Page 58 of Death Dance

SEVENTEEN

Le Havre was a jewel of his empire, one without compare.

In order to give Breckenan sufficient time to fall into our trap, it took us two weeks and a day to cross the Atlantic Ocean and enter the British Channel to reach Le Havre, France. Some of the delays involved scenic detours to view islands close to shore and partake of Scottish, Irish, and British coastlines before we headed to the heart and soul of my father’s cruise operations in Europe.

According to Eugene, my father had dealings in every port in the world capable of handling a cruise liner—and by dealings, he either owned part of the port, owned significant chunks of the tourism industry in the port city, or otherwise dipped his hand in every part of tourism he could.

According to Alisander, my father was in the business of bringing people joy whenever he could, and he filled that need through offering travelers the best vacations possible.

In Le Havre, my father owned it all from the cargo port to the cruise terminal, working with the French government to keep operations smooth. Sometime during my father’s long life, he’d gained French citizenship, and he operated the primary port on behalf of the public, ensuring safety and reliable transit and commerce.

Under his careful eye, Le Havre had weathered two world wars, numerous conflicts, and emerged strong and healthy every time. Damage from the wars had been repaired in record time, allowing trade to flow to Paris with minimal interruptions.

To my father, Le Havre was a jewel of his empire, one without compare.

Benoit basked in the glory of heading to the land of his birth, and he bounced around. In his excitement, he forgot how to speak English, talking with our father in French while my other brothers snickered. The crew had kicked my father off the bridge so the pilot could do his job in peace.

Rather than bring a fight to the cruise terminal, my father had directed the pilot to bring us into a dock meant for massive freighters. That way, when Breckenan did come at us, civilians would be safely out of the reach of the preternatural scum we hunted.

I appreciated his care and desire to protect the innocent.

I also appreciated his awareness that it would be more difficult to damage the cargo pier compared to the cruise terminal.

He’d had as many of the cranes removed as possible under the guise of replacement and maintenance during our voyage.

My father muttered curses, which boiled down the names of religious relics in French.

“They’re weird,” I commented to Alisander, shaking my head at the insanity. “Any news on our prey?”

“He’s here, waiting for us to dock,” he reported. “Our contacts on shore report they are forty strong, and we have a few witches who are identifying those who have been preternaturally influenced. Those will be kidnapped if at all possible and freed from the enchantments. I can’t promise how well things will work out for them, but that’s the only mercy we can afford. If we can take those specific people alive, we do.”

“How will we know which ones were ensorcelled?” I asked, scowling.

Like everyone else aboard my ship, I was armed and dangerous. In addition to my javelin, the bowl, and my new opal stake, I’d brought out my strongest stakes for the venture in addition to a handful of new ones I’d carved from the apple tree.

With some help from the rest of my family and Emerick, we’d managed to carve almost five hundred stakes from the ruins of the tree. While mine were the most potent, the others were capable of stopping any vampire dead.

I wondered at that; age supposedly mattered when it came to stakes.

My apple tree had, for whatever reason, broken the rules.

I suspected I was the cause, although I had no idea what I had done to the tree. The why seemed obvious enough to me.

Above all, I wanted Breckenan dead and gone so I could move on with the rest of my life.

“And the bystanders at the pier?”

“There aren’t any,” Eugene assured me. “The local broods worked with law enforcement, and before Breckenan arrived yesterday, the locals were tipped off about a rather nasty preternatural event underway. The wise left. The rest have been sharpening their stakes. All those people down there? They’re here for the same reason we are—and that fool of a vampire doesn’t have a clue.”

Emerick grumbled something under his breath before saying, “Or he’s so confident in his victory that he doesn’t care.”

“Oh, he’s definitely confident of his victory. That’s how this one operates. He just doesn’t expect you, some middling vampire who prefers hunting money over blood, to be capable of organizing anything of significance. From my understanding, he thinks you just bought a basic room aboard this ship before it departed.”

I bristled. “Excuse me?”

My brother laughed at me. “It’s not my fault how Breckenan thinks. I know better, you definitely know better, and you’re lucky our father agrees he’s not just some middling vampire incapable of doing anything of significance. Breckenan is going to spring his attack as soon as the gangway is in place, and they’ll probably just jump from shore onto the boat, expecting to surprise us. Frankly spoken, it’s going to be a slaughter.” My brother peered over the edge of the ship into the dark waters below. “There are sharks down there.”

As I’d spotted some suspicious dorsal fins earlier, I agreed with him. “I’m making a point of not going into the water. I don’t even know what types of sharks live around here.”