“Perfect. Now give me the keys, and tell no one of this. I’ll do my best to see that your property is returned to you unharmed, but just in case, take this money as recompense for your trouble.”
Rans gestured imperiously to Guthrie, who sighed and handed over his money clip. Rans peeled off a handful of bills that probably would have bought two boats to replace the one we were about to steal, and gave it to the man without comment. Slack-jawed, the owner pulled the keys out of his pocket and dropped them into Rans’ open palm.
Rans tossed the depleted money clip back to Guthrie, his attention still focused on the hypnotized boat owner. “Go away now. You never saw us.”
The man nodded absently and wandered off, staring at the wad of cash in his hand with a faintly confused frown. The back of my neck prickled, and I drew in a sharp breath as I scanned the length of the island-side dock.
“Fae,” I warned, as my eyes fell on a tall, golden-skinned male figure. Our gazes locked across the width of the harbor. Sunlight glinted off his ash-blond hair. He was a fair distance away, but I didn’t recognize him as being anyone I’d met before.
Rans’ voice jolted me loose from my reverie. “Get in.”
Guthrie and I tumbled into the passenger area of the boat with little in the way of grace. Rans threw off the mooring rope and slid into the driver’s seat, giving the simple control panel a quick once-over as he did.
“You do, um, actually know how to drive this thing, right?” I asked nervously as I stowed my bag and took a seat at the back. I fumbled around, but there didn’t appear to be any seatbelts—which was a bit worrying.
“More or less, and for god’s sake put on a life vest,” Rans said. Which was also a bit worrying. “There should be at least one of the things on board somewhere.”
I rummaged beneath the seats and came up with an orange vest. “Okay, but what about you two?”
“Drowning’s not really a concern for us, love.”
Guthrie shot him a look. “It’s not?”
“You’re still breathing part of the time out of habit, mate, but it’s strictly voluntary at this point, I assure you.”
Guthrie blinked. “Well... fuck.”
I managed to struggle into the vest and adjust the straps to fit just as the boat’s engine rumbled into life. My head whipped around, looking for the Fae. The place where he’d been standing was empty, and the crawling sensation skittering over my skin had eased. There was no sign of him as I scanned the harbor.
“Our spy just disappeared,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the engine noise. “Feels like he’s gone.”
“Off to get reinforcements, I’d imagine,” Rans called back. “I’ll wager he and his friends arrived on the private boats we saw docked near the cruise ship.”
The engine throttled up, and the boat slipped away from its berth. My stomach swooped sideways at the unexpected movement, making me hope I wouldn’t live to regret the fried conch and sweet pastry I’d just eaten for lunch. In moments, we were describing a broad arc inside the roughly rectangular marina, until the bow pointed at a gap between the outermost dock and the rocky spit of land where I’d dabbled a hand in the ocean to prove saltwater wouldn’t hurt me.
Beyond that gap lay open water.
“The most direct route to Antigua takes us right past the cruise ship dock,” Guthrie called over the sounds of engine noise and displaced water.
“Then give me an indirect route,” Rans called back, as the harbor fell away behind us.
“Hug the coast for a bit. If we can make it to Camp Bay we’ll be outside the direct line of sight of the cruise ship’s dock. Then, uh... south, I guess.”
Rans shot him a sidelong look, even as he slid the throttle forward. “You guess?”
The boat surged faster, and Guthrie glared in return. “How wide a berth do you want to give the cruise terminal? We can go counterclockwise around the entire fucking island if you’d rather, but it’ll end up being a hell of a lot more than a sixty-mile trip if we do.”
The familiar and much-despised tingle of Fae magic washed over my skin like spray from the powerboat’s wake, and I craned to look behind us. Two dark shapes interrupted the blue expanse of the water.
“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better decide now—Fae boats at six o’clock!” I warned.
Rans glanced back, wind blowing through his dark hair and rippling the fabric of his designer shirt. “Bugger. Hold on, you two!”
I clutched the edges of the seat with white knuckles as the boat turned in a wide arc to the left at high speed and headed almost directly toward our pursuers.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled, not reassured at all when Rans flashed me his best I-might-be-a-little-unhinged grin before turning his attention back to the other boats.
“Playing Battleship,” he said with evident relish. “What does it look like?”
Okay, this is it—I’m totally going to die now, aren’t I? I thought, still clinging to the seat with everything I had.
Guthrie didn’t seem to be faring too much better. The hand that wasn’t grasping his phone was clutching the edge of the dashboard with a desperate sort of single-minded focus. “Rans, in case I haven’t mentioned this lately, you are one seriously crazy motherfucker.”
“I think it may have come up one or twice recently,” Rans said. “Don’t lie, though—it’s one of the things you love about me, deep down.”
“No,” Guthrie retorted. “No, it’s really not.”
As our boat flew toward the Fae boats at an approximate speed of way-the-hell-too-fast, Rans’ strategy became evident—and while it was still crazy, it maybe wasn’t quite as suicidally crazy as I’d first assumed. After all, the Fae probably had about as much interest in experiencing a head-on collision as I did—which was to say, none at all. And apart from that, there wasn’t really a good way for them to physically stop us at these kinds of speeds.
One of the Fae boats veered right, though it wasn’t immediately clear if they were trying to block us or get the hell out of our path. As the distance between us closed, Rans spun the wheel to the left. It wasn’t like a car where the effect was immediate, but the powerboat arced in that direction a second or two later, throwing up spray in its wake.
“Get down, both of you!” Rans barked, as one of the Fae in the nearest boat stood up and raised one arm. I caught a glimpse of something dark in his hand, and several things happened more or less at the same time.
Our boat blew past the Fae boats while I was in the process of diving for the deck. A sharp crack hit my ears at the same instant a bullet whizzed through the place where I’d just been. A second crack of gunfire followed, and then a third, sounding more distant. The boat’s engine coughed and sputtered for a second or two before roaring back to full strength, pushing us farther away from the Fae, who were still going in the opposite direction.
“Everyone all right?” Rans called.
“Never better,” I croaked, nursing the bruise on my elbow. Cautiously, I poked my head up.
Guthrie was dusting himself off as he climbed back into the seat next to Rans. “You’re lucky I didn’t smash my damned phone.”
He craned around to look behind us, and I did the same. The Fae were slewing around to give chase, but Rans’ impromptu game of high-speed chicken had given us some breathing room while they got their vessels turned around and pointing the right direction.
“It’s a straight-up horse race now,” Rans said grimly. “If they can catch up to us within the next sixty miles, we’re screwed. If we can gain enough distance on them to ditch the boat at a port in St. John’s and disappear into the city, then we’re... well, we’re in roughly the same position we were before, I suppose. Just on a different island.”
“Great,” I said. “So, apparently this group is trying to finish the job Caspian started in California? They’re trying to kill us?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Rans called back as he consulted Guthri
e’s phone screen and altered course by a fraction, still running at full throttle. “Those were lead bullets, not silver.”
I frowned. “How on earth can you know that?”
“Because my body just expelled one of them from my left bicep,” he said.
“What?” I squeaked, scurrying forward until I could get a look at his left arm. A dark patch of blood maybe three inches across stained the sky-blue cotton of his shirtsleeve, which now sported a neat hole through the material.
“It’s fine, love,” he reassured. His expression hardened. “No permanent harm done—which makes me think they were trying to incapacitate me without killing both of us. And that, in turn, makes me think they want you alive.”
A cold lump settled in my stomach. If the Fae managed a lucky shot through Rans’ heart with silver, they’d kill me, too—not just him. They must know that he wouldn’t let me be taken without a fight, though... hence lead bullets that might put him out of commission for a few precious moments so they could snatch me, but wouldn’t be fatal.
I thought of the last time I’d been a prisoner of the Fae, and shuddered.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said in a shaky voice. “I’m not going back to Dhuinne.”
Blue eyes met mine and held for the space of a heartbeat, understanding shining in them. “I know, love. Brave heart, eh?”
“What happened with the engine back there?” Guthrie asked, breaking the moment. “I thought for a second they must have hit a fuel line or something, but it sounds all right now.”
“I’m not entirely certain,” Rans said, returning his gaze to the ocean ahead. “There are a couple of possibilities, including one I’m decidedly unhappy about—but there’s nothing to be done about it, either way.”
“Cryptic much?” I groused, still crouching between the two front seats. I looked back, and found that the Fae were once again on our heels, but lagging far enough behind for the moment that aiming with a handgun would be impractical. I watched, but couldn’t tell if they were gaining ground or not.
“Frequently, yes—though that wasn’t my intention in this case,” Rans replied. “Fae magic disrupts electronics. The effect covers a broader area when several of them are together in a group. The control panel on this boat is reassuringly analog, but I didn’t stop to think that it might have electronic fuel injection rather than a carburetor.”
Guthrie gave him another one of those oh-my-god-are-you-even-kidding-right-now looks. “So let me get this straight. If they get too close, they can just... kill our engine? With magic?”
“Our engine... your mobile phone. Suffice to say, it’s in our best interest not to let them get too close.”
I looked behind us again. Were the boats a bit nearer than they had been before? Or was that just my paranoia talking?
“And if they’re faster than we are? How are we going to stop them?” I asked, the unpleasant lump of fear in my stomach growing heavier.
Rans drew breath as though to speak and held it, but then he let it out slowly and shook his head without replying. He didn’t have to say anything.
The answer was—we couldn’t.
SEVENTEEN
THEY WERE GAINING on us. I couldn’t delude myself anymore into thinking I was imagining it. And I wasn’t the only one who’d come to that conclusion.
“We’re not going to make it,” Guthrie said, glancing from our pursuers to his phone’s GPS. “At this rate, they’ll be on us a full twenty minutes before we reach St. John’s.”
“Anything closer?” Rans asked, not even bothering to look back at the Fae. He just focused his eyes on the expanse of empty water in front of us, and kept the boat’s throttle jammed forward to its maximum.
“Not close enough to help,” Guthrie told him. “There’s a small peninsula west of the city, but it’s maybe five or ten minutes’ difference at these speeds.”
The powerboat, I’d learned, maxed out at about forty-five knots, which was apparently a bit more than fifty miles per hour. In a way, it felt crazy-fast with the wind whipping past us and the boat skimming the waves, throwing up spray in its wake. But when I looked at the emptiness surrounding us, my brain insisted we were barely crawling. Too slow, too slow, too slow—the words echoed through my head on a continuous loop.
“What do we do?” I asked, as if either of the two men could have an answer when our options were narrowing down to nothing.
“Run until we can’t,” Rans said. “Then stand and fight.”
I looked over my shoulder, and my heart kicked against my ribs when I saw one of the Fae standing again, gun in hand. “Down!” I yelled, diving for the deck. Guthrie followed my shouted command. Rans didn’t, though he at least glanced back to assess the threat as the first shot rang out.
“He’s wasting ammunition,” Rans observed, as though we were discussing the weather and not a fairy taking potshots at us in the middle of the Caribbean. “That kind of range is marginal at best with a handgun.” His eyes flicked to me. “But stay down anyway—they’re only going to get closer as time goes on.”
I stared at him, windblown and sun-reddened with his rumpled designer clothing, lounging at the wheel of a stolen powerboat. “You really get off on this whole James Bond thing, don’t you?” I accused. “Boat chases... motorcycle chases... racing trains in sports cars—I totally should have guessed that about you the first time I heard the accent.”
“Does that make you the Bond girl?” he asked. “Hmm. I suppose I can see it, especially since your knife-fighting skills have improved.”
“I refuse to play the part of Felix,” Guthrie grumbled. “Just throwing that out there.”
Another gunshot split the air.
“Still only one Fae with a firearm?” Rans asked, all business once more.
I peeked over the edge of the hull. “Nope. One in each boat now.” I flinched lower at the next sharp crack of sound.
He nodded. “If they’d intended to trap us on the cruise ship, it’s unlikely they’re carting around an extensive arsenal. Those might be the only two with guns, and they may only be carrying a couple of extra clips.”
“Yay,” I said flatly.
“For what it’s worth, I can see Antigua now,” he added.
“Does that help us?” I asked.
“Not particularly,” he admitted. “Perhaps you’d better dig around in my bag and get the iron daggers out. There should be two, one for each of you.”
Grimly, I crawled across the length of the deck. Dragging his carryon out from under the seat where it was stowed, I unzipped it and started rummaging.
“Rans,” Guthrie said, sounding deadly serious. “I’m not taking a fucking knife to fight with. Seriously, I have no idea how to brawl with anything deadlier than fists. I’d be just as likely to stab my own eye out as stab whoever I was fighting.”
There was a beat of silence. “Well... the good news is, your eye would grow back if that happened.”
“Rans.”
More silence.
“I’m... truly sorry you’re involved in this, Guthrie.”
I bit my lower lip, not thrilled by how much that statement sounded like a gallows confession.
Guthrie’s chest heaved with a sigh. “Yeah, you already said. But you didn’t get me into it, asshole. I got myself into it by selling my goddamned soul in a foolish attempt to cheat death. And, hey, look how well that whole thing turned out, right?”
I thought of Guthrie’s wife, and wondered if he would somehow get to see her again after he died. Or would Myrial reaping his life-force prevent that? Wordlessly, I crawled forward and clipped one of the sheathed iron daggers to Rans’ belt. The other one I held onto, since my sundress didn’t have anyplace convenient to hook it. I glanced down at myself, wishing that gladiator sandals magically gave one gladiator-like fighting skills. I was getting better, true—but I’d never fought a Fae in close quarters. Much less six of them.
A glance showed the pursuing craft getting uncomfortably
close. I looked back at Rans, sitting in the driver’s seat like a great big vampire-shaped target.
“Should you maybe make some kind of attempt to keep from getting shot?” I asked pointedly.
“Already been shot once today, love,” he retorted. “I expect I’ll get shot several more times in the next little while. Can’t be avoided.” He gave the pursuing boats an assessing glance. “Don’t fret, though. At this distance and with lead bullets, it’d take one hell of a lucky strike to hit anything vital enough that it would put me out of commiss—”
With a crack of noise, something whizzed overhead. Before I could so much as flinch, Rans’ skull exploded in a burst of red, and his body slumped sideways. I stared, uncomprehending, mouth open but no sound coming out. Things around me decelerated into slow motion, my thoughts freezing into stark denial.
Rans’ hands dragged against the boat’s steering wheel as he fell, and the small craft slewed hard to the left as the wide-open throttle and the rudder fought each other under the influence of physics and inertia. Guthrie—closer than I was and maybe not quite as disabled by shock—lunged for the controls. The boat rolled dangerously sideways, throwing me against the inner wall of the hull. Rans’ limp body toppled over the edge like a ragdoll, arms and legs windmilling as he disappeared into the water.
Holding my breath against the scream that wanted to break free, I huddled against the side of the boat and waited to die.
Look at it this way, I’d told Rans not half a day ago. If you do end up losing me, at least you won’t have long to worry about it.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut as Guthrie wrestled the vessel under control, but the sudden loss of forward momentum had been enough to allow our pursuers to close the final distance between us. The boat’s engine coughed and spluttered to stillness as Fae magic scrambled whatever electronics controlled the fuel system, and we were drifting, dead in the water.
Dead...
Why wasn’t I dead? If Rans was gone, I wanted to be dead, damn it. He’d promised me. He’d promised me we’d never have to live without each other—
The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set Page 83