The Vampire And The Highland Empath Read Online Free

forward again. Anticipating it, Roque grabbed her arms to steady her.
    She met his gaze. “Ye’re losing too much blood. D’ye not care?”
    “I have enough to spare.”
    His indifference to his own well-being made her angry. She pressed the torn cloth to his side. “I do not understand ye. You or yer friend. This wound is serious.”
    His hand covered hers, emitting warmth and strength. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Even without her empathic skills, she knew he was barely holding onto consciousness. The boat’s hull pounded beneath them.
    “Bleeding hell,” Alex shouted.
    Roque’s head snapped up.
    Two vessels gave chase, the smaller lifting and falling with the waves. The slightly larger vessel gave the impression of a hag tottering on a cane in comparison. Smoke billowed from her aft as she fell quickly behind the other boat.
    Alex furiously worked the strange mechanism, coaxing their little skiff to greater speed. Edeen’s knees banged against the bottom. Grim faced, Alex searched the shoreline.
    Edeen scanned the cliffs too. She knew this area. “Alex,” she called out just as Roque slumped into her, as loose as though he were a hay-stuffed doll, pushing her over beneath his weight.
    Alarmed, she slipped her hand onto his chest, waiting for the expansion of an exhalation, breathing with him when it finally came. The sea thumped beneath her bottom. She struggled to push Roque up enough that she could see over the side.
    The smaller craft was gaining on them.
    She’d lived her entire life on these wild cliffs and knew them as well as she knew her own heart. The water line was higher than she thought it should be though.
    “Alex, over there.”
    She stretched her arm out wide to where a cleft cut into the foreboding cliffs where swollen rains ran off.
    Alex’s mouth formed a hard line.
    “I know these seas!”
    “But the landscape has changed—“
    “Roque is unconscious. He needs help. Have you a better course?”
    His knuckles squeezed around the steering stick, his arms tight, wrestling the roaring little monster.
    “We cannot let that man near Roque.” As she shouted it, she knew the truth of those words. That Geschopf had hurt Roque before and would do so again. Anger gushed over her skin. “I’ve played among these cliffs since I was a child. I know a place those men will never find us.”
    Alex stared hard at her, his body strung tight like drying leather. Jaw clenched, he gave a brisk nod.
    “Over there.” Edeen pointed at a natural outbreak in the cliffs. “Take us close to that outcropping.”
    Though there was nothing but steep cliff walls and the surging slapping sea, Alex yanked the handle and the boat rose up on her side in a tight turn. Edeen slid with Rogue into the side.
    “Closer,” she yelled, her words snagged away by the buffeting of the waves and roar of the smoking monster. She searched for recognizable crags within the stone face. Cliff-nesting birds raged from their mud nests at their approach.
    Alex brought them along the inside of the outcrop, out of sight of the other boats. For the moment.
    “Here. ‘Tis here.”
    He shut the little beast up and the boat slowed in the water. “There’s nothing here,” Alex hissed.
    “Help me get him into the water.” Edeen began pulling Rogue closer to the side.
    Alex stumbled over, feet braced wide against a large wave that crashed into the cliff walls and slapped back over them.
    Edeen shook her wet hair out of her face. “There’s a cavern right under our feet with a passage that leads to the top of the cliffs. Only a few from my village know of it.”         
    He studied her sharply, obviously not liking it, but what choice did they have? With more strength than she had given his slim frame, Alex rolled Roque up and over the side. As the boat dipped, Edeen slid into the water with him, wrapping around the tall unconscious man, one arm hanging onto the side of the boat, grateful when Alex leaned over to pull