Vampirates: Tide of Terror (13 page)

Suddenly, Grace’s body went limp and she slumped down onto the grass.

“Grace!” Connor and Cheng Li cried, simultaneously. They raced back across the grass to see what on earth was wrong.

16

JOURNEY

“I’m all right. I’m all right,” Grace said, opening her eyes to find Connor and Cheng Li staring at her intently.

“What happened?” Connor asked. “One minute you were standing there, looking out at the harbor. The next, you were taking a tumble.”

“I don’t know,” Grace said, shaking her head slowly. The fall had taken her by surprise. It had been preceded by a rush of sensations — some familiar, others new. But she wasn’t ready to share this with the others.

“Let me feel your head,” Cheng Li said, “we should get you to the infirmary.”

“Really, I’m fine,” Grace insisted, as Cheng Li’s fingers gently probed the back of her head. “I think I just need to sit still for a bit.”

“There don’t
seem
to be any lumps or bumps,” Cheng Li said, “nevertheless, I’d feel happier if Nurse Carmichael took a look at you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Grace said. “I’ll just catch my breath. You guys go on with the Academy tour. I know Connor’s dying to see the freshwater pool!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Connor said quickly. “I can see it later.” But he didn’t do a good job of hiding the disappointment in his voice.

“No, no. You go along now. I’ll be fine.” Just ahead of them, she saw the jacaranda tree with its circular seat. An idea came to her. “If you will just help me over there, I could sit in the shade for a little bit.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Connor said. He reached out to lift her. “Cheng Li, can you give me a hand?”

The two of them helped Grace to her feet. With her arms around both their shoulders, they walked her over to the jacaranda tree.

“How embarrassing!” said Grace.

“Don’t worry about it.” Cheng Li shook her head. “It’s a hot day. Could have happened to any one of us.”

They settled her on the seat. Grace felt instantly better, sitting amid the soft blue bower, out of the glare of the sun.

“Here,” said Cheng Li, reaching into her pack and producing a bottle of water. “Take some sips of this.”

“Thanks,” said Grace, gratefully taking the bottle. The others watched her carefully as she took a sip. The cool water felt good. “I’m fine now,” she said. “I’ll just sit here for a bit. You go on.”

Cheng Li placed her palm on Grace’s brow. “You still seem a little hot to me. I’ll go on with Connor but we’ll be back to check on you within the hour.”

Grace nodded, unnerved by the intensity of Cheng Li’s stare. Really, all she needed was some peace and quiet.

After Cheng Li had gone, Grace slid back, deeper under the branches of the jacaranda tree, her arms brushing its trumpet-shaped flowers and releasing more of its sweet perfume. She felt cocooned there, looking out toward the harbor, where Captain Avery had at last successfully guided his charges out of their slips and off toward the harbor wall. Grace’s eyes fell to the glistening waters. She felt as if she were sinking. It was the same sensation she had experienced just before falling. This time, she didn’t fight it but instead let herself give in to the feeling.

She closed her eyes and felt her body grow limp once more. This time, she was able to cushion her fall by lying down on the seat before regular consciousness left her. It soon felt as if she were afloat on a more pliant surface than the wooden bench — possibly the ocean itself.

Her eyes remained closed and yet she could see that she was traveling through the air at a furious rate of knots — out across the dock and the harbor, out to the harbor wall and through the Academy arch, out beyond into the open ocean.

The speed of her motion was as exhilarating as it was giddying. The craggy coastline rushed past in a blur, the weather changing from sun to cloud and rain and then, just as quickly, back again. She continued to breathe deeply, letting this strange tide carry her wherever it wanted. She was unsure whether she should be fearful or excited about this journey.

She came to a point where she lost all sense of speed and she found herself swathed in a soft white mist, through which nothing was visible. The giddying sensation gave way to a deep calm. She felt safe. She sensed she was being looked after, held and guided by unseen hands. She waited.

Gradually the mist lifted and she was exactly where she had hoped to be — back on the deck of the Vampirate ship. She was standing up and yet she could not feel the deck-boards beneath her feet, nor the rocking motion of the ship. It made her understand that she was not really there, not wholly there — not in any normal sense. Grace thought of Darcy’s visit to her cabin on
The Diablo
. Somehow, she had managed to make her own spirit journey! How had she done it? How was she going to get back? She brushed the questions aside for a moment, just thrilled to be here.

It was daylight and the deck was deserted, as she would have expected at this time of day. She stood for a moment beneath the ship’s dark, winglike sails. A breeze was blowing and they billowed above her. Grace reached out a hand toward the strange leathery material. Her hand could not touch it — just as Darcy’s hands could not touch anything during her visit to
The Diablo
. Grace’s fingers moved through the sail, as if it were a hologram. Even so, as they passed through it, a spark of light shot up through the veins of the material. Grace watched the light rise and spark like a firework. It filled her with wonder and delight. It was so good to be back.

She walked over the familiar red deckboards to the very front of the ship. Beneath her, Darcy — in her day-light incarnation as the ship’s beautiful wooden figure-head — stretched out over the waves, watching the horizon with her wide painted eyes. Grace leaned forward against the deck-rail, but here there was an invisible buffer, preventing her from touching the rail itself. The breeze was strong and strands of her hair flew back into her eyes. She brushed them away, looking down at the perfect painted hair of the ship’s figurehead.

“Hello, Darcy,” she called, unsure if her friend would be able to hear her above the roar of the breeze and the noisy flapping of the ship’s sails.

“Grace!” She heard Darcy’s cockney accent and her heart leaped. “Grace, you came back. You shouldn’t have! I told you not to... but I’m glad you did!”

“Me, too,” Grace said, her voice suddenly choked with emotion. “How are you? How is everybody?”

There was a pause. Then perhaps a sob — or it might have been the slosh of the waters below.

“Things are worse and worse, Grace.”

“Why? What’s happened, Darcy?”

“It’s not...it’s not for the likes of me to say, Grace. Besides, I can hardly hear you at the moment. My head is filled with the sounds of waves during the day. My ears and mouth are only wood until it grows dark. It’s not easy to talk until after nightfall. What’s more, the captain was ever so angry when he found out I’d been to visit you.”

“Angry? Why was he angry?” Grace asked.

“He says we must leave you be. That this ship is for creatures like us, not girls like you. Says we must let you be free to get on with your life.”

“But how can I?” asked Grace. “How am I supposed to just carry on when I know that you are suffering ...that Lorcan is suffering?”

“That’s what I told him, Grace,” said Darcy, “but he got angrier and angrier, until he threw me out of his cabin and told me I was ...troublesome. That I was nothing but a troublesome piece of...,” she sobbed, “piece of driftwood!”

Grace was shocked. She would never have expected the captain to have spoken such cruel words. She wondered, with a shiver, what he would say when he found out
she
had come back to the ship. Perhaps he already knew. Little passed on the ship that he was unaware of. How much time did she have left here?

“Darcy, I’m going to look in on Lorcan.”

“All right, Grace. But be careful!”

“Careful of what?”

“Just careful, Grace.”

Grace felt a deep sense of foreboding. But what was the point in coming here, if not to see Lorcan? “I’ll see you later, Darcy,” she said, turning back across the deck.

The door to the captain’s cabin was closed, she noticed. She walked past it and instead opened the door that led into the main corridor. The lights were on — though dimly — and she eased her way down toward Lorcan’s cabin. As she turned the corner, she saw a couple of unfamiliar faces — a tall, well-built black man with short silvery hair, and a slighter, rather jaundiced man, his head covered by a cowl. She quickly identified them as vampires not donors. They were locked in conversation with each other and didn’t appear to notice her even as she brushed past them to proceed along the narrow passage-way. How strange!

She paused outside Lorcan’s cabin, suddenly nervous to enter. Summoning her strength, she raised her hand to knock. She failed to make contact with the wood but, nevertheless, the door opened. She stepped forward into utter darkness.

“Hello?” she said, her eyes struggling to adjust to the gloom.

There was a pause and then a familiar voice spoke. “Hello, stranger.”

“Lorcan!” she said, feeling a strong surge of emotion but trying to fight it. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Yours, too,” he said. “Yours, too. How the devil have you been?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just miss you — all of you — so much.”

“We miss you too, Grace.”

His voice trailed off.

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but still she could only just make out the outline of his head and body. His bed was a four-poster, with hangings, making it hard to see inside. She walked around it but, whichever angle she glanced through, his face seemed to be turned away from her, as if he didn’t want her to see him. Tentatively, she sat down on the edge of the bed. Much like when Darcy had sat on the bed in Grace’s own cabin, she found herself hovering — albeit quite comfortably — a inch or so above its surface.

“Darcy told me that things have been difficult since I left.”

“Sometimes, Darcy might think more and speak less.” His words were suddenly stripped of the sunny tone he had adopted before.

“No, Lorcan. If something’s wrong I want to know about it. I want to help.”

“You’re so kind, Grace.” His voice was weary now. “But I’m afraid this time you cannot help. Even the captain’s powers are being tested as never before.”

“What do you mean? Is this to do with the rebel Vampirates?”

“What do
you
know about them?”

“Darcy told me,” she said, “that Sidorio wasn’t the
only
Vampirate to rebel against the captain. That he was only the
first
. But now others challenge his authority. They want more blood. They want more Feasts.”

“Grace, you mustn’t interfere in such things. You mustn’t even think of them.”

If only he would turn toward her, or at least light up a candle. “But I want to help,” she said. “You were so good to me. All of you . . . but especially you and the captain.”

“It’s best you leave us to find our own way,” Lorcan said, his voice heavy with defeat. “You were only ever a visitor here. You know only a little of our world.”

“Yes, but I want to know more.”

“It’s too dangerous. You came closer than any mortal ever has. I don’t even know how you managed to come back...like this.”

Grace took a deep breath. Had she
willed
herself back here? “I think I journeyed back here because I care.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

Lorcan sighed. “Then you must stop caring, Grace. You must let us go.”

“How? How am I supposed to do that? Should I just extinguish any feelings I might have and forget all about you?”

“Yes.” His voice grew weaker each time he spoke. Her urge to see his face was impossibly strong.

“Lorcan, do you have a taper? It’s so dark in here. If you could just light one of the candles —”

“No, Grace,” he said, with sudden ferocity. “No candles. There’s the difference between us. I need the darkness, not the light.”

“Lorcan, please don’t talk this way. I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

His only answer was another sigh. It was almost as though words were too much of an effort for him now.

“Lorcan, aren’t you even a little pleased to see me?”

Still, there was no answer.

Suddenly, the room was filled with smoke. No, it was too cold to be smoke. It was the mist again. And, as much as she fought through it, it only grew thicker and thicker. Filled with frustration, Grace waved her arms about, trying to cut through the screen that separated her from her dear friend.

But it was no good. She had only been a visitor and, however she had got there, her stay was not in her control. The mist took hold of her, filling her eyes and ears and nostrils. And then she was traveling again, this time backward. Flying off the deck of the ship, light as a seagull feather — pulled back over the ocean, so the rocks and reefs and lagoons all rushed by in a blur that made her head spin. Until finally, there was darkness and stillness once more, and a heady scent, which, though familiar, she couldn’t immediately place.

Grace opened her eyes and found herself staring into the blue. It took her back to her first arrival on the Vampirate ship, when she had looked up for the first time into the intense blue of Lorcan Furey’s eyes. But this blue was differ-ent. As her gaze steadied, she watched the color separate into the trumpet-like shapes of flowers. Now, she remembered. She was lying on the seat beneath the jacaranda tree. She propped herself up, letting out a breath, wondering at her strange journey. Had she really been on the ship or only imagined it? It had all seemed so very real.

“Grace.”

The voice was soft but close. She twisted her head.

Cheng Li was sitting beside her, holding a small bag which hovered over Grace’s forehead.

“I brought you this ice-pack,” she said. “Nurse Carmichael thought it might be soothing to you. She recommended that I take you back to your room so you can get some rest. Do you think you might be able to walk there, with my assistance?”

Grace drew herself up. She actually didn’t feel too bad, just a little shell-shocked and confused, her head swimming with unanswered questions.