Vampirates: Tide of Terror Read Free Page A

but rather a mask. This was just one of the ways in which the reality of the Vampirate ship contrasted with the words of the shanty. The ship was as mysterious as she might have anticipated. But it certainly wasn’t the place of unalloyed horror that everyone expected. At least, it hadn’t been for her.
    “Wasn’t it a terrible place?” one or other of the pirates would ask her each and every day. “What was the worst thing that you endured?” was another popular question. And “What were they like, those demons ?”
    Faced with these questions, Grace had decided the best strategy was to say, “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.” That generally did the trick. Poor Grace, they thought. Of course, she doesn’t want to conjure up memories of that awful place.
    This was far easier than trying to persuade them that she had actually been treated well on board that ship. The masked captain had seemed a benevolent creature, with Grace’s best interests at heart. And though the Vampirates did — of course — drink blood, they did so in a measured fashion at the weekly Feast. And the blood was supplied by donors, who were treated well in exchange for their gift. She had told Connor about this, but even he had struggled to understand how she could be so accepting of it all. The mere thought of blood-taking — or “the sharing” as the Vampirates called it — filled him with horror. Grace smiled. As tough as Connor might appear to his pirate comrades, the very thought of blood made him nauseous. It was a good thing, she reflected, that it was she who had found herself on the Vampirate ship and he on the pirate vessel — and not the other way around!
    As strange as it sounded, Grace had made good friends on the Vampirate ship. Why, the very clothes she was wearing had been given to her by Darcy Flotsam — the ship’s figure-head by day and, in her own words, “figure of fun by night.”
    Sitting down on her narrow bed, Grace drew back the thin curtain over her porthole. Outside, the ocean was dazzling blue. It made her think — as she so often did — of Lorcan Furey. He was the “young” Vampirate who had rescued her from drowning. He had guarded her on the ship and, when the pirates came to find her, he had protected her one last time. She had left the ship in much more of a rush than she would have liked. She hadn’t even had the chance to say a proper good-bye to Lorcan. She had lost track of him after Connor arrived. Her brother’s arrival had been such a surprise!
    Of course, Lorcan must have headed inside the ship as daylight fell. But, when Grace went to his cabin to bid him farewell, he wasn’t there. She had made Connor wait while she searched the rest of the ship for him, but she hadn’t found him. Even the Vampirate captain was unable to tell her where Lorcan might be. Finally, she could stall Connor no more. Grace said her good-byes to the Vampirate captain and then returned to her cabin one last time. She took a small case of possessions — including the notebooks from her cabin and some of Darcy’s cast-off clothes — and headed back up to the deck to depart.
    When she had unpacked the case in her cabin on The Diablo later, she had discovered a small wooden casket that she didn’t remember packing. There was a small cloth bundle inside. As she unwrapped it, a small note-card fell out. Written in a familiar scrawl were the words:
Dear Grace,
Something to remember me by.
Travel safe!
Your true friend,
Lorcan Furey
    Grace’s heart was beating fast as she lifted the card. Just the sight of Lorcan’s scrawled signature was enough to move her. But, folded within the cloth, lay an even greater shock. For there was Lorcan’s Claddagh ring. She remembered the first time she had seen it, as he’d brushed a stray hair from her wet face, after rescuing her from drowning.
    Now she looked down at the ring — at the strange icon of the hands clasping a skull, a small crown set upon