“Don’t cry, sweetheart.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I’ll get us out of this. I swear.”
He kept talking to her, soothing her as best he could until she calmed and quieted. At last she lifted her face, working her jaw until the gag slipped down over her chin.
“Good girl.” Drew caught an edge of the scarf still stuffed in her mouth and tugged until it fell to the deck, and Gracie released a long, shuddering breath.
“Better?”
“They’re taking us to the island.” Her voice rasped out the words.
“Is this the same island where they dumped Samuel and Charlotte?” He felt her nod. “Good.”
She stiffened. “No, Andrew, it is not good. It is the end of our freedom. We’ll be kept there as prisoners, having children for the master until we die.”
“I promise you, that rotting piece of shit can’t make us do anything.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Do you trust me?”
“What do you think?” She hiccuped a laugh. “I gave up my life for you.”
“No, I think you decided to take it back.” He strained at the cords around his wrists again, and felt them loosen a little. “Samuel Taske is one of the smartest men I know, and I’m no slouch, either. So, tell me about the others like us. How many are on the island with my friends now?”
“Twelve,” she said slowly. “They lived with the master until a year ago, but he kept them secluded. I saw them a few times when I went to his estate at night. They are strange.”
Drew had been counting on recruiting some of the former orphans. “How strange?”
“They speak an old language—he would not let them learn Spanish—but it is how they walk and move and work. They do everything together, perfectly.” She hesitated. “At first I thought they were like machines, but it is more than that. They act as a group, not as individual people.”
“Did the master train them to do that?”
“I don’t think so. Seeing them always made me think of a herd of wild horses running together, or a pack of wolves hunting down prey.” She sighed. “Stanton said that I was supposed to be one of them, but something went wrong with me.”
He almost had one hand freed. “There is nothing wrong with you, sweetheart.”
“They think I can’t do anything like the others. That I am defective.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But they’re wrong.” She made a low, keening sound.
Drew went still as he heard a heavy thump on the outside of the hull. “Gracie, what are you doing?”
“Los delfines saved me when the men threw me away.” As several other thuds sounded, she tucked her head under his chin. “Now they always come when I call them.”
He heard what sounded like high-pitched, chattering squeals, and remembered the tat on her forearm. “Are you talking about dolphins?” He felt her nod. “You can communicate with them?”
“I can bring them to me, and make them do what I wish.” She lifted her head. “They will ram the boat until it sinks. They will drown Segundo and the others. All I have to do is think it.”
“That means I’ll die, too.”
She shook her head. “I won’t let them harm you. They will take us back to shore.”
Drew yanked his hand out of the cords and touched her cheek. “We have to get to the island and free the others. Your ability can help them escape.”
“The others, they hate me because I am different, and because I have been serving the master,” she said slowly. “When they see me, they will kill me.”
He pulled the cords from his other wrist before he put his arms around her. “That walking corpse forced you to work for him. If they don’t understand that, I’ll be happy to explain it to them.”
“We’re almost there.” Gracie let out another, lower sound, and the thuds on the hull stopped. “When I’m on land I can’t call them, Andrew. It only works when I’m in the water, or on it.”
Drew heard the boat’s engines throttling down. “Then if things don’t go well on the island, we’ll go for a swim.”
Light shone down on them as the door to the hold opened, and Drew put his hands behind his back, winding the cord between them.
“Stay behind me if you can,” he muttered.
The machete twins had been sent down to retrieve them, and, after cutting the cords around their ankles, they hauled them up and gestured for them to go above.
Burning torches held by Segundo and the men illuminated the deck, which had been stripped of everything but the pilot’s helm and a giant, ornate chair where Energúmeno sat covered in a cloak of gilded white feathers.
The boat had been docked at a narrow, dark pier. Drew could see a ribbon of glittering sand and the silhouettes of palm trees. A bamboo-covered ridge rose some twenty feet above the shore, mostly covering some kind of dark structure, but there were no signs of light or life.
The vampire rose from his chair and walked to the stern. “My children do not come to greet me. Where are they?”
“We never come at night, master,” Stanton said. “They are probably sleeping.”
“I feel them near. They do not sleep.” Energúmeno climbed out onto the deck and bellowed something in his native language, and then waited as if expecting a response.
Nothing moved or made a sound, but Gracie suddenly pushed Drew down on the deck.
Something hissed over Drew’s head, and he saw a flaming arrow slam into the chest of one guard and knock him over the side. The night air became streaks of flame as more arrows appeared, some sizzling out in the water but others hitting the deck, the side of the boat, and the vampire’s feathered cape.
Drew grabbed Gracie and dragged her behind the chair, looking around it as Energúmeno tore off the flaming cloak and threw it in the water.
The pier began to rock wildly, the posts lifting as if trying to pull themselves out of the water.
“Take off your shoes,” he said as he pulled his off, and shrugged off his jacket.
Another guard fell to the deck, his clothes on fire, his hands clutching the arrow buried in his neck.
“Time for a swim.” Drew pulled Gracie behind the burning man and jumped over the side with her.
The shock of the cool seawater dissipated almost at once, and he put his arm around Gracie as he swam away from the boat. She kept pace with him, only tugging at his arm to steer him toward shore. Once they reached the shallows, he planted his feet and looked back to see Stanton using a fire extinguisher to put out the flaming deck, and the vampire striding across the undulating pier toward the shore, where a group of men carrying spears and clubs rushed out of the trees and surrounded him.
“You dare attack me?” Energúmeno shouted, outraged. “I am your father.”
The biggest of the men stepped forward and said in a calm voice, “We are your captives, not your children.”
“That’s Samuel.” As Drew slogged the rest of the way through the water to the beach, he peered at the giant confronting the vampire. The man sounded like Samuel, but his beard was gone and so was his slow, limping gait. “I think.”
The vampire gestured all around them. “I created this paradise so that you might live long and happy lives here. Is this not what a loving father provides?”
“You imprisoned us here. You’ve treated us like animals,” Samuel countered as he moved closer. “That is not love, but enslavement of the worst kind.”
Energúmeno scanned the faces of the other men, and spoke to them in his strange language. A dark-skinned man came to stand beside Samuel, and leveled the spear in his hands at the vampire’s chest.
“This ends,” Samuel said, “tonight.”
Whatever they had planned to do went awry as another man rushed past them, shouting furiously. Before he could club the vampire, Energúmeno moved his hands through the air, and the man was flung backward onto the sand.
Drew started toward the group, but Gracie yanked him back. “You can’t go near the master when he’s like this.”
“Why not?”
Her lower lip trembled as she looked away. “You will see.”
The group converged on the vampire, only to be knocked away by some invisible force. Whatever the vampire used, it was fast and effective. In less than a minute Samuel was the only man left standing.
“You are stronger than the others.” Energúmeno sounded almost proud. “It will not save you. You are still mortal.”
“You were the same, once,” Samuel said.
“Perhaps I was. But no more.” The vampire made one last gesture, a mere flick of his fingers, and Samuel’s shirt seemed to explode, falling in tatters on the sand around him.
The big man staggered back, but somehow remained standing.
“This is what happens when you displease me,” Energúmeno said in a louder voice. “I will no longer provide for you and receive nothing in exchange. If you do not wish to starve, then you will give me one child on each night of the full moon. If no child is brought to the boat, then no food or comforts will be given to you.” He looked at Samuel. “And you . . . you are never to come into my sight again. If I ever see you again, I will take you and your woman apart, inch by inch.”
Drew watched Energúmeno’s regal stride as he returned to the boat, where Stanton started the engines and headed out to sea. As Samuel bent to check the first man the vampire had cut down, more figures came hurrying out of the shadows. One, a dark-haired woman carrying a case, dropped on her knees beside Samuel.
“Stay here,” Drew told Gracie.
Drew ran to the injured, stopping a few feet away when two of the men who saw him coming brandished their clubs. “Samuel.”
The big man turned. “Andrew?” His gaze shifted to the men. “No, he’s a friend.”
“I got it.” Drew quickly tore off his shirt and turned his back to show them his ink. As the men lowered their clubs, he joined Samuel. “Sorry. I intended this to be a rescue, but the bloodsucker shanghaied . . .” His voice died away as he saw the gashes and cuts on Samuel and the other men, who looked as if they’d been run through a meat grinder. He glanced at the unconscious form on the ground, whose torso had lacerations so deep and wide Drew could see some of his internal organs. “Jesus Christ.”