To her surprise, the three came right behind her as she headed back inside. As soon as Emma closed the front doors behind them, she said, “Bell, you’re sure they’re approaching from the east?”
“Yes,” he said. “But they could circle the island and approach from another direction at any time.”
“Let me know if they do. Shout mentally. I’ll pay attention.”
“But I’m with you.”
“I want you to go up to my mother’s room. I want you to stay with my parents. I can’t drag her down into the tunnels unless there’s no other choice, Bell, she’ll freak out. She’s been trapped in a concrete coffin for I don’t know how long. She can’t handle it.”
He nodded. “I understand. But where are you–”
“I’ve seen Wolf and Sheena in action. And I know the three of us can keep this thing contained. If Andrew and whoever is with him reach the island, people are going to die. Our people.” She met Sheena’s eyes, then Wolf’s. They both nodded.
They split up, Bell heading up the stairs while Emma led Wolf and Sheena to the basement and into the tunnel. They poured on the speed, flashing through the underground stone passage, which was dark and cool and soothing somehow. They stopped abruptly at its mouth, ten feet above the waterline where a small motorboat bobbed like a soldier awaiting orders. Emma didn’t hesitate, just jumped, splashing into the water and then pulling herself up into the boat. The two teens followed, taking their seats as Emma started the motor. If anyone heard it, they would just assume she was doing what Devlin had ordered her to do.
Ordered her. She could get pretty ticked about that, if the man wasn’t so sadly deluded. She was not the kind of woman who obeyed orders. And she didn’t need protecting.
They sped away from the island, and as she steered the boat, Emma spoke to Bellamy. Ride along inside my head, if you can, Bell. Tell me which way to go.
He answered almost immediately. They made a wide circle around the island and are coming at us from the west now. They’re a couple of miles out. Go that way and you should cut them off.
Thanks, Bell.
Be careful, Emma. Don’t get dead. Dev will kill me if you do.
I promise, I won’t get dead.
She pushed the boat faster. “Sheena, once we get near enough, I need you to take control of their boat. Just stop it in the water and hold it there. Wolf, I don’t know exactly how you do what you do, but–”
“Everything moves,” he said. “Vibrates. I can feel the vibration of everything. People. Places. Rocks and plants. Mountains and water. I adjust my own vibration to match and then I sort of....turn it up.”
“And what happens? Besides the shaking I’ve already experienced, I mean.”
He opened the fingers of both hands and said, “Boom.”
She nodded, not sure she got it, but hoping so. “You need to destroy the radio so they can’t call for help. Can you do that?”
“Why don’t I just destroy all of them?” he asked, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides.
“Because I don’t want you to just yet. We need to know what they’re up to, and who else knows about the island first. All right?”
“I see them,” Sheena said. She pointed. The patrol boat was heading directly toward them.
Emma leaned forward, straining her preternatural vision to its limits. Men in black fatigues armed with heavy weapons filled a boat. She guessed the boat to be under 40 feet in length, and that was a relief. It wouldn’t hold too many crows.
One of them, however, was Commander Hobbs.
Andrew was standing right beside him in the prow.
Emma withdrew the blocks from mind and addressed the vampire directly. What are you doing, Andrew?
Surviving, Emma. Get out of the way if you don’t want to get hurt.
Hurt? Don’t you mean killed? They’re going to wipe out everyone on that island if you lead them there. Including Bell. You really want to see Bell murdered, Andrew? Shot to pieces by these animals with their hatred of our kind. Or maybe arrested, so they can torture him for more information like they did me? Is that what you want?
Andrew was still, glancing sideways at Hobbs, lowering his eyes. I don’t have a choice. I went to them to make a deal, and now they’ve got me.
What kind of a deal?
I figured I could inform, not on you and Bell and Devlin, on others. They offered me protection, a mansion of my own with security, an income for life. They promised to leave me alone, let me live. That’s all I wanted. It’s all I ever wanted. Just to live without constant fear.
Emma thought she sensed true grief in him.
Now they’ve got me, and I have to do what they want or die. But you still have time to get away. Get Bellamy away.
Why’s that?
Hobbs needs to see the island with his own eyes before he’ll call in the air strikes. He has attack teams, jets and shit, ready and waiting. But he’s afraid I’m pulling some kind of hoax on him. I told him I didn’t know the island’s coordinates, but I could find it. I guided him too far north and then went right past you the first time out. I was honestly hoping you’d spot us and get away.
You shouldn’t have done this, Andrew. You should know better than to make a deal with the devil.
They’re going to win, Emma. We can’t fight this. Humans rule the world. Every government, the entire economy. It’s theirs, and if we want to survive at all, we’re gonna have to submit to that.
She nodded slowly, sighed heavily, cut the engines. The other boat was still speeding toward them. “Wolf, take out their radio. Do it quietly, if you can, so they won’t notice right away, as soon as they get close enough.”
“They’re already close enough.” Wolf rose, facing the boat, closed his eyes, tuned in, focused. A few seconds passed. No more. Then he opened his eyes and nodded once. “It’s done.”
“Sheena, turn them north by northwest. But keep them still until I tell you.”
Sheena stood up in the boat, lifted her hands, and reached as if she would pick the other vessel up. Then she twisted her hands, and Emma watched the boat change direction so suddenly it rocked up sideways. Men crashed into the sides and each other, then regained their balance while the boat rocked back and forth in place.
Hobbs was giving orders and men were raising their rifles to point them their way. “Get rid of their weapons, Sheena,” she said. Then she dove over the side, and swam toward the enemy boat.
She’d been dying to try her new skills in the water, and it was as exhilarating as she’d expected it would be. She sped to the other boat, rifles splashing into the sea all around her. Emma dove deep, then shot straight upward, rocketing out of the water and into the air like a missile and landing on the boat in the middle of all of them.
“Get her!” Hobbs shouted, and men came at her from all directions. Fewer men than she’d feared. Five of them, not counting Andrew and Hobbs. She wasn’t even slightly afraid, as she stood there, certain she could take them all with ease. But then the goops were flying all by themselves.
A quick look showed Emma why. Sheena and Wolf had moved the motor boat right up beside the bigger one without even starting the motor. Sheena was whipping her hands around, and the crows were sailing overboard with every motion.
Emma jumped up onto a platform and held up a hand to stop the kids. They stilled, and the men in the drink were already scrambling to make their way back onboard.
“Tell them to stand down, Commander, or I’ll kill you first.” There was only a few feet of deck in between them. And he had to know she could do it.
Hobbs tried to stare her down, but Emma didn’t blink. Finally he said, “Stand down, men. Stay where you are, for now.”
Another boat was approaching, but it was one of their own. She felt Devlin coming closer. She had to hurry. Turning slightly to conceal the action from Hobbs, she hitched her cell phone up out of her pocket just enough, hit a button, then turned around to face the dog faced commander.
<
br /> “Commander Hobbs,” she said. “I told you I’d make you pay for torturing me, almost killing me, and transfusing vampire blood into my body to keep me alive in hopes of getting more information out of me.”
“I would’ve killed you in short order, if it’s any comfort,” he said. “Put you out of your misery. Like the other damned souls who call themselves vampires.”
“You want to wipe us out.”
“And we’re going to raid that island,” he told her. “I don’t know why you’re trying to delay the inevitable. All I need to do is call in the coordinates once I see that this isn’t just a hoax perpetrated by this vampire POS, and–”
“How do you plan to do that without a radio?”
As soon as she said it, Hobbs looked toward the radio, where a little bit of smoke was still lingering, and the smell of hot wiring was heavy to Emma’s senses.
A splash distracted her then, and she spotted Andrew in the water just before he went under and took off like a torpedo. Apparently, he knew the game was up.
Hobbs used her distraction to snatch a portable radio off his belt, raised it, depressed the button.
“Sheena!”
No sooner had Emma shouted it, than the radio jumped out of Hobbs’ hand and sped through the air, straight into Sheena’s. It landed with a smack, and she smiled as if pleased with herself.
Emma looked at the broken radio in the boat, noting the channel. Then she said, “Sheena, set the dial to twenty-two and have Commander Hobbs tell his people it was a hoax. There’s no island.”
Sheena obeyed, repeating Hobbs’ earlier words, but paraphrasing to make them work. “Just a hoax perpetrated by this vampire POS. Stand down, men. Stay where you are.”
“Thank you, Sheena.”
Hobbs’ face was priceless, eyes wider than before, and a tick in his jaw. Other than that he was stoic, outwardly calm. But he knew there was no help coming. Not now. It was him and his handful of frightened, unarmed, human men against the vampires.
Emma said, “I know what happened to your troops. The ones you said the vampires massacred. I know it was really you who shot them all down. We have an eye witness. Two of them, actually.”
“No one will believe it. No one will take the word of a vampire over that of a man who’s served his country his entire life.”
“Maybe not. But they’ll believe a human who served under you. One of the men you tried to murder. The lone survivor.” Oh, he was starting to sweat now. Literally, there were beads appearing on his forehead. “Didn’t you wonder why you didn’t find his body with the rest? He was with us. We saved him from his would be executioner.”
“You’re lying,” he said, but it was clear he didn’t think so.
“He told us everything,” she said. “I imagine by now he’s told the authorities, as well.”
Hobbs clasped his fists at his sides so hard his knuckles were white. “You and your kind are dangerous predatory animals who will wipe out humanity if we give you the chance. People need to know how dangerous you are.”
“But we didn’t kill all those men. You did.”
“You would have, given time. I did what I had to do.”
“Murdered your own men and blamed it on the Undead.”
“I didn’t murder them. I sacrificed them to a higher cause. They died heroes. Their deaths will save countless human lives.”
“Thanks, Commander Hobbs. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.” She pulled the cell phone out of her pocket, shut off the video recorder, and tossed it to Sheena in the motorboat as Hobbs’ eyes went wide with realization that the entire exchange had been recorded.
“You can upload that straight to Youtube, hon,” she called, even knowing poor Sheena would have no clue what that meant. “Once we edit out any mention of the island.”
Devlin’s boat was coming up beside them now. Tavia was with him, her eyes on Emma, and then on Hobbs. But Devlin’s eyes were only on her, and for just a second, she thought she saw something more than affection, more than caring, more than concern in their depths.
Then Hobbs made a sudden move, and Tavia jumped out of the smaller boat to land behind him. She snapped her arms around his neck and would have snapped it, except for the blade in his hand. God, he’d been about to stab her, Emma thought, even as he jabbed the knife backward, into Tavia’s side. She grunted in pain, doubling over. Hobbs spun around lifting the blade high, about to drive it into Tavia’s back, but Emma lunged, hitting him so hard and so fast she took him overboard, right into the ocean, and when they splashed down, she was already sinking her teeth into his throat. He drove the knife into her shoulder but she was almost too angry to feel the pain. His blade hit bone, and then he went limp as Emma drained him. His hand released the knife, and it sank in a haze of blood. She let go of Hobbs and watched him sink slowly into the murky depths after it, blood trailing behind him.
Devlin splashed into the water, wrapped his arms around her, and took her to his boat, lifting her inside easily, climbing aboard behind her. He laid her down gently, pulled out the blade, and wrapped her shoulder. “You could’ve been killed.”
She lifted her head, looked at the men in the water, the blood spreading there. They hadn’t done a thing to help Hobbs, probably because they had heard the truth about what that bastard had done to their comrades. “Sheena, get them back on their boat before all that blood draws sharks,” she called, turning as she did to see the kids helping Tavia maneuver her way from the patrol boat and onto the small one they still occupied. She was pressing a hand to her side to stop the bleeding.
“Tavia,” Emma said, her voice strangled. “Are you–?”
“Pssh!” She waved her free hand. “It is…how you say, a flesh wound. I will be fine.” Then she shrugged and added, “Tanks to you, Emma.”
“Get her back to…get her back,” Devlin told Sheena and Wolf. “The others will know how to help her. We’ll be along after we deal with…” He looked at the larger boat and the five men standing there, dripping wet, shocked and horrified. They had lost their leader after learning he’d executed forty of their own, and were now in the hands of the sworn enemy they believed wanted to wipe them out. They had no idea what to do.
The power of Hobbs’ blood was rushing through Emma. She felt stronger and fiercer than ever before as she watched Sheena power the little boat away without even using its motor. Wisely, she didn’t head toward the island just yet.
Then Emma looked at Devlin, who hadn’t so much as taken his eyes off her. “You’re probably pretty mad at me right now.”
“The only thing I feel more is relief that you’re alive.” He reached for a small first aid kit he’d found in the boat, and used the bandages it held to re wrap her am, where the two inch cut from Hobbs' blade was still bleeding
“Well, you can be mad if you want. My way was better. I got Hobbs confessing to everything on video. It’ll be viral on the net by the time the sun rises again.”
Devlin’s jaw was clenched, his eyes unreadable. “Emma, those men on the boat know where the island is.”
“They’re humans. You can erase their memories, plant fresh ones,” she said. “You already bragged about how good you are at mind control.”
He shot her a look, but it wasn’t as angry. It was speculative. “Roland and Rhiannon tried that with the crew of the Anemone before they sent them all ashore in lifeboats. But some of them remembered, all the same.”
She shrugged. “Roland and Rhiannon are not you. The mind control thing is your gift. It’s one thing you do better than others do. And there were more men on the Anemone. Lots more. You can do a better job and you have fewer men to work on.”
“You’re right, I can. Or I can kill them all and we’ll have fewer combatants to fight against later.”
“My way’s better.”
He looked like he wanted to argue. But his eyes kept moving to the wound in her shoulder.
“It’s fine, Dev. I’m a kick-ass adventurer vampire, of cour
se it’s fine.”
“You could’ve been killed.”
“It was my call, Devlin. My risk to take. You’ve got to get it through your head that I don’t need protecting.” She stood in front of him, their bodies not quite touching, but close. “Especially not from you.”
Emma looked up and watched Devlin’s eyes. He didn’t move them away from hers. She said, “So what are you gonna do with them?”
“Send them about 100 miles from here to be found aboard their boat, traumatized and confused, with no memory of what happened out here today.”
Emma tried not to smile. “And what about Andrew? He made a mistake. But in the end, he tried to make it right. He got away, though.”
“We’ll contact the elders,” Devlin said. “Vampires police our own. I have more compassion for these mortal crows than I do for a man who would sell out his own kind.”
She nodded, and decided not to argue on that one.
After Devlin did what he needed to do with the surviving crows, erasing all their memories and then programming one of them to pilot the boat a hundred miles north and then call the coast guard for help, there was nothing left for him but the long ride back to the island with Emma.
He was shaken. She had surprised him. Taking it upon herself to go meet the enemy head on, risking her life to protect the island and everyone on it, and then risking it again to save Tavia from Hobbs’ blade. That was the kind of thing he would do.
She was a leader. She wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary, either. She’d proven that. He didn’t know what to say. There was a part of him that was still afraid of what he felt for her. He was awash in emotions he hadn’t felt in a century, maybe ever, and he was damned if he knew where to begin sorting them out.
“I had a long talk with my mother before everything went haywire,” Emma said.
She was so beautiful, sitting beside him with the sea wind blowing her hair back and the night sky sparkling down. Being near her made it hard for him to think straight, much less make sense of the events of the past hour or so, and the maelstrom of feelings raging inside him.
Twilight Vendetta Page 27
