The Forever Song
Page 74

I bashed into it once more, putting the last of my strength behind the blow. The impact jarred my body, sending a flare of pain through my almost-healed ribs, but the door flew open with a crash, and I stumbled inside.
The moment of triumph soon faded, though, once we were in the pilothouse. The controls, complicated and unfamiliar already, had been smashed and bent beyond repair. The wheel had been ripped off, broken, and was lying in pieces in the corner. Sarren had locked his course in, just as Kanin had guessed, and there’d be no changing direction, not from here, anyway.
“Dammit!” I snapped, gazing around helplessly. Through the window, the lights of the shoreline glimmered frighteningly close. “What now?”
“The anchor,” Zeke said, pointing to a metal box on the wall, with a single button in the center. “Drop anchor—it might be enough to turn this thing so it doesn’t crash into the checkpoint.”
I slammed my thumb into the button. There was a click, but nothing happened. The barge continued to plow toward shore with no signs of slowing down.
“He must’ve cut the chain,” Zeke growled, running both hands through his hair. “And there’s no time to get to the engine room, even if we could get in.” He closed his eyes, pressing his fists to his forehead. “What are we going to do?”
Desperate, I gazed at the barge, past the rabids milling below on the platform, to the back of the ship. I spotted the chain Zeke was referring to, the one that was supposed to be attached to an anchor, lying in a neat coil on the deck.
There was no anchor, obviously, but there were a pair of open metal containers lying close by, identical to the ones the rabids were prowling through below. And the ghost of an idea went through my mind. It was a gamble, and we’d have to get past that huge mob of rabids, but there were no options left. We were out of time.
“Come on,” I told Zeke, backing away from the controls.
“I just thought of something.”
I whirled toward the door, but froze when I saw Caleb in the frame, pale and shivering, gazing up at me with big, dark eyes.
“Allie,” he said, a shaky smile spreading over his face. “I kn-knew it. I knew you’d come back.”
The demon surged up with a roar. Before I could move, Zeke sprang forward and grabbed me around the waist even as my fangs slid out and I tensed to lunge, to pounce and rip open the child’s throat.
“Caleb, get back!” Zeke shouted, and Caleb’s eyes went huge with fear. Zeke held me tight, his arms like steel bands around me, even as I squeezed my eyes shut and turned into him, fighting for control. “Go down to the bottom floor with Bethany and stay there,” Zeke ordered, his voice firm, as I clenched my fist in his shirt and pressed my forehead to his chest. “When we leave, you and Bethany come into this room, bar the door and don’t open it for anyone but me, you hear?”
My demon howled, and the Hunger ripped and tore at my insides, both driving me insane. I heard Caleb sniffle, heard his frightened voice start to protest, and Zeke’s voice hardened. “Now, Caleb!”
The child broke into hiccupping sobs and fled. Zeke didn’t relent until the footsteps on the stairs disappeared, then very carefully loosened his grip, though not enough to let me go.
“Allie?”
“I’m okay,” I said through gritted teeth. The Hunger burned through my veins, relentless and terrible, but I forced my fangs to retract and stilled the thoughts of pouncing on a child and sinking my teeth into his throat. “Thanks for catching me.”
“Always, vampire girl.” Zeke pressed his forehead to mine.
“Just promise me you’ll do the same. We’ll catch each other.”
He glanced up, making sure Caleb was gone, then pulled away. “But right now, we have to stop a ship. What were you planning to do?”
Oh, yeah. The ship. “This way,” I said, leading him back down the stairs. I smelled Caleb and Bethany, somewhere close by, but I couldn’t let myself think of them right now.
Back on deck, I gazed across the platform and the maze of shipping containers below, to the other side of the ship. A chill ran up my spine. Rabids screamed and hissed at us from below, and the shoreline was frighteningly near. We had a few minutes at most.
“What’s the plan, Allison?”
I pointed across the chasm. “The chain,” I said, and his gaze fell to the heavy coils by the side of the ship. “The anchor is gone, but if we attached the chain to that container and push it over the side…”
“It might be enough drag to turn the barge,” Zeke finished. “Especially when it fills up with water. It won’t stop the ship, but it just needs to turn it so that it misses the checkpoint.” He nodded slowly, though his expression was unsure.
“It just might work, but that container is huge, Allie. Can we move it?”
“We have to,” I growled, and he didn’t argue. Reaching back, I pulled my sword, my fingers still stiff from when Sarren had broken my arm. “We’ll have to go through the rabids,” I said, as Zeke drew his machete, as well. “If we stay on top of the containers, they shouldn’t be a problem. But we have to reach the other side. Nothing else matters now.”
Zeke nodded and raised his weapon. “Go,” he said, nodding to the edge of the deck. “I’m right behind you.”
I stepped to the edge of the platform and surveyed the labyrinth of containers, trying to gauge the best path to the other side. Instantly, the rabids surged forward with screams and wails, clawing at the wall, trying to leap at me. Their numbers were smaller now, I realized, and pale bodies were scattered about the deck, twisted and in pieces. The Master vampire, though severely outnumbered and intending to die, had not gone quietly into his eternal night.
I deliberately kept my gaze from straying to the suspicious dark blot in the center of the platform. The place my sire had fallen.
Taking one step back, I gathered myself and leaped off the deck, aiming for the top of the nearest shipping container. I hit the roof with a ringing clang, and the rabids immediately swarmed around it, their talons screeching off the sides. One of them clawed its way up the backs of its fellows, hissing as it scrambled up beside me. I cut the head from its shoulders with a quick slash of my blade, and it tumbled back into the masses.
Zeke landed behind me with a clang, and together we fled for the opposite side, the rabids screeching and swarming below us. Leaping from container to container, we crossed the platform with only a few pale monsters managing to claw their way onto the roofs. Screaming, they hurled themselves at us, blind with rage, but we cut them down and kept going.
Reaching the edge of one container, I skidded to a halt.
This was the last roof we had to cross, and there was one final, very high jump we had to make before we reached the other side of the barge. To even have a chance I needed a running start, but two rabids blocked my way, hissing and snarling as they came forward.
Or one of them did, anyway. The other staggered, looking confused. As the first rabid lunged and met a swift end on my katana, the second shook its head, nearly falling off the edge of the roof. Its face had been clawed open until it was more skull than flesh, but small patches of skin were starting to grow over the gaping wounds.
The rabid shook itself and came at me again, hissing, but it was slower now, its movements not nearly as frantic as before.