Slave to a Vampire - Book 1 Catherine Page 2

  “Eat up my captives,” the captain yelled. “We set sail soon enough!”

  Catherine glanced from him to the other man and the ship beside them. “I think we’re switching ships,” she whispered to her brother. “Why would they do that?”

  Liam stared at the tall ship and nearly choked on his bread. “Catherine I think we’re going across the waters,” he whispered in disbelief. “We’re leaving these shores forever.”

  “Across the waters?”

  “West, I’ve heard rumors about these ships sailing across the horizon to a land far away.”

  Catherine wasn’t hungry any more as she stared out over the railing of the ship, into the nothingness beyond. How could they survive a journey beyond the horizon? It wasn’t possible! She was going to die on a ship in the middle of nowhere. This wasn’t how her life was supposed to end. It couldn’t be!

  “Get moving, now,” a sailor said as he suddenly shoved her forward. She reached out for Liam, but the sailor jerked her hand away. “No, males and females separated.”

  “He’s my brother,” Catherine argued.

  “I don’t care, woman. Follow my orders now!”

  Liam tried to reach her again, but the sailor smacked him hard enough to send him flying across the deck. Catherine screamed, but another sailor slapped her face bringing tears to her eyes.

  “Mouths shut! Get in line, move and do what you’re told you little bitch!”

  Catherine opened her mouth then saw the whip coiled in his hands. The sailor gripped it tighter and laughed when he saw her looking. She quickly averted her gaze and followed the other women. They struggled up the wobbly gangplank that spread from one ship across to the other. Catherine looked straight ahead, not wanting to see the waves just feet below them, waiting to pull her under if she fell. When they made it across, she watched as the males were sent below through a hatchway at the far end of the ship while she and the rest of the women were ushered to another. One girl stumbled and fell, she was sobbing so hard that she couldn’t see where she walked. Catherine hurried to get her to her feet as a sailor yelled, letting his whip fall to the deck.

  “What are you stopping for? Move!”

  Catherine kept her gaze lowered and hunkered her body over the young girl to protect her in case the man let the lash fly. Once they were below deck, Catherine started to move away from the girl, but she reached out a hand.

  “Thank you,” the girl said. “I just…I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Catherine pulled her close and hugged her as best she could with her chained hands. She wanted to tell this girl that everything would work out, that they would be returned to their village as it was all a mistake, but Catherine knew better and didn’t want to give the girl false hope.

  “I’m Mary,” she said.

  “Catherine. Did you have any family on board?”

  Mary swallowed hard and Catherine could tell she was trying not to cry again. “No, no one.”

  As the hold was closed off and the women tried to find places to sit that weren’t soiled from previous occupants, Catherine kept hold of Mary. “I’ll be your family then. We’ll get through this together.”

  She felt bad saying such words, not knowing what might lay ahead of them, but as the anchor was raised and the ship began its movements again, Catherine knew the only way any of them were going to get through this was to stick together. They would find strength in each other somehow. Her thoughts turned to her brother Dan. Had he been captured as well or was he now dead? And her mother, where had she disappeared to? She hoped that Liam and Michael were on the same ship and prayed that her reckless brother would not do anything stupid and get himself killed.

  Chapter 3

  Days past, how many Catherine wasn’t sure. She’d tried to keep count, but it was hard just to not get sick most of the time. The seas were rough and unkind to the ship with its many captives. They were only brought up out of the hold once a day and never at the same time as the men. Catherine looked frantically around for her brothers anyway, but deep down she knew she might never see them again.

  When they weren’t up on deck, Catherine spent her time huddled next to Mary, the young fifteen-year-old girl from a village to the north of Kilkenny, where Catherine was from. For the first few nights, the girls barely spoke. Too frightened of what was to come to even form words. Then one night, Mary had woken herself from a fitful sleep and glanced around hopeful, as if she would appear back at home in her bed.

  Catherine knew the feeling. She’d woken up many times praying it had all been a nightmare.

  “When will it ever end?” she groaned, laying her head back against the rough splintered planks.

  “Maybe we’ve died and this is Hell,” Catherine mused, thinking back to all of Father John’s sermons. “Maybe God has decided to punish us.”

  “Then he punished me the night they first attacked and I watched my parents killed,” Mary whispered. “Right before my eyes. Killed like sheep.” Her bright green eyes were suddenly staring at something far away on a distant, dark night. “We were such a wee village. There was no reason to attack us, but they did. Snuck out of the shadows like ghosts.”

  Catherine closed her eyes remembering the attack on her own village. The screams, the heavy stench of smoke on the air and the blood. Mary kept talking, muttering on and on about the horrors she saw.

  “My father, they cut him down when he charged out of our house with a pistol. Sliced his head clean off. And my mother, she screamed and cursed until three men carried her off into the darkness.” Mary’s eyes closed and a tear slipped down her cheek. “I heard her cries until they took me away. But she wasn’t on board when we left.”

  “I think they killed my mother too,” Catherine said. “I never even saw what happened to her.”

  “Probably for the best,” Mary said. “Then you can’t have nightmares about it.”

  Part of Catherine agreed with her, but the other part wanted to know desperately what became of her mother. Why hadn’t she been in the house to begin with? She wanted to think that her mother had somehow survived the attack and was safe. Maybe she got out with several others and they were all rebuilding the village. Catherine knew they were only far-fetched dreams but she clung to them like a blanket.

  “You know it’s funny,” she mused to Mary as the ship rocked back and forth and back and forth until she thought she would lose her mind. “I would have been a married woman by now.”

  “Was the lad a good one?” Mary asked.

  “Hopefully he was better than mine,” a voice on the other side of Catherine said. She hadn’t even noticed another girl was beside her listening. “I saw mine cut down in the attack. Good riddance to him.”

  Mary gasped at the woman’s words as she leaned forward and shoved her dirty blond hair from her face. “That is a terrible thing to say about your dead husband!”

  The other woman leaned forward too and smirked. Her pale blue eyes narrowed to slits as she said, “Not when the bastard used me as his personal hitting post for three years. No, I was happy to see him go.”

  Catherine wasn’t sure why, but she started laughing. She laughed long and loudly…she couldn’t stop and was holding her side, aching from the use of muscles she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The other woman joined in until they were both cackling like old hags while Mary looked on confused.

  “I’m Charlotte,” the woman said and held out her hand.

  “Catherine. And this is Mary. I am sorry it seems you fell from one bad life into another.”

  “Life is always full of its ups and downs. At least now before I die I can say I went on an adventure in the belly of a great beast, across the vast waters, and landed on a faraway shore where I met a handsome lord. We fell madly in love and lived happily ever after in his mansion,” she said then sighed. “That is the story I am going to tell myself every day of this God forsaken journey.”

  Catherine smiled, closing her eyes to picture such a future.
If only that was what would happen. There was always a glimmer of hope that they weren’t going to be taken somewhere dreadful. It was a very tiny glimmer that grew dimmer every day they were out to sea. None of the women seemed to have any ideas as to where they were headed. Who would want a ship full of young men and women? Catherine had grown up on stories of people being kidnapped and taken away in the night, but she’d never learned where they actually wound up.

  She just knew they never came home.

  When the last bit of laughter died down and the smile faded from Catherine’s face, she wondered how her brother Liam was holding up. He was a tough lad, but he was impulsive to a fault. She prayed that he would survive the journey and they would be reunited again when they landed.

  A sharp cry cut through her thoughts as Charlotte groaned next to her and muttered. “Not again.” Shaking from the rocking of the ship, Charlotte got to her feet and found her way around the other women in the hold. Curious, Catherine followed her and Mary too.

  At first, Rose’s whimpering and constant crying was annoying, but she really couldn’t blame the girl. She had no one left to look out for her and though Catherine was alone in this hold, she at least still had a living sibling.

  “Rose, we talked about this,” Charlotte was saying quietly. “You can’t keep getting on like this. It’s not good for you.”

  “Just kill me now and be done with it,” she sobbed.

  Catherine peered around Charlotte to see a girl around her age with long, tangled red hair and eyes that were filled with tears as they darted back and forth. Her whole body shook as she rocked herself, crying as if she would never be able to stop.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Mary asked, and Catherine hurried to shush her.

  “It’s alright, Mary,” Charlotte said. “This is Rose. She’s taken this all a bit harder than the rest of us.”

  “I can’t do this, I just can’t,” Rose whispered. “I don’t want to be here!”

  “Look around us Rose, do you really think any of the hundred or so women in this stinking hell hole want to be here?” Charlotte said sarcastically as she sat down beside Rose and held her close.

  Catherine and Mary sat in front and reached out to rest their hands comfortingly on her arms. “We’re all here together, though. You’re not alone.”

  Rose glanced around at their faces and Catherine could see a bit of the panic slipping away. But she could tell the girl was weak minded. She’d seen one like her before in their village. The girl had lost her entire family to sickness. Father John had tried to help her through it, but the pain had been too much and the girl had died of a shattered heart. If the other women did not find a way to pull Rose out of this darkness, she would die before they ever reached their destination.

  After a while the four girls drifted off to sleep, still holding onto one another as the waves rocked the ship, moving them ever closer to where destiny awaited them. Catherine struggled to keep her eyes opened, but they slid closed and she dreamed of home again, the green fields in the morning and the barley that surrounded their village. She wanted nothing more than to be home again and feel the soft earth beneath her fingers. It was all she could hope for now.

  More days passed and the women fell into the same daily routine, numb to all else around them. Several women fell sick, coughing and hacking, crying out for mercy day and night. At first they had torn at Catherine’s heart, but after a few more days, weeks, she just wanted them to die and be done with it. They were horrible thoughts and she hated herself for them. When the women did finally pass, the sailors would crawl down into the hold and take their thin and wasted bodies up above to be thrown overboard along with the buckets of waste. It was like nothing Catherine had ever thought to experience.

  Once a day they were brought up above to eat the tiniest amount of food possible, if it could even be called food. It was a hard and stale bread of sorts, barely filling their stomachs. Catherine ate what she was given. Water was sparse as well. A few large gulps and that was it for the entire day. Every time the ladle was taken away from her, Catherine wanted to follow it and drink the whole bucket, but she saw the other women around her were just as desperate. They were all in various degrees of starving and sickness. She wondered if the captain even cared that half his cargo might be dead before they made it across the ocean.

  She only wished they were able to see the others, but the men were always brought up after the women had been returned to their hold.

  Catherine took what she could get from their time above, letting the harsh sea wind blow across her face. Some days it chilled her to the bone, but it kept her alert, let her know she was still alive.

  Though like Rose, she was starting to wish she was dead. This was not a life. This was merely surviving and as their time above deck ended once more, she wondered if maybe it was even worth it to try and stay alive.

  Chapter 4

  A hand reached out in the dark to grab Catherine’s, startling her from her dreams. “Catherine?”

  “What is it, Mary?”

  “I can’t sleep anymore,” she whispered. “All I see are their faces, leering at me from the darkness. I don’t want to see that.” She started to shake and Catherine knew the poor girl was crying. It was starting to happen to them all. One by one, they were falling into despair and misery, just like Rose. That girl hadn’t spoken in weeks.

  “Think of something that makes you happy,” Catherine said.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  Catherine shifted closer and put her arm around Mary’s shoulders. “Try. It’s the only way you’ll get through this alive.”

  Mary nodded against her shoulder and moved in closer. “Is that what you do? You think of the man you were supposed to wed?”

  She started to say yes, but then realized her thoughts hadn’t turned to Michael as of late, but another young man she’d fallen in love with; one she’d dreamed would take her away from her poor village life. She was not in love with Michael and was fairly certain he did not love her either. There’d been another girl he’d wanted in the village, but she’d already been promised. Well, not anymore. Catherine did not recall seeing that girl on board the ship. Her body was probably in a grave somewhere back along the coast of home or it had been burnt to ashes in the fire that night.

  “Catherine?”

  “Sorry, Mary. No, it was not Michael I was dreaming of.”

  “What…do you love another then?”

  Catherine couldn’t see any point in denying it so she nodded. “Yes. I love another. Charles. I have loved him for a long time and I do believe that he loved me too.”

  “Why were you not going to marry him then?”

  She shrugged as she remembered back to the conversation with her mother about it being time to find a husband. Charles was the son of a wealthy farmer and of English descent. There was no chance he would be allowed to wed a poor Irish peasant, no matter how much they cared for each other. Her mother had arranged for Catherine to wed Michael instead. He was a good man and friendly. Catherine knew he would take care of her if they were to be together. Despite what her heart wanted, she did not have a choice in the matter. It was either agree to marry Michael, or not marry at all.

  “It was an arranged marriage,” she finally said. “To another lad, Michael. He is a sweet young man, but not the man I loved. Charles was of a higher class than I. There was no chance I’d be allowed to wed him.”

  Mary sighed and Catherine felt her slump against her shoulder. “I wish I had been betrothed to someone. Had a lad to dream about.”

  Catherine put her arm around her. “Thoughts of Charles help me get through the nights.”

  That, and thoughts of home, lately it was all she’d been dreaming about. What her life might have been if the village hadn’t been raided. She would have wedded Michael and been living as his wife now, maybe even be with their first child on the way. It was all any of the other girls could dream about…having a family of their own. Cath
erine had sworn she would teach her children, girls and boys alike, to read and write as she could. It was not taught usually, but she had not been raised in normal circumstances.

  A famine had hit home hard and though she’d only been a wee child, she remembered the hunger pains, watching her mother cry and worry day and night as she carried her twin brothers in her belly. Her father did what he could to find them food, but everyone in the village struggled to survive. Catherine had only learned of why her father had died when it came time for her to wed Michael. She’d shared her fears with her mother of marrying a man she did not love or long for. How could that make a marriage as loving as her mother’s and father’s had been? But Margaret had sat her eldest child down and told her what her father did to save them all.

  “Catherine, my daughter, there was a time when I did not love your father.”

  “But how can that be?” Catherine had asked. “I have seen the way he looked at you when I was little. How much you laughed together.”

  Margaret smiled, “I grew to love your father after all he did for us. He worked hard to provide a roof over our heads and food for us. During the famine, your father let himself starve so we would not go hungry.” She’d hung her head as tears slid down her cheeks. “He sacrificed himself to save me and the babies I was carrying, to save you. How could I not love a man with such a heart as he had?”

  Catherine had never known what her father did for them. She just thought he grew ill like so many others in the village. She respected Michael already and if her mother could marry a man she did not love, then she could too. It was her duty as a daughter. And though Michael did not love Catherine, she knew he respected her, mostly admired her for being able to read and write. After her father died, Father John had helped raise her and the twins, giving lessons to Catherine until she could read the bible front to back, and write for others in the village. He also taught her how to balance the money ledgers. It had helped her stand out and bring in coin when her mother struggled to find work.