Chapter 10
Water filling her nose jerked Liling awake. The interior of the cockpit had flooded with dark, cold water. She tore off the seat harness and turned to see the dead bodies of the pilot and copilot floating up toward the ceiling of the plane. A glint of golden hair between them made her push off the seat and dive under the water.
Jaus floated beneath the surface, limp and unmoving, bleeding from deep cuts on his face and hands.
A torrent of air bubbles escaped Liling's mouth as she called his name without thinking. She kicked her way up to the dwindling air pocket, gasping as she refilled her lungs, and then dove under a second time. Keeping her gaze averted from his face, she tugged at the tangle of equipment trapping his body.
It took three tries before the pile of debris shifted and she was able to pull him free. She put an arm across his chest and kicked, swimming up to push his face into the air pocket and surfacing beside him.
Jaus was not breathing.
"No." She dragged him by the collar to the cockpit emergency exit. The pressure of the water had knocked out the door, and through it she saw the lake bank some two hundred feet away. She pushed Jaus's body through the open door frame and into the water. From there she swam on her back, using her legs to propel her while towing Jaus in front of her. Oily water swirled as the sinking plane completely submerged.
A few feet from solid ground Liling's heels scraped the silted bottom of the lake, and she stood and dragged Jaus's body the rest of the way out of the water.
"Help, someone, please," she called out. The land around them appeared uninhabited, but the pitch-black conditions made it hard to see exactly where they were.
She wasted no more time shouting but rolled Jaus onto a grassy section of the bank. She had to stop and pant through a stabbing pain twisting in her side, and then she remembered what had happened in the cockpit. She pulled up her soaked T-shirt to check the wound. Where there had been an ugly, ragged-edged bleeding hole in her side there now appeared to be smooth, wet skin.
The gunshot wound had vanished.
Liling looked at Jaus, who had not been so lucky. Dozens of ugly cuts and scrapes covered his face, and when she felt for it she couldn't find a pulse in his throat.
She would worry about the wounds after she got his heart started and his lungs working. Thank God one of the requirements of her job at the Lighthouse had been to take a course and become CPR certified.
"You landed the plane. Valentin," she said to him as she tipped his head back. "We're safe. So you can't give up now."
Liling opened his mouth to check whether his airway was clear, and listened for sounds of breathing. His chest remained still, and she heard nothing. She pinched his nose shut, took a deep breath, and sealed her mouth over his. She blew hard, twice, trying to force her breath, into his body.
She lifted her head. "Breathe for me. Valentin. Please breathe."
She straightened, checked his throat again, and listened. Nothing had changed. She tore open his shirt and found the lower part of his breastbone, crossing her hands against it as she began to push down, performing the cardiac compressions. After fifteen compressions, she still found no heartbeat. She bent to put her mouth over his, and then stopped. At first she didn't believe what she was seeing, but she put her fingers to it. When she fell it happening, she had to believe.
The gashes and cuts on Jaus's face were closing and disappearing, as if they were erasing themselves from his skin.
No human being healed that fast, not even when Liling touched them to take from them. She shook her head, sure she was hallucinating, and pinched his nose before forcing her breath into him twice more. This time when she sat up the lacerations were only a few fading pink lines on his flesh, and his eyes were opening.
"Valentin." She rolled him onto his side as he choked out lake water, supporting him with her hands as he shuddered and cleared his lungs. He didn't gasp or make any breathing sounds, and she was about to flip him over to breathe again for him when he pushed himself up into a sitting position and turned to her.
Wet hair hung around his face, which now didn't have a mark on it.
She felt stupid, as if she had forgotten or missed something important. What she had seen on his face must have been only streaks of blood. The burning in her side flared, making her grimace as she pressed her hand to her ribs.
"Liling." She saw in his eyes the same confusion she felt. "What has happened?"
"I don't know. I must have blacked out." She tried to smile. "What do you remember?"
"Landing the plane." He turned his head and spit out a mouthful of water before finally breathing in. "I did not do It very well. Forgive me."
"For saving my life?" She wanted to laugh and hug him and dance around the meadow. She settled for brushing the wet hair back from his eyes. "You landed the plane, and we survived. You don't have to apologize for that." She dropped her gaze and swallowed against the tightness in her throat. "I thought we were going to die."
"I keep my promises." Valentin caught her hand and brought her palm to his mouth, placing a gentle kiss in the center of it. He closed her fingers over the tingling spot and pulled her suddenly into a tight embrace, holding her as close as he could.
Liling wanted to shriek with happiness. He was using his arm. The taking had worked.
As if he heard her thoughts, he said, "I do not know what you did to me, mein Mädchen." He put her at arm's length to look into her eyes. "But now I can hold you as I have wanted to."
She started to deny it, but his touch burned strangely into her, and she couldn't find the words to lie to him. "Valentin."
He tipped her head back. "It is my turn. I think, to kiss you."
Valentin brought his mouth to hers. The kiss felt weightless, the brush of a tendril of breeze against her lips. He took her deeper, coaxing her lips apart and tracing their edges before pushing into her mouth. The slow glide of his tongue against hers made her sigh with pleasure, the sound catching and humming between their lips.
Her hands crept up his chest and stilled. She couldn't feel his heartbeat, and then she could, a single pulse. An eternity passed before the next thudded against her fingers.
Fearful again, she pulled back. "Something is wrong. Your heart is hardly beating." She touched his neck, searching for the pulse.
"I am not like other men," Valentin took her hand away before he stood and scanned the entire area.
Liling didn't understand. He had virtually no heartbeat, but he moved and talked and breathed as if nothing were happening to him. Adrenaline did odd things to people, she knew, and while he appeared fine now, he might collapse at any moment. Her anxiety doubled as she felt the pain in her side return. How could she find help for him if she couldn't catch her breath?
He crouched down again beside her. "We have to find some shelter. I think I saw a house or a barn over there, by the pine trees. Can you walk?"
"I don't think so." Liling gritted her teeth as the heat blazing across her ribs doubled. "I have a cramp in my side. You had better leave me here for now."
"I am not leaving you anywhere, mein Mädchen." He frowned, catching her shoulder. "Liling?"
She tried to push him away, but the pain flared up into an inferno that she thought would burn away the world, and Valentin with it.
A hammering fist made Jayr, the newly named suzerains of the Realm, lift her mouth from the place she had been kissing on her seneschal's shoulder. She turned her head toward the sound of it outside their bedchamber. "Did you bolt that door?"
"No." Aedan mac Byrne, former suzerain of the Realm, nuzzled her throat. "But I will strangle the first man who walks over the threshold."
"Better you learn how to lock it." She climbed off his lap, pulled on a robe, and went to open the door. "What?"
Rain, a hulking bear of a man with the personality of a mischievous boy and the temperament of a kitten, grinned down at her.
"I did not wish to interrupt while you are training your new man, my lady"—he neatly caught the edge of the door before she could slam it in his face—"but there is a problem that requires your attention."
"Indeed." She gave him a pointed look. "Will someone die or the Realm burn to the ground if I do not attend to it for another hour or two?"
"Three hours." Aedan called out. "If you wish her coherent, make it four."
Rain looked innocently at the ceiling. "It is Locksley, my lady. He says it is an emergency involving Suzerain Jaus."
Robin often made jests, but not about other Kyn. She wished Byrne would let her keep a telephone in their chambers, but he had been adamant about keeping the human technology he hated out of their bedroom. "Have the call forwarded to the office. We will be there in a minute."
Rain nodded and then looked down. "Jayr." His brow furrowed. "When did you grow breasts?"
Jayr closed the door in his face before she walked over to the armoire to retrieve some clothes. Byrne reached it before her and leaned back against it.
His garnet red hair framed a strong face covered with dark blue tattoos and a smug smile. "It is my duty as your seneschal to dress you."
"You can never seem to finish the task." She nudged him aside and reached for a shirt and trousers, pausing and taking one of her new dresses. Tall and lean, Jayr had made the change from human to Kyn in the fourteenth century, before her body had finished making its natural mortal transition from girl to woman. Now, thanks to Alexandra Keller and the treatments she had administered, Jayr had small but mature breasts, curved hips, and a more feminine appearance. "Rob would not call if it were not important."
"Aye, he would." Byrne bent down to press a hard kiss on her mouth. "Rob wanted you and the Realm for himself. He is a poor loser."
"He is our closest Kyn ally," she reminded him, "and your best friend." She pulled the frock over her head, tugged it down, and straightened the skirt. She gave her smiling lover a pointed look. "Do you need my assistance to dress?"
"No, but when we come back," he warned as he grabbed his own garments, "I am barricading that door."
A few minutes later Jayr and a scowling Byrne walked from their chamber in the private wing to the business offices. Knight's Realm, which the humans of central Florida knew as a medieval-themed tourist attraction, was run and inhabited by Darkyn men and women who had actually lived during the Middle Ages.
Jayr was proud of how well the men of her jardin had adjusted to the recent changes in rule. Byrne, who had been suzerain of the Realm since building the Kyn stronghold, had stepped down. Michael Cyprien, the Kyn seigneur, had named Jayr, Byrne's seneschal, to serve as the very first female to rule over a jardin.
Some of the more conservative jardin outside the Realm still didn't approve of the notorious switch, nor of the appointment of a female to such a position of power. That Jayr and Byrne had also become lovers had been viewed as utterly scandalous by the traditionalists among their kind.
But Jayr had proven her honor and her worth at the past winter tournament to the satisfaction of everyone who had attended, and they were loud with their praise of her. As for those who still grumbled, none dared to publicly speak out against the suzeraina, not after what Byrne had done to the men who had tried to kill both him and Jayr during the annual gathering.
Harlech, Jayr's second, was waiting for them outside the business office.
"I regret that we had to disturb you, my lady." Harlech, her most loyal supporter, emphasized her title with a certain amount of relish. "But Lord Locksley was most insistent on speaking with you."
Jayr nodded, then went in and put the call on the telephone speaker. "Good evening, Lord Locksley. How may we be of service?"
"Jayr. Byrne. I apologize for the lateness of my call." Locksley, usually cheerful and charming, sounded grim. "Suzerain Jaus was flying down to visit my jardin tonight when his plane was hijacked by a Brethren operative."
"Have you contacted Chicago, lad?" Byrne asked.
"They informed me after Jaus contacted them by mobile phone," Locksley said. "It seems the hijacker murdered Jaus's regular pilot, took his place, and killed the copilot. When Jaus confronted him, he killed himself. Jaus called and asked to speak with a pilot who could give him instructions on how to land the plane."
"Dear God." Jayr couldn't imagine such a nightmarish scenario. "Where is the plane now? Has he attempted the landing yet?"
"We don't know. Hold for a moment; Scarlet has just handed me a fax from Chicago." The line went silent for several moments. "The last time the plane appeared on flight-control radar, it was in the vicinity of the Georgia-Florida border. It disappeared shortly thereafter, along with the signal from the mobile phone Jaus was using to talk to the instructor pilot." There was the sound of paper crumpling. "They do not know if he was able to land the aircraft."
"What can we do now. Rob?"
"Assemble your trackers and send out search teams," Locksley said. "Monitor local news reports. Humans may find the plane before we do, so be prepared to move quickly to retrieve the suzerain. I will send twenty of my best trackers down to you to aid in the search."
"Have Jaus's men inquire as to how much fuel the plane carried." Byrne suggested, "and how far it could have flown before running out. That may narrow our search area."
"I will, thank you, Aedan." Locksley said. "Jaus's tresora told me one more thing. There is a human female on board with him. She may or may not be part of this attempted hijacking. Contact me as soon as you have any new information, and I will do the same. Good luck, my friends." Locksley ended the call.
"You sure you know how to handle a boat by yourself, boy?" the owner of the charter boat service asked, squinting at Kyan again. "Rivers 'round here get a mite tricky, 'specially if you've never fished 'em."
"I know river." Kyan didn't have enough English to tell the middle-aged white man how many boats he owned in China; nor did he care to explain himself. He breathed in, the man's sweat filling his nose.
Fragments of thought and images flooded Kyan's head. Damn economy… doing the best I can. The man in the back office, a stack of invoices in front of him, worried as he talked on the phone. Heart attack… HMO… Democrats… Billy. A cluttered, dismal trailer. Portrait of a dead wife. A son in an army uniform. More invoices.
From those disjointed thoughts and images Kyan knew the man was not greedy, only struggling to keep from losing his business to his creditors. Kyan peeled off another dozen bills from his roll of the unfamiliar currency, adding it to the stack before saying the two words the man wanted to hear. "Security deposit."
"All right, then. Long as you're sure." The man scooped up the money and tucked it into his till before handing over the keys and a business card. "You call me if you can't make it back by Friday. I got this boat rented out for some weekend warriors think they know where all the bass are, dumb-ass fools." He chuckled. "If you're late, even ten minutes, it'll be an extra five hundred. I can't afford to lose the business."
Kyan nodded and walked out to the dock, where seven boats in various sizes and conditions were moored. He'd chartered the largest mainly because it had the most powerful outboard motor, as well as a tiny cabin with a bunk. Once he was on the water, he planned to dock only to refuel, get supplies, and kill the girl.
He spotted a pay phone and debated over whether or not to report in. This was his business, not theirs. At the same time, he had an old obligation to fulfill.
He dialed the number.
"Where are you?" his teacher demanded at once.
"In Florida, on river." He hated speaking English, but his teacher could not understand Chinese. "I track her water."
"Give me your exact location."
"Trace call." Kyan felt impatient that his teacher would use such tactics to stall him. "You no interfere. She mine."
"The plane went down," his teacher said harshly. "How do you know that she's still alive?"
"Always know." He hung up the phone.
Kyan released the mooring lines before he stepped onto the deck and checked the motor and fuel before taking the boat out the narrow channel to the St. Johns River.
Even in spring Florida was warm and humid, and the river water was muddy with runoff and pollution. Kyan didn't mind. It was the water, not the condition of it, that mattered to him. He never felt at ease on land, and the hours he had wasted tracking her from Chicago to Atlanta to this place had left him tense and irritable.
Kyan stopped in the afternoon for fuel at a small pier. He tied the boat to the dock and waited, but no attendant came out to the pumps. Kyan knew he could find the girl, but he had already tired of making himself understood to Americans. He didn't have the time or patience to read every person he met.
"It's self-serve, buddy," a fair-haired girl called from the window of a shack at the end of the pier.
Kyan didn't understand the words, so he secured the boat and jumped up onto the pier. The shack, little more than an aluminum shed with hand-lettered pricing signs, sold worms and bait for fishermen. The young girl inside was reading a textbook and writing in a spiral-bound notebook.
He took out the small book of English phrases that he had bought at the airport in Chicago.
"Dude, you are so going to get your butt kicked if you use a phrase book on this river," the girl said without looking up, and then translated her own words by repeating them in his native language.
Kyan frowned. "You speak Chinese."
"Uh-huh." She kept reading.
She was young, tanned, and hardly more than a teenager. It didn't make sense that she would speak his tongue. Did she have a phrase book? "You know Chinese how?"
She lifted her face, revealing Caucasian features and Asian-shaped blue eyes. "My grandmother taught me." Her lips bowed as she subjected him to a slow, thorough inspection of her own. "Wah-how-how."
Kyan gave up trying to speak to her in English. "I do not know what that means."
"It means, Dude, you are gorgeous." She looked over him again and fanned herself with her hand. "Jet Li and Keanu Reeves all wrapped up in one great big yummy package."
People of mixed blood were considered inferior in China, and Kyan didn't care to be compared by this American to film stars. Still, the blend of East and West in her open, smiling face was somewhat intriguing, even if the Caucasian curves on her petite Asian frame were a bit too generous.
"Like what you see?" she asked, pulling back her shoulders. "Or are you like all these other guys and just want some worms?"
"I am not fishing." He inspected the shack. It looked like the sort of thing a refugee constructed out of scrap salvaged from trash heaps. It also smelled like it. "Your family, they own this… ?" He gestured at the shack.
She shook her head. "My parents live up north with my little brother. I just work here part-time on weekends to make some spending money." She sighed. "It's spring break, so I'll be here for an entire week. I need the money, but it's beyond boring."
Her complaints sounded childish. He had watched young women work themselves into unconsciousness on some of the collective farms in China. "You should get another job."
"But then I wouldn't have met you." She opened and closed her eyelids rapidly. "Maybe you could stop by later, when I get off work. We could go get a drink in town or something."
Her American accent made her Chinese sound very odd, but he could understand her perfectly. He might be able to use her. "Why are you here and not with your family?"
"School." She lifted her textbook up to show him the cover, revealing that it was a volume on economics. "I'm a junior at Stadlin University. It's about five miles that way." She pointed west.
Kyan didn't care for the way she spoke to him. She was too forward, too disrespectful. She gave out information too willingly. Her smile was too easy. And her breasts were definitely too large.
"Okay, so you obviously don't want to get a drink. The only other thing I've got are these." She lifted up a plastic container filled with a writhing pink mass. "The guys say the fish have been biting pretty good out in the basin. We rent poles and tackle, too."
"No, thank you." He would have to read her, and for that he would have to touch her. "What is your name?"
"Melanie Wallace." She pushed back her shoulders again. "My friends call me Mel. What's your name?"
"I am Li Kyan." He held his hand through the open window.
The girl took it awkwardly, as if she were not accustomed to such polite contact. "Are you, like, always this stiff with people, or is it just your first day in the U.S.?"
Kyan could not take anything from the faint sheen perspiration on her skin; she happened to be one of the small percentage of people whom he could not read. Not that the thoughts of a student would be of particular interest to him. She spoke both English and Chinese, however, and she was American-born. She would be able to speak for him and explain things to him.
"I need a translator," he said, holding on to her hand. "Will you come with me on my boat today?"
"I make six-fifty an hour just sitting here in this sweat-box." She eyed the container of worms. "Can you pay me seven?"
He released her hand and took some of the bills from the roll in his pocket, handing them to her.
"Yikes." Her eyes widened, but then she shook her head and opened the side door to the shack, coming out onto the pier with him. "Here." She handed most of the bills back to him. At his blank look, she added. "You just handed me a thousand dollars, dude. I'd have to work for you, like, forever to earn that." She fluttered her eyelids again. "Unless you want me to do something else with my mouth."
Kyan inspected her, hiding his distaste. She was perhaps a foot shorter than him, and dressed in a thin white shirt stamped with the name of her university. The short pink pants she wore were skintight and reached only her knees. On her feet were thongs showing off toenails with yellow and pink flowers painted on them. Small rhinestones flashed at the center of each flower. Her breasts bobbed unrestrained under the shirt, and the shadows of her nipples showed clearly through it.
If they had been in China, she would have been arrested. He told her that.
"Really?" she said, deliberately striking a provocative pose. "Do you think I'd get a cute Chinese cop to frisk me? Would they strip-search me?"
"It is not funny." Neither was the fact that he would have an image of his own hands stripping the clothes from her rudely healthy American body for the rest of the day.
"Come on, dude, I'm just kidding." Her breasts shook with her laughter. "How can such a cute guy like you be so uptight?"
"My name is Kyan, not 'dood'," he told her. "You are coming with me?"
She went back into the shack, shoved her books in a large tote bag, and came out, kicking the door shut behind her. Her fetching smile made dimples in her cheeks. "Let's go."