“Ethan,” I said into the earbud, “if you can hear me, we need an evac, like, yesterday.”
Between bouts of static, I caught the intermittent words “mechanical” and “delay.”
“I didn’t catch that. Repeat: We need an evac right now.”
I caught “helicopter” and “broken.” The rest of the response was only garbled static.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Morgan said.
I didn’t think so.
“We’re gonna have to find another way off the island,” I said as gunshots echoed behind us. I looked right, left, found a path that led away from the concrete pad down toward the shore.
“There,” I said as voices began to sound behind us. I ran toward the path, began to half jog, half hop down the dirt- and rock-covered path, Morgan’s footsteps behind me.
The trail, narrow and rutted, ran up and down through a forested area, with switchbacks as tight as bobby pins. The forest was silent around us, whatever animals might have scampered in the dark smart enough to stay still while the predators roamed around them.
The path opened up almost instantaneously, shooting us onto a rocky, sandy shoreline where water lapped in the dark. There was an ancient picnic table, the remains of a circular fire pit surrounded by rocks. Maguire and his cronies—or Capone and his—had enjoyed a picnic or two on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no sign of a boat.
“Shit,” Morgan said, propelling out of the trees behind me, grabbing my body for balance as he nearly ran straight into me. We fumbled, separated, looked around, saw nothing but trees and water.
“There has to be a way off this godforsaken island,” I said, scanning left and right, but the shoreline was dark.
We couldn’t outrun these guys forever. They knew the island better than we did, and the sun would be up soon enough.
The darkness seemed to suddenly contract, to close in around me, as if I’d been shoved into a room without doors, a room with a barred window. Like a man with a key to unlock my head were standing beside me, and his words were in my ears again. Our business is not done.
No, I thought, trying to stem the rising panic, the memory of Balthasar that seemed right on the edge of swamping me. There was always a solution. I just had to think, had to slow down and think.
Crap, I thought as my vision began to spark around the edges. Panic attack.
I grabbed Morgan’s arm as my heart began to thud. The air was chilly, but a cold sweat broke out, peppering my skin with clamminess.
“What the hell are—oh, shit, are you okay?”
My throat felt snug as a straw, my head beginning to spin from lack of oxygen.
“Hey, breathe. Breathe, Merit. In, out. In, out.” He mimed the motion, then walked me to the picnic table. “Sit,” he said, but cast a nervous glance around him, waiting to hear humans running through the trees.
But why should they be in a hurry? This was their island. We were the interlopers here, and apparently with no exit.
“This isn’t a big deal,” Morgan said, squeezing my hand. “No need to panic. This is just a minor setback. There’s another way out of here, and we’ll find it.”
I followed his breathing, caught the rhythm of it, forced myself to breathe on counts. In, one, two. Out, one, two. Over and over again, until my heart began to slow its frantic pace.
“You can’t be afraid of the dark, you know. That’s not a thing a vampire can even have.”
He was trying to make me laugh, and I chuckled in spite of myself and my racing heartbeat. “Not afraid. Just—a memory. A bad one.”
“Then you need to replace it with a new one,” Morgan said, looking down, up, around as if he might find a replacement on a nearby shelf.
“Ah,” he said, his gaze on the sky. “Look up.”
“What?”
“Look up,” he said, and tilted my chin upward.
It was as if the moon had exploded and spilled its light across the sky—stars sprinkled the dark canvas like diamonds, the cloudy Milky Way gleaming among them.
I’d seen a similar sight in our few nights in Colorado, when the universe had flung open its arms to us. It was majestic, and it made me feel small in the best possible way.
“There is always light,” Morgan said quietly. “The stars are always shining, even if we can’t see them.”
He was the last person I’d have expected to hear something that philosophical from. And it helped.
A dog barked nearby. “We’ve got to go,” he said.
“Wait,” I said. “I have an idea. Just give me a minute. Keep an eye out.”
I closed my eyes, tried to slow my beating heart, tried to listen to the darkness for an idea, a suggestion, the hint of an escape plan.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, and I focused past it, strained for sound. It took precious seconds, but I finally heard the soft scampers of animals in the woods, the hoot of an owl, the rhythmic slap of water against the shoreline.
And there, in the back of the sounds, in the darkness, the squeak and groan of metal, just as rhythmic.
I opened my eyes again, stood up, looked in the direction of the sound.
“There,” I said, and as he followed behind, I jogged down the shore until I saw it: a metal dock, about twenty yards away. It floated on booms that squeaked with each soft wave.
Beside it, bobbing lightly in the water, was a boat. It wasn’t large, and it wasn’t new, but it was floating. And that was something.
Voices echoed through the darkness behind us, and they were getting louder.
“Dock,” I said, and we took off running. I pushed open the small gate—thankfully unlocked—intended to keep interlopers off the equally small pier, hurried to the boat docked at the end of it.
It was a powerboat, something a family might use for skiing on a day at the lake. A seat for the captain behind a control panel and short windshield, a seat beside for a passenger, a line of cushions across the back. Nothing fancy, but the outboard engine looked serviceable enough.
I hopped down onto plastic carpeting, the boat swaying beneath me. I hadn’t been on a boat in a very long time. Hell of a time for a reunion.
I sat down in the captain’s chair, checked the relatively simple dashboard—ignition, speed, fuel gauge, throttle. The key was in the ignition, and it looked as though the tank was full. There were other bits and pieces of high-tech equipment, which could have been whale-tracking machines for all I knew.
When I realized I hadn’t felt the boat bobble with Morgan’s weight, I glanced back, found him standing on the dock, staring down at me.