Page 84 of Bishop's Flight
“How droll.”
Brigid shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Lucas piped up from the bathroom. “Droll is another word for amusing.”
Brigid barely kept from rolling her eyes. “Cheers, Lucas.”
He added, “But in a dry, sarcastic kind of way—”
“Turn on the shower again please.”
The shower turned on and the steady stream of water allowed Brigid to relax just a little.
“Really, Brigid.” Zasha tutted. “You’d think you didn’t trust me. We haven’t harmed the boy.”
“But you did kidnap him.” Her fire spread outward. Always. She’d never been able to direct an explosion when she lost control. “And Henrik wants to maim him. So I think trust would be a bit of a stretch, don’t ya?”
Zasha smiled. “Fair point.”
She could control a stream of fire with her hands and her amnis, but an explosion with the force to break through the reinforced walls of this boat? She couldn’t control that.
Zasha glanced at Henrik and said something in a language that sounded oddly familiar but not. The man nodded, then walked out the door.
They turned back to Brigid and swung their leg back and forth. “You shouldn’t trust me, and you definitely shouldn’t trust Henrik. The Dutch are so economical in their cruelty, don’t you think?”
Definitely Dutch. Definitely Anker. “I don’t know many Dutch people—I just love the cheese.”
Zasha blinked. “I don’t eat cheese. It tastes like spoiled milk.”
No wonder you’re a sociopath.
Twenty-Six
Bernard moved onto the triangular boat with yellow and black stripes that pulled up to the dock. He handed a phone to his human assistant and turned to Carwyn as he stepped down into the large vessel.
Ugh. Boats.
He’d never liked the things and he never would. At least this lake wasn’t the ocean, with miles and miles of water keeping him away from his element.
“Rose and Agnes are on the way,” Bernard said, “and they’re sending more humans by helicopter.”
Carwyn didn’t know any vampires who wouldn’t destabilize a helicopter, but many kept them just so they could move around human staff quickly. “How many humans?”
“A dozen, all who know how to drive a speedboat. They’ll be dropped off at the major marinas on the lake. Agnes is already calling in favors to secure the boats we’ll need.”
Carwyn felt the boat pull away and the earth getting farther and farther from his touch. “How many marinas in total?”
“That will already have the kind of boats we need? Three. This one, Temple Bar on the east side of the lake, and the main boating marina near Boulder City. They’ve already called all their people in the area, several of whom are water vampires. Houseboats have to dock near the shore, and there are a limited number of beaches where a boat of that size could be. We’re going to find them.”
Carwyn sat at the far back of the cruiser as it puttered through the parking lot of lake vessels. He would keep well away from the electrical panels and instruments, but he craned his neck to look forward. “The signs back at the marina said that high-speed boating wasn’t allowed at night.”
As much as Carwyn loved an adrenaline rush—preferably on land—he felt that hurling a large floating vessel into the night at high speeds in the company of a dozen other boats piloted by humans was a recipe for disaster.
Bernard nodded to the front. “All the boats will have a vampire in the front to keep an eye out.”
As if he’d given a signal, a blond head with long hair tied in a topknot popped up from the bow of the ship, and Carwyn realized that the front of the boat was entirely open to the air. Fascinating.
The vampire in the bow raised her hand and motioned with her fingers in a “come on” gesture. The human piloting the boat pulled the throttle down, the engine roared, and the speedboat plunged into the black darkness of the moonless night.
