Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight by V. M. Black

it’s the right thing to do. So I just want to…help it along and see what happens next. Even if you are either a bastard of a user or an emotional coward—or both.”
    Ouch. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve that. “Let’s just hope the story has a happy ending, for both our sakes.”
    There was a buzzing sound that just started to register at the edge of Levi’s hearing, like the angry whine of a mosquito. He realized that he’d been hearing it for several seconds, but it had just occurred to him that the noise had a mechanical edge.
    It was a long river that went through a lot of people’s land, he told himself. Though the trees running down to the edge made it seem like they were in the middle of nowhere, there were few places in this part of Pennsylvania that weren’t a short distance from a building or a fenced field. It could be anyone on the river, just like the canoers and men fishing at the end of the dock.
    But Levi knew he wasn’t going to be so lucky. Not this time.

Chapter Six
     
    “ G ive me your purse,” Levi said, raising the oars and putting them into the boat.
    “What?” Harper straightened suddenly at his tone, looking around sharply as she slid her purse across to him with her foot.
    “It’s got my gun in it.” He dug through until his hand encountered the cool metal grip of the Walther.
    “It’s got my gun in it, too,” she said, pulling the purse back as soon as he released it. “If you need a gun, so do I.”
    Levi ‘s only response was to ease off the safety of his nine mil.
    Harper’s silver .38 special flashed in the sunlight as she gave it a quick inspection. Seven bullets, ready to fire. She just had to hope that they were made well enough not to be ruined by the water.
    “What did you see?” she asked as soon as she was satisfied that everything was in order.
    “I didn’t see anything,” Levi said. “I heard something. A motor.”
    “It could be anyone,” Harper said dubiously, squinting down the river.
    “Yeah, it could.”
    “But you don’t think it is.” She didn’t, either.
    “Call it a sixth sense. We’ve been lucky. Really lucky. I don’t think we should be counting on our luck any longer.”
    Levi hunched low so that his body was mostly hidden below the edge of the boat, and Harper copied him. She sat on the shallow bottom, her elbows on the back bench seat, scanning the river behind them.
    And then Harper saw it, around the last bend in the river—an airboat, fan blades spinning, sliding across the surface of the water.
    Maybe in Florida airboats were an everyday sort of sight, but on the Juniata, m ost people used small electric trolling motors or occasionally regular gas motors.
    Then she made out the figure in the front of the boat, and the hairs rose up on the back of her neck. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. She’d know that arrogant line of his back anywhere, now, and the imperious way that he waved to the others in the boat.
    “It’s him,” she said. “The vampire. But you shot him in the head, Levi—”
    “I know,” he said shortly. “I told you their healing’s even better than mine.”
    “Great,” she muttered, readying her gun.
    There were five men on the airboat, and Harper knew they’d already spotted her uncle’s jon boat lying still on the water. It was impossible to miss, the dark green boat on the brown river. They were sitting ducks, exposed on every side. There was nowhere to hide in the middle of the river—and they couldn’t even move except for drifting with the current with the trolling motor dead, not without putting Levi in their line of fire.
    The men had long guns, the shapes unmistakable even from the distance. Harper watched as the vampire gestured, and the men started to raise their weapons. Her entire body hummed with awareness, as if she could keep the bullets from going through her by sheer force of will. They were still too far out for her snub-nosed little revolver