Maggie on the Bounty (12 page)

"Killian!" I shouted.

He looked up.

He was being used as bait for me. 
I could tell.  They wouldn't have kept him alive otherwise.  They wanted me to
break through that boundary and probably get caught in the same vortex of hell
that they had imprisoned him in.

"Maggie..." he whispered.

There are times when it is tough to
know what to do.  Do you risk the whole world to save a single life?  Or do you
destroy a person to ensure the survival of the world?  Mortimer was somewhere
upstairs getting ready to play an organ that would pull down the boundary
between Earth and The Other Side.  My grandmother needed to get back into the
past so that I could be born.  And yet?  Call me a sap, but when it comes to
Killian, the world was on its own.

I didn't get a choice in proving my
loyalties, though, because as I sat there figuring out the hierarchical
structure of the universe, I felt hands on my back and a great big push.  I
fell through the force field and got a little zap.  Okay, so it was a big old
zap.  The entire place seemed to explode around me.  I saw stars flash before
my eyes.  My entire body felt like it was jello.  I collapsed on the ground.  I
felt like toast.  I felt like someone had put me in a great big oven and left
me to bake at 425 for thirty minutes.  I groaned.

"Oh, fuck, Killian."

He picked up his head and looked at
me.  "You came."

I looked up.  The vampire's face
peered over the edge of the hole.  Guess I wasn't as good as I thought I was.  Juice
from where I staked him dripped down onto the top of the force field, sizzling
with contact.  The vampire smiled and then disappeared.  No need to let Killian
know a vampire got a jump on me.  "Damned straight I came.  What the hell
have you gotten us into?"

"I suppose the heroic thing to
say at this moment would be that you shouldn't have come."

"Don't go telling me things
I'm figuring out for myself."

"But I am very glad you came."

I punched him softly in the arm. 
"I know."  I looked around the room. "So how are we going to get
out of this place?"

Killian shrugged softly, "I
don't know.  I tried to escape through the field and this is what happened to
me."  He pointed at some singe marks on his hands.  "The field seems
to feed off of its captive's energy and use it to strengthen itself.  There
doesn't appear to be any way out."  He clarified.  "There is no way
out."

"You could have told me this
before I came in."

"I was busy trying not to die,
as per your instruction."

I picked myself up and felt my way
around the hole.  I didn't feel any weakness.

"Have you been having a lovely
evening, Maggie?" Killian asked.

"It's been a hoot and a half. 
Found out at midnight, the walls come down and they turn me into a
vampire."

"Oh.  Another Saturday night."

The platform was at least ten feet
above us.  There weren't any walls to scale, just a great big force field that
was happy to zap me like a kid pissing on an electric fence.

"I told you so," Killian
said.

"Shut up, Killian."

I looked around. "Okay, so if
it was electric, that means there is a circuit.  We just have to break the
circuit.  How hard can that be?"

"Hard."

"Shut up."  I looked
around. "Okay, so circuit...  break the circuit...  We need something
plastic."

"We're in the middle of a
steel ship.  There is no plastic."

"Quit pointing out the
obvious, Killian."

"Can you make a portal?"

That was Killian's answer to
everything.  I sighed and reached out to push through the boundary.  Looks like
the vampires thought of everything.

"Nope."

"So we sit and wait for the
world to end?"

"I think so."

"Want to make out?"

I looked at Killian,
"NO."

"If we are about to bridge the
gap between half-dead and all-dead, we could at least make it enjoyable..."

"Listen bucko, this might be
your last moments, but I've got an eternity of sucking on necks to look forward
to."

"Lucky girl," he said,
lying back down.

I went over and
rubbed his chest.  "Come on, elf.  Keep fighting.  We'll get out of
this."

"I would like to sleep
forever," he said, his eyes drifting closed.

"What?  The vampires keeping
you up past your bedtime?" I asked.

"Someday, I shall keep you up
past your bedtime, Maggie," he murmured.

"You must have fallen asleep,
because you're dreaming."

He gave me a drowsy little,
"Mmmhmmm.  How much more time until the next whistle blows?"

I looked down at my watch. 
"Fifteen minutes."

He closed his eyes.  "Awake me
in ten."

Just then, there was a light that
started to glow in the far end of the bow of the ship.  The sound of someone
whistling a merry tune echoed through the cavern of metal.  And there was
Mortimer.  Fucking Mortimer!  Strolling into the place like a Sunday in the
park.

I sat up.

"No, come back," said
Killian.

"It's Mortimer," I said,
pointing at everyone's favorite idiot musician.  "I have to warn
him."  I walked over to the edge of the force field.  "Go back!"
I shouted.  "It's a trap!"

He wasn't listening.  He just kept
walking towards us and whistling, even as I kept waving him away.  "It's a
trap!  A trap!  Get out!  You can't—"

He walked straight up to the force
field, playing absolutely no attention to me.  He looked it up and down.  And
then he started singing
Twinkle Twinkle
.  The moment the sound of his
voice hit the field, it parted it like an umbrella in a waterfall.

I guess it made sense.  This siren
could tinkle the ivories and bring down the entire border between Earth and The
Other Side.  It was probably not too much of a stretch to think his voice could
part a little boundary made by a bunch of stupid vampires. 

But then the dummy walked inside
and was trapped in the bubble right along with us.  I looked up and six vampire
heads popped over the top of the hole.  They were so happy, you'd think their
favorite team won the Super Bowl.

"Shouldn't you be trapped by a
psychovampiric world walker and chained to an organ somewhere?" I asked
Mortimer.

He shrugged.  "I forgot my
sheet music."

"You were supposed to get us
out, not come in," I groaned.

"Maggie, this is the safest
place to be on this ship!" he pointed out with a great deal of insistence. 
"Did you know there are vampires on every floor?"

"Really?" I replied,
pointing at all of the drooling vampires on the platform overhead.

Mortimer's face became cross. 
"How is an artist supposed to work with this sort of attention," he
grumbled.  He began to whistle again.  The vampires seemed confused,
disoriented, like they couldn't see us below.

"Are you doing that?" I
asked.

Mortimer stopped.  The moment he
did, the vampires were back on us, tracking us like cats in front of a
fishbowl.

"A siren's music is their
source of greatest pride," he replied.

A plan started formulating in my
head.  "Okay... OKAY!  So can you sing us out of this bubble and hide our
movements with your whistling?"

He sighed like I had asked Mozart
to play chopsticks.  "If that is really what you want..."

"Yes, yes, that is EXACTLY
what I want."  I put my arm under Killian's shoulder and lifted him
gently.  He was about as cooperative as a sack of potatoes.  "Come on. 
Support your own weight, Killian."

"I am."

I hiked him higher on my shoulders
and turned to the siren.  "Okay, Mortimer.  Sing loud and sing
proud."

"I play the organ."

"Whatever.  You know what I
mean." 

He walked back over to the edge and
ran his fingers through his hair.  He fixed his cuffs.  He straightened his
jacket.

"Get on with it!" I said.

"I have an audience," he
replied, pointing out the undead watching us from above.  "I will not
compromise my artistic values for the sake of speed."

"For God’s sake," I
muttered.

"You are only as good as your
last performance!" he said with a great flourish of his arms.

"IF YOU DON'T SPEED THIS UP
THIS WILL BE YOUR LAST PERFORMANCE!"

He gave me a dirty look, cleared
his throat, and started up another stirring rendition of
Twinkle Twinkle
.

The bubble parted and I dragged
Killian through.  I was so grateful to be back in the darkness of the middle of
that boat.  Mortimer strode through like Pavarotti taking center stage.  The
vampires started hissing like vipers and were jumping off the platform to take
us down.

"START WHISTLING!" I
shouted.  "WHISTLE!"

Mortimer sighed, put his lips
together, and blew.  The vampires stopped in their tracks.  They looked around,
as if absolutely confused by why they were here.

Killian jerked his head towards the
direction Mortimer original came.  "Go that way, Maggie."

I dragged him along, Mortimer
marching along behind with happy little head bobs and wrist-flicks to whatever
tune he was improvising.

I could see the steps ahead of us
leading to the engine room. 

"This
is good!"  I said.  "I mean, I have no idea where anything else is
compared to here, but I recognize this spot!"

"Good,"
Killian murmured, fading in and out a little.

"Killian,
I promise if you keep fighting, I will let you take me to my first midsummer
dance."

"I
thought you wanted to inspire me to live, Maggie."

Sarcasm.  The elf was going to be
alright.

"Killian, we have the
organist.  We escaped the time-bubble trap.  Let's say we go destroy this
instrument of doom and wrap this party up."

Killian gave me a thumbs up. 

And that's when Mortimer's music
stopped.  I turned back to look at him.  "Why did you stop?!?"

He stroked his throat.  "I am
parched.  Perhaps if we can find a glass of water I can continue.  By the way,
Maggie, do you think you could help me find my sheet music?"

I looked back where we had come. 
The vampires were backlit by the blue bubble and were headed our way.

"Sure, Mortimer," I
gulped.  "I'm pretty sure it is up these steps."

And then I hauled ass, pulling
Killian up through the door to the engine room.

"C
ome on," I said,
pointing towards the end of the engine room.  "Let's get up to the pool so
that we can push Mortimer through to the future and hopefully skip this whole mess."

I hoped that I was grievously
overestimating vampire brain power and that they thought there was no possible
way we could escape our prison.

Note to self:  With this crew,
discontinue the Underestimating-Brain-Power Plan.

We were halfway through the engine
room, limping along the gangplank, when there was suddenly the sound of metal
slamming on metal.

I guess the vampires' failsafe was
that if Killian and/or I and/or whoever else escaped, they'd trap us here.  The
water-tight door behind us slammed shut and the water-tight door in front of us
was starting to close, too.  On the other side of the closing door ahead of us
was a vampire, there to make sure we didn't get through.

Killian and I didn't even
hesitate.  With a burst of energy I didn't even know Killian had in him, we
both ran full tilt towards that door.  Mortimer took up the rear, but I figured
they needed Mortimer.  Mortimer was probably on the Do Not Kill List.  And a
few minutes locked away safely in a room was not necessarily the worst thing in
the world for a guy like him.

We all got through just in the nick
of time.  I mowed straight into that vampire like a linebacker, because unlike
some of the other members of our team, I was wearing enough protection to take
a direct hit to the throat.  And he totally tried to directly throat me. 

I shouted, "Keep going, I'm
coming!" as the vampire and I rolled around.  Mortimer helped Killian
vault over and keep running.

"Why do they keep trying to
kill me?" Mortimer whined.  "I am happy to share my music!  There is
no need for this violence..."

I jumped up to go, but the vampire
grabbed my ankle.  I kicked him in the head and headed myself for the next door. 
I got there just in time as the door slammed shut.  The vampire started
pounding on the metal, but eighteen inches of steel said he wasn't going
anywhere.  Seriously, if those vampires had stuck Killian and I in one of these
rooms in the first place, we would probably still be sitting there.

There was another vampire in this
room that Killian was dispatching.  Even in his half- dead, beat up state,
Killian managed to knife that guy right through the heart.  I couldn't help
beaming with pride.  That was my partner.

Killian held his hand out to me and
shouted, "Maggie!  Hurry!"

Like I needed a reminder.

We all got through the next door. 
I guess the vampire inside was trying to be tricky or something, though,
because he hid himself and came at us from behind.  Killian and I turned the
moment we heard him.  The door started to close.  I lifted up one of my size
ten boots and gave the vampire a kick.  The door closed square on his chest.

"Door 13," I remarked. 
"Your lucky number."

The vampire was bisected, which was
good.  He wasn't dead, mind you.  Just squished in two.

He hissed at me, "So you've
returned to finish our battle, Maggie MacKay.  Come over here so that I might
finish you."

Some people like fluffy bunnies, I
have a thing for monsters who are completely lost causes and continue to
fight.  You gotta admire their gumption.

Killian walked over and staked him
through the heart.

"Hey!  What the fuck,
Killian!  I was going to keep him."

"He would not have gotten
along with your cat."

"You have a point."

"I
think that vampire has the point," Killian said.

The elf
was definitely feeling better.

"Come
on, you," I laughed. 

Suddenly I
heard a loud "thunk" and the sound of a watermelon getting dropped on
the floor.

Jackie was
standing there on the catwalk with the wrench and a fierce look on her face. 
Down below, George was making short work of a vampire.  He was like a
Rottweiler with a chew toy.

"Did
you do that?" I asked Jackie, pointing at the vampire.

"I
told you I could help!" she said with a grin.

George
finished off the guy and looked up at us.  "Sorry, Maggie!  They attacked
us on the other end.  We were only able to get this one, but they got your guy
in the fancy suit."

"Mortimer?"
I said.  I turned around and then realized what was going on.  Mortimer was
gone.  Arguably the most important person in our party
was now missing and the vampires had the one thing they needed in order to get their
party started.

I looked
around the engine room, "This better not be the day the music dies..."