Authors: Joss Ware
W
yatt still couldn’t believe that Remington Truth had left her dog behind when she took off.
What in the hell had possessed her to do such a damned foolish thing? And why would she take a risk, on her own, out beyond the safe walls of the estate?
He looked over at Dantès, who seemed to be just as confused as he was. The dog whined and licked his hand briefly, as if to say, “Where is she?”
It had to do with that damn orange crystal, he was sure of it. But to leave Dantès behind? He couldn’t believe she’d ever do that.
Even when he found the note on her bed:
Take care of Dantès for me. I don’t want anything to happen to him.
Well what about her? Didn’t she care about her own safety?
What the hell was she up to?
If she hadn’t left a note, Wyatt would have wondered if she’d somehow been kidnapped or taken away against her will when she went outside the walls during the day. But obviously she’d planned for and executed her own disappearance.
And that was why, against all logic, the morning after realizing she’d disappeared, he went beyond the safe walls himself. He led a horse by the reins as Dantès roamed ahead, sniffed and scanned the area in great big sweeping S shapes, then bounded back to his current master as if to touch base.
So far the German shepherd mix hadn’t picked up his mistress’s scent, which added to the concern in his intelligent, amber eyes, but his determination was evident.
Three hours later searching the perimeter of the walls, and more than a mile in circumference, Dantès finally found her trail.
But no sooner had he sounded the alarm than he took off and was gone. For good, leaving Wyatt standing there with a wry smile on his face. He’d have to follow as well as he could, but it would take a lot longer on only two legs.
At least Remy wouldn’t be alone.
And he hoped to hell she showed a bit more appreciation if he found her and brought her back to safety than she did the last few times he’d saved her butt.
I didn’t mean to sound ungracious.
Hell, she’d been the epitome of ungracious since he’d first laid eyes on her. Ungracious and haughty. Like a damned princess.
The stab of grief caught Wyatt by surprise, and he rubbed his stinging eyes with a brisk thumb and forefinger. His precocious little Abby had been fond of princess words, and in fact that was how the phrase was coined.
Oh
God
, he missed her.
Wyatt rubbed his eyes harder, as if to blot out the memory even as he tried to pull up an image of her in his mind. His cell phone, which had a variety of pictures on it and had been his most prized possession since coming out of the cave, was back in Envy. He kept it safely in his room so he could protect it and keep it charged as needed.
He couldn’t breathe for a moment, remembering Abby’s sparkling eyes and curly dark hair. He grieved for her and for David, his towheaded mischief-maker who never had more than a brief moment of bad temper.
He’d lost them . . . lost all of them—and a year after coming out of that damned cave, could still hardly comprehend that they were gone.
He hadn’t been there for them. To protect them and save
them
as he’d done for so many others.
No matter what, he should have been there. He should have been there to save his family.
And that was why, whether she liked it or not, Remington Truth was going to have to deal with him.
Because he knew she was important, and he was going to find her and protect her if it was the last thing he did.
F
ence swam up and down along the shimmering barrier, desperation making his strokes sharp and jerky.
Ana.
He had to find a way to get through that curtain. There had to be a way.
But he darted back and forth, like a trapped fish himself, with no sign of another safe passage, and realized he didn’t have any more time to waste.
There had to be another way.
Could he move one of the anchor crystals? He’d seen one earlier, when he was with Ana.
Unable to see much in the dim light, even with the shimmery curtain, Fence darted back to where he’d left the hand-cranked flashlights and snatched one up.
Once he had the light, it took him only a moment to locate the nearest one of the fist-sized lavender stones settled on the ground. He recognized the way the energy emanated from it, fanning out in a slender but extensive array of undulating energy.
He didn’t dare get too close, so in the end he decided to try the billiard route. He found a pole and a relatively circular stone, lined it up like a cue ball on the flattest part of the uneven ground, and took a shot.
He missed the first one, drew in a deep breath that brought a wave of cool inside his hot, panicked body, and focused. Lined it up.
Shot.
Click.
Although the sound was lost in the depths of the water, he imagined the satisfying noise the makeshift cue ball must have made when it slammed into the crystal.
To his satisfaction, the glowing stone was knocked out of place and rolled several feet . . . taking its shimmery wall with it.
Fence stared at the new development in growing frustration and felt the edge of panic threatening once again. This time, however, the panic wasn’t for him.
It was for Ana.
Ana.
He drew in another deep breath and thought some more. He knew how to remain calm in emergencies, and this was the height of emergency.
Think, Bruno Paolo, fucking
think.
If he could disrupt the force field in some way, he could get through.
For some reason, the image of a bird sitting on a wire popped into his mind, and he thought about . . . energy takes the path of least resistance. What would disrupt the flow of electricity?
He wasn’t certain that the force field was made of electricity, but with nothing else to go on he forced himself to think clearly and logically.
Rubber . . . glass . . .
Rubber.
That was it. He took off back to REI, surging through the ocean like a fierce submarine. Due to the fact that he’d already surveyed the remains of the store, he knew exactly where to find the self-inflating
rubber
rafts.
He had a bad moment when he could only find one . . . but then spied a second plastic-wrapped dingy yellow package and snagged it, hoping and praying this would work.
If not, he was fresh out of ideas.
Fence returned to where the safe passageway had been because he had to follow Ana’s trail. It took only a few moments for him to inflate one of the rafts by pulling its cord, but immediately it began to float toward the surface. He had to waste precious moments locating a heavy piece of metal to lash to it, but once he accomplished that, his plan moved along readily.
A few moments later he had two rafts, each lashed together on one end. Then he bent them at the ties to make a sort of inverted vee, weighted down and ready to shove into place in the center of the force field.
One, two
. . .
three
.
He maneuvered the shield into place, suddenly worrying that the rafts weren’t wide enough to cut through the force field . . . but they seemed to be.
When he saw that the shimmering curtain was disrupted by the bright yellow vee, he had a surge of real hope. But did he dare try it?
He was just about to dart through, taking his chance, when he felt something move behind him.
Spinning in a cyclone of bubbles, he saw a large, sleek fish cruising toward him. Perfect.
Fence waited impatiently for the creature to come closer, then chased it through the vee and watched in relief as it traversed the passage without hesitation.
He followed, shining his light around in search of the trail Ana’d left, his heart leaping every time he saw a new spot of gray sparkle. She’d done an amazing job of leaving a trail of bread crumbs for him.
He was looking so hard for the gray sparkles that he almost missed it, but a cloud of something dark and inky wavering in the water caught his attention as his light shone past. He swung the flashlight back and saw with a horrified start that it was red ink . . . blood?
His insides plummeted and cold fear rushed through him as he dove toward it.
It was the man, Darian. He was dead, his neck slit, crystals sliced from his abdomen, his skin white and ghostly in the darkness. His eyes stared at nothing.
Fence’s heart raced. Ana wouldn’t have done that . . .
Then he turned, desperation rising inside him again, and caught the flash of something else pale and white. His insides plummeted as he darted closer to see.
It was Ana, pale and limp, lying on the ocean floor. A large boulder rested on her arm to ensure that she’d have no chance of making it to the surface.
My God, those fucking bastards.
And blood . . . it rose in little red spirals from the four neat, empty places in her rib cage.
Her crystals were
gone
.
Fence turned to ice for an instant, then shot into action.
Ana
.
Her crystals were gone. She was bleeding.
And, oh God, she can’t breathe down here without them.
He shoved the boulder away and gathered her up, terrified when she didn’t move, when she hung limply in his arms as he propelled himself back through the makeshift tunnel in the shimmery barrier, then shot up like a rocket: up, up, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty feet . . .
Until he burst free into the clean air.
“Ana,” he gasped, choking and out of breath as he waited for his lungs to catch up with the change from gill to nose.
“Ana!”
He shifted her sharply in his arms, getting her face out of the water, terror shuttling through him.
They were so far from shore—it would take forever to get her there. She needed CPR . . . he had to get her to land . . .
Even as he realized it was too late, that she had to have been down there too long, he was kicking with powerful thrusts, orienting himself toward the land he knew was south and west.
He paused and bent over her there in the water, his legs fanning back and forth, breathing a deep gust of air into her mouth, wondering if this was how to give CPR to an Atlantean—if it would even help.
As he blew the breath into her mouth, blood spurted from the holes where her crystals had been. He froze, his body going numb.
He was literally blowing air—and blood—into and through her.
Oh God.
Shaking with terror, Fence stared down at her, his feet working madly to keep them both afloat.
Elliott! I fucking need Elliott!
He closed his eyes and hovered for a moment, pressing his powerful hands against her wounds while horribly aware of the blood oozing from her side, slick and warm on his skin, drifting into the sea.
And then something warm and rubbery bumped his leg. Fence whirled in the water and saw the silhouette of a dorsal fin less than a foot away.
For an instant he was sure it was a shark, attracted by her blood . . . but even in his blinding fear for her, he realized a bloodthirsty shark wouldn’t have wasted any time attacking.
Was it possible it was one of the dolphins she’d petted? What were their names?
The bump came against him again, and though Fence couldn’t see many details despite the full moon, he reached for the animal.
Then something else bumped him from behind and he felt the second dolphin nosing against him. Stunned, he wasn’t certain what to do, flanked as he was by the animals. But they seemed to want something.
When they made no attempt to move and instead seemed to be along for the swim, Fence did something he’d never imagined doing. He grabbed the jagged dorsal fin of one and lifted Ana on top of the animal, using his arm to hold her in place, then curved his other arm around the other, letting his legs sag into the ocean.
The dolphins shifted, moving close together and holding him in place so he could use himself to cover the wounds as well as he could, pressing her body hard against him in the front and positioning his hand over the four spots on the back of her torso to try and stanch them.
And then he gave her CPR.
Breathe . . . pump,
spurt . . .
breathe . . . pump,
spurt . . .
breathe . . .
Was he doing her any good? Frustration and fear trammeled through him, and his eyes stung from something other than saltwater.
Then all at once she stiffened, jerked, and began to cough. More blood, and now water, oozed from her wounds, and Fence didn’t have time for relief as he flipped her over so she could spit up the water lodged in her lungs.
She coughed, shuddering violently and expelling more blood. Then he felt her body shift into a ragged rhythm of breathing.
“Ana,” he said, and then
Thank God
in his head. She was shivering now, bleeding harder, and he knew that though she was breathing—at least from one lung—he had to get her to land. Find something to wrap her up, to stop the bleeding.
Desperate to try anything, he shifted her position on the smaller dolphin, the one with the ragged fin, so she was lying on top of it with her hands positioned around the fin, and he climbed onto the other dolphin. Holding Ana in place, he gripped around the neck—if a dolphin had a neck—of the one he was on and then climbed onto the other creature.
Neither of the dolphins seemed to object; in fact they seemed to communicate with each other, using hollow clicks, and started swimming off in tandem. They were in perfect synchronization, neither moving ahead of the other, staying exactly together, nose-to-nose, dorsal fin to dorsal fin, streaking through the water.
The wonder of the moment was tempered by cold fear, however, as he held Ana in place, trying to read through the press of his fingers against her whether she was still breathing, whether she was getting warmer or shivering or reacting in any other way. The full moon revealed the dark trails of blood trickling down over his hand, onto the dolphin and into the water.