CHAPTER TWENTY

Makeda opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped, only the last of the bubbles she’d held in her lungs. She didn’t think about her scream or her wonder or the darkness or the sharks she’d felt swimming close by. She reached out with her amnis and found the trail of Lucien’s energy moving incredibly fast and incredibly deep toward the open sea.

She followed on instinct.

As she sped through the water, she didn’t try to remember Kato’s lessons. She didn’t need to. She’d absorbed the knowledge like a sponge. Makeda raced through the ocean, dodging fishes and sharks as she chased after the void in the water that was Lucien. She followed his blood as he moved, and whoever had hold of him was fast.

Abruptly, she felt him come to violent stop.

Makeda didn’t slow. She swam down until the thread of his energy grew strong. She tasted grit and salt and algae in the water and knew the ocean floor had been churned up.

Lucien!

She dove farther, unable to see in the pitch black, feeling only with her senses as a sudden rush of water forced her to her belly. She landed facedown on the rocks and gravel, and that was when she felt it.

Like a roar coming from below, Makeda felt a wave of Lucien’s energy move up from her legs as the seafloor rippled and tossed her up. She was thrown into blackness and chaos, the currents twisting around her as the sand and the rock and the water battled nearby.

She could see nothing. She felt everything.

Whatever water vampire had grabbed Lucien had taken him too deep, too close to the seafloor and the ground that answered to him. She felt the rock fall away beneath her feet before it thrust her up and she was moving like a rocket through the water, the sand propelling her toward the surface like a coin flipped end over end. She burst into the night air and gasped, looking around at the vast emptiness of the sea.

“Lucien!” Makeda tried not to panic.

A jut of rock speared out of the ocean to her right, and she swam toward it. She could see the shore in the distance, but she couldn’t leave without Lucien. She was getting ready to dive back underwater when she felt the grit swirling against her legs. A swell of water and sand boiled up beside the small rock she was swimming toward. She froze, unsure what it meant until an algae-covered grey spear broke the surface of the water. It rose over her head, the stone giving way to pockmarked rocks ripped from beneath the seabed.

Lucien had pulled the earth from beneath the sea.

He hung naked off the side of the rocks, holding on with one hand as he let the rocks carry him above the waves. His fingers gripped the gnarled rock effortlessly, and the water poured over a bare back covered with tattoos. Stags and bears chased each other. Arrowed ink defined the muscles of his torso. He appeared like a young god, ripped from the earth and born from the water.

Trapped within the rugged stone was a strange vampire, his head hanging at a crooked angle, one arm and leg dangling free while his whole right side was clasped in an earthen fist.

“You pulled…” Makeda had known he was powerful, but this? She touched the jagged rocks. They felt sharp and rough, like they’d been hewn by a giant’s fist. “You pulled them from the bottom of the sea?”

Lucien swung toward her, his fingers nimble on the spiked grey face of the new island he’d created. “Makeda, are you all right?”

“Are you?”

A low chuckle. “I’m fine. More fine than our friend here.”

She swam closer and saw the vampire’s eyes rolling toward her though he couldn’t move his head. It was as if concrete had poured and hardened around him. Except the concrete appeared to be grey volcanic rock.

“He took you too close to the ocean floor. You were able to connect with the earth.”

“It’s not as deep as one might think. The south side of the island slopes off quite quickly and goes very deep. If he’d dragged me that direction, he might have managed to kill me.” Lucien swung toward his captive and patted the vampire’s cheek. “But you didn’t do that, did you?”

The vampire snarled.

“Do you recognize him?” she asked.

“No.” Lucien slapped the water vampire when he tried to bite him. “But it looks like Laskaris knows we’re coming.”

“My master will crush you like the— Grruggh.” The vampire’s voice fell away in a wet strangle.

“I didn’t feel like letting him talk.” Lucien dropped into the water and swam toward her.

“Shouldn’t you question him?”

“Why?” Lucien grabbed her around the waist and kissed her hard. “I had no interest in what he had to say. Are you tired?”

“No.”

He grinned. “You followed me so quickly. Were you going to wrest me away from the bad vampire carrying me to my doom?”

“If I had to.”

Lucien threw his head back and laughed. “I adore you, Dr. Abel.”

I adore you too. In that moment, with his smile huge and his amnis a living, pulsing power around her, she wanted nothing more than to take his blood. Let him take hers. He was glorious.

“What are you going to do with him?” she asked.

“Leave him.”

More wet, strangled sounds.

“Couldn’t he get away?”

“If he was as strong as Kato, he could use the water to break the rocks to pieces. But I don’t believe even his master, Laskaris, could break the earth’s hold on him.” Lucien looked toward the east, back toward the assassin’s craggy prison. Then he reached over and pushed the rock slightly north, angling its face toward the island in the distance.