She was not thinking rationally. She did not grasp the larger picture. She did not know Gau as he did.
“Go where?” he asked. “We are on an island.”
And Lucy could not swim. He would let her cool off before he sought her out, before he found her and explained . . . What? That her family must be sacrificed to her destiny?
Griff frowned. “Even so . . .”
“Oh, let the girl have her exit,” Morgan said. “She has earned that much.”
“She has earned much more,” Conn said harshly. “Including the right to be left alone.”
Alone.
In the clear cold dark, sound rushed upon her. Thought faded and fell away. Her nostrils were tightly sealed, her eyes wide open, her body as sleek and barreled as the swells she rode. The pulse of the surge was her pulse. The briny beating heart of the sea throbbed in her chest.
She moved with the currents and by instinct, bubbles spangling the water like stars. Dazzled by the constellations of her breath, immersed in wonder and sensation, she spiraled among swaying forests of kelp, over ridges of sea flowers. Every quiver and vibration, the darting fish, the swaying weed, the ponderous song of the whales, was caught by her whiskers. The texture of the water rippled through her fur.
She surfaced, and the world burst on her, explosions of light and air against a liquid horizon, harsh and overwhelming.
Breathing, she dived again.
Her sorrow was a weight in her chest, her fear and purpose a pressure at the base of her skull.
But beneath the waves, everything was buoyant and clear. With a flick of her flippers, she wheeled and soared, breaking the flat planes of her previous existence like a bird. She had slipped the shackles of land, the burden of responsibility. In the ocean, she was graceful, weightless, and alone.
She was free.
Lucy was not in their room.
Conn stood in the doorway, aware of an unaccustomed hollow in his chest.
Selkie were solitary. He had always preferred his own thoughts, his own company, his own space.
Yet after centuries in the splendid isolation of his tower, he had somehow gotten used to seeing Lucy’s face over dinner at the end of the day, had grown attached to her quiet conversation and her unexpected passion and the glow of her eyes by fire and candle light.
The hearth was empty. Lucy was gone.
Conn frowned. When had he begun to count on her presence, to want her company?
When had he started listening like Madadh for the sound of her voice or her footsteps?
Madadh, he thought. The vise around his chest eased. Lucy must have taken the dog for its evening walk on the beach.
Reassured, he crossed to the window and swung open the glass. The light faded from sea and sky, leaving behind a gray and purple luster like the inside of an oyster shell and Sanctuary like the rounded pearl at the heart of the world.
He scanned the scalloped line of foam rushing and retreating along the shore.
He saw the dinghy, pulled up against the rocks, and an unacknowledged tension left his shoulders.
He saw the dog, a long, lean shadow.
And there, dark in the dying light, he saw the red of Lucy’s cloak, crumpled on the sand.
Conn’s heart pounded. His eyes strained to see as his mind struggled to process. Lucy sleeping, Lucy hurt, Lucy . . .
Gone.
His heart howled in silent protest.
Snatching up his sealskin, he plunged down the steps of the tower, his own careless words drumming in his ears.
“Will you go after her, lord?”
“Go where? We are on an island.”
And Lucy could not swim.
Could not . . .
Should not . . .
Buggering hell. He slammed through the postern door.
She must not go alone into the sea. Not the first time. Without guidance, she could become dazzled, disoriented, lost beneath the waves.
Lost.
As his father was lost.
Conn stumbled and burst onto the beach, more bull than human, blind with fear, uncoordinated with worry. Madadh guarded a slim pile at the water’s edge. Lucy’s cloak. Lucy’s clothes.
Lucy was gone.
His heart turned to ice in his chest. She had left him.
He wanted to scream her name and plunge into the sea after her.
He fought the impulse. He had no way of knowing where in all the vast ocean she was. Or what she was. If she was Changed or lost or drowned.
His hands fisted at his sides.
He stood listening, casting his heart and all his senses out to sea to find her. But all that came back to him was the low roll of the breakers and the high seabirds’ cries.
Madadh rose, ears drooping, skinny tail pressed between his legs, as if his dim, doggy brain accepted responsibility for Lucy’s leaving.
“Not you,” Conn said hoarsely. “Me.”
He reached for her cloak, as if the touch of the fabric which had touched her skin could provide a hint of comfort, a clue to her presence or her fate. Something fell from the cloak’s folds, flashing as it tumbled to the sand.
Conn picked it up, his hand trembling.
The aquamarine drop glinted in his palm, pale as a diamond in the twilight.
His heart clenched. His hand closed.
Dropping to his knees on the hard sand, he bowed his head.
Lucy.
Lucy. A finger touch on her soul.
She was Lucy.
Her name was a chain around her neck, tightening her throat. She dived to escape, but the sound followed her into the depths like the ringing of a buoy’s bell.
She scythed through the water, pursued by her name, by the memory of his voice.
She had left him, the one who called her. The one she loved. She wept tears into the sea from large, moist, round eyes that saw in the dark.
But she did not turn back. The siren song of the sea rushed in her ears, drummed in her head, as she plunged in the wake of the sun, driven by a need deeper than hunger, more compelling than exhaustion, goaded on by visions of blood and tears that stained the water.
Wave upon wave.
Day after day.
She slept in snatches, bobbing in the waves, breathing brine. Woke and swam. Slept and swam again. Until her strength was nearly depleted, until her mind was almost gone, until she existed only as a purpose and a shadow gliding in the shadows of the water.
Following the sun.
Going home.
She carried the one she loved with her, a fish hook caught in her heart, and every mile she swam from him ripped her chest and made her bleed.
The wardens gathered around the ancient map imbued with magic on Conn’s desk. The tall windows barred the tower room with rose light and with shadow.
As if, Conn thought, the castle already burned. He clasped his hands behind his back, refusing to entertain the fantasy or the fear.
“There are no signs of life anywhere near the fissure,” Morgan said. He had just returned from the vent. “No squid, no shrimp, not even worms.”
“Killed by the heat,” Griff suggested.
Morgan shook his white-blond head. “Life thrives in the heat around the vents.”
Ronat frowned. “So if there is no life . . .”
“Then the vent opened only recently. After Gau’s visit,” Conn said grimly.
The issue was not the cause, but their response.
On the map, the demons’ activity was revealed as a throbbing red threat off the west coast of Sanctuary.
Never admit emotion. Never reveal weakness.
“How large is the seep?” he asked calmly.
Morgan shrugged. “The magma has not built up. But the cracks are deep. I could see the sulfur plume before I was down a hundred feet.”
Brychan whistled, obviously dismayed. “We cannot seal such a gap.”
“No.” Morgan turned his unblinking golden stare on Conn. “I should say . . . not without hel
p.”
Not without Lucy to boost and bind their powers together.
They all looked at Conn, as if expecting him to produce the targair inghean from thin air and save them all.
Conn quelled the impulse to shout at them. She was gone. She had left him. He could not save them.
“Even if we seal this fissure, there will be more,” Conn said.
“There are always vents,” Morgan said. “Thousands of them across the ocean floor.”
“But not this close to home,” Conn said. “This goes beyond a diplomatic skirmish at our borders. Hell strikes at our heart. The demons cannot break the wards on Sanctuary itself. So they open a fissure mere miles beyond our shore to use our own element against us. When the vent erupts—and it will erupt—the surge will flood us. We must control the surge. And evacuate Sanctuary.”
“Evacuate?” Enya’s voice was shrill. “No. Without Sanctuary, we are no more than mortals. We must go beneath the wave or age and die.”
There had been centuries when Conn might have welcomed death as a variation in his endless existence. Might have given up his responsibilities to join the king in the land beneath the waves. But to grow old cowed and conquered, knowing his death was defeat for his people . . . To die, knowing he would not see Lucy again . . .
No, Conn did not want to die. Not now.
He drew a breath. Loosed it. “Which is why the wardens will stay,” he said. “To hold the island if we can. And to fall with it if we must.”
Griff looked at him steadily. “And if we fail?”
Then his life and his love would both be forfeit.
“Then we will trust to be reborn on the tide,” Conn said. He regarded the few scattered blue sparks on the map, a taste like ashes in his mouth. “The youngest will survive. Along with however many of our people still exist in the sea or under the wave.”
“Survive, how?” Byrchan asked.
“There is a boat in the harbor,” Conn said. “Iestyn can sail.”
“Why a boat?” asked Enya. “Why can’t they simply Change?”
“With the right winds, a boat will get them clear. And there are things I would save from Sanctuary that they could take with them.”
Morgan lifted an eyebrow. “We flow as the sea flows. We have no need of possessions. What the surge seizes, we can retrieve again from the deep. What would you take from Caer Subai?”
Conn looked around the tower room where he had lived and ruled since before the sidhe fled to the west and Britain was overrun by the Romans and the Vikings and the monks. His room was furnished with treasures, his desk from a Spanish galleon, the fish-shaped lamp from the temple of Enki.
What would he save from the salvage of centuries?
“My dog,” he said.
An embarrassed silence fell.
“How very . . . human of you,” Enya said.
“The Creator gave us human form, too,” Conn said. “Perhaps it is only our pride that makes us deny our human affections.”
“Much good those affections have done us,” Morgan said.
Another silence.
Ronat cleared his throat. “There is no sign of the targair inghean?”
“No,” Conn said shortly.
Griff grunted. “Well, if you cannot find her, neither can the demons.”
“Unless she swims into a trap.” Morgan tapped the other side of the map, where a smattering of red dots clustered, demons off the coast of Maine. World’s End.
The possibility that Lucy might have fled to greater danger twisted Conn’s gut. But Hell’s focus was on Sanctuary. The activity on the map proved it.
“The demons were already active on World’s End,” he said evenly. He put his finger on a glowing spark north of the island. “One of them, Tan, is imprisoned here, beneath the water.”
Which accounted for that submerged stain.
At least he hoped Tan was the cause.
She came ashore in early twilight under a sky that smelled of snow. She raised her whiskered face to the breeze that blew from inland, scented with wood smoke and spruce. Recognition pierced her exhaustion. She knew this outcrop of rock and sand. This was the point on World’s End, a mile and a half from home.
The gray sea reached long fingers over the frozen beach. The air was cold and still.
She struggled on the broken shore, levering her weight on the rocks. For one awkward moment, as she flailed in the surf, panic swelled and threatened to swallow her. Would she . . . How would she become human again?
Her flippers scrabbled. Her belly scraped the shale. She tightened her stomach to shove herself forward and sprawled naked, half in and half out of the water, her wet hair in her face and the sea foaming around her ankles.
Lucy gasped. Shivered with shock and cold. Her fingers curled into the gritty sand.
Fingers. She had fingers. And ankles. Toes.
She staggered to her feet to see. Ten toes. Webbed.
Like Conn’s.
She swayed, unsteady as a newborn foal or a hospital patient after surgery. Naked. Naked and cold, tired and hungry. Her sealskin washed in the retreating waves like seaweed caught in the tide.
She raised her head, and the shore jumped out at her, etched in black and white, sharp and bright. Frost coated the rocks. Ice encrusted the frozen bladders of weed. The clouds, the same turbulent gray as the sea, were pregnant with snow.
Pregnant.
The word leaped in her mind like a flame, warming her, reigniting her sense of urgency.
Maggie was pregnant.
Lucy had to find . . . She had to warn her family.
She stooped for her pelt.
The fur rippled in the water. She hauled the heavy, wet pelt from the surf, streaming water. With trembling hands, she stroked the fur, a brindled silver gray, smaller and lighter than Conn’s in both weight and color. In her arms, it felt no more than damp.
Selkie magic? she wondered.
Why not?
She wrapped the pelt around her like a beach towel, over her breasts, under her arms. Her skin prickled with goose bumps. She was cold, but not intolerably so. She should be freezing . . .
Her heartbeat quickened. And then she realized. She was different. Changed. Her journey through the sea had changed her. She wondered if, when night fell, she would be able to see in the dark.
Her stomach growled.
She stumbled over the rocks on long, awkward legs and tender feet, picking her way up the beach to the trees standing sentinel along the road. She needed shoes. Shoes and clothes and food.
She could not remember the last time she had eaten. Days ago.
As she stepped from under the trees, a light snow began to fall. The soft, wet flakes dissolved against the black asphalt, softening the outlines of the trees, blurring the boundaries between earth and sky. She trudged along the shoulder of the road. Going home.
She didn’t want to be seen. Noticed. What would she say to a driver, a neighbor, the parent of a student, if they stopped and wanted to know why the teacher of the island’s first grade class was walking along the snowy road half-naked and wrapped in a fur?
“Think of it as wearing a fur coat,” Conn had said.
She smiled. Yes.
But the memory of Conn hurt her chest. Like poking a bruise. Like picking a scab. Bowing her head, she concentrated on putting one cold, bare foot in front of the other. The gravel stung her soles. Her stomach cramped. She was dizzy with hunger, trembling with fatigue.
Almost home.
She would not need to worry about encountering her father. At this time of day, he was always at the inn.
She spotted their rusting mailbox, lurching a little to one side ever since Bart Hunter swiped it in the truck one night. Staggering in exhaustion and relief, Lucy turned up the driveway and climbed the steps to the porch. The key was hidden under a lobster buoy by the door. But when she reached for the knob, it turned easily in her hand.
Sick panic lurched to her throat.
&nbs
p; Gau’s voice played in her head. “Do you know what I’ll do to them when I get there? Your pathetic excuse of a father. Your big brave brothers and their bitches.”
She whimpered and opened the door.
Old smells, old memories rushed at her, must and mildew and old carpet. The house was cold and quiet.
“Dad?” She croaked and cleared her throat. “Dad?”
Silence.
Heart thumping, she closed the door behind her. She should go upstairs. She needed warm clothes and a hot shower.
She shivered. She needed to call Caleb.
She went through the dark house to use the kitchen phone. A loaf of bread sat on the counter.
Oh, God, she was so hungry.
She seized the bread, ripping open the plastic sleeve, and jammed a slice into her mouth. It tasted so good. Her stomach demanded more. Still chewing, she grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet and slathered a second slice.
She would call Caleb in a minute. In just a minute. She ate standing up, like a horse, tearing into the food like an animal, almost choking in her eagerness to replenish her body. Water. She needed water. Her hand shook as she reached for the kitchen tap.
She heard the creak of the front door, felt a rush of cold air, and froze with her hand under the faucet.
She blushed like a dieter caught on a midnight raid of the refrigerator, like a drunk with his hand in the liquor cabinet. Like her father.
She swallowed hard. “Dad?”
Thumps. Footsteps, coming down the hall.
Lucy turned, pulling her sealskin more closely around her, her heart thudding in her chest. She was home. She didn’t need to hide what she was or be ashamed. Her mother was selkie. So was her brother. Her father knew.
“In here! In the kitchen,” she called.
More footsteps. Bart Hunter appeared in the kitchen doorway, lean, weathered, and gray as driftwood, all the life battered and bleached from him years ago.
His eyes rounded. His mouth dropped open in shock.
Lucy’s smile wobbled. So did her knees. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m really here.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.
Sea Lord Page 22
