Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Chapter 44

Howler monkeys screeching. Boulders knocking together. The very ground quaking.

In and out of consciousness, Lucia dimly perceived that MacRieve had her in a fireman’s hold, spread over his shoulder, hanging upside down. He’d yelled, “Oh, fook this!” snatched up her gear, and then he’d taken off running.

With his every step, pain spiked through one spot in her neck. The rest of her body was numb.

As he sprinted down the cobbled path, the totems flanking it began to topple, giant dominoes collapsing. MacRieve ducked and sidestepped while they crashed all around them.

Then came a minefield of those huge ceiba trees exploding up from the rupturing ground, their roots shooting out like grasping arms.

Lucia could do nothing to help him.

When MacRieve leapt once, then directly again, she gaped down. Beneath them, crevasses in the earth fissured, opening and closing like gills….

At last, against all odds, MacRieve made it to the levees. He scrabbled up, scaling the rock wall even as it crumbled. Vines snapped, whipping as though alive. Every time she thought he’d gotten his footing, stones would disappear, plummeting below. On each side of them, unimaginable water pressure shot rocks like they were cannonballs. Directly above them, water jetted with a bullet’s velocity.

“Just hold on, lass,” he told her. “I’ll get us out of this.” He added in a mutter, “Somehow.”

With that, she blacked out once more.

The next time she woke, he was laying her flat in the bottom of the skiff. Then she dimly heard him trying to start the engine, again and again. “Come on, fire, you little bugger!”

It roared to life—they’d be saved!

“Can you hear me, Lousha?” he asked as he got them under way.

She blinked open her eyes, squinting against the afternoon sun streaming in through branches. With a frown, she lifted her head—

Pain radiated through her neck, then down her back. “Ow!”

“Damn it, stay put!”

She couldn’t move her head without pain, could only look straight up. Probing her neck, she cried, “That hurts!”

“Then stop doing it. Just lie still for a bit.”

“Are we safe yet?”

“Uh, no, no’ as such.”

She could hear the propeller churning, could smell the engine smoking, and yet the branches overhead weren’t moving. The boat was staying in place? Ah, gods, the river was equalizing, and they were caught in the current. “We’re about to be sucked back into the necropolis, aren’t we?”

“Oh, aye.”

Come on, come on! Garreth inwardly commanded. But how much more could this engine take?

She’d been quiet for long moments. “Now are we safe?”

Just as he’d muttered, “No’ yet,” the current released them at last. The boat shot forward, freed. He briefly closed his eyes in relief.

“MacRieve, you’re going to have to narrate. I can only look up.”

“We’re out of danger for now—and on our way back to the Contessa.” If the ship’s even there.

“How did you get us out of that back there?” she asked.

Sheer luck. “Great skill. How’s your neck?” Though it was such a devastating injury, the actual break would be small and quick to regenerate. “If it’s hurting, then it’s healing.”

“Then I’m definitely on the mend. I think I can sit up soon,” she said. “I can’t believe Lothaire gave me the neck adjustment from hell. Strike that—I can totally believe it, but I’m shocked he was right there at the tomb. Makes one wonder how long he’d been watching us.”

Doubtless the leech watched me claiming her. Bluidy vampires!

“When did Lothaire get so freaking strong?” Lucia asked.

“He’s an ancient, the Enemy of Old.” And immortals grew stronger with every year.

“What do you think he wants with that ring?”

“Doona know. It was the simplest piece of gold in all of the chamber. It must have some powers that we doona know of.”

“Do you think he’ll be back?”

“I think he’s long gone from this place.” Like we should be.

“What are we going to do about the great evil getting her finger broken off? Also, I’m going to go out on a limb and say we probably got water in there on the watchers. Three out of three house rules broken.”

And I’d already heard something moving within. “I doona know that anything could have survived that impact. The city was razed and then submerged.” But if they did survive… Wendigos were rapacious killers. And then La Dorada—who knew what she was capable of? A warrior as strong as Damiãno had feared her.

Lucia grew quiet for a moment, then asked, “What do we do if the Contessa left us? Or, um, sank?”

“Paddle this boat for double the amount of days it took for the Contessa to motor here. Or attempt to fix the Barão.” A ghost ship. Filled to the brim with hacked-up bodies. “Let’s just hope they dinna.”

She stretched her hand out to him. “Help me up.”

“Lousha, it’s too soon.”

“I won’t move my head.” When he grudgingly tugged her upright, she looked stiff and hurting, but not too bad. “See.”

“Aye, then. So tell me, what’s the last you saw of the passengers and crew?”

“Travis was injured. He head-butted the wheelhouse and was knocked out cold. Schecter was urinating on himself in fear, Rossiter was in the engine room, manning the pumps.”

“What about Izabel and Charlie?”

“You mean Chizabel?” At his frown, Lucia explained what she’d seen. How Izabel’s body had morphed—much like a shifter’s would—from female to male.

“You saw Izabel change into Charlie?” Garreth asked.

“Right before my eyes.”

“No shite?” Then his brows drew together. “You dinna change your swimsuit in front of Izabel, did you?”

“Only a couple of times.”

“Bluidy hell. Charlie’s seen my woman naked,” he said in a surly tone. “I almost liked him better when I thought he was a machete murderer.” He steered around a log. “You need to find out what his—and her—story is. Sate my Lykae’s curiosity for me.”

“So what are we going to tell everyone when we get back?”

“Partly the truth. We tell them that Damiãno attacked with a machete last night. So we got in the skiff heading for the Barão. But he’d already killed all the passengers there. Then we say the motor got fouled up and we drifted until I could get it working again.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said, with a shrug, then winced at her aching neck.

“Easy, lass. You have to give that time. Coincidentally, we have some to burn….”

For hours, they traveled upriver, praying that the Contessa would still be there. Toward late afternoon, he said, “It should be just around the bend.” Then he proceeded to hold his breath….

“They waited for us!” Lucia gave a relieved sigh when they saw the ship, still anchored. “And they’re afloat! I don’t know whose decision it was to wait, but they’re my new best friend. I need a dry bed and a shower.”

“Aye, and coffee and food for me. Seems like our luck is turning.”

The Contessa appeared to have taken on some water, but she wasn’t listing—a good sign. The old girl had more in her than Garreth had ever imagined. Her generator was still working, the water pumps humming.

Of course, the ship looked like shite. Most of the railings were gone, and the windows were shattered. The sole air-conditioning unit dangled precariously from a sagging window frame.

All over the decks, river vegetation dried, and twenty-foot arcs of mud sprayed over the ship’s sides, most likely from caiman tails digging down as the creatures attacked.

“I bet the ship can make it back to port in half the time.” He motored on. “We’ll be running with the current, and with all the rains, the water’s moving,” he said, adding silently, And once I have you tucked somewhere safe, I’ll go take care of this Cruach business. Alone.

“Oh, gods, look at that,” Lucia said, pointing out a dead giant caiman hung up on a nearby log. Her arrows still jutted from its eyes. Flies swarmed the bloated carcass from above—piranhas from below. The fish were fighting over it, tearing at it so viciously, the caiman’s limbs and tail jerked as if it were still alive.

“Rain forest garbage disposal,” Garreth said. “It’ll be picked clean in seconds.” Giving the piranhas a wide berth, he steered them to what was left of the Contessa’s platform. Once he’d tied the skiff to the ship, he carried Lucia aboard, setting her on her feet so gingerly.

“Stop treating me like crystal, MacRieve. I’m all healed up.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist. “As am I. So we can be all healed up in the shower together.”

“It’s a date, but first thing’s first. Let’s find everyone.”

Garreth called out, “Travis?”

No answer.

“I think Travis will probably be out of commission,” Lucia said. “That hit he took would stagger even an immortal.”

“Anybody here?” Garreth yelled, sniffing the air. No vampires, no Damiãno, no Loreans… so why was he uneasy? When he heard sounds coming from the salon, they headed up.

Izabel and Schecter stood within the room, their faces pale.

Lucia asked, “What’s going on?”

Only when Garreth and Lucia had entered did they see three robed men behind them in the salon, covered in dried blood, with guns drawn.