A Trail of Echoes (A Shade of Vampire #18)(27)

“What is happening?” she gasped.

I just grabbed her and pulled her toward the ladder. Climbing up, I opened the hatch and raised my head slowly.

A shower of bullets fired at me the second my head came into view. I ducked just in time to avoid being hit by one square in the jaw. It’s too late. If we were to step out now, we’d be blown to bits within seconds.

I looked down at River. “Hunters. Change of plan,” I breathed through gritted teeth, closing the hatch again and pulling her back down the ladder.

As I moved back toward the control room, the sound of the window smashing filled my ears. I didn’t need to step inside to realize what must’ve just happened. The submarine that had been closing in from the front had caught up. As the scent of human blood grew stronger, and footsteps rang out near the nose of the submarine, I gripped River’s hand and dragged her toward the furthest room away from them. A small bedroom cabin. Locking the door behind me, I looked down at her.

“We’re trapped,” she whispered.

A beeping had started from the other side of the submarine, and now there were footsteps in the control room. A door swung open.

I focused on River, taking in her face, her eyes, her lips. Bending down, I gripped the sides of her head and kissed her. Hard. She responded, even as her hands trembled as they touched my hair.

“Get underneath the bed,” I breathed, as our lips parted.

She lowered to the floor and slid beneath the bed. She was still holding onto my hand, trying to drag me down with her.

“Ben.” She looked at me pleadingly.

I shook my head, and detached myself from her.

“They’re going to kill you the moment they see you,” she whispered.

Maybe. But I was going to try to take a few of them out before they shut me down. I wanted to make this as difficult for them as possible.

I just looked down at her calmly, taking in her beautiful face for what I was sure would be the last time, and then turned to face the door. The beeping grew closer and closer, as did the footsteps, along the corridor toward us. A few moments later, someone gripped our door handle. It rattled as they began shaking it.

I leapt up to the ceiling, stretching myself out against the walls like a spider, so I would have an advantage over them when they first came in, and a greater chance of taking a few out before they got to me.

I waited with bated breath as what sounded like several men began to kick the door. Then metal clicked. And a gunshot rang out. A bullet shot right through the door and shattered the mirror at the opposite end of the room. Then came another gunshot, and another, until a circle of holes had been created around the handle. Now all they had to do was kick the door open. Bracing myself in the next few seconds that River and I would have in this cabin alone, I prepared to pounce.

But the door did not budge.

River looked bewildered as she looked from me to the door from the spot she was hiding in beneath the bed.

No hunters stepped through it. Not even after two minutes of waiting.

Is this some kind of a trap?

What in the world are they waiting for?

Even though I had no idea whether it was safe, I slid back down the walls and cautiously peered through one of the holes in the door.

I could hardly believe my eyes.

Strewn about the floor were the still bodies of half a dozen hunters. Each lay in the same position—on their backs, their eyes blank and wide open, gazing up at the ceiling. And their mouths… blood was trickling from them and pooling beneath their heads.

As I pushed the door open, River slid out from beneath the bed and stood next to me.

“What happened?”

“I have no clue,” I replied.

“They’re dead,” she said.

I approached the nearest man to me and felt his pulse, even as his blood called to me.

“Yes. Dead.”

I moved along the submarine, checking in other cabins for hunters. Then I climbed up the ladder and poked my head through the hatch. The submarines that had been chasing us had come to a standstill, and as my eyes fell to the water surrounding us, I spotted more bodies floating in the water.

I didn’t think that it was possible for me to feel more bewildered, but as I ducked back down into the submarine and entered the control room with River, it was to see that the window was no longer smashed. It was completely repaired, as if it had never been broken to begin with.

Chapter 17: Ben

I drained and stored the blood of the dead hunters lying in the corridor, then threw the corpses into the sea. I had been worried about what I was going to do for human blood for the rest of the journey. I didn’t need to think about that problem again for a while now.

River and I were still lost for words as we took a seat back in the control room and I started up the submarine again. I stared through the perfectly smooth glass.

I had no idea what had just happened, but when River’s and my tattoos started prickling as we dipped beneath the surface of the waves and continued our journey underwater, I couldn’t help but link the incident to the last bizarre experience we’d had—blood raining from the sky.

River drew the same conclusion.

“Something is following us,” she said, brushing her fingers gingerly over her tattoo.

But what? Neither of us knew how to even begin to speculate. It was all so bizarre. If it were really Jeramiah’s witches following us, why would they even bother? If they wanted us to return to The Oasis, they could magic us there by force. Why follow us around and play these mind games with us?