The icy water froze her skin and her sodden floated around her.  The crude life jacket did little to ease the pain from the cold of the icy Atlantic water.  With one last look at Daniel, she let herself go.  Isabella the Vampire Slayer was dead.

April 14th 1912

Aboard the Titanic:

Isabella de Roxelle sat alone in the luxurious cabin.  It was nearly time to go patrolling again.  She wasn’t looking forward to it.  The freezing Atlantic air chilled her to the bone.  She reasoned with herself.  No vampire activity had taken place over the last few days, and yet there were definitely those aboard who were bloodsuckers.  Daniel had taught her how to recognize them.  Daniel.  Daniel Hart was her watcher and guardian and although her was almost double her age, she still felt a burning desire to tell him the truth about her feelings for him. At 16, she was ready for marriage, but with no parents to choose a fiancée for her, and of course, the task of the slayer she didn’t expect to find a suitor soon.  Or ever.  An eerie feeling crept over her.  She was going to die, and that was her destiny as the chosen one, but sometimes, alone, she would cry over that fact that it was likely she would die before she reached 18. The previous slayer had been called at 14 and died at 15.  Isabella didn’t want that.  Daniel entering the cabin interrupting her disturbing thoughts, his arms laden with documents obviously stolen from the second-class library.  He looked in every way the gentleman.  His stylish suit and clean-cut hair suggested wealth, but he was as poor as a person in third class.  He borrowed money from the de Roxelle fortune, and Isabella didn’t mind at all. The De Roxelle family were all dead now, apart from her, so there was no one else she could give it to really.  Daniel told her she looked like her mother, with her long black locks and deep blue eyes.  She thought, by the way her talked about her mother, that perhaps they had been more than just friends.

“Ah! Isabella! Are you ready to patrol?”

“Mmmm” she answered, not even looking him in the eye.  She turned to him, and saw the odd expression on his face.

“Is something the matter?” she queried.

He beamed.  “No my dear, just…I was wondering…have you had any more of those nightmares recently?”

The Nightmares.  The horrific pictures of death, ice and water.  Some people say that a slayer has prophetic dreams, but if these dreams were meant to show the fate of their ship, why…that would be impossible? The Titanic is unsinkable! Lying through her teeth, Isabella reassured Daniel that all was well, and the nightmares had stopped.  She got up, grabbed her stake and headed for the A-deck promenade.

The wind whistled through Lorenzo’s hair as he waited in the shadows.  As a vampire, he didn’t feel much cold, but something about tonight.  He could feel it in his un-beating heart that tonight, carnage should, or would take place.  The third-class waif stood on the poop deck gazing over the railings at the moonless sky.  An easy kill.  As he crept forward, he saw her move in the corner of his eye.  The slayer.  She was onboard! The rumours were true!  The girl was startled at the noise, turned, took one look at his face and fled, terror in her eyes and panic in her scream.  Not only had the slayer attacked, but also the ship had shook violently.  An iceberg!  A deep grinding noise shook the liner and an atrocious screeching noise filled the air. Ice chips flew over the edge, almost hitting the pair of onlookers.  Lorenzo turned and watched the slayer run.

“Daniel! We’ve hit an iceberg!” shrieked Isabella, already packing stakes and crossbows into a small bag.

“This ship is unsinkable, we’ll be fine! Calm down for goodness sakes!” he paced around the room with her, urging her to stop.

“Think of the panic Daniel, think of what the vampires will do!” she protested, “There will be hundreds of people and an equal number of the un-dead!”

A knock at the door stopped the argument.  It had been half an hour since the Titanic had struck the chunk of floating ice.  Daniel calmly opened to be met with a steward handing out lifebelts.

“Please take one Sir,” the man said primly, “ And had up to the boat deck.”

“Why?” demanded Daniel crossly, “What on earth is the matter?”

“I believe we have struck ice and we are sinking Sir, now take a lifebelt…” the steward began to move away.  Suppressing her urge to gloat, Isabella put on her lifebelt and headed out the door with Daniel hot in pursuit.

“What are you going to do?” he asked with an edge of something in his voice.  Turning to him, Isabella saw fear reflected in his eyes. She wanted to kiss him.

“I’m going to kick vampire arse.” she replied in the most uncouth language.

On the deck, it was pandemonium.  The band played a happy tune, a crude attempt to calm the disarray.  Isabella searched for the vampires, and saw that most were women, already in lifeboats, the same dread of others written across their faces.

“Cowards….” muttered Daniel, but Isabella looked for the vampire she had hunted earlier.  She had a horrific thought that perhaps he had turned the few on the ship, all by himself…

“Isabella…there’s one there!” shouted Daniel, shaky and shivering.  Following his gaze she saw the vampire.  It was him.  “I recognize him!  It’s Lorenzo…he’s an evil bastard that one! Killed 3 slayers in the past 300 years, one each year…including…”

Daniel stopped and Isabella knew he meant her mother. Her mother.  Memories came rushing back….

The man with the funny nose bit Mummy’s neck as she frantically tried to stab him with a stick…and then…nothing…”

“Right…come…” Isabella snapped out of her past and into the present, only to find Daniel gone and water around her ankles.  She looked around in desperation.  He was nowhere to be seen.  She ran towards the front of the ship, into the icy cold water gradually rising, ready to engulf her and stopped dead.  The vampire…Lorenzo…had Daniel in his grasp.  Daniel’s expression made her stop in her tracks.  Tears welled up.  He was strangely relaxed and as he saw her he tried to cry out…but it was too late.  The vampire tore his neck out and drank.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Isabella collapsed.  The next thing she saw was him.  Lorenzo.

“Ola Senorita, mind if I….?”  He reached down and gently lifted her.  The water had numbed her, but she still felt the needle-like pain as he began to drink from her.  After an hour, he stopped.  She was barely conscious, but still alive. He dragged the bodies into a cabin and left them there.

When Isabella regained some strength, she found herself on a soaking bed, with Daniel’s still body floating on the water...water? Icy water, up to her torso.  She screamed with frustration as she tried to get out.  No one heard.  After half an hour she gave up.  Looking at Daniel’s face, she kissed his blue lips for the very first and last time.  The she lay down on the highest bunk and waited to die.

April 18th 1912

Watcher’s Council’s report on Latest Slayers Death:

They have strangely found the body of Daniel Hart. The men that went back for the corpses found it a few days later.  It appears that many were killed by the un-dead including Hart.  The body of Isabella de Roxelle cannot be found. God rest her soul.