Nicholas stopped, the lit cigarette smoldering forgotten between
his fingers.  There it was, again. Ever since coming aboard in
Cherbourg, he'd felt as if he were being stalked. Followed. He
stretched out with his feelings, searching the ethers for the tell-
tale trace of another of his kind. After a few moments, he gave up. He
felt nothing. Whatever it had been, it was gone, now.
     Relax, Nicholas, he told himself. You gave him the slip, back in
Rouen. You are safe for the moment. Soon, you will meet the collector,
and have the Abarrat. But was he? Was he really, ever, truly safe from
the clutches of his Master...
     "Merde!" he hissed, as the cigarette burned down to his fingers,
bringing him back to the here and now. He flung the offending object
away, and looked out over the railing. He quickly found his thoughts
absorbed in the dark water speeding by below him, and the stars
punctuating the cosmic velvet. Stars. He could never look at them
without thinking of his long-dead sister, Fleur. Ever the seeker after
knowledge, she had absorbed everything she could possibly find about
them.
     Ah, my little Flower, Nick mused, if only you could see them like
this! If only you knew what we know, today. If only...
     If only you were here.

     So absorbed was Nick in his own thoughts, he would not have felt
the other, even if he'd been paying attention. Some distance away, in
the Marconi room, both operators sat, eyes glazed, as a tall,
imposing, nay frightening figure perused the stacks of messages on the
table. He smiled at some, laughed at others, and frowned scornfully at
still others. At last seemingly finding what he wanted, he slipped
several into his pocket, and left the room. The two operators slowly
blinked, and came gradually to themselves. 

     She was gorgeous, and obviously wealthy from her manner of dress.
He'd seen her from time to time, after the ship had departed
Cherbourg. In the First Class Dining Salon, the Library, even the
pool. While she had beauty, always enough to make him look twice, she
also had something else. After a while, he began to realize that she
was watching him. The hunter had become, after a fashion, the hunted.
It was as if...as if she knew what he was. True to his expectations,
she came up to him a little after 10 P.M., like a lioness on the
scent. 
     Or a vampire. 
     "Aren't you being a little irresponsible?" she began, boldly.
     "Excuse me?" he responded, taken a bit off guard by her rudeness.
     "Traveling in such high profile among mortals. The lion in our
midst."

     LaCroix stood near the bridge, hidden in the shadows. As an
officer passed him, he reached out, and took hold of him.
     "What..."
     But the old vampire did not feed, merely looked hard into the yes
of the trembling mortal. He spoke to the man, and planted a command
into his numbed mind. Released, the officer continued on towards the
bridge. Once there, unseen by the others, he turned the ship's wheel,
ever so slightly altering her course. He did not, however, tell
anyone.

 
     It was true, Nicholas decided as he fenced with her. She knew.
Knew exactly what he was. For a moment he was at a loss what to do.
LaCroix, of course, would have dispatched her at once and thought no
more of it. Janette much the same. But he wasn't like that. Not merely
was he on a ship full of potential witnesses, but he had foresworn
killing. Never again. Never...
     All thought vanished when she slit her wrist, offering him a
taste of her blood. The sight of it oozing along her arm, the scent of
it, slammed into his brainstem, nearly driving rationality away. It
had been years since he had tasted Human blood. Ohhh, she...
     
     High up above, looking down and watching them, LaCroix smiled. 
     "Nicholas." 

     Nicholas didn't remember making it to her cabin, or how he
managed to make wild bestial love to her without harming her, but when
they at last calmed down, she was quite unhurt. Then she began to
talk, showing him the Black Buddha, and outlining what she knew of its
history. It was quite a tale, he decided. He'd heard of it, of course,
in his myriad researches, but had never given it a moment's thought
the last few years, so consumed had he been tracking down all leads to
the ancient Sanskrit text, the Abarrat.  When she at last told him her
greatest wish, he couldn't believe it.

     On the bridge, no one at first noted the tall, ominous figure
that had entered. He surveyed the scene, smiling. Then, one of the
officers turned and saw him.
     "Who are..." He got no further, as LaCroix reached out with his
power, and the lot of them stopped, blank-faced.
     "Well now, what have we here?" he said, putting one hand to the
ship's wheel. "Hhmm. This is left. No, right. Oh, how complicated it
all seems." He turned as a bell rang through the bridge. He picked up
the telephone receiver.
     "Iceberg right ahead, sir!"
     One of the officers stirred, seeming to come out of his stupor,
and LaCroix looked him right in the eyes. 
     "I was never here."
     "Never...here."
     With that, the old vampire put the phone in his hand, and
vanished from the bridge. The mortals awoke, slowly, to their peril.


     "I shall step off the Titanic immortal," she declared, followed
at once by a lurching of the ship. Nick turned his head, and with his
vampiric senses, could both feel and hear the hull being torn by
something. Torn? But...
     Ice! They'd hit an iceberg. The grinding and tearing of the
Titanic's steel was clear to him. The unthinkable had happened. Then
it was gone, the only noise being the usual vibration of the ship's
engines.
     Alarmed, he left her cabin, heading up onto the deck. People were
milling around, most of them seemingly unconcerned. Then, the engines
stopped. A few minutes later, he saw the Captain and another man run
past, grim-faced. He didn't need the perceptions of a vampire to
understand what they were feeling. With his hearing, he could hear the
water pouring into the ship far below. With his speed, he dashed below
decks, and had his fears confirmed. The wound in her hull was a fatal
one. The R.M.S. Titanic was doomed. 
     Panicking, Nick ran for the book dealer's cabin. The man was not
there, nor was he in the smoking lounge, or the bar. In a near frenzy,
he tore the fellow's cabin apart, looking for the Abarrat. The plan
had been to meet with the fellow, examine the book to be certain it
was the real article, then hand over a banker's draft for a million
once they reached New York. But to hell with that idea. He had to have
that book. He had to! 
     Ripping open the portable safe, he at last found it. Stuffing it
roughly into his suit, he dashed back for Gibson's cabin. She wasn't
there. He found her up on the boat deck, watching the first boat being
lowered. Convinced that she had brought this catastrophe upon the ship
by her possession of the supposedly cursed Buddha, and begging Nick
for the atonement of death, she offered him her neck, and he took it,
draining her amidst the confusion. He plopped the body down on a
bench, and moved aft.
     He could, he figured, just make it to land before dawn. He felt
his pockets again. He had the Buddha in one, and the somewhat crumpled
Abarrat in another. He...
     Then he felt it. Felt the blood knowledge from her. She had...the
lying bitch! Then he felt him. No, it could not be! Please God, not...
     He ran back towards where he'd propped Gibson's body, and his
heart sank. There, next to her, sat LaCroix, his bloody wrist to her
mouth. As he watched, she was reviving. She stood up, looking at
Nicholas, and smiled the smile of hell. 
     "As promised, My Dear," said LaCroix. "You have your wish."
     A passenger on their way to the boats never made it. With the new
swiftness of her nature, Gibson grabbed them, and dragged the kicking
screaming victim through a doorway. First Feeding.
     "You bastard!" Nick spat at his Master. "You..."
     "Of course I did, boy! Give it me!" He held out his hand.
"Nicholas!"
     "Go to hell!" replied Nick, and moved to follow Gibson. LaCroix
seized him, and with enormous strength, slammed him into a bulkhead.
He slid to the deck, and LaCroix tore the Abarrat from his pocket. As
the dazed Nicholas looked, LaCroix briefly perused the leaves. 
     "Did you really think I'd let you have this, Nicholas? Did you
really think I did not know?" Nick looked aft momentarily, and LaCroix
smiled. "He's dead, Nicholas. Your greedy little bookseller was most
uncooperative. He wouldn't tell me where it was, and I wasn't quick
enough to get it from the safe ahead of you. However.." He belched
theatrically. "I have it now." So said, he wadded the manuscript up,
and hurled it down a vent. Nick lunged, but LaCroix struck him in the
stomach, sending him flying into something hard, and then all was
blackness.

     He awoke, the sky still full of stars, and tried to rise. He
found himself on ice, LaCroix and Gibson next to him. A few hundred
yard away, they could see the great Titanic, the most magnificent
piece of technology man had yet achieved, sink lower and lower into
the water. Fuming but unable to do aught, Nick watched as it went
dark, then broke up, and slowly slid into oblivion. His heart ached as
he heard, could not keep himself from hearing, the screams and moans
of those in the water, unable to do anything for his fellow beings.
Next to him, LaCroix smiled, as if it was all just another form of
amusement in the arena to him. For her part, Gibson, as immune to the
cold now as he, stood silent, saying nothing.
     "We must go," his Master said at last. It still seemed dark,
though to a vampire, dawn's approach was already noticeable.
     "Where?" asked Nicholas, sarcastically. "We lost our ride."
     "Not to worry," said LaCroix, as off-handedly as if he were
quoting the weather report. "I've secured another." He grabbed both of
his children, and took to the air. Below, not seven miles from where
the Titanic's survivors struggled, there was another vessel, stopped
dead in the icefield. They landed on the deck, and looked around.
"Welcome aboard the Californian," LaCroix smirked, as if he owned her.
"Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and finish bending the minds of
those aboard her." He turned back, and smiled at his son. "Don't go
away."
     Alone with Gibson, Nick turned away from her. What a fool she'd
played him for! All that guff about the Buddha, and how it could grant
its owner a wish! How clever, how diabolically cunning LaCroix had
been. All this, to distract him from his quest. And at what cost? Over
half the people aboard the Titanic, gone to a watery grave or doomed
to die in the freezing sea, all to keep him as he was.
     LaCroix was insane, he decided. Completely mad. To slaughter
innocents on this scale, without regard for anything but his own
selfish desires, was below even his usually depraved standards. One
day, he thought. One day, he would rid the world of his Master, and
then perhaps those who now lay at the bottom of the sea could rest a
little easier in their watery tomb.
     He turned and cast a glance at Gibson. His hate burned white-hot
in his chest, and he nearly gave in to his desire to kill her here and
now and damn the risks, an easy task for one as old as he. But he
forebore. Why he did not know. For her part, after a single look at
him, she turned back towards the sea, cold and silent beneath the icy
stars.
     And in his pocket, forgotten for the moment, sat the Buddha,
biding its time.

      
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