by Justin Sloan
That fight had been over very quickly.
However, her skills could not compete against five or ten men intent on taking her down. With his men, he made it too expensive to mess with her and the kids.
He wanted a better life for them. This journey was supposed to be his last. The big score that would pay enough to make the move to a safe, or safer, location.
Now that dream was destroyed with the loss of his ship, on its way to the bottom of the Atlantic as waves crested over the remains.
A knock came on the door, and he quickly wiped his eyes and focused on his role — captain. Not someone who gets teary-eyed thinking of his wife and children. Alone, without him, back home.
“Captain?”
He startled at the sight of the female vampire. She still had blood on her clothes, but at least she’d wiped it from her mouth. He was also relieved to see that her eyes weren’t glowing anymore.
With a heavy sigh, he turned to watch the horizon. “We owe you a great debt.” He hoped to see land, sooner rather than later. Having not believed in vampires until one stormed into his captain’s tower, he wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt having one on board at the moment.
No, that was a lie. He damn well wished she wasn’t on his ship or in his life at the moment.
From the stories he’d recently heard and quickly dismissed, they tossed humans around like meat-puppets, taking lives for the smallest infractions in some incomprehensible code of conduct. Most believed them to be myths.
Apparently, the myths held truth interwoven with their fantasy.
“If you get me and my friends across,” she walked toward him and leaned against the side of his controls, “I’ll consider us even,”
“You’re injured?” he asked with an annoyed glance at her hand. No one should be up here without permission, especially this close to the controls. He didn’t like the feeling that there was a superior to him on his ship.
Valerie held up the hand she’d bandaged with a piece of her shirt, then glanced down to see her navel showing through the ripped shirt. She laughed. “It’ll heal fast enough. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the shirt.”
His eyes shot down and lingered for a moment longer than perhaps they should, noticing the way her jeans rode low and her torn shirt revealed the curve of her hip bone. He blinked and snapped his head back, realizing he’d just been checking out a female vampire.
Something that was rather inappropriate, whether she was human or not.
A quick glance, and he saw her smirking at him.
Dammit to hell! She’d noticed. “What can I help you with, uh…?”
“Valerie,” she answered his unasked question. “And, here’s the thing I need to make sure you understand. People can’t know we exist.”
“We?”
She pointed at herself. “Weres and vampires. I need your promise no one will find out what happened here. The alternative is you and all of your crew kissing away your lives. My brother would prefer this latter option.”
He swallowed and jerked his head toward the other part of the ship. “Is that your brother, back there? A vampire and a Were, brother and sister?”
“I wish,” she muttered. He caught her staring into the distance, a disturbed look on her face. Whatever was twirling around in her brain was likely best left alone.
She turned back to him. “Do I have your word, Captain?”
“Of course,” he agreed. If the option was swear or death, it wasn’t too hard a decision. “I swear it.”
“Good.” She turned, but stopped before opening the door and spoke softly over her shoulder. “I think you have a visitor, or possibly both of us have one each.”
With a nod from him, she opened the door and stepped to one side. One of his men and Sandra stood, waiting just outside.
“Captain, you’ve gotta see this,” the man spoke, waving his arms down the hall.
Sandra nodded, letting Valerie know that indeed it was worth seeing.
The captain put the ship on autopilot and turned with a raised eyebrow. “This better be good, John Mark.”
“Believe me, Captain,” the sailor ran a hand through his hair and licked his lips, “it’s outstanding. Better than good. I mean phenomenal, okay, we’re talking—”
“Perhaps it’s best if you simply show me,” the captain grumbled, stepping out the door and walking past his man.
They all had to move quickly as they followed him through a wide set of doors and down the stairs into the pirate ship’s cargo bay. It was smaller than the Captain’s bay had been, but the cargo was more interesting. The vampire’s buddy, Diego, was holding a gun. He stood beside an open crate, full of more guns just like the one he held. And more than that. There were swords, and what looked like some spices and dried meats in a couple of other crates, also with their tops pried off.
“They’re trading?” Sandra asked, looking around.
The Captain looked through some of the cargo and said, “More likely they got it off another ship they attacked. The plan was to sell it off as their own, I’ve no doubt.”
“Captain?” the man who’d fetched them asked, raising an eyebrow. The Captain seemed to hear the question in the single word.
Captain Bronson looked around and shook his head. “No, I don’t think it is nearly enough to cover our losses.” He walked deeper into the hold and opened another lid. “But it’ll help.” He fished around in the crate and added, “It just might be enough to bribe the right people so we keep our heads, though.”
“A head is good enough for me!” the man agreed, but another who’d been opening crates now stopped to glare.
Captain Bronson got it. His men were worried about their livelihoods as well. Often, one’s life was the worst of one’s worries. For his crew, he needed to push his own concerns into the background.
He’d have to make the best out of the situation, because that is what the men who flew the skies did.
Or they died trying.
***
Valerie was interested in the shipment, but she was more curious about the worried look in the captain’s eyes. There was something here he wasn’t telling her—which was good, because that meant he could keep a secret. Including hers.
“We need to speak,” she said, capturing the captain’s attention. “Ask your men to leave.”
“What’s this about?” he asked, giving her a nervous look.
“Relax Captain, I think you and I need to come to an understanding, based on what you’ve seen and what we’ve found here.” She waved at the contents in the hold.
It took a minute, with a little grumbling from those who wanted to know more about what was in the crates, but the Captain finally put a boot in the ass of the loudest, and they left. Valerie moved near the Captain and rested against the crate beside him. He turned his head to the vampire standing just a foot away.
“You know this merchandise is stolen, but you plan on reselling it?” she asked conversationally.
The captain assessed her, then nodded.
“And you know, no matter what you saw, there are no such beings as vampires or Weres, right?”
He looked confused for a moment, but then nodded agreement. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but your message is what, exactly?”
She looked at him a moment longer, and then motioned for a crate. Her nose had picked up on it the instant she’d walked through the doors. Blood, and not dead pirate blood, either. Something was different about this blood.
The crate didn’t open easily. It looked like the others, but it turned out that its wooden exterior hid a locked, metal interior.
“What is it?” the captain asked, his voice betraying his interest, his eyes curious.
“We’re about to find out.” She grabbed a knife out of a crate and used it to pry down hard on the lock, snapping it open.
Diego lifted the lid to reveal several small, glass vials packed besides tubes holding liquid nitrogen and surrounded by blankets. I
n the vials was a thick, dark red liquid.
“I don’t understand.” He straightened up and scratched his ear.
“That makes two of us,” she told him.
Diego looked from the blood back to Valerie. “I know I shouldn’t make assumptions here, but… any chance a vampire would be carrying blood around like this? I mean, is that a thing vampires do? Maybe some of the crew were vam—”
“No,” Valerie said, cutting him off mid sentence. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Already, she could tell something was off about the blood. Even more so when she removed the stopper. The scent was wrong, somehow.
“Oh, don’t do—” Diego said as he saw her lift the blood to her lips.
With a smile, holding in a laugh at his reaction, she dipped the tip of her tongue into the blood. Instantly it hit her— this was vampire blood!
Dammit. Now what?
She put the stopper back in, unable to make eye contact with anyone in the room. This was so out of her comfort zone. While she’d learned from experience that feeding Sandra would heal a human after an injury, it had never occurred to her that anyone would seek out vampire blood, let alone bottle it.
Could vampires be selling their own blood... or was this worse?
“I’m sorry, Captain,” she finally spoke, putting the blood back in the crate. “You can have the rest of these crates, arms and all.” She pointed down to the new crate. “But this one’s coming with me.”
The captain opened his mouth to argue, but must have seen the anger in her eyes as she viewed the crate and then him. He shrugged and nodded his agreement.
After a moment of her staring at him, without blinking, he finally caught on that she wanted him to become scarce.
He nodded curtly, turned, and headed to the door of the hold. “I’d better make sure the ship is on track.”
Sandra waited until the doors had close behind them, then turned to Valerie with questioning eyes.
Valerie held up a hand and assessed Diego now, weighing him. They’d just met, but he’d proven himself an ally. He had been very useful in this fight… and she’d seen him naked.
For whatever reason, that pushed the decision into the trust column.
“What’re you smiling about?” Diego asked, a confused look on his face.
She hadn’t realized she was smiling, but went with it. “I need you on our side, Xianliang.”
“Xian-what?” Sandra asked, looking at him and then back to Valerie with confusion.
“Diego, please,” he said with a nod. Valerie took it to mean that he appreciated the sign of respect, but it wasn’t necessary. “After seeing what you’re capable of, I don’t see how I’d be on any side but yours.”
“I’m relieved to hear that.” Valerie bent down to make sure the crate was locked, then stood up and turned toward him. “Because we have no idea what’s waiting for us over there, and this discovery means it could be beyond insane.” She held out her hand.
“Insane’s what I do best,” he said with a laugh, likely trying to cover up his worry, and reached out.
Valerie shook his hand, then told Sandra they needed to take the crate and find some quarters on the ship. They soon were situated in their own room, and set up a watch between the two of them to stand guard at all times. No one would go to this much trouble if the blood wasn’t valuable, and Valerie didn’t like the idea of it falling into the wrong hands.
Near the end of her watch, Valerie sent Diego off to find them some food. After he left, she pulled Sandra closer and spoke in a whisper.
“You keep putting your neck on the line for me,” Valerie said, keeping eye contact. “None of the other handmaidens would’ve stepped up like you have.”
Sandra blushed and swallowed. “Then they are cowards, Mistress.”
Valerie nodded, but felt there was more to understand, “Are you injured?”
Sandra’s eyes flittered down to Valerie’s burnt hand. “No, but you are. Here….” She held out her thin wrist and bowed her head.
Valerie’s heart quickened and she felt her fangs throbbing, desiring the pulse of Sandra’s heartbeat as she pressed her wrist to her mouth to drink. And she did. It was glorious, the taste sweet in spite of the bitter hint of iron.
Not too much though, she reminded herself, and pulled back so that her lips barely brushed the younger woman’s inner wrist. She watched as Sandra wrapped a cloth around her wrist, each move with the delicate ease of muscle memory. So often she’d fed on this woman, and yet she stayed by her side, loyal to the end.
The few times Sandra had required Valerie’s blood were a small price to pay for such a companion.
As Valerie lay back to sleep, her eyes growing drowsy, she asked Sandra, “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”
But she never heard the answer, if it ever came, as sleep swept over her.
--
“Land ho!” a voice called, what felt like mere moments later, waking Valerie from her sleep.
Diego and Sandra were both at the doorway, talking in hushed voices. They perked up at the announcement.
Sandra made it to the window first, and then motioned with a huge smile for Valerie to join her. “Come see it, Mistress. It’s amazing.”
Valerie removed the bandage from where she’d burned her hand, and was happy to see it had finished healing. She stood and walked to the window with slow, deliberate steps. What she saw took her breath away.
This was America. This was the land she’d heard such stories about since her childhood—once the country that had ruled the world, but now... this.
Darkness surrounded the city for miles. A wasteland of buildings, homes and apartments that had once been populated, but she doubted could be anymore. The city itself was a completely different matter. Skyscrapers stood tall with neon lights that lit up the night, and the feeling of life and new beginnings was simply overwhelming.
Whatever had happened here after the fall of the world must have amplified the need to build higher, because she doubted this city could have looked like this before. Off in the distance, an object glinted in the reflection of the city lights and then zipped off -- a flying car. She hadn’t seen one of those since her last visit to Old Paris, and even then only the true elites had them.
A headless Statue of Liberty was just visible in the foreground, and when she saw the location where they were going to dock, her mind started spinning at the thought that they’d actually made it.
It wasn’t what she’d imagined, and fear was present as she took it all in. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.
She was in way over her head.
CHAPTER SIX
Old Manhattan, New York City State
The ship set down just off the tip of Manhattan, at a location the captain told her was once called Castle Garden, where immigrants had arrived on Ellis Island before. A building still remained, but not much else along the waterfront.
Valerie wanted to see what the city had to offer and, as Sandra pointed out, they’d have to find a place to stay before sunrise.
