accustomed to sleeping in the day or because of the baby’s surprisingly deep snoring, but because after what he’d done, he couldn’t face the nightmares that were certain to be lying in wait for him.
Shortly before dawn, after feeding the baby again, Larten returned to the room with the four captives and opened the door. They thought he’d come to kill them, and they cowered against the wall. But he only pointed a finger atthe senior mate and said, “You.”
The sailor crossed himself, muttered a quick prayer, then staggered out of the cabin. He was sweating and trembling, but otherwise carried himself with dignity.
Larten locked the door and led the way to the deck. The mate’s face blanched when he cast his eye around, but he didn’t try to run.
‘You can sail this ship?” Larten asked wearily. If not for the baby, he’d have lowered himself over the side and gone for a swim with the sharks. But if the boy was to live, this had to be done.
“I’m no captain,” the mate said quietly.
“If we are to live, you will have to be,” Larten retorted.
“If I had a crew…”
‘You do not. Can you steer it anyway?”
The mate checked the rigging and shrugged. “We’re not so far from land — a week’s sailing, I reckon. I can get us there if the weather holds. We’ll struggle t’ dock, but we can get close enough t’ set one o’the scows down and row ashore. If the weather holds. If we hit a storm, we’re finished.”
Larten nodded. “Do your best. I will be taking care of the child. If you need me, shout. Do not try to release the others, and do not try to kill me — I will hear you coming, even in my sleep. If you can drop us ashore, I will set you free.”
“What about them?” the mate called as Larten left. He pointed a shaking finger at the corpses. “They’ll fester if we leave ’em. The stench…”
“I will dispose of them later,” Larten promised. “When the sun goes down. That is when I am most powerful, is it not?” Smiling thinly, he went inside to play with the baby, leaving the mate to steer the ship of corpses through the waves of the ever-hungry sea that would soon receive their lifeless, bloodied hulks.
Chapter Twenty-five
Feeding the baby and prisoners became the focus of Larten’s time. Daniel and the sailors were easy to care for — he just threw them food and water a couple of times a day — but the baby was a different matter. Larten had no experience with babies and was astonished by how often the child wanted to feed. Keeping the boy content was a full-time job.
The mate in charge of the ship reported to Larten regularly. Larten had no interest in their course — he wouldn’t have cared if they’d sailed in circles forever-but it was easier to let the mate deliver his reports and nod thoughtfully while pretending to listen.
Larten was ravenous — he needed blood — but he waited until the mate said they were a day from shore. Tucking in the baby, he went below to the locked room and opened the door. Daniel and the sailors thought that he was coming to feed them, and they shuffled forward eagerly. They still feared the vampire, but had come to believe that he meant them no harm.
Not wishing to alarm them, Larten moved quickly, as he had when he’d embarked on his killing spree. Darting from one to another, he blew a sharp breath of gas in their faces, the gas of the vampires that sent humans to sleep. Once they were unconscious he drank from each of them, then refilled the vials that, unknown to him, had cost Malora her life.
Daniel stirred as Larten was leaving. The vampire had breathed on the boy last, so Daniel hadn’t been dealt as strong a blast of the gas as the others. Larten took no notice as the boy’s eyes flickered open, only closed the door and locked it, then went to feed the baby.
Larten spent most of that last night on deck, watching by the light of the stars as they drew closer to land, thinking of what he’d done, numbly considering what he must do next. He didn’t know much about Greenland, but he knew it was an ice-covered, sparsely populated country. Many cold, lonely, unforgiving places where a vampire could pass quietly from this world. He would find a suitably desolate spot and let the snow and ice finish him off. A fittingly meek finale for a vampire who had lost the right to die a noble death.
The mate approached late the following evening, as Larten was feeding the baby. “We’re almost there,” he noted.
“Aye,” Larten murmured.
‘We should make port not long after sunset, if the wind’s fair.”
“I will disembark before that,” Larten said.
The mate frowned. “Disembark?”
“I will take a scow and sail ashore by myself.”
“Are ye sure?” the mate asked. “There’s nothing much along this stretch and the weather’s fierce inhospitable.”
“Good,” Larten said shortly.
Awave of joy swept through the sailor. He had tried not to think about what would happen when they docked, but whenever he did, he saw no way that the vampire would let them live. They were witnesses to the massacre. He surely could not spare them if he wanted to escape.
But now the mate saw that Larten didn’t care. He was going ashore to die. For the first time in a week, the sailor faced the future with real hope. He almost cried, he was so relieved.
‘You will take care ofthe child when I go?” Larten asked.
“Of course. I’ll take him home with me. I have six already, so one more won’t make much difference.”
“Thank you,” Larten said softly. “And,” he added as the mate returned to the wheel, “you will keep him awayfrom vampires?”
The sailor nodded grimly. “Aye, sir. That I most definitely will.”
The mate helped Larten ready and lower the scow. Before he departed, Larten went down to the locked room one last time, to release the prisoners. He could have left that job to the mate, but he wanted to do it himself, so they could come up, see him leave and know for certain that they had nothing to fear from this night on.
“Come, gentlemen,” Larten said as he opened the door. “Your time of captivity is over. You are free to…”
He came to a stunned, horrified stop.
Daniel Abrams was sitting on the floor, hands and lips as red with blood as Larten’s had been a week before. The boy had torn open the throats of the two men while they were unconscious and drank as much of their blood as he could stomach. He’d even bitten chunks out of their flesh and eaten it. He was chewing a sliver of cheek, pausing every so often to spit out blood, when Larten entered.
Daniel’s face lit up crazily when he spotted the vampire, and he staggered to his feet. “I’m one o’ yer lot now,” he cackled, waving the strip of flesh at Larten as if it was a flag. “Ye don’t have t’ kill me. Ye can take me with ye. I’m a bloodsucker too, see? We’re the same.”
Larten stared at the boy, first with shock, then disgust. “You think that you are the same as me?” he snarled.
“Aye,” the boy hooted. ‘We both kill and drink blood. What’s the difference?”
And the awful thing was, he was right. When you put the two of them side by side, there was no real difference at all. A pair of well-matched monsters.
Larten backed out of the room, away from the blinking, spitting, blood-smeared boy. He glanced at the murdered sailors, then bolted for the deck, where he raced to the side and threw up over the railing. Before Daniel Abrams could climb the steps and ask again to travel with him, Larten ducked into the captain’s cabin and picked up the baby.
He had meant to bid the child farewell, but as he stared at the chubby babe, he decided he couldn’t leave the boy behind. Not with a beast like Daniel Abrams on the prowl. Maybe they viere cut from the same cloth, but at
