Keep in mind as you read that there can be no light without the darkness.
Thank you to everyone who has reviewed the story so far.
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After they passed the mouth of the harbor and turned towards Anchorage, Mick stood and offered Josef a glass of blood
After they passed the mouth of the harbor and turned towards Anchorage, Mick stood and offered Josef a glass of blood. He took it reluctantly and drank it slowly, like he was forcing himself not to vamp out and gulp down every last drop. The effort was a visible strain as he sat the half empty glass on the low counter next to him.
"Drink the rest of it," Mick commanded. He'd been back in Josef's presence for less than an hour and he was already tired of this crap.
"In a little while," he said as he sat in the captain's chair and looked over a computerized map of the area.
Mick stood and moved next to the other man, picking up the rest of the blood and holding it in front of his face. "Now, Josef. Drink it. I need you sharp, not half starved and weak. Beth needs you strong too."
"You don't get to order me around on my ship, Mick. I'm in charge here, not you," Josef said calmly, like he was commenting on the presence of the sea outside, his eyes never leaving the bow of the ship.
Setting the glass back down on the counter, Mick stepped back a foot. "Fine. Rule of the sea, I get it. But when we get back to port…" Not bothering to finish the sentence, Mick stepped forward again and grabbed Josef around the neck and drove a short wooden stake into his heart, pulling him down onto the floor of the small room. Josef's paralyzed arm pulled the helm sharply to the left on the way down, and the ship listed to port.
"I'm sorry it had to come to this, brother, but the pity party is over. Beth doesn't have time for your self flagellation, and neither do I. It's time for you to get your shit together." Mick fished from his pocket a large metal syringe and filled it with the blood from the second glass, injecting it directly into Josef's carotid artery, refilling and injecting his neck again. It was like Mick could actually see the other vamp's frame filling out before his eyes, the muscles returning to their normal size. His color was no longer ashen, and the small cuts on his hands were healing.
Jack's running footsteps were audible and he was yelling out to Josef. "Captain?! Joe?! What the hell?" He burst through the door to the wheelhouse and his eyes widened at the sight before him… the stake protruding from Josef's chest, the syringe, the blood.
"Relax, Jack." Mick flashed his vampire eyes and fangs at him. "Take the helm and get us back on course. You can do that, can't you?"
The younger man was fixed to the spot, fighting with his fear just to avoid running, his heart rate soaring, but he nodded. Mick decided that Jack may know something about vampires, but he was clearly in uncharted waters. Gathering up the supplies, Mick threw Josef over his shoulder and headed out of the wheelhouse. "Just keep us from grounding, or running into any really large rogue waves. Joe will be back at the wheel in about twenty minutes if he's not dumping my body overboard. This is just sort of a tough-love thing between friends," Mick said carefully, finally giving up trying to explain the situation to a human who looked like a deer in the headlights. The boy was bringing Josef blood for God's sake, had he never seen "Joe" vamped out?
Once the two vampires were out of the way, Jack ran to the wheel and righted the ship, the looked back to make sure there was no one else behind him.
Six more injections on the galley table and Josef almost looked like himself again, except for the beard and the stake in his heart. The puncture wounds from the hypodermic were healing faster each time Mick withdrew it, and he hoped that Josef was well fed enough for some of his sanity to return. A quick trip up to the wheelhouse verified that the ship was back on course, though Jack still looked shaken, and Mick murmured a few words of apology and encouragement before grabbing two more bags of blood from the refrigerator there.
Another unit of AB negative later, Mick was impressed at just how much blood Josef had really been down. He was surprised the other vamp had been able to control himself around the humans. The cold air here had to help, but still.
When Josef finally appeared healthy, even if it had been from feeding the hard way, Mick leaned his face over his friend's so Josef could see him clearly. "Look, Josef, I'll make you a deal. Once you and Beth are safely back in L.A., and we've all had a chance to talk, if you still want to die I'll kill you myself. Quickly and as painlessly as I can, I'll take your head and you won't have to suffer anymore. But I won't allow you to kill yourself by degrees, penance or not. You're still my friend, dammit."
With that Mick pulled the stake free and backed up, expecting Josef's wrath to be legendary. But he just laid there for a moment longer before slowly getting to his feet and straightening his clothes along with his dignity. His face was empty as he went to the counter and emptied the remaining bag of blood into a glass and downed the contents, not giving Mick so much as a glance. When the glass was washed and set upside down to dry, Josef walked towards the door, adjusting his jacket to cover the gaping hole in his shirt made by the stake. He stopped there in the doorway, just below the stairs, but didn't turn around.
"You have a deal," he said quietly, with no hint of sarcasm in his voice, before heading back up to the wheelhouse. Mick collapsed onto the bench seat and ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. This was not going as well as he'd hoped.
Mick stood out on the deck for hours, appreciating the quiet, the solace of the cold night. Except for the low hum of the engine and the waves hitting the side of the ship, it was devoid of sound. Devoid of all the sounds of the city that he hadn't realized he'd become so habituated to over the last fifty years. He could see why Josef had run here, but not why he had run in the first place. Now did not seem like the time to bring it up.
Jack was nervously waiting twenty feet behind him… Mick could hear his heartbeat increase.
"Did you need something, Jack?" Mick turned around and smiled his best you can trust me smile.
"Mr. St. John, I just wanted you to know that I can keep a secret. My family's kept Joe's secret for four generations, and you don't need to worry about me telling anyone what happened. I know secrecy is important to… your people."
"Don't worry, I wasn't going to kill you over it. I knew you were already aware of what Joe was because I could smell the blood you brought him. Just please continue to keep the secret, if you wouldn't mind," Mick said reassuringly.
Jack suddenly looked more relaxed, and joined Mick at the rail, where they both watched the moon setting at the horizon, large and almost red. "My family's mostly Inuit, you know. Joe saved my grandmother's life when she was a child. It was a cold January just like it is now, and she was walking back from fishing with her catch when a polar bear and her nearly grown cub caught the scent of her and the fish. As soon as she realized what was happening she dropped the fish and ran, but the bears wanted her more than they wanted the fish. Joe… he was called Samuel then, got between her and the bears, snapped both of their necks with his bare hands just as my great-grandmother came over the hill, having heard her daughter's cries. There was no way to hide what had happened, or how his skin healed within minutes where he'd been bitten."
Mick listened in silence to the man's story. For all the bluster and talk of not having morals, Josef had done a surprising number of good deeds in his life. Mick couldn't help but feel like he was hearing a story that had been handed down through the generations unchanged, each word memorized by rote and deliberately not embellished.
"So my grandmother and great-grandmother agreed to keep his secret, and feed him as they could. Most of their family gave him blood, and Samuel was always kind to them, even bringing in larger game for them when my great-grandfather died. He only stayed a few years, but my grandmother's sketch of him was shown to each of us when we turned fourteen and were considered old enough to feed him if he ever returned. I knew who he was as soon as he came to town. We keep his secret but do not forget. He saved at least three fishermen from death right there in the harbor, and two more at sea. I hope that someday he will return again."
Mick could only nod once and hope that he could do as the man asked. Jack sounded far older than his twenty-five years, and it felt both strange and right that he tell that story out there, in the middle of the empty sea. There didn't seem to be anything else to say as Jack walked off towards the galley, leaving Mick alone with his thoughts, and Josef alone with his, fifty feet away where he'd been watching the two of them.
