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“There’s a spare key under the seat cushion.”
Rolling onto my good side, I glanced up and found an auburn apparition leaning over me. A wall of shimmering wet hair separated me from the madness outside, and for a moment, for a fleeting fraction of a second, I felt like a kid in a blanket fort again.
Then, another window shattered, and she was gone, crouching behind the seat with her hands over her head.
“Drive!” I shouted, pulling the pistol from my holster and launching to my feet. I stood in the hatch, shielding her with my body as the first head came into view over the harbor wall.
“I don’t know how!”
“Turn the key!” I aimed and pulled the trigger as the engine roared to life.
That head and the body attached to it dropped to the ground, but was quickly replaced with another. And another.
“Do you see a lever?” I shouted between blasts.
“Em … yes! Over here!”
I fired three more rounds into the squad barreling toward the edge of the pier above us. It was enough to keep them back, but not enough to keep them from returning fire.
“Hold down the button on the handle and slide it forward.”
I widened my stance to keep my balance as the boat lurched forward. It might not have looked like much, but the Pride of Howth had a beast of an engine. Thank fuck.
Clover screamed as a bullet flew through one of the already-broken side windows and shattered the windscreen.
“They’re shooting from both piers!” she shouted.
“Stay low and steer!”
I swiveled and took out two lone infantrymen on the opposite pier before returning my attention to the squad to my left. With the choppiness of the water and the sudden acceleration, it was getting harder and harder to hit my marks, but it made us a harder target to hit as well. More bullets ripped through the helm, piercing the bulkheads and showering Clover with sparks from the radio.
By the time my clip was nearly empty, the men I hadn’t hit were lowering their guns and screaming obscenities as Howth Harbor disappeared behind us. None of the amphibious tanks were fast enough to catch up, and by the time they figured out how to hot-wire another fishing boat, we’d be long gone.
I turned to face Clover with a sigh of relief, but she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking forward either. Her entire body was sideways in the captain’s chair, and her gaze was locked on the rolling green hills of Ireland’s Eye as we sped past. Saltwater misted her face through the broken windows, but Clover didn’t so much as blink. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she scanned the empty island, almost as if she was searching for something.
But that small patch of land disappeared just as quickly as the harbor, and when it did, Clover turned away with a deep sigh. The afternoon sun cast her silhouette in a halo of golden light as she wrapped her arms around her naked body and shivered.
“Here.” I took off my blazer—wincing as the fabric dragged across my latest injury—and draped it over her shoulders. Then, I sat on the floor and pulled off my boots and socks, slipping them onto her tiny, ice-cold feet. I would have given her my shirt as well, but it was covered in fresh blood, most of which wasn’t mine.
Clover slipped her hands into the oversize sleeves of my jacket and buttoned it closed while I cinched the laces on my boots as tight as they would go. By the time I was done, her shivering had stopped.
Satisfied, I leaned back against the hatch and closed my eyes. I could feel the darkness creeping back in—the fog of unconsciousness that I’d been trying to fight off ever since my head injury. I knew Clover was watching me, but I didn’t have the strength to lift my eyelids and find out why.
“They shot you again,” she finally stated, her tone factual and cold.
I nodded slowly.
Silence stretched on between us as I struggled to stay awake. I knew there was more that she wanted to say, and when I finally forced my eyes open to let her know that I was still listening, she said it.
“You’re one of them.”
Clover was furious with me—I could see it in her stiff back and clenched jaw—but her tone gave nothing away. She was either too polite or too afraid to let it show.
I hoped it was the former, but I knew better. I’d seen the way she reacted to me back there. I was a monster to her now.
I was a monster, period. The things I’d just done, the ease with which I’d done them … I’d enjoyed killing those men. I’d needed it. And Clover had been a captive audience for all of it.
I’d become a lot of things that I wasn’t proud of over the last five years—a liar, a puppet, a deserter, now a killer—but there was one thing that I couldn’t be accused of, not anymore.
