Nothing the Crowgard could do for her there.
Aggie shifted to human form, picked up the gun, and ran to where Julian lay on the wet sand. She set the gun beside him, remembering from stories to point it away from him, then shifted back to Crow and studied the human. Water leaked from his closed eyes. He was not paying attention. That wasn’t smart with so many of the terra indigene feeling angry toward humans.
Did she care? Did it matter?
He was Miss Vicki’s friend. And so was she.
Perched on Julian Farrow’s raised knee, Aggie cleaned her feathers while she kept watch.
CHAPTER 76
Vicki
Watersday, Sumor 8
It didn’t matter if I wanted to go back to The Jumble’s beach or go on to Silence Lodge. I had reached the point of no return. I was done, exhausted—and hurt. My side felt strange, but I was too scared to touch it and find out why.
A wave caught me in the face, and I thought my side would rip as I coughed up the water I’d swallowed.
Then I saw the shapes coming toward me, saw a delicate dorsal fin, the flick of a tail. They surfaced all around me. If I hadn’t been so brutally tired, I would have been terrified.
Imagine a creature whose ancestors had been a giant piranha that had mated with a lake-dwelling species of human. They had a humanlike torso that ended in that kind of tail shown in sketches of mermaids. The backs of their bodies were a blue-black that changed to a silvery-gray front. Big fish eyes. And triangular, interlocking teeth that could tear flesh from bone, easily stripping a carcass in minutes.
Elders. The long-standing, or long-swimming, residents of Lake Silence.
They raised their heads above the water, bobbing to keep the gills in their necks wet.
“I can’t swim anymore,” I said. I didn’t know if I was asking for help or telling them that this prey didn’t have the strength to fight them.
Two of them bobbed under the water on either side of me. When they surfaced, my arms were around their narrow shoulders, holding me up. I wasn’t much help, but they maneuvered until we faced the shoreline near Silence Lodge.
An undulation of water lifted all of us, as if we were all riding on the back of something that had risen from deep in the lake to become a long, gentle swell. An arched back that rose and went back down. But the motion had brought all of us noticeably closer to the shore.
The third time that undulation occurred, I imagined I saw a giant head and shoulders right in front of me—a body that was never separate from the lake but still distinct.
We were in sight of the shore faster than I would have thought possible. Silence Lodge didn’t have my nice beach. Dark pebbles, maybe shale. Shale had sharp edges. Landing on it would hurt. Not that I had a choice. I wasn’t sure my companions understood human speech, and they weren’t likely to spend their time pondering the preferences of shoreline material.
My vision blurred. The Elders who had been holding me up dropped away. And I rode that last undulation to the shore alone.
CHAPTER 77
Ilya
Watersday, Sumor 8
<Come to the shore, bloodhunter. We are bringing the Reader to you. She is wounded.>
“To the shore,” Ilya told the rest of the Sanguinati. “Hurry.”
He shifted to smoke and rushed to the shore, followed by Natasha and Boris. The other Sanguinati spread out to cover the rest of the shore in front of the lodge. As soon as he reached the water’s edge, Ilya shifted back to human form and saw the swell—and the beings riding it.
Twice more a swell formed under the beings, carrying them closer to shore. Then the Elders swam away, leaving Victoria to ride the final swell alone. As the Lady of the Lake lifted Victoria DeVine above the stony shore, Ilya raised his arms to catch The Jumble’s caretaker.
CHAPTER 78
Grimshaw
Watersday, Sumor 8
As Grimshaw marched Yorick Dane to the big screened porch at the back of the main house, he looked for Julian. Instead of spotting his friend, he saw Crows gathering near something on the beach. The land sloped, denying him a visual of the beach itself, but he could guess what would attract so many of the Crowgard.
Gods above and below.
Cougar appeared over the rise, moving away from the beach. The Panther saw him and stopped. As Grimshaw watched, Cougar looked back toward the beach. Then a front paw changed into a furry human hand that gave him a thumbs-up before the hand became a paw again and Cougar continued moving toward the cabins.
Somehow that human gesture to indicate something, or someone, was all right disturbed him more than the bodies he’d glimpsed in the past few minutes. But if he understood the message, Julian had survived.
“Osgood!” Grimshaw called as he and Dane approached the porch.
“Sir!” Osgood scanned the area, then unlocked the screen door and held it open while Grimshaw muscled Dane inside. “According to Mrs. Dane, one of the women should be at the lakeside cabins.”
“I’ll check it out.” He pushed Dane into one of the chairs. “Stay there.”
“Where’s Darren?”
“Where is Vaughn?”
Grimshaw eyed the women. There was fear under the bitchy attitude. “Darren is dead. I think Swinn is dead. I didn’t see Vaughn.” He hadn’t gone looking.
“Why is Yorick in handcuffs?” Constance Dane said. “You can’t arrest him.”
“Yes, I can.” He used the tone of voice that was so polite, so professional, no one had ever mistaken it for anything but a threat.
“Police!” Hargreaves, from the front of the house. Backup had arrived.
“Back here!” Grimshaw bellowed.
Hargreaves appeared in the kitchen doorway. He looked at the women, then at Yorick Dane. “Who is under arrest?”
“All of them,” Grimshaw replied.
“What’s the charge?” Constance Dane demanded, jumping to her feet.
“Fine.” Grimshaw uncuffed Yorick Dane. “Either you’re all under arrest or I chuck you all out the door, and you can take your chances.”
Something near the porch laughed, a sound so full of terrible glee that it made Grimshaw’s body clench, made Hargreaves’s face tighten. Made beads of sweat pop up on the foreheads of the officers standing behind the captain.
“We’ll take them to the police station in Sproing and sort out the charges there,” Hargreaves said. “What are we starting with?”
“Abduction,” Grimshaw replied as his mobile phone rang. “Possibly murder.” He turned away from the people on the porch and covered one ear with a hand in order to hear the person on the phone. “Grimshaw.”
“Bring a doctor and medical equipment to Silence Lodge,” Ilya Sanguinati said.
Leaving the porch, he took several steps away from the house, ignoring Hargreaves’s low protest. “You found Vicki? Do we need to take her to the hospital in Bristol?”
A slight hesitation. “I don’t think she has time to reach Bristol.”