Page 51 of Tin God

Brigid kept her voice soft. “And Rachel?”

“I heard her scream his name, and then I didn’t hear anything. She would have done anything for Jackson. She loved…” He cleared his throat. “She loved him. But there were three of them on her. Sandra—my daughter—almost ran back to the house, but I grabbed her and took off.”

“Trying to get to the barn.”

He nodded slightly. “We were running into the woods and two of them just— They scooped us up like barn owls catching mice. Flew us up over the ocean, tossing us back and forth.” His eyes were blank. “They were laughing. It was like a game to them.”

Lev muttered something low and dark in Russian. Tenzin was an eerie blank void beside her. The two men holding Walter had clearly heard the story before, but their faces remained stoic.

Brigid wanted to rage, but she kept her focus on Walter’s face and her expression open. Carwyn called it her “trust me” face, and clearly it was working. “They dropped you in the ocean.”

“Lost their grip on us, maybe?” He shook his head a little. “I swam in circles, trying to find Sandra, but I couldn’t…” His voice caught. “I couldn’t find my girl. Felt the current pulling me, and my God…” His voice turned cold. “I wanted to go under so bad. My whole world was on this island, and they took it.”

“But you swam back.”

Walter’s eyes narrowed. “I knew someone would come. Eventually someone would come. Swam back, tied off my leg, and I waited.” He glanced at the man to his right. “Knew these boys would come soon enough.”

Walter’s strength humbled Brigid.

If someone killed your entire family?—

Hush. No. She couldn’t go there. Even a whisper of the idea took Brigid to such a dark place that she felt her blood start to churn and her skin heat up.

“You gonna find who did this?” Walter kept his eyes on Brigid. “You gonna kill them?”

“I swear.” Brigid nodded. “With my own fire.”

He kept his eyes steady on her. “I’ve seen a body burn before. Vampires burn the same as humans?”

Her gut twisted. “At the beginning? Yes.”

Tenzin moved, crouching down next to Brigid and speaking directly to Walter. “You should imagine the vampires who killed your family turning black, curling into twisted shadows of their previous form, and scattering like ashes in the wind. Because Brigid is going to kill all of them, and I am going to help her.” Tenzin never broke her stare. “Do you believe me, Walter?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, I do.”

“Will you let me fly you to the human doctors so they can try to save your life? I can smell that you are bleeding internally and your chances of survival are small, but they do exist.”

Brigid saw the man considering it. Saw the ache of longing to leave the world and the hard pull of survival battling in his yellow-tinged eyes.

“Do you have other kin?” Brigid asked.

One of the men holding the old man said, “Jackson has a sister in Louisville.” He put his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “Jackson said she just had a baby. That’s your great-granddaughter, Walter.”

“Survive for them,” Brigid told Walter. “Your granddaughter has lost her brother and her parents. Don’t make her lose everyone.”

The old man gave a curt nod and then looked at Tenzin again. “Fly me to the docs then.” He looked back at Brigid. “And I’ll be seeing you again. When it’s done.”

“Yes.” Brigid stood, keeping her eyes locked with his. “You will.”

ChapterTwelve

Tenzin was meditating when she heard Brigid return from her lessons with Oleg. The young fire vampire was disciplined and hardworking, but she was still disconnected from her element in a way that told Tenzin that even after a decade of being immortal, Brigid still thought more like a human than a vampire.

Tenzin had just returned from ferrying the wounded human Walter to the clinic Oleg ran, and she had very serious doubts the man would survive, but she wasn’t dismissing anyone who’d managed to drag himself back to land through a freezing ocean with sharks and orcas, then last for nearly two weeks before someone found him, all while taking shelter in the ruins of a home that housed the ashes of his family.

“I need you to be honest with me.”

She looked to the right and saw Brigid standing in the doorway of the room she’d been assigned in Oleg’s compound. “Why?”

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