With Julie still dangling and thrashing beneath me, I knew my hold on her couldn’t last much longer. As a vampire, she was strong, and although I still had a little strength left in me, it wasn’t enough to keep my grip on the little snake forever.

As what appeared to be the last of the monsters ascended the ramp and arrived on board, I moved closer to the center of the ship where the crowd was thickest. Then, clearing my hoarse throat, I bellowed down, “Hey, folks!”

Each pale face shot upward in unison.

“No!” Julie screamed, her whole body shaking with hysteria. “Please, I beg of you!”

My fingers loosened.

I let go.

She howled as she went plunging downward. But, to my dismay, she did not land where I had intended. The force of her flailing just before I’d let go of her caused her to swerve and miss the center of the crowd. Instead, she fell headfirst into a barrel of water.

Still, it didn’t matter. The pale creatures had watched her dive, and were already lurching toward the barrel. One of them turned the barrel on its side, spilling out its water. Julie went skidding across the deck. She scrambled to her feet, gazing all around her in sheer panic. She had nowhere to run. She was surrounded by the monsters, and they were quickly closing in on her.

Her gaze shot to the sails. I already knew what she was going to do. Dammit. She leapt upward just as one of the monsters reached out to grab her. She got scraped by his claws and only narrowly avoided his fangs aimed for her neck.

I swooped down on her as she attempted to gain a stronger stance on a wooden boom. I grabbed the back of her neck and whacked her head down against the wood, attempting to bring her into submission. I felt ashamed of how much of a struggle it was to fight with her. If I’d had my powers working at full strength, those monsters would already be feasting on her by now.

Just as I had detached her left hand from its hold and was on the verge of pulling away her right hand, a frigid breeze penetrated my skin. It was so piercing, it felt as though it reached through to my very bones.

I sensed a presence. A cold, dark presence. A presence that made my stomach churn.

I paused, momentarily forgetting my struggle with Julie and allowing her to regain her hold on the boom. I was too preoccupied by the vision unfolding before me on the deck. A strange black mist had settled over it, emerging from nowhere. It swirled and began forming a denser fog.

Even the monsters became distracted from Julie. Those who’d been impatient for me to loosen Julie and drop her down to them had been on the verge of leaping up, but now the focus of each of them was on the black vapor. Their faces were blank as ever, though I could have sworn that I caught a glimpse of curiosity behind them.

The black fog, now so thick that I could no longer see through it at all, took on a reddish tinge. Then came a bone-chilling voice. The voice of an Elder.

“Children,” it hissed. It was addressing the monsters, I could only assume. Could they even understand it?

The dark, fluid smoke dipped down and engulfed the nearest creature to it. The Elder is attempting to inhabit him. The monster let out a guttural snarl and began shaking his head violently from side to side. He dropped to the floorboards on all fours, arching his back like a cat, his hissing and snarling intensifying. A moment later, the Elder reappeared. The black fog drifted out from the body and floated upward. The Elder let out a long, agitated hiss. Its attempt to possess the monster had apparently gone in vain.

There was a pause, and then the smoke moved down again, attempting to consume a different creature this time. But as before, the Elder was expelled after barely a few seconds had passed.

Who was this Elder?

Based on the noises it was making, it was growing more and more angry and frustrated. Then it stopped trying to enter the creatures’ bodies and instead drifted higher, until it arrived at Julie’s level. Just as I’d been frozen in my spot, Julie had also been gaping at the Elder. It would have been wiser for her to use this distraction to attempt to escape, but it seemed that she was too taken by the scene to think of it.

Now that the Elder had arrived right next to her, her face grew paler than it already was, if that was even possible. She gaped at the Elder’s ethereal form.

“Basilius?” Julie breathed.

“You failed me, girl.” His voice turned to ice.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, her knuckles stark white as they gripped the boom.

Basilius moved closer to her, and before she could even leap away, his mist enveloped her body. Her eyes bulged and her lips parted, shock flashing across her face. And then the Elder emerged again, almost as fast as he had apparently been forced to exit from the monsters beneath us. “You see,” Basilius continued, “the Novak boy was our only hope. He was the one I was meant to inhabit and now he is lost to us forever.”

“What?” Julie and I gasped at once.

“The vial,” he hissed. “He drank from the vial you left in his pocket. His body is now useless! He is dead!”

Benjamin. Dead. The words hit me like a punch in the gut. My already wrecked heart had just been ripped further.

And what vial? I hadn’t even been aware that Benjamin was carrying a vial. He’d never mentioned it to me… then again, he’d never talked to me much. He only ever spoke to me when he needed to.

Did he really commit suicide?

Despite the way he shoved aside my advances and made it painfully obvious that he neither liked me nor wanted me around, I couldn’t help but become attached to him during the time we spent together. I might have even loved him. Tears heated the corners of my already sore and bloodshot eyes.