29. Emergency
Chapter 29
Emergency
Cabin 417—Earlier that same night
A s soon as Henry woke, he checked the weather. The cyclone was well past them, and, for their final evening on board, the ship’s captain forecast clear skies.
Henry joined Cerissa to watch a musical revue at the main theater, then took her for a pleasant stroll along the deck. With the rain gone, the winds mild again, and her warm hand in his, he couldn’t be happier.
Tomorrow, they’d arrive in Oahu. He’d already packed everything of his in their suite for transport to the hotel and placed the luggage in the corridor for the porters to collect and deliver to the dock. A few hours before sunrise, he returned to his sleep room to pack the last of his clothes, reserving an outfit to wear when he woke that night. While he and Rolf slept, the cruise ship would dock in Oahu.
He rubbed his temples, thinking about all that had happened in the past week. Perhaps their time in Hawaii would be more relaxing. Once he locked the sleep room suitcase, he rolled it into the hallway. While he and Rolf slept, the cruise ship would dock in Oahu and serve as a floating hotel for the next twenty-four hours, giving passengers an extra day in port before clearing them out and loading a new group for the trip back to San Francisco.
Their mates couldn’t stay aboard the extra night and depart the following morning because he and Rolf had to leave at night. As soon as dusk hit, they’d join the ladies, then disembark and remain on the island for the rest of their honeymoon.
For the last few nights, Jill’s presence had been uneventful. She’d cooperated, and there were no more biting incidents. Antonio expressed his relief, but he’d kept his distance. He didn’t trust a vampire who wasn’t part of a community.
The two couples—being passengers—would exit the ship as any mortal would. But Jill wasn’t a registered passenger. She had to go as cargo, the same way she arrived. The cruise line would remove her container before the ship left port, but it would have to clear customs. She’d be stuck in the huge metal box for twenty-four hours after he and Cerissa disembarked.
The cabin door opened and Jill slipped in. “Hey, dude. Didn’t expect you here yet.”
“I had to take care of my luggage.”
“Got ya. Did you pack all the dark wine?”
Henry opened a drawer that held the clothes he’d wear when he woke at sunset. He’d left a pouch in there and packed the rest away. After he talked it over with Cerissa, they realized that hiding the manufacturer’s name from Jill was silly. She knew who they were, and that they were from the Hill, and could put two and two together. “You may have this one.”
Rolf arrived a short time later, and they all settled down for the day.
Because of the early moonrise, Henry woke before sunset and slipped into the bathroom to shower and dress, donning a white Guayabera shirt and tan shorts, with leather sandals. Then Jill took a turn in the bathroom.
Since no sunlight penetrated the interior hallways, he escorted her to her storage hold on the first level while Rolf got ready. Henry carried a small ice chest with some bags of blood in it for her, courtesy of Antonio, who’d dropped them off a short time ago.
Jill unlocked the cargo container but didn’t step inside. “Why do you want to lock me in here now? I hate just hanging out in the box. It’s so boring.”
“Because we need to go ashore tonight, and you can’t disembark with us. Where do you hide the key?”
“No key. Gotta use customs-approved seals.”
Trapped vampires could lure mortals to release them, which was one reason they were difficult to imprison. “If we hadn’t become involved, who would have locked you in?”
“Usually my last lover does.”
“I see.” He handed her the ice chest. “You have enough blood in there to feed you for two nights. We will see you on Oahu for our surfing lessons.”
“Sure, dude, that was the deal.” She held out her hand. “Here are two container seals. If they’re missing, customs will have a cow.”
The seal had two parts—a steel bolt and an interlocking cap. Yellow plastic with an imprinted six-digit number covered both parts.
“After you turn the handles to lock the door rods, just slide the bolt part through the hole where you’d insert a padlock hasp. Then attach the cap. Fasten one to each of the inner rods.” She pointed her two index fingertips at each other. “You know, the rods nearest to where the doors touch.”
“Understood.” He put his hand on the small of her back and guided her into the cargo container, reaching to close the door. “Goodnight.”
Her hand shot out, blocking the corrugated metal. “Wait. Don’t go yet. You have some time before you have to get off the ship.”
“I need to meet my wife.”
“I thought you might like something more than surfing lessons, ya know?” She stepped closer to him. “How long has it been since you’ve had vampire sex?”
“I’m not interested,” he replied stiffly. “I’m married.”
“Oh, come on. One piece of vampire tail couldn’t hurt anything.” She sidled nearer, reaching for him.
He caught her wrists and shoved her back. “No. Goodnight.” Then he shut the doors on her and slid the locking rods into place. After pushing a bolt through each hasp, he attached the caps with a click .
Pain slammed into him, and bright lights flashed behind his closed eyelids. Someone had hit the back of his head with something hard.
Fangs sank viciously into his neck a moment later. Arms and legs like steel bands wrapped around him from behind, and from the jeweled fingernails gouging his abdomen, he guessed a woman had grabbed him. It couldn’t be Jill. She was locked in the cargo container. Whoever had attacked him held on, feeding fiercely. He staggered, both from the blow and the sudden blood loss.
His heart pounded and anger shot through him. His attacker would grow stronger from drinking his blood. He couldn’t risk that she might overpower and kill him.
Whatever hesitancy he had earlier over fighting dirty against a woman was gone. He jabbed his elbow into her chest, cracking two of her ribs, then reached around and grasped her hair. Pulling her off him, he intended to throw her over his shoulder, but didn’t have enough leverage. As her lips left his neck, she raked her fangs across his flesh and down to his back. Twining his fingers tighter into the strands, he used her hair as leverage to jerk her around, throwing her on the ground in front of him. She immediately gripped his leg and sank her fangs deep into the bulging muscle of his calf.
He didn’t have time to devise a more elegant plan. Instead, he twisted about, hauled back his arm, and punched her square where the jaw connected to her skull. The joint broke with the force of his blow. He bodily raised her over his head and slammed her against the shipping container.
She bounced to her feet and whooshed away, deeper into the cargo hold.
His vision faded as dizziness overcame him. The ripped artery on his neck and shoulder gushed with each pump of his heart, soaking into his white shirt, and blood from the leg wound dripped down his calf to pool in the heel of his sandal.
He couldn’t meet Cerissa at the disembarkation point looking like this, nor could he allow mortals to see him in this state. He staggered to his fourth-floor cabin without attracting attention, careful to avoid others, and phoned Cerissa from the room. “ Mi amor , I have locked Jill in and returned to the sleep room to change for the journey. You and Karen should go on ahead to the hotel. Relax and have dinner. Rolf and I will be along later.”
“But I want to wait for you. I want to be on your arm when we first set foot in Honolulu.”
He wouldn’t lie, but he didn’t want to scare her, either. “All right. Meet me on deck three in twenty minutes.”
She gave him a phone kiss. “Until then.”
He disconnected and called Rolf to meet him in the sleeping cabin. While he waited, Henry unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it off his shoulders, folding it into a square pad. He was trying to look at the wound in the vanity mirror when Rolf came in.
“What happened to you? Cerissa get a little too aggressive?”
“No. A woman attacked me.”
“Jill?”
Henry dabbed at the deep gouges with his shirt. “Someone else. I’d just locked Jill in the container.”
“They really ripped your neck. Did you see who?”
“I noticed some details. But figuring out who did this is second to getting off the ship.” They couldn’t linger and get stuck here or allow the attacker to strike again.
“You can’t leave until this stops bleeding.” Rolf moved the shirt away and pressed his fingers around the wound. “Why hasn’t it clotted?”
“Ow. Stop that.” Henry shrugged off Rolf’s attempts to stanch the bleeding.
Rolf strode to the bathroom and came back with a towel.
“Do not use the cruise line towels. Use my shirt. It’s already beyond repair.”
Rolf rotated the splotched Guayabera and pressed a clean portion of white cloth against the gouges. “What are you going to tell Cerissa?”
“I had not planned on telling her anything.”
“So you’re going to avoid going ashore with her?”
“No, she is meeting me on deck three.”
Rolf huffed. “That bite won’t heal in the next twenty minutes, not one that deep.”
“I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind donating…”
“Of course. Take a shower first. I need to see where the wound starts and ends. Right now it’s a bloody mess.” Rolf glanced at his watch. “And hurry—we should leave soon.”
Henry nodded and went into the small bathroom to shower. The leg bite wasn’t bleeding as badly. Once rinsed off and dried, he pulled on his underwear and tan shorts. To avoid smearing blood on his shorts, he puffed out the fabric using his fingers, then slipped into his washed-off sandals. After applying vampire blood from a small vial to the calf wound, he tried to examine the one on his neck in the mirror. Both bites throbbed, and his neck and shoulder looked like someone had cut two parallel lines with a pitted razor, with blood still forming in the channels. Henry went back into the narrow room and sat on the vanity chair.
Rolf opened a vein in his wrist and drizzled his blood over the parallel wounds. “There, that should help. But take your own advice. Tell Cerissa what happened.”
“I will consider it.”
Henry used the wall to steady himself and he studied the bite in the mirror, expecting Rolf’s blood to accelerate the repair. Except it wasn’t healing. Then he glanced down at his sandal. Fresh blood ran from his calf to pool at his heel. He took a step, and the world went black.
Third Floor—Moments later
“ W hat?” Cerissa screamed into the phone.
“Someone attacked Henry. He passed out,” Rolf said. “Come to the sleep cabin.”
Cerissa veered away from the disembarkation line and raced down the hallway, her roller bag thumping on the carpet, the phone still at her ear. Karen’s running steps weren’t far behind her.
“Call Antonio. We may have to transfuse him. Ask for blood and a transfusion kit.”
“ Ja, ja, ” Rolf said before the line went dead.
Cerissa skipped the elevators. With all the disembarking passengers, they were a crowded mess. She rushed to the mid-ship staircase and, grabbing the suitcase handle, climbed the one flight to reach the fourth floor, her pulse pounding.
“What happened?” Karen asked, panting as she tried to keep up.
Too frantic to respond, Cerissa let the question float in the air unanswered and ran down the narrow hall, rolling the bag behind her again, sliding past the passengers who were trying to get to the stairs or elevator. Reaching room four-seventeen, she banged her fist on the door.
The latch clicked and Rolf let them in. “He’s awake.”
Henry’s voice came from further into the cabin. “You shouldn’t have called her.”
Rolf flattened his body against the wall. “I tried healing both wounds, but my blood didn’t work.”
Cerissa turned sideways, scooted past him along the short hall leading into the eight-foot-square bedroom, and released her roller bag. “Both?”
“I just need blood.” Henry lay on one of the twin beds, as pale as the white pillow underneath him. A towel caught the dripping blood. “Antonio is bringing donor bags.”
She took his pulse, then checked the wounds on his neck and sucked back a gasp. The garish gouges still oozed. “Where’s the clone blood?”
“I gave Jill mine,” he murmured.
Rolf shook his head. “I don’t have any either. I drank my last pouch before he returned. We packed the rest in the luggage—the porter took the bags already.” Rolf lifted Henry’s leg. “Check out his calf.”
Cerissa unwrapped the towel. A nasty puncture wound, also oozing. Panic flooded her, but she slapped it down and pressed the towel against his calf.
A rapid knock sounded at the door, and Rolf sprang into action. “Karen, sit on the other bed.” With his hands on her hips, he moved her in that direction. “I’ll let Antonio in.”
The cramped room wasn’t designed for five adults. Antonio, with an emergency kit in one hand and a small ice chest in the other, slid past Rolf. “He’s awake?”
“Now he is.”
Antonio opened the ice chest and passed Cerissa a bag of blood. “You feed him. I’ll check his vitals.”
“Henry, can you sit up?” Cerissa asked.
Karen handed her the pillows from the other bed.
Cerissa propped them behind his back so he could drink. “Antonio, draw a blood sample first, before he feeds. I’ll run an assay on it later.” She unzipped her roller suitcase, removed a medical bag, and opened it. “I want to see if the vampire who bit him somehow injected silver.”
“It does not feel like silver,” Henry mumbled.
Cerissa shuffled through her bag and found the collection of test strips she carried. She laid one over the bleeding shoulder wound and checked it for a change in color. “He’s right. Negative for silver.”
Antonio expertly inserted a needle into the big vein in Henry’s arm, popped in a vacuum collection tube, and drew the blood sample. When finished, he handed it to Cerissa.
She stashed the capped vial in her carry-on bag to test later, then found a glass in the small bathroom to pour the donor blood into and supported Henry’s head as he drank.
“What happened?” She knew a stake through the heart, beheading, and silver poisoning were the principal ways to kill a vampire. Although garlic caused a painful reaction, it wasn’t deadly. “Can anything besides aqueous silver poison a vampire?”
“There are a few…but from what I’ve read, none cause bleeding like this.” Antonio handed her another donor bag. “I’ve never read a case history on any vampire bleeding out. It shouldn’t be possible.”
Minutes later, Henry finished the second bag and Antonio confirmed that his blood pressure and other vitals had improved. Cerissa lifted the folded shirt from the neck wound. The gouges were crusting over.
She then examined his knuckles. “Your blood, or your attacker’s?”
He raised his hand to stare at the abraded knuckles. “Both?”
Maybe she could isolate the attacker’s DNA. She swabbed his knuckles and dropped the bloody cotton-tipped sticks into a collection bag, then shook her head. “What do you think, Antonio? Did he just bleed too much, or was a poison involved?”
“This much blood from wounds like that? And see this bruising?” Antonio pointed to various purplish-brown spots forming under the skin of Henry’s stomach, with the outline of fingers where his assailant must have grabbed him. “Do you know what these bruises remind me of? Someone with a clotting disorder. So poison is a real possibility.”
“What’s the standard treatment?”
“As much mortal blood as he can drink. There’s a third bag in the chest. I’ll go back to the medical center for more.”