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Gohen: Redemption

Beta: Ilye, Fimbrethiel

chapter fifteen

"Following World War II, we remained in Europe, aiding in the reconstruction efforts," Maglor said, sipping the coffee Erestor had made. "But, as the years wore on, that pull west began to surface again. When we were idle, it was the worst. In 1965, I booked us passage on the Italian cruise liner the Antonia Doria."

Erestor looked up at David; they had shifted their positions so that Erestor's head now rested in David's lap and Maglor sat in front of them. Erestor was sandwiched between his lovers. "It was a magnificent ship, David. The Italian liners could not compete with the British liners in speed, but they compensated with luxury and opulence."

Maglor nodded. "And while not as large as the Titanic, the Antonia Doria was more than comfortable for a Trans-Atlantic voyage." He put his mug aside. "But, the liner had fallen on hard times by the time we boarded her; she was outclassed by other great Italian liners like the Michelangelo and the Raffaello."

"Although the Antonia Doria could hold almost fourteen hundred passengers, there were less than six hundred of us on that crossing," Erestor said softly. "In those days, the Italian liners took eight, perhaps ten days to cross the Atlantic. In the luxury of the Antonia Doria, though, there was little people wanted for. There were three pools on board, nightly shows in the dining rooms, organized games during the day -- it was structured and lavish at the same time.

"We had a stateroom on the Boat Deck; First Class section, of course. We would travel to the lower decks, typically the B or C decks, to feed from the Third Class passengers. We were careful, though, feeding from several rather than one or two and risk detection. We were at sea no more than three days when the trouble occurred," Erestor said, closing his eyes as David ran his fingers through his hair.

Maglor loosely held Erestor's hands, fingering Glorfindel's ring Erestor had worn since their confrontation about the Elda. "Various crewmembers died. Accidents, really. Two men in one of the boiler rooms were locked in when the boiler was vented. A man tripped and fell over the railing into the water while he was cleaning the deck. One of the female attendants was found at the bottom of a stairwell." Maglor shrugged. "Then they started disappearing. Now, because there were only six hundred of us aboard, they were not sailing with a full crew. By the end of the week, half a dozen more of the crew just went missing. A few of the passengers began to panic and claimed that the ship was cursed."

"While we weren't responsible for any of the deaths," Erestor explained, "there were enough Italian seniors around with enough of a folklore background that they began to suspect us anyway. Two men, traveling together in the same room, never seen in the dining room, but often noticed moving around in the lower class cabins. Some of them began to talk to others about it. It wasn't long before people would turn the other way if they saw us approach, or make 'evil eye' warding gestures as they passed. More and more of them would take special care to lock the doors to their cabins, and never walk along the decks alone. For us, feeding in any capacity became first difficult, then impossible."

Maglor continued, "We didn't know it at the time, but the captain was among those crew who disappeared. A grand mutiny was underway, right under our very noses. The first mate had commandeered the vessel, gathered those loyal to him, and disposed of anyone else. He had been slowly steering the boat south, making small course corrections each day so that it was less noticeable to the passengers. By the tenth day, though, we were moving almost due south, and the change in the position of the sunrise was enough to alert most people that something was wrong.

"The first mate explained to anyone with questions that there was a problem with one of the main engines. No, it was nothing serious, he said, but it required them to follow a different shipping lane that didn't force them to fight against the currents. It shouldn't delay the arrival too much longer, and no, the captain isn't available right now, but I will give him your message.

"By then, of course, it was too late. By dawn on the eleventh day, over a third of the passengers were dead, apparently from food poisoning, and probably half of those left were too ill to leave their beds. Word was circulated throughout the ship that everyone still feeling well was to assemble on the main deck to be checked by the ship's doctor. Erestor and I, having no need for either food or doctors, naturally remained in our cabin."

"If we hadn't, maybe things would have been different," Erestor said, taking over the story.

Antonia Doria, 1965

A knock at the cabin door roused the two vampires from their near-slumber. Barely an hour had passed since the order was given for the passengers to assemble, and the two had barely managed to fall asleep again. Grumbling softly, Erestor dragged himself from the warm bed and pulled on a pair of pants.

"Whoever it is," Maglor mumbled, "eat them."

Erestor chuckled. "Hush. It's probably just one of the crewmen wondering why we aren't up on the main deck. I'll tell him to go away." He opened the door and admitted Crewman Salvatore into the sitting room.

"If Sir is feeling well, then Sir should be on the main deck," Salvatore said in Italian.

"We are both feeling fine," Erestor answered, also in Italian. "We did not eat the dinner last night, so there is no need for us to see a doctor."

"But, Sir, the doctor thinks there are more than bad clams involved in this. He wants to give everyone an injection of penicillin just to be safe."

"Ah, there you have it. My companion and I are both allergic to penicillin. It is just as well that we remain here."

"I am afraid," Salvatore said, a sudden sharpness to his voice, "that I cannot allow you to do that." He flicked his right wrist, and Erestor heard the soft sound of metal scraping on metal. As the crewman brought his hand up, the light glinted off the straight razor he held.

For Erestor, the world seemed to slip into slow motion as his vampiric reflexes took over. He stepped into the blow, bringing his arm over Salvatore's and trapping him at the elbow. A small squeeze, and the man's arm snapped like a twig. Salvatore screamed twice before Erestor broke his neck.

Maglor burst through the door from the bedroom. "What the hell is going on?"

"I have no idea," Erestor said slowly. He bent down and picked up the straight razor from the dead man's hand. "Salvatore here just tried to kill me. Something is seriously fucked up on this ship."

"So what else is new?" Maglor groaned as he stepped into his slacks.

Without pausing to put on shirt or shoes, or even tie back their hair, the two vampires stepped into the hallway. The scent of blood was suffocatingly strong. Fresh blood -- gallons of it. But poisoned, undrinkable. Starving as they were, surrounded by the smell of what they craved but could not consume, Maglor and Erestor's senses redoubled in intensity along with the gnawing hunger. Their control hung from a narrow thread.

And then it snapped.

Two crewmen exited the rooms on either side of theirs, both sheathing straight razors. "Everything okay, Salvatore?" one asked before looking up into Maglor's bestial face.

"Everything's fine," Maglor said, stabbing forward with two fingers into the man's throat. The air rushed out through the hole with a pop, followed by a gurgling as blood spurted from the wound. Maglor leaned forward and drank up as much as he could as the body fell, but it was nowhere near enough.

Erestor, meanwhile, had not bothered with pretense but had immediately lashed out for the crewman nearest him. He slashed the throat with the razor, opening his mouth into the spray of vitae. The vampire grabbed a handful of hair and pulled the head back as he fed, but death came too quickly, and he, too, was left unsatisfied.

Two more doors opened farther down the hall. Erestor and Maglor turned and leapt the entire distance, tackling their prey to the ground and tearing into their throats. This was no tender embrace and gentle bite, but an animalistic frenzy of violence. In their hyper-excited state, though, the energy they gained from the blood burned off almost as fast as they could drink. By the time the two crewmen were dead, the vampires felt just as thirsty as when they began.

They sniffed the air. There was no more live blood on the entire deck. Moving as one, they stood and moved swiftly to the stairwell to the lower decks. Their feet barely touched the ground as they descended to C deck, in the bowels of the great ship. Here, the stench of death was even more palpable than above, yet there were also numerous flares of life.

One of those flares appeared directly in front of Maglor, and the elder vampire pulled him in close, breaking both of the man's arms in the process, and sank his fangs into the warm throat.

As Maglor fed, another door opened at the far end of the hallway. The new arrival sighted the vampires and began running toward them, screaming for his crewmates. Doors burst open all along the corridor, and the passageway was soon filled with twenty uniformed crewmembers, all brandishing straight razors dripping blood.

Maglor dropped his latest victim to the ground, and for a moment, all froze in shock, and silence dropped heavily across the mob. Then Erestor howled and plunged into the fray. Two of the men fell in an eyeblink, one slashed across the throat, and the other across the abdomen. Erestor no longer gave any thought to feeding; he merely spun and cut his way through the murderous crew with an almost Florentine flourish. He ripped a second razor from the hand of one of the men as he fell and began dealing death from both sides.

When the last one fell, Erestor turned to look at Maglor across the field of dead and dying. His arms were covered in blood and bile up to the elbow. The ancient Noldo could only stare in disbelief. The entire massacre had played out in less than thirty seconds. Erestor stood panting, spittle dripping from his lips, and his bare chest spattered in blood. Maglor took a deep breath, though the hunger continued to consume him, and he reached out with his mind. He scanned the upper decks and found no life on them. There were flashes of life, but they were moving up, up.

The main deck.

Maglor then directed his thoughts to Erestor. He pushed an image of the main deck into Erestor's blood-frenzied mind, and the younger vampire nodded. They slowly moved up the various stairwells, Maglor's mind constantly searching for prey while Erestor gnashed at the air in animalistic fury.

The two vampires crested the stairs, the main deck spread out before them. There were perhaps six of the crew officers facing one of the elevators, and Maglor could hear the whirr of the wheels. The doors slid open and the six officers opened fire, quickly slaughtering the crewmembers in the elevator.

Erestor sniffed the air, his black eyes scanning the deck. The swimming pool. It was normally bright blue-green, crystalline; now it was ghastly red with limp bodies floating in the chlorinated water. The officers who had killed the crewmen in the elevator returned to the door Erestor knew led onto the bridge of the ship. They would shoot their guns at the steel door, pound on it, and shout at those he could sense cowering from them inside. The door to the stairwell slammed shut as Maglor joined Erestor on the deck, and the mutinous first mate swung around, blindly firing his machine gun.

The two vampires stood impassively, clothed in trousers slick with body fluids, bare torsos spattered with blood and bits of flesh, and eyes as black as the night sky. There were no irises, no pupils, no white -- the eyes were inhuman and the lips were pulled back, baring long, dangerous fangs. The bullets did not slow their advance, and the two leapt over a pile of dead passengers, rushing toward the armed officers.

Erestor easily slashed his clawed hands across one of the men closest to him, killing him immediately, but he was propelled back as one of the other officers shot at him at point blank range with his machine gun.

Maglor glanced at Erestor, and roared his irritation at seeing his lover on his back, sprawled over the deck. He jumped behind the first mate, shielding his body with the man's, and snatched his gun, firing wildly at the remaining men. When they fell in bloody heaps to the floor, Maglor dropped the first mate's bullet-riddled body, panting as he made his way to where Erestor lay dazed.

Erestor snarled, but took Maglor's proffered hand, and stood. They both turned their eyes, glittering like onyx in the moonlight, to the warped bridge door. The cries and screams were easily heard by the vampires; Maglor looked through the small glass window and into the bridge. He could see about a dozen frightened passengers huddled against a far wall. Erestor growled deep in his throat and pushed Maglor away, gripping the steel door. With a primal cry, he ripped the door from its hinges, and tossed the offending metal aside.

The passengers inside the bridge screamed at the sight of the two vampires, and Maglor's ears rang with the sound. "Shut up!" he screamed, and all the passengers stilled, their eyes blank and their faces pale.

Erestor moved around the frozen figures, checking the instruments. "All the radios have been destroyed," he said, his voice deep and guttural, the words obscured slightly by his fangs. "The compass has been shot and the helm is locked."

Maglor closed his eyes and forced his heart to slow, the hunger to recede. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was once again pewter. "Erestor. We do not know where we are, since they have taken us so far off course. There is no way for us to seek help. The passengers will starve to death, and we will go insane with hunger, assuming this ship does not collide with anything Ulmo chooses to raise in its path."

Still lost in his hunger, Erestor regarded Maglor with those glassy black eyes. "What would you suggest we do, Maglor?" he hissed.

"I suggest we offer these passengers a painless death, quenching our hunger. We can overfeed, prepare ourselves for a long wait before we reach civilization." When Erestor did not object, which Maglor was expecting, he turned his burning eyes to an auburn-haired woman still dressed in her lacey nightgown. "Come," he said to her.

He touched her mind, soothing her fears and altering what her eyes saw as she looked upon him. Her name was Lisa, and she was to join her husband in New York. She would never arrive. Her chocolate eyes drooped, becoming lost in an illusion Maglor created for her. She swooned in his arms, her pulse fluttering with arousal as Maglor projected the vision of him laying her on a satin bed, resting himself comfortably between her thighs, and kissing her neck tenderly.

She surrendered completely to the image, the horrors she had witnessed that night fading under the fantasy. He bit her, gentle and sweet, taking care not to pull her from the dream, and she gasped. In the fantasy, he moved inside her, brought her closer and closer to completion with her legs wrapped tightly around his lean waist. As her body shuddered in the vision with orgasm, the body in Maglor's arm trembled on the cusp of death.

He released her neck as her heart ceased beating, and allowed her to slip from his arms. She crumpled in a lifeless heap at his feet, but her blood coursed through his body, warming him. Maglor turned to Erestor and was relieved to see the deep brown orbs surrounded by white once more.

They could only drain two passengers each before they were bloated with blood. "We cannot continue to feed, Maglor," Erestor warned. "I have not felt nauseous in centuries, but if I try to take one more..." he left the sentence unfinished, knowing that Maglor felt the same.

Maglor nodded sadly.

The eight passengers still held under Maglor's sway met swift deaths. Each vampire broke necks, soothing the mortals' minds with visions of peace. As the sun rose, they showered, washing the blood from each other's bodies, both lost in their dark thoughts. They dressed in light clothes and launched one of the lifeboats. The sun was dipping low in the sky by the time they boarded the boat. Maglor began rowing toward the setting sun, toward the west, leaving the bloody halls of the Antonia Doria behind.


	Navigation multi-story arcs previous next		Gohen: Redemption Beta: Ilye, Fimbrethiel chapter fifteen "Following World War II, we remained in Europe, aiding in the reconstruction efforts," Maglor said, sipping the coffee Erestor had made. "But, as the years wore on, that pull west began to surface again. When we were idle, it was the worst. In 1965, I booked us passage on the Italian cruise liner the Antonia Doria." Erestor looked up at David; they had shifted their positions so that Erestor's head now rested in David's lap and Maglor sat in front of them. Erestor was sandwiched between his lovers. "It was a magnificent ship, David. The Italian liners could not compete with the British liners in speed, but they compensated with luxury and opulence." Maglor nodded. "And while not as large as the Titanic, the Antonia Doria was more than comfortable for a Trans-Atlantic voyage." He put his mug aside. "But, the liner had fallen on hard times by the time we boarded her; she was outclassed by other great Italian liners like the Michelangelo and the Raffaello." "Although the Antonia Doria could hold almost fourteen hundred passengers, there were less than six hundred of us on that crossing," Erestor said softly. "In those days, the Italian liners took eight, perhaps ten days to cross the Atlantic. In the luxury of the Antonia Doria, though, there was little people wanted for. There were three pools on board, nightly shows in the dining rooms, organized games during the day -- it was structured and lavish at the same time. "We had a stateroom on the Boat Deck; First Class section, of course. We would travel to the lower decks, typically the B or C decks, to feed from the Third Class passengers. We were careful, though, feeding from several rather than one or two and risk detection. We were at sea no more than three days when the trouble occurred," Erestor said, closing his eyes as David ran his fingers through his hair. Maglor loosely held Erestor's hands, fingering Glorfindel's ring Erestor had worn since their confrontation about the Elda. "Various crewmembers died. Accidents, really. Two men in one of the boiler rooms were locked in when the boiler was vented. A man tripped and fell over the railing into the water while he was cleaning the deck. One of the female attendants was found at the bottom of a stairwell." Maglor shrugged. "Then they started disappearing. Now, because there were only six hundred of us aboard, they were not sailing with a full crew. By the end of the week, half a dozen more of the crew just went missing. A few of the passengers began to panic and claimed that the ship was cursed." "While we weren't responsible for any of the deaths," Erestor explained, "there were enough Italian seniors around with enough of a folklore background that they began to suspect us anyway. Two men, traveling together in the same room, never seen in the dining room, but often noticed moving around in the lower class cabins. Some of them began to talk to others about it. It wasn't long before people would turn the other way if they saw us approach, or make 'evil eye' warding gestures as they passed. More and more of them would take special care to lock the doors to their cabins, and never walk along the decks alone. For us, feeding in any capacity became first difficult, then impossible." Maglor continued, "We didn't know it at the time, but the captain was among those crew who disappeared. A grand mutiny was underway, right under our very noses. The first mate had commandeered the vessel, gathered those loyal to him, and disposed of anyone else. He had been slowly steering the boat south, making small course corrections each day so that it was less noticeable to the passengers. By the tenth day, though, we were moving almost due south, and the change in the position of the sunrise was enough to alert most people that something was wrong. "The first mate explained to anyone with questions that there was a problem with one of the main engines. No, it was nothing serious, he said, but it required them to follow a different shipping lane that didn't force them to fight against the currents. It shouldn't delay the arrival too much longer, and no, the captain isn't available right now, but I will give him your message. "By then, of course, it was too late. By dawn on the eleventh day, over a third of the passengers were dead, apparently from food poisoning, and probably half of those left were too ill to leave their beds. Word was circulated throughout the ship that everyone still feeling well was to assemble on the main deck to be checked by the ship's doctor. Erestor and I, having no need for either food or doctors, naturally remained in our cabin." "If we hadn't, maybe things would have been different," Erestor said, taking over the story. Antonia Doria, 1965 A knock at the cabin door roused the two vampires from their near-slumber. Barely an hour had passed since the order was given for the passengers to assemble, and the two had barely managed to fall asleep again. Grumbling softly, Erestor dragged himself from the warm bed and pulled on a pair of pants. "Whoever it is," Maglor mumbled, "eat them." Erestor chuckled. "Hush. It's probably just one of the crewmen wondering why we aren't up on the main deck. I'll tell him to go away." He opened the door and admitted Crewman Salvatore into the sitting room. "If Sir is feeling well, then Sir should be on the main deck," Salvatore said in Italian. "We are both feeling fine," Erestor answered, also in Italian. "We did not eat the dinner last night, so there is no need for us to see a doctor." "But, Sir, the doctor thinks there are more than bad clams involved in this. He wants to give everyone an injection of penicillin just to be safe." "Ah, there you have it. My companion and I are both allergic to penicillin. It is just as well that we remain here." "I am afraid," Salvatore said, a sudden sharpness to his voice, "that I cannot allow you to do that." He flicked his right wrist, and Erestor heard the soft sound of metal scraping on metal. As the crewman brought his hand up, the light glinted off the straight razor he held. For Erestor, the world seemed to slip into slow motion as his vampiric reflexes took over. He stepped into the blow, bringing his arm over Salvatore's and trapping him at the elbow. A small squeeze, and the man's arm snapped like a twig. Salvatore screamed twice before Erestor broke his neck. Maglor burst through the door from the bedroom. "What the hell is going on?" "I have no idea," Erestor said slowly. He bent down and picked up the straight razor from the dead man's hand. "Salvatore here just tried to kill me. Something is seriously fucked up on this ship." "So what else is new?" Maglor groaned as he stepped into his slacks. Without pausing to put on shirt or shoes, or even tie back their hair, the two vampires stepped into the hallway. The scent of blood was suffocatingly strong. Fresh blood -- gallons of it. But poisoned, undrinkable. Starving as they were, surrounded by the smell of what they craved but could not consume, Maglor and Erestor's senses redoubled in intensity along with the gnawing hunger. Their control hung from a narrow thread. And then it snapped. Two crewmen exited the rooms on either side of theirs, both sheathing straight razors. "Everything okay, Salvatore?" one asked before looking up into Maglor's bestial face. "Everything's fine," Maglor said, stabbing forward with two fingers into the man's throat. The air rushed out through the hole with a pop, followed by a gurgling as blood spurted from the wound. Maglor leaned forward and drank up as much as he could as the body fell, but it was nowhere near enough. Erestor, meanwhile, had not bothered with pretense but had immediately lashed out for the crewman nearest him. He slashed the throat with the razor, opening his mouth into the spray of vitae. The vampire grabbed a handful of hair and pulled the head back as he fed, but death came too quickly, and he, too, was left unsatisfied. Two more doors opened farther down the hall. Erestor and Maglor turned and leapt the entire distance, tackling their prey to the ground and tearing into their throats. This was no tender embrace and gentle bite, but an animalistic frenzy of violence. In their hyper-excited state, though, the energy they gained from the blood burned off almost as fast as they could drink. By the time the two crewmen were dead, the vampires felt just as thirsty as when they began. They sniffed the air. There was no more live blood on the entire deck. Moving as one, they stood and moved swiftly to the stairwell to the lower decks. Their feet barely touched the ground as they descended to C deck, in the bowels of the great ship. Here, the stench of death was even more palpable than above, yet there were also numerous flares of life. One of those flares appeared directly in front of Maglor, and the elder vampire pulled him in close, breaking both of the man's arms in the process, and sank his fangs into the warm throat. As Maglor fed, another door opened at the far end of the hallway. The new arrival sighted the vampires and began running toward them, screaming for his crewmates. Doors burst open all along the corridor, and the passageway was soon filled with twenty uniformed crewmembers, all brandishing straight razors dripping blood. Maglor dropped his latest victim to the ground, and for a moment, all froze in shock, and silence dropped heavily across the mob. Then Erestor howled and plunged into the fray. Two of the men fell in an eyeblink, one slashed across the throat, and the other across the abdomen. Erestor no longer gave any thought to feeding; he merely spun and cut his way through the murderous crew with an almost Florentine flourish. He ripped a second razor from the hand of one of the men as he fell and began dealing death from both sides. When the last one fell, Erestor turned to look at Maglor across the field of dead and dying. His arms were covered in blood and bile up to the elbow. The ancient Noldo could only stare in disbelief. The entire massacre had played out in less than thirty seconds. Erestor stood panting, spittle dripping from his lips, and his bare chest spattered in blood. Maglor took a deep breath, though the hunger continued to consume him, and he reached out with his mind. He scanned the upper decks and found no life on them. There were flashes of life, but they were moving up, up. The main deck. Maglor then directed his thoughts to Erestor. He pushed an image of the main deck into Erestor's blood-frenzied mind, and the younger vampire nodded. They slowly moved up the various stairwells, Maglor's mind constantly searching for prey while Erestor gnashed at the air in animalistic fury. The two vampires crested the stairs, the main deck spread out before them. There were perhaps six of the crew officers facing one of the elevators, and Maglor could hear the whirr of the wheels. The doors slid open and the six officers opened fire, quickly slaughtering the crewmembers in the elevator. Erestor sniffed the air, his black eyes scanning the deck. The swimming pool. It was normally bright blue-green, crystalline; now it was ghastly red with limp bodies floating in the chlorinated water. The officers who had killed the crewmen in the elevator returned to the door Erestor knew led onto the bridge of the ship. They would shoot their guns at the steel door, pound on it, and shout at those he could sense cowering from them inside. The door to the stairwell slammed shut as Maglor joined Erestor on the deck, and the mutinous first mate swung around, blindly firing his machine gun. The two vampires stood impassively, clothed in trousers slick with body fluids, bare torsos spattered with blood and bits of flesh, and eyes as black as the night sky. There were no irises, no pupils, no white -- the eyes were inhuman and the lips were pulled back, baring long, dangerous fangs. The bullets did not slow their advance, and the two leapt over a pile of dead passengers, rushing toward the armed officers. Erestor easily slashed his clawed hands across one of the men closest to him, killing him immediately, but he was propelled back as one of the other officers shot at him at point blank range with his machine gun. Maglor glanced at Erestor, and roared his irritation at seeing his lover on his back, sprawled over the deck. He jumped behind the first mate, shielding his body with the man's, and snatched his gun, firing wildly at the remaining men. When they fell in bloody heaps to the floor, Maglor dropped the first mate's bullet-riddled body, panting as he made his way to where Erestor lay dazed. Erestor snarled, but took Maglor's proffered hand, and stood. They both turned their eyes, glittering like onyx in the moonlight, to the warped bridge door. The cries and screams were easily heard by the vampires; Maglor looked through the small glass window and into the bridge. He could see about a dozen frightened passengers huddled against a far wall. Erestor growled deep in his throat and pushed Maglor away, gripping the steel door. With a primal cry, he ripped the door from its hinges, and tossed the offending metal aside. The passengers inside the bridge screamed at the sight of the two vampires, and Maglor's ears rang with the sound. "Shut up!" he screamed, and all the passengers stilled, their eyes blank and their faces pale. Erestor moved around the frozen figures, checking the instruments. "All the radios have been destroyed," he said, his voice deep and guttural, the words obscured slightly by his fangs. "The compass has been shot and the helm is locked." Maglor closed his eyes and forced his heart to slow, the hunger to recede. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was once again pewter. "Erestor. We do not know where we are, since they have taken us so far off course. There is no way for us to seek help. The passengers will starve to death, and we will go insane with hunger, assuming this ship does not collide with anything Ulmo chooses to raise in its path." Still lost in his hunger, Erestor regarded Maglor with those glassy black eyes. "What would you suggest we do, Maglor?" he hissed. "I suggest we offer these passengers a painless death, quenching our hunger. We can overfeed, prepare ourselves for a long wait before we reach civilization." When Erestor did not object, which Maglor was expecting, he turned his burning eyes to an auburn-haired woman still dressed in her lacey nightgown. "Come," he said to her. He touched her mind, soothing her fears and altering what her eyes saw as she looked upon him. Her name was Lisa, and she was to join her husband in New York. She would never arrive. Her chocolate eyes drooped, becoming lost in an illusion Maglor created for her. She swooned in his arms, her pulse fluttering with arousal as Maglor projected the vision of him laying her on a satin bed, resting himself comfortably between her thighs, and kissing her neck tenderly. She surrendered completely to the image, the horrors she had witnessed that night fading under the fantasy. He bit her, gentle and sweet, taking care not to pull her from the dream, and she gasped. In the fantasy, he moved inside her, brought her closer and closer to completion with her legs wrapped tightly around his lean waist. As her body shuddered in the vision with orgasm, the body in Maglor's arm trembled on the cusp of death. He released her neck as her heart ceased beating, and allowed her to slip from his arms. She crumpled in a lifeless heap at his feet, but her blood coursed through his body, warming him. Maglor turned to Erestor and was relieved to see the deep brown orbs surrounded by white once more. They could only drain two passengers each before they were bloated with blood. "We cannot continue to feed, Maglor," Erestor warned. "I have not felt nauseous in centuries, but if I try to take one more..." he left the sentence unfinished, knowing that Maglor felt the same. Maglor nodded sadly. The eight passengers still held under Maglor's sway met swift deaths. Each vampire broke necks, soothing the mortals' minds with visions of peace. As the sun rose, they showered, washing the blood from each other's bodies, both lost in their dark thoughts. They dressed in light clothes and launched one of the lifeboats. The sun was dipping low in the sky by the time they boarded the boat. Maglor began rowing toward the setting sun, toward the west, leaving the bloody halls of the Antonia Doria behind.