The fog cleared from her mind as the damp air coated her body. She felt the blood coating her face. The sickly sweet smell made her stomach roil. She bent over, retching in the corner of the hold, streams of blood pouring from her mouth. She vomited the blackness from her belly, but she could still feel it leaching into her veins, infecting her amnis.

“Let me help her,” Brigid said. “Don’t you see? She’s bitten them, Murphy. She’s afraid of infecting you.”

There was a roar of rage, and Anne felt her mate’s amnis surge to life in her blood. She clung to the clean, bright thread of his energy.

“Anne”—Brigid had a hand at her back—“we need to get you to your father.”

Her father.

“Da?” she choked out on a sob.

“Let me help you. My mother’s alive, remember? I’ll be fine as long as my mother is alive. You can touch me.”

“Anne.” Murphy’s tortured voice came to her, but she pushed him away again.

“Can’t,” she gasped. “Don’t touch me, Patrick. You can’t touch me.”

She stumbled out of the ruins of the ship and let Brigid pull her up the stairs. She felt the sea around her as soon as she stepped onto the deck. Without another word, she ran to it, stripping from her bloody clothes and leaping into the ocean.

The sea claimed her.

WHEN Anne dreamed, she dreamed of death and madness. Of the deep and of forgotten things. The moon shone full through the water, and the drifting weeds surrounded her as she stared into the night sky. She heard her father’s voice, singing Coleridge’s poem:

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

The water enveloped her. The pulse of the current took her and she drifted deeper.

Past the edge of land.

Beyond the silken brush of reeds.

About, about, in reel and rout

The death-fires danced at night;

The water, like a witch’s oils,

Burnt green, and blue and white.

She sank past the touch of moonlight, where the chill of the water crept into her bones and settled her soul.

HE found her in the darkness.

He pressed his hand to hers, though she tried to pull away.

Murphy wrapped his arms around her and lifted her to the surface where moonlight touched her face and bathed her in its cool glow.

MURPHY swam Anne back to the red-sailed barge and lifted her as he would a child. He handed her to her father, who carried her past her friends and belowdecks, where he tucked her under a woolen blanket.

“Sleep, lass,” Tywyll’s rasping voice commanded. “Ye’ve had a long night, and we’ve some longer ones ahead.”

“Keep Murphy away. His sire is dead. If I infected him—”

“I’ll give ye tonight, but I won’t keep a man from his woman, even if she is my daughter. He loves ye, Annie. I won’t drive him mad from yer fear. He won’t be biting you, I can promise ye that.”

“Da, you need to bleed me. Bleed me. Please. Get the dirty blood out.”

Tywyll walked over and met her eyes. His face was grim. “I know. We’ll start tomorrow night. It’s too close to dawn now.”

“Did I kill them?”

“Ah, lamb, I saw their bodies.” He brushed the damp hair back from her forehead. “They were skin and bones. Ye hastened it is all. The one who killed them was the one who gave them that poison.”

“I tore their throats out.”

“From what young Brigid said, ye weren’t in yer right mind.”

“It was Jean.”

“It were definitely his boat. At least it was you who found them, not yer man. Like you said, he’s not got a sire living.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Rest now. I’ve got to get you lot to shelter. We won’t leave the river before dawn.”

Chapter Twenty-six

MURPHY WOKE IN A SQUAT HOUSE by the riverbank, the smell of water in his nose and the ache of Anne’s absence in his chest. Anne had refused to rest beside him, worried that she could somehow infect him with the blood she’d taken from the humans the night before. Tywyll had guided them upriver before dawn, hiding them in a secluded cottage before he disappeared for the day.

He could feel her.

It was only her blood in him that gave him rest; he could feel her amnis alive within him. When Carwyn had torn into the compartment the night before, it had been the only thing that told him she was alive, though her face was painted red with blood and her body lay limp on the floor. He could feel her now, a quiet hum in his chest.

He wanted to find her. Hold her. His arms ached with the desire to keep her safe.

Someone tapped at the heavy wooden door.

He rose and wrapped a sheet around his waist. He unlocked the door and cracked it open.

“Where is Anne?” he asked Brigid.

“And good evening to you too. She’s in her room. Resting. Doesn’t want to see anyone as yet. Tywyll showed up at dusk. They’re talking about when to start the process.”

“The process” being Anne’s complete exsanguination, followed by a new infusion of her sire’s blood. She would be like a newborn again, though with a shorter time to adapt to vampire life, hopefully. It had worked on most of the vampires who had tried it, though the process itself carried risks. Some vampires who were too far gone into madness didn’t wake. Anne was not out of danger yet, though the fact that her sire was already with her was promising.