Why had he agreed to all this?
Tom watched Abram's transformation with growing discomfort. He'd been troubled enough as it was, what with Lucius' condition and Lucius' recent tantrum on deck and Lucius' incessant questioning of things that were far from his business and pretty much anything Lucius, really. Now he had to watch poor, barely conscious Richard be threatened by a creature even bigger than him, which had only happened once before with the garm incident.
Which had also been Lucius' fault.
"Tom—" Lucius' voice said behind him, as if emphasising his already obnoxious presence in Tom's thoughts.
"Tom will be fine," Ethan's voice then said, and it sounded as though they were moving up the stairs. "Richard would never hurt him, even like this."
That much was true, at least. Tom had no reason to fear Richard's uncontrolled state. It was a perk only he possessed, but while that was a comfort it was far from a guarantee that Richard would listen to him, and that was the bigger issue at hand.
He had to take a step back as the membranes on Abram's now wingified arms spread out and blocked his view entirely, only causing Richard to be more distressed.
Poor Richard. His mind was not aware enough to understand who or what Abram was anymore. All he could see was a creature trying to keep Tom away from him. His Tom.
Just as Abram got ready to ward off any potential attacks however, Richard stopped to look up at the ceiling. He tilted his head to the side, ears pointing upwards and nose sniffing the air while seemingly growing more and more agitated.
"Richard," Tom tried, ducking under Abram's wing to show himself. "I'm alright. He's not dangerous. Not to us."
Richard spared him a glance, suddenly conflicted while looking up and down but finally settled his gaze upwards again, and before Tom could retreat backwards he'd begun sprinting forward.
"Captain, I—" Tom began as Abram drew a breath to screech again, but before either of them could utter a sound Richard had spurred his legs against the floor and jumped with impressive force up through the deck opening, sending boats flying and leaving the two of them stumped.
"What...?" Tom whispered, but Abram was far more distressed than he was as he hurried to the opening only to stop abruptly in front of it.
Tom made a face, realising why Abram could not chase after him, and while the other vampires were strong and possibly possessed some inhuman abilities few of them would be able to handle a moon-drunk Richard. The younger ones even less so, and with Abram and Ethan being the only two candidates onboard and one suddenly being incapacitated, it didn't bode well.
The fact that Richard could be injured still remained though. A couple of vampires at a time wouldn't do much but if half a crew managed to gang up on him at the same time things could get messy, so despite it going against his wish of staying away from trouble, Tom had to do something.
"What now, Captain?" he asked while hurrying to Abram's side, trying to look up and see if Richard was still in view.
Abram's sharp, golden eyes turned in his direction before narrowing, and Tom winced. Was Abram blaming him because he'd failed to make Richard listen? It didn't seem very Abram of him, but Tom had also never seen him in a situation like this before.
Things got worse as Abram looked up again, and then back to Tom, seemingly deciding on a chaotic route and Tom couldn't do much but hold his breath as he was grabbed by a big, clawed hand that effectively swung and tossed him through the hole to land him, not too gracefully, up on deck.
An unexpected chaos had begun there, and to Tom's remorse it appeared he'd lost his glasses during his painful entrance. From what he could discern through squinting, vampires were swarming against something that wasn't Richard, with the latter trying to get into the mix as well while Ethan, judging by the long hair, was fighting his way through everyone to get to the middle. Tom knew better than to go near that. Even though he didn't understand it and it was possible things could turn hostile again, Richard did not seem to be in any life threatening danger.
He paused in his step, blurry gaze landing on the pile of supernaturals again as he repeated the last three words inside his head. Life threatening danger. Words so often associated with someone else. Then he looked around, failing to spot that person in question, which forced his attention back to the pile.
"Fucking Lucius," he muttered, rarely using such language but having decided to allow it only in cases that concerned one specific fucking person.
"Tom!" a panicked voice called out, and Tom winced as another threat to his inner peace made herself known.
"Eliza?" Tom frowned as he spotted what had to be Eliza by the wheel and he walked closer to confirm. Uncomfortably close in the end, but he valued reading expressions, especially with intimidating people. "Why are you over there? Can you even steer a ship?"
"No! I can't!" Eliza made sharp nods to the side at the vampire pile. "But all vampires just left their posts all of a sudden and apparently no mortal is aware enough to realise what that means for the ship that was just until recently managed by the supernatural part of the crew!"
Tom drew air through his teeth.
"Well, can't you yell at them to take over? Just kind of... Snap them out of it?"
"Me?" Eliza tilted her head down to gesture at herself. "Do I look like the captain to you? Last time I looked Abram wasn't blonde, or white, or green-eyed, or wearing a dress! Is your eyesight that bad?"
"But you're the only one aware enough to take action," Tom argued, scanning the dead weights around them. "The others really are motionless, perhaps out of shock."
Eliza groaned.
"Damn it! Then what do we do? Lucius is in danger and Richard is up here now. Where the Waste is Abram?
"He can't be in the moonlight," Tom reminded her, and Eliza's gaze immediately snapped to the riggings.
"So unfurl the covers!"
"Me?"
"Someone! Several someones!"
"I don't know if I can find—"
"For crying out loud!" Eliza rolled her eyes before sucking in a breath to yell even louder than Tom had already considered to be enough. "Mortal crewmembers, unfurl the light protections for your captain now! Those of you left need to get in your usual positions and keep this ship steady until the vampire mess is sorted out!"
As if brought out of a trance, all humans blinked in confusion before abandoning their vampires to obey whoever was spouting reasonable orders at them.
"You go find the ship's surgeon, Tom." Eliza was finally freed from her position by a mortal helmsman and she steered her way towards the vampire pile while rolling up her sleeves. "We're gonna need her."
"Wait, what are you planning?" Tom's eyes widened in horror, unsure who he was supposed to be most concerned about at the time and Eliza frowned at him.
"Gotta save Lucius, don't I? No one else is—"
At that moment Ethan fought his way out of the chaos with a roughed up Lucius in tow, and Eliza let out a breath of relief.
"How is he—" she began, but cut her sentence short as Ethan ignored her to pull Lucius along past them at a frightening speed. "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
She caught on quickly though as Richard and the swarm of vampires halted what they were doing, smelling the air before turning in Ethan and Lucius' direction.
"Well damn it again." Her voice was dry as she took a harsh grip around Tom's arm to pull him out of the approaching cluster of supernaturals' way.
"It's Lucius." Tom looked after them while rubbing his sore arm. "The thing on his chest. It's got to be."
A screech chilled them both to the bone, and they glanced towards the hole Lucius and Ethan had disappeared into.
"Oh no," Tom whispered, recalling having read that a shifter vampire's nose was almost on par with a werewolf's, and Eliza nodded in agreement.
"We need to go down there." She'd barely uttered the sentence before hurrying forward to chase after the smaller army that had jumped down as well, and Tom's jaw dropped.
"You can't go down there!" He grabbed Eliza's arm, realising the ridiculousness of his attempt both from Eliza's condescending smirk at his grip as well as him having deeply underestimated the bulkiness of said arm.
He still sucked in a breath.
"You're only mortal. Both of us are." He refused to let go of her, despite the disappointing fact that his resistance barely slowed her down. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"
"Making sure he's not harmed of course." Eliza grabbed his hand to make him release her, and Tom considered the option to let go. He wasn't too fond of her. Their personalities clashed, and she acted like she knew Richard just because they'd been childhood friends, but she'd never known his true self. Not like Tom.
But he was just being condescending. Maybe jealous. Hardly something to justify letting her go into that death trap, so he grabbed the hand she was using to make him release her.
"Listen," he hissed. "Those beasts down there aren't human. No matter how strong you are, you won't survive two of them, especially when things are like this."
While it was hard to see, harder than usual for some reason, Eliza looked at his new grip as though she was ready to bite his hand off, but she finally relented with a sigh, pausing her stride while still looking towards the hole.
"... At least there's Ethan, I guess."
Tom wrinkled his eyebrows, having not thought about it until then.
"But how? He's a vampire too."
"Either way I'm thankful he's there." Eliza reluctantly turned her head to check on the state of the quarterdeck. "Let's focus on keeping things running up here then."
"The light protections are down, ma'am!" a crewmember yelled from the shroud of the mainmast, and Tom finally made the connection why he could barely see at all.
"Well that won't do much anymore," Eliza whispered to herself while still giving the man an appreciative wave.
Then there was a sudden silence. It struck them both just as hard as a sudden boom would have. The scratching and slamming and growling had stopped. They'd gone quiet? All of them?
"Did... Did something happen to Lucius?" Eliza whispered, voice weaker than usual and Tom gritted his teeth. If the driving force had been Lucius, wasn't his disappearance what would stop them? Ethan had always been stern about not shroud-walking away with living beings though, so that wasn't it.
So what other way could Lucius have disappeared?
***
Author's note:
Bit of a shorter chapter this week, but we're likely in for a longer one next time so it evens out! So we have a bitter Tom and stubborn Eliza trying to collaborate on deck, hopefully keeping the ship intact while bickering, and we've got Something going on below, but what??? o.o What do you think happened to Lucius? To Ethan? To the vampires? To Richard? To Abram? To Tom's glasses?
And just in general I'd love to hear what you think about the chapter, or about the story so far? What are your hopes and/or predictions moving forward?