I bowled over a soldier as I emerged onto the deck, the door slamming into his chest, followed by my shoulder in quick succession. He sprawled to the floor with an outraged squawk and his fellow navymen turned, anger quickly darkening their features.

  I spared no care for their emotions, skidding to a holt and kicking the downed soldier in the face. He reeled backwards on the deck, nose gushing blood and hands shooting up to cradle his injured face. It left his body free, and I squatted down – knees protesting loudly within my mind frmo the movement – and yanked his steel from its sheath.

  “Hey!”

  “You fucker-”

  “Get ‘im!”

  Shouts resounded around me from the outraged navymen that had just watched me brutalise their friend, but I ignored them. I also ignored the threatening swish of swords being drawn behind me, and the heavy thump of boots on the wooden deck as I was surrounded.

  Instead, I whirled back to the door to the soldier’s quarters that had slammed closed behind me, and readied myself. The door banged open as the thrall – all that was left of Lucien Lucksworth – emerged onto the deck, and my palm hit him in the chest, driving him back into the wall beside the door as I trust the fencing steel into his stomach, feeling it slide past ribs and dig deep into the wooden planks behind.

  I released him and leapt back, receiving a heavy blow to the head from the basket hilt of one of the soldier's swords. I staggered, and then I was kicked to the floor, vision obscured by stamping feet and angry men as the soldiers beat me mercilessly.

  I couldn’t really blame them. As far as they knew, I’d just killed their leader in front of their eyes – I’d have probably done the same in their shoes.

  I wasn’t in their shoes though, and despite what I had tried to convince myself of when I had agreed to take on this mission, I was still very much attached to my life. I’d come out here to die on the high seas rather than face a long life in dank cells far in land, but the salt on my tongue and the breeze in my beard had reignited a spark that had long since dimmed.

  I rolled over, grabbing a booted foot and pulling with all the might a decade of hauling ropes could give, and the man whose foot I’d grabbed yelped as he was thrown to the ground beside me. I rolled over, slipping my manacles around his throat and heaving him atop me, shouting nonsense words all the while.

  The blows abruptly stopped, the navymen leery of kicking their own man that I held above my aching body like a strangely flopping and gasping shield. I heard booted feet moving around behind me and I yanked the chain tighter, bellowing with rage even as I sent telepathic pleas to my small crew.

  “Hold it! One more fucking step and I snap his neck!”

  My threat seemed to do the trick as I heard no further footsteps, the sudden silence eerie after all the chaos. My limbs ached, and I was sure that one of my legs had been broken by a particularly nasty stomp, the pain radiating up from my knee in shooting waves of agony.

  I levered myself to my feet, dragging my captive up with me and drawing a hustle from the soldiers in a semi-circle around me. They stilled once more as I shouted back at them and once again tightened my chain around the man’s neck.

  “What’s the plan here, Radagan?” Julius’ high-pitched voice cut through the tense air between us. “While it would be regrettable to lose another soldier, all of us know that letting you go would carry far worse consequences for everyone present.”

  I caught the soldiers sharing disgruntled looks at the man’s willingness to throw away their lives, but none spoke up in protest. Julius wasn’t even wrong, the bastard, but I was playing for time more than anything.

  “You can’t murder a high-born wytch-hunter in cold blood on the middle of the deck and expect anything but a painful death, surely?” The noble’s voice was conversational and I could swear I detected a hint of glee beneath the faux-calm he projected. Julius Noxel was a man that revelled in exercising power over those below himself, and my actions has just promoted him to top of the proverbial food chain on his ship.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I replied wearily. “Look at him-”

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  I was interrupted by one of the soldiers reaching out and gripping the thrall's shoulder. “He’s not dead!” he shouted over his shoulder, turning to look at us with relief. “He’s aliv-uuuuugghh!!”

  His hope was interrupted by a hellish scream as teeth ripped through the heavy brigandine protecting his collar and sunk deep into the back of his neck. My own eyes widened at the speed and violence of the move as the thrall pounced on the soldier, and I could only imagine the terror and surprise that the rest of the navymen must have been feeling.

  The screaming did not last long before the limp body hit the deck, and the thrall wearing the face of a vampire-hunter pulled the blade from his stomach, letting it too clatter to the ground. Its face was a twisted mockery of the handsome noble’s, jaws distended and fresh fangs bursting through the gums. Thick blood dripped from the corners of the waxed mustachio and pattered to the deck below like tiny drums.

  The world held its breath as the thrall stared at me with red-rimmed eyes, cocking its head this way and that like a curious dog, before it took a few careful steps forwards. The dozen soldiers before it, pride of the Cerevisian Navy that they were, stepped aside in fear as it stalked through their midst, and soon the semi-circle of soldiers between us had become more of an open tunnel.

  I frowned, disappointed by their complete inability to respond to the moment, but not entirely surprised. I was perplexed by the behaviour of the thrall though, or rather, the behaviour of the vampire prime controlling the thrall, before things slid into place.

  I was the only one that knew of the deep-crawler behind all of this. Were I to die here and now, even if the thrall itself was killed too – and it likely would be, without access to the wytch-hunter’s magic and surrounded as it was by soldiers that could now clearly see its vampiric nature – then the deep-crawler could continue to hide itself amongst the ship, infecting the crew one by one until it could make it to land. If it could hold its instincts in check long enough to make it to the capital…well, a string of noble deaths would be the least of the worries for humanity’s last bastion.

  Considering the way the thralls had acted thus far – particularly the woman we had picked up from the downed galleon – this alien creature clearly had a keen mind and a good understanding of human behaviour. Worrying, but not entirely surprising; knowledge was carried in the blood, after all.

  I stood tall as the vampire thrall stalked towards me, arms hanging low by its knees, fingers stained in blood as sharp claws burst from the ruined stumps. Its mouth was now a distended mess of overlapping fangs, thin and pointed like needles, clearly taking inspiration from the deep-crawler that controlled it.

  My eyes flicked to Micah as he fumbled with the heavy sea-chest that contained my accoutrements, and I sent another frantic telepathic command to the big oarsman, who strode over without hesitation. I needed time though, so unhooked the chain from the man I still carried, and shoved him towards the creature of darkness before me.

  A single swift slice of jagged claws and a throat was split wide, the soon-to-be corpse of the soldier hitting the deck with a thump and leaving a yawning red gash in his neck smiling at the sky above. The few moments it took the thrall to dispatch the useless soldier was enough though.

  The massive sailor stamped hard, twice, snapping the rusted iron lock off the chest, and the boy’s quick hands darted inside. A shout resounded inside my head as he called to me, and I snatched the blade from the air as it whistled towards me from his blessedly accurate throw.

  Now armed, I faced down the vampire with something more akin to confidence in my heart, though I couldn’t deny its frenetic pace all the same. the creature bared too-many teeth at me, and I gave it my own snarl beneath the bruised sky, gold flashing in the afternoon.

  It leapt, and my heavy cutlass leapt to meet it. Fingers flew through the air, severed by my cut, and I ducked beneath its second swipe, a trail of blood splashing across my face as I did so. An unholy screech echoed towards the heavens, soon followed by the raucous calling of gulls as they flapped from their viewing platforms in a great flurry of white wings.

  It echoed my thoughts on the divine rather nicely; terrors stalking the earth beneath white wings – angels ever watchful but as always, unwilling to lift so much as a finger to help us quell the tide of darkness. The inquisitors lectured about the magnanimity of the divine and their god-given powers to help rid the world of the vampiric plague, but they did a piss-poor job of it, far as I could see.

  Besides, I knew from experience that gods were not the only ones to bestow power to mortals. I was living testament to that fact. Or I would be, if I could live out this battle. It was seeming increasingly unlikely, however.

  The thrall forced me back across the open deck, wild swings and greater speed keeping me out of range, only able to deal flesh wounds to a creature that ignored both pain and the functional laws of biology that the rest of us abided by. A severed tendon in the heel did nothing to affect its speed, and it now flashed across the deck towards with me with just a faint limp instead of its usual feline gait.

  More feral, and less predictable. It drove me back. Up first one step and then another, until I was retreating up the wheel deck with only a few meters to spare before I would be cornered against the ship’s wheel.

  I saw its eyes glinting, pupils having expanded to cover the entire orb, sclera and all. They flashed a rainbow of blues and purples, like seashells glinting beneath the surf, and I almost felt I could see the alien mind of the vampire prime glaring at me through them.

  It drew itself up just as my backfoot hit the base of the wheel, and then blurred towards me, jaws extended like the hungry maw of a leviathan, poised to swallow my entire world.