Darren Shan - 02 Ocean of Blood

“Thank you,” Larten said softly. “And,” he added as the mate returned to the wheel, “you will keep him away from vampires?”

The sailor nodded grimly. “Aye, sir. That I most definitely will.”

The mate helped Larten ready and lower the scow. Before he departed, Larten went down to the locked room one last time, to release the prisoners. He could have left that job to the mate, but he wanted to do it himself, so they could come up, see him leave and know for certain that they had nothing to fear from this night on.

“Come, gentlemen,” Larten said as he opened the door. “Your time of captivity is over. You are free to…”

He came to a stunned, horrified stop.

Daniel Abrams was sitting on the floor, hands and lips as red with blood as Larten’s had been a week before. The boy had torn open the throats of the two men while they were unconscious and drank as much of their blood as he could stomach. He’d even bitten chunks out of their flesh and eaten it. He was chewing a sliver of cheek, pausing every so often to spit out blood, when Larten entered.

Daniel’s face lit up crazily when he spotted the vampire, and he staggered to his feet. “I’m one o’ yer lot now,” he cackled, waving the strip of flesh at Larten as if it was a flag. “Ye don’t have t’ kill me. Ye can take me with ye. I’m a bloodsucker too, see? We’re the same.”

Larten stared at the boy, first with shock, then disgust. “You think that you are the same as me?” he snarled.

“Aye,” the boy hooted. “We both kill and drink blood. What’s the difference?”

And the awful thing was, he was right. When you put the two of them side by side, there was no real difference at all. A pair of well-matched monsters.

Larten backed out of the room, away from the blinking, spitting, blood-smeared boy. He glanced at the murdered sailors, then bolted for the deck, where he raced to the side and threw up over the railing. Before Daniel Abrams could climb the steps and ask again to travel with him, Larten ducked into the captain’s cabin and picked up the baby.

He had meant to bid the child farewell, but as he stared at the chubby babe, he decided he couldn’t leave the boy behind. Not with a beast like Daniel Abrams on the prowl. Maybe they were cut from the same cloth, but at least Larten wouldn’t feed on the innocent baby. If Larten took him from the ship, the boy was doomed, but death in the wilds was preferable to what might happen to the infant if he remained.

Larten never considered the possibility of simply killing Daniel. In a mindless panic, he thought that there were only two options — take the baby or leave him to be bled and devoured.

Larten wrapped the child up warmly and staggered across the deck to the scow. The mate was bewildered when he saw the wild-eyed vampire climb in with the baby. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “I thought you were leaving him.”

But Larten would neither listen nor respond. Before the mate could stop him, he cast off and rowed madly towards the icy shore. Understanding would come to the sailor later, when he discovered the young cannibal below, but for the time being he could only stand on deck and stare dumbly at the swiftly receding boat.

* * *

Larten thrust ahead without pause, muscles aching, neck bent stiffly, never looking up. If he’d gone in the wrong direction and missed land, perhaps he would have rowed until he weakened and died. But the mate had pointed the scow true, and before long he struck shore and ground to a halt.

Larten stood in a daze and gazed at a giant sheet of ice that seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. For a moment he was overwhelmed and thought about returning to the ship. Then he grinned darkly, seeing the obstacle for what any true vampire would have judged it — a challenge to be met.

Picking up the baby, Larten strapped the silent, shivering boy to his back and made sure he was secure. Then, with a cry of total abandon, he leapt from the boat and cut a path towards the glittering wall of ice. Dragging his way through mounds of thigh-high snow, Larten laughed manically at the moon and stars as he pushed on in delirious pursuit of his place in that other, eternal, always freezing night.

To be continued…