A Fork of Paths

“The blood of the last victim he consumed,” she replied grimly. “I had to make several iterations of this potion because the first few caused him to throw up. I’m sure he expelled almost all of the blood in his system. Now he is quite pale again, as you can see. ”

“All right,” Aisha said. “We should return to the ship.” She paused, her eyes settling on Braithe’s face. “But isn’t it a risk keeping Bloodless alive here? It only takes one of them to break free from your castle to recreate the problem we have now.”

Uma shook her head. “You need not worry about that, jinni,” she replied. “This specimen and the ones I choose from the vessel will be kept securely locked away. And once I’m finished with my experimentation, I will end their lives.”

That seemed to satisfy Aisha, or at least enough that she didn’t argue further.

The witch returned to her cauldron filled with tranquilizer potion and turned off the heat. “The two of you can go wait outside in the entrance hall. I will bring you everything we need.”

Aisha and I looked at each other, then respected the witch’s request. Perhaps she wanted some time alone to clear her head before we descended on the ship. Although it pained me to leave Braithe as he was, stark naked and stretched out on the treatment bed like a cadaver, I trusted Uma enough to believe that she would put him away somewhere safe, and keep him safe while we were gone.

Aisha and I didn’t exchange a word as we sat together in the entrance room, but the witch didn’t leave us alone long. She emerged carrying two bulging grey shoulder bags and four long, sheathed swords. She approached us and handed one of the bags to me, along with two of the swords. Then she turned to Aisha, giving her the other bag and the other two swords. I winced. Surely, this was a direct insult to the jinni, who should not require the use of crude weapons and brute force to end the Bloodless. But strangely, Aisha did not act offended. Rather, she accepted the witch’s offerings without a word.

I looked down into my own bag to see that it was heaped with feather-ended blow darts. Beside them, in a thin, long inner compartment of the bag, was the blowgun itself—smaller than I’d expected it to be, and made of mahogany.

The witch now stood empty-handed. She would work only with her magic.

“Will your sister accompany us, too?” I asked.

“My sister is not home. She’s visiting a relative.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, disappointed. It wasn’t so much that I thought we couldn’t handle the ship with the three of us, but I would have been comforted to have a second witch there as a barrier against Aisha in case she decided to murder me the moment we finished with the Bloodless. I would have begged both sisters to help me escape. They might even stick up for me, if only to behave contrary to the jinni. But there was only one witch—Uma. I had no choice but to rely on her.

“Let’s go,” Aisha pressed.

“All right,” the witch said, a hint of apprehension in her eyes as she glanced at me. “Let’s go.”

Julie

For the second time, just before the witch vanished with me, Aisha reached out and clutched my arm, allowing herself to be transported by the witch’s magic. When we reappeared, hovering over an endless expanse of waves near where we’d left my ship, I couldn’t help but ask her why.

The jinni glowered at me and pursed her lips.

“Can either of you see the ship anywhere?” the witch asked.

I turned my attention to the matter at hand. Gazing around, I couldn’t spot any sign of it.

“Are you certain we’re in the right area?” the witch asked.

“Yes,” Aisha replied, half confident, half impatient. “Let’s keep moving.”

The witch kept hold of me, allowing me to glide alongside her, while the jinni flew beside us by her own magic.

“Over there,” Aisha said, after about five minutes of soaring and scanning the waves. She was pointing south of our position. “Do you see it?” she asked, squinting.

“Yes,” the witch and I replied. Now that she’d pointed it out, I could see it. It was my boat—I could tell even from this far distance. We zoomed toward it with supernatural speed. When we arrived above the deck, it was empty except for the bloodied corpses of a few witches strewn about the deck. The absence of Bloodless up here shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, considering that it was daytime. Like regular vampires, I guessed that they weren’t sun worshipers.

We touched down on the floorboards, near the broken trap door. My hand locked around the hilt of my sword as we carefully descended to the lower deck. My heart ached again at what a wreck it was. Gazing around, we moved along the corridor, searching each of the cabins… only to find that they were empty. We moved on to search the other levels of the ship. We didn’t find a single Bloodless. The ship was still moving, but apparently, that was by the will of the sharks alone.

“What happened here?” I breathed. I couldn’t understand for the life of me where they could have all vanished to.

“Seems they’ve abandoned ship,” Aisha murmured.

The witch furrowed her auburn brows. “Why would they do that?”

Aisha shrugged. “Let’s keep moving. They can’t have gotten too far. Maybe they took one of the lifeboats?”

“Even if they took all of the lifeboats, the Bloodless couldn’t all have fit on them,” I said, shaking my head.