuck out in defiance, the crucifix still in her hand.

  With the departure of the vampires, she'd regained much of her composure, far more than Quin, he had to admit. And in the middle of it all, she'd told him she loved him. The memory of that brought a smile to his lips as he gazed at her. He took her free hand in his, and she smiled back.

  Abe nodded. "I gave my life to stop you." He let go of Quin and looked down at his hands. "I allowed myself to be turned into this abomination." He looked up into Murtagh's eyes. "It was worth it."

  "If you don't like this shadowy life of ours, boyo, then allow me to relieve you of it!"

  When Abe had released Quin, he'd moved just far enough away from Lucy to be out of reach of her crucifix. Having seen what it could do to a vampire, Quin didn't blame him for being uncomfortable around it. Staying well away from it, though, gave any other vampire a clean shot at Abe too.

  Murtagh charged at Abe like an enraged bull and bowled them both clean over the edge of the roof. Quin tried to reach out for his friend, but he was gone and past him before he had a real chance. Lucy shouted out Abe's name, but that did as little as Quin's effort to keep the two vampires from tumbling away. They landed on the open section of the Shelter Deck fore of the bridge with a sickening thud.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Quin glanced around for the fastest way to drop the two levels to where the vampires wrestled with each other. He didn't know how he could be of any help to Abe, but he was determined to try. He spotted a rope hanging down from one of the cranes on the forward deck that hung attached to the edge of the bridge's roof, and he went to unhook it from its mooring.

  "What are you doing?" Lucy asked as she knelt to help him with the hook.

  "I have to get down there." Quin freed the hook and pulled on the rope. It had a little give to it, but not much. He hoped that once it took his weight it wouldn't just play out freely and let him fall.

  Down below them, Murtagh had sprung to his feet. He'd picked up a deck chair and hurled it at Abe, knocking him flat. That having succeeded, he threw everything else he could find at Abe: tables, lifebuoys, and more. He finished up with a cover he tore off a hatch and flung it at Abe, spinning it like a buzzsaw blade.

  Abe withered under the assault. He'd never been much for brawling outside of an occasional bout in the ring, and even during those rare matches he'd fought like a gentleman. Murtagh, on the other hand, scrapped like a back-alley stray. There was no blow too low for him to strike, and he was happy to try them all.

  Quin hefted the heavy steel hook in his hand and stepped up to the edge of the bridge's roof. As he did, the ship tilted at an even sharper angle. The Titanic had taken hours to sink, but she'd only been holed near her prow. She was supposed to be unsinkable too.

  While a good ship, the Carpathia had never had that term applied to it, and the hole blown in its side meant that the entire ship could fill up with water that much faster. Quin also suspected the captain had purposefully left the bulkheads unsealed. If so, that would leave the ship with little in the way of defenses against the incoming sea.

  All that meant to Quin was he had less time than ever. He took a deep breath to steel himself and then leaped out into the open to swing out over the Shelter Deck.

  Lucy sprinted up and leaped onto Quin just as his feet left the bridge's roof. "You're not leaving without me!" she said.

  Delighted as he might have been to hear that under other circumstances, Quin hollered out in pain and dismay as Lucy grabbed onto him. He felt like his arms might give out at any second, but he knew that if he let go too early he would drop them from too high up and risk killing them both, so he held on not only for his own life but for Lucy's as well.

  Abe gritted his teeth and held on until they reached the low point of their swing. This put them only a few feet above the deck but did nothing to affect their momentum. Quin let go, and they fell the last little bit to the deck and went tumbling along it.

  The wood in Quin's leg stabbed even farther into his flesh, and he howled out in pain. As Lucy extricated herself from the jumble of limbs they'd created, she looked down at his wound and let fly an unladylike curse.

  "You're not going anywhere with that leg of yours," she said. She pulled her crucifix from where she'd stuffed it inside the collar of her dress before she'd hopped on board him for the ride down to the Shelter Deck. As she did, she knelt down and kissed him on the lips. "I have to help Abe. I'll be back as soon as I can."

  Quin put a hand to his mouth and stared after her for an instant as she turned and left. Of all the things that had happened to him today, the kiss might have been the most shocking. He knew, though, that he couldn't let her join the fight against Murtagh without him. She and Abe would need all the help they could get.

  He tried to get to his feet, but the wood lodged in his leg made it impossible. It just hurt too much every time he moved. He had to remove the gigantic splinter from his flesh as soon as possible.

  Gritting his teeth, Quin reached down and grabbed the splinter of wood with both hands and pulled with all his might. It slid out of his flesh far more easily than he had hoped, but he still screamed through every inch of its withdrawal. It hurt like hell, but removing the wood also gave him an odd kind of relief.

  It also allowed him to move again. He shoved himself to his feet, the splinter – which was as long as his forearm – still grasped in his fist. At first he thought that he'd taken a concussion and that it had thrown off his balance, but then he realized it had to do with how badly the ship was listing instead. Waves lapped at the starboard rail, showing how hungry the sea was for the entire ship.

  Quin staggered across the canted deck on unsteady feet and spotted Lucy standing between Murtagh and an injured Abe near the ship's prow. The edge of the fragment of the hatch that Murtagh had hurled at Abe had caught him in the chest and tore through his jacket and flesh. It seemed to have stopped shy of his heart, but Quin could see even from here that such a blow would have killed any still-living man.

  "You stay away fr
om him!" Lucy said to Murtagh. "It's over, Brody! You lost!"

  "True," Murtagh said, "but that doesn't mean you can't lose too."

  Murtagh had a length of railing in his hand that he had torn from somewhere, and he cocked back his arm to hurl it straight at Lucy. Knowing he had run out of time, Quin lunged at the man, screaming from the pain he felt with every movement of his injured leg. He held the splinter he'd yanked from his leg up above his head in a twohanded grip, ready to drive it down into Murtagh's heart.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Murtagh heard Quin lumbering up behind him and turned to meet his charge. Too late for him to stop, Quin kept moving forward and brought the splinter down toward Murtagh with every bit of strength he had left. He only had one last chance left to save Abe and Lucy, and no matter how slim it might seem, he meant to take it.

  Murtagh swung out with the pipe in his hand and caught the splinter with it, knocking it clear out of Quin's grasp. It tumbled out over the starboard railing and landed in the Atlantic with a splash.

  "You idiots. How dare you?" Murtagh spoke with such menace in his voice that it made Quin want to curl up into a ball and cover his ears to escape it. "You've ruined everything. And for what? Your short, pathetic lives?"

  Quin tried to scramble away, but his leg betrayed him, buckling underneath. He might have still managed to stay on his feet, but Murtagh backhanded him to the deck. Blood flowed from his mouth, and the vampire loomed over him as he stared up in horror with waterfilled eyes.

  "You're mortals, and you spend your time fearing gods before destroying them." Murtagh tossed the pipe to one side and bared his fangs, preparing to feed. "Well, it's time for the gods to fight back."

  Murtagh fell on Quin and grabbed him by the head, forcing him to bare his throat. Quin struggled against him as hard as he could, but the vampire's grasp was like a steel vice from which he could not break free. Quin punched at Murtagh until his knuckles bled, but the vampire ignored every blow as he darted in for the kill with his ferocious teeth.

  Before those fangs punctured Quin's skin, though, Lucy leaped on Murtagh's back and stabbed her crucifix down into the nape of the vampire's neck.

  "You're no god," she said. "Only a devil!"

  Murtagh arched his spine in agony and howled in unforgivable anguish, flinging Lucy off his back as if she were a murderous child. He pushed himself off of Quin and reached back to where his skin was already bubbling away at the point the crucifix had entered his flesh. He plucked the wooden icon from his dissolving muscles and held it out before him, gaping at it in immortal horror.

  Quin saw the bones from Murtagh's fingers already showing through his hand as the meat there dripped away to land in sizzling puddles on the deck. The destruction spread fast from there, lancing up Murtagh's arm to consume it whole and stretching forward from the base of his neck to expose his naked skull.

  The man flopped over like a marionette with severed strings and collapsed in an awkward heap of snapping tendons and vanishing flesh. Soon, there was nothing left of him but a naked skeleton, its bones already bleached white by the last bubbling bits of its skin.

  Quin shoved himself to his feet and fell into Lucy's welcoming arms. He held her tight as she shuddered against him.

  "Are you all right?" she said.

  He nodded against her. "Yes."

  "Thank God," she said. She looked up at him, smiling through tears, weeping in relief.

  "No, Luce." Quin kissed her lips, soft and warm and full of life. "Thank you."

  Abe staggered up to them then, the wound in his side already knitting back together, as Quin could see through his tattered clothes. He gave Murtagh's remains a wide berth. "Is it over?" he said.

  Quin and Lucy each reached out an arm and brought Abe into their embrace. They held each other there for a long moment, one that Quin hoped would never come to and end. Once they let each other go, they'd have to deal with the aftermath of what had just happened, of everything they'd done, and he didn't know how he could manage that.

  The ship's deck pitched even harder to starboard then, and Abe had to hold Lucy and Quin tight to make sure they didn't go sliding down the polished wood, topple over the railing, and tumble into the silent sea. In the distance, Quin could hear people screaming in fear and shouting orders. He glanced back down the length of the ship and saw lifeboats being rowed away from the ship, filled with women, children, and even many men.

  "We need to go too," Quin said. "We can't stay here."

  Lucy nodded as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. "I can't believe it," she said. "To think that this nightmare is finally over."

  "I'm afraid that's not quite true yet." Abe grimaced and gestured to himself. "We still have one vampire left."

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Getting to the lifeboat that Elisabetta had cut loose had been difficult, but the three of them managed it. They wanted to make sure they had their own boat, so they were willing to leap into the icy waters and make the long swim to where it had floated away. Quin was grateful that Lucy had suggested they take the time to bind up his leg before they set out. Otherwise, he was sure he would have passed out from lack of blood.

  Once they reached the lifeboat, Abe had lifted them in and found blankets in the storage compartments that had been buried beneath the graveyard dirt. He wrapped Lucy and Quin in them and had set to the oars himself, working tirelessly to bring them toward the distant shore that Quin had spotted before. As soon as Quin had stopped shivering, he'd insisted on lending a hand, but Abe had refused.

  "Save your strength," Abe had said. "You'll need it come dawn."

  They had yet to reach the shore when the first rays of the imminent sunrise broke over the eastern horizon. They spotted a few bats flying high overhead, ones that they guessed had become disoriented in the night and not known which way to fly. Now that they had wandered close enough to the shore to see it, they made a beeline for it.

  Quin could tell, though, that they would never reach land in time. A couple of them that were higher up in the air burst into flames as they flapped along, falling into the sea like shooting stars that screamed. Others hung closer to the waves, avoiding direct exposure to the oncoming sunlight for now, although Quin was sure that they would run out of time soon.

  After the first bat fell burning from the sky like a little Icarus, they took the remaining blankets out and wrapped Abe in them. Then they folded the remnants of the lifeboat's canvas cover over that in as many layers as they could manage. Then Quin and Lucy shoved Abe as tight as they could under a seat and covered any exposed bits as best they could with their legs.

  "How do we know if that will be enough?" Lucy said.

  "We don't." Quin eyed the sun as the top of it broke over the horizon. "But we'll find out soon enough."

  The two of them sat there in the boat and held hands as the sun rose higher into the sky. After a little while, its rays reached over the top of the lifeboat's gunwale and spilled down into the boat. They kept a close eye on the bundle beneath them as sunlight coated more and more of the interior. When the rays fell square on one end of the bundle they'd been unable to completely cover, they held their breath and waited for some sort of reaction from the friend they'd buried beneath so many things.

  Quin and Lucy had seen the vampires burst into flames as they emerged from the Carpathia's hold. They knew what would happen if even the slightest bit of sunlight managed to penetrate the materials with which they'd covered Abe. They'd only have seconds to leap clear of him themselves before the conflagration scorched them too, and there was a real chance that the blaze would destroy their lifeboat and leave them floating in the sea, still a long way from land.

  Nothing happened.

  Lucy and Quin exhaled then and held each other and allowed themselves to enjoy a single sweet and tender kiss. Then they set to the oars and rowed for the still-distant shore.

  "It bothers me to think of Abe under all those things," Lucy said as they neared land. "I
know he can't breathe beneath all that."

  "He doesn't need to breathe, Luce. Not any more."

  "I know," she said. "That's what bothers me."

  About midday, they reached a barren patch of shoreline and beached the boat. After a short rest, they worked together, using the oars as levers, to flip the boat over with Abe still inside. After checking to make sure he was still all right, they took shelter in the shade the boat provided and fell asleep.

  They awoke as the sun set over the land on which they sat, and Quin thought that he had perhaps never seen such a lovely thing in his life. They were parched and hungry, so Quin crawled under the overturned boat and found some bottles of water and crackers in one of its storage compartments. He and Lucy had just finished making a light meal of his findings when they heard something under the boat start rustling around.