Trip stood beside me at the railing. Unlike yours truly, he did not appear to be feeling seasick at all, but rather seemed to be enjoying himself. He was descended from Jamaican fishermen, so he must have been more in touch with his ancestors' seafaring genes than I was. I had told him about my dream.

"I still have nightmares. I think most of us do," he told me. I knew that some of the zombies that he had been forced to dispatch had been some of his friends and former students. Something like that is bound to weigh heavy on a man's mind. "Something weird was in the air last night."

"But I heard the instructors' meeting about us. I knew about this mission before they came to get us. Explain that."

He shrugged. "You know how it is when you wake up confused. Your brain chemistry's all screwed up. Your unconscious mind just fills in the blanks as needed. We found out about this right after your dream. Seems like the logical thing to me."

"Seems to me that if you want to be logical, you sure did go into the wrong line of work."

He ignored that. "And six master vampires working together? That isn't supposed to happen either."

"Seven," I corrected him. I couldn't forget about the one in the boat, the sharp-faced one that had so enraged and terrified the Old Man.

"Either way. That has never happened. They're too powerful, and too territorial. According to Harbinger there probably aren't that many Masters in the whole world. Besides, how could you tell they were so powerful? All of them look the same." That much was true. From what we had been taught all vampires looked pretty much human, unless you caught them feeding.

"I don't know how I knew. I just did. And there were huge winged monsters, but I didn't get a good look at them. But the other thing, the thing in the boat. That was the scariest. I mean it was the worst thing I've ever seen." I nervously checked my Remington 870 for the twentieth time. It was still there.

"Quit worrying about your dream, man. We've got real stuff to worry about. Let's put our game faces on." He slugged me in the arm, hard. Damn football players.