A Trail of Echoes (A Shade of Vampire #18)(28)

A slapping noise came from the back of the submarine.

I groaned internally.

“We still have those merpeople back there,” I muttered.

“What are we going to do with them?” River asked anxiously.

“Let’s go and take a look at them.”

Once we had gotten well away from the area where the hunters had been, I put the vessel back on autopilot and the two of us headed to the back of the submarine.

I opened the door of the cabin where we’d left the mermaid and merman. They were curled up together in a corner in the same fetal position.

I walked over to the male and nudged his slimy shoulder. He didn’t even look up at me, though he was clearly still alive.

“We can’t risk throwing them back in the water again. For some weird reason, they’ve decided they want to be inside our submarine. If we let them go, they might try to break through the glass again.”

“Then what?” River said, frowning. “We just keep them locked in here?”

“Yes. For now,” I muttered, leading her back out of the room and closing the door. “It’s their own stupid fault they climbed in here. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them.”

They seemed docile, and they might even die on their own anyway. Those slimy creatures were really the last thing on my mind right now.

We spent some more time in the control cabin while I plotted our course for the rest of the journey, and then we headed to one of the cabins—whose door was broken thanks to the hunters—and sat down on the bed. She leaned back against a pillow, pulling a blanket up around her, while I leaned against the wall.

“Mermaids,” she muttered, still looking traumatized. “I feel like I’m ruined.”

I shot her a glance. “Ruined?”

“I wanted to be Ariel when I grew up… now that movie will never be the same again.”

I smirked. “You still watch that cartoon?”

She poked me in the shoulder. “Don’t judge.”

She heaved a sigh and we fell into silence. She moved closer to me on the bed. I slid my arms around her as she nestled against my chest.

When she spoke again, it was in a deeper voice. “I honestly thought that we were going to die in this room.”

I kissed the top of her head. “So did I.”

Chapter 18: Rose

After Caleb agreed to turn me, I promised not to speak of the subject again for the rest of our trip. And I kept my promise.

Our honeymoon turned out to be everything I could have imagined it to be. Having so much uninterrupted time with Caleb was bliss. Just the two of us, adrift in the middle of the ocean. We ended up spending longer at sea than we’d planned before reaching the first island, just because we were so wrapped up in each other’s company.

When we finally began stopping at islands, I realized that Caleb hadn’t been joking when he’d said that he would take me to remote parts. We hardly spotted a single human. By day, we stayed on the boat, and at night, we roamed the islands. I had also brought a number of small instruments with us from my father’s music room. We bathed in hot springs, went on long walks and explored the gorgeous landscapes. Often I would spark up a bonfire and we would sit around it, playing and making up our own melodies. Our nights often ended up with making love on the beach before returning to the boat before the sun rose. Even though Caleb tired me out and we were out all night, I found that I just couldn’t sleep much. I just wanted to be with him. And of course, he barely slept anyway.

Once we hit New Zealand, things got more upbeat. Despite agreeing to stay away from humans, we did spend many nights in clubs on the beach, and during the day continued sailing around different parts of the magnificent country.

I took a charmed phone with us, and remembered to call my mother once a week as I had promised to assure her that we were still fine. But time flew by, and before I knew it, we’d been gone several weeks.

Since we had finished touring all the places that Caleb had planned out, he suggested that we start making our way back. We stocked up on food supplies for me with the money we had brought with us, and there was still plenty of blood in the boat’s storage room.

And then we took off into open ocean, making our way back toward The Shade.

We traveled slowly. We wanted to make the most of our time away, but I suspected that Caleb was also going slower because he was beginning to feel more and more nervous about the end of the journey, when he’d promised to turn me.

We spent a few more days on the ocean, enjoying the last of our long honeymoon. But finally, we began to near home.

It was close to midnight one night when Caleb felt that we had neared close enough to The Shade. He moored the boat and then looked at me. I couldn’t miss the worry in his eyes as I stood with him in the control room.

Taking my hand, he led me out onto the deck. He looked toward the distance, scanning the shoreline. I couldn’t see so far into the darkness.

“Do you think those hunter ships are still surrounding The Shade?” I asked.

“We’re not close enough to them now to see. But if I had to take a guess, I would say that they are still there.”

Gathering me closer to him, he leaned down and closed his mouth around mine, caressing my lips slowly and tenderly. He kissed me as though I was the most precious thing in the world.