by Lynsay Sands
Domitian frowned. "We do not have to make it to the mainland. I am sure we will encounter another island--"
"What if we don't?" Sarita asked. "And what if we are attacked by a shark? What if you're injured?"
He was more concerned about her being injured by a shark, but before he could say so, she added, "Without blood to help you heal, you might be more dangerous to me than a shark."
Domitian opened his mouth to assure her he would never harm her, but paused as he realized he couldn't make that promise. If he were badly injured in a shark attack . . . Well, immortals had been known to lose their heads and attack mortals in that state. The nanos could cause terrible agony and a blood lust when they needed blood. Sarita might be right. He could be more dangerous to her than a shark in that case.
"And then there's my grandmother," she said now.
Domitian focused on her with confusion. "Your grandmother is on the mainland."
"Do you really believe that?" Sarita asked dryly. "Think about it. Dressler wanted us both here for some reason, and he is the one who called and told me that my grandmother needed me. What are the chances that she just happened to fall down the stairs and hurt herself at the exact time when he apparently wanted us here? Hmm?"
Domitian shook his head. That hadn't occurred to him. "But you said she wasn't on the island. We thought perhaps they live on the mainland in the apartment and use the island house as a cottage."
"I said there was no sign that she lived in the big house," Sarita said firmly. "But I was thinking about Grandmother's letters, and according to everything she's ever written me, she definitely lives on the island with Mrs. Dressler and her son year round. I'm pretty sure Dressler is the only one who stays in that apartment in town. They have to be in the little house. There is nowhere else that they could be."
"Okay," he said reassuringly. "We will give that news to my uncle and they can be sure to--Why are you shaking your head?" he interrupted himself to ask, but suspected he already knew why.
"I am not going to the mainland," she announced, proving he had known why after all. "I don't think we'll make it if we head that way. And I'm not leaving my grandmother stuck out there on that island with Dr. Demento while I follow you to my death in the middle of the ocean."
"Sarita," Domitian said patiently.
"I'm not," she said firmly. "But I won't stop you if you want to try it. Your chances are probably better without me to slow you down. You might even make it. And I'll even tell you everything I know about the big island so you can tell your uncle."
"And what then? You will try to make it to the big island by yourself?" he asked with disbelief, and then said grimly, "I don't recall any of the reports I got saying you were suicidal."
"I'm not," she assured him. "And while I'm not a marathon swimmer, I did take lessons as a kid, and I'm a good floater. I can swim, then float for a while to rest, then swim again."
"Sarita," he said, running a hand wearily through his wet hair.
"It's closer than the mainland," she pointed out firmly. "I know I can't make the mainland, but the island is closer. I'm sure I can manage getting there, and I don't even have to build a raft. There are some blow-up lounge mattresses in one of the wicker chests that will do for a shorter journey."
Domitian scowled. "I think you probably could reach the big island, but we would be swimming directly into Dressler's waiting arms."
"We?" she asked.
"Well, I am not letting you swim anywhere on your own. There are sharks out there," he said gruffly.
Sarita smiled widely, but then responded to his comment about swimming directly into Dressler's arms. "El Doctor and his men will be watching for boats, not someone swimming to the island."
Domitian considered that.
"Actually, this might work out better all the way around. After we check the little house on the north end of the island to make sure my grandmother is okay, we can sneak around and find out all we need to know to help your uncle and his Rogue Hunters attack the island."
"Si," he agreed. "But how do we get that information to him?"
Sarita shrugged. "There is a phone in the big house. If there isn't one in the little house, then we can sneak into the big house and use that one. We could call your uncle, give him the location and all the pertinent info, and coordinate with him."
"Coordinate?" Domitian asked with alarm.
"Yes. Find out what time he expects to attack the island so we can help. We can even try to get in and free the kidnapped immortals so they can help from on the island," she added thoughtfully.
"No," Domitian said firmly. "You will wait somewhere safe while I--"
"Domitian," Sarita interrupted patiently.
"Si?" he asked warily.
"Please don't go all Ramsay on me."
"Ramsey?" he squawked, seriously insulted. "I am nothing like Dressler."
"Gordon Ramsay, not Ramsey Dressler," she said dryly. "I know you're a chef, but that doesn't give you leave to go all Gordon Ramsay and start trying to boss me around," she explained. "I'm a police officer, trained for confrontation, and I've also studied martial arts since I was thirteen. As I mentioned, that was the first thing Dad signed me up for in Canada. Of the two of us, I'm more equipped to deal with this."
"I am more than a chef," he said indignantly. "I have been a warrior, a knight, a pirate. I can handle myself in battle, Sarita," he finished stiffly.
"Oh yeah. I guess you can help then," she said, turning to head for the stairs. "Come on, we should get as much sleep as we can today so we're well rested tonight."
Domitian turned, but didn't start moving right away. Instead, he stared after her with suspicion, wondering how his trying to protect her had somehow turned into his having to justify his involvement in the battle that would come.
She'd turned the tables on him, he realized. And quite neatly too. And was now prancing off thinking he was going to let her risk herself by helping on the island.
"Sarita," Domitian said sharply. "We need to--" He'd meant to say they needed to discuss this further, but his voice died in his throat when she reached back to undo the top of her bikini and let it drop into the water as she mounted the stairs.
Turning once she stood on the terrace, Sarita faced him. Her hands were on her hips and her head was held high and proud, he noted before his gaze fell to her beautiful bare breasts. God, he loved her body.
"Hurry, Domitian. You need to make love to me so I can sleep," she said huskily. "I think we should stay in bed all day to be sure we are well rested for later."
He was across the pool and out, scooping her into his arms before she quite finished the last word.
"As you wish," Domitian growled as he strode toward the house.
Eleven
Eyes narrowing, Sarita scanned the island in the distance, looking for any movement that might tell her someone was patrolling the beach and might notice their approach when they got closer. In truth, she wasn't worried about Domitian being seen, he was mostly under water with only his head bobbing up once in a while as he took in air.
Sarita, however, was presently lying on her stomach on an inflatable pool lounger and was much more visible. She knew they'd have to pop the mattress and let it sink soon, but that was okay with her. She hadn't really wanted to bring it anyway. She would have taken it willingly if she'd been trying to reach the island alone, just for safety's sake. But with Domitian to help her, she hadn't expected to need it. She'd insisted she could alternate swimming and floating and make the distance without the air mattress when he'd brought it up as they ate their last meal on the island in the cocooned bed. He'd insisted they bring it, however, arguing that her resting would slow them down and they needed to reach the island before dawn. With the lounger, she could rest on it when she wearied and he could tow her as he swam.
Sarita had given in and retrieved the air mattress from the wicker chest where she'd seen it earlier. Leaving Domitian to blow it up by the pool, she'd gon
e to collect scissors, and had taken them with her to the bedroom. She'd made the rope to pull the air mattress in the privacy of the cocooned bed in the hopes of not giving away what they were up to any earlier than necessary. It was the sheets actually on the bed she'd used, cutting thin strips that she'd then braided together. Fortunately, it hadn't taken too long. Still it had been later than they'd wanted when they'd taken the mattress and rope and headed for the beach.
Unfortunately, as Sarita had feared, she'd spent a good portion of the trip on the air mattress. Oh, she'd swum more than half the distance under her own steam, but Domitian was a much faster swimmer than her and she'd found herself having to climb onto the mattress to rest more often than she'd liked. It was humiliating each time he'd noticed her flagging and had relegated her to the mattress to be towed along like a sick whale pulled out to deeper water by a boat.
That thought made Sarita cast a quick glance around at the moonlit water for any sign of a shark or anything. They'd been fortunate and not encountered anything like that so far, but how long could their luck hold out?
Movement below her made Sarita glance down through the clear plastic window in the center of the lounger's headrest. She half expected to see the shadow of a fish swimming along under her. She'd seen that once or twice in the bright moonlight, the darker shadow of a fish in the dark water, or even a flash of color if it was right beneath the mattress. This time, though, she was shocked to see a human figure swimming past under the mattress. She saw the clear outline of a head, chest, and arms moving quickly through the water headed toward Domitian.
Cursing, Sarita immediately lunged off the mattress after the figure.
Domitian was just thinking they were getting close enough to the island that they should stop, pop the air mattress, and leave it behind when the makeshift rope tied around his waist suddenly seemed to go slack. Stopping, he turned swiftly in the water to look back and saw that while the lounger was still there, Sarita was gone.
Frowning, he quickly reached under water, grabbed the rope at his waist and gave it a tug. Pain seared his back as the cloth dug in before the makeshift rope snapped, but he ignored it and dove under water. The ocean was dark, but Domitian had no problem spotting Sarita some fifteen feet away. Still, it took him a second to accept that she appeared to be struggling with something. Not something, someone, he realized. It was a man, and he was dragging Sarita down deeper in the water and away from the air she needed to survive.
Growling in his throat, Domitian shot forward, swimming hard to reach them as quickly as possible. Sarita couldn't survive long under water without air. She already appeared to be flagging while the man showed no signs of having the same problem. Swimming up behind the man, Domitian didn't even hesitate, he simply snapped his neck, then caught Sarita by the arm and kicked for the surface, pulling her with him.
He'd feared she was unconscious on first grabbing her, but Sarita started coughing and sputtering the moment her head broke from the water. It was music to his ears. Relief racing through him, Domitian dragged her to the air mattress, and lifted her to lie across it, then held on to it with one hand as he patted her back to help her spit up the water she'd swallowed.
"Are you okay?" he asked with concern as she gasped for air.
Sarita nodded, but simply continued to suck in great drafts of air. When she'd recovered enough to speak, she turned a stark face to him and gasped, "His face."
Domitian frowned, and then glanced around for the man, but he hadn't floated to the surface. A sliver of concern slipping through him, he said, "Wait here," and released the mattress to dive under water again. He spotted the man right away, motionless in the water where he'd left him some fifteen feet away.
Bewildered, he swam to the figure and stopped to look him over. While Domitian was having to work hard to keep from rising to the surface thanks to the air in his lungs, the dead man was just floating there about ten feet below the surface, neither sinking nor floating upward. He appeared dead, though.
Catching one of the man's hands, Domitian kicked for the surface, dragging the body behind. He wasn't surprised to see that Sarita hadn't listened, hadn't rested on the lounger as he'd instructed. She was halfway between him and the mattress, looking around worriedly when he broke the surface and pulled the man up next to him.
"There was something wrong with his face," she told him, swimming closer to peer at the man now lying facedown between them. "And he seemed to be breathing under water."
Domitian nodded and pulled the man closer. It was as he started to turn him in the water that he noticed something behind the man's ear. Pausing, he pulled the ear forward to get a better view.
"They look kind of like gills," Sarita said with amazement, stopping next to him.
"Yes," Domitian muttered, running a finger along one of the six four-inch flaps that ran around the man's ear and curved down his neck.
"Does he have a tail too or just legs?" Sarita asked tightly, no doubt thinking of the fetuses in the jars back at the lab. "I couldn't tell while we were struggling."
"Legs," he answered.
"His fingers are webbed, though."
Domitian glanced to the hand she was looking at and saw that the skin between the fingers was indeed webbed.
"Probably his feet too," Sarita said thoughtfully, releasing his hand. "He was moving pretty fast in the water. If I'd been any slower I wouldn't have got him. As it is, I barely dove in quick enough to grab his foot as it whipped by."
"You attacked him?" he asked with surprise. He'd assumed the man had pulled her off the mattress.
Sarita nodded. "I saw him swim under the mattress. He was heading for you at speed. I was sure he was going to attack you so I dove in and grabbed him. It wasn't until he jerked around that I saw the knife," she added with a grimace and then glanced to the man. "He could have stabbed me right then, but didn't."
Domitian turned his gaze back to the man as well, wondering if he'd allowed his worry for Sarita to make him kill someone who had really meant them no harm.
"He seemed to be trying to half drown me, though," Sarita added. "Yet he wasn't overly rough while he did it." She frowned and then glanced to Domitian and said, "Dr. Dressler still needs something from us. Perhaps he's given orders that if we came around they weren't to harm me, but could do whatever was necessary to subdue you because you'll heal. Maybe he wasn't really trying to kill me, just weaken me to make me easier to handle."
Domitian nodded and relaxed a little. Sarita was probably right about that. Dressler would know by now that they hadn't just gone for a swim in the ocean and were headed somewhere. He would have warned his people to keep an eye out in case they somehow ended up near the island. Which meant there were probably other hybrids like this one in the water.
"We have to move," Domitian said, releasing the man and taking Sarita's arm to urge her back toward the air mattress.
"I wanted to see his face," she protested. "What I could see of it while we were struggling seemed odd."
"No time. There could be others out here," he pointed out grimly. "We need to move."
"Oh, yes of course," Sarita murmured and stopped trying to turn back.
When she started to swim, Domitian released her and followed the rest of the distance to the air mattress.
"We should pop the lounger," she said as they stopped next to it. "I can swim from here."
Domitian merely nodded, let his fangs slide out and bit down into the mattress. But he was wishing it was a bag of blood. His body had used up a lot of energy to get this far and keep his body heat high. He was starting to cramp with the need for blood.
"Handy," Sarita said with a wry smile as she watched him puncture the mattress twice more to speed up the release of air.
Domitian grunted. "Let's go," he said softly. They'd both instinctively been talking quietly. Voices carried across water.
Sarita nodded and struck out at a steady pace he could have easily outstripped, but didn't. They still had
a distance to go to get to the island and then they had to make their way around to the north end. It was better to go at a steady medium pace than to go fast and wear Sarita out. Besides, he wanted to keep an eye out for any more gilled people that might be out there with them. Fortunately, they needn't rush. Either the big island wasn't as far from the little island as he'd thought, or they'd made good time. By his guess it was still a good couple hours until dawn.
Sarita kept expecting Domitian to overtake her and surge ahead to urge them to a faster pace, but he didn't. He stayed behind her as they approached and then swam around the island where Dressler had his labs. They were just turning to curve around the end of the island where the little house she'd seen should be when Sarita realized why he hadn't overtaken her. He was watching her back in case there were more gilled creatures out there like the one now floating in the water on the other side of the island. Which was nice, but there was no one watching him and she twisted her head and glanced back toward him as she turned her face up out of the water to get her next breath. It was something she'd done every other breath since they'd left the air mattress behind, and he was there just as he had been each time she'd checked. But this time, he was swimming sidestroke instead of freestyle, obviously watching for her to look back, she thought when he noticed her looking and stopped swimming to gesture at her to stop as well.
Sarita obeyed at once and turned in the water to face him. As she waited for him to move up next to her, she cast a glance toward shore. They were much closer now than the last time she'd tried to scan the island. Back then it had been little more than a black blob with lights shining out from behind black shadows here and there. But they'd cut in closer as soon as they reached the end of the island, and in the dark shadows, she could make out the general shape of the beach and where the jungle that bordered it started. She couldn't see the house yet, but suspected they were close.
