Carpathia (28 page)

  Lucy blanched, and Quin felt a shiver go through him. They'd just managed to survive another shipwreck days ago. He couldn't imagine having to undergo that again.

  "How long do we have?" Abe said in his absent voice.

  "It's hard to say. The boilers are designed to prevent just such a thing, of course."

  "What do we have at the least?" Lucy said. "An hour."

  "At least," said the captain. "Perhaps much more. There are many variables to consider, and my men will have to work hard and fast to make it happen."

  Quin felt sick. "How will you persuade them to do that? Isn't that tantamount to suicide?"

  The captain nodded. "They're sailors, and it's a dangerous world out there. We hear rumblings of war all across Europe, all the time. They knew when they signed on that it might come to this. They'll do their duty, or they'll die trying."

  Quin shook his head. "Seems to me they'll die either way."

 
 

 
 
 

When Dushko leapt for Brody, he knew the man would make him pay for it. The gun went off long before he could reach the Irishman, and the slug tore through his right shoulder, taking a good chunk of his flesh along with it. It didn't hurt much, but then there were few things that could make Dushko feel anything. A tiny bit of lead wasn't going to do it.

  Dushko had healed from worse wounds in his long years as a vampire. It seemed like someone always wanted a piece of him. As a brother to the wolf, he understood that the pack would often have a young pup in it that wanted the alpha's post and was willing to make a grab for it as soon as he thought he was ready. He had spent far too much of his time squelching such efforts before they got rolling, but Brody had proved to be an especially determined aspirant. Dushko had already decided that he would have to kill the man before this. It would only be a matter of time.

  Perhaps sensing this, Brody had stepped up to challenge him for the pack's leadership again, taking one last desperate shot at it. This time, one of them wouldn't be knocked down to lick his wounds and regroup for another attempt later. This time, one of them was going to die. Dushko was determined to make sure that it would be Brody who was destroyed, not him. Despite being shot, he still landed square on Brody's chest and knocked the smaller man to the ground. He pinned the bastard down with his legs and started laying into him.

  Dushko slashed out with a savage claw to knock the pistol from his foe's hand. He didn't know what kind of damage the weapon might do to him if a bullet found his heart or his brain. He might survive it. He might not. But he decided he didn't want to find out.

  "Smart boy, bringing a gun into the fight," Dushko said with a snarl as he slashed at Brody again and again, tearing chilled blood from the man's cold flesh. "You needed it. But now it is gone, and where does that leave you?"

  Brody disappeared then, transforming into a mist, and Dushko found himself kneeling on the deck rather than his foe. "Nicely done," he said, "for a coward. Bring your body back here, so I can tear it apart for you."

  Dushko got to his feet and saw that the captain and the others who'd orchestrated the destruction of so many of his people had departed. He scanned the room and spotted them – Rostron, Harker, Seward, and also Holmwood – climbing out through one of the starboard windows his vampires had smashed in. Deciding to ignore Brody for the moment, he started after those four, sure that they would be up to some sort of deadly mischief designed to finish the extermination they'd started earlier in the day.

  That turned out to be a mistake, because he didn't see Brody materialize behind him. By the time he heard the man it was too late.

  Brody had grabbed the captain's wooden chair and slammed it down over Dushko's back. The boy had gotten smarter since the last time he'd thrown down a challenge over the pack's leadership. He'd remembered that wood hurt a vampire a lot more than metal.

  The chair splintered across Dushko's spine, breaking into several large pieces. The impact sent the older man sprawling across the floor, his head spinning.

  "You've been in charge of our little family for far too long." Brody picked up one of the chair's legs and flipped it around in his hand to use it as a club. He brought it down against Dushko's skull as the other tried to push himself to his feet.

  Dushko felt fire explode in his head, and stars swam before his eyes. He groaned in pain and struggled to come up with the will to turn himself into mist, to escape in the same way that Brody had. It might be a cowardly thing to do, but turnabout was fair play. Besides which, he could not let this bastard win.

  Before he could manage it, though, Brody cracked him across the base of his skull again. He struggled to press himself up on his arms, but he failed and fell face first against the wooden floor.

  Brody grabbed Dushko by one shoulder with his free hand and flipped him over. Then he smashed him across the jaw with his makeshift club. "Not looking so good now, are you?"

  Brody sneered down at Dushko and smacked him with the club in the side of his head. This time, the chair leg broke apart from the impact. It took a while for Dushko's vision to clear, but he consoled himself with the thought that at least Brody would have to find something new to beat him with.

  When Dushko's eyes started working again, he saw that Brody had a long, meaty splinter of the chair leg in his hand, the end of which looked as sharp as a nail. The Irishman held it over his head with both hands wrapped around the top of it, and he brought it down hard and fast, right toward Dushko's chest.

  Dushko put up his arms to fend off the blow, but he didn't have enough strength or time to manage it. Brody's makeshift stake came straight down through his ribcage and pierced his heart. It went straight through him and blunted itself on the floor below.

  Dushko reached out to pull at the stake, but he found that his strength had left him. He'd spent so many decades stronger than anyone around him, and now he felt weaker than an infant. With the stake twisted as it was behind him, it would have taken a superhuman effort to dislodge it, and he no longer had such power in him.

  Brody stumbled away from Dushko and returned a moment later with his gun back in his hand. He pointed it down at Dushko's, aiming it right between the man's eyes.

  Dushko wanted to scream out for help, to beg for mercy, but he couldn't draw the air into his dead lungs. The stake had taken every bit of power from him, leaving him with nothing to negotiate his freedom or even his life.

  He glared at Brody with every bit of hatred he could muster, hoping that this simple act might give the man pause. Perhaps it would delay him until one of the vampires loyal to him could step in and save him. Maybe even one of the humans might do it.

  Brody pulled the trigger, and the bullet went right through Dushko's skull, splashing his brains out onto the deck beneath him. He emptied the rest of the revolver's rounds straight after it, leaving Dushko's head nothing but a bloody mash of red and white and gray.

 
 

 
 
 

As the captain raced to the bridge, Quin stood there on the Bridge Deck with Lucy and Abe and wondered what they could do. "We still have time," Quin said. "This isn't over yet."

  "True," Lucy said. "We need to alert every living person on the ship and have them head for the lifeboats."

  "Right," Quin said, already striding toward the davit located on the starboard side of the bridge. It suspended a single, canvas-covered white lifeboat in the air above. "Abe and I can handle that, just as soon as you're safely away."

  Lucy dug her heels in and stopped cold. "Quincey Harker!" she said. "Have you lost your mind?"

  "It's women and children first," Quin said, taking her by the hand. "It's a maritime tradition. I can't help that."

  "It's chauvinism, pure and simple," she said. "I should never have let you talk me into taking advantage of it back on the
Titanic
, and I'm not about to repeat that mistake."

  "But Luce–" Quin said.

  "No, Quin." She reached out and took his hand. "There's nothing you can say to make me leave here without you."

  Quin gazed deep into her eyes and knew that she was right. As terrifying as it might be, he didn't want to ever be away from her again, not even in a situation like this. He didn't feel right about leaving the ship behind, though, with so many people still on board, but at the same time he couldn't conceive of keeping her there with him.

  "Look, you two." Abe spoke in a voice low and weary. "This is not an orderly evacuation of a ship. It's an attack, an invasion. The people on the lower decks likely don't even know anything is wrong yet. The first indication they'll have may be right before the vampires tear out their throats."

  "What are you suggesting?" Quin gaped at his friend. "That we should abandon everyone here along with the ship?"

  Abe stabbed a finger at the lifeboat hanging over their heads. "I'm saying you should get into one of these things, put it in the water, and get as far away from here as you can."

  "But, Abe," Lucy stepped toward him, furrowing her brow, "what about you?"

  Abe offered up a wan smile. "It's too late for me, I'm afraid." He pointed at his neck. "I'm already done for."

  "Don't be silly." Quin reached out to put an arm around Abe's shoulders. The man looked far more piqued than Quin had ever seen him before. "We're not leaving without you."

  "Someone has to operate the davit to lower you two into the water."

  "I'll do it," said Quin. "I'll lower the two of you down and then dive in after." He looked to Lucy now. "I promise."

  "We don't have a lot of time to argue about this," Abe said. He pointed back toward the first class dining room. "One side or the other will win out soon, and once that happens, they'll start cutting through the people here, either killing or capturing them. We cannot be here when that happens."

  "Fine," Quin said, "but we're all going. Together."

  He and Lucy worked the davit to get the lifeboat over their heads swung out over the water, and then they lowered it until its gunwale was even with the railing next to them. Abe sat down on the deck while the two of them worked the ropes, offering bits of advice and encouragement as they went. Quin and Lucy exchanged dark looks.

  They both knew that Abe wasn't doing well. He'd pushed himself too hard, and the appearance of the vampires was sure to have overstressed him at the moment he could least afford it. Quin cursed himself for not insisting that Abe stay in the hospital under Doctor Cherryman's care, but Abe had appeared to be rallying at that point. He was paying the price for that foolhardiness now, and Quin worried that in the end it might cost him his life.

  "Hold her steady," Abe said. "Right up against the railing."

  "We have it." Lucy started to work the straps that kept the lifeboat's canvas cover stretched over its top. Quin leaped in to lend her a hand.

  "I'm going to miss you two when I'm gone," Abe said.

  "I think that's the other way around," Quin said. "The dead don't miss anyone."

  "And you're not dying today," Lucy said. "So quit being so maudlin."

  A thin smile crept across Abe's lips. "Ah," he said. "Well, there's always tomorrow."

  Quin tried to stifle a laugh as he helped Lucy strip off the lifeboat's cover. He failed, though, and Lucy caught the edge of it and started to giggle too. A moment later, all three of them were laughing in a way that Quin couldn't remember them managing in far too long.

  It lasted until the cover came off the lifeboat and Lucy peered inside. What she saw there made her scream.

  "What?" Abe said. "What is it?"

  Lucy recoiled from the lifeboat and went to shudder against the wall opposite the railing. "Oh, God," she said. "Oh, God."

  Quin reached into the boat and pulled out a handful of dirt from the yards of if that lined the boat's floor. It crumbled between his fingers: good, rich soil, fresh and soft.

  "This is where they were," Quin said. "The vampires weren't just sleeping in that hold. They made a makeshift cabin out of this lifeboat too."

  "They were probably in all of the lifeboats," Lucy said. Her voice shook as she spoke. "Every damned one of them that says
Carpathia
on the side, at least."

  "That's how the crew missed them. Captain Rostron asked them to go over the place with a fine-toothed comb, but they never thought to look inside the lifeboats."

  "I don't think that's important right now," Abe said. Quin looked up from the boat and saw his friends pushing himself to his feet by shoving his back against the wall behind him.

  "Why's that?" asked Lucy.

  Abe jerked a thumb toward the aft part of the ship. Quin and Lucy followed it back to spot Brody Murtagh striding towards the rail, his face a mask of death.

 
 

 
 
 

Murtagh stood on the section of the Boat Deck on which the first class dining room perched, staring down at Quin, Lucy, and Abe from the foremost railing. He carried a body over his shoulder. Quin thought he recognized Dushko's suit on it, but its head was such a mess that he couldn't be sure if it was in fact that man.

  Murtagh heaved the body up over his head and hurled it overboard. It arced out into the darkness and disappeared into the Atlantic with a splash. Unlike when he'd disposed of the body when Lucy and Quin had spotted him at the ship's stern, he did not skulk about. Instead, he raised his hands over his head and shouted into the starlit sky in triumph.

  Looking out past where the body landed, Quin spied points of light floating on the horizon. They might not reach New York City until sometime tomorrow, but they were closer to land than they'd been since they'd left Queenstown on Ireland's southern coast, the last stop on the
Titanic
's maiden voyage. If that realization caused Quin's heart to leap with hope, what he saw next sank it to the bottom of the sea.