A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21)(29)

Jamil looked down at me thoughtfully, wiping away my tears with his thumbs. He kissed my forehead. “You really like that boy, don’t you?”

I gave him a pained smile. “Yeah,” I croaked.

Although I shed silent tears in bed each night, I’d been trying so hard not to break down in front of my family. But with my newfound brother looking down at me, his eyes so similar to my father’s, it exacerbated my emotions—the grief I felt over losing Ben—and I couldn’t stop myself. I buried my head against my older brother’s chest and sobbed.

“Hey,” he soothed me, rubbing my back. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’ll see him again. He’s a vampire, right? They’re supposed to be immortal?”

I couldn’t bring myself to answer, but I appreciated his comforting all the same, no matter how baseless it was.

Screams pierced the air. Jamil and I whirled around to catch sight of our mother and sisters moving frantically toward the shore. Women tended to overreact to creepy-crawlies and slimy things in general, me being guilty of it myself, but from the urgency of their movements, I quickly realized that they had seen something much worse than a hermit crab.

“Mom?” I yelled. “What’s wrong?”

I sped up, knowing that I would reach them with my speed before they exited the ocean. Quickly outpacing Jamil even with his long legs, I hurtled toward the waves. Jamil and I had wandered some way up the shore, but it didn’t take long for me to come within ten feet of them. I would reach them before they reached dry sand—

My mother took a tumble, and she fell beneath the surface, while my sisters hurried ahead.

“Mom!” I yelled again.

I hurried into the waves and had just about reached her when, in a blur of red and teal blue, something slimy and heavy shot out from the waves and slapped hard against my face. I lost my footing, staggered back and fell. I shot back up to my feet. My head felt dizzy from the assault. To my horror, I found myself staring down at a blue-tailed mermaid with flaming red hair. Her arms were locked around my mother’s neck, causing my mother to struggle and choke for breath as the waves rolled over her. The mermaid tugged on her and began retreating deeper into the ocean.

“No!” I screamed.

I launched myself into the waves and managed to grab hold of my mother’s leg before the creature swam out of reach.

“Let go of her!” I hissed at the mermaid. I wasn’t sure whether she could even understand me.

It only seemed to anger the creature. She bared a set of razor-sharp black teeth. Teeth that made my skin crawl. One jab of those into my mother’s throat could easily end her life.

I had no weapons on me, and, being a half-vampire, no claws or natural defenses with which to defend myself. All I had was my speed. Moving forward as fast as I could, I balled my right hand into a fist and threw a punch square into the mermaid’s face.

Part of me expected to miss, but I hit my mark. She loosened her grip on my mother. My mother struggled to keep herself above water as she clutched her throat. She choked on a mouthful of seawater as a wave rolled over her head. I grabbed her by the midriff and began pulling her toward the beach with all the speed I could muster.

Then came a shriek from behind us. The mermaid’s shock had subsided and she was gaining speed on us.

I looked desperately toward the shore, where Jamil was moving toward the Port with my sisters, all three of them shouting for help.

We weren’t going to reach land in time. The mermaid was simply too fast. Who is this mermaid? She didn’t look like the one Ben and I had brought in on the submarine—and besides, that one had been badly injured by Shadow. I would have been surprised if she’d even survived a day after the dog’s attack. Who, then, was she? As far as I was aware, the two merfolk Ben and I had carried through the boundary were the only ones who’d visited these waters. And wasn’t Ibrahim supposed to have gotten rid of the two of them ages ago?

The mermaid caught up with us and once again grabbed hold of my mother. The creature tugged so hard at my mother’s ankle, I feared that trying to hold on might dislocate one of her limbs, and to make matters worse, my mother had a weakness in her lower spine. I could see from her eyes how much pain she was in.

The mermaid sensed my hesitation, and with a huge tug, she managed to pull my mother right out of my grasp. The mermaid’s fierce tail writhed as she jolted away. If I hadn’t leaped forward and grabbed hold of the tip of it, she would have dragged my mother into deep waters without me.

Although I had no claws, I dug my fingers into her scales as hard as I could, even as the mermaid writhed violently and tried to shake me off. It was like wrestling with a slippery anaconda. I knew I didn’t stand a chance for long. My mother’s head had been pushed underwater again, if I didn’t manage to get to her in time—

Splashes thundered behind me. I cast my eyes over my shoulder just in time to see a giant dog bounding toward us in the waves. I thought for a moment that Shadow had come to the rescue, until I realized that this creature was the wrong color. It wasn’t a dog. It was an enormous, shaggy brown wolf.

As my hands slipped from the mermaid’s tail, the wolf reached the creature and, opening its heavy jaws, clamped them around the mermaid’s midriff. She let out a shriek as blood spilled from her insides and stained the water surrounding us. While the werewolf chomped on the mermaid, I leapt toward my mother. I caught her arm and held her tight, hauling her to the surface. She choked and spluttered, coughing out seawater and drawing in rasping breaths. I wrapped an arm around her waist and kicked my legs hard, propelling us both toward the shore.