Vampirates 5: Empire of Night (8 page)

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followed, moving in unison. The exodus continued like a wave as each Vampirate and his or her donor left the banquet hall--no one hurrying, no one missing a beat. Though Grace had seen it many times before, it still fascinated her--now perhaps more than ever.

The wave reached them, and now it was Lorcan and Oskar who rose; and each began walking along his side of the table toward the exit. Then, Mosh Zu and Grace stood. Though they were not Vampirate and donor, they would exit the cabin together, so as not to break the symmetry.

As Grace followed in Oskar's path alongside the table, she couldn't help smiling at the irony that she still sat on the donor side of the table. She was so deep in her own thoughts that she didn't even register leaving the banquet hall, and was surprised to find herself out in the corridor. Was this what it was like for the Vampirates? She had seen the distant, empty look in Lorcan's eyes when his hunger was most urgent. Like now.

Glancing over at him, Grace saw that his normally blue eyes had changed. They now looked like deep pits of fire. It didn't scare her or freak her out. She had seen him in this condition before. All he needed was the gift of Oskar's blood to satisfy his hunger. Grace found her gaze turning to the tanned skin on Oskar's neck. Suddenly, it was as if his skin was transparent and she could see the blood flowing within the veins beneath it. She could see it. Smell it. Taste it...

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They climbed the stairs to the next deck--the donors' deck. Along the corridor, doors opened and quickly closed, like the beating wings of moths, as the Vampirates and donors disappeared inside. Grace felt her heart racing. Her head was pounding with the strange, driving music of the Feast, now intercut with Oskar's words.
You should join us.... Share me. Share me. Share me. Share me.

Oskar reached for the door. He opened it, and Lorcan walked purposefully inside. Oskar followed. The door began to close.

Grace faltered.
Share me
, he had said. What was she supposed to do? She should talk to Mosh Zu about this but, as she turned, she saw that he had continued on along the corridor. Now she was separated from him by other vampire and donor pairs making their way to their cabins.

Oskar's door was still ajar. Grace felt a powerful heat coursing through her, followed by as sudden and penetrating a chill right along her spine.

Share me
. Inside her skull, Oskar's voice grew stronger. Her head would surely explode if the music didn't end; if this feeling didn't subside. This feeling that she now understood to be her hunger. There was only one way for such a hunger to be quelled, wasn't there? Grace saw the sliver of candlelight spilling out into the corridor. She stretched out her hand and pushed the door. Taking a deep breath, she entered the room.

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The cabin was covered with a red glow. Grace couldn't be sure if this was the lighting within or if it was a further effect of her hunger. Each of her senses seemed heightened. Time seemed to lurch from running at increased speed to suddenly spooling very slowly. Through all of this, she felt the alternating heat and chill, and the relentless throbbing in her head.
Share me.

It took all Grace's strength to gather her focus. At last, she began to make sense of what was happening around her. There was Oskar, leaning against the wall, Lorcan to his side. So this was how it happened. This was how they shared. Grace had glimpsed Lorcan sharing with Shanti from outside in the corridor once before, but then she had been quick to turn away. Now, she opened her hungry eyes to the scene before her, fascinated to see how it worked. Once again, it seemed to her that Oskar's skin had become completely transparent, and she could see the blood coursing from his heart and through his veins toward the punctured skin of his thorax. Looking up, she was surprised to find him smiling at her and beckoning her closer.

"Come," he was saying. "Share me."

Grace stepped closer. She moved forward until she was standing only a breath away from Oskar. He smiled at her again as she looked into his eyes. There was fire there, as in Lorcan's eyes, but more distant somehow. It confused her, distracting her from her hunger for a moment. She stared deeper into the black slicks of Oskar's pupils, seek

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ing out the fire. Then she recoiled, understanding. There was no fire in Oskar's eyes; they were simply a mirror, reflecting back to her her own deep hunger.

The realization made her gasp and step backward, stumbling toward the door. The room suddenly felt utterly airless. She needed to escape. "I'm sorry," she said, unsure whether there was any volume to her words. Oskar was turning toward Lorcan now, as the Vampirate prepared to take his blood.

She had to get out. Now. She wasn't ready for this.

Grace wasn't sure of the sequence of events that followed. Somehow, she managed to locate the doorknob and twist it open. She made it into the corridor and found herself pushing open another door--though she had no recollection of having climbed up any flights of stairs--onto the main deck. It was only as she stepped out into the air that she began to breathe with any semblance of normality and to start to pull together her thoughts into some kind of shape.

She knew she had done the right thing, removing herself from Oskar's cabin. She was not yet ready for this. Her hunger had fallen away as steeply as her appetite at dinner. Now, as she reached out to the deck rail, the thought of what she had been on the verge of doing shocked her to her very core. She took in a deep lungful

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of air, then exhaled just as slowly. Her body felt released from the thrall of her hunger. She felt normal again, though this seemed a relative state and quite possibly a temporary one. She stood at the guardrail, the breeze caressing her hair and skin, growing calmer with each passing moment.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there before she heard footsteps and became aware of someone joining her. She smiled, preparing herself for the sight of Lorcan. He must have broken off the sharing to come after her. How typically selfless of him, even in the moment of his most urgent hunger, to come and check on her. Truly, he was the perfect gentleman.

But when she turned, it wasn't Lorcan's face she found gazing back at her, though it was still familiar, still handsome. Instead it was a face she hadn't expected to see again--or not for a good while, at least, and not here, of all places.

Johnny tipped his hat and grinned at Grace appreciatively. "Well, look at you, little lady! Heaven must be missing an angel tonight!"

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9 THE INVITATION

Connor stood in the icy water, outside the Full Moon Saloon, staring at Jez--or rather, he corrected himself, at Stukeley. His former comrade was wearing a red shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and beaten-up black leather breeches. Since the last time Connor had seen him, at Sidorio's wedding, Stukeley's hair had been closely shaved. From his left ear dangled a tiny skull. On the back of his neck was a fresh tattoo--of a wave, in the style of a Japanese woodcut. Lower down, on the inside of his forearm, was the tattoo of three cutlasses that identically matched the tattoo on Connor's own arm. Connor, Bart, and Jez had each woken up to find them there after their "lost weekend" in Calle del Marinero. It remained a complete mystery to them as to how the tattoos had gotten there.

"How do," said Stukeley with a nod.

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"We were just talking about you," said Connor.

"Well, you know what they say," Stukeley grinned. "Speak of the devil and the devil appears."

Connor shook his head. "You're not the devil. You've got some wacky new habits and strange new people to hang around with, but you're not the devil."

Stukeley shrugged. "Thanks... I think." He smiled. "Shall we go ashore?" He put his arm on Connor's shoulder and led him out of the cold water onto the sand.

Amongst the rubbish on the beach were a couple of rusting oil drums. Stukeley leaned back against one, and Connor sat down on the other. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I came to find you," Stukeley said. "To give you this." He reached inside his shirt pocket and produced an envelope. In the starlight, the vellum shone like a sliver of white gold.

Connor took the envelope and saw his own name written on it in ink, in wild, curling letters. He had a deep sense of foreboding about what lay inside. He let it rest in his hands for a time.

"Open it," Stukeley said.

His heart beginning to race, Connor tore open the envelope and pulled out the folded parchment. He unfolded it and scanned the brief letter....

Dear Connor,

I hope this finds you well. My son, you have been much in my thoughts of late. Our reunion was interrupted. We
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should get to know each other. My wife and I would very much like you to come and stay with us aboard our ships. Come as soon as you can and stay as long as you wish.

Your blood father,

Sidorio

Having read it, Connor instantly folded up the letter and reinserted it into the envelope. He set it down on the rusting oil drum and began walking away.

"You can't ignore this," Stukeley said, coming to walk alongside him.

"I can try." Connor's eyes were fixed ahead.

"It won't change anything," Stukeley said. "Sidorio
is
your blood father. You're one of us now."

Connor said nothing, just kept walking. He was in imminent danger of running away from the beach.

"Wait!" Stukeley said, jumping in front of him. "Look at me, Connor!"

Reluctantly, Connor lifted his eyes to face Stukeley once more.

"We were friends once," Stukeley said. "We said that our friendship transcended life and death, remember? When I came back to find you, you helped me. You took me to the Blood Tavern and then to
The Nocturne
so I could get help from the captain."

Connor nodded. "I remember." He shivered at the thought of the Blood Tavern.

"You helped me," Stukeley repeated. "Now it's my turn

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to help you." He reached out his hand to Connor's shoulder. "I know you must be reeling from all this--discovering that Sidorio is your father, that you are a dhampir. It changes everything."

"Only if I let it," Connor said defiantly.

Stukeley shook his head. "No, Connor. You're not in control of this. It's bigger than you. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."

Connor thought about Stukeley's words. He thought of how he had watched Jez die and of the lavish funeral they had staged for him on the deck of
The Diablo
. He thought of how Jez's journey had ended there, but Stukeley's had just begun as they had tossed his coffin into the ocean and unwittingly sent it traveling on the tide into the grateful arms of Sidorio.

"I didn't ask to be on this side of the fence either," Stukeley said, as if reading his thoughts. "But Connor, I've learned that the only way through this is to accept what you are."

Connor hung his head, letting his eyes close. A fresh thought occurred to him. He opened his eyes again, frowning.

"What's the matter?" Stukeley inquired.

"I don't understand," Connor said. "I thought I destroyed Lola Lockwood at the wedding. But, in the letter, Sidorio says, 'my wife and I,' as if she's still around."

Stukeley's nod confirmed it. "Lady Lola is very much still around," he said. "In spite of your best efforts to the contrary."

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Connor shook his head in disbelief.

Stukeley leaned in closer. "You saw how she managed to recover from your first attack, didn't you? You stabbed her, but she removed the sword from her own chest."

"Yes." Connor thought back to the events of that night. "But then I decapitated her and we separated her head from her body. That should have proved fatal."

Stukeley shrugged. There was a look in his eyes Connor couldn't decipher. "You'd certainly have thought it was enough, but Sidorio brought Lola's head and body back together and before you could say, 'Congrats!' they were bound for their happy honeymoon."

"That flies in the face of all our research," Connor said, shaking his head again.

"You can't trust what you read," Stukeley said. "Sidorio and Lola break all the rules. The closer they come to destruction, the more powerful they seem to emerge."

This struck a chord with Connor. He thought of how the captain of
The Nocturne
had once counseled Connor to attack the renegade Vampirates with fire. The captain had said that fire would be fatal to Sidorio, but, though it had destroyed some of his fledgling crew, it had left Sidorio--and indeed Stukeley--somehow stronger. Like metal, forged in the flames. Connor could see the hungry fire in front of his eyes now, and in it the faces of Sidorio and Stukeley and Lola.

"I can't come with you," Connor said.

"No such word as 'can't'!" Stukeley said, grinning.

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"Think about it," Connor said. "I'm the one who attacked Lola. I tried to destroy her. She can't possibly want to see me." He had a fresh thought. "Unless she wants to take revenge."

Stukeley shook his head. "She wouldn't dream of taking revenge on you. You're much too important to Sidorio. And, before you go there, I can assure you that revenge is the furthest thing from
his
mind. He genuinely wants to get to know you, father to son."

Far-fetched as they sounded, Stukeley's words rang true. Connor remembered the last time he and Sidorio had faced one another, on that other beach, after the pirates' disruption of the Vampirate wedding. Sidorio had drawn Connor toward him, his twin incisors bearing down toward Connor's thorax, poised to kill. Then Cheng Li had spoken and everything had changed. Not just for Connor, but for Sidorio, too. He remembered the look in Sidorio's eyes as he had stared at Connor and declared, "He's my son."

"Trust me," Stukeley said now, "Sidorio only wants the best for you, and for Grace, too. He talks about you both as heirs to his empire."