As I worked, I heard more scratching from the underside of the hull. Come nightfall, I’d have to fight him. I rechecked for my weapons. All were gone. Even the Benelli. I remembered carrying it at some point. If the suckhead under the boat had tossed my gun, I’d rip off his head with my bare hands. Then I wondered if he had my guns and blades with him. If he was smart, he would have taken everything I had overboard with him and come up shooting. He didn’t need air, but by dusk, he’d be hungry, boiled, burned, and as salt damaged as my leathers.

I went through my pockets, finding a few trinkets: the Glob, of no use whatsoever since I had no idea how it worked or how to activate it, and a stone. It looked like black glass with bits of white in it. I didn’t know what it was. And then I started laughing.

He had held out a closed fist. Dropped a small black stone, one with white inclusions in it, in my big-knuckled paw. “It’s called an Apache tear,” he’d said. “If you need me, you can crush it. I will come.”

I closed my fist around it and I squeezed. Nothing happened. Even in half-form I wasn’t strong enough to crush it. I pulled out the Glob, set the Apache tear on the engine housing, and brought the Glob down on it, shattering the obsidian.

Gee DiMercy to the rescue, I thought. But he didn’t come. And he didn’t come.

The day went on. And on. Cold, with a brilliant sun, and lapping waves. Eventually, the sun began to set, the clouds picking up the red rays and casting the entire skyline in shades of scarlet and crimson and fuchsia. The moon rose. The first star peeked out. The sky began to darken. The vamp beneath began to scrabble on the boat bottom. Hull. Whatever. Vamp nails on wood.

The scratching on the bottom of the boat got stronger. This was not going to end well.

The clouds to the north boiled. Sparkled. Dragons. Les Arcenciels. Five of them, in all colors of the rainbow. Gee DiMercy darted among them, his blue and scarlet plumage catching the pale light. I came to my knees in the bottom of the boat. I was so thirsty that my throat ached. I’d never be able to yell at them, and in the light they wouldn’t see me. But I was wrong. They dove down from the clouds, the dragons diving into the water near my boat, long and lean and glistening, erupting to play, creating huge waves that nearly capsized me. “Hey!” I yelled. “Watch it!” But it came out a scratchy croak and I was ignored.

Gee DiMercy alighted on the small seat of the dinghy. From a pocket he pulled a bottle of water, cold and wet with condensation. “You called, my mistress?”

I took the bottle, opened it and crushed the weak plastic, forcing the water into my mouth in a single long drink. I dropped it in the bottom of the boat. “Another.”

“No. As your IT specialist says it, you will hurl.”

I blinked. Laughed. “Yeah. That sounds like Alex.” Out in the water, dragons played, dipping and splashing and trumpeting like elephants and cheeping like birds. Their scales caught the last rays of the sun and threw back the light. Their frills splashed and wings made waves big as buses. The dinghy rocked violently. Beneath the boat, the vampire had grown silent, unmoving as the dead. “I need a ride home. Can you help with that?”

“Of course, my mistress. Your people will be pleased. They think you are dead.” He handed me a cell phone. “It is a satellite phone. It might save his life if you were to call George Dumas.”

I punched in his number. It rang and rang. He finally answered, the single word raw and ragged. “What.”

“Howdy, Bruiser.”

A silence grew, too long, too vacant, a void, barren of life and hope. “J . . . Jane?” he whispered.

“Yeah. You okay? Leo okay? Did we win?”

“I’m . . . Leo is . . . fine. Jane?” he repeated, his tone still disbelieving.

“I have one last vamp to take care of. Then I’ll be home.”

“Dear God in heaven.” He took a breath so tattered it groaned in pain. “Jane?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. Ish. I’ll be home soon. I gotta take a swim.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “I was afraid . . . Afraid I would never get to say the words. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said. “See you soon.” I ended the call and gave the cell to Gee DiMercy. There was a weird pain and odd warmth in my chest, and I wondered if my heart was gonna explode or something. I blinked into the sunset, seeing a reverse image on the inside of my eyelids. Bruiser loves me. I took a breath. It felt cold and wonderful going down. I felt weightless and buoyed and . . . totally weird. Instead of saying any of the things I was thinking and feeling, I said, “There’s a suckhead under the boat.”

“I am aware. The arcenciels are teasing him much as cats tease mice.”

Ten feet off the sidewall of the boat, the water rose in a liquid bowl and erupted. A dragon made of light had become flesh, pearled and glistening and leaping for the sky, a cerulean creature of myth made real. In her jaws was a vampire. She flew straight up and whipped her tail, flipped her body, and dove for the ocean. Carrying the vampire, she leaped and frolicked before leaping for the sky again, and diving back. Two feet above my fragile boat, she hovered and shook her prey. Guns and blades fell into the boat. My weapons. Callan looked like a rag doll in her dragon hands.

Another arcenciel broached the water and leaned over the side of the boat, her face human and gorgeous, human hands holding her in place. Soul said, “We’ll take him to your house. He may provide some intelligence that we don’t yet have.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

“You will ride me.”

“Say what?”

“My little bird is fierce but too small for your mass. You will ride me, as recognition for saving our sister.” She stretched out in the water, her hands disappearing, wings out, one under the boat, holding it steady. “This is not a boon offered to another since ancient times.”

Gee seemed amused. “Ummm. Okay?” I gathered my gear, shoving the blades and other weapons in place, hearing the small snaps as they settled. I worked my left hand, happy that my fingers again had feeling. It had taken all day to get the sensation back. I accepted a second bottle of water from Gee. Drank it down, wished I had taken the time to pee. And stepped onto the back of a dragon made flesh.

• • •

I spent that night wrapped in Bruiser’s arms. And a blanket. A heating pad at my feet. Riding an arcenciel was freezing business. They fly high, in a nearly airless part of the Earth’s atmosphere. I had nearly suffocated until Soul realized I was having problems staying alive and dove lower. I’d been so cold when she dropped me off on the boulders in my backyard, I could barely move. So exhausted I could hardly speak.

Bruiser had carried me into the shower, cut off my ruined black leathers, and held me there until I started to thaw. It had been nearly impossible to get him to leave me long enough to shift to fully human, and when it took too long, I’d had to resort to bribery to get him to go away—promises of a future date to last an entire day and through the night. On the gulf. On a boat. With umbrella drinks and music.

Shifting had been . . . hard. So hard I didn’t want to think about it just yet. I hadn’t made it directly from half-form into human, and finally resorted to shifting into Beast, and from Puma concolor into my human form. The pain had been incredible. The snake that resides in all things, the twisted strands of my DNA, were tangled and tripled and torn. Finding my form in the mess of genetics had been nearly impossible. I wasn’t sure what it meant. And when the shift was completed, I had been too exhausted to eat. I had never been too exhausted to eat. Not ever.

Now it was night again and hunger rode me, a fierce, desperate need. I sliced into a full slab of very rare beef, a ribeye that had started out postlife as a sixteen pounder, before Eli rubbed it down and threw it on a grill to sear. He had cooked two, thank goodness, so the others had meat to eat. There were potatoes and beer and salad too, but I drank water and ate beef and listened as my partners and my clan filled me in, asking monosyllablic questions to get the info I wanted. The questions did not come out in an order I’d have expected. “Brute?” I asked first.

Eli straddled a chair and cut off a bite of cow. “Brute’s at a local veterinary hospital, being attended to by a vampire and a witch and a vet who’s scared shhh— witless of getting were-taint. She only agreed to help when Dacy Mooney of Asheville agreed to feed her father to help him heal from cancer.”