by J. C. Diem
Kokoro looked at me with a strange expression but looked away again before I could ask her what was wrong. I had the feeling she’d just been sent a vision. She hadn’t had a vision since the ten ravenous disciples had woken from forty thousand years of slumber. If she had been given a snippet of our future, she didn’t seem to be inclined to share it with the rest of us.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We only had a short wait at the airport in New York before the plane continued on to Canada. One of Ishida’s female warriors hypnotized two of the baggage handlers into feeding her ruler. Ishida wasn’t happy about feeding from men but he had to replenish the blood that had been extracted from him. We could only hope that Kokoro was right and that he would be able to recover his youth. Experiments by humans had never been performed on our kind before and this was a first for all of us.
It was full daylight when we landed in Montreal. Geordie was the only one still too young to remain awake at will. I was even younger than the teen but I was also a freak and the normal rules didn’t apply to me. Igor tossed his unconscious apprentice over his shoulder and we all moved as far away from the cargo door as possible. When the baggage had all been removed, a heavily bamboozled handler told us the plane would now be taken into a hangar for maintenance.
Shut inside once more, we waited for night to fall. Few of us chose to sleep the day away. After spending the past few months being lab rats, my friends weren’t about to trust their safety to anyone now. Not even to their allies.
“I’ve been thinking,” Gregor said about an hour before the sun was scheduled to fall from the sky. He instantly gained everyone’s attention. “I believe our best chance of survival would be to head back to Africa.”
“Why Africa?” Cristov asked.
“None of us come from there originally,” the dapper one reasoned. “Since most of us are European or Japanese, Sanderson will most likely focus his search for us there.”
“We could hide out in the jungles for decades,” I said with an attempt at enthusiasm. None of us particularly wanted to live in the jungle like animals but what choice did we have? At the rate the human population was growing, we wouldn’t have anywhere left to hide before too long.
Ishida turned to his seer to judge her reaction. Kokoro gave a preoccupied nod while avoiding my gaze. She knew something and she still wasn’t willing to share her knowledge. “It is agreed, then,” the child king said. “How will we get to Africa?”
“By sea,” Igor offered. “If I am correct, Montreal is a port city. With luck, we will find a cargo ship heading to Africa.”
“We’ll be trapped on a ship for weeks. Sounds like fun,” someone said glumly.
“At least there will be plenty of rats to eat,” I pointed out. “Just kidding,” I said quickly when I received expressions of disgust. In truth, I’d been serious. The ship would probably be teeming with vermin. But it would probably also have several dozen crew members on board. We wouldn’t be in any danger of starvation as long as we were careful to bamboozle our meals.
As soon as night fell, Igor foisted Geordie off onto my care and disappeared with Luc in search of transportation. The teen came awake a few minutes later and snapped upright with his hands raised to protect himself. Seeing me sitting beside him, he dropped his hands sheepishly. “I thought I was back in the cell for a moment.” Being surrounded by white walls again, I could understand his confusion.
“How are your wounds?” I asked. He lifted his hoodie, revealing his skinny, pale ribs. The holes were gone and his flesh was unblemished again. Everyone seemed to have recovered physically from their torture. Aventius’ skin was unwrinkled, or as unwrinkled as he had been before being immersed in water for the past several months. Only Ishida still showed the effects of experimentation. After multiple meals, he was starting to flesh out again and his frame was slightly less withered. Some of the grey had even receded from his hair. It gave me hope that he would be back to his usual self again one day.
A short while later the cargo door whooshed open and Igor gestured for us to follow him. Two of Ishida’s warriors hastened to help their leader and we all hurried from the plane. It was a long trek to the car park and we moved in a nervous cluster. Our mode of transportation turned out to be a tour bus. Luc opened the door for us and we piled inside.
Igor took the wheel and I was relieved when Luc slid into the spare seat next to me. His arm went around my shoulder and he slanted me a smile. I hoped this meant he’d forgiven me for killing the Comtesse. He’d hated Mucia and had wanted her dead yet some small part of him mourned her loss at the same time.
“The port is only a few miles from here,” my beloved turned to tell the group who had taken the seats behind us.
His nearness was making me warm somewhere deep inside. It was a figurative warmth rather than literal. I only realized it was my flesh hunger awakening when it became hard not to straddle him and have my way with him. Sensing my sudden need, Luc fought to contain a smile. It was disconcerting to have my needs flaring up at the most inconvenient times. If our situation hadn’t been so dire, I would have asked Igor to pull over so I could quench the fire building inside me. With super human effort, I managed to control myself until we reached the port.
Well aware of my problem, as was everyone else on the bus, Gregor motioned for Igor to open the doors. “Does anyone want to volunteer to search for a ship that is bound for Africa?” he asked with a sly glance at me.
One of my hands shot into the air. The other one clasped Luc’s arm tightly. “We’ll go. Back soon. Bye!” I said as I dragged my most favourite companion towards the door.
“Gee,” Geordie said with heavy sarcasm, “I wonder what their hurry could possibly be?”
Racing through the dark streets, the smell of salt water and pollution predominated. My need was reaching desperate levels and we searched for somewhere private so we could satisfy our flesh hunger. Finding an abandoned building, Luc kicked open the door and we stumbled inside.
A musty pile of blankets heaped in one corner wasn’t the most romantic of spots to get naked together but we were beyond caring. Our clothes went flying then I was on my back and Luc was plunging into me. It had been too long since I’d fed my flesh hunger and it was frantic for release.
Luc’s tongue flicked out and caught my nipple and he began to suck, grazing my skin with his fangs. My legs went around his and began to tighten as his speed increased. Pressure built inside me as long denied ecstasy beckoned. When it burst, orange light bathed the ceiling and several bones in Luc’s legs snapped.
Groaning in either pain or pleasure, Luc pounded me into the hard cement floor while his bones popped back into place and he finally came. Lying on the sacks, he turned to contemplate my blazing eyes. “I thought that only happened when you were in the midst of battle.”
“Me too. Who knows how my body works?” I asked rhetorically. Thoroughly satisfied, I was about as far from being in the mood to kill and dismember as I could get. I decided to ignore the fact that my eyes were orange again. There was nothing I could do about it anyway so what was the point of getting myself all worked up about it?
With my need sated once more, we dressed and walked hand in hand towards the docks. It didn’t take us long to find what we were searching for. A line of gigantic cargo ships stretched out in a neat row. The vessels shifted slightly on the waves, rocking from side to side in an almost hypnotic motion. They might be enormous and weigh several thousand tons but they were still at the mercy of the ocean. Even the Titanic hadn’t been impervious to the perils that deep water held. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be encountering any icebergs on our journey.
Dozens of men scurried around on each vessel. From a distance they looked like ants traversing the carcasses of rotting elephants. Cranes struggled to offload large metal containers filled with cargo. This close to the ocean, the stench of salt water and pollution was much stronger.
A security guard spotted us and ambled over before
we could get close enough to the first ship to start asking questions. Being Canadian, he was polite but he eyed us suspiciously. “Can I help you folks?”
Catching his gaze, I made him mine within seconds and the usual dreamy smile appeared. “Are any of these ships leaving for Africa anytime soon?” I asked him before he could start rhapsodising about my beauty.
Half turning without taking his eyes off my face, he pointed at one of the ships further down the line. “The Dancing Mermaid is scheduled to leave for South Africa in a couple of hours.” In this ship’s case, cargo was being added rather than subtracted from the hulking vessel.
“Thanks. Go about your duties but ignore us if you see us again,” I instructed him.
We hurried back to the tour bus to give everyone the good news. Geordie gave me a sour glance but neglected to comment on the activity that he knew Luc and I had been engaged in. I wasn’t looking forward to a trip that would last for several weeks. It was doubtful any of us would be able to find much time for privacy during our coming journey.
“We’ve found transportation,” my brooding companion told the group when they piled out of the bus to surround us. “A ship called the Dancing Mermaid is due to leave for South Africa in a few hours. The only problem is that the docks are crawling with humans. I don’t know how we are going to be able to get on board unseen.”
Igor must have foreseen this problem because he had a solution ready. “Our best bet would be to swim to the ship and climb up the anchor chain.” The ocean was bound to be cold, not to mention stinky and polluted, but we had little choice. Sneaking twenty-nine people on board without being spotted would be difficult, even for the stealthiest of us.
Everyone paired up with one lone Japanese warrior left on his own. Luc and I were the first to head for the water. We chose a dark spot on the docks, checked that we were unobserved then jumped in. Without the ability to breathe, I couldn’t gasp in shock at the frigid temperature when I surfaced. The best I could do was to make a sound of protest from between my chattering teeth. Treading water wasn’t going to warm me up, not when I had zero circulation. We would have to move quickly before the cold could leech our strength to the point where we would be unable to function.
Luc treaded water beside me, staying close enough that our arms kept brushing. It didn’t look like he was planning on being parted from me anytime soon, not that I was complaining. We had been separated for far too long and I was reluctant to let him out of my sight as well.
Igor and Geordie came next. The teen let out a yelp of surprise when his head bobbed to the surface. His teeth immediately started chattering as well as he swam towards us. To my surprise, Gregor escorted Kokoro and solicitously entered the water with her. She trusted him implicitly and calmly put her arm over his shoulder when they surfaced. I was pretty sure she read my idle thought that maybe they should try dating because she frowned at me disapprovingly. It might not have dawned on anyone else yet but they were going to have to let their old prejudices go now that we were so few in number.
Ishida insisted on only one of his warriors accompanying him and they soon caught up to us. Shortly, our entire group had entered the water and were swimming towards the ship that hulked in the distance.
When we reached the Dancing Mermaid, Igor inspected the chain. It was huge, rusty and slick but he proved that it was easy enough to climb. None of the sailors were on the lookout for an invasion by sea and he remained unnoticed. Climbing the chain next, Luc slipped over the railing then offered me his hand when I reached him. We darted into the shadows as our friends took turns climbing on board. Containers loomed over us, stretching upward towards the sky. They gave me the dizzying sense that they could fall and crush us at any moment.
Igor found a hatch leading to the interior of the ship and gestured for us to follow him inside. We remained clumped together and moved almost silently down the long, narrow corridor. We froze as one when footsteps sounded ahead. We’d never make it back out through the hatch without being seen and there were no other doorways in sight. I sprinted past Luc and Igor just as a sailor rounded the corner. His surprise and alarm changed to happy devotion after I captured him with my eyes.
“Ask him what the quickest way to the cargo hold is,” Igor told me. He and Luc had caught up to me and were standing at my back. Luc slipped past my new servant and I to keep watch and to make sure no one else was heading in our direction.
Dutifully repeating the question, my brain almost went to sleep at the long and complicated answer I received. The ship was even larger than I’d realized and it was going to take us several minutes to descend several levels to our intended destination.
“Did anyone get all that?” I asked when the sailor stopped speaking.
“I believe so, Mortis,” one of Ishida’s female warriors said.
“Great, you take the lead,” I suggested. With an enquiring glance at her ruler, she eased past us at Ishida’s tired nod. I instructed the sailor to go about his duties and to forget about us. Continuing along the corridor, he started whistling a sea shanty that echoed eerily through the metal walls of the vessel.
We encountered several more sailors on our way to the depths of the ship. The female warrior in the lead bamboozled the first three but the fourth one showed no sign that he was going to fall beneath her spell. Before he could scream for help, I was standing in front of him with my hand clamped over his mouth. He succumbed to my dark mojo as easily as the first sailor had despite the fact that he preferred men to women.
“How did you do that, chérie?” Geordie asked me. He had been following me closely enough that he was almost treading on my heels. “I thought we couldn’t hypnotize humans who weren’t attracted to us.”
“It looks like I might have changed a bit after Sanderson reduced me to ash,” I replied quietly, hoping only my closest friends could hear me. With the loud metallic groaning that seemed to emanate everywhere from the ship, it was a possibility.
“You can control any human now?” Igor asked in surprise.
“It looks like it.”
Luc knew me well by now and gave me a sharp glance. “Is there something you’re not telling us, Natalie?”
“It can wait until we get settled,” I replied evasively, hoping to avoid the question for as long as possible.
Deep in the depths of the Dancing Mermaid, our temporary home was dark and dank. I could already hear the furtive squeaking of rats. Geordie screwed up his nose but a sharp glance from his mentor stopped him from voicing a string of complaints.
My hope that no one else had overheard Geordie’s comment was dashed when Ishida and Kokoro approached me. “Did I hear correctly when you said that you can now hypnotize any human?” Ishida asked.
It was bound to come out sooner or later so I might as well confess to my new talent now. “Yep. It looks like I can also bamboozle vampires as well.” Someone laughed and unsuccessfully turned it into a completely unnecessary cough. “Anna-Eve told me everything I wanted to know after we had a staring match,” I explained.
“I would like to see a demonstration of your new power,” the child king said. The last time he’d wanted to see a demonstration of my power, one of his people had ended up dead. I was pretty sure killing someone wouldn’t be necessary this time.
At first no one stepped forward, then Cristov offered himself to be my guineapig. Aventius made a sound of protest but his follower just patted him on the shoulder. “I am willing for you to try to put me beneath your control,” he said to me.
I had to admire his bravery. At an enquiring look to make sure no one objected to the experiment, I stepped forward. Coming to a stop when we were only inches apart, I started into his eyes. Within moments, Cristov’s body relaxed and his expression became utterly blank. He didn’t smile goofily or tell me how beautiful I was yet he was under my control. His will had been taken away and there was nothing in its place, not even adoration for the one who had bemused him.
“Tell him to d
o something, Nat,” Geordie urged me.
“Cristov, put your left hand on your head.” He did. “Put your right hand on your stomach.” He did that too. “Stand on one leg.” He followed my direction and Geordie sniggered at the spectacle before him. “Now hop, rub your stomach and pat your head all at the same time,” I instructed him. My puppet complied woodenly, hopping on one foot, rubbing with one hand and patting with the other. I looked around but no one seemed convinced that he was really beneath my spell. “You try it and see how hard it is,” I said in exasperation. Several of the men complied and it quickly became apparent how much trouble it was for them to do all three tasks at the same time. The women didn’t share the problem and darted smug looks at their male counterparts.
“Tell him to kill Aventius,” Ishida suggested. The Europeans rounded on him in outrage.
Actually, that was probably the only way anyone would believe this was real. “Cristov, tear Aventius’ head off.” He immediately stopped hopping and started forward with his hands outstretched. Aventius blanched and stumbled backwards. The look he sent me was full of shocked disbelief. His followers surged forward to try to protect him but Cristov ignored them as if they didn’t exist and continued to reach for his leader.
“I am convinced,” Ishida said in a slightly shaky voice as the bedazzled vampire’s hands closed around the ex-councillor’s neck.
“Stop, Cristov.” He became motionless with his hands still in the act of trying to behead Aventius. “Come here,” I told him, uncomfortable at treating him like a robot. He dropped his hands, pivoted and came to stand before me.
After another staring match, he blinked and came out of his daze. “Did it work?”
“Oh, it worked alright,” Geordie said with a disturbed look in my direction. Suddenly, no one was brave enough to meet my eyes. Once again, I had proven that I was the strangest of all the monsters in the land. Now everyone knew just how very different I was from them and every other creature on the planet.
