ability to absorb every bit of information it contained just by holding the device in his hands.
What would he believe of his offspring if he were fed all the lies about them contained in that book? True, she hadn’t finished it, but what she had read so far had depicted the vampire race as animals. As soulless, murderous savages without feelings.
She made it to the boulder and came to a stop.
“What is it?” she asked the twins. To her surprise, the sea was just a stone’s throw away below them.
“Just a passing group of humans,” James said. “We think they were just hikers, but given the circumstances…” He looked at Lucy. “What have you got there?”
She handed it to him. “The electronic version of Folsom’s book. Scarface offered to trade it to me in exchange for letting him go. I took it from him so he wouldn’t try to tempt Utanapishtim with the same offer.”
James took it, looked at it and then flung it as hard as he could. The device sailed through the sky, arcing overhead, then plummeting downward again and falling into the sea with a “plip.” “That takes care of that problem,” he said.
Lucy licked her lips, realizing he would do the same to her personal edition of the book if she told him she had it.
“That information might have been useful, James,” she pointed out.
“Information? It’s propaganda. Our secrets are ours, Lucy. To keep or to share, our call. Not some retired DPI goon’s.”
“But there might have been things on there about them, things we don’t know.”
“Once DPI, always DPI. Believe me, he didn’t give away a thing that could help us. They never do.”
“Knowledge is power, James.”
“I have all the power I need, thanks. Or at least, I did.”
What was that supposed to mean, she wondered, lowering her head. “Books are sacred to me.”
“That wasn’t a book. It was a phone.” He hooked a finger under her chin and smiled, as if trying to tempt her out of her displeasure.
“It was a book, and you know it.”
His face turned serious then. “It was a weapon meant to be wielded against my people. And I destroyed it. It was the right call, Lucy.”
“Destroying knowledge in any form is never the right call.”
“Will you two go get a freaking room or something?” Brigit turned, irritated, and then her eyes widened as she looked beyond them. “Utanapishtim! Heads up! Scarface is getting away!”
James and Lucy whirled to see the mortal darting around a sand dune and heading into the woods. The vampire he’d been carrying lay bundled on the ground.
Brigit ran like a flash to where Utanapishtim was and lifted her hand, palm up, fingers touching her thumb, toward the fleeing prisoner, but Utanapishtim reached out, closed his hand around hers and pushed it down.
“No need…to keep him.”
“Who the fuck are you to make that decision?” Brigit shouted.
Utanapishtim backed up a step, as if stunned by her words, not to mention her tone. “I am king. You…are…of me, woman. Remember it.”
Brigit stared at him, her eyes blazing mad, and he stared right back at her.
“Let it go, Brigit,” James said softly. “There wouldn’t have been room in the dinghy for him anyway.
“I needed him.” She jerked her hand free of Utanapishtim’s and used her finger to poke him in the chest. “You’d best watch your step, King Shit. Because you don’t know fuck about what’s going on here.”
Lucy stared at the pair of them, her eyes rounding with fear, until Brigit turned and marched back toward the boulder, where she reclaimed her undead passenger and began striding onward, picking her way down the steep slope toward the beach below.
It was only a few hours later, late in the afternoon, when the dense bank of misty fog that surrounded the island came into view. James stared at it so intently that Lucy knew he was trying to feel for his relatives’ energies, because navigating by sight was absolutely impossible.
Standing beside him at the helm, Lucy asked, “Isn’t there some sort of sonar system you could use to pick your way to shore?”
“The yacht isn’t equipped with sonar.” He met her eyes, and his were warm with approval. “But that was a good idea.”
“And it gave me another,” she said. “Can the vampires’ power block military sonar from detecting the island?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it. But then, I don’t know every vampire or what each one is capable of, so it’s impossible to say.” He stared through the heavy