“Come on!” He pulled her toward the open door, drawing her out into the night air just as another explosion sounded.
They ran down a rutted pathway that led all the way to the pier. When they stopped, Oriana leaned against one of the posts, her breath embarrassingly ragged. They were alive. She closed her burning eyes for a moment. Now that they’d escaped, she was shaking all over. She clung to the post.
Another explosion shook the air, less terrifying now that they were some distance from the building. They could see another portion of the roof cave in. The contents of the building were starting to burn now, a roar building.
Duilio came to her side and laid one hand on her back. “Are you hurt?”
Oriana turned to face him, shaking her head. Her lungs felt ready to burst and her gills had begun to sting from the smoke drifting their way. “No. I’m fine. You?”
He was breathing hard. The scab on his cheek had begun to bleed again, and his clothes were ruined. She suspected he would be horribly bruised by morning. “I’m well enough,” he said, though, wrapping his hand about her own. “Thanks to you.”
His eyes on hers, he opened his mouth to say something else, but the words seemed to be caught in his throat. Oriana waited, desperate to know what he meant to say. It was as if they were alone in that darkness. The roar of the fire retreated, all sounds fading as if the world waited for those stalled words.
Then a voice forestalled whatever he meant to say. “Well, Ferreira, a thorn in my side until the last. I had hoped that you would be caught in the explosion, but alas it seems the fuses were too long.”
Duilio turned back toward the flames. Maraval strode down the rutted pathway toward them, a gun in one hand and a portmanteau dangling from the other. Oriana’s hands clenched into fists. Maria Melo might have chosen Isabel to die in The City Under the Sea, but he was the one whose mania had started this nightmare in the first place.
Four Special Police officers flanked him, cutting off any chance of retreat into the vineyard. Duilio gave her a gentle push toward the water. She didn’t know if Maraval had seen her standing behind him. Was there enough light coming from the fire? The man must see her skirts, if nothing else.
Maraval came closer, apparently undaunted by the revolver in Duilio’s hand. When he stood a few feet away, he said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Ferreira? If you’d let the case alone, as ordered, Portugal would once again be the empire it was meant to be. Now I’ll have to start over. Brazil awaits, with as many loyal servants of the empire as this tired old city, perhaps more.”
Start over? Oriana shuddered. Did the man think he was simply going to walk away?
“There’s no point, Maraval. You can’t turn back the clock,” Duilio said.
“Are you going to say next that it’s God’s will?” Maraval asked with a snort. “We have grown beyond letting God decide history for us.”
“And so you decide who lives and who dies?”
“Sacrifices have to be made,” Maraval said with a blasé shrug.
Oriana swallowed, fury rising in her gut. It was exactly what Maria Melo had said about choosing Isabel. Was a spy no different from this man, playing at being one of the gods? Perhaps Maria Melo was different in her espoused cause, but both valued their goals above innocent lives.
She laid one hand on Duilio’s back so he would know she was behind him. Keeping her eyes on the four police officers, she backed away. She was in the water then, up to her knees. She turned and dove into the shallows, pushing away toward the edge of the cove.
Duilio heard a splash behind him; Oriana had fled to the safety of the ocean.
Good. She would be safe, and he could count on her and Erdano to get the pelt back to his mother. He wasn’t going to get out of this alive, not facing five armed men. He could take two, possibly three. He took a deep breath, feeling remarkably calm. “I’m not a religious man, Maraval,” he said, “but don’t you worry you’re inviting divine retribution?”
“God doesn’t concern me,” Maraval said blithely. “Now out of my way, Ferreira. We have a tide to catch. Rios, you lost control of him. You finish him off.”
Duilio tore his eyes away from Maraval long enough to see that one of the four officers was indeed Captain Rios. The captain gestured with his pistol for Duilio to clear the way to the pier for his master. Duilio gazed at the muzzle of the gun, knowing Rios wasn’t going to hesitate. Rios had never liked him.
He was going to die now.
And then a sound made him spin about, eyes drawn toward the sea.
Duilio felt his heart slow as an ethereal song tore his attention away from the fire, from Rios, from Maraval. He tried to quiet his own breathing so he could hear it better. He needed to find the source.
He scanned the dark water with desperate eyes. At the edge of the cove he could see a swimmer, only a dark silhouette of a head above the water. He had to find her. . . .
Then he realized what he was hearing. Wordless, keening, it wasn’t a song after all. Duilio ground his teeth together and jammed fingers into his ears, trying to block it out, trying to concentrate.
His pulse pounded in his shut-off ears and his head buzzed as if a fly were trapped inside. He wanted nothing more than to remove the fingers from his ears and let it out, but if he did he would surely find himself swimming toward that open ocean, unable to help answering Oriana’s call.
CHAPTER 35
It was her only weapon against the man who held a gun on Duilio.
Oriana wove the call from memories of childhood longing, from every bit of homesickness she’d felt in the last two years, of the yearning to have her family whole again. She didn’t weave a spell of sexual desire, but of comfort and home and love. It was her only magic, her only way to protect him—to call them to her.
He stayed on the shore, hands on either side of his head. He recognized what she was doing and didn’t come to her. Thank the gods!
But the others did—all of them, the four police officers and Maraval. The marquis resisted her only for a second before his desire for the comfort of fond memories led him to the edge of the pier. He dropped his bag and leapt into the water. He swam toward her, drawn as straight as an arrow.
Two of the police officers didn’t swim. They were going to drown.
Oriana didn’t let that stop her. She couldn’t let them go and still call Maraval. So she sang on, kicking farther away from the beach as she did so. She swam out to sea, the three of them—no, only two now—following her call. How far out did she need to draw them?
She submerged, skirts buoying about her, and dropped her call to a hum. She spread her hands wide so that her webbing could sense the movement of the two remaining pursuers. There was a disturbance in the water behind her, but with a flash of dismay, she realized one of her pursuers was almost on her. She kicked desperately backward, only to collide with Erdano. Suddenly her arms were full of pelt and he was gone in a flurry of bubbles, the policeman in his grasp. He might not be all that clever on land, but Erdano was fast in the water.
Oriana turned her attention back to her lone pursuer: a slower swimmer moving doggedly in pursuit. Clutching the pelt to her chest with one arm, she sank lower. Then she started back to the beach, cutting around her adversary with a dozen feet to spare. It was Maraval.
Was this her chance? She could use her call to draw him down in the water, to cause him to follow her deeper to his own death. It would be a proper repayment for what he’d done to Isabel, a death by drowning. She could pull him down and then release her control of him when it was too late for him to make it to the surface but not too late to understand that he was drowning. It would be justice.