As the first man told the other one to do something anatomically impossible, Sarita eased away from the tree and crept along the tree line to get nearer the house. The path came out about two hundred feet in front of and to the side of the house. She wanted to get up about even with it. It would put her in a better position to help Domitian when he tried to leave the house.
He had to still be in there. Sarita had neither caught up to him, nor passed him on the trail. Unless she’d missed another trail that branched off from the main one, he was still in the house. Hopefully, that meant he was on the phone, giving as much information as he could to that uncle of his, and not that he’d been caught in the house and was now unconscious or wounded or just chained up somewhere.
Sarita had just about reached a spot that was even to the front of the house when she spotted movement at the far corner of the terrace. Stilling, she watched, her eyes straining. A moment later Sarita was assaulted by a combination of excitement and concern. She was happy because she was quite sure the head that kept poking around the corner of the house was Domitian. He hadn’t been captured or injured. Her concern, though, was because he was obviously considering trying to run across the front yard, despite the two men on front-door duty who would surely see him.
Holding her breath, Sarita watched him change focus and stare at the two men by the front door. Much to her amazement, first one suddenly turned and faced the wall beside the door he was guarding, and then the other did. It was as smooth as clockwork . . . and rather shocking to see, Sarita acknowledged, letting her breath out. She was suddenly very glad the man couldn’t read or control her.
Sure that Domitian was going to make a break for the jungle path now, Sarita glanced toward the yard, noting that every man she could see appeared to be looking away from where Domitian was. She glanced up the side of the house next and then sucked in a horrified breath. Two men were just coming around the corner from the back of the house, headed along the side wall toward the front.
Sarita wasn’t sure how this mind control business worked, but suspected Domitian had to concentrate to do it. If he were unexpectedly tackled by the two men he couldn’t see approaching, he would no doubt lose his focus, and then he would have every man in the yard converging on him. And apparently the men had some special “juice” in their guns. She was guessing a high tech bullet or something. Whatever it was, it would apparently be game over for Domitian.
Sarita considered the situation briefly, and then cursed under her breath and hurried along the edge of the trees until she was about halfway along the side of the house. Now even with the men Domitian couldn’t see, she swerved out and charged them. While one of the men appeared deep in the middle of telling a tale about something that needed big hand movements, the other one did glance up and see her just before Sarita reached them. She saw him raise his gun to aim it at her, but it was too late, she was already in the middle of a flying kick. It hit him hard across the face, spinning him and sending him to the ground.
The second man couldn’t help but notice her then. He immediately raised his own gun.
Grabbing the barrel of the rifle, Sarita moved her head to the side to avoid getting shot and rammed it back into the man’s face as he tried to aim. When he looked dazed but didn’t go down, she slammed it into his face again. This time the man’s eyes rolled back and his body followed the motion so that he landed flat on his back in the grass.
The third man came out of nowhere. Sarita saw a large shadow out of the corner of her eye and then an iron band was around her throat, lifting her off the ground as the sound of large wings flapping told her it wasn’t a human she was dealing with, but one of the hybrids. One who was winged like Thorne.
Gasping for air, Sarita struggled to free herself, clawing at the arm that was around her throat and choking off any access to oxygen. She was also kicking wildly, but dangling under the man as she was, her legs were kicking nothing but air. Desperate to be able to suck in a breath, she redoubled her efforts at clawing up his arm, but he seemed impervious to the deep trails she was gouging into his skin.
“Keep it up,” her captor suggested lazily. “If I drop you now, you’re dead.”
Sarita glanced down then to see that they had gained height quickly and were already above the treetops.
Darkness was just beginning to crowd in at the corners of her eyes from lack of oxygen when she spotted Domitian below. He had reached the trees unhampered and was disappearing into the woods completely oblivious to the fact that she was flying high above him.
“Good girl,” the man holding her said approvingly when she stopped struggling. The pressure around her neck eased as he shifted his hold. Sarita found herself suspended in the air with one of her captor’s arms across her ribs under her breasts and the other now across her shoulders at the base of her throat rather than choking her.
Too aware that he could decide to drop her at any moment, she merely held on to his arm with both hands and stared out over the island.
“My father will be happy to see you,” he announced, turning them toward the labs. “You and that vampire of yours rather ruined things leaving the island when you did. We were on the way to the island to put Father’s plan in motion when MacNeil radioed us with the news that the pair of you had left the island, swimming south, and towing an air mattress behind you. He thought you’d headed for the mainland, and we spent many hours last night crisscrossing the water trying to find you.”
Sarita didn’t comment. That had been her idea. She’d suspected that a man who had so many cameras inside, probably had them outside as well and had suggested leaving by the beach in front of the house and swimming around it to the north after they’d first swum south for fifty feet or so away from the island. Apparently it had worked for a while.
“But when MacNeil radioed in that my brother’s body had washed up on shore with his neck broken, we knew you’d come here, so we all headed home.”
Yep, should have found some way to sink the gilled man’s body, she thought, since that could be the only man he was speaking of. Even dragging it along with them would’ve been better, she thought grimly. Domitian could have tied the rope from the air mattress around the man’s waist and pulled him along, and then they could have dragged his body on shore and into the jungle and left him there under some leaves. At least there was less likelihood he would have been found that way, Sarita thought and then frowned.
“He was your brother?” she asked as what he’d said sunk through her thoughts. Her voice was raspy, Sarita noted with a frown.
“One of many,” the man answered indifferently, and then asked slyly, “Afraid I’ll want revenge and drop you?”
Sarita stiffened in his arms.
“I could,” he said with amusement. “Claim you were struggling and I lost my grip on you.”
Sarita peered down at the trees below, wondering what crashing through them would do to a body.
“Fortunately for you, I didn’t like my brother,” the man added.
Sarita was silent for a minute and then asked, “How do you feel about Dressler?”
He chuckled. “Hoping I hate my father too and could be convinced to help you escape?”
“You might want to consider it. I’m sure the Rogue Hunters will go easier on you if they know you’ve helped me.”
“The Rogue Hunters?” he said thoughtfully. “You don’t mean those idiots on the mainland do you? They won’t find us here.”
“They will as soon as they look up which island Elizabeth Salter owns,” Sarita said grimly.
“Problem is they’ll never know to look up Elizabeth Salter,” he said with amusement. “Is that what you were trying to do at the house? Call the mainland and tell them that? I suppose the vampire was there somewhere and you think he managed to make the call. He didn’t,” he said with a certainty that struck at her heart.
“The minute MacNeil radioed that my brother had washed up on the beach, Father told him to have the satellite phone removed from his office in the house and locked up in his office in the labs. There’s no one coming for you, little Sarita. Your life is here now.”
Sarita’s mind rebelled at the suggestion and she was about to tell him that her life sure as hell wasn’t here now, but snapped her mouth shut when he suddenly swooped downward, dropping quickly toward land. For one moment she thought they were going to crash into the ground between the fence and the labs, but at the last moment he pulled up, swinging his body down and forcing hers with it as he flapped his wings against the wind to slow them. They landed rather abruptly, but on their feet, and then he took her arm in a steely grip and started walking toward the first building.