28. Was it a Mercy?

The scent of wet stone and ocean brine filled my nostrils. Frustrated with myself, I opened my eyes and stared at the water running down the dark gray rock inches from my face. Steeling myself, I dared a glance down and watched a massive wave crash onto the rocks twenty feet below.

Clive hadn't resurfaced. Shouldn't he have resurfaced? How long had it been? Fear was screwing with my head. A few seconds? Minutes? Had he found the cave? Been impaled on a rock below the foaming surface? Was he fighting Leticia now?

I tried to find him in my mind but couldn't. Fear was quite literally blinding me. I had to suck it up. How long had he been gone? Partners are supposed to stick together. One wasn't supposed to be cowering while the other did all the work. Seriously, it had to have been a half hour by now or maybe five minutes. Hard to tell.

Channeling my inner drill sergeant, I berated myself quite loudly and viciously in my head and then started to move my damn hands. Ledge to shallow ledge, I slowly made my way down the cliff face. When seawater started splashing against my legs, I knew I was close.

Taking a deep breath, I dropped down into the ocean and was immediately slammed against the rock. Keeping my arms against the side of the outcropping, I was able to brace against another head injury while pushing myself farther under water.

Opening my eyes, I felt the sting of salt water but also saw a dark open area to my right. Hoping there was air in the cave because my lungs were about to burst, I waited for a wave to move out and then dove down, fighting the pull of the ocean, and swam into the mouth of the cave.

Popping out of the water a moment later, I gasped for air and waited for my eyes to adjust. The cave appeared empty. Shit. Were there two caves? And then a growl rent the still air. I swam toward the edge of rock, smelling blood and werewolf.

Climbing out of the water, I went to a body chained to the rock. He was almost unrecognizable as a man, body ripped and torn, covered in vampire bite marks. When I knelt beside him, his eyes flew open.

"Kill me. Please."

His eyes held flashes of red, as Clive's sometimes did when he was angry.

The chains were too thick for me to break. George may have been able to do it with his outsized dragon strength, but not me. When I moved to check the bolts in the rock, he writhed and growled, the sound reverberating off the walls. I scrambled back to check on him and saw long, pointed fangs sliding over his lips.

Hissing, he pulled at his chains, desperate to attack me. Heart sinking, I knew what she had been doing. I moved to his head, placed my hands on his temples, and dove in. Pain. Fiery, agonizing pain. She'd been feeding on him, keeping him chained in silver so he couldn't heal, and then forcing the change on him. He didn't know how long he'd been held captive, but it was long enough to have lost track of the days.

She was turning him into her undead pet, giving him just enough of her blood to begin the change, but withholding what he needed to quench his tormenting thirst. His mind was a raging torrent of pain.

"Shh." I rested my forehead against his, trying to calm the vamp and the wolf. He snapped again and again, desperate to feed on me. I considered offering up my blood, but it would never be enough. She'd painstakingly created a killing machine, a weapon to use in her war on Clive. She was going to set this poor creature loose and let him carve out a killing path to the nocturne. Clive would be so distracted, dealing with an undead werewolf, he wouldn't see her move in.

I could see it all in his tangled mind, what she'd said and done to him. He couldn't be set free as he was. I'd been able to manipulate vampires in the past. Perhaps…

Uncoiling the thread of my magic, I imagined roping it around the part of his consciousness that spoke to mine, the undead vampire part. Gathering it close, looping my magic around and around, I tried to tear it out of him. His heart stuttered to a stop. I released my grip, and it began again unsteadily.

"Kill me." His hoarse words echoed in the dark cave.

I didn't let myself think about it, didn't second-guess it. Unleashing my claws, I raked them across his throat, taking his head and ushering his spirit to the other side.

Clive emerged from the water a few minutes later. "Thank the gods! I thought you'd dropped into the ocean and were washed away." Crouching in front of me, he tilted my head. "You're bleeding." His kissed it to staunch the flow.

"Oh, that. I hit it on the rocks out there."

He followed my gaze to my bloody hands. "What—" Then he looked to the left and saw that the werewolf we'd come to rescue was minus a head, thanks to me. "You put him out of his misery, Sam. It was a kindness, a mercy."

"Kind? No, I don't think that was kind of me. I gave him what he asked for because I couldn't fix what she'd done to him. I tried to extract the vampire, but it would have killed him, making him exactly what he didn't want to be. Look how decomposed he is now. She'd been slowly torturing him, turning him by inches." I found his gray eyes in the dark. "Why? I mean, I know that she wanted a pet monster, but why draw it out?" I felt hollow inside.

"Two reasons, I think. One was to drive him insane. There'd be no logic to his attacks and no way to trace him back to her. The second is only a guess. You said you couldn't find her in your head. It's possible she was too far away. It's also possible that feeding exclusively on wolf was muddying her signature."

"That happens?"

He took my hand and pulled me away from the dead wolf. "There have been experiments, rumors. Russell explained to you that Lafitte had a theory about drinking from wicches and psychics in order to absorb their talents. I don't know that it's possible, but still the rumors continue to circulate.

"Come on." He pulled me toward the water's edge. "Let's talk elsewhere. No more cliffs for you. We'll swim to shore instead. Swim fast and hard straight out and then turn toward the beach to avoid the rocks." Laying a hand on the side of my face, he wiped away my tears. "Ready?"

Nodding, I took in a deep breath and dove back into the ocean. Clive stayed right beside me as we ducked under the stone lip of the cave and swam away from the rocks. When I had to break the surface for a breath, he wrapped my arms around his neck and shot off through the water.

Once we hit the sand, I remembered the time. "How long until the sunrise?"

"We'll make it." He took my hand. "Let's go get the car and I'll tell you what you missed."

It wasn't until we hit the road that I noticed Clive was barefoot. "How about if I give you a piggyback ride this time?"

"I think not."

Stopping, I pulled on his arm. "So, this is all one-sided, huh? Only you can help me?"

"Sam, I love you, but I don't need your help."

He tried to tug me forward, but I wasn't having it. "Roadsides are always littered with glass."

"I'll survive." When I remained unmoving, he sighed. "If we ran, we'd already be at the car."

"If you stopped being a vampy manbaby and take the ride, we'd already be at the car."

"That word." Glaring, he leaned in and nibbled on my lower lip. "How would this even work? I'm taller than you."

"Just climb on and quit being weird."

Once I had him on my back, his arms around my neck, I pulled his legs up on either side of me and sprinted up the hill. My running shoes squeaked wetly, but we were back at the car in under a minute and Clive's feet were uncut.

I drove us home, as it was dangerous to drive without shoes. At least that was my argument. Clive gave up his token protest rather easily. He was sweet on me and knew I wanted to drive again. The conversation this time, though, was less about making plans for the future and more about dealing with the present. Discussions of weddings and rings had been replaced by all things Leticia.

"When I swam into the cave, her scent was too strong not to have just been there. I knew she wasn't in the water, so I examined the back of the cave and found a narrow cut in the wall. I tried to follow and got stuck."

I grabbed his forearm. "I was hanging on a cliff while you were stuck in rock?"

"In my defense, she's a petite woman. Anyway, I eventually made it through."

"Wait. You were stuck and instead of pulling out, you pushed forward?" I was pretty sure I was hyperventilating as I took a curve in the road at too high a speed. Forcing myself to both calm and slow down, I said, "We're getting married. You need to start asking yourself, ‘Would Sam be okay with this?' And the answer is hell no, she would not!"

He patted my knee and I punched him in the thigh. "I'm perfectly fine. Anyway, the passage led to a far smaller cave. I followed her out into the water, but I'd been stuck in the passage for too long. I lost her."

"Do either of us have a phone that wasn't just destroyed in the water?"

He pulled his from between the seats. "I took it out of my pocket before we went to explore underwater caves. I'd assumed you'd done the same."

"Well, aren't you so smart?" It was a brand-new phone. Damn. I was trying to stay on Norma's good side. "Can you dial Hollis for me?" Even with the top down, we'd be able to hear each other on speakerphone.

"What?" I flinched at his angry growl, remembering too late that the rest of the world slept at night.

"It's Sam Quinn. I don't know if you remem—"

"Yeah, I know who you are and why you're on that bloodsucker's phone." The disgust was palpable. He'd been growly but kind when we'd met a few months ago. Of course, that was before anything had happened between Clive and me.

Clive rubbed my thigh in comfort.

"Right. I'm calling to ask if you're missing any wolves." I'd heard a name in all the snarling chaos in his head. I was pretty sure it was his name, but it could have been someone he was thinking of.

"Why?"

Is it okay to tell him about Leticia?

As she's targeted one of his, I think we have to.

"There's a vampire who's causing horrible problems—"

"They're bloodsuckers. Evil comes with the territory."

"Listen, asshole, I'm reaching out to give you information. How about you stop bashing my betrothed." When I saw the corner of Clive's mouth kick up, the nerves in my stomach settled.

"Betrothed?" I felt his growl through the phone. "Just tell me what you need to tell me so I can go back to sleep."

"A vampire named Leticia, petite and blonde, took a wolf and kept him captive in a cave in Bodega B—"

"What!" I heard crashing in the background. "What the fuck are you talking about? Who does she have? And where?"

"Just let me tell it, okay? We came to Bodega Bay because we had reason to think she might be hiding up here."

"What reason?" he spat out.

"Stop interrupting, and none of your business. If you're going to be an asshole about vampires, I don't need to pass on any vamp secrets." Or my secrets. "We came up and started searching. We received information that she was hiding in a cave."

"A cave? What the fuck cave?"

"You're really not good at shutting up. A little north of town, there's an outcropping of rock maybe a hundred feet?" I turned to Clive and he nodded. "A hundred feet from the edge of the cliff. On the far side of the rock, there's a cave that's underwater except at low tide."

"I know where you mean."

"Good. We went to investigate and found a wolf chained in silver." I heard a hiss through the phone. "He was covered in bite marks, unable to heal because of the silver."

"Fucking bitch!"

"That's not even the worst of it. She was trying to turn him into a vampire, feeding him just enough to keep him mindlessly in pain."

I almost swerved off the road at the sound of his anguished howl. Distant howls answered his. "Who does she have?" His voice was unrecognizable. He was probably very close to shifting.

"Had. Clive chased her off. I stayed with—I think his name was Rob. She'd turned him into a mindless, undead killing machine with the strength of a wolf. I took his head so she couldn't bring him back."

A mournful howl wailed through the phone and then it went dead.

"I may have just added a pack of wolves hell bent on taking me out, but I had to tell him."

"He needed to know. If his misplaced anger is directed at you, we'll deal with it."

Nodding, I released the breath I'd been holding. He was right. We'd deal with it. That quiet evening of ring shopping and movie watching seemed farther away than ever.