Page 80 of Bishop's Flight
Lucas stared at the wall in front of him, his eyes growing animated as he talked about chess. “Both the queen and the bishop were originally much weaker pieces. Now the queen is incredibly powerful and the bishop is equal in strength to a knight.” He looked at Brigid. “Sometimes I think of vampires like chess pieces.”
She smiled. “Really? Where do you think fire vampires fall? Are we the queens of the vampire world? Or the pawns?”
“Not pawns.” He shook his head. “Humans like me are the pawns.”
Brigid didn’t respond. He was right. Too often, humans were the pawns in vampire games.
Lucas’s eyes darted around as if he was watching a chess game on the plain white wall of the narrow bedroom. “The piece you are would depend on if you care about collateral damage.”
“Like Zasha?”
“Zasha is a knight.” Lucas’s voice was definitive. “They don’t care about collateral damage, so they’re flexible. Good in close combat with a lot of different pieces on the board. If someone gets damaged in the game, they don’t care.”
Lucas. Miguel. Alina. All were collateral damage in Zasha’s game.
“Yeah,” Brigid said. “I can see that.”
Lucas looked at her. “You’re more like a bishop.”
She snorted. Brigid a bishop? Not likely.
“I don’t look much like a holy man or an elephant, kid.” She stood again and started to pace the room, trying to find a way to protect Lucas so she could bust out of the ship. She’d tried simply punching through the hull with a heated hand and that did nothing.
“There’s nothing holy about the bishop in chess,” he said. “You have to forget the religious connotations. The bishop is a powerful piece that can move great distances as long as it has room to maneuver. A clear board.” He scooted forward, clearly loving the metaphor. “Right now you’re obstructed by a pawn.” He pointed at his chest. “Me.”
“Exactly.” She was more than obstructed, she was stymied.
“But you’ll figure out a way to move me out of your path. You’re smarter than most vampires.”
She frowned. “Thanks?”
“That’s when bishops can work best, when they have a clear board. You can do a lot as long as you don’t have obstacles in your way.”
Callville Bay Marinawas a dot on the north side of Lake Mead, nearly an hour away from downtown Las Vegas. The marina was a sparsely populated outpost with little more than a curving building topped with red tile, a long boat launch, and rows and rows of white-and-blue houseboats bobbing quietly in the calm blue waters of the lake.
Lake Mead itself was a deep blue slash in a sea of desert brown. Unlike the California lakes Carwyn was familiar with, it wasn’t surrounded by forests or meadows. It was a massive flooded canyon in an immense desert landscape. A few struggling palm trees attempted to give it some character, but the emptiness was profound. The lake was rimmed by rock walls, boulders, and narrow sandy beaches.
Carwyn looked at the lake on the map. “It’s huge.”
“Over five hundred miles of shoreline.” Bernard had changed out of his suit and was overseeing the group of searchers.
“And the houseboats” —Carwyn glanced at the square white vessels in the marina and scanned the map— “they can go anywhere?”
“It’s expansive, but we’ll utilize our wind vampires to scan the area and look for possibilities. Chances are they’re not far from the marina.”
“They’re getting papers every day.”
“Exactly.”
“Unless Zasha has wind vampires too.”
Bernard muttered, “Yes, I had thought of that.”
Carwyn suspected that even if Zasha had a flyer or two on the payroll, the boy was being guarded by humans. Zasha might have been the grand-orchestra conductor in this twisted symphony, but holding a human required twenty-four-hour awareness, which vampires didn’t have.
“Do we have pictures of the houseboat?” Bernard asked.
“Lee looked online.” Carwyn spread out three printed photographs. “If Gayle’s husband was correct, it’s a Summerland houseboat that looks something like this. We don’t know the year, and nothing in the records was registered to Gary Preston, but these are the most likely possibilities.”
