Первородные: Восхождение

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE STORM CAME in faster than any Rebekah had ever seen. The captain was caught completely off guard, stammering that it couldn’t be happening. They lost precious minutes to his stupidity, but it didn’t matter. They were never going to make it to open water before the hurricane reached them. It wasn’t even going to be a close race.

“We have to turn back,” Eric urged, his brow furrowed with concern. “The captain is putting everyone in danger. We need to tell him there’s no need to take such a risk.”

“We can outlast this,” Rebekah said, gripping the rails as lightning forked the sky. There never should have been a storm that night, and it couldn’t possibly be as bad as it looked. “It’s just a bit of rain. You’ll see much worse than this if you stay with me.”

Eric looked away from the hurricane to pull her near for a kiss. “Of course I will stay with you,” he said into her hair. “Through this, through worse—through anything. But the ship’s crew have made no such vow, and this is far more than just a bit of rain to them.” She realized that he was leaving his entire life behind to go with her, but he couldn’t leave his habits. He was a leader. Of course he thought of the common sailors, even at a time like this.

“They are all being paid as well, and they understand the risks,” she replied, but she was not so sure. The sailors looked alternately green and pale, clinging to the rigging and watching the clouds anxiously. The captain, who stood to gain the most by leaving and arriving on schedule, was the only one who seemed to think that they should press on. Aside from Rebekah, of course, who had not been afraid of storms since she was a child.

“We can go back,” Eric persisted, “After this, we’ll have every night together, my beloved, so what does it matter if that begins tonight or tomorrow?”

No, she wouldn’t go back—she couldn’t. If they hesitated, they might be lost.

The water was growing wilder by the minute. As they watched, a wave broke just over the bow of their ship, and a few of the sailors shouted in alarm. Wave after wave pummeled the ship, and the wind groaned and whipped about them in an incessant fury. They were tossed about like toys, and the ship spun in the water’s brutal current. Even the captain looked nervous. Finally, Rebekah realized that a broken boat and a drowned crew wouldn’t carry them far, and that they had to turn back.

“Wait here,” she told Eric, kissing him as she left his side. “Please, where I can see you, and hold on.” Another wave broke over the rail, higher this time, and a line snapped free of its mast and whistled through the air above their heads.

When he nodded his assent, Rebekah ran forward to the bow, where the captain struggled to keep control of the wheel. The ship was less and less inclined to respond to his orders, much like his crew. The storm was slowly taking ownership of them all, and she cursed the time she had lost to her stubbornness.

“Not to worry, Madame,” the captain shouted, his voice barely audible over the shrieking wind. “It’s just a trifle. Looks worse than it is.”

Rebekah positioned herself before him and ruthlessly caught his eye. “Turn the ship around,” she ordered, her voice humming with compulsion. “We’ll return to New Orleans and sail again when the weather is clear.”

“We’ll turn back now,” he agreed numbly, then shook himself into action. He began barking orders, which the sailors struggled to obey. By then, one wave out of three was soaking the deck, and the crew was fighting just to stay on board.

Lightning struck down out of the sky near them, and a tree just past the shoreline exploded into a shower of sparks. It was too close, Rebekah realized—they were too late. The ship would never make it back to the harbor, not intact. Just as the thought occurred to her, a crewman was washed overboard, his hands groping for the rail until they disappeared below the white-capped waves.

“Eric!” Rebekah screamed. It had been a terrible mistake to leave his side. She had to get back to him. She tried to run, but the deck tossed and rolled. Another wave washed over the boat, tugging hungrily at her ankles. She wiped the spray from her eyes and found him again. He was holding fast to the central rigging, just as she had asked him to do, but even then she had underestimated the hurricane’s fury. Eric’s feet skittered across the wooden boards of the deck, the strength of his grip the only thing keeping him on board.

In the back of her mind, Rebekah counted between each wave. She would make it; he could hold on. She would reach him before he was swept into the water, and she could carry him safely to land. She would turn him the second they had solid earth beneath their feet, pact be damned. She could not live with the thought that she might lose Eric.

She could predict the swell and crash of each wave, but the next bolt of lightning caught her completely off guard. It struck the mast, and the sound of splintering wood and booming thunder was deafening. She staggered as the deck beneath her feet shuddered.

It cost her two seconds at the most, perhaps only one. But one was enough. A beam the width of her torso collapsed across the ship, splitting the deck from the prow to the stern. And she could not see Eric anymore.

Her cry was lost in a second peal of thunder. She could not believe the violence of the storm, and for a moment she allowed herself to believe that Eric had only been hidden by the bracing curtain of rain.

But she knew, even before she reached him. She had thought she could escape her fate—running from her family to make a new one. For a few short days, she had believed that an Original vampire could be entitled to a life of her own choosing, but it had all been a girlish fantasy. Her crime and her punishment was Eric Moquet.

He lay, limp and lifeless, beneath the heavy beam. His glassy hazel eyes stared vacantly, and his mouth was slack. There was nothing left but his body. Everything else, everything that made him real and human and hers, was gone.

“Eric,” she cried, “Eric, come back to me.”

She bit viciously into her own wrist, tasting the tears that ran down her face as she ripped into the pale, blue-veined skin there. She held the bleeding wound to his lips. Each beat of her heart sent blood coursing down his throat, and she willed it to move and swallow.

She could feel water rushing into the hold below her feet, and fewer voices shouted around her now. The sailors were dead or dying, or else they were abandoning the ship. They were sinking and she needed to get Eric to safety so that her blood could work. She needed to save him so that he could rescue her.

She tugged at his arms, but his body was trapped. She pulled again, harder this time, and felt one of his arms pop out of its shoulder socket. She risked a closer look at how he was stuck.

His stomach and pelvis were completely crushed, and there would be no extracting him without lifting the beam. That would speed the breaking up of the ship, she knew, but it might still be worth the risk...if Eric were not so finally, completely dead. She had known it before she’d given him her blood, but the truth was too hard to comprehend. He’d been beside her just a minute ago. She had kissed him.

Desperately wanting those last sweet moments back, she kissed him again and smoothed a hand down over his eyes. The lids closed, and she choked back a hysterical sob. He looked less dead now, as if he might only be sleeping. She could remember him sleeping a dozen different ways, and she rested her head next to his, trying to capture her happiness again.

There was no breath, no heartbeat, no miracle. He was gone, and he stayed gone. The ship broke apart beneath them, the water pulled them down, and the wreckage surrounded and covered them. They fell into the cold, swirling water together, him dead and her unable to die. She couldn’t feel the storm at the bottom, but it raged on inside her.

Eventually, she had to kick, to swim, and he remained on the bottom. It broke her heart to let him go, but she knew that it would be better there, in the silent depths. If she carried him back with her into the miserable night, she might hold his corpse forever, waiting for it to come back to life. She would lose her mind with the grief of the mistakes she had made and the chances she had missed, and in the end it would do her no good, anyway. Eric would not come back no matter how long she waited.

She broke the surface with a gasp, and made for the shore. Once she thought she saw a sailor clinging to some driftwood, waving frantically at her, but she ignored him. She dragged herself into the shallows of the bayou and sat on a muddy hillock for a while, her arms wrapped around her knees, crying like both a lost child and a grieving widow.

She would have to stand up eventually, she knew. She would have to make decisions again. She would have to rejoin her family and perhaps even speak about this terrible loss. The wound would be covered over and then hidden under fresh ones until she could barely remember the shape of it, because she would have to live with this pain forever.

But for now, she just sat, battered by the rain and whipped by the wind, sobbing.