I expect her to lunge at me again, but instead, she feeds me a fistful of sand. Coughing and spitting, I blindly grab two hunks of her hair and pull her face to the ground. Her claws rake what’s left of my shirt. It hangs from my shoulders in ribbons, exposing my dairy to everyone. I kick at her thighs, but I can’t seem to connect. One of her arms rests on the ground, so I sit on it.
Wrong move.
With super strength, she flips me onto my back. The wind flies out of me in a whoosh. She plants her weight on her right knee across my thighs, pinning me to the ground. She wrestles my right hand from her hair and pins it under her left knee. Long black strands wave from between my fingers in a minuscule victory. Her face descends toward my neck, with her elongated fangs leading the way. The only barrier is my left hand, still holding her hair, pressed against her forehead. She can’t bend my elbow without breaking my arm.
Where is her other hand? She will sneak attack me if—
It swipes across my belly. I hear my cry ring into the air as if someone else screamed it for me. Blood bubbles from my innards just below my bottom ribs. My arm shakes as she lifts her bloody claw to her extended tongue.
“Delicious,” she whispers. “I knew I’d love your taste.”
“Get away from my sister, you beast!” A red tentacle slams against Magda’s head, knocking the vampiress off me.
“Sister? The two of you? One is a kraken? Oh, you are full of surprises, aren’t you, pet?” Magda taunts Sabrina as she spits out sand.
“Pick on someone your own size,” Sabrina sneers. Her tentacles ripple over the sand with her fury. I nod and give her a half-smile when she flicks her gaze to me. She came to my rescue. After all these years of my saving her, Sabrina saved me. I’ll be okay with a few stitches, but she’s garnered Magda’s attention. “Stop being such a bully when they came to you for help.”
“My help?” Magda says, finger-combing her hair to remove the sand. She shocks us all when she pulls a brush from her coat pocket and begins to style it.
“Didn’t you see Chub and his wife—”
“Chub’s married too? Those knuckleheads found their lady loves after all…I guess. I’m happy for them,” she says quietly to the snarl she works with the brush. “Such lies may be truth, and you may have a kraken twin, but I don’t believe you’re my replacement.”
“Nobody sought to replace you—just clean up the mess you left behind when you found your happily ever after,” Teeth says, emerging from the surf. Magda takes in his towering form and navy-blue tentacles with a shocked countenance. “I’m sure you will meet Catalina soon, but in the meantime, meet Sabrina…my wife. The one you maimed is my sister-in-law, Captain Betts ofPatricia’s Wish. Let her get stitched up so that she might explain to us why our boat is in two pieces in the bay while her satyr sails on a raft made from our navigation table.”
“Flint? He’s alive!” I yell as I attempt to stand. The pull of the skin on my belly sends darts of pain up my spine. I flop back onto the beach in defeat.
“No problem for Chevelle,” Magda says, waving her hand to dismiss Teeth. She doesn’t acknowledge Sabs, or Teeth’sannouncement that she’s his wife. It’s as if Magda chooses what to believe, and the rest is beneath her.
“Chevelle delivers Chub’s baby as we speak,” replies Eze.
“Well, you are just a needy bunch of inconveniences, aren’t you?”
“Magda,” says a voice with a timbre so deep, it rattles my bones. “Behave. These are friends.”
“Branko, you have no idea what I’ve been through,” she whines. “She threatened me.”
“The one who you opened like a cask of ale? Good thing I brought my medical kit. As soon as you flew out of bed, I knew I would have to mend claw slashes, bullet holes, or both.”
“You sound tired, friend,” Teeth says, approaching him for a masculine embrace.
“Yeah, well, your wife turned you into a fish, so shut your face,” Branko replies with a smile that lights up the night.
22
Betts
“You should go inside,” Sabrina says. “You don’t want the bugs picking at your wound.”
“You sound like you’re my mother,” I quip. My stitches hurt like hell and are as crooked as a harbormaster. I guess that’s what I get for allowing Teeth to sew them.
“How the roles have flipped, eh? What possessed you to take on Magda?”
“I don’t know. I guess to prove I deserve my new life, or maybe to establish myself here. She’s something else. I like to think I earned a place among her friends by standing up to her. Anyway, how did you find us?”
“Teeth and I went to Mexico—you know, to the safe house where they expected Catalina months ago. He needed to say goodbye to Chub one more time…in case they chose to live inland. The men had each other’s backs for decades…he can’t just let go….not when we just let go of our first clutch of hatchlings. In any event, you weren’t there. We planned to go where we last saw you and look for clues. We watched you wreck, but we were too far away to save you.”
“It worked out,” I say without taking my eyes off the sea. Sabrina looks out and back at me, then out again, raising her eyebrows. “Flint’s out there. Gunter saw him after the wreck.”
