Demeter

Standing on the deck, gazing out over the waves, the predator sensed movement and vanished in an instant. The crew of this ship, small though it was, were in numbers great enough that the predator might have trouble, should any know of his kind. It was likely that they would have some knowledge; sailors had ever been a superstitious lot, and this was a crew from Russia, close enough to his home to have heard tales aplenty. Ten days ago, they had left the port at Varna, heading to Whitby.

The crewman grumbled as he walked the deck. The predator recognised him, an uncouth sort that nobody would miss. Darkness reached out to the crewman, fed from his veins, the blood pulsing into the predator’s mouth in nourishing bursts of ecstasy; ecstasy the crewman shared, until the last drop was gone. The predator wiped his chin free of gore and gently pushed the still standing yet emptied carcass over the side and into the sea. The crewman’s body slipped under with no fanfare, nobody to witness his exit from this reality.

With a self-satisfied grin the predator made his silent way to the cargo hold. A moment’s pause to consider, he picked his refuge for the day and in the blink of an eye the predator was gone. Only a thin mist, light grey with a hint of a sickly green, which seeped into the chosen crate where the predator regained his physical, corporeal form. With a sigh of contentment, he fell into a deep slumber. Deeper than slumber. The predator fell into true Death while he slept, nestled in the earth of his homeland.

As he returned to a semblance of Life, the predator heard shouting. It was, he reasoned, the captain bemoaning the mysterious loss of the crewman. Rather, once his ears focussed on the noise, it was the captain berating the remaining seven crewman for believing that some mysterious presence was responsible for what he was sure was a simple matter of the man tripping and falling overboard, perhaps knocking himself senseless on the trip rendering himself unable to call for aid from the only other crewman on night watch. The crew grumbled but accepted their captain’s explanation.

The predator grinned in his crate. The sun had vanished behind the horizon once again, and he was once more at his full power. He felt his face, wondering as the lines that showed his age had faded once again. A common enough occurrence when prey was plentiful. Part of him wished for one of those ‘foul baubles of men’s vanity’ as he only had centuries’ old portraits to remind him of his youthful appearance. He had no desire to know what his older guise looked like.

He reached out with his senses, seeking the rodents that he knew resided within this ship. Crushing the will of the first rat he found, he forced his own consciousness into the unfortunate creature and forced it topside so that he could get a glance at the weather. The swaying and rolling of the ship were enough to describe the waves motion, and the predator figured that there was a storm. He was right; the rain pelted down in sheets, hard enough that the rodent was soaked almost instantly. Once he removed his consciousness from the rat, its body lay on the deck with a tiny trickle of blood leaking out of an ear. The creature was very dead, having suffered a stroke that destroyed most of the unlucky rodent’s ear.

Moments later, the predator climbed the ladder to the deck to experience the rain in person. He tossed his head back and began to chuckle delightedly; he hadn’t had this much fun in decades. A shout from astern startled him; he’d been spotted even in the pelting rain. Perhaps this crewman just had sharper eyes, or else his laughter had alerted him. In any event, the predator decided to retreat back down the ladder and mistily slid into another crate.

He resolved to stay awake during the day, listening in case of threats to his safety and security. The crewman convinced the captain that he had indeed seen a stranger onboard, leading to a ship wide search. Perhaps, he reasoned, he should stay down below for the time being. A few nights, perhaps.

A week later the predator was ravenous, his visage showing signs of aging once more, he could bear it no longer. He silently slid above as the lone crewman not snoring below walked the deck. He waited for the man to turn, catching his eye. The sailor stared, slack-jawed, at him and the predator beckoned. The man walked forward slowly, in a daze. He leaned his head over to one side, and the predator leaned in, his fangs easily piercing flesh and drawing the precious blood from the sailor’s veins. He’d been drinking, this man. And a hint of… was that opium? Yes, it was indeed. The predator grinned drunkenly; he was in for an interesting couple of hours.

After this second disappearance, the predator learned the next day through disposable rodent, the crew set a double watch. Feeding would be difficult under such conditions. He considered attacking the captain, as the man would be the only one likely to ever be alone, but he was unsure as to whether he needed to be invited within the man’s cabin. He felt that he probably would, and it was unlikely that he, a stranger and stowaway, would receive such an invite.

Another few days switching between boxes it would be, he decided. It was an easy enough task; if he desperately needed sustenance there were always rats, unpleasant though they were. However, he had not lived through several centuries without learning caution. Some unpleasantness was better than being discovered and dumped overboard or set alight and burned to the Final Death. He idly wondered whether the Law governing his passage over running water would apply if he sank to the bottom of the ocean. With a shudder that sent ripples through his precious home earth he hoped he would never learn.

He had a thought, reaching out with his senses again, this time to the clouds above. Perhaps he could… Yes! He had consumed enough of the liquid of life that his powers had grown; he filled the clouds with rage and hatred and bent them to his will, sending lightning and rain against the Demeter for the next few days. His goal simply to bring the crew to such exhaustion that they dropped their guard and made mistakes.

After a few days he heard through the rodent-vine that the crew was tired enough that they could no longer hold a double watch. His mastery over the weather was great, but after four days of it he could hold it up no longer without feeding. Without the blood. He resolved that tonight he would feast; he picked the crewman on watch off, simply sneaking up behind him, clubbing him unconscious and draining him, then he set his sights, and teeth, onto the mate manning the helm. Two more dead bodies over the side later and a much more replete predator sank back below to a most satisfied and satisfying slumber.

The next night, shrouded in fog, the predator emerged again. His overconfidence, often a cause for concern in his youth, had resulted in his emerging just as the crewmember on watch came past. The young man cried out in terror as the predator devoured him and sent his body to the depths, then he sank below once more as surely the remaining crew had heard that scream.

Another man attacked him as his attention was focussed on the simple beauty of his latest slaughter, driving a knife into his back. It hurt, could have seriously injured him had it struck his heart, indeed it severed his spine, but his body functioned according to different rules than the biological in these nights. In agony, the predator took his mist form and retreated below once more.

The next night he prowled the ship, taking the blood of the crewman at the helm this evening. The predator glutted himself and tossed the empty vessel overboard. A noise alerted him this time; he was not going to let his guard down again, not after last night’s attack. He scuttled over the side of the ship, clinging onto the outer hull. A precarious position, but he dug his talons into the wood, digging great gouges into the hull.

He heard the words “Come with me Captain, the sea will save us from Him!” an instant before the man that had attacked him the previous night leaped out and over him into the ocean. The captain called out after him, calling him several different unpleasant names, accusing him of having taken the lives of all the rest of the crew. That nearly made the predator giggle as he mistily made his way back to his slumber. He’d save the captain until they were just about to enter port. He watched as the man made his final log entry, then lashed himself to the helm a crucifix around his neck. The holy image burned in the predator’s vision. Cursing his luck, and the captain, he made his way back below. The man would die soon enough but with that… thing around his neck he was safe.

The predator glanced towards the bow of the Demeter, saw lights behind the fog. Large friendly lights. Welcoming lights.

He sank back into one of his crates of dirt, a predatory grin on his face, fangs overlapping his lower lip. A city of several million people, a never-ending feast, awaited him. But first things would have to come first… some fun. He wanted to ruin whatever remained of the life of that pathetic fool of a lawyer that he’d left behind, with his brides.