Skye hung in the shifting water for a split second, then with all her strength tried to follow him. But immediately hands seized her from above and she was hauled upwards, away from Hunter’s disappearing form. Her head broke the surface, and she coughed and choked.
A voice swore in shock. “Skye!” the voice choked out. “I thought you were...”
She flailed weakly, trying to break free. Hunter – she had to get to him...
The voice swore again, arms struggling to restrain her, and both she and her rescuer sank momentarily beneath a crashing wave. They rose to the surface again, spluttering and coughing. “Skye,” he gasped, “Stop! You’ll have us both under. Don’t make me knock you out.”
Exhausted, she went limp, tears spilling from her eyes as she felt herself pulled further and further away from Hunter. The distance felt physical, a hollow that grew. Her rescuer found his footing on the sandy floor at last and hefted her awkwardly in his arms, stumbling through the rough shallows to set her down on the wet shingle.
She looked up into familiar hazel eyes. “Ethan?”
Ethan grinned weakly, looking strangely relieved. “Hey,” he said softly. He reached out a careful hand and gently pushed a strand of wet hair off her face. The gesture, so familiar in someone else, felt like a blow. “Amber’s gone for help, her cell was flat. Skye, what were you thinking, going in on a day like this, and in your clothes too?” he asked. “I thought – I thought you didn’t plan on coming out. You were down a while – for a really long time. I didn’t think you were still alive when I got to you. I really don’t understand how...” he bit his words off.
“He’s…he’s still out there,” Skye cried, “I have to get to him.” She struggled to rise, but Ethan held her down, frowning and looking at her oddly.
“Who is still out there exactly? For a second there, I almost thought I saw...”
But past him in the rolling breakers Skye caught a flash of red, a figure tumbling close to shore. Dad. Numbness moved down her body, an icy stillness of nightmare horror.
She pointed in horrified silence. At once Ethan sprinted towards him, Skye stumbling after. In moments he’d pulled her father from the surf and laid him on the sand, and was busy with CPR. Skye crumpled next to them, reaching around Ethan’s busy hands, tugging at her dad’s T-shirt to straighten it, patting at him uselessly until she was pulled away, folded into Ethan’s arms where she clung like a child, weeping hot tears into his sodden shirt. Everything was cold grief and loss. Then they went still, as with a groan her father moved.
“What the...” Ethan whispered. At that moment a clatter from the archway announced reinforcements. Ethan turned to hail them as Skye threw herself down at her father’s side. He blinked up at her, meeting her gaze, his own heartrendingly broken. The hand he reached towards her was tightly closed. As Skye took it in both of hers he opened his palm, loosening his grip on a tangle of fine chain and shells that fell to the sand between them. Skye stared at it, momentarily frozen. Then she snatched it up, lifting it over her head, and swiftly thrust it down the front of her wet shirt.
36. Courage
Ethan and Skye stood outside the medical centre. Her father had been checked in, and checked over, almost an hour ago. He was okay, physically, but would be kept in for observation. ‘Indefinitely’ had been the unspoken implication. The assumption seemed to be that he had tried to end his life in the waves.
Skye knew there was nothing she could say that would help his cause. She wasn’t even sure they weren’t right about his motives. When he had looked at her she’d seen how damaged he was. It couldn’t hurt him to have professional care until they could let Uncle Mike know. She’d left five messages on Mike’s answer-phone. Maybe he was surfing, she thought exhaustedly, picturing the normality of the life she used to know where Mike was always surfing when he was needed.
The Doctor had wanted to keep Skye in too, but unable to deny her perfect health, had grudgingly agreed to her request, discharging her with strict instructions to go straight home and rest.
“I’ve got the van right outside,” Ethan offered, “I’ll drop you at the café.”
“Sure,” Skye agreed, barely attending him. She was hyper-aware of the necklace beneath her wet T-shirt, pressing against her skin. Her wet puffer jacket on over her wet clothes, she should have been cold. But she wasn’t.
And something else fought with the overload coursing through her dazed mind. An aching hollow had begun the moment Hunter had fallen away from her. It pulsed, filling her consciousness. But it wasn’t grief. It was something else, something she’d never felt before. She needed to be alone to work it out.
They had nearly reached the café when Ethan quietly swore.
“What?” Skye asked.
“Nothing. It’s just...Amber. I told her I’d be right back.”
“She’s not waiting at the beach is she?”
Ethan looked sheepish. “Not now, I guess.” There were no parking spaces free outside Bliss. He rolled the van to a stop a bit further along and pulled out his phone. “Ouch.” he said, reading a message. “I’d better go. I’ll double-park, just come in for a few minutes, make sure you’re okay. Maybe wait while you tell Morgan and Rowena about your dad?”
“Actually – I’d rather tell them alone. You don’t mind, do you?” Skye looked back at the café. She’d lost all track of time but guessed it was early afternoon. And tonight Ethan’s brother’s band would be performing. Another bad night for Sebastian craziness to intrude in a public way. Not to mention the plan forming in her mind. “I might not tell them just yet.”
“You have to let them know about this.”
“I will,” she said, “But not right now. No need to have their night ruined. I’m safe. Dad’s safe. Telling them can wait, truly. I’ll tell them after closing. Okay?” Ethan looked at her steadily for a minute then shrugged, resigned.
“How you’re so okay, I have no idea, Skye. You must have nine lives, you and your dad.” He shook his head. “It’s incredible you’re both all right. I think it’s great you tried to save him...but it could have all gone really, really wrong. Promise me you won’t try anything like that again.”
Skye squeezed the hand Ethan had laid on her arm. “Thanks Ethan.” He seemed to accept that as a promise, and Skye let the assumptions he’d made about that, and about what had happened with her dad, go. The truth was impossible to explain.
Waving the van off, Skye made for the side entrance to the studio, and managed to get across the courtyard and upstairs to change without being observed.
Grateful the café was keeping all hands and minds occupied, after changing she got back downstairs to the office without encountering any questions. From here to the studio, to exit again via the lane, would be easy. Skye chewed her lip as she stared at a blank sheet of notepaper, wondering what to write.
She was about to do something desperate, something that to anyone else would seem insane. If it wasn’t for the impossible certainty she had inside, her idea would seem insane to her as well. Next to the notepaper lay her necklace, the fine chain now carrying only Hunter’s shell, like a circle of storm cloud made solid, contained by links of gold.
Hunter wasn’t dead, she was certain of it, despite what it had looked like when he’d fallen away from her into the depths. This pain wasn’t that pain, this aching hollow. She’d never felt this emptiness before, this sense of being incomplete. Her feeling of connection with him hadn’t left her. It had changed. It was as if she felt him, and felt the absence of him, magnified by a thousand, forming a thread that joined them. And she had the means to follow that thread, to find him, to go to him. Her father was literally living proof of that. She just had to be brave enough.
She knew her plan could go badly wrong, really badly wrong, just like Ethan said. And if it did, she didn’t want village speculation hovering on anyone but her. And she didn’t want Morgan or anyone who cared about her to think she had left them, or harmed herself, on purpos
e. But she had to do this, she had to find Hunter. He needed help, she knew it, and she was the only one who could help him now.
“Lots to catch you up on. See you later tonight. Love, Skye” she wrote, then propped the note up against the office phone. The note would make it clear she planned to come back. Her well-documented difficulties with swimming should account for...a bad outcome. Her swimsuit would show the swim was planned. If this went wrong, people would think she’d simply been overcome by her fears. It would have to be enough.
Nearly an hour later Skye stepped out onto Ciarlan Cove, hazy with fine drizzle. It was deserted, essential for her plan. The shingle was littered with shreds of torn seaweed, and the surging breakers had subsided to low steady waves. The tide was still receding.
She had a reasonably clear idea of where she’d been when Jarrod had first spoken to her. Less clear was where she’d been when he had drawn her below. She closed her eyes momentarily as faint nausea swept through her, leaving behind a residue of fear.
Resisting it, she opened her eyes and tried to trace a line from that point out to deep water, to where Hunter could have fallen away. But even as she did, she acknowledged that the need for a starting point was irrelevant for any other reason than that it identified the shortest path to where everything inside her drew her to Hunter. The inexplicable, aching absence and presence of Hunter, somehow entwined, cast a direct line to him. All she had to do was follow it, like a lifeline from her soul to his.
All she had to do? Facing the shifting surface of the Cove, she was forcibly struck by the insanity of her plan. For the briefest moment she contemplated turning around, going back through the archway, back to the café.
But that meant leaving Hunter to his fate, wherever he lay out there, alone. No way. She would do whatever it took to see his eyes crinkle in a smile again. Her warmth had restored him when he’d become drained from pulling her back after their first kiss. She would find him, give him her warmth, and revive him again. She knew she was right about the shell keeping her safe. This would work. She just had to be brave.
She recalled his husky voice whispering find me. Yes, she answered silently, I promise.
Retracing her steps to the archway where a plastic bag with dry towels and warm clothing waited – more proof to anyone in a potentially tragic aftermath that tragedy wasn’t her agenda, she undressed and tucked her clothes on top.
Hunter’s heavy grey shell hung with the two white shells on the fine gold chain around her neck. One white shell, now feather-light, had once been as heavy as Hunter’s. The solid weight of his gleaming grey ring seemed like confirmation that he was still alive. Existing, he would say.
Alive. Lifting it off over her head, she undid the clasp and drew Hunter’s shell off, tucking the chain into her bag. Then she slid the shell ring onto her trembling finger. It fit perfectly. Heart pounding, she walked down the beach and into the sea.
Like before, the water barely felt wet. It was more like stepping into mist. But despite the proof of her father’s survival, and her own experience earlier that day, fear pulsed as she faced down the waves, bracing herself against their steady barrage. With each step, waves broke higher against her, resonating with the echo of the nightmare breakers rolling darkly through her mind. It took all her courage to keep her shaky legs moving forward into what her mind screamed was liquid death. Her breath began to come in shallow gasps as her subconscious anticipated the worst.
At last the waves broke over her chest and shoulders, her feet lifting off the sea bed a little with each onslaught. Even with their force blunted by the shell ring she wore, Skye was gaining no further ground. It was time to swim.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Pulling Hunter into her mind with all her strength and holding him there, she felt for the thread that connected them. Taking one last breath she had to believe she wouldn’t need, she sank to a crouch, blowing out a little of the air as she sank, letting the waves close over her.
Her heartbeat pounded through her head, fear like a scream she didn’t dare release building in her throat as she choked back that last desperate breath. Hunter, she thought like a prayer, find Hunter. Save Hunter. She opened her eyes and peered through silt-filled water. Although her eyes didn’t sting, visibility wasn’t much better than when they did.
Bringing her focus onto Hunter, his whisper to find me, Skye released her last breath with a wail of anguish even as she hardened her will.
And just like before, her need for air had been suspended. She simply was. Not breathing, not choking, not drowning. She looked around her through the water, Hunter’s bleak and violent world. Not breathing. It was the most unnatural sensation she had ever known. But it meant that she was right. She could do this.
As if her surrender to the power of the shell magnified her connection with its maker, Skye felt the pull of Hunter’s presence intensify, a magnet designed just for her. It was unmistakeable. The aching Hunter-shaped hollow, and the part of him that seemed now to be part of her, tightened and strained towards him, like a cord binding her to him. Following it, she pushed off from the seabed beneath the surging water.
And now a desperate sense of urgency filled her. Along with the increased connection, Skye sensed that if she didn’t reach him soon, the presence at the other end of this cord could vanish, leaving her broken forever. She swam, pulling through the dim water, following the invisible path that led to Hunter.
Time became meaningless for her in this otherworldly light between realities. The rock pillars of Ciarlan Cove, larger than she would have imagined, towered above her towards the surface. Forests of seaweed reached for her, schools of tiny fish breaking and reforming among the undulating fronds. Above her, shapes of large fish veered away, ominous shadows until they caught the dim light in a flicker of iridescence.
The faint light from the surface became more distant as she progressed, and the pressing shadow she knew should be numbing cold, denser. It was eerily silent, and the uncanny inability to feel the cold or wet had a claustrophobic effect, as if she was being smothered alive.
Too soon, she found that while she was impervious to the usual effects of immersion on a human, it hadn’t changed anything else about her abilities. She could only move at a nightmare pace, like slow motion, with the growing sense of urgency gnawing and grinding at her insides. She was quickly becoming too exhausted to move with any real progress, even with the outward current of the tide helping her. Eventually she had to rest. She let herself sink deeper through the darkening water.
It was like sinking into the nightmare where the rotting Mulligan boys had drawn her down. Her heart thudded as she imagined a seaweed forest closing over her. She might never find her way out of it in this state. Claustrophobic panic clawed at her, terror building into a scream.
But she couldn’t give in. She could do this. She could do this. She thought of her mother, half-stupefied by Mesmer, who had lived this life, and then walked out of the sea at Ciarlan Cove and into Dad’s arms. If Mum could survive this, half-alive, then Skye, fully present, could too.
To her relief she felt firm sand beneath her feet as she touched bottom, and after crouching for a moment with her eyes closed, centring herself, she felt calm enough to continue. Opening her eyes, she peered through the shifting shadow, unable to make out much beyond the sand immediately surrounding her.
And now the fear of Hunter’s clan, the thought of Jarrod lying in wait for her pushed through, adding to the emotions already threatening to overwhelm her resolve. What had happened to them?
She peered in every direction, searching for approaching shadows. But after an agonising wait with no sign of them, she acknowledged that there was nothing she could do to either help them if they needed it, or to fend them off if they didn’t. Either way, crouching here frozen wouldn’t achieve anything. She had to keep moving.
Closing her eyes again, she felt with her heart along the connection that led to where Hunter must lie. She sensed him close now. His wa
n face, eyes rolling blindly up, filled her mind again: her falling angel, leaving her. Not dead, she reminded herself fiercely. The determination not to lose him was power to her tired body, and once more she moved forward, like wading through quicksand, following the pull of him.
At last she saw him, barely visible, a splash of pale in the shadows of the sea floor. Crossing the last stretch, she fell in slow motion to her knees beside him.
He was completely motionless, eyes closed, a marble statue, heartbreaking and beautiful. Her heart seemed to stop. Calling his name, her voice was less than sound in the vast pressing silence. She tried to shake him, to alert him to her presence, tried to pull him into her arms. He was immoveable, as cold and heavy as granite. As if he’d become part of his shattered city. Was she too late?
Instinctively, she moved over him, floating to cover the length of him with her body. Then she clung to him, holding herself close to him, willing warmth she couldn’t feel at all to fill him.
For an immeasurable time they lay together, like a monument to lovers consigned to oblivion on the sea floor. Then, almost imperceptibly, Skye felt a change. His cheek beneath hers felt – not exactly warm, but – less cold. A minute change, but a change nonetheless. Something was happening. She pressed her cheek to his with all her strength, and as the minutes ticked by – two or two thousand, she couldn’t tell – it became unmistakeable: his skin was warming beneath hers.
Daring to hope, she lifted her head and searched his face. His eyelids fluttered, flickering open, and his charcoal grey eyes met hers. There was no surprise in them. It was as though her presence was the only thing that made any sense to him. He slowly lifted his arms and closed them around her. The hollow aching absence of him inside Skye dissolved.
Find Me (Immersed Book 1) Page 33
