Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

at Lucia with pleading eyes.
    I can’t believe I’m doing this
. “Charlie was patching a hole when we came in. Looked pretty bad.”
    Izabel quickly added, “
Capitão
, your head’s bleeding again. I’ll put you back in bed, then go help Charlie. We’ll get the
Contessa
under way in no time.”
    Lucia waited for Travis to bark that no one could improve anything. Instead, he gazed down at Izabel and muttered, “What would I do without you two?”
    Izabel, in turn, looked crestfallen. And now Luciaunderstood why.
Okay, perhaps they do have a decent-sized barrier between them.
    Just then, Schecter came running into the cabin. One of the lenses in his glasses was cracked, and his cowlick had finally deflated. “Uh, there’s a beam wedged against the engine room hatch.”
    “So?” Travis snapped, looking like he wanted to murder the professor.
    “So… I think Rossiter’s in there.”
    At once, the captain and Izabel charged out. When MacRieve cracked open an eye and muttered to Lucia, “Go. Like that mortal,” she ran after them, hurrying to the engine room.
    She found the captain straining to move the beam, his head bandage already saturated with red. Schecter was worthless. Izabel was gone, no doubt “looking” for Charlie.
    “Here, let me help!” Lucia said. Acting as if she struggled, she wrenched the beam away, then dashed forward to open the hatch. When steaming fumes gusted out from within, she coughed, waving her hand in front of her face.
    Once the miasma cleared, she saw Rossiter on his hands and knees clawing his way up the steps. He was shirtless, covered in grease and sweat, and up to his waist in water. He also looked drunk from fumes, his eyes bloodshot.
    As Lucia rushed down to help him up, she spied a line of oil residue high on the wall from where the water had risen. “The water got that high?” If so, then the ship had been sinking.
    Rossiter rasped, “I was singularly motivated… to keep the pumps running.”
    She couldn’t imagine how terrifying that would have been for him—a mortal trapped with little light, the water rising, knowing he was about to drown.
    Travis said, “If not for you, we’d have gone down.” Over his shoulder, he added, “All because of the giant fucking
caimans
!”
    Everyone on board hated Schecter, but Rossiter had the most reason to. Aside from his harrowing night, the doctor’s mission was now finished—with no hope for finding his orchid. Schecter might just have killed him.
    Once they got Rossiter back on the deck, his wild-eyed gaze landed on Schecter. With a maddened bellow, the doctor attacked.

FORTY-SIX

    “I haven’t seen a punch like that in ages,” Lucia said as she entered the wheelhouse. Chizabel was piloting the boat into a dramatic orange sunset.
    The already cracked windshield had been no match for caiman attacks, and now as the wind streamed in, her long black hair flowed behind her. Izabel was so feminine; you’d never know she was half-man.
    “And then when Doc Rossiter kept beating Schecter?” Izabel said. “I never knew the expression
beating the piss out of someone
was literal.”
    “I meant to step in and break it up sooner. Really I did,” Lucia said. “So where’s Travis?”
    “Capitão
’s sleeping in his cabin. Rossiter shot him up with some morphine.”
    The doctor had wanted to examine MacRieve as well, but Lucia had insisted his wounds were superficial, assuring Rossiter,
You’ll see him up and running in no time.
    “Is MacRieve still alive?”
    “He’s resting, too.” The Scot had been passed out again but was regenerating nicely. “Prognosis is good.”
    Izabel raised her brows at that. All the humans had thought he was surely at death’s door.
    Lucia guessed she and Izabel would dance around the subject of her being part man a little longer. So she stared at the sun over the water. As distraught as she’d been just this morning, Lucia was now filled with hope.
    In her possession was a dieumort, which moved her one step closer to freeing herself from Cruach. And one step closer to a future with MacRieve, the Lykae who’d somehow gone from enemy to lover to love of her life.
    But she wasn’t prepared for MacRieve just yet. Earlier, on the ride back to the
Contessa
, Lucia had feared he would ask her to marry him. Though it wasn’t necessarily the Lykae way, he’d told her she’d be his wife one day. And if he’d proposed, what could she have said?
Rain check? Let me get back to you