“What are you doing?” Roland whispered hoarsely as soon as he was out. “We need to get to the other boat like he did.”
The men were a boat length away. “It’s too late. They’ll see us.” I looked around and quickly saw that there was only one avenue of escape. Roland wasn’t going to like it.
“Come on.” I grabbed the rail at the end of the boat and lowered myself over the side, gasping as freezing water lapped at my legs.
Roland’s eyes widened and he latched onto my hand before I could let go of the rail. “You’re going in the water?”
“Yes,” I whispered urgently. “Now get your ass down here before they find us!”
He let me go and I let my body sink up to my neck in the frigid sea water. The cold punched the air from my lungs and I took in a mouthful of water before I got my balance. The tide was out but the water was still over my head and I had to thread my feet to keep from going under.
Roland hoisted himself over the rail. “Oh man, I knew I should have switched places with Pete,” he moaned as he joined me with a small splash. “Fuck this is cold!”
“Shhh,” I whispered. The men were at the Mary’s Hope and the boat rocked as they climbed aboard. We were tucked out of sight beneath the front of the boat but it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where we’d gone. Voices and footsteps came toward the bow. If we didn’t move in the next thirty seconds, we’d be caught.
“Follow me,”
I mouthed through chattering teeth. Roland nodded miserably and I quickly but quietly moved toward the dock. The pilings were slimy and I lost my grip on them several times before I managed to pull my body between them. Roland did not hesitate this time and he was right behind me when I turned to look back for him. I put my finger to my lips and pulled us into the deeper shadows beneath the dock.
“They can’t have gone far,” said a deep voice in halting English. He sounded German.
“He will not be pleased if they get away, Gerhard.” The voice was clipped and cold with a Middle Eastern accent. “I told you to grab the little man as soon as he arrived.”
I knew it – they were after Malloy. I gritted my teeth. If we got out of this alive, he was going to hear it from me.
“Split up and check every boat,” ordered the Middle Eastern man. “And have Cesar watch the entrance.”
“Why don’t we have the witch find them for us?” the German man named Gerhard asked.
His companion’s laugh was colder than the water lapping at my chin. “He’s already doing his thing. They better pray we find them before he does.”
Roland and I stared at each other with frightened eyes and he mouthed,
“Witch?”
I shrugged. What kind of mess was Malloy in? Whatever it was, we were not going to stick around to find out. I had enough to deal with without adding witches and a bunch of thugs to the mix.
I waited until I heard the men move to search the surrounding boats then I pointed to the long tunnel of darkness beneath the dock that led to the cement pier. Roland nodded and followed me as I moved through the water with agonizing slowness. My hands grabbed at the cross beams under the dock to pull myself along but my fingers were too cold to hang on. If we didn’t get out of this water soon, the men pounding on the dock above us would not be our biggest problem.
Roland stayed so close behind me I could feel his reassuring bulk every step of the way. It seemed to take hours to travel a few yards even though I knew it was only minutes. We did not speak but I feared my thumping heart or chattering teeth would give us away any second. Every now and then footsteps moved over our heads and we froze in place, expecting a shout and a muscled arm to reach underneath the dock for us. Then they moved on and we started breathing again.
When my feet hit bottom, I knew we were making progress finally. It was hard walking through the water but a lot easier than trying to keep afloat. Soon I felt rocks under my feet and I saw the slope of rocks that marked the end of the dock. Once we reached it, the tricky part began because there would be no more dock to hide beneath and the only way to shore was across the pier or circling it. We might be able to keep low enough to avoid detection, especially if the men were still busy with the boats. We’d just have to deal with that when we got there.
Roland put a hand on my shoulder as I started to climb the rocks. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
I turned my head to listen and my ears picked up scraping sounds ahead followed by a series of squeaks. “Rats. They live under the pier.”
He shuddered. “Rats!”
“You live in the country and you are strong enough rip a vampire apart. How can you be afraid of rats?”
He drew himself up taller. “I didn’t say I was afraid. I just hate the little bastards.”
I hid my smile. “Just ignore them. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“I’m not afraid –” His eyes bugged and he looked like he was gasping for air. “Uh Sara…”
I followed his horrified stare to the rocks above me where a squirming mass of fur and teeth suddenly streamed from beneath the pier. Hundreds of brown and grey bodies formed a moving barrier between us and the pier while hundreds of pairs of black button eyes watched us with eerie intelligence.
“Jesus Christ!” Roland muttered close to my ear. “This is not normal, is it?”
“No.”
“Maybe they can feel the storm coming. Would that freak them out?”
I shook my head, not taking my eyes off the pack of rats. I shifted my position slightly and a couple of rats bared their sharp incisors at me. I’ve been around plenty of rodents and healed more than one rat over the years and I had never seen this kind of behavior. Most animals were at ease around me, and never threatening toward me. What if they were sick? My power was strong enough to heal some of them but not hundreds.
I opened myself and let a trickle of power flow from me, directing it to the closest rodent. The big brown rat’s nose twitched when it sensed the warm energy permeating the cold air around its body and then it reacted to my power in a way no animal had ever done – it recoiled. I swallowed my gasp of surprise. Animals loved my power. It calmed them and made them feel safe and unafraid. Something was very off with this rat.
A little mental push was all it took to send a stronger stream of power at the squirming rodent. It was almost enough to put him to sleep but I had to get past his fear and figure out what was wrong with him. I could barely believe my eyes as the brown body twisted and jerked and tried to scramble over the other rats to get away from me.
What the hell…?
The pack shifted, tossing the fleeing rat around until it lost its footing and tumbled down the mass of bodies to the rocks. Its feet scrambled for purchase on the slimy rocks before it slipped and flew straight at me and Roland.
Roland made a “Gak” sound as my hands shot out instinctively to catch the rat before it hit the water. My fingers closed around the long furry body just as I remembered that the rat had hissed at me a minute ago and would likely sink its not so small teeth into my flesh any second. I let power pour from my hands and into the animal’s body. My power is always stronger with direct contact and if there was something wrong with this rat, I would know soon what it was.
“What are you doing?” Roland asked in a horrified whisper, his hand clenching my shoulder in a death grip.
I couldn’t answer. My tongue was silenced by the shock of my power colliding with another presence inside the rat’s mind. It was intelligent and strong and it felt like I touched the outside of an angry hornets nest when my energy made contact. I had never encountered anything like it and it frightened and amazed me at the same time. I felt the rat’s heart race and sensed its terror as it cowered from the thing invading its body. If this same alien presence had infected the whole pack it was no wonder they were so hostile. What could do something like this, and why?
Roland shook me from behind. “Are you fucking insane? Drop that thing before it gives you rabies or something.”
“Be quiet or those men will hear us,” I warned him hoarsely, securing my hold on the rodent so it could not try to bite me. “There’s something wrong with these rats. Stay still so you don’t frighten them.”
“Frighten
them
?”
I shrugged out of his hold. “Shhh.”
“Listen, I know you have this weird way with animals but these are not cats or dogs, Sara. These are rats – huge crazy rats that look like they are about to eat us. And in case you’ve forgotten, we already have enough to deal with.”
“Just give me a minute, will you?” Roland didn’t know what I knew. As soon as I felt the sinister consciousness in the rat’s mind, I knew it was not going to let us pass. I also knew I could not leave these poor tortured animals without trying to help them.
I let power pool in my hands as if I was going to do a healing. My energy worked on sickness and injuries but I had no idea how to use it against another power. Except for that one time that I had pushed back on Nikolas when he entered my mind, I’d never used my power offensively and I had no idea if I could do it again. Time to find out.
My palms grew hot and the rat began to squirm. “Easy there,” I crooned, caressing its back with my thumbs as I let the power flow into him. The instant I came up against the unnatural presence, it shifted and pulsed like a cold slimy maggot and the rat began to squeak and twist frantically. Bile rose in my throat at the feel of the foul thing burrowed in the animal’s mind and my power flexed unconsciously, pushing at it, surrounding it like it was an infection to be burned from the body. The invader pushed back and I turned up the heat until I felt the thing shrink away, twisting in pain. I latched on and sent a blast of white hot energy into it and I felt the explosion of power in my own mind like a scream. The rat stopped struggling as a healing current swept away the last traces of the sickness and replaced it with a warm sense of safety and wellbeing.
“What the hell…? What did you do?”
“I…” I struggled for the words to explain what I had done. I’d already decided to tell Roland and Peter about my power but I thought I’d have more time to think of a way to show them. But this – I wasn’t sure what I’d just done. How could I explain it to him?
“Look.” He pointed ahead and I looked up to see rats disappearing between the narrow slats beneath the pier. I reached out to lay the rat on one of the rocks and he scampered after his pack without a backward glance.
I resumed my climb over the rocks. “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered. There was no guarantee that what had infected the pack would not return and we had to make our escape while we could. I sensed that Roland was brimming with questions but he followed me quietly, as eager to get away from there as I was.
We made it over the rocks without further incident and came to the end of the dock and our only cover. We listened for our pursuers and I heard them still searching the boats. The whole encounter with the rats had only lasted a few minutes although it had felt longer and I’d half expected to find the men right on top of us. I allowed myself a small sigh of relief. One man still watched the entrance but there was more than one way out of the marina if you didn’t mind getting dirty. And we were already wet and filthy.
Roland followed me as I let myself slide back into the water, clinging to the slats and ropes along the side of the pier. My body hung flush against the pier as I moved sideways, pulling myself along as fast as I dared with my head just above the water. The sun had disappeared while we were under the dock and a steady wind tossed the water, camouflaging the ripples caused by our progress.
Guess that storm is on its way.
My feet touched bottom again and I trudged the last few yards to shore where I sank wearily on the narrow strip of rocky beach beneath the clubhouse’s deck. Using my power on the rats had not drained me as much as I would have expected and I just needed a few seconds to catch my breath. At least I wasn’t freezing anymore; that was one good side effect of my power. I hoped Roland was okay. I knew werewolves could withstand extreme temperatures but I didn’t know if that applied to their human form.
Roland risked a peek round the building and pulled back quickly, shaking his head. He held up a finger and pointed to tell me he’d seen one man standing by the clubhouse door. The parking lot was less than twenty feet away but there was no way to get to it without being seen.
I saw the worry on his face and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile as I examined our situation. The only way out from our current location was if we followed the beach for about fifty yards then cut across the parking lot of the nearby seafood restaurant. There was a good chance of being seen by the men on the docks and I wasn’t sure if it would give us enough headway to lose them if they gave pursuit. It was getting darker by the minute because of the approaching storm so our best option was to wait until the light faded enough to obscure us and hope the men searching the marina did not think to look down here for us.
I whispered my plan to Roland and he nodded grimly and settled down beside me to wait. Above the rising wind and the lapping waves, we heard the sounds of activity from the marina as the workers hurried to finish their preparation for the storm. I couldn’t hear our pursuers but I knew they were still there. I didn’t know what beef they had with Malloy, but with his business it could be anything and I didn’t want me or Roland dragged into it. The men had not mentioned either of us by name so hopefully they had no idea who we were or how to find us.