Had Steve still been close enough to feel Olivia’s cry for help?
While the question renewed his rage, it was probably irrelevant. One way or another, as soon as Steve had made his move, he would have known that he would have to work fast. He couldn’t know whether or not Phaedra would say anything to the crew circling in the yacht at the surface. He would be swimming as fast as he could underwater, to get as much distance from the yacht as he could before surfacing, which was why he needed an oxygen tank even though he was also Wyr.
Steve had to have a preplanned route in mind. Perhaps he was meeting someone, but if he was, Sebastian doubted very much if they would chance connecting too close to Phaedra or the yacht. Just like with the crossover passageway, it would be much easier for someone to slip away than for someone to try to approach.
Then Sebastian knew where Steve was going.
The other Wyr was going to try for one of the underwater openings to an old, vast tunnel system that lay underneath San Francisco. Carling had told him about it. When Vampyres traveled back and forth from the island, they would swim to the tunnel system to avoid surfacing in any sunlight. If Steve reached the tunnels, his chances for disappearing grew a lot higher. He might even be planning to meet someone in the city.
Sebastian swam harder, pushing his body to the limit. His lungs began to burn. He needed to breathe.
He reached the other side of the passageway and sensed Phaedra’s presence.
She sensed him too. She said, sounding sleepy and bored,
It’s about time you all started to come out.
We’re not
, he said as he kicked upward.
Steve killed Dendera, stabbed Olivia and sabotaged our equipment.
He broke the water’s surface and sucked air.
Phaedra’s physical form snapped into existence in front of him. She looked strange, as she didn’t swim, but merely appeared as if she stood in front of him on dry land.
“He stabbed Olivia?”
“Yes.”
The Djinn scowled. “I’m very displeased. Grace will be unhappy. That will make my father furious.”
“She’s going be all right.” He cocked his head, treading water. “Are you bored enough to track Steve down? I think he’s headed for some tunnels underneath the city.”
“I will do much better than that.” She vanished, then reappeared again almost instantly with Steve wrapped in her arms, complete with wetsuit, flippers, mask, oxygen tank and the container of books hanging from him by a cord. “You were correct,” she said. “He was just beginning to crawl into a tunnel when I found him.”
Steve kicked and struggled, wriggling like a fish on the end of a line. Behind the mask, Sebastian caught a glimpse of the other man’s astonished expression.
It swiftly turned to fear as Sebastian lunged for his throat.
Sebastian didn’t kill the other man, but he did hurt him real bad. He had told Bailey he would, and he always kept his word.
Steve tried to fight, but he didn’t have a chance. Sebastian was, by far, the better and more seasoned fighter. In fact there was no comparison. Steve was hampered with the weight of the oxygen tank, the heavy container of books, and the mouthpiece and mask that obscured his face when he attempted to shapeshift to bite.
Sebastian drove his fist into that mask. Then he did it again, and again. The blows broke the lens and drove pieces of the frame into the other man’s face. They twisted together, bobbing with the waves, while Phaedra floated close by and watched curiously. Sebastian felt other bones break underneath his hands. They sank underneath the water, and he was all right with that. All he could see was the wide pool of blood where Olivia had lain.
Then other people splashed into the water alongside them. They shouted at Sebastian and worked to tear the two men apart. Sebastian recognized members of his crew from the yacht. Only then did he let go of Steve.
The symbologist lolled half-conscious as Sebastian’s crew dragged him onto the yacht. A couple of them hauled on the line to draw up the container. Ignoring the chilly air, Sebastian climbed up the ladder, issuing orders like a spray of bullets.
“He murdered Dendera and sabotaged our equipment. I need suits and tanks. Guard the hell out of that container. I think he was working with somebody who wants the contents badly. He had to have expected to disappear fast otherwise he never would have tried to pull this stunt. Call Carling, Julian and the tribunal, and update everybody. Get someone to comb the tunnels underneath San Francisco. Trace every step that fucker made when he went into the city during shore leave. In fact, trace every step that fucker has made in the last three months.” He took a deep breath and roared,
“Where’s my equipment?
”
They came running with two spare suits and tanks. Then Brendan, who was captain of the yacht in his absence, said, “Just so you know, all the research teams have reported back. Their reports are sitting on your desk.”
“What?” Sebastian stared at him, for a moment not connecting at all to what the other man was saying. “Forget about all that.”
He hooked his arms through straps on the tanks, grabbed the suits and dove into the water again. He had to get back to the island as fast as he could.
His mate needed him.
Chapter Ten
When Olivia opened her eyes, she lay in her bed in the manor house. Faded sunlight streamed into the window, touching the edges of things inside the room one last time before disappearing for another night. A bright fire crackled in the hearth.
Sebastian slumped in an armchair beside the bed. His head rested against the back of the chair, his eyes closed.
She was quite free from pain, clean and warm, and tucked under blankets. Then she tried to move, and her heart leaped into a rapid, skittish tempo. Her mouth dried out, and her head swam. A saline bag hung from one of the bedposts, the line running to an IV taped to the back of her left hand.
Sebastian’s eyes flared open. He straightened and leaned over her.
She had grown used to the strange black-and-amber pattern in his eyes. He looked so tired, worn and worried. “Don’t try to move around too much,” he said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Dendera,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” He stroked her face.
Moisture flooded her eyes. She nodded and turned her face away.
The chair creaked as he shifted. Then the bed tilted as he sat on the edge. He planted his hands flat on the mattress on either side of her head and leaned closer. “Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”
As always, he pulled her to him. She could never turn away from him. She looked up. His hard face looked even more haggard at that angle, the fire throwing strong, flickering bands of light and shadow across the room.
He told her softly, “You know we need to talk, don’t you?”
Her mouth shook. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded again. Why would he bring that up now, of all times?
He stroked her hair. “In fact,” he said, “I’ve been planning on talking to you for a while. I was just waiting for the right time. And this is not the right time at all, so naturally I want to take full advantage of that.”
She blinked several times. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
He smiled. There was something remarkably patient, clear-eyed and ruthless about him in that moment. “I love you,” he said. “And I believe you love me.”
She whispered, “Yes.”
Gently, gently he bent down and brushed her lips with his. “Then this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to marry me. We’ll winter in Jamaica and live the rest of the year in Louisville. You will work part-time at your job. I will work part-time running my company, and Bailey will take over the rest. We’ll have children—I think two would be nice—and we’ll have plenty of time to take care of them. And we’ll travel sometimes, but mostly we’ll stay at home, and if I go blind, I will find an avian Wyr who will fly with me sometimes—”
“That’s not going to happen,” she interrupted.
“I understand, but if it does…”
“It
won’t
.”
He cocked his head and looked exasperated. “I am trying to make a point here.”
In spite of everything that had happened and the dizziness that still swam in her mind, she had to smile. “And what point is that?”
“That we can meet every challenge ahead of us if we do it together.”
Her smile turned into a chuckle, while happiness began to take root. “Is that what you were saying underneath all of those orders?”
“They were statements of fact, not orders,” he said. He touched her cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers. “And we’re not really having that talk, not while you’re injured and exhausted. That would be insensitive of me. Besides, it’s too soon. I’m merely making things easy for you by laying everything out ahead of time.”
Her chuckle turned into a helpless ghost of a laugh. “All of that was preparation for the talk we’re going to have someday?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that’s good to know, because it
is
too soon for all of it,” she whispered. “I can look forward to the fact that when we do have that talk at the appropriate time, you will actually propose with a question and a ring, and not a statement of fact.”
His expression went blank. “A ring.”
It occurred to Olivia that she had recently grown to care about more than one creature that wasn’t housebroken. That was when her meager strength petered out. She closed her eyes. “Goodnight, Sebastian.”
“Sleep well, my love.”
He kissed her forehead, and that was the last thing she remembered for a long time.
Of course, things were not as simple and as straightforward as the talk they planned on having one day. She slept, woke and drank some warm broth, and slept some more. Sebastian was always present when she opened her eyes. Derrick checked on her a few times through the day, and by the next evening he had removed the IV.
She had to work through the memory of the attack, and the shock of witnessing Dendera’s murder. Sebastian was there for that too. He held her as she wiped her eyes and talked through the worst of it.
Olivia could not make the underwater crossing until she had recovered from the chest injury and could complete a few basic exercises, like walk a mile in under twelve minutes. She was healthy, though, not only in body but in spirit, and she rebounded quickly.
Soon she could sit in the main hall in the evenings and visit with Derrick, Tony and Bailey. Then she could take short walks. She shooed Sebastian back to work, while she sat in the sun and read the light novels they brought to her.
In the meantime, the other four worked hard. They transported the part of the collection that Olivia, Dendera and Steve had already packed. Time passed more quickly on Earth, so every time they made the crossing there was more news.
Steve had been taken into official custody. Through emails, phone calls and bank account records, investigators discovered that, after Carling had completed background checks and hired everybody, a private collector from South America had approached him with a two-million-dollar bribe and a wish list of items. Shortly after that, the collector was taken into custody and extradited to the Elder tribunal in the States for prosecution.
With the approval of the tribunal, Carling hired a new team of symbologists to finish packing the library. “You are also certainly welcome to stay and finish working on the job if you so choose,” Carling wrote in a letter to Olivia, which Bailey delivered one afternoon. “But even if you do, you will need help, and besides, I want for you to have the freedom to come home if you should wish.”
Olivia was tempted briefly, mostly because she refused to let another person’s actions drive her away from what she loved to do. But, the truth be told, she had grown a little weary of the adventure.
What finalized her decision, however, was when Bailey handed Sebastian a sealed packet in silence. He tore the packet open and looked through the contents quickly. Afterward, he set the papers on the kitchen table and walked out of the house, into the overgrown vegetable garden.
Bailey and Olivia looked at each other soberly. Then Olivia picked up the first report and scanned it. “Sorry to say, this approach to breaking the curse is not a feasible one…”
She set it aside and picked up the next one. “I’m afraid we found no realistic avenue in the indigenous magic system that would alleviate what has been done…”
And a third. “I cannot express in words how difficult it is to tell you that we found nothing…”
She stopped reading, pushed away from the table and walked outside to look for Sebastian. She found him standing at the edge of the cliff, his hands on his hips as he stared out over the water. He looked severe, unapproachable, his back stiff and his face like stone, but she didn’t let any of that stop her.
She walked up beside him and slipped an arm around his waist. “Of course this is not the appropriate time to have that talk that we’ve been planning, so let me tell you how things are going to be,” she said gently. “Then we will talk about it when the time is right. You will propose to me with a beautiful diamond ring, because I have my heart set on it. When we get married, I will wear the dress of my dreams, because I have my heart set on that as well. You are going to wear a tuxedo-gray morning suit, and Bailey is going to be your best person, so you need to remember to ask her soon. But first, right now, you and I are quitting this job. You are going to delegate the rest of it, and we are going to cross over, go to Florida and consult with Grace. And we are going to start facing our challenges together.”