“I agree with my lady. There has been enough violence for one night, my friend.” Samuel gestured for the other islanders to stay where they were before he spoke to Agraciana. “Why did you obey the vampire?”
Drew’s expression darkened. “Well, for one thing, he’s been holding her mother hostage since Gracie was a kid—”
“You don’t have to tell them anything.” Agraciana folded her arms. “I can defend myself.”
Samuel watched as she scanned the room, focusing on a bowl of figs. A strange aqua light flickered in her dark eyes as she uttered a short, high sound, and the bowl shattered, spilling smashed figs onto the table.
Colotl surged forward, fighting Samuel’s grip.
“Let him go,” Agraciana said. She tilted her head, studying his face, and then laughed. “No, hermano, Energúmeno never made me. This is what I am.” She yanked up her sleeve, exposing the tattoo of a blue dolphin.
“She’s Takyn,” Charlotte said.
Colotl muttered something ugly.
“I am the same as him. As all of them.” Agraciana flicked her fingers at the islanders. “We were made in pairs. But the boy made for me died, and I had no more value for them. I was discarded, and when I was brought here, I was alone. I had no one to be with me. To help me.” To Colotl, she said, “I tried to tell you, but you were a coward, and you blocked me out. So I did what I had to do, so that I could live.” She lowered her arm. “Just as you did.”
Doubt flickered through Colotl’s thoughts, and the rest of the islanders exchanged puzzled looks.
“I can feel all of them now, buzzing back and forth with their thoughts and emotions,” Charlotte murmured. “They can connect with one another as a group.”
We never told her or Energúmeno that we could do this, Charlotte, Colotl thought. It was the only way we could protect ourselves against him.
“I always knew what you were thinking to one another,” Agraciana said. “Even when you blocked my thoughts, I could still hear yours. And I never told the master.” She turned and walked out of the room.
“Nice going,” Drew said to Colotl. “Just for the record, Gracie was dumped here with me because she tried to help me kill Energúmeno tonight. What we did probably cost her parents, the only people who have ever cared for her, their lives.” He took off after her.
“Come on,” Charlotte said. “We need to get them settled down before they start bleeding again.”
Samuel helped Colotl back to the sofa, where the islander rested for a moment before he spoke to the others in a low voice. When he finished, he held out his hands to Samuel and Charlotte.
Unless she attacks one of us, we will not harm the outcast. Colotl’s thoughts were sluggish with exhaustion. Perhaps you can persuade her not to leave the island. She knows much about the master and his men.
“How can she leave?” Samuel asked.
“She’s thinking of dolphins,” Charlotte answered before Colotl could. “She can control them with her voice. Be nice if she could call enough to take all of us back to the mainland.”
“We can’t run away from this,” Samuel told her. “We have to find a way to stop the master before he hurts anyone else.”
You are the way. Colotl pointed to his chest, where the gashes the master had inflicted on him had vanished. He gave you his blood, hoping to change you. You did not turn, but it has made you as strong as he is. That is why he commanded you never to come near him again. He fears you, Samuel.
“What do you mean, ‘he didn’t turn’?” Charlotte demanded.
Energúmeno wishes to make more of his kind to serve him and rule over his people, Colotl thought. So he makes the biggest and the strongest of us who are found drink from a goblet of his own blood. Until now no one has survived this except Samuel. We know he has not turned you because he did not become like the master. He did not grow fangs or try to drink your blood after you were beaten.
Samuel’s stomach surged. “I think that transfusion you gave me after they left us here saved more than my life, Charlotte.”
Charlotte released their hands and stalked out.
Without her, Samuel couldn’t read Colotl’s thoughts, but the islander must have absorbed some of his language, for he said in thick English, “Charlotte afraid. Go, talk.”
Drew spotted Gracie sitting on the end of the pier, her hair dancing with the breeze, her legs dangling in the water. As he approached he noticed she had her hands braced on the edge, as if ready to push herself in.
“If you want to go skinny-dipping,” he said, “first you have to take off your clothes.”
She looked up at him. “You should go back and be with your friend.”
“You’re prettier than he is.” He sat down beside her. Sleek, dark shapes moved beneath the surface of the water, disrupting the waves with almost imperceptible circular wakes. “I’m sorry about what happened in there. You didn’t deserve that.”
“They are right to despise me for what I’ve done. I never killed anyone, but I brought men to Energúmeno whom I knew he would torture and murder. I even arranged everything so that Tacal could kidnap your friend. I did whatever he told me to, no matter what it was.” Her shoulders hunched. “For that, I should die.”
“I worked for Jonah Genaro for a couple of years,” he told her, nodding as her eyes widened. “I ran his tech department, and while I never killed anyone personally, some of the work my technicians did resulted in several kidnappings and murders of people like us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “I can give you all their names, once I add your mother and father to the list.”
“You are not to blame for their deaths, if they are dead.” Her voice grew dull. “The master doesn’t kill right away. He will hurt them, and feed on them, for several days.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “He likes to take his time.”
“Energúmeno can’t do anything to them if he’s deceased.” Drew turned her to face him. “The others want to make that happen, and while they didn’t win the battle tonight, the war is still on. If we stay and help them, I think we can figure out a way to put this bloodsucking bastard back in the ground for good.”
“They don’t want my help, Andrew. They hate me, and if I stay, they will kill me.” Her voice broke. “And I will let them.”
“Sweetheart, at this moment, you are the most valuable asset they have.” He pressed a finger to her lips. “Not because of this, but this.” He tapped her temple. “You’ve been watching the vampire for years. You know what he wants, how he does things, his strengths, his weaknesses. . . . . You’re practically an Energúmeno encyclopedia.”
A glimmer of hope flashed over her face. “None of the children have seen him more than a few times, and even then he always kept his distance.” She gave him a startled look. “I thought it was his disdain for mortals; he truly does believe he is a god. But now I think . . . he may be afraid of them.”
“If he wasn’t before tonight, he is now.” He put his arms around her. “So, can you send the dolphins off into the wet blue yonder?”
She uttered a piercing sound, and the dark shapes changed direction and headed out to sea. “I should go and talk to Samuel.”
Drew caught a glimpse of the big man following a tall, lean figure stalking down the beach. “I think maybe that has to wait for now.”
Charlie knew she should go upstairs, check on Ihiyo’s condition, and tell Tlemi that Colotl was recovering. As the only medical care provider, she had a duty to put her patients first, and she had never let anything interfere with her responsibilities: not her personal life, not her emotions, and certainly not the current bizarre circumstances in which she was being held captive.
She left the villa and walked down to the beach, staring out at the horizon. Clouds had swallowed the moon, and now nothing separated the blackness of the sky from the dark depths of the sea.
What Brent Collins had done had given Charlie an abiding hatred of suicide; she considered it the most selfish act a human being could commit. Yet standing here, knowing now that she might have to live with Samuel for the rest of her life, she understood what drove people to the brink of it.
I was afraid I’d die with him, she thought, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist. Now I’m afraid I won’t.
She felt Samuel coming toward her, felt it on her skin and in her bones, and her despair deepened. She had loved her father with all the purity and trust of a child, and he had tried to drag her into death with him. Now Samuel had her heart in his hands: Samuel who was handsome and rich and kind, just like Brent. Once more she felt small and dark and ugly, a changeling cast as a princess, entirely dependent on him. If they managed to confront the vampire again, would they escape certain death? Or would he die as her father had, leaving her to crawl away, broken and alone?
“I can’t take any more.” Her voice sounded harsh against the soft rush and ebb of the waves.
“We’ve all had a rough night. Tomorrow things won’t seem quite so hopeless.” He came to stand beside her, but when he tried to put his arm around her she moved out of reach. “Charlotte?”
“As soon as Ihiyo is stable, I’m moving out. Let Segundo come and find me.”
He frowned. “You can’t. There is nowhere else for you to go.”
“It’s a big island.” She gestured vaguely inland. “I’ll live in one of the other houses, or with Pici at the cave.”
Samuel came around her, peering down at her face. “Is this because the vampire supposedly gave me his blood? Obviously I’m not going to turn into one or infect you. The texts say—”
“I don’t give a damn about the texts.”
He straightened. “Then why are you leaving me?”
“I’m not your wife.” Shouting that made her feel like a bitch, but she couldn’t take another second of his endless kindness and compassion. “I’m not your girlfriend, your lover, or even your occasional roll in the hay. We’re strangers who had sex to save me from another beating. I’m grateful, and the sex is good, but it’s meaningless. In real life you and I would never have gotten together. So whatever you think we have here is a fantasy. It doesn’t exist. I can’t leave you, Sam, because I was never with you in the first place.”
