Was it a good kind of silent?

  Amanda held her breath and only released it when Sirius suddenly appeared around the corner. His reaction was similar upon seeing her. Then he knelt to check on Pierre.

  “Is he good?”

  She nodded. “He’ll be fine. Are we safe?”

  He matched her nod. “We got them all. There were only five of them it seems.”

  “Five who fought like fifty,” said Pierre with a tired sigh. “I’ve never seen men who could move so fast, not ones that weren’t quickfoots anyway.”

  “Vampires,” Sirius answered.

  “They were vampires?” Amanda asked, but the truth was she’d known it from the moment she’d seen the attacker’s eyes. Red and violet were common vampire eye colours. “Were they after the blood?”

  “Vampirates,” Shiv corrected as he rounded the corner, followed by a few other men. “And almost certainly.”

  “Shit!” Pierre remarked. “That’s what we picked up in Wildwater isn’t it?”

  Sirius nodded.

  “How did the others fare?” Pierre asked Shiv. Then he turned to Sirius. “I was using magic and he was countering me. Blow for blow. If you hadn’t come in when you did, he might have actually had me.”

  “They got a few of us,” Shiv replied somberly. He looked at Sirius. “Kip’s dead.”

  Sirius got to his feet, a serious look on his face.

  “They got the lookout too. Mick and Jethro. Fuckers used guns too, long range by the looks of it. Then they stabbed a few in their sleep”

  “How many?” Sirius asked.

  Amanda felt a chill creeping throughout the corridor as Shiv rattled off eight names. None of them were crew she’d been especially close to but she knew them all the same. Could visualise their faces laughing at dinner only a few hours prior.

  She zoned out for the rest of the conversation. She barely even noticed when they’d stopped talking or what decisions had been made until she felt Sirius’s hands gracing her arms.

  “Hey?” he whispered. “Are you alright?”

  She nodded without thinking. Compared to many others this night she was fine. “Is it always like this out here?” she whispered back.

  Sirius could do little but nod. “Sometimes,” he replied. He would have been lying if he’d said otherwise.

  He helped her to her feet and then back to his cabin. Noticing Pierre’s blood on her hands he grabbed a cloth, wet it with a bottle of water he kept in the room and washed her hands clean.

  “This is my fault,” she said.

  He paused in his cleaning and gave her a confused look. “What? How?”

  She met his gaze and he was glad that at least she seemed to have a focused look in her eyes now. She’d looked almost dazed back in the corridor and he’d been worried. He was worried. He’d had to deal with the situation first though, the cleaning up of the bodies and the reorganising of the crew roles. New lookouts were needed and new chef for the morning meal. Hopefully Bruce had learnt enough during his time as chef’s hand.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  The men had gotten to it without complaint. They were used to it. It was the nature of the sea. This night had been particularly bad. They’d been taken by surprise. If it hadn’t been for Crawly taking a mid-morning piss break, it was possible none of them would have seen the sunrise. Their attackers had been more skilled than their usual opponents.

  It wasn’t the norm, not on this ship, but it did happen occasionally and it was better Amanda knew what was possible, especially now more people probably suspected them of blood shipping. In hindsight he should have upped the night security but he hadn’t expected them to be attacked so soon and not by such a small and stealthy crew.

  “If it weren’t for me and the whole thing with the pegasus… Sirena knew it was my fault. Michael told her before Shiv got him. And he must have figured out about the blood too.”

  Sirius shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault. The crew riled Michael up far more than you did. Ain’t their fault either though. Just bad luck. We don’t usually run into crews like that. We’ll sort out a better warning system for tomorrow and we’ll be back in Little Rock in a couple weeks okay. I promise I’ll get you home safe.”

  He meant what he said and he knew taking her home was the right choice but his heart still broke in two when she didn’t argue but instead simply nodded.

  Sirius lay with her until she fell asleep again and then he got up and met Shiv in the wheelhouse. “What do we know?” he asked.

  “Well, we acquired some new weaponry.” Shiv gestured to three rifles lying on the table they normally used for maps. They weren’t ordinary hunting rifles either. The barrel was longer than Sirius was used to seeing and the stocks were each a sleek grey-black in colour.

  Fallon was inspecting the guns. Nearby, Pierre sat in a chair. Griff was driving the boat.

  “Who were these guys?” Sirius asked.

  “We got one alive,” Shiv replied. “For awhile. I believe they came from Cap.”

  “But we’re delivering the blood to them, why would they try to steal it?” Sirius frowned and leaned cross-armed against the wall while he thought.

  Shiv shook his head. “I don’t think they were sent of behalf of Cap. Seems like they’re an off-shoot, looking to make a quick profit on a black-market trade. They’ve been attacking a few ships coming through here, and then hording the blood to drive up prices.”

  “Are we sure? Even if that’s what they said it doesn’t mean it’s the truth.” Sirius replied. It wasn’t uncommon for some towns to hire their own pirates.

  Shiv was quiet long enough that Sirius knew that it was not something they could be certain of.

  “If they are we’re going to need to tread carefully in Cap.”

  Sirius nodded. He thought of Amanda asleep in his cabin. Would it be safer to bring her into the city with them or leave her on the boat once they got there. Maybe after the events of tonight she’d be wary enough to stay on board if he asked her to. But given the skill of those who had attacked them, it was also possible she’d be safer with him. The issue of the attack would need to be brought up with the vampire council in Cap but it would have to be done so delicately. They had a right to know what their citizens were up to, but what if they already knew?

  He eyed the weapons. Expensive tools. Had the crooks just been doing that well for themselves? Or was someone in a powerful position funding their ventures? Regular pirates weren’t usually quite so skilled. If they were being funded by the council themselves then raising the issue might mark The Black Dog as too much of a risk, one that needed to be disposed of.

  “They killed men in their sleep,” Sirius remarked with a shake of the head. “They weren’t just after the blood.”

  “It might have been a warning,” Pierre said. “They only entered the first two cabins. The rest were killed during the initial boarding or the subsequent fighting. If the alarm hadn’t been sounded, it’s possible causalities might have been lower.”

  “Or higher,” Shiv commented.

  “They we’re built for stealth,” Fallon added.

  “I guess we’ll never know,” Shiv remarked.

  “Yes, because somebody killed the only one we managed to capture before we could get all the information out of him.” Fallon looked at Shiv pointedly.

  “He wasn’t gonna give us anymore,” Shiv retorted with a scowl. “And to get any information at all we needed to fight them.”

  “At least we know there aren’t any more out there,” Griff remarked.

  Sirius met Shiv’s gaze. Both of them knew that wasn’t necessarily true.

  They made a plan with the help of Fallon for how to prepare in case of any more stealth attacks. It was almost sunrise by the time Sirius returned to his cabin. He was pleased to find Amanda was still fast asleep. He watched her for a little while, finding peace in the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Then he lay down next to her, hoping he could keep her safe until he got her home. Wishing at the same time that he never had to take her home at all.