“Layla…Please try to open your eyes.” Definitely a guy…and since I don’t really
know many of those, that narrows the list down pretty quickly.
A garbled groan oozes from my throat, as my
head rolls to one side to cough out a gurgling breath. I hear the scatter of dusty grit puffing away
in the gust from my lungs, and I wrench my lids open to a heap of washed-up
seaweed on a bed of sand. I roll onto my
back again, squinting against the glaring daylight. A head moves in to eclipse the sun, its
backlit face obscured by shadow. The
halo of short curls dances and sways in the breeze, a pleasant greeting filtering
through the air in that familiar voice.
“Hey there…You sure can give a guy a heart
attack, you know that?” I can only
respond with another groan, pressing my palms into the sand in an attempt to
sit up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa…Take it easy
there. Get your bearings first.” Tristan’s hand gently presses my shoulder
back down, and I flop backward like a ragdoll upon the sandy dune.
“Wh-what happened?” I stammer, clenching my
eyes closed again, as the vivid remembrance of suffocation charges like a bull
through my brain. “How’d you get me out
of the water?”
“You took care of that yourself,” he puffs out
a relieved chuckle. “We found you washed
up face-down on the sand. You must’ve
pulled yourself to shore before you passed out.
I should’ve warned you to watch out for rip currents.”
“Yeah,” I cough out a sarcastic snort with a
mumble under my breath. “Rip
currents.” My gut reaction is to tell
him I know what the hell a rip current is…and they don’t have elbows or hairy
heads. But then my thoughts flash to the
spinning whirlpool that sucked me under, and along to the insanity that’s been
polluting my brain lately. Maybe yet
another screw has come loose from my unhinged mind. Best I just keep my mouth shut.
But wait a minute…
“We?” I fight against Tristan’s cautioning advice
and rise up to sitting. “What do you
mean ‘we’ found you washed up on the beach?
Who’re we?”
“She’s not one for expressing gratitude, is
she?” A shiver of goose bumps crawls
over my skin at the taint of madness in that high-pitched snicker.
Pyke.
“You just get the hell away from me.” Suddenly I’m scrambling to my knees,
scurrying around behind Tristan and practically jumping piggy-back onto him, my
pruny fingers digging into his bare shoulders.
I said I’m no coward; but apparently, I stand corrected. I fish for more words but come up empty. All I’ve got is the icy glare I’m aiming past
Tristan’s shoulder, squaring Pyke’s face in my sights.
A knowing smirk contorts his bearded lips, and
it strikes me that his grungy hair is as dry as the day we met. He’s once again stark-dry from head to toe;
and logic would lead one to conclude he had no possible hand in my
near-drowning. Too bad logic has
forsaken me, ever since Pyke came barging into my life.
“Get
far, far, far away from me…and then
take a few extra steps, just for good measure.”
My eyes narrow a bit further as I struggle to rally the hard-edged
conviction in my voice. “Start. Walking.
Now.”
He just crosses his arms defiantly with a
swaggering tilt to his head, as another bray of laughter shakes his chest. He lists a little closer, a taunting leer
shadowed beneath his dark brow. “And
here I thought you were starting to warm up to me.” I hadn’t noticed from a distance just how
deep purple those circles under his eyes are…perhaps because they weren’t there
until I jammed my thumb into his eye sockets.
I fix him in my searing glare with a low
snarl. “I’d sooner warm up to Satan.”
“Well, of course…” A wicked smile lights his eyes. “He has Hellfire and whatnot at his
disposal.”
“Enough, Pyke,” Tristan shuts him down with a
sharp reprimand. “She’s not exactly
having the best day…Now’s not the time for games.”
I silently thank Tristan with a subtle squeeze
of his shoulder, his sun-baked skin a stark contrast to my clammy hands. All this talk about warming up to people, and
in fact I’m chilled to the core. There’s
an unnerving quiet while Pyke debates how much my torment is worth to him. I realize I’ve been holding my breath when he
turns with a shrug to head for the water.
A shudder rolls through me as I draw in a lungful through chattering
teeth.
“You’re shaking,” Tristan’s brow furrows as he
turns to look over his shoulder. “Are
you cold?”
“No,” I absently shake my head, pulling my
trembling fingers from his back. “At
least I don’t think so.” The truth is,
sheer terror and bone-chilling cold bring on a remarkably similar shiver. Judging from the fact that it’s at least a
hundred degrees out today, I’m fairly certain it’s mainly terror behind my
quivering limbs.
“We should get you to the hospital,” he turns
and puts his arm around my waist for support.
“Just to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I shake my head. “I just want to go home.”
“Are you sure?” He raises a questioning eyebrow, and I give
an insistent nod. “Well, you’re not
driving,” he contends. “We’ll go in my
car.” Funny how his voice really deepens
when he’s being especially serious.
I reluctantly concede with a nod. Truth be told, I’m far from fit for driving
right now. Physically, I’m pretty sure
I’m coming around and will be fine. My
state of mind is another story. And as
if I haven’t had enough mental torment for the week, I make the mistake of
looking back over my shoulder. I can’t
seem to stop myself from checking for Pyke.
Knowing he’s somewhere behind me just gives me that hair-raising feeling
of being followed. Only he’s definitely
not tailing us…He’s wading out into the waves, glancing all around as though
he’s searching for something. He seems
to catch sight of whatever it is he’s seeking; and he springs from the seabed,
arching forward into a dive with arms in a point overhead.
But of course, nothing with Pyke can end that
simply.
Just before he enters the water—his pointed
hands not quite yet touching the surface—he becomes
water, his tattooed arms liquefying to a transparent spray. The transformation to a flowing crystal-clear
stream spreads in a swift cascade from his head to his toes. What was formerly his diving body is suddenly
an arcing wave, splashing into the sea to join up with the ripples dancing
across the surface.
By this point, I don’t think there’s any color
left to drain out of my face.
I look to Tristan with saucer eyes, my arm
still looped over his shoulder as he guides me back toward the parking
area. I only see the back of his turned
head…He’s been looking back too. As his
face slowly rotates back toward me, I search for any signs of shock, dismay, or
an impending freakout in his eyes. But I
find nothing of the sort. He flashes a
polished smile, that crooked tooth practically mocking me with its complete lack
of alarm. It’s no use asking if he saw
anything strange…Whatever he saw, he clearly isn’t rattled by it (most likely
because—like the rest of the sane world—he saw nothing out of the ordinary).
“You think you can make it the whole way?” His
voice knocks me out of my stupor. “Maybe
I should run ahead and bring the car back this way.” I come to the awkward realization that he’s
practically lugging me like a sack of potatoes, with absolutely no help from
the dangling pair of useless rubber bands I call my legs.
“I can make it,” I straighten up, willing the
jelly in my bones to support my weight.
I’m not about to let him walk off and leave me here, with his
psycho-murderer-slash-shapeshifter buddy still skulking somewhere out there in
the waves. I set my sights on the Jeep
Cherokee in the distance, focusing on making one footprint in the sand after
another. Those prickly lights make an
appearance in my fading peripheral vision again, my ears popping with a muffled
hum beginning to drown out the seagulls.
I try to be as casual as possible, muttering a garbled suggestion,
“Maybe I should go ahead and give you directions to my house now…Just in case I
pass out again.”
At that, Tristan scoops me up off my feet,
ignoring my grumbling objections. I’m
ashamed to say he was slowed down more by my pitiful attempt at walking than by
the full weight of my body in his arms.
“If you pass out again, I won’t need any directions…I’m remarkably
familiar with the route to the nearest emergency room.”
I’d believe his claim outright (there are only
so many streets in this town to begin with), but I have the feeling he’s more
familiar with the local emergency room than your average citizen. I’d never really noticed the jagged scar
trailing down the side of his scalp beneath the curls—curving behind his left ear
and ending about halfway down the back of his neck—probably because I haven’t
been quite this up-close-and-personal before.
It’s way too crooked to be a surgical scar, and it makes the one above
his eyebrow look like a paper cut. I
imagine there’s probably a captivatingly grisly story to go with it; but
frankly I couldn’t have less interest in asking about it right now.
I’ve had all the excitement I can handle for one day.
Sarah Robinson is a native of the Washington, DC area and continues to reside there with her new husband, Justin, and their 16 pets! She has both her Bachelors and Masters Degrees in criminal psychology. A vast amount of in-depth work experiences in intense environments have given her a plethora of experiences to draw from when writing crime dramas. Writing has been her hobby since high school and she has been published several times. 
