Brady had had this dream before, although it had been a long time since it had first disturbed his sleep. It was a memory really, played out in vivid detail, cutting through his normally empty slumber like a hot knife through butter.

        The four men, others much like he had been, dragged him into the abandoned, derelict old barn and proceeded to beat him relentlessly until his only defense was to lay prone on the straw covered floor. They stripped him, held him down as they cut into every inch of his skin—paper cuts, really, that somehow managed to sting whenever the memory came back to haunt him.

        It was all for profit. He’d been wanted dead or alive and the posse who’d come to collect the bounty on his head preferred dead. After all, if they killed him they could at least have fun doing so.

        He was a mass of blood and torn flesh by the time they’d had enough and death would have been welcoming. Even in departure the four bounty hunters still hadn’t been completely satisfied. They’d brought a bag of salt with them, and before riding away they strung it up from the rafter’s right over top of him and fired a single shot at it. Salt exploded everywhere, cascading onto Brady’s open injuries like snow.

        He tried to keep quiet through it all. Any indication of pain would have goaded them onto inflicting even more torture. But the second the salt hit his bloody body he lost all thought of preserving his dignity and screamed in white hot pain, his whole body feeling as though it were engulfed by flames.

        Brady woke up at that point. He’d always woken up when the salt hit his body in the dream, his scream echoing in his mind, feeling the hot burning pain within that first microsecond of wakefulness. For a moment he felt completely disoriented, not knowing why in the world he wasn’t waking up in his bed back in Sundown with Jackson there to soothe him as he always did whenever that particular nightmare struck.

        Then, as he became more lucid, he realized that he was still on the riverboat, and with that realization came all the bitter reminders of what had happened in the past month. What he’d lost.

        Too used to the loneliness after so many weeks, Brady did not allow himself a moment to dwell on the absence. He felt resentful of his subconscious for never letting him see Jackson’s handsome face and short, white-blonde hair in his dreams. After several moments of simply sitting up in bed attempting to get his wits together Brady kicked the sheets off of his body and set about getting dressed.

        He needed to feed again. The blood from the man he’d attacked on the docks in Temptation had been too riddled with alcohol to provide the nourishment he truly needed.

        Brady had no trouble finding his way around in the small, strange room in spite of the near pitch blackness. Darkness was a comfort to his kind. Even though vampires couldn’t see in the dark, like animals, they had heightened senses that proved useful when things like light failed.

        As a result of these increased abilities it took Brady no less than a minute to realize that two things were amiss.

        The ferry wasn’t moving. As it wasn’t due in Zion City until the crack of dawn, Brady felt a moment’s panic. If the craft had already docked then surely sunrise was mere moments away. He couldn’t risk making a dash for safety this soon, least of all if there were people milling on the wharf. The citizens of Zion City weren’t used to vampires and the last thing Brady wanted to do was draw attention to himself.

        After a moment, common sense replaced panic. The ship wasn’t securely anchored, that much Brady could feel by how it was gently rocking on the water. He could hear waves lapping placidly against the sides of the boat and. Peering out the window he saw not the dark shapes of buildings but shadowy, distant trees.

        The riverboat was stopped on the lake.

        The second thing that Brady became aware of, and it was the one that put him on edge the most, was the faint but unmistakable smell of blood. The closer he got to the door of his room the more overpowering the sweet, metallic scent became. Dressed only in his trousers he put a firm hand on the door and wrenched it open, determined to figure out just what in the hell had happened while he had been asleep.

        As soon as he opened the door into the corridor beyond he felt his hunger intensify at how thick the air was with the smell of blood. It permeated the entire ship and at that moment Brady knew that something had boarded the riverboat with him, something with a mindless desire to feed.

        His own hunger momentarily overwhelmed him as he stepped into the hallway; his jaw stretched as his fangs grew involuntarily. Cursing himself for not having fed properly before boarding, Brady got a grip on his thirst, albeit with immense difficulty.

        He tried to breathe in some kind of scent that would help him determine just what else had made it onto the riverboat. Doing so only served to flood his senses with the tempting odour of blood. It was no use to rely on rudimentary senses. He would have to search the ship.

        Brady knew what he would find before he stumbled upon the bodies. The air was too thick with blood for there to be any other possible explanation but that still didn’t make the sight of the slaughter in the main passenger deck any less awful. Bodies, young and old, were strewn all over the place, many of them prone and peaceful as though still asleep. Whatever had attacked had done so when the passengers had been at their most vulnerable. Some, those closer to the various exits, had obviously been roused by whatever it was that had killed them but they had been too sleepy to put up much of a fight

        Anger rose in Brady’s chest. It was one thing to attack a human to feed, but this kind of senseless massacre hadn’t been done for sustenance but for fun. There was only one thing he knew to be capable of such mindless savagery.

        If it was still on board then he was in just as much danger as these poor people had been.

        He wasn’t afraid. He’d encountered this creature and its kind only a few weeks ago. Having survived a whole colony of them, he wasn’t in the least bit scared of running into it. He was actually hoping to.

        A quick search of the promenade deck showed him more bodies, some them half over the side of the boat as though they’d tried to make a desperate escape for the water.

        The riverboat itself had run into some kind of sandbar near the shore, which wasn’t as far off as Brady had first thought. Had he been a cowardly man he would have jumped over the side and swam for the shore. But Brady was no coward. Taking in a deep breath of air he realized that his suspicions were only too true. The cleaner air outside meant that the smell of blood wasn’t as overpowering as it had been in the close quarters of the ship. Smelling the night air, Brady was able to discern the creature’s rotten scent.

        It was above him, in the crewmen area.

        Narrowing his eyes Brady leaped at the railing that surrounded the upper deck. No mortal man could have made that sort of jump, but to a vampire it was a mere skip.

        Without so much as a pause Brady hoisted himself over the edge of the railing and landed, crouched in a predatory stance on the crew deck.

        He heard and smelled the thing before he saw it, the familiar scent of rotten flesh hitting his nostrils with such intensity that he almost coughed. The odor of blood and death hung over the air despite the clarity of the night, but with the dead crewmen strewn all over the planked floor it was a small wonder why.

        Sickening slurping and gnawing sounds emanated from the bottom of the stairs that led up the operator room. The monster was crouched, gorging itself on the insides of the now dead captain. Even in the darkness Brady could see the monster’s grey, mottled skin as it continued to feast, too drunk on the captain’s innards to pay even the smallest mind to the vampire watching him.

        Brady had encountered a whole colony of these creatures when he’d first left Sundown to find Jackson. They lived in cavernous caves underneath the cliffs that surrounded Superstition Valley and even now as Brady watched the thing feed he found it hard to believe that it had once been a vampire like him.

        Wraith.

        That’s what Jackson had called them when he’d explained the boundaries of being a vampire to Brady. In spite of the convenience that feeding off of sick humans offered, doing so meant ingesting blood that was tainted with disease, and it didn’t take long for a vampire to literally rot alive.

        “Your mind goes along with the rest,” Jackson had told him.“It’s the pain of dying from whatever the human passes onto you. All you can do is think about feeding to numb the feeling.”

        Having satisfied itself with the captain, the Wraith tossed its meal aside and righted itself from its hunched position. Suddenly it sniffed the air, its dead lungs rattling. It let out a gurgling noise of alarm and turned its head to stare directly at Brady, who hadn’t made a move towards it in the slightest.

        Gaping eye sockets stared at him balefully, two white pinpricks from within the only indication that the thing could actually see. Its torn lips stretched in a smile that revealed a line of sharp, uneven teeth. Sticking out its rotten tongue it tasted the air around it, getting a full hit of Brady’s scent. With surprising speed it lunged towards him like some predatory cat, bony limbs propelling it forward.

        Brady met it head on. He wasn’t about to turn away from the foul thing, not after the innocent lives that it had taken. If he ran for it then the Wraith would follow him, just as it had from the caves. It wouldn’t matter where he went, the thing would pursue him and devour anyone in its way.

        The Wraith’s were, despite their corpse-like appearance, resilient. Brady had learned as much when he’d encountered them before. Even with all his strength behind him Brady only succeeded in slamming into the Wraith with equal power, bracing his arms against its shoulders to keep it at bay.

        He gritted his teeth as he felt the creature’s sharp nails dig into his flesh. Rancid breath, fresh with blood, played across his face as the Wraith grappled with him, trying to tear into his flesh with its jagged, blood-stained teeth.

        With a snarl of fury Brady exerted all his strength and flung the Wraith from him, feeling his flesh burn as the creatures nails tore into his skin as it stumbled away from him. It hissed at him in hungry rage and made another go for him but this time Brady knew better than to meet it head on. Just before the Wraith was about to collide with him he seized it by the arm and used its own momentum to swing it around. The wretched thing flew over top of him and over the side of the railing to the deck below.

        Brady didn’t count on it latching onto his shoulder with its cold, talon-like hands. As it fell, so did he. For a second Brady felt the whole world spin around before he slammed hard onto the floorboards of the main deck.

        His head swimming, he staggered to his feet, wishing once more that he’d fed better before boarding. The lack of nourishment was beginning to take its toll and he half entertained the notion of draining what might be left of the ship’s dead for the sheer sake of regaining his strength. But he would not allow himself to stoop to the level of a rat.

        In any case, the lack of sufficient nourishment was keeping the worst of the pain at bay. He was wounded, but he could withstand it.

        The Wraith, also dazed by the fall was hunched half over, its gaping eyes fixed on Brady. He knew that the thing hadn’t been expecting its prey to have so much fight in him. It let out a feral, gargling snarl, its jaw stretched wide as it made another leap for him.

        Brady’s fist collided with its face a split second later, shattering one side of its jaw and sending it stumbling backwards in pain and shock. The vampire knew that it would take more than that to kill the foul thing and there wasn’t a chance that he was going to let the Wraith get away from him, not after the devastation it had caused on the riverboat.

        As the Wraith howled in pain at having part of it face shattered, Brady strode forward, seized it by the back of the head and threw it bodily into one of the large windows that looked into the passenger bay. He meant only to distract the thing for the time being.

        But again, the Wraith’s resilience surprised him. It righted itself in seconds, shards of glass sticking out of its head and torso, black blood oozing from its skin. It let out a shriek and before Brady could so much as pivot out of the way it leaped at him, throwing him to the deck, its claws buried in his neck as it repeatedly bashed his head against the planks.

        Spots danced in front of Brady’s eyes as the Wraith throttled him. His frustration was mounting and he was still gnawingly thirsty for blood. All the loneliness he had experienced over the past month meant that he really had nothing left to live for. So what if he let the Wraith take him? At least it would all finally be over.

        But Brady wasn’t a quitter. And he wasn’t about to let the foul thing sink its putrid, broken jaw into him. Through the pain and rage, he seized the Wraith by the wrist and wrenched its hands away from his throat, feeling his skin tear. With all his strength he snapped both of the thing’s hands back, breaking them with a satisfying snap.

        The Wraith howled in pain and Brady took the opportunity to throw it into the lifeboats tied to the edge of the railing. The creature struggled to untangle itself from the wreckage of wood and rope but with two broken hands it could do no more than thrash about like a floundering fish.

        Seizing his chance, Brady grabbed the end of one of the ropes. Pressing his foot firmly onto the struggling Wraith’s chest to prevent it from escaping, Brady wrapped the rope around its neck and pulled with all his might.

        The Wraith gasped and spluttered for air as Brady pulled on the ends of the rope. The thing’s eyes began to bulge but still Brady did not relent. Black blood oozed from the creature’s skin as the rope squeezed into its flesh. With a sickening squelch the rope severed the Wraith’s head from its neck, tearing through flesh and bone and sending spurts of the creature’s tar-like blood into the air.

        Brady dropped the rope and stepped away from the destroyed lifeboat, kicking the Wraith’s severed head over the side of the stern and into the lake.

        His neck and arms stung from where the Wraith’s claws had ripped into his flesh and his head was still pounding from having been clubbed against the deck. Now that the rush of the battle was over the desire to feed was even more overwhelming and with his injuries Brady knew that he needed to find blood fast.

        Something moved on the crew deck above him. Fighting through all the exhausting hunger Brady once more leaped over the side of the railing, an act made somewhat easier by the break in the posts from where the Wraith had carried him over the side.

        The dark shape of a man moved among the dead. One of the crew had survived the Wraith’s massacre by playing possum and was now hurriedly going through the pockets of his dead shipmates, laughing nervously to himself as he did so. As Brady moved towards him he could smell the blood covering the man. He must have rolled around the corpses the better to appear dead to the Wraith. He was moving far too quickly to have any serious injuries.

        Brady’s fangs distended as he grabbed the man roughly by the back of his hair.

        He’d never turned down feeding from cowardly vultures like this man before.