Chapter Sixteen Nina #3
And then hands were at my shoulders, around my waist. Men lifting me off my feet as I fought to free myself, wrenching my body in every direction.
“PATRICK!” I shouted over and over.
Another sound was growing. Beyond the shrieks and the ring of shots fired, above the wet thwack of Patrick’s fists and John’s grunts, a roar emerged.
The canal was groaning, rising impossibly high onto the docks, harrying feet, then ankles. Passengers tumbled backward and fled. The dock, thick with spores of rot, turned slick, and the men who tried to carry me away slipped and fell.
All breath was pushed from my lungs, but I had the wherewithal to scramble through the rising water, to flee.
“NINA!” came a shout.
Waiting in the canal was a narrow boat arriving around the bend, the water churning beneath it. The moored boats had crashed into the pylons, capsized onto the dock, or else were paddling away as quickly as the driver could muster.
Standing at the wheel of this newest boat was Theo.
“RUN!” he shouted again, eyes wild, hands outstretched, the water rising by his will.
He pushed funnels of it at officers who rushed toward me, pushing them back, but there were too many, and a larger wave would endanger the many innocents still slipping and wading on the dock, trying to escape, some laden with children.
And here again was John, his arm reaching toward me, Patrick close behind him, both of them bloody.
I reached toward John’s hand as though it were a life raft, and as it lifted me from the wash I felt relief, even as that rough hand slid around my throat. Even as it spun me so that my back crushed to his front, and the cool metal of the blade pressed under my jaw.
Fear delayed, then stampeded in.
John held me with a viselike grip. “Stay calm,” he murmured into my ear. Then he lifted his chin. “GET BACK!” he bellowed out to the dock, and the policemen froze, dripping wet, confused.
“That’s it. Back away now, boys! Or we’ll have the earth Charmer’s throat all over the docks.” There was a sharp jostle. Patrick’s voice saying, “No! Not her.” Then John’s, growling in return. “Just get in the fuckin’ boat. Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t move!” one of the policemen shouted, eyes bulging. “Lower your weapons!”
Slowly, through knee-high water and under the straining eyes of a bevy, John shuffled me backward. The blade never left my throat.
I tried to find purchase on his forearm, but it was as immovable as stone. And I was as afraid of him as I was of the Belavere uniforms.
“Nice and easy,” John said. “They won’t shoot, hen. Don’t you worry.”
The water receded back into the canals, taking a few officers with it as they lost their footing.
And I heard the boat behind me jostle against the dock.
Soon I was lifted over the side, and then the dock slipped away, eyes following us uselessly, Theo cursing, John shielded by my own body, and Patrick somewhere on the deck, a stream of hisses emitting from him.
The narrow boat moved faster as Theo pushed the current, and soon we turned a corner out of sight. We were barricaded by high brick walls on either side.
Only then did the blade leave my throat.
I took my first full breath in hours, days perhaps. My knees buckled, and I gripped the boat’s side, heaving.
Heavy feet stomped across the deck in my direction, and I threw my arm over my face. But when I opened my eyes, it was only Patrick.
Patrick taking his father by the collar of his coat and dragging him back. Patrick throwing his fist with full force into his father’s nose.
“Fuck!” John shouted, clutching his face with both hands and toppling. The boat tipped. John shook his head and groaned. “God almighty. Right jab’s improved, eh?”
Patrick’s chest heaved with such ferocity I thought he might attack again. Instead, he scrubbed his own face, pointed a calloused finger in John’s, and said, “Touch her again, and I’ll forgo myself a father.”
John raised his hands, abandoning the flow of blood from his nose. “Lord. Easy, son. I weren’t gonna hurt her, and you know it.”
Patrick advanced again, only this time, he did not box him, he simply leaned to push his face as close to his father’s as he could come.
“Not another hand on her,” he said clearly, deep enough that it reverberated in my own chest. He thrust a finger at me and turned to address Theo and his father both.
“Not a single fuckin’ hand on her, or I’ll cut it off. ”
He breathed like a steam engine, and he crouched there on the deck, a hand dragging over his face, every muscle in his body rolling beneath the surface.
I silently begged him to look at me. To say something.
But he only growled a curse, stood, and retreated down into the cabin of the boat.
The door slammed against its frame.
“Lord,” John said once more, only this time with a sort of foreboding. His eyes moved from the door to me, as though I held a grenade or a loaded revolver. He sighed. “Tore his heart out, I take it?”
My throat closed over.
He grunted in understanding. “The pretty ones always do.”