Carpathia (21 page)

  Dushko loosed a derisive snort. "Of course it does." He stood, put his glass down on a nearby table, and gave a stiff bow to the men with whom he'd been pretending to have an interesting conversation. "Gentlemen, I must be off to attend to my lady's needs."

  Amid a chorus of guffaws, Dushko took his leave and followed Blum out of the Smoke Room and onto the open section of the Boat Deck. With the
Titanic
's lifeboats stacked up among the
Carpathia
's, it felt a bit more cramped than normal, but it also meant that fewer people bothered strolling the deck. This gave Dushko and Blum as much privacy as if they'd locked themselves into Dushko's stateroom.

  "What is it?" Dushko said to Blum. "What is so vital that Elisabetta needed to interrupt my evening away from her? I was going to clean those men out at cards later tonight. I might still if I can get back to them in time."

  "There was an incident in Miss Ecsed's room," Blum said. "No one's seen her since, and the captain has us turning over the boat to look for her."

  Dushko felt his irritation at Elisabetta wash away. "What happened?" he said. "Where is she?"

  "I don't know," Blum said, his voice cracking with strain. "That's the thing. No one knows. We've been unable to find her."

  "Did you check the hold?"

  "Of course, sir."

  Dushko gave Blum a hard look until the man squirmed under his gaze like a worm in the summer sun.

  "I didn't actually go into the hold, of course, so it's possible that she's hidden down there, but the others told me that she hasn't been there since sundown."

  Duskho ground his teeth. "What about Murtagh?" he said.

  "No one's seen him either. Not that I know of, anyhow."

  Dushko shook his head in frustration. "Find Brody and you'll find Elisabetta. I'd put money on it."

  Blum stared at Dushko, his mouth hanging open. The man clearly had something else to say but couldn't bring himself to broach the subject.

  "I've told you already," Dushko said. "I will not give permission for Elisabetta to bring you into our fold. Not now."

  "But, sir." Pain marred Blum's normally stoic face. "You'd said that it would happen once we left America behind."

  "Once we reached our destination, I said." Dushko spread his arms wide. "Does this look like Europe? We're on our way back to America. I can't have you disappearing into the hold for the rest of the trip. What would happen when we reached the docks in New York?"

  The officer gave Dushko a reluctant nod to indicate he knew the man was right, even if he couldn't bring himself to like it. Dushko clapped a broad hand on the man's shoulder.

  "Once we reach Fiume and disappear into the city," Dushko said. "Once we're all arrived and safe, I'll have Elisabetta fulfill her promise to you herself."

  Blum's face erupted into a smile that faded away as fast as it had come. "That's the one thing I didn't mention yet, sir."

  "About Elisabetta? What is it?"

  "There was a fight in her room, sir. Blood everywhere."

  Dushko ran his hands over his face. "Of course there is. It's Elisabetta. Damn it."

  His mind raced over what he might have to say or do to help her explain this incident away. Had she gotten carried away during a feeding? It had been known to happen before. Either way, he would make it right. He always did.

  "But that's not all, sir."

  Dushko looked at the officer, surprised by how much he was cringing. "What is it, man? Out with it."

  "I… I found a pile of dust in her room."

  Blum said it as flat and plain as if he'd seen Elisabetta strolling out of the room himself. But Dushko knew what that meant, even if Blum didn't.

  "She's dead?" Dushko said.

  Blum swallowed hard and nodded. "No way to say for sure, of course, sir, but – it seems so."

  Dushko allowed himself a soft snarl. "Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps. And should that prove true, then whoever might have stolen that lovely creature from my side after all these years will pay with far more than their miserable lives."

 
 

 
 
 

"So you believe me?" Quin asked Doctor Cherryman. He glanced at Lucy. Maybe this would be what he needed to convince her that he was telling the truth about what happened to Abe. She knew that she didn't think he was lying. She just couldn't bring herself to admit that things like vampires might truly exist, especially aboard this ship.

  The man bowed his head for a moment before speaking. "It runs against everything I've ever been taught or believed in. I'm a man of science, not superstition, but when evidence like this crops up, what am I to do? How do I explain it?"

  "Just because you can't explain something doesn't mean it's not so," Lucy said. She reached out and put a hand on the man's arm, and that seemed to give him strength.

  "Let's say it's true." Quin glanced at Lucy and saw her lips purse together as if she'd bitten something sour. "Just for the sake of argument. Call it a hypothesis, if you will."

  "A hypothesis." Lucy nodded at the term.

  "Let's formulate the hypothesis and test it. Just like we would for any science."

  "Right." Doctor Cherryman's face lit up. Here was a way for him to grapple with the problem that the reality of vampires had presented him. "Let's say vampires exist. What does that mean?"

  "That they're bloodsucking murderers here to kill us all?"

  Lucy and the doctor gaped at Quin's bald-faced assessment.

  "Tell me I'm wrong," Quin said.

  "Let's avoid conjecture and stick to the facts as we know them," the doctor said. "They drink blood. They can mesmerize men."

  "And women," Lucy said.

  The doctor acknowledged this with a nod and continued on. "They can change shape: mist, bats, wolves, and so on. Have either of you read
Dracula
?"

  Lucy and Quin shared a smile at this.

  "What?" asked the doctor. "Did I say something humorous?"

  "Our parents are old friends with Mr Stoker," Lucy said. "We used to call him Uncle Bram. I think Abe might have been named after him."

  The doctor's jaw dropped. "Wait? Harker, Seward, and Holmwood? Are you serious?"

  Quin waved off Doctor Cherryman's concerns. He'd had to explain this countless times throughout his childhood, and he'd become immune to the astonishment his family name sometimes produced in others. "He used their names for the heroes in the book. With their kind permission, of course."

  "And you don't believe in vampires?"

  Quin grimaced. "Not until today."

  "It's a fiction," Lucy said. "I've read the book. Who hasn't? It's laughable to think it could be real."

  "Did you never ask your parents?" The doctor's astonishment hadn't faded yet.

  "Of course we did," said Quin. "They explained to us in no uncertain terms that such creatures did not exist. Emphatically. Several times."

  Quin remembered the conversations all too well. He'd had nightmares about vampires from time to time over the years. Each time his parents had comforted him and told him that there was no such thing as vampires. Despite that, he'd believed in them so much that they'd taken steps to protect him, just to humor him. Or so they'd said.

  Quin felt ill.

  "What is it?" Lucy took his chin in her hand. He'd faded away from the conversation and not even realized it. "You're white as a ghost."

  Quin stared into Lucy's concerned eyes and swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. "Did it ever strike you as odd that our parents always kept a large supply of garlic handy around the house?"

  "They loved the smell of it cooking," Lucy said. "I remember coming home from school to find the house soaking in it. The scent always brings me right back to my childhood."

  "That doesn't strike you as odd?" Doctor Cherryman said. "It's not exactly a traditional staple in English cooking."

  "They grew it in our garden. We had heaps of it. My father told me that they'd brought it back with them from a fantastic trip to Italy in their youth, before any of us children were born. All our fathers had been along on it. Quin's mother too."

  "We had an awful lot of crucifixes around our house," Quin said.

  "I don't see that as unusual for members of the Anglican church," said Lucy.

  "Over every door and window?"

  "Dear God." Lucy's hand flew up to cover her mouth. "We are such fools."

  Doctor Cherryman shook his head. "If you grew up surrounded by such things your whole life, it's easy to see why you wouldn't think them unusual. Let me assure you, though, that most homes in England are not suffused with garlic and crosses."

  "What do we do?" Lucy said. "Even if you destroyed Miss Ecsed, that Mr Murtagh is still out there, trapped somewhere on this ship with us."

  "Maybe he's not a vampire," the doctor said. "Maybe he's a servant, like Renfield in the book."

  "A servant wouldn't throw himself overboard in the middle of the Atlantic," Quin said. "Not unless he thought he could – oh." He stared at the others. "He must have changed into a bat after he leaped off the railing."

  "Then what do we do?" Lucy asked again, her voice creeping higher as she spoke. "I can't go to sleep tonight knowing there's a vampire creeping about the ship."

  "According to
Dracula
–" The doctor put up a hand to head off Quin's interruption. "I don't care to reopen the argument about whether the book is fiction or not, but it serves as a fine hypothesis for how vampires function, does it not?"

  Quin granted the man this point with a nod.

  "The book lists vampires' weaknesses as well as their powers. They cannot enter a room without an invitation from the owner. They cannot abide garlic, crucifixes, and holy water. They dislike sunshine and mirrors, in which they cast no reflection."

  "It's a novel," Lucy said. "Can we really rely on its prescriptions against vampires? Can we trust that with our lives?"

  "Do you have a better resource?" the doctor asked. "The research about the reality of vampires seems a bit thin otherwise."

  "We don't trust anything until it's been proven to work," Quin said. "Let's gather our prospective tools together, though, and test them as we go."

  Lucy shuddered. "I can only pray that some of them work."

 
 

 
 
 

"Where is he?" Dushko shouted as he stormed into the
Carpathia
's hold. He glanced around, his eyes eagle sharp, hunting for some sign of Brody Murtagh. Finding none, he slammed the steel hatch behind him and bellowed at the people inside the hold with a voice that rolled like thunder.

  "Where is he? Don't any of you dare try to protect him. Don't you dare get between me and him, or so help me I'll pitch every damned one of you into the sea so you can watch the sun come up one last damned time!"

  Piotr stood up and opened his mouth. Dushko flashed a savage grin at the man, exposing his fangs as he did. He could always count on Piotr to spill his guts before he tried spilling blood.

  The man froze before he could utter a single word of what was on his mind, staring in horror at something in the distance. It took Dushko a moment to realize that Piotr had been captivated by the sight of something behind him, to his left. He spun about to see what it was, but he was already too late.

  The blunt side of a large baling hook smashed into Dushko's face, catching him right under a cheekbone. The forceful blow snapped his head back and sent him sprawling on the floor of the hold.

  "I don't need protection, boyo!" Brody stood shaking the heavy iron hook at Dushko, his face flushed and angry. "Not from the likes of you!"

  Dushko shoved himself to his feet and squared off against his attacker. He felt his cheek. Had he still been breathing, it would have been shattered for sure. He wiped the injured area with the back of a meaty hand, and it came away stained with blood.

  "What did you do to Elisabetta?" Dushko could barely contain his rage. He wanted to rip the man's head off right here and stomp his brains out of it, but he knew it would go better if the others heard Brody confess his crimes first.

  "Not a damned thing," Brody said. "She invited me into her cabin, and a steward interrupted us while she fed on me."

  The rest of the people in the hold gasped from the various corners in which they cowered. Dushko stifled a self-satisfied smile. If Brody had allowed them to be found out, no penalty would be stiff enough. Dushko could do to him whatever he wanted without fear of repercussions. Still, the man was responsible for even worse crimes, and Dushko wanted to expose him for those too.

  "And where is she now?" Dushko knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to know if Brody did.

  "Last I saw her, she'd killed the witness. I helped her hide the body. There was no harm done."

  This was the first Dushko had heard of this little wrinkle. "Dumped the body over the railing just like you were seen doing earlier?" He let sarcasm drip from his lips with every word. "You have become too bold over the years, boy. You have become careless."

  "Me?" Brody brandished the hook at Dushko again. Dushko had to force himself to stand strong and not back up a single step. "What the hell have you been up to for the entire trip? The rest of us loll about down here in this hellhole while you parade about with the breathers upstairs, just daring them to find you out. And once they do that, what happens then? You think they'll be content?"

  "No one has ever suspected me," Dushko said. "I have decades of experience in covering my tracks, in posing as a part of the still-living world. Elisabetta did too. She would still be alive if not for you!"