There was no time to ask Herb about that—or any of the myriad other questions that Mark still needed answers to, and so he assumed the worst. After all, if Herb was to be believed, these were creatures of darkness. It stood to reason that they would not be as disabled by a lack of light as humans were.
It felt like crossing the ice took forever. When they reached what Mark guessed was the centre of the rink, he felt his panic chasing him. Never in his life had he felt so exposed. It was like he was standing in the middle of an open park, and someone had just informed him that there was a sniper out there somewhere.
With each passing second, he expected to hear the creature behind him; the crunching of claws biting into the ice. He desperately wanted to move faster.
He crashed into the low barrier that surrounded the ice without warning, and only as he toppled over it did he realise that he hadn't been out in the centre of the rink at all, but had crossed it. The darkness playing tricks on him.
He opened his mouth to whisper a warning to Herb, and the air was blasted out of his lungs again as the man landed heavily on top of him. He shoved Herb off without a word, afraid that the sound of them falling had been more than loud enough to draw attention, but when he cocked an ear, he heard only eerie silence.
That's because it did hear something, and it's listening, just like you are.
Mark held his breath and waited a few seconds, until he was as sure as he could be that nothing else was out there on the ice, and slipped the lighter from his pocket, casting a glow that extended no more than a few feet.
It was enough. To his right, he saw the changing area where people could exchange their shoes for ice skates. A few tables set up around a sandwich bar and a soft drinks machine for those who weren't brave enough to step onto the ice themselves.
And the exit.
Mark knew the way from there. Outside the ice arena, there was another small lounge area decorated with stunning floor-to-ceiling tropical fish tanks—one of many such rest areas dotted around the ship, offering passengers a chance to catch their breath before moving on to the next attraction.
When the nightclub opened its doors, the lounge was intended to double as a
chill out zone.
Three words that Mark thought were destined to never belong together again.
They were close to the nightclub doors now, and Mark extinguished the lighter flame, confident that he could find his way in the dark.
"Let's go," he whispered, and hauled himself upright, moving toward the exit carefully. Herb followed a moment later, close enough that Mark could almost feel the man's breath on the back of his neck.
He moved through the lounge area carefully, and felt his way along the wall until he found what he was looking for: the door to the
Apollo
nightclub was framed by faux tiki torches. He found them easily, and pushed the door open, blinking as the sharp smell of disinfectant washed over him.
The nightclub opened at 11pm, and judging by the smell, it was still being readied for action when the ship went dark.
Mark was suddenly struck by the time: he estimated it could be no later than ten o'clock. Only a matter of hours since they had been docked in Portsmouth, and Mark's biggest problem had been the possibility that Steven Vega would somehow prevent him from heading to the nightclub to party when his shift was over.
Now, Vega's brains were splattered over the conference room wall, and Mark was running for his life from a mythological creature.
If he hadn't been so steeped in terror, Mark thought he would have found the situation funny.
"In here," he said in a low voice, and flicked on the lighter for a second to direct Herb. As he stepped inside, Mark reached out and plucked a tiki torch from its bracket.
It was flimsy, but it would serve as a temporary deadbolt, and would deter anything that wasn't determined to get in. He was, however, under no illusions that the flimsy plastic would withstand a barrage similar to the one the creature had unleashed on the conference room doors.
He pulled the door shut and slipped the torch between the handles. After a moment's pause, in which he heard only silence and Herb's panicked, shallow breaths, he flicked on the lighter once more.
The
Apollo
was small: like the ice rink it was designed to be a scale model representation of the real thing. The Oceanus didn't expect to play host to too many younger people; those for whom evenings and alcohol inevitably led to thumping beats and crowded dance floors. Mark had hoped differently, of course, but the prospect of getting drunk and finding young, single women to dance with suddenly seemed very distant indeed.
He cast the thought aside, and headed straight to the bar and began to search through the crates and boxes stored behind it.
The glow sticks were scale model affairs, too: not much bigger than drinking straws. They wouldn't emit much light, but as things stood, they were a step up on the lighter and the seemingly endless darkness. He snapped one and shook it until soft blue light flooded the bar and nodded, satisfied.
Mark stuffed a fistful of the glow sticks into a pocket and slid the box along the bar to Herb, who took a few and nodded, before returning his focus to the bottle of
Jack Daniel's
he was trying to open. When the cap came off the bottle, he took a long slug and offered it to Mark.
Mark shook his head.
"You sure?" Herb said. "You know, there's every chance this will be the last drink you ever get to take. And I don't know about you, but my nerves could use a little calming."
Mark shook his head again.
"I think it's better if I keep a clear head," he said curtly. "Besides, I'm an angry drunk."
Herb snorted and rubbed at his jaw.
"You're not that much fun sober."
Mark grinned despite himself.
"You asked for it," he said. "Wailing like a damn baby."
Herb grunted, and twisted the cap off a bottle of tequila, taking a swallow and grimacing.
"You planning to get shitfaced?" Mark said. "Because I'm not sure that's such a good—"
"No," Herb interrupted with a chuckle. "Just figure it's a waste to open all these bottles and not take a sip."
"All?"
Mark arched an eyebrow.
"Molotov's," Herb explained as he twisted the cap off a bottle of vodka. "I've got a feeling the fuel tanks on this beast are going to be pretty difficult to set off. If I'm right, these will do as backup."
"Backup for what?"
"For burning this ship to the ground," Herb said, knocking back a mouthful of vodka and blinking as the liquid seared his throat. "Well, the sea. Whatever. You know what I mean."
Herb smiled, and for the first time Mark noticed how young the guy was. He put him early twenties; almost certainly not a day over twenty-five. He definitely didn't look like a terrorist, though Mark would have been hard pressed to say what a terrorist
should
look like. Herb just looked like a kid with a penchant for telling tall tales.
Or maybe not.
If what Herb had said was true, he hadn't had much say in his upbringing, or in the way he ended up on the ship. Maybe, in some ways, his presence there was every bit as fucked up as Mark's.
Hell, Mark hadn't pursued a career in cruise ship security; he doubted that
anyone
chased that particular dream. Mark had ended up on the Oceanus because his father had been determined to raise a boxer in his own image, and hadn't ever left room for what Mark himself might want.
To sixteen-year-old Mark, it hadn't seemed that there were a great many career options for someone whose greatest talent was the ability to throw a not-quite-professional punch. Of the options that were open to him, precious few were legal.
So he paid his dues in the security business, and after fifteen years of endless bullshit, he ended up on cruise ships. Fifteen years to claw together a job that could be described as decent at best, and utterly pointless at worst.
And now, it didn't even look
decent
; not
at all. It looked increasingly like a job that was going to get him killed.
Maybe Herb had the right idea after all.
"Here," Mark said, and held out his hand for the vodka. Herb slid the bottle along the bar, and Mark scooped it up smoothly and raised it in a toast.
"To family," he said with more than a trace of bitterness.
Herb stared at him quizzically for a moment before lifting another bottle of
Jack Daniel's
to his lips, and he drank with a dark chuckle.
Edgar stared at the sobbing man in frustration, and cast a frantic glance along the hallway at the top of the stairs.
He couldn't help but notice the spots of blood on the steps, and knew that they meant only one thing: one of the creatures had been in this part of the ship. Maybe was even still here. It was not safe; definitely
not
a place to take a seat and start having some sort of mental breakdown.
Ferrying Dan Bellamy about the Oceanus was a waste of time. Edgar was sure of that. The likelihood of his wife still being alive seemed slim, and even if she had somehow survived the initial attack, she would surely be holed up somewhere and impossible to find.
Edgar had planned on leaving the man and the now-dead woman in the security uniform when they reached the stairs. His own search for Herb was likely to prove equally futile, but at least Herb knew what he was dealing with. There was a slim chance that he might have found a place to hide before it all started, and if that was the case, Edgar was certain that Herb would be somewhere down in the engine room.
There was a good chance that the vampires hadn't descended that far into the ship yet. For them, there would be no need; nothing to draw them down there for a while. Most of the meat on the ship was located on the passenger decks.
Meat
.
Edgar shuddered when he thought about how close he had come to being no more than meat himself. He could still feel an echo of the dead vampire's toxic presence in his mind, like it had stained his thoughts. He forced his attention back to Dan, desperately trying not to focus on the sickly feeling in his head.
Dan was still sobbing; still in the middle of some sort of
episode.
The prospect of leaving Dan to fend for himself hadn't bothered Edgar in the slightest. For as long as the guy tallied along, Edgar thought he could be useful, even if only as a means of distracting any vampires they happened across.
But then everything had changed, and all of a sudden Dan seemed terribly important. So much that Edgar was even willing to waste time finding the man's cabin and his almost-certainly-dead wife.
But time was short, and the detour toward the cabins was taking too damn long. The other vampires
would
descend through the ship; that might even be what the two remaining monsters were doing at that very moment. If Herb was still down there somewhere in engineering, his time was running out.
Just leave him
, Edgar thought, but he knew he could not. The sobbing man had effectively disproved a part of the ancient texts that Edgar's father had always maintained was not up for debate. In the presence of the vampires, humans turned to terrified mush, their minds paralysed by the very sight of the creatures. Edgar had felt it himself.
Crawling toward the vampire in the Indian restaurant, only a tiny fraction of Edgar's mind had remained his own; the rest was in thrall to the hideous creature, and Edgar was fully aware that he was crawling to certain death, and equally aware that he was powerless to stop it.
The man on the stairs was different somehow. Unaffected by the crippling terror the vampires instilled in humans. Leaving him felt like it could be a huge mistake.
Besides that
, Edgar thought,
you might need him if you run into another vampire yourself.
The thought chilled Edgar as much as it baffled him. The guy sitting on the stairs in the ragged shorts and t-shirt was no fighter, that much was obvious. He was scrawny; weak. A tear-streaked face under a childish mop of hair. And yet somehow he had charged directly at the creature that was preparing to kill Edgar while he cowered on the floor pissing his pants, and he had damn near beheaded the thing with a
cleaver
.
That made Dan Bellamy valuable, but only if he could get his shit together.
"Come on," Edgar said, retreating half way down the steps and hauling the man upright by his armpits. "You're not going to find your wife if you sit here cry—"
The scream ripped Edgar's words in two.
It was loud, close and very definitely human, but it wasn't the scream itself that silenced Edgar.
It was Dan Bellamy's reaction to it.
Dan went stiff with what Edgar assumed was fright, but Edgar saw something other than fear in the man's eyes. Shock, yes, but...something else.
Recognition?
Before Edgar could move a muscle in response, Dan turned and charged up the remaining steps and disappeared out of sight along the dark hallway at a sprint.
In the distance, the human scream dissolved into another noise; similar and yet twisted almost beyond recognition. A vampire shriek.
For a second, Edgar stood there, stunned, and then he too was running, trying to tell the rising panic in his mind to shut the hell up.
It didn't work.
The fear built with every step.
Because he was sprinting
toward
the dreadful noise.
*
Dan rocketed around the corner and slammed to a halt.
The hallway had no windows; it was as dark as the grave, but the goggles allowed him to see perfectly and his mind took in every hideous detail, lingering on the horrific sight in front of him like a slow motion zoom.
His beautiful wife, face down on the floor, her back stained by an ocean of blood as the vampire raked its fearsome talons down her spine, opening her up like a
ziploc
bag.
Dan let loose a bestial shriek. No words, just emotion. Rage and horror and denial.
The vampire looked up sharply.
And laughed.
"Oh,
dear
," it rasped. "I think she must be yoursssss." It cackled, and pulled Elaine's head up from the floor to face Dan.
"She's mine nooooow."
Dan stared at Elaine's face, and felt a feeble flicker of hope. She was still alive; her eyes rolled up in their sockets and a thin line of bloody drool leaked from her lips. Elaine gave no indication that she knew Dan was there.
Too dark for her to see me
, he thought, and he felt his heart breaking.
"Please—" he began to say, but the word twisted into something unrecognisable as the vampire hooked its claws under Elaine's jaw and tore her head away from her shoulders like a piece of rotten fruit.
Elaine's head landed somewhere behind the vampire with a wet crunch.
The creature grinned, and drilled its eyes into Dan.
He felt a vague prickling at the back of his mind, and some part of him understood that it was the vampire's attempt to instil the fear in him that Edgar had spoken of. The strange mind control.
It didn't work.
Dan's mind had already slipped, collapsing in on itself with searing familiarity, and at last he understood. The panic attacks. The strange blackout episodes.
It wasn't fear. Fear was what he felt every minute of every day; it was little wonder that the terror the vampires provoked barely registered as little more than a blip. The panic attacks were something else. Something darker. Something that took over Dan's mind when fear was no longer enough.
The terrible black river in his mind was
rage
, suppressed for too long, awe-inducing in its intensity.
For a second, all Dan could do was stare right back at the creature as his mind tried to process the fragmented images that his eyes delivered.
Blood.
Hideous, twisted muscles.
Teeth.
Elaine's eyes. Wide with terror, unfocused. Unable to see her husband in the pitch-black hallway, standing right in front of her, ten feet and a lifetime away. His beautiful wife, the only thing that had anchored him to the real world for two years, frightened and alone in the darkness, dying at the hands of a monster that had crawled out from a maniac's nightmare.
And all because Dan had been too slow to reach her. Because he had let the horror of the world overcome him.
While Elaine was falling beneath the vampire, Dan had been so close, but was lost in tears and self-pity.
He could have saved her.
The images that flashed in Dan's mind were overpowering, burying him beneath an avalanche of emotion. He saw everything and nothing as his world blurred and stretched, breaking and remaking itself as an endless abyss of despair.
It felt like the darkness was claiming him, smothering him, until he could only see one thing.
Red eyes.
Dan saw those evil, glowing red eyes
clearly
. Saw them widening in astonishment as he charged forward, swinging the cleaver in a wide arc at the vampire's head, putting every ounce of his strength into the blow and unleashing a hoarse roar of rage that he would never have believed could have originated in his own throat.
*
Mark held a Molotov cocktail in each hand, and found himself simultaneously wishing both that he could carry more, and that he could set them aside and never think about picking them up again.
The bottles felt heavy, and dangerous. Even without setting a flame to the flimsy napkins he and Herb had stuffed into the necks of the bottles, Mark couldn't help but feel like they might explode in his hand at any second.
He remembered a kid at school turning up in class after a long absence. Everyone knew what had happened to Tommy Addison: the rumours swept around the school like wildfire. Sometimes the details changed a little: nobody seemed to know for sure what
type
of firework he had been holding, but everyone knew that he had still been gripping it tightly when it went off.
Mark would never forget the sight of Tommy's hand when he finally did return to school: fingers gone, leaving only mangled stumps, and flesh on his palm that looked to have melted. Tommy's left hand was red, as if it had been bestowed upon him by some demon, and it was sickeningly shiny. It didn't look like human flesh at all.
Mark had been afraid of fire and what it could do to the human body ever since. He didn't consider that a phobia. More like good common sense.
And now he was about to set a ship alight, while he was standing on it.
"Uh, are you sure that sinking this ship will bring help?" Mark asked feebly.
"Sure?" Herb said breezily. "Not even remotely. But I'm not letting them get their talons on me, that I
am
sure of. But if you want an educated guess? Yeah, my father won't allow any harm to come to the vampires. It would be a total failure. I don't even think he would much care about the prospect of their retaliation. More about the disgrace, and the failure of his boys to fulfil their
destiny
."
Herb spat the last word out, and lifted aloft a book of matches that he had taken from behind the bar. He struck one.
"Wait," Mark said weakly, unsure what he could say next, but certain in the knowledge that once Herb lit that match, matters would move swiftly beyond his control. Beyond anybody's.
Herb looked at Mark quizzically as the flame sputtered to life.
And his eyes widened as something heavy crashed into the door, rattling the flimsy tiki torch barring the handles like a toothpick.
Mark glanced at the door, and his stomach knotted itself in fear.
It had been all too easy to believe that they were safe in the locked room. Easy, almost, to forget that the vampire was out there searching for them.
Maybe they had been making too much noise, Mark thought, and he cursed himself for letting his guard drop even a little.
The thing beyond the door charged again immediately, and Mark heard that terrible sound once more. Dry snapping. A makeshift deadbolt giving up its feeble resistance.
"No time for waiting," Herb said. "No time for much of anything, really. Can't guarantee we can blow the fuel tanks, but there's a hell of a lot of alcohol in this place, and alcohol burns just fine. Better get to the exit."
Mark rushed to the rear exit of the nightclub in a dream.
This can't be happening
, he thought as he pulled the door open and glanced quickly at the empty darkness beyond. He held a Molotov in each hand, and started to struggle with them, trying to transfer both to his left hand while he fished in his pocket for a glow stick with the right.
He needn't have bothered.
Behind him, Herb tossed a flaming Molotov at the bar, and suddenly there was light everywhere.
Herb followed Mark into the hallway, grabbing for his arm, but Mark found himself rooted to the spot, unable to tear his gaze away.
In the nightclub, the flame quickly became a swirling vortex, hungrily devouring the alcohol. The bottles lined behind the bar burst like microwave popcorn, feeding the growing ball of fire until the entire club was filled with it; a roaring, writhing beast. The fire was a living creature; a devouring monster in its own right.