Chapter 70

Say “I’m going to bake my favorite man a blackberry pie.”

—Bowen Knight taking a photograph of a laughing Kaia Luna

BO WENT THROUGH the photos again—and halted on a video of Kaia he’d taken one morning while lying in bed. She was sitting up making faces at the camera and had suddenly pounced on him.

He’d dropped the phone . . . and there.

Freezing the image, he turned it to Krychek. “Is this clear enough?”

The cardinal took almost a minute to examine it, zooming in and out. “I have a lock,” he said without warning. “Faint but usable.”

“Do it.” Bowen put his hand on Kaleb’s shoulder. He had a feeling the telekinetic was too powerful to need the contact, but he had no intention of being left behind.

A shift in time and space, and then he was standing on a floor that rocked under him. A boat. Even as the thought passed through his head, he saw Kaia sitting on a bunk inside the small room. Head hanging low, she was shivering, wrapped only in a thin blanket. She also had a massive bruise down one side of her face as well as thin cuts that crisscrossed her face on both sides.

Dropping to his knees in front of her, he gently stroked back her hair as she stared at him as if he was a ghost. “What did the bastards do to you?”

“Bo! You’re real!” She hugged him tight, the blanket still gripped in her hands. When she drew back, she tried to smile. “Ouch.” Wincing while he fought his rage, she said, “Punched me when I bit one of them.” She sounded very satisfied by that, but her voice came out slurred, something inside her face broken or badly bruised.

“They cut you.”

“No, it’s from the net. My dolphin skin marks easily.” A glint in her eyes. “I bit the asshole so badly he dropped his knife into the ocean. Others said the bruise plus the marks from the net would hide me until they got his hand bandaged up. He must be the designated cutter.” Her voice slurred even further, her eyelids flickering. “Shit, I—”

Scooping her unconscious form into his arms before she could slump forward, Bowen looked at Krychek. “Can you get back here?”

The cardinal nodded. “I have enough specific location markers.” A glance at Kaia. “Where?”

Bo’s instinct was to take her to an Alliance hospital facility, but he wouldn’t hurt Kaia by bringing her to land. Neither would he betray BlackSea by taking her—and thus Krychek—to Ryūjin. “Do you know Malachai Rhys’s face?” The other man should be on Lantia coordinating the search.

“Yes. I leave the water changelings alone but I know who they are.”

The answer put Bowen’s final concerns at ease; if Krychek knew Mal’s face, he could’ve teleported to Mal at any time. Bo wouldn’t be breaching BlackSea’s wall of security by showing the other man a photograph. “Go.”

Wind and saltwater spray hit his face a heartbeat later. In front of him, Malachai’s muscles bunched before he focused on what Bowen carried. “With me!”

Bo was conscious of Krychek staying in position on the edge of the deck while he pounded inside the city with Kaia. Healers swarmed over her the instant he put her on a bed in what appeared to be a large infirmary. A wet Miane Levèque appeared seconds later dressed only in a large black T-shirt that hung off one bare shoulder; she put her hand straight on Kaia’s skin.

Unable to break his own skin-to-skin contact with his mate, Bowen looked at BlackSea’s First. “Will she be all right?” It was impossible to ignore the brutality of the blow to her face; the bright light in the infirmary highlighted every break in the skin, every inch of black bruising. How had she even spoken to him? Her cheekbone looked to be shattered and one eye socket was dangerously sunken in.

Miane snapped her head toward him, her eyes nothing human . . . nothing animal, either. Not as Bo understood it. She was a wholly alien creature at that instant, with thought processes he couldn’t predict. “Does Krychek have location markers?”

Bo nodded.

“Go.” The order was directed at both him and Malachai. “Find the bastards—keep at least one alive for questioning.” A sudden, unexpected touch of her fingers to his shoulder, the punch of alpha power behind it a thing that rippled along the mating bond. “I have her.”

Conscious they could lose the cowards who’d taken Kaia unless they acted at once, Bowen forced himself to break contact with her and headed out with Malachai. They arrived on Lantia’s eastern deck to find ten cold-eyed BlackSea men and women pointing guns at Krychek. The cardinal had an amused smile on his face. As well he might—he was so fucking powerful he could probably telekinetically push all ten to the far corners of the city before they ever pulled the trigger.

“Stand down,” Malachai ordered before taking guns off two of his men. “We may be bringing in unfriendlies. Re-arm and stay alert.”

Nodding, the two men raced off.

“Krychek,” Bowen said at the same instant. “We’re ready.”

They were inside the room where Kaia had been held less than a heartbeat later. Krychek broke the lock using a small pulse of telekinetic power. Taking the gun Malachai held out, Bo went and opened the door with care. A glance outside showed a narrow and dark wood-paneled hallway that led to a flight of steps. Whatever this boat was, it was small. Which meant it probably didn’t have much of a crew.

But Kaia had said “others” so there had to be at least three.

Going quietly up the steps, conscious of Malachai and Krychek behind him, he took extreme care emerging into the light. No bullet whizzed past his head. No shout went up. He looked around, realized they were on a small fishing boat. A net lay crumpled against the hull to his left alongside other tools of the trade. He could see the silhouette of one man at the helm out front, complete with a captain’s hat.

Another man stood at the opposite end of the ship—behind Bo—and seemed to be scanning the retreating horizon with binoculars. Bo could just barely glimpse a third man along the right side of the boat, closer to the captain than the one with binoculars. He, too, had his attention outward.

It was the male with the binoculars whose hand was bandaged. Fucker.

Moving his own hand back behind him, he counted off the number of sailors for Malachai and Krychek’s benefit. A touch on his wrist told him the message had been received. He changed the hand motions to point in the three directions where the men were located. Then, once that message was understood, he pointed to the stern, telling the others which target he was taking.

After that, there was nothing but speed.

Bo erupted out of the belly of the ship, heading straight for the man with the binoculars. Shouts went up as he was spotted, but it was far too late. He took down the man who’d brutalized Kaia before the bastard could do anything but drop his binoculars to the deck. And yeah, Bo took great pleasure in smashing the butt of his gun into the fucker’s face, crushing his cheekbone and smashing his eye socket. “That’s for Kaia.”

He was ready to murder this asshole and dump him in the ocean, his rage a cold wave, but his mind flashed to Kaia’s sadness as she spoke of BlackSea’s vanished, Miane’s words about bringing in at least one live abductor ringing in his head. “You’re alive only on sufferance,” he said as the man coughed and tried to rise from where he’d fallen to the deck. “Stay the fuck down or I’ll blow off your pathetic head.”

Sadly the asshole wasn’t stupid enough to disobey.

Gun on him nonetheless, Bowen looked over to see both the captain and other crewman similarly captured.

Krychek’s capture was floating five feet in the air, helplessly flailing his arms and legs. The whites of his eyes showed bright against the deep tan of a man often out on the water.

Krychek slipped his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Would you like to return to the city?”

A single hard nod from Bo and the entire boat appeared next to Lantia. Meanwhile, Krychek looked like he was out for an evening stroll, not as if he’d just transferred a large vessel and multiple people across half an ocean.

Bowen looked to the other man. “These three Psy?” He’d felt no psychic strikes against his mind, but that could simply be because the three were disoriented and terrified.

“No, human.”

“We’ll take it from here,” Malachai said to Krychek. “BlackSea owes you.”

“No. The payment’s been made.”

Malachai’s eyes connected with Bowen’s after Krychek teleported out, a silent question in them. Bo just shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to speak of his devil’s bargain. A bargain he’d make again and again to bring Kaia out of danger. “Later.”

Nodding, Malachai threw a rope over the side and the boat was soon secured against Lantia.

Their three captives quivered as they were made to disembark, then get down on their knees on the exposed deck of the city. Miane appeared seconds later, still dressed in nothing but that large black T-shirt that hit the tops of her thighs and fell off one shoulder. Bo suddenly realized it was the same one Malachai had been wearing during their call. It should’ve made her look like a teenage girl playing dress-up with her boyfriend’s clothes.

But Miane Levèque was no girl, the power that burned in her a chilling cold.

Her inhuman gaze found his for a split second. She nodded.

Kaia was safe.

His heart slamming, Bo kept his gun trained on the captives—and forced himself not to pull the trigger on the one with the bandaged hand and the broken face. He’d made the call not to kill on the boat and now he was on Miane’s city; this was her show to run.

“You took one of mine,” Miane said silkily to the three. “Talk.”

The captain began to babble. “We rescued her. She was flounderi—” His words ended in a fleshy thump of sound as Miane backhanded him so hard that he hit the deck with violent force; he spit out a bloody tooth when he struggled back up onto his knees.

“Lie to me again and you go into the ocean.” Miane didn’t raise her voice, the menace of her all the more deadly for being so contained. “Now, I’m going to ask again. Why did you take one of mine?”