I pushed to a sitting position. Remembered the fangs buried in my throat.
Looked around. I inspected my surroundings and myself. Storm clouds were on the northern horizon. The sun was setting in the west. Land was invisible. Around me was nothing. Water, water everywhere. I had been in a storm in the Mississippi. Now I guessed I was in the Gulf of Mexico. I had been bitten by a master, crazy, outclan priestess vamp. The water I was sitting in was red with my blood. I kicked the gas cans that were connected to the motor. Both rang hollowly, empty. Not good. I was still pelted, still fanged, and I was alone.
I tested the cuffs. The chain holding the wrist bracelets was the weak link. I chuffed out a laugh. Weak link. I braced my shoulders and spine, took a deep breath. And jerked. The cuffs abraded the flesh over my wrist bones, but nothing else happened. I tried again. Again. I smelled my blood; the pain in my wrists was terrible; my left fingers went numb. I tried it one last time and the metal gave way. I fell forward, into the bottom of the boat, taking in a mouthful of bloody, salty water. My arms dropped to my sides. I fought back to a sitting position and as quickly as I could, I started slow stretches to get my muscles moving and to get feeling back in my fingers. I started bailing out the boat.
Beneath the hull, something scratched, and my first thought was sharks. Then I thought, fanghead, hiding from the sun, instinctively reacting to the presence of blood in the water. I paused, remembering Callan in this very boat, in the river, trying to make it ashore. Good odds he was under the dinghy.
I touched my throat. It was heavily knotted and rippled with scar tissue. Healed. Not well, but well enough to not be dead. My skinwalker magics? Or the thing under the boat? I went back to bailing, ignoring the possible vamp under the boat, for now.
There was nothing useful with me in the boat. No cooler, no water, no food. I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten aboard. I wasn’t sure what day it was. I pulled my cell to find it was soaked and dead. I had a feeling that my people thought I was dead too. “Well, this sucks,” I said, my voice hoarse. Thirst dragged through me. I desperately needed to pee, but I also needed to save the urine in case I needed to drink it. Gag. Fortunately or not, there was nothing to pee into. For the moment, holding it was the wiser choice. My clothes were ruined, the leather damaged by salt water, gray and crusty white and stiff. I kept bailing out the boat. It took a while, but the blood in it was starting to smell.
As I worked, I heard more scratching from the underside of the hull. Come nightfall, I’d have to fight him. I rechecked for my weapons. All were gone. Even the Benelli. I remembered carrying it at some point. If the suckhead under the boat had tossed my gun, I’d rip off his head with my bare hands. Then I wondered if he had my guns and blades with him. If he was smart, he would have taken everything I had overboard with him and come up shooting. He didn’t need air, but by dusk, he’d be hungry, boiled, burned, and as salt damaged as my leathers.
I went through my pockets, finding a few trinkets: the Glob, of no use whatsoever since I had no idea how it worked or how to activate it, and a stone. It looked like black glass with bits of white in it. I didn’t know what it was. And then I started laughing.
He had held out a closed fist. Dropped a small black stone, one with white inclusions in it, in my big-knuckled paw. “It’s called an Apache tear,” he’d said. “If you need me, you can crush it. I will come.”
I closed my fist around it and I squeezed. Nothing happened. Even in half-form I wasn’t strong enough to crush it. I pulled out the Glob, set the Apache tear on the engine housing, and brought the Glob down on it, shattering the obsidian.
Gee DiMercy to the rescue, I thought. But he didn’t come. And he didn’t come.
The day went on. And on. Cold, with a brilliant sun, and lapping waves. Eventually, the sun began to set, the clouds picking up the red rays and casting the entire skyline in shades of scarlet and crimson and fuchsia. The moon rose. The first star peeked out. The sky began to darken. The vamp beneath began to scrabble on the boat bottom. Hull. Whatever. Vamp nails on wood.
The scratching on the bottom of the boat got stronger. This was not going to end well.
The clouds to the north boiled. Sparkled. Dragons. Les Arcenciels. Five of them, in all colors of the rainbow. Gee DiMercy darted among them, his blue and scarlet plumage catching the pale light. I came to my knees in the bottom of the boat. I was so thirsty that my throat ached. I’d never be able to yell at them, and in the light they wouldn’t see me. But I was wrong. They dove down from the clouds, the dragons diving into the water near my boat, long and lean and glistening, erupting to play, creating huge waves that nearly capsized me. “Hey!” I yelled. “Watch it!” But it came out a scratchy croak and I was ignored.
Gee DiMercy alighted on the small seat of the dinghy. From a pocket he pulled a bottle of water, cold and wet with condensation. “You called, my mistress?”
I took the bottle, opened it and crushed the weak plastic, forcing the water into my mouth in a single long drink. I dropped it in the bottom of the boat. “Another.”
“No. As your IT specialist says it, you will hurl.”
I blinked. Laughed. “Yeah. That sounds like Alex.” Out in the water, dragons played, dipping and splashing and trumpeting like elephants and cheeping like birds. Their scales caught the last rays of the sun and threw back the light. Their frills splashed and wings made waves big as buses. The dinghy rocked violently. Beneath the boat, the vampire had grown silent, unmoving as the dead. “I need a ride home. Can you help with that?”
“Of course, my mistress. Your people will be pleased. They think you are dead.” He handed me a cell phone. “It is a satellite phone. It might save his life if you were to call George Dumas.”
I punched in his number. It rang and rang. He finally answered, the single word raw and ragged. “What.”
“Howdy, Bruiser.”
A silence grew, too long, too vacant, a void, barren of life and hope. “J . . . Jane?” he whispered.
“Yeah. You okay? Leo okay? Did we win?”
“I’m . . . Leo is . . . fine. Jane?” he repeated, his tone still disbelieving.
“I have one last vamp to take care of. Then I’ll be home.”
“Dear God in heaven.” He took a breath so tattered it groaned in pain. “Jane?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. Ish. I’ll be home soon. I gotta take a swim.”