Page 31 of Midnight Serenade
I should have known.
In mere seconds, we went from zooming down the line at a quick pace to jerking to a complete stop with sudden, violent force. The cable that connected me to the main cable line above me snapped off while simultaneously the straps all along Rafe’s back shredded apart. The straps around his waistand under his backside were still in place, and he was still holding on with both hands to the holding bars above him, but we had disconnected from each other, the remaining itty-bitty straps that still attached the two of us all that kept me from plummeting hundreds of feet down to the ground.
I screamed, flipping upside-down, still connected to the strap around Rafe’s waist and thighs. Gravity tried to wrench me out of the rest of my harness, but I held on for dear life with both hands now, despite my injury.
Rafe shouted, one hand snapping instantly downward to grab the torn straps that had connected me to him. He grunted as he took on most of the weight of my body.
“Hold on!” he yelled, and I wanted to shout back, “OfcourseI’m holding on!”
I had the brief image of how idiotic we must look, mirror images of each other in placement, but then disaster struck again. And just like when we’d violently screeched to a stop a moment ago, it all seemed to happen again at once. One of Rafe’s buckles snapped just like mine had. Thetitaniumbuckles that hooked his harness to the main cable. He still had another one, but because the buckle caught and then got tangled after it partially snapped, we stopped so suddenly that my hands wrenched loose of the stranglehold I had on Rafe’s straps.
I screamed as I dangled below him. We were now canted at a steep angle, neither of us strapped into the harness as intended, both of us holding on to various things for dear life. I scrunched up enough to grab the strap below Rafe. It took me three tries because of the difficult angle, and I kept accidentally touching Rafe’s butt, but I finally managed to grab it again. I’d apologize later for the liberties I was taking once were no longer in danger of dying.
“Rafe, shift and get help! No one can see us here!” It was only after I suggested it I realized that if he shifted, I would fall. I blamed my idiocy on all the blood rushing to my head.
“If you make one more idiotic suggestion, I’m going to toss you into shark-infested waters at my next opportunity,” he snarled.
Rafe, still holding onto my straps with one hand and onto the bar above him with the other, couldn’t do anything to help our situation.
It was up to me.
I didn’t hold out much hope for our survival, because a gymnast, I was not.
I scrunched up again, doing a reverse crunch until I got my other hand around his butt strap, and then I pulled myself up using straps and Rafe’s clothing, apologizing as I went, until I was more facing him chest to chest. The only problem was, the harness straps still connected to Rafe had become hopelessly snarled, and neither one of us had a hand free to loosen them so I could take off the broken clamp to allow us to slide down to the next platform.
Where were the employees? By now, they’d surely realized that something had happened? We’d been gone too long!
I blinked when I looked down and saw a cute, tiny, fuzzy bat land on my tennis shoe.
“Rafe?”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t bats nocturnal?”
Rafe’s head snapped down so fast to where I was chin pointing that I knew for sure he’d need a chiropractic adjustment after we got back to the ship.Ifwe got back to the ship.
“Bash,” Rafe snarled. “Help us, you leech-brained vampire bat!”
Bash? Short for Sebastian? Wait, could vampires really turn into bats? I was gobsmacked. I’d thought the bat legends about vampires were untrue! I’d always privately scoffed at them, and I had never even thought to add them to my books because I’d always found the idea that vampires could turn into bats ridiculous.
“You are torso to torso with the love of my life and her injured hand is bleeding,” the bat said.
I blinked. It could speak? And, wait! The love of his life?
I shook my head, refocusing on me and Rafe not dying. It didn’t matter that the little adorable Bash bat could speak. Or the other... thing he’d said. We needed to get out of this predicament first, and then I could contemplate the other stuff. I was going with magic for now. That explained all the confusing parts about the supernatural world, anyway.
“Change, lummox,” Rafe snarled again. “You can’t help us as a bat and my hands are cramping.” He grunted as he said the last bit, and I stared wide-eyed as Sebastian was suddenly in front of me as himself, gripping the main cable with one hand and trying to unsnarl my harness with the other. When he couldn’t do it by hand, he patted Rafe’s pockets and came up with a pocketknife. Apparently, the world over, men carried pocketknives.
He started hacking quickly at the harness pieces that connected me to Rafe.
“Umm, should you be doing that? Why not just unstick the broken clamp? It will allow us to slide downwards to the next platform.”
Sebastian clamped the knife between his teeth as he maneuvered some straps with his bare hands and then grabbed the knife again. “Because if I can get you detached from him, I can wrap the lower cable around your waist and push you to the next platform. If worse comes to worst, he can shift, and I don’t want him taking you down with him when the idiot has wings.”
“Thanks so much,” Rafe said drolly. “Really, you’re such a good friend.”
“And how are we going to explain that you happen to be up here hanging out with us?” I asked.
