This Same Earth

Chapter Seventeen

English Channel

March 2010

The sun was pouring through the porthole when she woke, and small droplets of condensation cast tiny rainbows around the small room. Beatrice remembered Giovanni’s favorite waterfall in Cochamó and how it looked during the day with the sun reflecting off the spraying mist. It would be late summer right now, and she decided that if she could pick one place to be, it would be at their house in the valley with him.

They would wake in the early evening and make love in front of the fireplace in their bedroom, the flecks of mica sparkling in the hewn granite wall. She would sleep next to him all day and spend the night riding through the meadows in the moonlight. Maybe there would be wildflowers. She would have to remember to see as much of the valley as she could in the sunlight and take pictures for after she had turned. Since it was summer, maybe they would implement a no clothing rule in the house. She knew Giovanni wouldn’t mind.

Beatrice rubbed her eyes and stretched. She was going to get out of the room today. She wasn’t sure how, but it was daytime. Granted, it was morning, which meant that some of the vampires could still be awake if they stayed out of sunlight, but by afternoon, she knew they would be sleeping. That meant anyone up and walking around would be human. And she was pretty sure if she could land the odd blow on Gemma, she could kick some human ass.

Hours later, when the sun was hanging lower in the sky, she beat on the thick metal door.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Anyone?”

She paused to hear if there was any movement.

“Anyone out there? I’ve been in here all day, you gonna feed me?” She pounded some more. “Hey, I’m starving!”

She wasn’t starving, she was sickeningly nervous, but she needed someone to open the door.

“Open up! I need some food.”

She finally heard steps approaching, and Beatrice stepped back, grasping the sheet she had twisted into a thick rope.

“Hello?” an accented voice called. “You are hungry?”

“Yeah, I’m starving, all right? Will you feed me already?” She braced herself on the corner of the bed. When the door opened, whoever came through would see her immediately, there was no avoiding it, so she stepped up on the small bed, knowing that she would get one chance for surprise.

“Okay. I get food,” the voice called. She felt a brief pang at the thought of harming the voice, which sounded fairly friendly, but there was no way in hell she was going to show mercy to her captors when Lorenzo was waiting at sundown.

The footsteps walked away, and she put down her sheet to take off the jacket she had been wearing. It was cold on the ship, and she knew it was cold outside, but the jacket was too bulky for her to move freely, and she knew that the less an attacker had to grab, the better.

Beatrice took deep breaths, preparing her mind for the rush at the door. She focused on her hand-to-hand training with Gemma and all the advice the woman had given her over the past month.

“Go for the dirty punch. Always. And hit them when they’re down.”

“Throw your attacker off balance. It’s the only way your small size can be used to your advantage.”

“Be quick! Quicker. Make yourself so fast they can’t grab you. If they do, you’re dead.”

She took a deep breath.

The footsteps approached.

She heard a key in the lock.

The door cracked open.

She saw a tray.

Spotting her opportunity, Beatrice braced her arms on the narrow walls and kicked up, knocking the tray into her captor’s face as she swung the twisted bed sheet around his neck and, holding it securely, jumped off the bed.

The force of her momentum knocked the large man off balance and he stumbled into the wall. She aimed her boot at his groin and kicked him as hard as she could. Then she kicked him again.

He was on the ground, grunting in pain, so she stomped.

Beatrice was surprised how little noise he made. She must have knocked the wind out of him. After the first low grunt, the crewman curled into himself while she continued battering his kidney area with her boot the way Gemma had taught her. She shoved the door mostly closed and paused to survey the writhing man at her feet.

There was a gun in his belt. Score.

She reached down to his doughy waist and grabbed it. It was a Heckler and Koch nine millimeter, exactly like the one she had practiced with the previous week.

“God bless you, Terry,” she muttered as she popped the magazine out and checked the ammunition. The crewman hadn’t fired his weapon since he’d loaded it, so she slammed it back, racked a bullet into the chamber, and took the safety off.

She aimed it at the belly of the large man who was looking at her with wide eyes.

“Funny thing, guns. Six foot tall man with a nine millimeter, five foot tall woman with a nine millimeter…pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

He didn’t speak, but he was panting and she saw his mouth start to open. She kicked him in the kidneys again.

“You stay quiet. You yell? Everyone’s going to know I’m busting out, and I’ll have no reason not to just shoot you. Noise is noise, right? I don’t particularly want to shoot you, but I really hate the creepy asshole that put me in here, so if I have to, I will. Is this making sense?”

The silent crewman nodded and closed his mouth.

“Good, what language do you speak?”

“Español,” he whispered.

“Fine.” She switched to Spanish. “I want off this boat. Like I said, I don’t particularly want to shoot you, but I will if it’ll get me off the boat. Is that a cell phone?” She nodded toward his pocket, where she could see a slight bulge.

“Yes.”

“Give it to me. One hand, in your pocket. No sudden moves, or I’ll shoot you.”

“Yes,” he said as he reached down. “Please, I just work here. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know-”

“Shut up.”

“My name is-”

“Shut. Up.” If she had to shoot him later, she sure as hell didn’t want to know his name. She didn’t know if she could kill him, but the thought of shooting his legs didn’t bother her at all.

The more Beatrice examined the nameless crewman, the more she realized that he looked like a normal guy. He didn’t react or assess the room like someone trained in security, and she smiled a little when she realized she had lucked out.

It also made her feel slightly bad about scaring the shit out of him-she could smell that he had peed his pants-but she wasn’t going to back down.

Let him think she was a big badass; Beatrice was feeling like it at the moment.

He handed her his phone and she stuck it in her pocket. “Thanks. Now, where are we, and how far are we from land?”

“We’re still in the Channel. We had to stop in La Havre before dawn. We are…maybe fifteen miles off the coast of France? Near Cherbourg. I’m not sure.” His voice shook just a little.

“Shit.” The land didn’t look that far away. She was going need a boat. “Where are the lifeboats?”

Would a lifeboat be enough on the English Channel in the middle of February? She had a sudden thought. “This is a freighter, right?”

He nodded, looking confused when she smiled. “So it’s got those big, orange life rafts with navigation and engines and all that stuff? The contained ones?”

“Yes.”

Thank you, Discovery Channel. She shoved the gun closer. “You ever launch one?”

“I-I’ve seen the drills, but there’s never been an emergency-”

“Good enough for me. We’re headed for the lifeboat, mister. If you try to get away, I’ll shoot you. If you try to yell for help, I’ll shoot you. I don’t really have a lot to lose at this point, and I’m sure the creepy, blond asshole that hired you told me you can’t hurt me, so don’t even try.”

She nodded toward the door and the crewman scrambled up, still clutching his groin from where she had kicked him.

Beatrice hadn’t heard anyone pass in the hall, which fit with the deserted feeling she’d gotten from the ship through most of the morning. She nudged the large man in front of her with the barrel of the H &K, taking comfort in the sturdy grip in her hand. She snagged her thick jacket on the way out the door.

Nameless Crewman walked in front of her.

“Where are you taking me?”

“The lifeboats, remember?”

“Honestly, I’ve seen the drills, but there’s never been an emergency, so I don’t know-”

“Feel this?” She nudged his back with the barrel of the gun. “This is an emergency. You’re launching it, and you’re taking me to the nearest stretch of land. And I suggest we get there before nightfall, ‘cause that’s when the monsters come out.”

“Monsters?” She could hear his voice quiver a little, and she shoved down the flicker of sympathy.

“Yeah, monsters. And my boyfriend? He’s the scariest one, so as long as you help me get out of here, you’ll be fine.”

They wound through the corridors of the creaking ship, heading upward at a steady pace. Nameless Crewman didn’t halt and seemed to be cooperating, so they reached the deck in short order. She could smell the fresh sea air when he stopped by the last door.

“Wait, Miss. Let me check outside to see if anyone-”

“I will have this gun at your back the whole time, do you understand? If I think you’re messing with me, I’ll shoot you.” Beatrice was impressed by how firm her voice sounded. She was probably going to fall apart later, but at the moment, the adrenaline and the firearm were making her feel like Superwoman.

He nodded and cracked open the door, only to close it almost immediately.

“There are men out there I do not recognize! With guns. Lots of guns,” he said in a panic. “What is going on? The captain has been acting so strange; he never used to-”

“Shut up! Men? What did they look like?” Giovanni couldn’t have found her already; she had seen the crack of sunlight at the door. Would Lorenzo have hired security that Nameless Crewman didn’t recognize?

She crowded him, shoving the gun into his belly. “Do you know everyone on this boat? What about passengers? Are there any?”

He frowned. “There are the strange people renting the interior cabins. They are odd and they come and go at night while I am off duty-”

“Okay, but the guys out there aren’t them?”

“No. And they’re speaking French. This is a Spanish vessel. We all speak Spanish.”

“French?” Her eyes lit up.

Jean.

She remembered him bragging about his extensive human staff when he gave her his card.

“Day or night, B. If you are in France, call these numbers and someone will help you. I have people everywhere,” he’d said proudly.

She wracked her brain for the numbers he had given her and pulled out Nameless Crewman’s phone. The signal was faint, but it might just be enough. She punched one in and practically cried in relief when she heard the phone ringing on the other end.

“Allo?” a polite woman answered.

“Do you speak English? This is Beatrice De Novo, and Jean Demarais-”

“Ah! Madmoiselle De Novo,” she tumbled off a ridiculously fast stream of French before Beatrice heard another voice on the line.

“Miss De Novo?” a deep voice asked. “Am I speaking with Beatrice De Novo?”

“Yes, you are. I met your boss a few nights ago, and I had a quick question.”

“We have been looking for you since this morning, where-”

“Do you happen to have a whole bunch of guys looking for me on the deck of a freighter in the English Channel right now?”

There was a deep chuckle. “As a matter of fact…”

She sighed in relief but gasped when she felt the cold barrel of a gun at her neck. She dropped the phone when she heard a low voice hiss in Spanish, “You’re not supposed to be out of your cabin, are you?”

Beatrice turned to Nameless Crewman, who was staring in horror at the group of men gathered behind them. He looked at her in panic right before one of the crewmen raised a gun and shot him in the chest. She cried out when the man slumped forward and the pool of blood spread under him.

“No!” I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.

It was Beatrice’s last thought before she felt something strike her temple, and she blacked out.