Twisted: Bitter Harvest, Book Two

by Ann Gimpel

  “Not right now,” Ketha replied, “but I’d be happy to gin something up later, once we’re all back aboard Arkady.”

  Viktor swung the craft around so its stern end hit the beach. “I’ll get out,” he told the women, “and drag the raft ashore. Perch on the pontoon about where I am and time the waves. Wait until the waves are moving out before you jump down.”

  “Before anyone goes anywhere,” Karin said, “exercise reasonable caution. Don’t touch anything. Don’t collect anything to bring back to the ship.”

  “Don’t drink the water, and don’t breathe the air,” Rowana muttered.

  The lyrics from Tom Lehrer’s song, “Pollution,” struck Aura as humorous, and she laughed.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.” Rowana looked askance at her.

  “I know,” Aura said, “but I was thinking about the life we left behind. What you said reminded me of another aspect of it: music.”

  Ketha followed Viktor’s direction and jumped off the pontoon, wading through the surf to shore. Aura and the other women followed her. All of them wore knee-high Wellington rubber boots. The ship’s mudroom had been stocked with them and their waterproof jackets and bibs.

  “Where to?” Aura asked Viktor once he’d tied off the anchor rope to some handy rocks.

  “We should be methodical about this,” he replied. “Maybe we’ll walk down to the barracks, check them out, and then make our way back this way.” His mouth twisted into a sad expression. “There used to be fur seals here. Lots of them. They’d block the road and bark at you, but I’m sure they’re all dead. They lived on fish and krill.”

  “That way?” Aura pointed.

  At Viktor’s nod, she set out along a rutted dirt road that hugged the shoreline. The ocean was only a few feet away, so close it must wash over the road from time to time. She skirted an enormous hole easily, since the track was wide enough to accommodate vehicles, and passed a couple of crumbling buildings on her left. Rotting carcasses, probably the remains of seals and seabirds, dotted the road. She stepped over and around piles of them. Mostly bleached bones, they reminded her of Ushuaia’s streets before they’d cleaned them up.

  Caught up in the simple joy of movement, something she hadn’t been able to indulge in on the ship, she breathed the chilly salt air, drawing it deep into her lungs. The air in Ushuaia had grown progressively more toxic, so she appreciated being able to breathe without assuming every breath brought her one step closer to her grave. She saw rows of tan buildings a quarter of a mile before she reached them. From long habit, she sent her Shifter senses ranging wide. If anything was alive out there, she wanted to know about it before she got too close.

  “Watch it!” Her cat was near the surface, and a snarling hiss punctuated its words.

  Aura ground to a halt. She’d pulled well ahead of everyone else with her leggy stride. Viktor and Ketha strolled with their arms wrapped around each other as lovers often did. Karin and Rowana brought up the rear, chatting.

  “Watch what?” she asked her bond animal.

  “I caught a whiff of wrongness. Check for yourself.”

  “What is it?” Ketha pulled up next to her. “Why’d you stop?”

  “My cat thinks something’s not right.”

  Viktor slipped the rifle off his shoulder in a fast, fluid motion that spoke to his familiarity with it.

  Aura shut her eyes, urging her senses to preternatural sharpness. Something unpleasant and eerily familiar zapped her. She curled her hands into fists and dug deeper. She had to be wrong.

  Before she was through dissecting what she sensed lay beyond, perhaps in the barracks a couple hundred yards away, Ketha muttered, “Shit! It isn’t possible.”

  Aura opened her eyes and gripped the other Shifter’s arm. “You picked up on Vampire emanations, right?”

  Ketha nodded, eyes wide with disbelief. “How? They’re all supposed to have transformed into humans or Shifters.”

  “Why are you talking about Vampires, dearie?” Rowana asked. She and Karin had finally caught up with them.

  “I have no idea how,” Aura gritted out the words, “but they’re here.”

  Karin narrowed her eyes to slits. “Vampires? Don’t be ridiculous. The Cataclysm altered them, removed the Vampire mutation in their DNA.”

  “Or not.” Rowana twisted her face into a grimace.

  “Check for yourself,” Ketha told the other two women.

  Aura scrubbed the heels of her hands down her face, urging rational thought, and then scanned the place that felt menacing one more time. “It’s not quite right for Vampire, at least not the Ushuaia variety,” she muttered.

  “Not exactly,” Ketha agreed. “But there are at least two of whatever they are, and their emanations are closer to Vamp than anything else.”

  “The question of the hour,” Viktor said, “is whether we move forward or retreat. It’s a group decision.”

  Aura thought about it, and when she spoke, her words came hard. “We left Ushuaia to figure out what was left in the rest of the world. If we turn tail and run the first time we encounter anything, we may as well never have set sail.”

  Viktor grinned wryly. “Spoken like a true explorer. Shackleton would have been proud of you.”

  “I remember reading about him,” Aura muttered. “If this is Grytviken, isn’t he buried here?”

  “He is, indeed,” Viktor said. “His grave is on the far side of the post office, but only because his wife told the ship with his remains to bring him back here. I guess he was quite the philanderer, and she wasn’t interested in footing the expense of bringing his cheating ass home.”

  “Interesting,” Aura said, “but we’re stalling. My vote is to see what the hell feels like Vampire.”

  “Mine too,” Rowana said.

  “I’m in,” Karin said. “If we could survive Armageddon against the Cataclysm, how hard could this be?”

  Viktor cocked his head to one side. “Depends. If they’re Vamps, only beheading with iron will do them in.”

  “Maybe they’ll be friendly.” Ketha screwed her face into what might have been a hopeful expression, except it came off more like a grimace.

  “Friendly and Vampire in the same sentence is an oxymoron,” Viktor said in a flat, dead tone. “It appears we’re all game, so all of you get behind me and stay close. Deploy your magic. It’s still far more finely honed than mine.” He shouldered the rifle. “If I have to, I’ll use this. It should at least slow them down.”

  “Do we have any way to communicate with the ship?” Ketha asked.

  Viktor slapped his forehead with an open palm. “Crap. It’s been too many years since I ferried Zodiac rafts ashore. I’m not thinking. Hang on.” Reaching inside his insulated parka, he withdrew a two-way radio and depressed the push-to-talk switch.

  “Juan. Come in.”

  The radio crackled. “Juan here.”

  “Possible Vampire sighting. Secure Arkady and come now.”

  “Aw Jesus! Really?” Juan’s words held a strangled note. “I’ll drop the other decent raft in the water and bring Recco and Daide with me. Where are you?”

  “By the barracks. Don’t waste your time stopping in the town.”

  “Roger that. Be there in half an hour. Maybe less.”

  “The iron saber is in the equipment locker. Bring it along and make damn sure it doesn’t puncture the raft.”

  Juan chuckled. “Aye, aye, Captain. Your faith in me is touching.”

  Viktor rolled his eyes. “By the time you get here, we’ll either be dead or turned or breaking bread with the bastards.”

  More static. “You’re sure it’s Vamps, and they’re alive?” Incredulity underscored Juan’s question.

  “Affirmative on the alive part. See you soon.”

  “Roger that. Over and out.”

  The radio sputtered to silence. Viktor clicked it off and dropped it back inside his parka. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Don’t you want to wait for Juan a
nd them?” Aura asked.

  He shook his head. “No. They’ll bring the Zodiac to the beach down there.” Viktor pointed at the barracks. “Vamps have ears like lynxes. They’ll hear an engine even over the roar of the surf. We need to be near enough to do some good once they figure out we’re here.”

  Aura was still trying to make sense of how the demise of the Cataclysm could turn Vampires into Shifters in Ushuaia and leave them untouched a few hundred miles away. Maybe it had something to do with Karin’s mutation theory.

  “Guess we’re about to find out,” she muttered.

  “What’d you say?” Ketha asked.

  “Nothing. I’m with Viktor. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Chapter Two: Just Like Old Times

  Juan Torres lounged in the glassed-in bridge, sipping a cup of coffee. They were at anchor, so he didn’t need to bother with the wheel or navigating. Not until they were underway again. His chair was tilted back, and his feet rested on the rail spanning every wall. The command center was his favorite part of Arkady because of its expansive windows. Five feet tall, they lined the entire bridge on three sides.

  The coffee was hot and thick and bitter, exactly the way he liked it. He’d been pleasantly surprised to unearth a trove of beans in one of the food lockers. Some cook must have stashed them during Arkady’s last voyage because Juan had taken inventory before they left port.

  Arkady had been in dry dock for eight months before the Cataclysm hit. Skirting too close to rocks had damaged her hull. Not badly, but enough to require repairs. Those were completed in short order by a competent shipbuilder. Normally, they’d have ferried the boat back to Germany in October for a thorough overhaul to make certain it was ready for the Antarctic tourist season, but unusually rough seas and a lengthy winter meant neither he nor Viktor had been able to finesse a round trip to the shipyards peppering the Baltic Sea.

  It wasn’t the end of the world. They kept the second ship in abeyance in case something happened to the other vessel. He recalled a particular conversation—the one where he and Viktor decided to stop worrying about Arkady’s annual checkup. They’d been aboard Gavrill, Arkady’s sister ship, on their way back from the summer season where they ferried tourists through the Canadian Arctic as well as swinging through Svalbard with its scenic fjords.

  A host of hardy passengers had signed on for the voyage from Norway across the Atlantic and down South America’s eastern coastline, a decision that had cost all of them dearly.

  A hurricane spawned by the Cataclysm—except he hadn’t known anything about magic then—drove Gavrill into deadly rocks south of the Strait of Magellan. The boat sustained major damage, and they’d lost half the people aboard along with the ship. Juan unclenched his jaw. The memory still haunted him, made him wish he’d somehow done more even though he’d come within a hairsbreadth of drowning.

  The seas had been high and the wind shearing in ninety-knot gusts. Thirty-foot swells crashing against sharp rocks had destroyed two overloaded rafts. The occupants struck out swimming for shore, but most never made it. Life jackets didn’t do much good when waves battered you over and over.

  After the disaster with the first two Zodiacs, he and Viktor switched up their strategy. The boat was lost anyway, so they’d fired the engines full throttle and forced the vessel closer to shore. It was sinking, but not very fast. Unlike Hollywood portrayals, big ships took their sweet time heading for the bottom. The crane that lowered the rafts broke off at deck line, so everyone else donned life vests and made for shore.

  When he and Viktor gathered the group who reached a narrow, rocky beach, they counted forty-nine. Less than half their number. Given what happened afterward, though, it might have been better if the lot of them had perished in the Southern Ocean. At least drowning would have been clean.

  Juan slapped his feet on the deck with a resounding thud.

  He dropped his coffee cup on the chart table and paced from one side of the bridge to the other. Why the fuck wouldn’t that memory leave him be? It had been ten years, for chrissakes, but their struggle first through the ocean and then across the Tierra del Fuego range could have happened yesterday. No one else died, but it was probably because only the hardiest had fought their way through the brutal sea to shore. The storm that had driven their ship aground raged on once they left the shoreline. Most of the time, he and Viktor navigated through the mountains by compass since they couldn’t see more than a few feet.

  He’d thought about Shackleton more than once during those three days it took them to cross the Tierra del Fuego. Juan wasn’t a praying man, but if Ernest Shackleton’s ghost protected mariners and fools, he did his damnedest to channel him. Many of the early adventurer’s quotes still rattled around Juan’s head, notably:

  “Superhuman effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.” And “Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.”

  Juan had been relieved, jubilant even, once he realized they’d made Ushuaia. They had another ship there—Arkady—and they’d recover from their losses. He’d been in shipwrecks before, but nothing as vicious as what he’d just lived through.

  His elation was short-lived. They’d no sooner marched into Ushuaia, still battling forty-knot gusts, hail, and sleet, when a group of Vampires waylaid them.

  Vampires.

  What the unholy fuck?

  Raised in Buenos Aires, Juan was no stranger to superstition, but he’d never believed in anything magical. Until Raphael turned him. The years he’d been a Vampire had been odd and horrible. It was like the man he used to be gazed out through uneven glass at a distorted world. On the rare occasions he wasn’t lusting for blood, he used to pretend he was still human. It worked for a while when he caught something and roasted it for his dinner.

  But his illusion of normalcy went up in smoke every time he cut into something’s jugular vein, and hot, coppery blood slithered down his throat. The elation—almost a sexual high—that went along with drinking blood disgusted him, but he couldn’t turn it off or stay away. Not for long, anyway. When he couldn’t stomach what he’d become, he’d sneak aboard Arkady and lie on his bunk, breathing the familiar scents from when he’d still been human.

  During the early years, he hatched plan after plan to escape, but a barrier spawned by the Cataclysm made travel beyond Ushuaia impossible. No. If he’d been set on leaving, the time would have been the couple of weeks after the Cataclysm hit. Once it gained a toehold, no one else arrived, but no one left, either. Juan had spent the first few months after Vampires snagged him, in a cell. By the time he was free, he’d been turned, and the die was cast.

  No going back from the choice he made when Raphael offered his streaming wrist.

  Viktor had occupied the cell next to him, and the two of them tried every trick at their disposal to spring themselves. Eventually, Raphael showed up and dragged Viktor into the corridor right outside Juan’s cell.

  The crafty, old Vampire had focused the full force of his hypnotic blue-gray eyes on Juan. “Watch. This is a great honor, and you will be next.”

  Juan hadn’t wanted to watch, but he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze away from the grisly specter of his closest friend being drained to the point of death. He silently urged Viktor to turn his head away when the Vampire offered his wrist, flowing with dark-red blood. Death was better than being a Vampire. Surely, Viktor knew as much.

  For a long, agonizing moment, Juan thought Viktor might have the strength to refuse. His normally tanned face was ashen, and he lay limp in Raphael’s arms. Damn! Viktor was going to beat this. Yeah, he’d die, but some things were far worse than death. Juan had just sucked in a relieved breath, when an agonized moan ripped from Viktor, and he glommed onto the Vampire’s wrist, throat working while he drank.

  Disgust and hopelessness vied with resignation. If Viktor hadn’t had the strength to resist, Juan probably wouldn’t, either. He felt Raphael’s gimlet gaze locked onto him and raised his own, staring defiantly.<
br />
  A small smile played around the Master Vampire’s profanely beautiful face. “No one can withstand the pull of Vampirism. You’ll see when it’s your turn.”

  “And when will that be?” Juan had asked.

  “Soon. When I need to feed again.”

  Color had returned to Viktor’s face, but his green eyes held a flat, dead aspect. He wrenched his mouth away from Raphael’s wrist. Bolting upright, he’d raced down the corridor and out of the cave system holding the prison cells.

  “Aren’t you going after him?” Juan demanded. He curled his hands around the bars of his cell and shook them.

  “No. No reason. Newly made Vamps are always hungry. I’ll catch up to him once he’s fed.”

  Juan’s stomach had twisted into a hard, painful knot. He tried to remain silent, but a question forced its way out. “Will he hunt people?” Juan stopped shy of adding, like you just did.

  Raphael tossed his head back and laughed. It made his luxurious dark hair dance around him. “Who knows? He may begin with animals, or maybe he’ll dive right into the real thing.” Still laughing, the Vampire turned and sprinted down the corridor, moving with superhuman speed.

  “Hey, man! You’re going to wear a hole in the linoleum.” Recco stepped into the bridge. The door swung shut behind him.

  Juan stopped dead. He shook his head hard and then turned to face the other man. Recco was a wolf Shifter now, but he’d been a Vampire right along with Juan.

  “Thanks. I get lost sometimes, and not in a good place.”

  Recco drew his dark brows together. His native heritage showed in his high cheekbones, deep-brown eyes, and beak of a nose. Straight black hair fell untidily around his face to shoulder level. Like all of them, he’d borrowed heavily from clothing stowed aboard the ship. Black woolen pants hung off slender hips, and a warm red jacket was zipped to his chin.

  “What were you chewing over?”

  Juan shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “When I was turned. It’s not one of my better memories.”