Vampires were unholy creatures, unable to cross water.
As foolish as ropes of garlic?
“Make it easy on yourself,” the vampire said.
“You mean easy on you, asshole.”
“Whatever.” Ago lunged with that preternatural speed. I stopped thinking and jumped into the Claw.
CHAPTER 14
Noa
My heart nearly stopped with the shock of frigid water, needles piercing my skin, freezing the air in my lungs before the current dragged me under. But the sodden weight of my coat kept my arms cocooned and useless. I would drown. Sink to the bottom where I’d rot. Unless I bent my elbows, worked the zipper with numbed fingers. Dragged my arms free.
The burning in my lungs fueled an explosive need to breathe, to part my clenched lips and inhale.
I struggled, a child caught in the blankets, kicking out, tangling myself more in the river grasses, submerged branches.
Then a hand clawed at the coat, and I couldn’t stop the scream. Couldn’t halt the last bit of air that bubbled from my frozen lips to stream toward the water’s surface.
Had Ago found me?
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the watery sting. Not Ago. A woman gripped my coat, tugging me against the river’s current. Her fingers were long and pale, but her strength added to the terror. My lips parted. She slapped her free hand against my mouth, perhaps to hold in whatever air remained. Or keep me from drowning myself by screaming once again.
Her dark hair nearly concealed her features, but the fingers were nymph. She pulled us under the ice, thick near the riverbank. Faint light illuminated a hollowed space, an air pocket. I pressed my face upward, breathed in greedily. Coughing at the fishy water that leaked into my throat.
The nymph bobbed her head, mimicked drawing in air seconds before she pulled me under again. Towed me further upstream. I was nothing more than flotsam, wreckage at the mercy of the current that beat at my face, streamed through my hair. Wanting to push me back toward Ago.
When she paused again and I surfaced with the nymph beside me, my teeth were chattering, my legs kicking weakly to stay afloat—and I swore I heard Barend’s hybrids baying in the distance. Ago’s screams. Moonlight reflected off the snow; it was enough to reveal the silhouettes—long-legged wolves, half-starved, pacing along the riverbank, searching for the scent. Ago, stalking behind them.
It wasn’t in me to shudder. Each breath I dragged in sliced like knives in my throat.
“A little longer.” The nymph hissed to keep her voice low, and then we were beneath the surface of the Claw again, the current raging, my body crashing into the rocks. My lungs fought the crushing pressure. The lack of oxygen turned everything fuzzy.
When the nymph dragged me back to the surface, braced my body against a log, I had no strength to hang on. My arms refused to lift. My hands were leaden weights, completely numb.
My jaw ached from the chattering of my teeth.
The nymph said, “You’ll be warmer in the water.”
“Not under the water.” Ice cracked through every muscle. “Breathing for me isn’t an option.”
“Dying shouldn’t be, either.”
I glanced toward the riverbank at that comment, relieved to see it empty. “Did they give up? Or did we outswim them?”
“Didn’t notice you doing any swimming.”
“You swam,” I muttered, forcing the sarcasm past stiff lips. “I was towed like a damn piece of bait on a hook.”
The nymph whipped wet hair from her eyes and smiled, baring her pointy teeth. “And here I believed Lorielle when she said you were worth saving.”
Lorielle… the river nymph who had lured me into the water with a floating log, clawed her way across the rocks like a crab before morphing into a female.
“I was worth saving,” I groused. “To someone who thought I’d be lunch.”
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t eat things with legs.”
