A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire, #21)

As I followed River riding atop Jeriad, away from the Black Heights and out of the boundary, I had a bad feeling about River accompanying the dragons. I wished that she could have stayed behind and let the dragons go by themselves. Then, when Amaya caught Jeriad’s eyes with a curse, my fears came to fruition. Through the chaos and commotion, nobody noticed River slip from the dragon’s back and crash into the waves.

I was afraid that she’d fallen too close to the jagged rocks, that she might have been injured by the force of her fall—half-bloods weren’t as sturdy as vampires. I didn’t know exactly how much they could endure. But then she emerged beneath a sky of fire.

“River!” I yelled.

Bolting through the smoke, flames, and even a couple of hunters as they aimed their bullets at the dragons, I leapt off the rocks. I glided over the surface of the ocean and reached River. As the waves rolled over her, she opened her mouth to shout, but the thick cloud of smoke stifled her. Disorientated, she was carried backward by the tide, which, to my horror, started swelling closer and closer to the hunters’ speedboat.

She was strong. I didn’t understand why she didn’t kick her legs furiously and distance herself from it, but then I realized that she couldn’t see the speedboat. I could see in this smog, but the dragons’ offense was blinding her, and by the time she realized where she was headed, it was too late. She brushed up against the side of the speedboat and one of the men noticed her. His arms shot down and grabbed her by the shoulders. Before she could even react, he’d yanked her up over the edge of the boat.

“No!” I roared, my voice sounding on par with the dragons’ bellows as it echoed in my head.

I leapt onto the boat after her. Six hunters were now bent over her, grabbing her limbs as she kicked and thrashed. Then one pulled out a gun and jammed it against her temple, forcing her into submission. I feared that they were going to treat her the same as my parents—that the hunter was seconds away from pulling the trigger—but instead, they fastened metal restraints around her wrists and arms. Then they dragged her through an open hatch. I sped through to find that it led down to a small, lower deck.

She struggled against her restraints, but they must have been strong. For all her supernatural strength, she couldn’t break through them.

As they carried her to a wide bench in one corner, a man yelled from above deck, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” The engine roared, and the speedboat lurched.

The men backed away from River, though four remained watching her, guns still ready in their hands. A pain lanced my chest as River begged, “Please, let me go.” She was soaked to the bone, and it killed me to see how much she was shivering.

I glared around at the hunters, trying to see if I could recognize any of them. Most had removed their shades, but I couldn’t. None of these men bore burns, so I guessed that they had remained on the boat. Despite just witnessing an attack of gigantic, fire-breathing dragons, all looked quite calm, as though they saw this kind of thing every day.

What do they want with River?

Back near The Oasis, after we had first escaped and ventured out into the desert—a desert that was closely guarded by hunters—I remembered how she had almost died from one of the bullets. They’d chosen to attack without even hearing her out, so I expected them to behave in the same way here. Plunge a bullet into her chest or skull. But they didn’t.

The speed the boat was traveling at unnerved me. When it began to slow, I left River temporarily to poke my head out through the hatch. We had arrived near the huge naval ships. I expected us to head right for one of them, where they’d likely carry River aboard, but instead they stopped two dozen feet away from it.

“Doug, are you ready with the sub?” A man near the bow—the same tall, wiry man who’d addressed my parents on the rocks—spoke into an earpiece.

A few moments later, a submarine surfaced in front of us. It poked out from beneath the waves and a hatch lifted open.

The tall man nodded to another hunter, who descended to the lower deck and instructed the men watching over River to carry her up. They grabbed her and hoisted her over their heads as they transferred her from the speedboat to the submarine. Even bound and with all four men, each of them about twice her size, manhandling her, she still managed to make it difficult for them. But not difficult enough. She was shoved down through the submarine’s hatch, and as I followed, four more men were waiting for her. They picked her up and carried her along a narrow corridor.

“Let me go! Please!” River’s voice cut me again.