"It's beautiful," Sarita assured her, taking the top.
"Oh, yes that would look lovely on you, Chiquita," her grandmother said happily. "I have just the skirt for you to wear with it. And it is new, I just finished making it. Wait here and I will fetch it."
Sarita watched the little woman hurry from the room with a smile that faded slowly as she thought of what Mrs. Dressler had said earlier. Turning back to the woman, she said, "You suggested you were all prisoners here. Including my grandmother?"
"Yes," the woman said simply.
"Why?" she asked with a frown. "From what I understand when she was first employed by you, Grandmother came to work in the mornings and was allowed to leave at night. At least she did while you lived on the little island. Why did that not continue here?"
"It did for the first couple weeks after we moved here to the big house," Mrs. Dressler said, hanging her hooked pole from the clothes rod again. Sitting back in her seat then, she sighed and added, "But then I went into early labor with Thorne." Mouth tightening, she explained, "I had made arrangements to move to the mainland for the last month of my pregnancy in case there were complications. Ramsey was going to fly me out the next day, but suddenly I was in the throes of it. What I didn't know then was that Ramsey had no intention of letting me have my son on the mainland and had put something into my drink at lunch to induce labor."
Sarita's eyebrows rose at that. She was surprised he'd take the risk with his own child. If complications had occurred he might have lost both his wife and child.
Huffing out an angry breath, Mrs. Dressler continued, "I should have realized something was amiss when he cancelled his classes for the day and was home in the middle of the week. He said it was because he wanted to spend time with me, and I thought it was sweet and even fortunate that he was there when I started having contractions. I hurried to him, sure he'd put me in the helicopter and fly me straight to the mainland, but he said everything was fine. It was too early, these were probably just Braxton Hicks contractions. He said I should just relax and breathe, and they would surely go away. He kept saying that right up until my water broke."
Her mouth tightened and anger crossed her face. "And then he showed his true colors. The sweet man I thought I'd married became a cold hard monster. He flat out said he'd never had any intention of my going to the mainland to have the baby. He'd brought the labor on early to ensure that didn't happen, so I might as well resign myself to the fact that I was having the baby here on the island, and stop whining and crying at him. I'd be in labor for hours. Go lie down and leave him alone. He'd check on me later and help if necessary."
"I was young then," Mrs. Dressler said sadly. "And I was shattered by his behavior. I burst into tears and stumbled back to my room and locked the door. And then I decided I wanted that man nowhere near my baby and stuck a chair under it to make sure he couldn't get in." Clucking her tongue she shook her head and added, "And with that one action, I sealed your grandmother's fate."
Sarita's eyebrows rose at the words. "How?"
"Because Maria was in the room," she explained quietly. "I didn't realize it until I finished jamming the chair under the door and turned to see her frozen with the bed half-made, her eyes wide."
Mrs. Dressler shook her head sadly. "If I'd known what my actions would mean for your poor grandmother, I would have moved the chair and ordered her out at once. But I didn't know, and I was grateful to have her there. I was scared and feeling more alone than I had in my life and she was all I had." Smiling wryly, she said, "We weren't exactly friends back then. While your grandmother knew a few words of English, I knew not a single word of Spanish. There was a bit of a communication barrier there, but Maria was kind and gentle and supportive and helped me through the darkest hours of my life. She is the one who saw Thorne into this world." Mrs. Dressler sighed. "And the moment she laid eyes on him, Maria was doomed to remain on this island for the rest of her days."
"Why?" Sarita asked with confusion.
"Because she saw what I am."
Jerking around, Sarita peered toward the doorway at that grim comment and got her first really good look at Thorne Dressler. The man was breathtaking. With high cheekbones, a chiseled jaw, pale golden eyes, and hair so fair a blond it was almost white where it lay flat against his head. Towheaded, she thought, that was what they called it because it was the color of tow--flax or hemp fibers.
Sarita stared at him blankly for a minute and then shook her head slightly. "I don't understand why seeing you would--"
The words died in her throat as he stepped into the room and out of the shadow that had hidden the humps at his back. Still staring at his face, she'd barely noted the humps when he suddenly swung his arms out and up. Immediately, the two humps dropped and swung out into two huge chocolate-brown wings. They stretched out at least six feet to each side of his back, touching the walls at either end of the room.
"Dear God," she breathed.
Thorne's mouth tightened as if at a blow.
"They're magnificent," she finished and he blinked, looking suddenly uncertain.
"Did you find some clothes for Domitian?" Mrs. Dressler asked gently.
Clearing his throat, Thorne nodded and looked at his mother as he said, "Yes. That is why I came. I thought to tell you he is all set and changing." He hesitated and then said, "I will put on some tea and wait with him in the kitchen for you ladies to finish."
"Thank you, son," Elizabeth Dressler said affectionately.
Sarita watched him leave, her gaze sliding from his pale golden eyes, the sleek, white cap of what she now thought might be feathers not hair, and then as he turned to leave the room, she examined the chocolate-colored wings that had folded back into place behind his back. She also saw that there was no back on his shirt below his shoulders. It had been specially made to accommodate his wings.
"Bald Eagle?" she asked softly once he'd left the room.
"Yes." The word hissed out of Mrs. Dressler on a sigh. "My husband--" the word sounded like a curse from her lips "--apparently drugged me and harvested my eggs on our wedding night. He fertilized them with his sperm and then injected them with various concoctions of mixed DNA from animals he considered valuable. At least I think that's what he told me." She waved a hand irritably and added, "I was a tad distressed at the time."
"I can imagine," Sarita said sympathetically.
"Anyway, while I don't pretend to understand what he did, he did mention gene splicing or something when I confronted him." She shook her head, and then added, "He apparently drugged me again about a week after our wedding and planted one in my womb. My Thorne."
She glanced toward the door where her son had been and then back to Sarita. "The eagle in him shows up the most because of the wings and his eyes. Ramsey always had to wear glasses, so the exceptional vision eagles are known for appealed to him. But Ramsey says there is other DNA in him too. Jellyfish because they age backward. Salamander because they can regenerate limbs, ears, even their hearts, and so on. We don't know what all he has, or what it could mean. Ramsey wanted to test him over the years to see what DNA had taken and what effect it had, but I refused to let him anywhere near my son," she said grimly. "I couldn't protect all those other children he made, but I kept him from Thorne and refused to even live in the same house with him. I threatened to live in the jungle if he didn't build a small cottage for me, Maria, and Thorne to live in, and I would have. I couldn't bear that house after realizing the kind of monster I'd married. I think I would have killed myself long ago if not for Maria and Thorne."
Sarita peered at Mrs. Dressler's face. While she obviously loved and was proud of her son, she was also furious and probably hurt that the husband she'd thought loved her had done such a thing. And she was probably hurting for her son too, because the man could never have a normal life. Were he to show up on the mainland, she had no doubt he'd soon find himself in a lab somewhere, being poked, prodded, and experimented on as doctors and scientists tried to so
rt out just what he was.
"Here we are."
Sarita glanced to the door as her grandmother rushed back in, and she thought about what Elizabeth had said. Maria Reyes had been kind and comforting and had been doomed to remain here the moment she'd helped bring Thorne into this world.
Of course, now that she'd seen Thorne properly, Sarita understood. She was quite sure everything Dressler had done was illegal. From harvesting his wife's eggs without her permission to the genetic game of Scrabble he'd played with them and so on. He couldn't risk her grandmother leaving the island and telling anyone what she'd seen.
So all these years, her grandmother had been kept here against her will, while her husband and son had thought she'd abandoned them. Sarita could have wept for her . . . for all three of them really. If her father and grandfather had known the truth, she had no doubt they would have moved heaven and earth to bring her abuela home. Not knowing the truth, though, they'd thought she'd abandoned them and had hated her for it instead.
"Do you like it?"
Sarita forced her attention to the skirt her grandmother was holding out and smiled with surprise. It was a lovely slate-blue peasant skirt. Touching the soft material, she nodded. "Yes."
"Are you sure?" her grandmother asked and frowned down at it. "It's probably ridiculously old-fashioned, I know, but we don't have patterns here to make the clothes. We are lucky Ramsey brings in cloth for us at all, and--"
"Abuela," Sarita said firmly, tugging the skirt from her and hugging her tightly. "Peasant skirts will never go out of style. It's beautiful. I love it."
Releasing her, she added dryly, "And I will be ever so glad to be wearing something more than--as Domitian put it--a hanky ripped into three tiny bits and pasted on."
Her grandmother looked her over in the minuscule bikini she wore and smiled wryly. "I am surprised he complained. You are gorgeous, Chiquita."
Sarita chuckled. "He was complaining that he found it distracting when we were trying to sort out a way off the island."
"Now that I can believe," she said with a grin, and then tilted her head and asked, "He is a good man, si?"
"Yes," Sarita answered without hesitation. "He is a very good man."
"How?" she asked at once.
Sarita blinked in surprise, but didn't have any trouble answering. "Well, he's strong and smart and brave. He's considerate too. And he can cook," she added, that was pretty important since she couldn't. "And I think he must be the most patient man I've ever met, and--" Sarita paused and glanced at her grandmother uncertainly when she released a little sigh. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," her grandmother said quickly.
It was Elizabeth Dressler who said, "I'm afraid your grandmother and I have allowed ourselves to dabble in fantasy a bit more than we should to relieve the boredom here. We had rather built up the hope that someday perhaps Ramsey would die, and we would be free to invite you here. We were sure once you met my Thorne, the two of you would fall in love and we could live happily here with the pair of you producing several grandbabies for us to spoil."
"What?" Sarita gasped, her eyes wide with shock. Turning on her grandmother, she said, "You didn't!"
"Well, Thorne thought you were pretty when he saw your picture . . . and he enjoyed your letters as much as we did," her grandmother said defensively. "And he is a good man, Chiquita. He is so good to us, but he is so lonely. He deserves to be happy too." She sighed and shook her head. "But if you love this Domitian then . . ." She shrugged.
"I never said I love Domitian," Sarita squawked with alarm, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. "We hardly know each other. We only met a couple days ago on the little island. I can't possibly love him."
"The things you said about him suggest you know him well, and they sounded like love to me," her grandmother said and then glanced to Elizabeth Dressler. "Did you not think so, Elizabeth?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Si." Her grandmother glanced back and shrugged. "But if it is not, then bueno. There is a chance still for you and Thorne."
"Er . . ." Sarita said weakly.
"Come on, Maria," Mrs. Dressler said, sounding amused. "Thorne was making tea. Let's go see if it is ready and leave Sarita to dress."
Nodding, her grandmother moved around behind the woman's chair and wheeled her out.
Sarita watched them go and then blew out her breath and shook her head.
"Unbelievable," she murmured. The pair had been marrying her off to Thorne in their fantasies before she'd even met them, let alone the man in question. Wow. So this was what having a grandmother was like?
The thought made her smile faintly. Sarita's grandparents on her mother's side had died while she was quite young. Her memories of them were fuzzy at best. They consisted of a grandfather who always had a smile on his face and a cigar in his hand, and a grandmother who had smelled of lavender. That was it. It looked like having a grandparent was going to be interesting.
Shaking her head, she began to pull the borrowed clothes on over her swimsuit.
Thirteen
"You must be tired after swimming all night."
Domitian tore his eyes away from the closed door to Mrs. Dressler's room at that comment from Sarita's grandmother and turned his attention back to the people seated at the tiny kitchen table with him. Mrs. Dressler, Maria Reyes, and Thorne. The table seemed almost too small for the three of them to eat at. He hadn't thought they'd fit five chairs around it. They'd managed it, though. It was tight, but would serve for having tea.
"Yes, I am a bit tired," he said finally, mostly because they would expect any normal person to be tired after such a trek. But while Domitian was tired, he was also in pain. He'd definitely used up a lot of blood with the swim here and needed more. However, he wasn't going to feed off any of the people here at the table. The women were both in their late seventies by his guess, and fragile. Feeding off them could cause a heart attack. As for Thorne--
His gaze shifted to the man. Thorne looked to be in his early thirties, but there was no way he was that young. This house was old and the walls thin, Domitian had had no trouble hearing what Mrs. Dressler had told Sarita about her marriage and her son's birth. If he'd been born eight months after she and Dr. Dressler married and moved to Venezuela, then he knew Thorne was in his fifties.
It wasn't Thorne's age, however, that removed him from consideration as a blood donor. It was the fact that he wasn't wholly human. Domitian had no idea how the DNA splicing had affected Thorne's blood, or how his blood would affect him. He wouldn't risk it.
"Oh well--" Sarita's grandmother began, and then paused as the bedroom door opened and her granddaughter stepped out.
Domitian was on his feet at once, and moving behind the empty chair next to his own. He'd fetched it for her from the living room as they'd arranged the table. It was a straight-backed cushioned chair and he now pulled it out slightly, his eyes sliding over Sarita as she approached in a pure white peasant blouse with a slate-blue peasant skirt. She looked beautiful and he smiled and murmured, "Lovely," as she approached.
Sarita smiled at the compliment as she settled into the chair he held for her. "Thank you."
"My pleasure," he murmured, easing the chair in.
"Domitian was just saying that he was tired from swimming all night," Sarita's grandmother commented as he reclaimed his seat.
"Yes," Mrs. Dressler agreed. "And actually I could do with a little rest myself. I'm not used to getting up this early."
"Neither am I," Maria Reyes admitted and then confessed, "I seem to sleep in later and later the older I get."
"Then I think we should all go to bed after tea," Mrs. Dressler announced. "Sarita, you can have the guest room upstairs. It used to be my room until . . ." She gestured to her wheelchair with distaste.
"Domitian can have my room," Thorne said. "I'm not tired, and someone should keep an eye on the guard on the beach anyway. Make sure he doesn't come up to the house."
"Wel
l, good then. It is all decided," Sarita's grandmother said brightly. "We will finish our tea and then all get some rest. That way we will be bright and well rested when we decide how best to get the needed information to the police waiting to raid the island."
Domitian eyed the old women, noting their satisfied expressions and got the distinct impression they had planned this between the two of them. They obviously didn't want Sarita doing anything as risky as accompanying him to the house to use the phone, and he agreed with them. In fact, they'd just made things easier for him. He could pretend to go to bed, wait until he was sure Sarita was sleeping, and then slip out and go make the call himself . . . stopping along the way to feed on one of Dressler's security men of course. Or two, he added, and then noticed that Sarita was eyeing him with concern.
No doubt she'd noticed his pallor, Domitian thought with an inward sigh. Unfortunately, the sun was now climbing the sky and streaming through the windows and there was no way she would miss it. The woman didn't miss much of anything from what he could tell.
"Yes, sleep sounds a good idea," he said now, smiling at Sarita's grandmother and Mrs. Dressler.
Much to his relief, Sarita nodded in agreement and her grandmother then asked her if she'd received her last letter before leaving for Venezuela. As she turned to answer her, Domitian considered his plan. Telling his uncle that the island had been purchased under the name Elizabeth Salter would be helpful in getting them here, but it certainly wouldn't prepare the Rogue Hunters for what they would encounter once they arrived. Part of his coming had been to get as much information as he could about the security on the island and whatnot.
Turning to Thorne, he asked, "Do you know how many security men and domestic workers Dr. Dressler has on the island?"
The man hesitated, but then shook his head regretfully. "Other than a couple of trips to check out where the cameras were and to see if I could not take one of the boats and get my mother and Maria away from here, I stay away from that side of the island as much as possible."
"At my request," Mrs. Dressler said solemnly. "The last thing I want is Ramsey to get his hands on Thorne and experiment on him as he has the others. So he stays here at the cottage for the most part."