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Authors: Justin Somper

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BOOK: Demons of the Ocean
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"Na-hah, buddy," said Bart, reaching out a hand to Bart's shoulder. "What about us?"

"Yeah," added Jez, digging Connor in the ribs. "What about the Three Buccaneers?"

"All for one and one for all!" added Bart."Very original," said Cate, with a sigh.But their clowning had done the trick. Connor was smiling again."All right, lads," Cate said, "I'm off to make the final preparations for attack."

"Yes, sir!" Bart said, saluting her.Cate tried to frown but she couldn't stop the laughter breaking through. "Enough of your cheek, Mister Pearce. Any more lip and you'll be on toilet duty tonight, while the rest of us are off to Ma Kettle's." She turned and walked away, before another wave of laughter broke through her serious demeanor.

"Ohh, I love it when she gets all uppity," said Bart to his mates.Connor rolled his eyes at Jez."Come on, Connor," Jez said, "let's leave Mister Pearce here to his lovesick fantasies while we get on with some serious rapier maneuvers."

"You're on," agreed Connor.After spending the morning cleaning swords, Grace Tempest was in need of a good wash herself. She scrubbed away at her hands and arms but, though she managed to get rid of most of the grime, she couldn't extinguish the smell of oil and metal. Oh well, she'd just have to let it wear off, she decided. Bidding farewell to her fellows, she headed back down to her cabin for a well-earned break. As she walked down the corridor, she could hear the pirates on the top deck getting ready for the attack. Connor would be among them. She felt an instinctive wave of nerves for him. After three months, it was still strange to think of her twin brother as a pirate prodigy.Sometimes, she wondered at the way things had turned out. After their father's death, there had been nothing left for them in Crescent Moon Bay--nothing save a life of drudgery at the orphanage or being adopted by the lunatic bank manager, Lachlan Busby, and his demented wife, Loretta. And so they had taken to the ocean in their old boat, Louisiana Lady, not exactly sure where they were heading, but certain that wherever they ended up would be better than what they left behind.Neither one of them could have ever imagined what lay ahead though, thought Grace, pushing open the door to her small cabin. Her brother had been rescued by this pirate ship. And as for her, well, she had been brought to the Vampirates--creatures she had only heard of in the strange shanty her dad had sung to both twins.I'll tell you a tale of Vampirates,A tale as old as true.Yea, I'll sing you a song of an ancient ship,And its mighty fearsome crew.Yea, I'll sing you a song of an ancient ship,That sails the oceans blue...That haunts the oceans blue.As many times as they had heard the shanty, they had never thought that the ship might actually exist. But it did! And she had found herself on board, coming face to face--or rather, face to mask--with its enigmatic captain.

They say that the captain, he wears a veilSo as to curtail your frightAt his death-pale skinAnd his lifeless eyesAnd his teeth as sharp as night.Oh, they say that the captain, he wears a veilAnd his eyes never see the light.The captain did not wear a veil, but rather a mask. This was just one of the ways in which the reality of the Vampirate ship contrasted with the words of the shanty. The ship was as mysterious as she might have anticipated. But it certainly wasn't the place of unalloyed horror that everyone expected. At least, it hadn't been for her."Wasn't it a terrible place?" one or other of the pirates would ask her each and every day. "What was the worst thing that you endured?" was another popular question. And "What were they like, those demons?"Faced with these questions, Grace had decided the best strategy was to say, "I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind." That generally did the trick. Poor Grace, they thought. Of course, she doesn't want to conjure up memories of that awful place.This was far easier than trying to persuade them that she had actually been treated well on board that ship. The masked captain had seemed a benevolent creature, with Grace's best interests at heart. And though the Vampirates did--of course--drink blood, they did so in a measured fashion at the weekly Feast. And the blood was supplied by donors, who were treated well in exchange for their gift. She had told Connor about this, but even he had struggled to understand how she could be so accepting of it all. The mere thought of blood-taking--or "the sharing" as the Vampirates called it--filled him with horror. Grace smiled. As tough as Connor might appear to his pirate comrades, the very thought of blood made him nauseous. It was a good thing, she reflected, that it was she who had found herself on the Vampirate ship and he on the pirate vessel--and not the other way around!As strange as it sounded, Grace had made good friends on the Vampirate ship. Why, the very clothes she was wearing had been given to her by Darcy Flotsam--the ship's figurehead by day and, in her own words, "figure of fun by night."Sitting down on her narrow bed, Grace drew back the thin curtain over her porthole. Outside, the ocean was dazzling blue. It made her think--as she so often did--of Lorcan Furey. He was the "young" Vampirate who had rescued her from drowning. He had

 guarded her on the ship and, when the pirates came to find her, he had protected her one last time. She had left the ship in much more of a rush than she would have liked. She hadn't even had the chance to say a proper good-bye to Lorcan. She had lost track of him after Connor arrived. Her brother's arrival had been such a surprise!Of course, Lorcan must have headed inside the ship as daylight fell. But, when Grace went to his cabin to bid him farewell, he wasn't there. She had made Connor wait while she searched the rest of the ship for him, but she hadn't found him. Even the Vampirate captain was unable to tell her where Lorcan might be. Finally, she could stall Connor no more. Grace said her good-byes to the Vampirate captain and then returned to her cabin one last time. She took a small case of possessions--including the notebooks from her cabin and some of Darcy's cast-off clothes--and headed back up to the deck to depart.When she had unpacked the case in her cabin on The Diablo later, she had discovered a small wooden casket that she didn't remember packing. There was a small cloth bundle inside. As she unwrapped it, a small note-card fell out. Written in a familiar scrawl were the words:[handwritten text:Dear Grace,Something to remember me by.Travel safe!Your true friend,Lorcan Furey]

Grace's heart was beating fast as she lifted the card. Just the sight of Lorcan's scrawled signature was enough to move her. But, folded within the cloth, lay an even greater shock. For there was Lorcan's Claddagh ring. She remembered the first time she had seen it, as he'd brushed a stray hair from her wet face, after rescuing her from drowning.Now she looked down at the ring--at the strange icon of the hands clasping a skull, a small crown set upon the skull's head. She took the ring in her fingers. This was too great a gift, she thought. It was almost a part of Lorcan. But perhaps that was the point, she thought with a thrill. He wanted her to have a part of him. She'd have to return it to him one day, she decided. In the meantime, it would be her talisman--a reminder of the time she had spent on the Vampirate ship and an omen that one day, in the future, she would return.For now, she unfastened the chain Connor had given her, and slipped the ring onto it, so that it nestled beside Connor's locket. They were her two most precious possessions.Grace reached up her fingers to touch the ring now. Sometimes, when she touched it, she closed her eyes and had such a clear vision of the Vampirate ship, it was as if she were able to see it for real. If only this were true!How were they all--the captain and Darcy and Lorcan?--she wondered. Where were they now? Once again, she wished she had had longer to say her good-byes. It had been impossible to argue with Connor when he had said she must come to live with him on The Diablo. She would never have been able to convince him that they should stay on the Vampirate ship. That would be madness, wouldn't it? Choosing to live amongst a crew of vampires? She remembered something her father had once told her. "Sometimes madness is wisdom, Grade." She had the feeling her dad would have understood.Grace let her hand fall from Lorcan's ring. She would have chosen to stay with them if she had had a real choice. Only one of the crew had threatened her. As always, she shuddered as the image of Lieutenant Sidorio came into her mind--his eyes flaming pits of fire, his gold incisors as sharp as daggers.Sidorio--who had killed his donor and held Grace hostage in her cabin until the captain rescued her.Sidorio--who had told her that he had been killed by Julius Caesar himself before he crossed.Sidorio--who had been banished from the ship, and sent into exile.He had been the only truly dangerous one aboard that ship, thought Grace, as she stared out into the translucent ocean. But Sidorio was gone. The danger had passed. Surely it would be safe to return now, if she could only find a way.

Back cover:Well, if pirates are bad,And vampires are worse,Then I pray that as long as I beThat though I sing of VampiratesI never one shall see.Twins Connor and Grace never dreamed that there was any truth to the Vampirates shanty their father sang to them before he died, but that was before the two were shipwrecked and separated from each other. For Connor, who is taken aboard a pirate ship, there's the chance to learn to sword fight, but for Grace, aboard a mysterious ship of vampire pirates, the danger is great. The twins want to find each other more than anything, but their time is limited and they're an ocean apart JUSTIN SOMPER worked in the editorial and marketing departments of various UK children's publishers before establishing his own children's creative consultancy based in London. He took sword-fighting classes to help him write the fight scenes in Vampirates.$5.99$7.99 in CanadaISBN 13 978-0-316-01444-1

Table of Contents

Prologue:

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 1

BOOK: Demons of the Ocean
6.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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