Chapter 26
Anais
It wasn’t easy to keep from shivering as we stole one of the lifeboats from the side of the cruise ship.
It had taken us several hours after dark to get back to our rooms without being seen, get the few possessions we didn’t want to leave behind and get to one of the decks from where we could take a lifeboat.
Leandro had a device that scrambled the camera feeds, but if someone was paying attention, it didn’t give us long before we would have security on us again. Not that security would know it was going to find us. They were likely to expect almost no foul play or anything difficult at all.
Because of that, we’d had a long discussion on what was needed to get the lifeboat down into the water and get into it before anyone could respond. We had to do this like we were a well-trained crew. Or Leandro would need to hold off security and we would be detected again.
If we simply took a lifeboat, we would only be drawing attention to someone in a lifeboat and not necessarily us. Although at this point, I was pretty sure that we were the most likely suspects in anything that happened on the ship.
We managed to get the boat over the side of the ship easily and then began lowering it, Petros calling instructions as Naomi and Alan did a lot more of the helping.
I tried, but after the tiredness of the previous few days and how much I had worn the ring, been fed on and how little we had eaten in the past day or two, I was weaker than I wanted to admit.
In the state I was in, there was no way I could handle another fight. Not even for a few minutes.
“Anais, you get in first and keep the boat steady,” Leandro said as the boat grew closer to the water. I was going to have to climb in while it was partway in the air, and so were the majority of the team, but we had the hang of what we were doing now.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Tess added, smiling at me. She was also exhausted and feeling the strain of everything we had done. I knew that my team needed me to keep my head together and give them hope that we were going to get out of this as well.
Already we’d all had messages on our phones from the academy demanding we turn ourselves into local authorities so they could investigate and we could be taken to the nearest academy safe house for questioning.
I knew what that meant, and there was no way I was taking my team anywhere near an academy safe house until I had some evidence that we didn’t cause this problem. And I didn’t know how I was going to get that yet.
So far, the team were continuing to trust me and not one of them had asked if they could go or uttered any word of protest about what we were doing now.
I’d known that if it hadn’t been for Petros, we all could have gotten off the cruise ship in broad daylight, Leo able to cope with it for a short while if nothing else.
But I wasn’t about to abandon a vampire who had acted to save our lives in this situation. He was one of the reasons we were still alive. Not only had he brought Leo to me and the rest of my team, but even though he’d said he wouldn’t help in a fight, he had come to our aid anyway.
My parents had warned me about being a vampire hunter like them. Said that they understood me wanting to be one, but that it wasn’t always as it seemed. I wished I’d asked more questions about what they meant by that, but I hadn’t, and now here I was with no idea if they’d known this could happen.
Trying to put it all from my mind, I climbed down into the lifeboat.
I didn’t like leaving them all behind on the deck, but Tess was true to her word and was soon sitting beside me.
I quickly lifted an oar and handed her one.
If nothing else, we could be prepared to push off and get rowing away as the other four climbed down to us as quickly as they could.
As soon as the boat was near the water, Leo and Petros shifted to the winches to finish lowering the boat and the other two members of my team also came down to us.
For a moment, I feared that the two vampires wouldn’t join us and would cut us loose or capsize us, or any number of other ways they could screw us over in this moment, but there was an unspoken bond between us all, it seemed, now.
They were quick to get the boat winched down the rest of the way and then both of them clambered down the side of the ship using the ropes, each in a way only vampires could. It would have been terrifying to watch if they hadn’t been allies and people that we thought we could trust.
Before long we were all off and safe together in the water. No one had come to see what was going on with the cameras and no one had shouted at us as the ship had carried on and we had turned around.
We’d deliberately turned most of our phones off before sleeping this afternoon, but Leo was already turning his phone back on now to get an idea of exactly where we were.
Tess and I were rowing, knowing this was going to be a long enough journey that would take a while.
The ship was traveling along the coast and hadn’t gone all the way out to sea, but it had gone far enough that we couldn’t see any lights on the horizon of houses on the shore.
I was tired out fairly quickly, but Alan and Naomi took a turn before we’d let the vampires try to row. It wasn’t taking as long as I feared either, the tide with us and helping to push our small boat closer to safety.
There were a lot of clouds in the sky and they kept it incredibly dark, ensuring that we could hear the waves hitting the shore long before we could see it.
“We should slow,” Leo said as we approached. He and Petros took over the rowing again, controlling the boat with their much greater stamina and strength.
We were out in the middle of nowhere and had to make sure we arrived on a beach and didn’t smash against rocks or tore up the boat on submerged coral.
Thankfully, it was fairly sandy and not rocky or difficult to haul the boat up out of the water.
Leo dragged it a long way up until the sand turned into dunes and then grass that rose up a hill.
“There’s a bunch of farms and a town not far from here,” Leo said, still using his phone to guide us. “We’re going to have to steal a car and then drive for a while and switch modes of transport once we’re in a larger place.”
“Where do we go from there?” Tess asked, looking more to me than Leo, but as he frowned, I realized he didn’t know.
“I’ve got somewhere we can go,” I said. “A place that the academy doesn’t know about and the vampires shouldn’t either. My parents had a safe house that we used a few times. No one ever found us there. And I’m guessing now that they were hiding from the academy then just as much as we are now.”
Naomi raised an eyebrow as she looked at me, her face barely visible in the faint glow of a couple of small flashlights. “Didn’t they tell you if they also had a misunderstanding of some kind with the academy?”
I shook my head. My parents hadn’t been the kind of people to tell me anything. All they’d wanted to do was protect me from everything and kill vampires. I had tried to get them to open up, but it was always too soon. And then they had been gone and it was all too late.
“Will the academy have discovered it since?” Leo asked. “Or anyone else who might see all this?”
“No, that part I’m certain of. There was only one other person who even knew the place existed, and as far as I’m aware he was never in the academy and should be dead as well. Of course, that means the place will probably be a bit run-down, but it wasn’t so long ago that it will be awful.”
I feared that I wasn’t quite telling the truth and they would pick up on it.
I’d made a few assumptions over the years, and the biggest one was that my uncle was dead.
After there being no response from him or interest in raising me, I had to assume he had been also finished off by the vampires that had got my parents.
There was no way to be sure. It was just the assumption I’d made when I’d not been able to reach him. I knew he would have wanted to raise me. My parents had asked him to watch out for me if anything happened to them.
None of them had figured out what should happen to me if they all died at the same time.
As I led the way, Leo guiding us to the road and civilization, I began to come up with a route out of the area and toward Scotland, where we would find somewhere to lie low and figure out what we were going to do about this mess.
As Leo’s phone was slowly drained of battery, we opted to preserve the last of it so he had a way of contacting people in an emergency and I turned mine back on again. Almost immediately the phone vibrated with all the missed messages. I had turned it off while we were on the cruise ship.
No one wanted to respond to their messages.
It was all people from the academy who had been told that we’d betrayed them.
Some of them didn’t seem to believe it and were fishing for the real reason the academy didn’t like us.
Some of them, including my previous team, had taken the academy’s word for the whole thing and attacked me and the others in messages.
While I had already realized they weren’t good people, it stung a little that none of them saw how much I didn’t want the vampires to take over the world and kill us all.
Over the last few hours many replies had run through my head, but until we’d discussed what we wanted to respond with and if there was any point, I didn’t plan to start that conversation.
It took us several hours to get to a place where we could ditch the stolen car Petros and Leo had boosted from a village farm, and by then it was almost morning again.
“We could do with keeping moving,” Leo said.
“If we buy a car and stick some blankets on the windows, I might be able to cope. We’re going to need it to not be a sunny day.”
Naomi immediately looked up the weather and Leo began looking for somewhere he could buy a car.
It still didn’t solve the problem of where we would take Petros until we had the car.
Nor how we were going to get all the way to Scotland while only being able to travel at night.
It also made me wonder how on earth Petros had been able to get onto the cruise ship in the first place.
“Did Petros have a daywalking relic at some point?” I asked Leo when I could get close to him so no one else would hear.
Leo slowly nodded, only glancing at Petros from the side of his view. “Yes, but I know they can be draining as well and they only work for so long.”
I frowned, wondering if he was making excuses for his friend or if this was a real possibility.
I just had to hope that Petros wasn’t looking for ways to betray us.
The vampire was one that Leo seemed to trust a little, and so far he had proved reliable, but he had also led us into the trap in many ways.
Could he have been involved in this since the beginning? I didn’t know yet, but I wasn’t leading him to my parents’ safe house until I was sure that he was on our side and not deliberately slowing us down.
Leo glanced my way as he finally found somewhere he could get us a car. I didn’t know if he had that sort of cash on him and I was worried we would be traced, but he seemed pleased.
As soon as he was done, he beckoned Petros over. “How much do we need to hide you? Is the daywalking relic not going to cut it for a few hours until we can get you in a car?”
Petros frowned and shook his head as he reached into his pocket. “Sorry, boss. It broke during one of the fights. Almost fell right off my finger.”
He had two pieces in his hand, the ring still solid otherwise.
“Do you think they deliberately targeted it when they recognized what it is?” Leo asked, taking the pieces.
Although Petros shrugged, knowing what I did of the whole situation, this made me feel a lot better about it. Petros hadn’t broken it himself.
“Can’t we just glue it back together?” I asked, knowing we couldn’t all go get the car and would need to hide Petros if this relic didn’t start working.
Leo looked at me as if I had said the craziest words, his eyebrows arched so high I thought they might come off the top of his head. In a far less cautious and more open response, Petros nodded.
“It might not work as well or for long, but the blessing won’t be gone from it. It just needs to be something I can wear and is connected.”
“Okay, let’s get somewhere we can hunker down for the day,” I said. “And then we can try to fix this while Leo gets a car. Hopefully we can then leave and get on the road without Petros burning to a crisp.”
Leo nodded but he looked as if he wanted to suggest an alternative. I wanted to go with him, but I also knew that I couldn’t leave the team with Petros.
There was no good way to divide the group to make me happy that everyone would be safe. I wanted to protect and help all of them and couldn’t. I also knew that I’d had far less sleep than my team and my body was beginning to protest. My hands had begun to shake a little and I was light-headed.
“We’re also going to need some food,” Tess said, concern on her face as she looked at me.
It was a good point.
“Once we’ve got the car and grouped back up, we can find a supermarket or grocery store on the way out of town and grab supplies. We’ll want to stop as little as possible after that.” Leo met her gaze and gave her a brief nod.
I got the impression they’d just decided between them that they were going to take care of me as well.
While I appreciated the concern, I didn’t plan on resting or letting anyone put me first until we were all in a car and driving out of this place.
The further we got from the cruise ship and our last known whereabouts the better.