Crave the Night (14 page)

Stranded like a beached animal, she could do
nothing but stare into the creature's over-sized amber eyes.

Holding her gaze, it pulled its tail from
the water and slapped it hard against the surface of the water.

A wave washed over the yacht and the dragon,
sending the boat and Sarina airborne. She closed her eyes and
prepared to hit the water, but the welcome feel of the ocean
embracing her never came. Instead, she was grabbed again, this time
by the dragon's tail.

With a roar he held her overhead, like a
human dangling a mouse by its tail.

On deck, Nolan blinked—not from the sun, but
what was blocking it.

A huge gold and green dragon with fins
jutting from the sides of its face and a tongue that danced out of
its mouth like an excited snake's rose from the sea next to the
yacht.

At Nolan's arrival, it opened its lips and
roared. Hot steam coated Nolan, clouding his glasses.

He had wanted fire. It appeared the dragon
might soon give him his wish.

He glanced over the deck, searching for
Sarina, but the mermaid was nowhere in sight.

Free then
.
Swum away, leaving Nolan to face this beast on his own. Not that
Nolan could blame her. He couldn't imagine a mermaid had much
defense against a creature this large—no more than a lone vampire
might.

But then Nolan couldn't swim, at least not
like the mermaid.

Which left him with one choice—fight.

While he thought, the dragon had turned the
boat, using a part of its body submerged beneath the water, Nolan
guessed.

Nolan stood still as it analyzed him and his
apparently hopeless situation.

"If you are going to sink me, do it now," he
muttered as much to himself as the beast.

The dragon paused and for a moment leaned
closer. Its tongue darted out, touching Nolan's face, chest and
legs.

The boat rose and the dragon turned, another
bigger section of its body appearing from beneath the waves—its
tail, Nolan realized, but something more too.

Wrapped tight in the creature's tail was
Sarina, her face pale and her eyes closed.

She hadn't swam away.

One simple thought, but it was enough.

The beast Nolan worked so hard to keep
hidden behind a human face burst free. His fangs extended and his
muscles clenched. His thick vampire blood pounded through his
heart, and the pulse at his neck jumped.

He hadn't fed in two weeks, not from a
living creature. And while the blood of this over-sized snake was
far from what he craved, it would more than do for now.

He ran forward, leaping as he did.

His arms wrapped around the dragon's body,
not far below its head and his fangs sank into its flesh.

Its scales were soft and easy to pierce, but
in an anger-fueled rush, Nolan had taken no time to assess his
target. His bite sank into flesh, but missed any veins the creature
might have.

If it had veins.

The dragon jerked and tossed its head trying
it seemed to dislodge the vampire attached to its throat, but
determined, Nolan hung on. The creature roared, and steam rolled
from its throat.

Nolan's clothing stuck to his skin, and his
hair clung to his face. He was sticky, and his arms ached with the
effort of holding the twisting, angry beast, but none of that
mattered, nothing mattered but getting it to loosen its hold on the
mermaid.

His lifted his face and yelled, "Drop
her."

The dragon sank under the sea, beneath the
boat and lower. Arms and legs wrapped around the creature now,
Nolan closed his eyes and willed his mind to slow.

He was accomplishing nothing holding the
creature like this. Would accomplish nothing. He was to the dragon
what a mosquito might be to a bear. Annoying, but little more.

Deeper they went until sun no longer
filtered through the water, until only Nolan's vampire ability
allowed him to see at all. Suddenly with no apparent reason, the
dragon slowed until he seemed to barely be moving at all.

Nolan pulled the sunglasses from his face
and shoved them into a pocket. Then, thinking this would be his
chance to let go and escape back to the surface, he looked around,
but he quickly realized that he had no idea which was up and which
way was down.

He could as easily swim deeper into the sea
as swim to the surface.

As he pondered his choice, something slipped
under his waist and curled tightly around him. Then with no other
warning, he was jerked from the dragon's throat and dropped. He
floated for a moment, stunned and unsure of what had happened.

With no sound and no backward look, the
dragon slithered away. It was then Nolan realized the creature had
done as he'd ordered. He had dropped Sarina, and Nolan too.

Unfortunately, wherever he had left the
mermaid was nowhere near here.

Deciding his only choice was to take a
chance and hope he swam the right direction, Nolan swept his arms
through the water, pushing his body upward...or what he hoped was
upward.

He had moved maybe three feet, before his
body jerked to a stop. Confused, he looked down.

A long, green tendril of some plant was
wrapped around his leg. Curving his body down, he tried to loosen
the strands with his fingers. The plant held tight. In fact, if
Nolan hadn't known better—that plants were incapable of action of
their own volition—he would have sworn the vine actually tightened
in protest to his pulls.

Tired of messing with the thing, he bent
lower and tried to saw through the tendril with his teeth. After
what felt like minutes of scraping his fangs over the plant, he
pulled back again.

The plant was completely unscathed, not even
a scratch to show where Nolan's fangs had touched it.

It was then he realized that the dragon's
unexpected release of him might not have been unexpected at
all.

He had been trapped.

Sarina floated to the surface and gasped in
air. The dragon had held her too tightly, too long. The air she'd
held in her lungs had been squeezed out. She'd been close to
passing out when the beast had dropped her and left her floating
like debris in the deep water.

Mermaids didn't die easily though, and she'd
managed, despite a shooting pain in her chest, to make her way back
to the surface.

She had also, however, lost sight of both
the dragon and Nolan.

An image of the human flying toward the
dragon shot through her mind. She'd been weak then, desperate, and
the human had seemed to notice...had seemed to care.

An impossible thought, of course. Humans
didn't care, not about mermaids as beings like themselves. They
cared about what they thought mermaids could bring them.

But the light in Nolan's eyes; the way his
face had twisted....

It had reminded Sarina of her mother,
fighting the pirate who three hundred years earlier had thought to
steal Sarina and her sister away. Rage so pure and intense, no
creature could face it and think they would win against it.

Her mother had won, at least what she fought
for. Sarina and Allera had slipped out of the pirates' net.

But Sarina and her sister had lost.

Allera had lost her soul, and their mother
hadn't survived. She'd died in that net, speared by a sailor when
she tried to follow her daughters through the opening she'd created
with the slashing of her tail.

Her mother's tears and blood had coated
them. Sarina could still feel and smell both. She'd stared at her
sister and known Allera, younger and more vulnerable, was her
responsibility now, and she'd sworn she would find away to get her
sister’s soul back.

Sarina's hand wrapped around the vial that
hung from her neck.

Which brought her back to Nolan. Whether
he'd attacked the dragon out of rage for Sarina as a being, or
Sarina as the mermaid who could get him to the sea hag, didn't
matter.

Sarina needed him.

In the distance she could see their yacht,
still a float. She spun in place, scanning for the human and the
dragon. There was no sign of either.

If the dragon had left, his assignment must
have been completed. The boat seemed stable and Sarina, though
hurt, was alive.

Which only left Nolan. Sarina couldn't
imagine the sea hag would have ordered a possible mate killed, but
tested? Yes.

And how would Melusine test a mate?

She'd do the same thing Sarina had done.
She'd see if he could last underwater.

Ribs aching, Sarina dove deep into the
sea.

Sarina searched the ocean for hours, long
past time any human could possibly still be alive, but despite the
growing pain in her chest and all logic, she couldn't stop. She
couldn't believe Nolan was truly gone, and she wouldn't until she
saw his body.

She had worked in a spiral out from the
boat, moving deeper into the ocean as she moved outward. She was at
the bottom now and further from the boat than she had been at any
other point. Once back to the yacht she would have to stop. The
pain had moved past something she could describe as an ache or
throb and now edged toward agonizing.

She wouldn't be able to stay under water
much longer.

Her mermaid body, legendary for its ability
to survive any storm and hundreds of years, was about to give
out.

Her fingers trailed over the ocean's floor,
touching sand and debris. She was pulling herself along now, her
body too tired to even swim. She coughed and tasted metal. Her hand
moved to her mouth and came back red.

Blood. She was coughing out blood.

In a sea filled with predators, that
couldn't be good.

The thought was fleeting.

Her eyes closed, and she let her body
drift.

Nolan smelled blood, or maybe he tasted it.
He wasn't sure how he knew blood was in the water somewhere close,
but he did.

Realizing he most likely was not the only
predator in the sea that might be drawn by the scent, he spun in
place, searching for the source and any creatures that might have
been attracted by it.

At first he saw nothing.

Then something long and silver
fluttered.

Nolan's gut tightened.

There had to be many things in the ocean
that were silver—plants, debris, fish....

A logical thought, but one Nolan couldn't
accept, not without seeing for himself.

He jerked his foot upward again. The plant
that held him tightened like a seat belt activated by a sudden
stop.

Nolan paused. The analogy gave him a
thought. He pulled again, this time softly. Again the plant
tightened, but not as quickly or as tightly.

He took a step to the side with his free
foot and dragged the other behind him. The plant allowed it. He
tried to swim upward. The plant objected, jerking him back
down.

Another step to the side and then another.
Soon Nolan, never lifting his trapped foot from the ocean's floor,
was six feet from where he had originally been pinned.

He could move, in an ungainly manner, but
move.

He lowered his head and concentrated on his
steps and nothing more. He kept going until the smell of blood had
his vampire hunger snapping to be set free.

Then he looked up.

Sarina floated six feet above the ocean
floor, looking like a magician's assistant levitated for an
astonished crowd.

Except most magician's assistants didn't
have blood leaking from their mouths.

Nolan leapt forward, forgetting his
constraints and the repercussions moving upward had. The plant's
tendril tightened around his ankle, so tight it cut through Nolan's
sock and skin. Now Sarina wasn't the only source of blood in the
sea.

But Nolan had no time to worry about that,
he lengthened his body as far and as quickly as he could, desperate
to latch onto the unconscious mermaid before the plant could
retaliate fully and jerk him back to where he had started.

His fingers wrapped around her hand and they
both went flying backward to his starting point.

But Nolan didn’t let go of Sarina; he clung
to her like a child holding a prized toy.

When they stopped, they were no better off
than they had been before—except they were now together,
bleeding.

One arm around her waist, he used the other
to pull her hair from her face. Her features were fine and her skin
delicate, at least in appearance, but Nolan knew from stories that
mermaids weren't delicate or easy to damage.

What had the dragon done to her and why?

It was a useless question, one, if Nolan
wanted to save them before sharks or something worse arrived, he
had no time to answer.

Now he needed to think—not about the dragon
or its motive, not even about the beauty of the mermaid in his
arms, or the arousing scent of her blood. He needed to think of how
to save them, how to get his foot loose and them both back to the
ship where maybe he'd think of a way to save her.

Save her. How much life did she have left?
Unable to do anything until he knew, he pressed his ear against her
chest.

The vial she wore around her neck, dug into
his cheek. He grabbed it in his fist, his first instinct to jerk it
free and release it to the sea, but something about the feel of the
tiny object in his hand caused reason to return. She wore the
object for some reason; it had some meaning to her. It wasn't his
place, in a fit of annoyance, to steal it from her.

He brushed the vial aside instead and placed
his ear back against her chest.

Her heart beat...weak, but he could hear
it.

He closed his eyes for a moment, relieved
and not, he realized, just because he needed the mermaid to find
the sea hag.

He was relieved because he saw something in
Sarina—a quiet strength and determination.

She was, in some eyes, a monster like him,
but she was beautiful too. He'd seen her swimming when she didn't
think he could see her. Seen her staring into the distance too.