Page 149 of Vampire's Choice

Ruth dropped to her heels again. Though everything in her rebelled against it, wanting to shriek, rail and fight her way through that field that would likely fry her brain, she started the chant, rocking back and forth, lifting her hands. Each word and gesture possessed meaning. She pulled on the power within her, of family. Her mother, her father, her brother, always with her, always tied to her.

It doesn’t matter what world they’re in. They’re with you. Nothing severs that bond. You ride in the same hunt, side by side, always…

As her heart slowed and mind cleared, she focused on the lap of the water on the shore, the noises of the birds who had once again landed on the rocks. Her calmer energy must be helping them, too. Then she became aware of something else.

Someone was reaching out to her.

Someone beneath the water.

The voice…there were no intelligible words, but she could feel the insistent pull on her mind. It drew her to the mouth of the cave.

Merc’s logic was sound. If someone powerful enough to impose that field was still around and saw her, she’d have no chance.

But this wasn’t that. She was sure of it. Fuck it. Ruth picked her way down the rocks, slipping and sliding in her haste, cutting her hands and ripping a hole in her jeans.

She ignored that, scrambling to the water’s edge and forcing herself to embrace that calm center again. Then she reached out with every sense she had.

Vampire. It was vampire.

Calling for help, with a savage urgency. No trickery. A trickster would be cajoling, pleading. There was nothing here but rage.

Definitely male energy. Not her father. She squelched her disappointment and considered what was below. An artificial coral reef, formed by several freighter containers and a shipwreck, an old fishing vessel. He had to somehow be trapped within them.

Vampires had no buoyancy. Swimming was like pulling a body-sized boulder through the water. But since who was calling to her so insistently was beneath the water, buoyancy wouldn’t have been in her favor anyway. She removed all her clothes except for her underwear and entered the water.

It got deep quickly, and she used her arms to push herself downward, holding her own against the current. The pressure got uncomfortable, but a vampire didn’t get the bends. She supposed at a certain depth they could still be crushed, but she didn’t have to go that deep. She saw the wreck and the containers, half buried in the sand, claimed by the sea, coated with seaweed, barnacles and other ocean life.

But there was a newer container, and that deadly fury was coming from within it. The metal box was wrapped up in spellcraft that had the same signature as the field over the island, which explained why she hadn’t immediately detected him. As she stroked closer, she reached out toward the latch.

An electrified bear trap closed on her arm. Fortunately, she shoved herself backward at its first touch, sheer luck allowing her to escape its range. If it had succeeded in knocking her unconscious with its voltage, she would have been drawn off by the current, her body headed for the Gulf Stream.

Then Merc would have really been pissed.

She planted herself on top of one of the other containers. Hooking her foot under a rusted bolt kept her there, and she did the centering exercise again to manage the air hunger her lungs didn’t need to feed.

She stared at the container. There was definitely a vampire in there. The container should have exploded from the wrath of its occupant. He was pounding on it, loudly enough to echo through the water and inside her head.

It had to be Lord Mason.

The name matched the energy so precisely she knew she was right. But that terrifying coldness returned. Who had the ability to contain a Council vampire that powerful?

Focus on the positive. They couldn’t kill him, so they’d had to settle for containing him.

Unless there was a more important reason for leaving him alive.

She had no mind connection with Lord Mason, but he’d been able to reach out to her, so she hoped the concentrated feeling she sent back to him penetrated, in spirit if not in the actual words attached to the feeling.

I’m getting help. Hang in there.

She fought back to the surface and pulled herself onto the rocks. Merc, Lord Mason is locked in a metal container under the water. I can’t get him free.

She didn’t know what her range was with an angel. They hadn’t yet tested it. She wished they had. She didn’t get a response, but in case his range was better than hers, she repeated the message several times, in the hopes one iteration would get through so he could communicate it to the others.

Mason’s pounding, that kind of urgency, meant really bad things. Things they needed to be handling. Not sitting here waiting for help.

Fucking hell, this was going to make her crazy. She thought again of Lord Mason’s prison, the shape and look of it. When Adan was still young enough he did his magic lessons with Derek on the island, she’d trailed along and paid close attention.

There’s always a key. It doesn’t always take a sorcerer to unlock it. Especially if no one expects a sorcerer to be there.

---