“I,” della Torre went on stoically, “will help you take your baggage onto the boat.”
“You’re too kind,” said Josephine in English as they started across the dock.
The boat was about thirty feet long, with apple-shaped bows and a leeboard like a wooden wing on each side; the mast was hinged and lying back across the stern, and Crawford could see that it would carry a gaff-rigged mainsail and a jib. He admitted to himself that it did look serviceable.
Within minutes the mast had been raised and locked in place, and as soon as the baggage and the four passengers were aboard, the lines were cast off and the sails were raised and the land-side leeboard was swivelled down into the water, and the boat began angling out away from the dock.
Josephine had gone straight to one of the narrow bunks below the deck, but Crawford refilled his flask and sat with it by the starboard rail, and he watched the village recede behind them.
Today was Monday. They had left Lerici on Saturday night, and already he had spent more than half of the two thousand lire Byron had given them … and lost Byron’s carriage and horses.
But the brandy made him optimistic. With luck, he thought, we’ve also lost our pursuers, both human and inhuman.
All afternoon the boat beat on down the Po, between green fields dotted with white cattle, and at sunset Josephine came tottering up onto the deck.
Della Torre stared at her for a moment, then walked across the deck to where Crawford sat. “She’s bitten,” he said.
Crawford nodded drunkenly. “We’re going to get her unbitten.”
“Why do you go toward the sea, then? The Alps, I’m told, are where one goes to shed the vampires.”
“We’re going to do it in Venice.”
“Venice?” Della Torre shook his head. “Venice is their stronghold! That’s where their king is supposed to be living.”
Josephine walked up and without a word took Crawford’s flask and drank deeply from it. “God,” she said in English, “I’m—” She shook her head, staring at the distant riverbank.
“I know,” said Crawford. “I’ve felt it too. Fight it—for the child’s sake if not your own.”
She shivered, but nodded and took another sip.
“Talk Italian,” said della Torre. For the first time, Crawford heard real uneasiness in the man’s voice.
The sky was darkening ahead, and clouds curled solidly in the sky.
At dusk the man from the docks—whose name, Crawford gathered, was Sputo, the Italian for spit—started to tack in toward the lights of a city, but della Torre told him to keep going, to sail all night. The man shrugged and obeyed, only remarking that if they were to go on they’d have to kindle up running lights. Della Torre walked around the boat with a firepot, carefully lighting the lamps that swung on chains out over the water.
The wind had picked up, and the boat was scudding along under only the half-reefed mainsail.
Crawford was in the bow, fingering the grip of the pistol under his jacket and watching the turbulent sky—but he was nevertheless taken by surprise when the thing struck.
Aloud, musical rushing sound slashed the air like a sword across the strings of a harp, and then the deck was heavily struck and resounding hollowly—the boat was jarred sideways with a loud crack and a ripple of popping rigging, and when Crawford scrambled around and looked back toward the stern the hair stood up on the back of his neck.
A translucent human figure, a woman, was rising slowly in the dark sky above the mast, its long hair streaming out behind it like the fine tentacles of a jellyfish. The long glassy arms and legs were flailing, and Crawford realized that the creature had rebounded upward after hitting the deck, and was now about
to dive into it again. The face of the thing was contorted with idiot rage.
Della Torre and Sputo had scrambled to the stern and were cowering there, though della Torre had drawn a pistol; Josephine was standing beside the mast, staring up into the face of the woman in the air. It seemed to Crawford that Josephine’s head was canted, that she was looking upward through her glass eye.
Crawford drew his pistol and aimed up at the inhumanly beautiful form, wishing the boat would stop rocking and that his hands were steadier, and that he had a few more pistols with him—and then he let out the breath he’d been holding, and squeezed the trigger.
The explosion jolted his wrist and the long yellow-blue muzzle-flash blinded him, but over the ringing in his ears he heard the harsh metallic music of the thing’s scream.
Crawford rolled away to the other side of the bow as the air shook with the firing of della Torre’s gun.
Again the boat was struck. Crawford got to his knees on the slanting deck, blinking furiously to rid his eyes of the red dazzle-spot that stained his vision.
Dimly he could make out the inhuman woman’s form; it was contorting in midair only a couple of yards over the deck, its fine hair spread out around its head like a flexing crown. One perfect leg was stretched behind the body and its clawed left hand was slowly stretching out toward Josephine’s face.
Josephine was just staring at the approaching hand.
Crawford sobbed a curse and lunged aft at the thing, but even as he took the first of the two steps that would propel him uselessly into the creature he saw Sputo draw a knife from behind his collar and throw it.
The woman exploded in an icy gust that punched Crawford backward off his feet and filled his nostrils with the smell of cold clay.
Crawford wanted nothing more than to lie on the deck; but he rolled over and got up onto his knees and then, gripping the rail, he stood up.
The woman-shaped thing was gone—a wisp of fog out over the water might have been what was left of her. The boat had lost headway and was heeled around almost perpendicular to the current, and it disoriented him to look aft and dimly see the shoreline beyond the stern.
Josephine had sat down against the mast; Sputo walked up next to her, and he crouched to pick up the knife he had thrown. He grinned at Crawford and held the blade up. “Ferrobreccia,” he said.
Iron breach, thought Crawford. Eisener breche.
Della Torre barked some harsh order at Sputo, who shrugged, tucked his knife back behind his collar, and went back to the stern.
For the next ten minutes everyone, even the subdued Josephine, was kept busy lowering the sail and splicing and repairing lines and bailing water out of the hold. At last della Torre took the helm and had Crawford raise the gaff-spar halfway, and the sail filled without snapping the rigging, and the bow began ponderously to come around into the wind.
Crawford was crouched by the broken-off leeboard, where until a moment ago he’d been ready to release the runner line if the sail or the gaff-spar had looked overstrained, and della Torre now left the helm to Sputo and walked over and leaned on the rail near Crawford.
“She,” he said, nodding toward Josephine, who was up at the bow, staring ahead, “summoned that thing. To kill us.”
Crawford laughed weakly. “You know that’s not true.”
“How do I know?” Della Torre’s tone was one of token anger, and when Crawford looked up at him the only expression he could see in the man’s eyes was haunted bewilderment. “The thing came to her, was reaching for her.”
“Not to do her any good. If Sputo’s knife-cast had missed, I’m pretty sure my … my wife’s face would have been torn off.”
Della Torre shook his head. “It came to us—something drew it.” He heaved himself away from the rail and went back to talk to Sputo.