The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(78)

I touched the brim of my hat and spun on my heels.

The jump from the dock to the first boat was a paltry thing, four or five feet at most, but by the time I spied Holmes’s figure already leaping from the railing of the moored boat, the distance between the two vessels was already eight or nine feet, and growing. Holmes’s leap wasn’t quite long enough, and he fell grasping the Merry Widow’s rain-slick deck rail, just barely getting hold. I saw him dangling there awkwardly as the bow heaved. The wind whipped at his coat as if it meant to pluck him free with malicious intent and lightning streaked across the sky, painfully and briefly lighting the entire tableau.

“Holmes!”

I ran across the deck without any pause for thought, safety, or balance, and flung myself across the growing distance between the two ships. It was too far to jump, much too far, but I leapt anyway. Only after my feet had left the railing did the thought of drowning occur to me. The Thames was a brown, angry abyss underneath me, the sky an angry tumult above.

I’d underestimated the growing strength my vampiric affliction afforded me as compensation for becoming a creature solely of the night. My leap carried me easily over the gulf, and I landed as neatly as I could have wished on the rolling deck of the Merry Widow.

I spun, spied Holmes’s hand still gripping the railing, and got a hold of it.

“Watson!” he said, gratefully.

“I have you, Holmes.” I slipped on the wet deck, but then got my footing and hauled on his wrist. He scrambled aboard, then cast his gaze about. I’d barely paid attention to my surroundings until now.

There was still no evidence of a crew and this was a ship badly in need of one. It drifted idly as the wind picked up, floundering helpless. None of the sails were deployed, but any decent trick of the wind could well be enough to push on the naked masts enough to tip her over. The Thames was crowded with other ships, of course, and nearly always was, but none of them looked in any position to help us, all of them too busy with their own problems.

For the storm was no longer brewing, but fell on us with full fury. The Merry Widow was heeling dangerously now to port and quite in danger of spilling Holmes and I back the way we’d just come. The mainsail boom swung around with a great crash, catching the full wind in a way that made the entire boat lurch and groan. Water flowed up the scuppers and onto the deck while several lines and spars snapped.

The ship was in danger of capsizing at any moment. Even so, we’d already made it out some distance from the dock and into the larger waters of the Thames proper. It could have been the expansive stretch of Gallions Reach, but the storm made it impossible to tell, and there was nothing but grey curtains of rain in all directions. The elemental fury blanketed all my senses, and I thought wildly that I would never complain about the mere din of London again. The stench alone of salt and refuse that came with the Thames clogged my nostrils. There was a bulky darkness above us that suggested one of the bridges, but it was impossible to tell which. Likely, we were within a hundred yards of shore on either side with ships that could affect a rescue, if only they’d known of its existence, but the storm obscured everything more than a dozen yards away. If the Merry Widow heeled completely over, which seemed likely to happen at any moment, there would be no hope of rescue or assistance until the storm abated.

“We can’t stay here long!” Holmes shouted over the sudden downpour.

“Where is the crew?” I shouted back, for I was now quite sure that Holmes had something to do with their absence.

“Gone!” Morris’s voice said behind us. “That’s right, isn’t it, Mr Holmes? Somehow you did something with the entire crew.” He was behind us on the deck, gripping onto the mainstays to keep from slipping. The other hand still held his revolver, but the ship was getting too rocky for him to keep it trained on us and maintain his balance. The tilt of the deck made it so that he looked down at us from a height. Holmes and I had managed to get our feet braced against the railing, but further movement risked slipping, and disappearing forever into the water behind and below us.

The doors to the captain’s cabin flew open and Mary struggled up the short flight of steps to the deck. “Empty!” she said. “There’s no one on board at all!” The port-side railing dipped at frightening intervals into the water as the ship pitched back and forth. Each time it seemed less likely to ever rise out again. The sole light, a covered deck lantern hanging from the main mast, pitched crazily with the ship’s motion, throwing eerie, glimmering shadows. Splashes and plumes from the bucking aft of the ship threw up spray that hissed on the hot iron of the lantern, perpetually threatening to put it out, but never quite accomplishing the task.

“What did you do with them?” Morris raged.

“Lestrade had the crew seized this afternoon. They are all languishing at Scotland Yard. Now, there is no one here to help you and no place for you to escape to.”

“Lestrade,” Mary spat. “But on your orders.” She still had her gun and had it pointed at us now.

“Yes,” Holmes said. “You might as well give up, there’s nowhere for you to go.”

“The invincible Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Mary sneered, “who knows everything because it is his business to know it! Mr Sherlock Holmes.” She spat the name like a curse.

Then she turned on me. “Has he even explained the game to you, dear John? The stakes, the moves, the real players? How the dangers that have fallen on you these past months, including my transformation, the sea monsters, and even Morris here, are all the work of your one true enemy?”