by Chloe Neill
The groan of metal filled the air, then a sound like a shotgun. The boat lurched, spilling people into the narrow gap between the boat and the river. A chasm that was filled with solidifying slush. The ice would crush the boat, and everyone else would be crushed by the pressure or sent into the river.
The CPD was behind us, and they’d get divers out as soon as they could. But we were here now.
I wasn’t entirely sure whether vampires could drown or get hypothermia—surely not?—but it didn’t really matter. Our chances of survival were higher than theirs. So we had to take the chance.
A look at each other, a confirming nod, and then we climbed onto the balustrade, and jumped.
• • •
Vampire and gravity were friends. Maybe not BFFs—we had to plan our falls to keep from being injured—but we made the twenty-foot drop to the boat below without breaking any bones. We still skidded along the ice-covered deck but managed to catch ourselves, stand up straight again.
And we probably should have announced our presence, because two people suddenly dropping into a ship of screaming passengers didn’t exactly help calm them.
“I’ll help those in the gap,” Ethan said.
“I’ll take this deck, try to get them down the stairs and closer to the dock.”
I’d guessed marriage was going to require divvying up responsibilities. I hadn’t expected we’d be dividing jobs in two separate rescue missions less than twenty-four hours into it.
Forever, Ethan said to me, then jumped down to the second deck.
“It’s all right,” I said, striding forward to the humans who were hanging on to benches bolted to the deck in an effort to stay upright and keep from sliding into the gap themselves. “We’re going to get you off the boat. And onto the dock,” I added, since getting them off the boat and into the water was a real possibility.
The boat’s staff were downstairs, so I looked around, found someone who looked reasonably strong and reasonably calm, pointed at him. He was young, with tan skin, dark hair, and a faint mustache over his top lip that he probably wished was thicker.
“You!” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Pham.”
“Excellent, Pham. I’m Merit. You’re going to help me, okay?”
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. “Okay.”
I put a hand on his arm. “You’ve got this.” I glanced around, pointed to the closest stairway—or the boat’s half-ladder, half-stairway version of one—where people were pushing and shoving to get to the first deck. The stairs were already leaning and slick, so pushing was a recipe for certain disaster. “Go stand at the stairs,” I said.
“I can’t swim,” he said, blinking back tears I could see he was working not to shed. “I don’t want to drown.”
“Pham, do you know who I am?”
“Vampire,” he said with a nod.
“Exactly. I’m immortal, which means this water can’t hurt me.” Or so I hoped. God, I really, really hoped. “So one way or another, I will be here to make sure you get off this boat. Okay?”
That seemed to be enough to satisfy him. With grit in his eyes, he nodded, then slip-slid down the leaning deck toward the stairway, squeezing his lean form into the line and positioning himself at the access point. “One person at a time!” he yelled out. “One person at a time!”
I found another supervisor, a woman with strong shoulders and a narrow waist. A swimmer’s build, I hoped. Just in case. I put her in charge of the opposite stairwell.
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
I looked back, watched Pham work to stop a man in a suit who tried to push an older woman out of the way so he could get to the stairs first.
And that was my cue. I pushed through the throng, grabbed him by the arm. I saw fury fire in his face, replaced by quick confusion, and then anger again when I pulled him back.
“Get your fucking hands off me.”
I hauled him closer by the lapels of his very expensive coat. “You will not make this situation worse and more dangerous by being an asshole. You can’t follow the rules, you go to the back of the line.”
He tried to shove my hands away.
Emphasis on tried.
“I’m stronger than you. I could make sure you’re the last person off this boat, or I can call the Tribune and let them know you just tried to push a woman twenty years your senior down the stairs.”
“I’ll fry you for this.”
“I doubt it. But my name is Merit, Sentinel of Cadogan House. You want to fry me? The House is easy to find.”
That put the fear of God in his eyes.
“Exactly,” I said. “Get your ass in line.”
He moved back into position, stayed there until it was his turn. “What a piece of work is man,” I muttered, and turned around just in time to hear a woman scream when the boat shuddered. She lurched forward, hand outstretched, as something disappeared over the side of the boat.
“Shit,” I murmured, and ran forward, slipping once and hitting my knees on the slick and icy deck; it took a moment before I could get traction again.
Her son had tumbled off the boat and onto a plate of ice below, screaming in terror. He slid across the ice nearly to the serrated edge, managed to stop himself before hurtling into the dark water.
There were cuts on his cheeks from scraping the ice, and his face was pale with fear. But he was in one piece.
“I’ll get him!” I yelled, and looked down at the slick flat of ice, a chunk about the size of a recliner. I couldn’t jump down onto it. It still bobbled in the not fully frozen water, buoyant now, but maybe not if I put all my weight and the force of my jump onto it. If it didn’t hold, we’d both end up in the drink.
Kid overboard, I told Ethan. I’m going after him.
Be careful, he said, but I was already moving, not bothering to wait for a response.
The child had fallen on the side that tilted toward the water, probably having slipped on the snow that was hardening like concrete around the deck as the temperature began to fall. The ice vampire cometh, I thought, and went to my knees at the railing. There were ropes that linked one deck to the other on this part of the ship. If I was careful, and really lucky, I might be able to get a toehold.
I was glad I’d worn my boots.
“My baby!” the mom screamed as I stood up, put one leg over the railing.
“What’s his name?” I asked her, putting the other leg over, which left me cantilevered backward along the side of the boat. I kept an iron grip on freezing steel with frigid fingers. Too bad I hadn’t thought to wear gloves.
“Stephen,” she said, kneading her fingers with understandable nerves. “His name is Stephen.”
“I’m going to get him and bring him back to you.” I looked around for something helpful for her to do. “Grab that life buoy,” I told her, gesturing to the white ring with red stenciled letters that hung along the railing a few feet away.
“Keep the rope attached to it, and come stand near the rail. When I give you the signal, throw it down to me.”
She nodded, picked her way across the slanted deck with both hands on the rail, and unhooked the ring.
I took a breath and took the first toe off the bottom rail, stretching down and searching for the rope that hung below.
But I was too short, or the rope was too far away, depending on your perspective. I’d have to drop both feet.
“Fingers, don’t fail me now,” I murmured, and let go of one railing to grip the next one down, then moved hand over hand until I hung from the bottom rail, feet suspended in midair due to the boat’s list. My wedding and engagement rings bit into my finger, but I ignored the pain, focused on finding the rope with my toe. The tilted deck put the rope at least a foot in front of me, so I had to swing like a gymnast to bow forward. It took
a moment of ungainly scrambling, but my toes made purchase.
I glanced down, fought off the sudden vertigo caused by the bobbing water beneath me. The river was only a few feet down now, a small drop. But his plate of ice had moved a few feet away, driven by the river’s current. Another plate of ice had taken its place.
There was no help for it. I kept my gaze on the ice, ticked off the seconds until I could land as squarely as possible, and let go.
I hit the ice in a crouch, square in the middle.
And I should have known better than to get cocky about it.
There was a splash on the other side of the boat, a scream. Someone else had fallen into the water. And that movement, as slight as it was, tilted the ice. Before I could react, the sheet tilted, sending me sliding backward. The shift in my weight tilted the ice further, and there was nothing to grab, nothing to hold on to.
The woman at the railing screamed, and then I was underwater.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HEART OF ICE
The chill was instantly painful, every cell and nerve screaming simultaneous alerts that something was very, very wrong. That the water was much too cold, the temperature much too low, and I was in too much danger.
I bobbed up, sucked in air, pushed frigid water from my eyes. I grabbed at the closest sheet of ice, looking for a fingerhold so I could claw my way onto it. But my fingers and toes were numbing, and it was hard to grab. And there was no point in it, I realized, my brain logy. If I was in the water, I might as well aim for the ice the kid was actually on.
I paddled through the slush, pushing ice out of the way, my fingers blue with cold, to the ice floe where Stephen lay crying, hands gripping the edge of the ice. He wore a T-shirt and shorts and was probably as cold as I was.
“Hi,” I said at the edge of the water, trying not to let him see my teeth chatter. “You’re Stephen, right?”
He nodded, his enormous blue eyes filled with terror.
“Excellent. I’m Merit, and I’m going to help you get back on the boat.”
“Are you a mermaid?”
“Not exactly,” I said, and turned the ice toward the boat, kicking as I pushed us toward it. I was suddenly in swimming lessons again on a kickboard—except those lessons had never been in freezing water in the middle of the Chicago River.
I kicked as hard as I could, and could feel the river freezing around my feet. I was kicking upstream and each kick was getting harder, like swimming in thickening sand.
“Life buoy!” I managed through chattering teeth, and caught it one-handed. “Stephen, honey, let’s get this on you, okay?
“Hang on!” I said. “Pull him up!” I yelled, to whoever could still hear me, and they began to haul him over the side of the ship.
“Stephen!” His mother had made it to the lower deck.
“Here!” a man called, holding out a hand to help pull me on board. But that hand seemed so far away, and it seemed to get smaller and smaller. I couldn’t understand how that was possible, how the world could shrink. And as his hand moved farther away, the brutal ache of cold that had lodged in my bones like a cancer began to fade.
I slipped under and began to sink like a stone. I wasn’t buoyant, my clothes were heavy and waterlogged, and the thickening water slowed my progress toward the surface.
I opened my eyes in the dark water, watched light skitter across the thickening ice. I kicked and pushed up, even as ice shoved me around in the water like bullies in a junior high hallway. But the ice above me was congealing, solidifying into a cap above the water below. I dug at the ice with numb fingers, but it was too solid to dig through, too large to simply push aside. Panic clawed at my throat, my lungs begging for air.
Dark spots appeared in my vision. As I sank into the water again, panic faded to a kind of resigned acceptance.
I hadn’t thought to wonder what drowning would feel like, but I wouldn’t have guessed it felt like this. There was no panic now, just the realization that I’d gone under, and I’d probably run out of oxygen soon.
Thinking-Me was separate from Drowning-Me, and the first watched the second with dissociative curiosity. Am I drowning? How strange.
I hadn’t managed to be married for very long, I thought. It would have been nice to be married, to be the First Lady of Cadogan House, for a little while longer. To be with Ethan for a little while longer.
Ethan, I thought. Ethan. Ethan.
The word, his name, the knowledge of him, was a match strike in a dark room. It snapped me from fading consciousness, from the lethargy and acceptance that aching bones and muscles longed for. Anything to take that pain away.
Ethan.
I kicked up, pushing with every joule of energy my body could spare, hands pointed above me to stab through ice, when a hand appeared in the water, grabbed me by the back of my jacket, like a puppy being pulled from danger by the scruff of her neck.
I broke the surface and gasped for air, the ache of cold slicing through me again like a white-hot dagger.
I let him pull me onto the boat and fell to my side, coughed up what felt like liters of river water.
“Sentinel, I may never let you out of the House again.”
I nodded, let him help me sit up. Everything ached, and I couldn’t stop the shakes that racked my body. “Not . . . bad . . . idea. Also fix the weather, probably.”
He pulled off my wet jacket, wrapped a thermal blanket of shimmering silver around me, then pushed damp hair from my face.
“I heard you say my name,” he said.
I’d thought it. I hadn’t realized I’d said it or that he’d heard. But thank God for it.
I leaned forward, wrapped my arms around him, and let fly the sob that was trapped in my throat.
Thank God for him.
• • •
The crowd was appreciative and grateful when we trudged up the stairs back to Michigan Avenue again. But our clothes were wet and were crunchy in the freezing air, and icicles had frozen in my hair. I felt as if I’d been frozen from the inside, like crystals had actually begun to form in my blood.
“Good work as always,” my grandfather said. “Although absolutely terrifying.”
“Most of the things she does these days are,” Ethan said.
My grandfather stepped closer. “Does she need to go to the hospital? Her lips seem . . . bluish.”
“No,” Ethan said. “We’ll keep her awake and moving, and anything that might have been damaged will heal itself.” His gaze went hot. “And when she’s feeling one hundred percent again, we’ll have a very long talk about diving into a freezing river.”
Since that sounded much braver than having climbed into the river and fallen at the last moment, I let him believe it. And yeah, not my best move. But the Patton family was super glad of my recklessness right now, and that was the only outcome that mattered.
Pierce walked toward us. She’d abandoned the headset but added a CPD jacket that was too big for her athletic frame. “The Department of Water Management is sending an icebreaker to keep traffic moving. We’re going to keep automotive traffic rerouted on this portion of Michigan until we figure out what’s happening.” She aimed her direct gaze at my grandfather.
“I hope that’s something you can do.”
“So do I,” he said.
“I think we’ll want to talk to Winston,” Ethan said. “But we need to go to the House first, get a change of clothes.” He glanced at me. “I called Brody. He’s on the way, will meet us across the river.” He looked over at the police boundaries, the detour signs, the general congestion. “It’s best to stay out of this.”
My grandfather nodded. “Best to stay out of the Loop if possible. As for Winston, let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll meet you at the gate.”
“We’ll do that. Come on, Sentinel,” Ethan said, putting a hand at my waist. �
�Let’s go home.”
I need to be with my people for a little while, he silently said.
And in his House, I thought, behind the fence, where the Novitiates didn’t need quite the same kind of saving.
• • •
We walked in silence through the crowd, accepted with nods and polite smiles the thank-yous and pats on the back. We were tired enough that the nods and smiles were the only responses we could muster.
“Sire,” Brody said, opening the door of the large black SUV he’d driven to pick us up. It would undoubtedly handle better in the snow than Ethan’s current wheels—a sleek sports car that was better equipped for straightaways than freezing roads.
To his credit, Brody had turned up the heat and the seat warmers. I was asleep before we left the Loop, my head propped on Ethan’s shoulder.
I woke again as Brody pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the gate, then climbed out of the car to open the door for us. The gate was closed, but the human guards opened it quickly enough at the sight of us. For the first time, we walked into the grounds of Cadogan House as husband and wife.
Before I could argue, Ethan picked me up.
I put an arm around his neck. “I think it’s a little late for this, isn’t it?”
“Carrying your wife over the threshold is a tradition. And maybe it will be good luck. We could use a little of that.”
No argument there.
“Congratulations!”
The door opened to another cacophony of sound, but this cacophony was a lot better than the last one. Lindsey, Luc, Malik, and two dozen more vampires stood in the foyer beneath a gold CONGRATULATIONS banner hung from the coffered ceiling. They blew gold paper horns and bubbles from tiny gold bottles while Margot passed out steaming cups of hot chocolate and warmed blood.
“You didn’t get a honeymoon,” Lindsey said, “so we decided you at least needed a welcome-home hello. And a warming-up opportunity.”
“You must be frozen through!” Margot said.
“I’ve been warmer,” I agreed. “And the temperature is still dropping.”
