CREEEAK. CRUUUUUNKTHOOM! The floor collapsed.
There was nothing they could do. In vain, they scrambled to hold on to something, but they were sucked down the ship's pipes. It wasn't a long fall, but it was frightening and disorienting.
They rose, groggy and off-balance.
"Owww. Father, are you okay?" Jessica asked. She couldn't see anyone in the small gray room. She craned her neck and peered into the darkness. Then she felt it. "Father? Where are у—eek!"
Something moved under her skirt. Jessica jumped up and screamed at the top of her lungs.
Abel, his eyes rolled back in his head, lay beneath her. He looked half hurt . . . and yet more than a little satisfied. She must've sat right on his face when they'd landed.
"Father, are you all right? Please don't be dead."
"It hurt, but it felt good," he mumbled. "Where am I? Who are you? What smells so good?"
Abel continued to babble on for a few moments before he could shake the cobwebs from his addled mind.
Jessica, fearing he'd had a concussion, tried to snap him out of it. "We're on the sub-bridge. The floor panels were rusted and they gave out. Are you feeling all right?"
"I had a dream. There were angels, but they were wearing pink instead of white. And they smelled sweet, like perfume . . ."
Abel's voice trailed off when his mind caught up with what he was saying. He snapped his mouth shut and blushed.
Jessica stared coldly at the squirming priest. She took great care to chastely adjust her dress. "There has to be an electrical switch around here somewhere," she said, looking anywhere but at Abel. "Ah. Here it is."
"So, this is the hangar for the messenger plane. We can leave any time we need to."
Jessica ignored the priest and moved to the computer switchboard. She knew which knobs and levers needed to be flipped for manual flight, so she began typing in the command sequence. After a short time, the makeshift bridge was up and running. The computer booted up, but the display revealed a blinking cursor, nothing more.
"I don't know what this is, but there should be information on here, a prompt to enter a password or something. Right now, we're completely locked out," she said.
"Is that so? Let me see," said the priest.
"It's no use. Only a programmer can—" Jessica stopped in mid-sentence.
At the console, the priest was typing furiously. She thought he'd lost his mind and was just banging away at the keyboard like a madman. She didn't have time for such foolishness.
"Father! Quit wasting our time with that nonsense! We need to find another way to divert the ship."
He simply replied, "I know what I'm doing."
The computer screen filled with strange characters—green letters and numbers, rushing rapidly down the monitor. After a while, Jessica began to see patterns in the chaos. Bits of words, pieces of code, and specific breaks in character sequences started to add up.
"Got it," said the priest. He punched a large key, and then raised both fists in triumph.
The console beeped at them and began to whir. A moment later, the switchboard lights changed from green to blue. Jessica knew this meant they'd gone from autopilot to manual mode.
"Who are you really, Father?"
"I'm the guy who's going to cover you while you fly this ship to safety." The priest straightened his robe and looked around. "I worked my miracle; now it's your turn. You need to keep this ship from crashing at all costs. That's going to be the easy part. Landing's the hard part. You stay here; I'm going to look for our friend from the flight deck."
"Isn't that dangerous?" she asked.
He searched her face. "It's dangerous to let him find you here—I won't let that happen. I'll do my job, you do yours."
"Uh . . ."
"Yes, Jessica?"
She didn't know what she was trying to say. She couldn't sort out the tangled mess of her emotions. Finally, she settled for "Be careful."
"Thank you." The priest's sharp blue eyes seemed to soften whenever he looked at her. "I'll be back; holler if you have any problems."
Abel had barely finished his sentence when he was flung across the room. He flew through a pane of glass; the shards shredded his face and clothes. Most human beings would have been decapitated, but Abel merely lay there, limp as a rag doll.
Jessica turned to see the vampire before her. She wanted to scream, but her throat closed up. She stood in silence for what felt like forever.
As if savoring her terror, Alfredo, Duke of Meinz, took a long time before he spoke.
"You'll holler before I'm through. I promise you that."
Abel landed flat on his stomach—or what was left of his stomach. The vampire's punch had shattered his ribcage. He felt his organs spilling out beneath him, along with copious amounts of his blood.
He felt so cold.
"I thought you weren't foolish enough to try something like this."The duke laughed. "Did you think I wouldn't find you? Are you really that stupid?"
All hope Jessica once had now faded. Abel was dead, and she was about to be violated. No, it'll be worse than mere rape, she thought. The vampire would probably sexually torture her, and then take his sweet time draining her dry. Crippled with fear, she fell to her knees.
"Not so fast!" the duke said, chuckling. He smacked his lips, chewing on a wad of tobacco. "While you'll spend plenty of time on your knees tonight, it won't be until after I've knocked your teeth out. But business comes before pleasure." The vampire gave her a feral smile.
Jessica tried to back away, but she couldn't. She was helpless, enthralled. She couldn't even brace herself.
"Be patient, honey. I know you'll break easy, but I want to do it spectacularly. I'm going to do things to you that humankind hasn't seen in a thousand years. Horrible things. Wonderful things. You'll beg for more and you'll beg for death— at the same time."
The duke pulled out the metallic disk that he'd used on the bridge and held it up high.
"What is that?" Jessica asked, curious despite her fear.
"I think it's the master code for the computer. But, you wanna know a secret? I really don't know what it is. They told me to put it in the computer and push a few buttons. Amazing that something so small can bring down this big ship, huh?"
Startled, the duke suddenly jerked back.
"No," came the eerie whisper. Thin fingers grabbed Alfredo's leg.
Jessica gaped. It's the priest! How is he still alive?
"Please, there are over a hundred people on this ship," the priest ground out.
"I don't give a damn about those worthless people!" screamed the duke. Alfredo kicked Abel squarely in the temple. The force of the blow sent the priest skidding into a wall of machines. He lay sprawled on the floor, broken. Jessica heard the wet thud as his innards smeared along the ground. Her eyes welled up with tears.