Page 81 of Guarded By the Vodnik

Carver laughed, kicking my legs from under me until I fell flat on my belly. That gave me enough cover to stick one hand under my stomach. I closed my fingers on the handle of the knife Vodyan gave me, just in case. While my other hand clawed at the bottom, my body heaving, I eased the knife from its sheath.

“Ah, that’s fucking beautiful,” Carver said with a laugh. “Zoe Gilbert dying at my feet like the stupid cunt she is.”

I moved more and more sluggishly, using the cover of the disturbed sand to gulp in a final, deep breath that I held. I stilled completely, bidding my body to be loose and hoping like hell Carver would leave me alone now.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he muttered. “Let’s make sure your fish guy can’t revive you once he finds you.”

I held back a flinch when he straddled my hips, my heart going into overdrive from terror. It was now or never.

I flipped fast, cutting blindly with the knife. Carver gasped in surprise, then grunted when my blade met flesh. I pushed in as deep as I could, breathing hard, but a moment later, a heavy fist connected with the side of my head. The knife slipped out of my grip.

“You fucking bitch!” Carver screamed, hitting my head again until I had to blink hard against a haze of disorientation. “The tooth wasn’t enough for you? You had to give me a scar, too? How the fuck are you alive?”

I saw a blur of movement over my face. I caught it instinctively, my hand closing around a blade. Carver roared, yanking it back, and I screamed, releasing a flurry of bubbles. My hand pulsed with a cold, vicious pain, cut open.

“Fine! I don’t care!” Carver snarled viciously. “I’ll gut you like a fucking…”

Suddenly, he was gone. One moment, he straddled my hips, looming above me in the gloom, and the next, he screamed, clouds of sand rising from the bottom where he tumbled away, wrapped up in a roiling mass of tentacles.

“You will never touch her again!” Vodyan bellowed, his voice sack lighting up so brightly, the entire shipwreck illuminated green. “You fucking scum!”

Carver gurgled. I sat up carefully, my head feeling tender and dazed. I didn’t see much, but it was obvious Vodyan was on top. Thank God.

“One last thing before you die,” my bodyguard spat viciously. “Who’s your mole?”

Carver gurgled something incomprehensible. A beat later, he screamed in such agony, I winced on his behalf, even though he deserved whatever Vodyan did to him. Dark blood rose around them and, a moment later, a cut-off palm drifted out of the carnage.

“I’ll cut you piece by piece unless you tell,” Vodyan promised, his voice so cold, I shivered. “Last chance. Who’s your mole?”

After a moment of silence, another gurgling scream shook the water. A foot floated gently up, followed by a dark ribbon of blood.

Before Vodyan had a chance to ask again, Carver broke.

“Beck! It’s Beck!” he sobbed. “Please, I beg you…”

Silence fell, and then, more thick, dark blood bloomed, completely obscuring them both. Two frantic heartbeats later, it parted like a dark curtain, revealing Vodyan who swam over in one powerful thrust, one of his tentacles sending the floating hand careening into the sunken ship.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice tight with tension as his hands, the same ones that just cut Carver open, tenderly held my face. “Zoe. Talk to me.”

I pointed at my mouth, showing him I couldn’t speak. Gently, I cupped his cheek with my uninjured palm, trying to communicate I was all right.

“Do you have any wounds?” Vodyan asked, quickly adjusting his questioning strategy.

I raised my palm and showed him the knife wound. He took a careful look, his body tensing where it curled around me, tentacles holding me gently.

“Do you have other injuries?”

I shrugged, unsure how to communicate that I was hit repeatedly in the head. I pointed at my temple with my free hand, and Vodyan immediately palpated my skull, but the suit was in the way.

“I’ll take it off,” he murmured, sliding it off my head. “Are you cold?”

I shook my head. The suit still worked, heating most of my body, and I could live with my head being uncovered for now.

When gentle fingers buried in my hair, looking for injuries, I closed my eyes and finally relaxed. Carver was dead. He was dead. It was over. And even though I knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt, because I trusted Vodyan’s ability to kill, it still didn’t fully register.

There would be no trial. No more people trying to kill me or my family. No need to hide.

I was safe. I could go home. Maybe I could even have my old life back.

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