Chapter 28
Caspian hadn’t been kidding about there being a storm, I realized when we went out on deck.
Not only did it make sense we couldn’t have flown in this weather—even if showing up at a heavily defended location in a plane was a good idea—but I thought maybe he’d been right that they wouldn’t notice us approaching in the boat.
Everything was gray, and it was hard to tell the shades apart enough to differentiate ocean from stone shoreline from castle from sky. It was just a smear of different grays that all ran together. Part of me wanted to shift, in hopes it would be easy to tell things apa—
My vision sharpened then, and for just a second, I panicked, afraid I had shifted and was going to capsize the boat with everyone on it. But the deck hadn’t budged beneath me, and when I looked down at my feet, they were just . . . well, my feet.
Feet that I could see much more clearly. I wasn’t sure that was actually better, though. The island itself was forbidding, with not a speck of life apparent. Not even kelp on the rocks, unless kelp in the North Sea was way different from any kelp I’d ever seen before.
I wondered what it said about Davin and Caspian, that they were just walking right into this disaster, eyes open, when they didn’t have to at all.
I didn’t have a choice, but they did. Twist was always in for a good fight, but Davin preferred a quiet life, and while I wasn’t as certain of Caspian, he’d never professed any bloodlust in my experience.
Even if he had apparently had his own custom swords made.
Was that weird?
I mean, obviously it was, but if you grew up learning how to fight with a sword and then had the money to commission your own, it made sense to do that, right? Maybe.
He hadn’t seemed especially concerned about being shot, and that kind of made sense. Vampires could heal bullet wounds easily, and they didn’t have nearly as many vulnerable spots as humans. Being shot in the lungs didn’t mean much when you didn’t need to breathe.
Davin, though . . .
Nope. I couldn’t focus on that. I would panic, and that wouldn’t help anyone, including Davin.
Getting ashore was the first hurdle, and involved a whole lot more freezing water than I had ever wanted to experience in my life.
This, then, was why people said the ocean was terrible, when I had only previously experienced the Pacific at its softest right outside my shop.
Sure, the waves were high enough to surf, but they were also not nearly this cold.
And I didn’t even like surfing, much to Grady’s eternal disappointment.
I lay on the rocks at the base of the castle, on the edge of the little inflatable boat we’d used to get ashore, breathing hard and staring at the sky, which was when I realized we weren’t done getting wet.
Nope. There was about twenty feet of rocks between us and the level of the castle, which we had to . . . climb?
Fuck me, this was why I didn’t jog. Or surf. Or . . . do anything more strenuous than hunt through my closet for the right shirt. Or laundry.
And speaking as someone who could win a “world’s worst” award at laundry, I really wished I were doing that instead.
“Can’t I just change into a dragon, fly up there, and menace them?”
Caspian looked more amused than annoyed by my whining, but he shook his head. “What would stop him from dropping your cousin off the top of the castle if you did that?”
Fuck.
He wasn’t wrong.
And even if I might be able to catch him, risking Sexton’s life on my mediocre dexterity was a gamble I wasn’t willing to take.
So climbing the slick gray-black rocks it was.
Davin and Caspian were both apparently champion rock-climbers, so by the time I reached the top, panting and sputtering and with cuts all over my fingers from the too-sharp rocks, they were already up there waiting on me.
Damned vampires.
Davin reached down and hoisted me up the last of the way, and then kissed me on the cheek with a smile.
“Kitten all right?” Caspian asked, and I cringed.
Fuck, I hadn’t even checked in with Twist while banging my way up the rocks, falling against the damn things repeatedly.
She clearly heard Caspian asking after her, though, and was uninjured enough to poke her head out of her pocket. “I am well, Great-Grandfather.” Once more, I had to stifle my laughter. Except . . . no, Caspian was not the guy who’d be bothered by that.
“She says she’s fine, Great-Grandfather.”
As expected, he let out an instant laugh, and had to cover his mouth to hold in any more, lest he give away our position to possible guards.
He doubled over, though, his shoulders shaking, and when he finally righted and composed himself, there were tears in his eyes.
“She calls Fiona Grandmother, doesn’t she? ”
“Sure does,” I agreed. “I have not passed that on to Mother yet. I think at least . . . . Dad . . . Would be amused. If it extends to him.”
Dad. I’d never really thought about calling him that before. He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d have to be “Father,” like Mother was . . . well, that. It was a strange paradigm change, and it warmed my freezing bones.
I only wished the warmth was more real.
Caspian peeled off the coat he’d been wearing, which seemed nuts to me, but again, vampire. He probably didn’t really do cold, and had worn the jacket for show.
Glancing back out at the water, I wondered if the men on the boat could . . . except there was no boat. It was gone. Fuck, had it sunk? Were they—
“Nina is coming to pick us up,” Caspian explained. “We’re going to handle this, then Nina will land on the airstrip on the other side of the island.”
Davin was frowning at him. “Is there a reason we didn’t come up that side, instead of climbing slippery wet rocks?”
That was a good fucking question, but of course, Caspian had an answer for it.
“Because no one saw us here.” He motioned around us, where there was .
. . well, nothing. It was an area where, on any other castle, there might have been a garden or .
. . something? But it was just bare dirt.
I didn’t know if it was because nothing could grow on such a godforsaken rock, or because my grandfather didn’t really care, but either way, it was an excellent point.
No reason to keep a guard watching this barren field of nothing, and no one in their right minds would have come up this way.
Which was what we had done.
Davin cocked his head, but not at Caspian or the conversation.
At the side of the building. He went over to a wall and knelt down next to it, and it only took me a second to realize why.
Three of the huge stones there had fresh .
. . mortar? Was that the word? Whatever the stuff was that they glued rocks together with to make castles.
It was almost white, contrasting with the rest, which was as faded and gray as the stones themselves.
He looked up at me and tapped one of the fixed rocks. “Bet this is where your da escaped.”
It . . . well. That was a hell of a thought. I tried to imagine rolling out of my prison to find myself on a dirty ledge over a twenty-foot drop onto sharp slimy rocks, and . . . I was gonna have to buy Dad chocolates or something when we got home. Maybe I’d ask Arthur for a special batch for him.
He’d survived this to save me.
Suddenly I was the one with tears in my eyes, but for an entirely different reason than laughter.
“That’s good,” Caspian interrupted my mental vacation without noting it aloud. “It means we know where the prison is. Here, on the lowest level. We have to go up to get to an entrance, so we’ll be looking for stairs back down to find where your cousin is.”
“It also means it’ll be a little hard to toss Sexton off the parapets like a damsel in distress, unless the old bastard has the constitution for lugging around a good twelve stone,” Davin added.
Which was a fair point. Sexton wasn’t going to go along willingly to be tossed off the roof. But I figured that was what henchmen were for, and we didn’t know exactly how many of those Tadhg had. I wasn’t going to start counting any chickens just yet.
“Come on, then,” Caspian said, turning toward the path upward and motioning for us to follow him. “No reason to wait around here hoping not to be discovered before we decide on a plan of attack.”
It seemed a little counterintuitive to me, avoiding discovery by rushing headlong into danger, but also . . . well, what did I know? I’ve never laid siege to a castle before, and I was willing to bet Caspian had.
We came around the side of the building, finding no people, or even any windows, on either of the first two levels, which made things easier.
It was starting to feel like the place was abandoned, and this whole thing was a wild goose chase, when Caspian stopped dead at the next corner and held up his hand behind him to tell us to stop as well.
Instead of moving forward, he pulled out his knives. Swords? I supposed I should have asked him what they were called. He reached up and banged the hilt end of one against a stone, making a terrible noise, and then stepped back a pace from the edge of the wall.
A moment later a man came around the corner, and before I could process the interaction, Caspian grabbed the guy by the front of his annoying camouflage outfit, pulled him in, and then shoved him against the wall with a blade against his neck. “Very quietly,” he said. “How many guards in the keep?”
The guy sneered at him. “Thousands. If you think you’re going to steal the great dragon’s—”
Caspian rolled his eyes, then whacked the guy on the head with the hilt of his right-hand blade.
Then he turned to us. “What I expected from a dragon’s man.
Entirely loyal, and therefore not inclined to be of much help to us.
” He glared hard at first Davin, then me.
“I need you both to follow my and Plot Twist’s lead in this.
These people will show you no mercy. If you hesitate to kill them, they will kill you. ”
“You didn’t kill him,” Davin pointed out.
Caspian rolled his eyes. “What, and make an unnecessary mess of myself before the fight even starts? In thirty seconds, he’s going to be locked out of the castle, and no longer relevant.
It’s not mercy.” Oddly enough, he focused in on me instead of Davin.
“How do you think any of them are going to survive out here after Tadhg is dead? I doubt they can call in help when food stores run low, or that there’s a regular plane out this way.
Even if they escape, they likely have nothing outside absolute service to the dragon.
No lives, no money, no family, no fucking social skills.
These are dead men, Flynn. You can’t save them. Killing them is a mercy.”
“You’ve fought a dragon before,” I realized aloud. “You’ve seen this.”
He took a deep breath, then let it out slow and nodded. “Your people inspire incredible loyalty, Flynn. It’s just that you and your father are the first ones I’ve met who were worth that loyalty.”
With that, he turned and marched around the corner. Davin and I rushed to keep up, stepping over the unconscious man. I paused, wondering if . . . but no. Caspian was right about at least one thing. I didn’t have time to worry about anything but saving Sexton, not yet.
Maybe later.
Around the corner was a set of double doors that Caspian threw open without an ounce of hesitation.
Inside, the first thing visible was a giant foyer area with two staircases that went up, and a set of open doors beneath them, beyond which was a huge room where there were .
. . fuck me, there were dozens of guys in the silly camo clothes, carrying weapons.
Caspian, meanwhile, stepped past the threshold like he owned the place, a blade in each hand.
He looked like a fucking action movie hero, but I was terrified for him in a way you never had to be for those guys.
They were always going to win, right? But Caspian wasn’t the star of a movie. He didn’t get that certainty.
He turned, doing a scan of the area, then motioned back to us. “Stairs down, three o’clock. I’ll handle this. You all go. Now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, because dozens of fucking armed guys versus one guy with some swords was . . . but then the banisters of the two staircases both caught fire at the same time and I remembered this wasn’t just one random guy.
It was fucking Caspian.
As we passed him, the smile on his face was eerie in the reflected glow of firelight. “You dragon worshippers always like playing with fire, don’t you? So let’s play.”
“Come on,” Davin muttered, grabbing my jacket and pulling me toward the stairs Caspian had pointed out. I followed, even as I continued to worry, just a little, about him. Yeah, he was a badass vampire fire mage. But how much could he handle?
I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him.
The sound of something going up in flames, then yelling and crashing, followed us down the stairs, and my mind settled just a bit. Maybe he really could handle dozens of guys.
Crazy.
My kind-of grandfather, the action hero.