Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (2 page)

Zeke let the power of the water, the surging, swelling, sheer force of the tide, grab hold of the board.

The bitch was angry tonight. The mood of the ocean was a complete mirror of his own. As if all the turbulence and turmoil swirling inside him manifested in the ferocious magnetic pull of the current, determined to drag him under, to make him pay for his foolishness, for his mistakes, for his arrogance.

The thunderous force built below him, alongside him, as the seawater gathered might and speed. With a quick jump, his feet found purchase on the board, and he crouched, arms out, knees bent, balance uneasy.

The fine mist of frigid water on his face, the salty brine in his nose, the muted roar of the wave as it started to crest all thundered through him. His heart pumped, triumph hurtling through his veins, as he mastered the physics of beating nature.

He kept his balance on the board, the fiberglass solid beneath his feet, the power of the water challenging his muscles, he rode the freaking cold water like a penguin on an iceberg.

The gulls still dipped and squawked, seeming to move closer to the beach, as if following something. One came particularly close to his head, and instinctively he ducked.

Dumb.

His Grandpop would have smacked him upside the head for that one.

As he straightened his body, lifted his head up, he saw a silhouette on the beach. A woman, her face in shadow, her body limned by moonlight, she stood sentinel.

But the sudden movement had thrown off his balance, and his arms tipped, one up, one down to maintain his position on the board. The adjustment was too late.

His left hand swooped up, connected with the wave over his head, sucking him into the swell of water. His feet lost purchase on the board, and he began a tumbling free fall into the drag of the water. He tucked his body, and covered his head, hoping to minimize the bruises and beating he would take from wiping out.

He couldn’t see anything, lost in the froth and dark black water, until suddenly the wave dropped him with a thump.

Pain, sharp and brutal, arrowed through his head.

And then...nothing.

Two

October 20

2:40 am

Cambria, California

I wandered along the sandy beach, careful to stay far away from the angry waves punishing the shore. A trail of seagulls followed me, diving and fighting over the crusts of bread I tossed.

The full moon hung high in the clear night sky, provoking the memory of another full moon as I tried not to recall the nightmare from thirteen years ago.

When life had changed irrevocably.

I wasn’t even sure why I was here. The anniversary of my grandparents’ murder loomed ever present in my mind.

The deliverer, my stepfather, was a demon in my memories, and water the method that killed them. And yet, like the temptation of a siren, the pull of the ocean beckoned to me. A terrible, terrifying lure.

Steely fog rolled in, misting my face and soaking my cream cable knit sweater. The lace hem of my brown skirt, damp from the sand, brushed at my ankles, while I curled my toes into the cold, wet sand and stared out at my lifetime nemesis.

The ocean moved like a slithering serpent, curling toward me then drawing away, taunting, scaring me with allure. The frigid chill of the receding tide was a promise or a curse or a portent—I was never sure which.

Would I ever be able to break the fear?

A deep unease spread through me and involuntarily I retreated from the water still some sixty feet away. The sense of impending doom had been growing for the last few days. A low frequency of turmoil that disturbed me at some hidden level and disrupted the inherent calm I had fought diligently for, upsetting the balance I struggled to maintain.

And I didn’t know why.

Nothing had changed. Mama and I had been settled in Cambria for nine years without any sign of discovery, without any hint of danger. Yet suddenly I felt as if danger was as close as the surf on the shore. I had safeguards in place, electronic alarms if my stepfather ever traced Mama, and human warning systems, the good old-fashioned gossip alerts from living in a small beach community. If any stranger in town asked about either of us, I would know by the time they left the shop where they made the inquiry.

A towel lay in the sand near the receding waves. The tide was moving out. Some tourist had left their belongings behind again. Except...the towel was dry. If the tide had come and gone, the towel should be soaking wet. A pile of clothing, t-shirt, sweatshirt, and running shoes lay discarded on the chilly sand. Next to the towel was a brick of wax. Surfboard wax.

Surely no one was crazy enough to surf on a cold Fall night like tonight?

That couldn’t be it. Must be teenagers, a secret tryst perhaps. A vagrant with no other place to sleep. Maybe. Except where were they?

I searched the beach cautiously. I had taken enough self-defense classes that unless I was faced with a gun or my worst nightmare, water, I was confident I could defend myself.

But I didn’t see anyone.

As insane as it seemed, I searched the waves. The moonlight glimmered on the black water, reflecting off the ripples that were nearly blinding in their brightness against the pitch of the sky.

And there I saw him, like an ancient Hawaiian God, balanced on the board, his body bathed with moonlight, a spectacular muscular display of man and nature as the wave rolled in and the water curled over his head.

My heart pounded furiously. It pushed,
boom-boom, boom-boom,
against my breastbone as I watched him battle the swell of the wave. My blood pulsed so hard I could feel the strength of it in my throat. My breath caught, terrified and fascinated, until disaster struck, and he faltered.

I saw the precise moment when his balance failed, watched with horror as the surf battered and rolled his body, until the water dumped him on his head like a giant dropping my old, beloved Lunette to the earth.

“Oh no, no, no,” I whispered into the heavy night air.

I waited for him to get up.

I would watch, make sure he was safe, and then I would flee.

The tide pulled him back out into the scruff of broken shells and kelp.

And he didn’t move.

The tide rolled back in, sweeping the body closer into shore.

And he didn’t move.

“Get up, get up.” The thunderous beat of my heart echoed in my ears,
thump-thump thump-thump
. I couldn’t move, couldn’t hear anything else but my own terror as I waited.

The gulls swooped closer to him.

I imagined they were squawking to each other but nothing penetrated the terrified, panicked rush of my blood.

Completely still, he lay in the shallow bit of water, on his back thankfully, so he wasn’t drowning as I watched.

Not again
.

I couldn’t watch someone die again.

Not this day for Goddess’s sake. The universe couldn’t be that cruel, could it?

The tide pulled his body out toward the waves. Water shush-shushed softly as it lapped at the shoreline and then rode back out to sea.

And still he didn’t move.

“Are you okay?” I shouted, hoping the noise would bring him to consciousness. Hoping he would pop up from his prone position and laugh crazily as I’d seen surfers do, and say something nuts like, “man what a rush,” and then go back out again.

But nothing.

I could see his chest rise and fall slowly, so he was breathing. But his body would shimmy on the inhale as if the cold was already seeping into his bones and muscles.

“Hey dude!” I tried again.

Just in case he was lying there catching his breath after that magnificent wipeout.

But he didn’t give any sign of consciousness.

A particularly strong wave rushed in, turned his body sideways, and pushed him further up on shore. As the next swell crested I knew that if he didn’t get up soon he would end up swept out to sea.

I was going to have to go get him.

Longingly, I looked back toward the parking lot.

The
empty
parking lot. There wasn’t time to go get help.

My cell was in my pocket and I pulled it out but I only had five percent of my battery left and no service. Half the time the stupid thing didn’t work out here. I was the only rescue in town. Goddess help him.

I edged closer to the shoreline and his body.

The moonlight rippled on the water making the ocean appear as if the giant black hole would swallow me up. My breath seized in my chest.

I tried to breathe in, but only tiny sips of air made it past my constricted lungs.

“Huh, huh, huh,” my breath wheezed. No, no, no. The chant pounded in my head, as my breath grew shorter and shorter, my vision went whiter and whiter.

At this rate, I would pass out and he would die. I could not let that happen.

I stopped. Shut my eyes. Put my hands together in prayer position, mouth closed, I breathed in slowly through my nose, imagining myself on a magnificent, spiritual mountaintop and ignoring the susurrous of the water against the sand.

Slowly, slowly I let the breath out, chanting softly, “You can do this, you can do this.”

I took one step for every word, controlling my breath, reassured by the fact that I had a paper bag tucked in my skirt pocket if I began to truly hyperventilate.

He lay maybe ten feet away.

A smaller wave rolled in, coming perilously close to my toes. I danced backward, even as my feet sunk further into the saturated sand.

“Wake up,” I yelled.

I concentrated on him instead of the steadily encroaching water. I had to get to him now before another large swell dragged him back out to sea.

He didn’t seem to be regaining consciousness.

I glanced up, supplicant to the moon, my namesake, the one I hadn’t been able to acknowledge in thirteen long years.

And I begged.

“Please let me do this. Please.”

With a deep breath, I watched and waited until the water was as far away as possible and then I ran, pleading the entire way. “Please, please.”

I squatted down and hooked my hands under his armpits, scooping until his shoulders were in the crook of my elbows. Then I inhaled and yanked.

He barely moved.

“Come on, you big, you big...lug.”

I yanked again.

Panicked, I looked up. The water was coming.

I watched mesmerized, terrified, while my heart pounded, my blood thickened and I wondered if this was how it would end.

Here and now.

Sucked in by the beast. Consumed by its power. Destroyed by the terror.

I refused to let my fear win.

As soon as the water hit his body, I used the motion of the tide as it rolled in to pull him further inland.

As the water rushed back out, I held on with a death grip, my fingers cramped against the bare skin of his shoulders. The sea sucked at his feet, trying to take him from me.

I waited, unable to close my eyes, gaze locked on the water rolling back in. As soon as it hit I had to pull him backwards again.

A large wave broke near the shore. And I knew this was the chance I needed. I couldn’t think about the water rushing toward me, I had to concentrate on the physics, using the force of the water to pull him backwards, and not think about the black death coming for us, hovering, greedily waiting to suck us both out to sea.

The wave rushed toward me and lifted his body up. I scrambled backward, with great crab-like steps, his body heavy against mine, his head lolled against my breast.

That last little push before the wave retreated toppled me over and I fell into the cold wet sand. The damp soaked through my skirt and the bottom of my sweater. I held onto him, my arms curled around his muscled shoulders, my heels dug into the saturated sand as the tide tried to take us both back out into the abyss.

My blood thundered in my ears.

I panted with the effort. He was heavy.

His body lay limply between my thighs, his muscled legs stretched out along the sand, kelp wrapped around one ankle, arms flopped to the outside of my thighs, effectively trapping me on the ground.

Shivering, I watched another wave roll toward us, praying this one wouldn’t breach our spot. My arms ached with the strain of holding him up and keeping him from being pulled out to sea. To death. To...peace. I didn’t know if I had anything left.

The water sluiced onto the shore creeping inexorably closer.

I clenched him tightly, barely registering the slick feel of his cold skin, the sleek bulk of his muscles.

In the end, the wave didn’t even reach his toes.

We were safe.

For a single moment I rested my cheek against the top of his head. His wet corkscrew curls were damp against my skin, soaking through my sweater and bra, chilling me with salty water.

His body shook with the force of his involuntary shivers.

I had to get him awake and warm. Somehow.

There was no way I would ever be able to get him up to my car on my own.

“Wake up, please,” I whispered. “Please, please.”

Warm tears rolled down my face as reaction set in. Tremors of relief shimmied through me. I had braved the monster and survived.

His dead weight held me against the sand and I couldn’t move. I flopped back on the towel, slid my legs out straight, arms out at my sides, palms up and his head dropped into the concave hollow of my stomach. I stared up at the moonlight, the bright silver rays mocking me as I tried to find some measure of calm.

What now?

I needed to check for injuries. A thousand thoughts flitted through my mind but only one took root, the interesting, amazing weight of him on top of me. Sort of.

The inferno of heat from his torso burned through my clothes warming my thighs, making me feel things I hadn’t felt...ever.

Suddenly, he exploded into motion, flipping over, straddling me, and pinning my arms to the ground, his face fierce, his body battle tense and primed for violence.

“What the hell?”

Three

Zeke didn’t remember getting here.

He stared down at the woman beneath him. Didn’t remember her.