Page 43 of High Seas

I ignored them and kissed him again, unable to get enough, but we were interrupted by a female growl, a muffled male scream, the sounds of boots scuffing on the floor, and something that sounded like a fingernail breaking.

While Enoch’s quarters were at the stern, the crew’s quarters were on the forecastle, toward the bow. Enoch rushed inside, careful not to wake his sleeping men. Most snored in bunks built into the wall, while a handful slumbered in hammocks strung from ceiling planks. In the furthest corner, Terah crouched over her victim, wiping his blood from her mouth. She turned at the sound of a squeaky plank under Enoch’s foot, her eyes wild. The blood had overwhelmed her senses of propriety.

“Is he dead?” Enoch asked softly.

I couldn’t hear a heartbeat, or air whooshing from the man’s lungs.

Terah tilted her head in question.

Enoch pointed at his crewman lying prostrate in front of her. Terah turned to look and then stood and put her hand over her stomach, a crystalline tear leaking from one eye. Her lips quivered as she began to cry.

I knew that look. She wasn’t in control and it scared the hell out of her.

She felt helpless. Weak.

“Go,” Enoch ordered. “I’ll see to him.”

She hesitated, still crying.

“Come on, Terah,” I whispered, holding my hand out to her. She looked at my upturned palm and then surprisingly slid hers into it. I took her through the small maze of men onto the deck where she sucked in several deep breaths. I watched as she waged a war with herself, tearing at her golden brown hair, swiping at her lips until the skin around them was red and raw. “The blood is gone,” I told her.

She stopped mid-swipe and wheeled around on me. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” I asked, stepping away from her, my hand instinctively reaching for one of my stakes. I’d seen the same crazed look in more than one vampire with which I’d trained. Her body was tense as she prowled forward. Movement from the stairs caught my eye. Titus crept up them slowly, a finger over his lips.

The crewmen who were keeping watch were no longer watching the sea.

Titus clutched his stake, ready to fight with me, likely to our deaths.

“You came to our doorstep,” Terah snarled. “You brought the fight to us. Your kind slaughtered people we loved, and somehow through it all, my brother thinks you’re innocent. Well, I’m not so certain.” One moment, Terah was a few feet away, and the next, she blurred and stopped behind me. I slowly turned to face her. “Things would be better if you were gone,” she growled. “The years before you came were the best of my life. Then the three of you showed up and wreaked havoc, claiming we were the ones to blame! Well, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ.”

Enoch emerged from the crew’s quarters, the limp body of one of his crewman in his arms. “It’s not her fault, Terah.”

“Then whose fault is it?” she screeched. “Tell me, brother. Whose fault is all of this? Would we have made any vampires at all if it wasn’t for her?”

“She didn’t make us turn anyone.”

“She planted the first seed by suggesting we could. We were innocent, trying to help everyone we could, until she showed up and ruined everything. Because of her, we have no home. We live on these infernal ships, a rootless, pathetic existence, trying to avoid her kind. Well, I say no more. I say we wipe her kind from the earth, the way our kind was once purged.”

Enoch calmly walked to the railing and closed his eyes before letting a swell rise up and claim his friend. The body sank almost immediately. I remembered my clone and how she looked suspended in the water, like she was flying, before succumbing to the pull of the sea. Some of the men still watched, witnessing their friend get tossed into a watery grave.

“Sister, it is easy to blame others when we are forced to see the worst parts of ourselves. And her presence here suggests we would learn to sire vampires on our own without knowing the damage they might inflict on future generations. Terah, it was not Eve who killed William. You did that on your own. The bloodlust has gotten the best of you of late. You’re the only one who is responsible for your actions, no matter what truths might have been revealed, no matter how you are provoked, no matter what. You are responsible. You are free to feed and kill, but you are not free from the consequences of killing. There may not be justice on the sea, but I believe your victims will haunt you in a way nothing else will. The next time you feel out of control, please come to me. I will help you through it.”

Terah gave me a heated look that promised our little conversation wasn’t nearly over, and that we’d continue it when Enoch wasn’t around to interrupt.

“We sure as hell didn’t teach you about bloodlust. You were already learning all about it back at the castle. I saw you,” Titus started. “You didn’t kill the ones you fed from in private, when Enoch was busy actually doing good for his people, but you weren’t taking a mere sip, either. You were barely in control then.”

“Blood is the only thing that makes me feel strong in a world that whispers I am weak,” she revealed.

The soft blur of Terah’s pale blue dress was all I could see as she ran away, disappearing below deck where she would crawl into her dark place. I wondered if she’d ever come out of it.

Titus put his stake away and I holstered mine, too.

“Would you have used it on her?” Enoch asked.

“I know she’s your sister and I know how much you care about her, so I hope it never comes to it, but I will defend myself if I have to.” Enoch nodded, scrubbing a hand down his jaw. He knew my answer before he asked it. Terah could probably snap me like a twig, but I wouldn’t sit back and let her do it without a fight. If she came at me, I would defend myself.

“I hope it never does, either.” Enoch looked between me and Titus, and at that moment, a rift the size of the ocean seemed to stretch between him and us.

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