RESCUED BY THE HIGHLANDER

by Preston, Rebecca

  Better to go it alone, she couldn’t help but think. After all, alone might have had its downsides, but at least they were known quantities. She knew what could go wrong if she stayed by herself — she had a strong sense of self-awareness and self-knowledge that could help her guide herself, compensate for what she lacked. But with some men… well, there was no way of seeing the future. So many uncontrollable variables. Look at tonight, for example. Who could have predicted Billy coming after her with a baseball bat? Nobody. It had come completely out of left field, because Billy was a man, and men were unpredictable, terrible shits.

  Well, her father wasn’t, and neither was her brother. But the rest of them… she just didn’t know. And she sure as hell didn’t trust herself to judge. A cat, she decided sleepily as she drifted off into unconsciousness. She’d get a cat. A stray, or a rescue — an animal that needed a good home and would repay her with unconditional love. That would bring a lot more to her life than some good-for-nothing, unreliable, unpredictable man ever could.

  Chapter 4

  But her rest was short-lived. After dozing on and off for an hour or so, she found herself sitting up in bed, bleary but very awake. This happened to her sometimes — her body just decided that she needed to be on guard, for some reason, and any sleep she was going to get was going to be crappy quality anyway. Sometimes she got useful thinking done on nights like these, nights when she couldn’t get to sleep, but at the moment, all she could think about was how annoyed she still was that she’d ever invited Billy into her life.

  So, she wound up getting her phone out — always a killer when it came to trying to get a reasonable amount of sleep, blue light filter or no — and a good chunk of the night was spent scrolling randomly on social media. Her Facebook account was locked down with the strictest privacy settings she could manage, her name was a pseudonym, and her photo wasn’t of her … still, she had the strongest suspicion he had figured out how to follow it. Something so invasive and aggravating about that. It needled her every time she looked at the account… but she needed it for work. So many communications went on via Facebook these days. And for things like her self-defense seminars, making a Facebook event was by far the best way to get as many people as possible involved.

  She spent a bit of time working on her professional page, figuring that she was too angry and stirred-up to get much sleep, so she might as well do something useful. The description needed a working over. More of a focus on the empowerment element of self-defense, that was her current opinion. It was valuable to be able to fight, yes, especially for women, who weren’t traditionally steered that way as young people. But in her experience, even if you never got into a fight, knowing that you were equipped to handle one if you did was worth its weight in gold. There was just something about being able to look a stranger in the eye and feel confidence, instead of a worried hope that they wouldn’t decide to pick on you. She felt it every day, and she wanted to share it. That was a good way to frame it, actually, she thought, making a few edits to the page’s description. That way she was still talking about herself, but also generalizing her experiences to invite her audience in. Perfect.

  She liked running group sessions. There was something about being surrounded by a gaggle of women who were determined to get stronger that just gave her strength. She’d spent time training men, too — early in the process, she hadn’t specified which gender her classes were targeted at — but that had somehow been less successful. The men who turned up to her classes usually already had just enough experience to think they knew better than her. And once they saw her four-foot eleven frame, they got complacent, thinking there was nothing a woman so slight could possibly teach them. Then it became an exercise in winning their respect. As if being in the military and completing two active tours of duty wasn’t enough to do that. It ground on her, training these arrogant men. It usually only took a couple of takedowns to knock the wind out of them — proving she could break their arms easy as breathing generally convinced them that she was worthy of fear, if not respect — but then she’d have to deal with pouty, sulking men for the rest of the class. They either looked down on her because they didn’t think she could beat them, or they hated her when they realized she could. There was no winning.

  Not all men, she sighed to herself. Some of them had been just fine. She’d trained a sweet, soft-spoken young man once who’d been nothing but polite, who’d laughed giddily when she showed him how to turn a confrontation to his advantage. He’d thanked her warmly at the end of the class and confessed that he was a performer whose audiences often got a bit threatening, so it was good to know he could handle himself with them now. She’d asked what kind of performance, surprised to hear that this shy young man spent time in from of audiences, and he’d grinned and given her a bright pink business card with a picture of a gorgeous and extremely heavily made-up woman on it. It had taken her a long time to figure out that the woman was standing in front of her.

  “Like I said,” he’d smiled, “sometimes audiences get a bit … critical. Walking home after, too… I mean, in general, my crowds are great. But there are always those bigots…”

  “I can imagine.” She’d tipped him a wink. “Use your heels as a weapon if you need to.”

  But even there, it had been men who were the problem. Anna sighed to herself, turning over in bed. If it wasn’t for men, she’d have a lot less business as a self-defense trainer, she thought irritably. That would be a hit she’d happily take if it would make the world safer. After all, that had been why she signed up for the military. Her whole life, she wanted to fight to keep people safe, to make the world a better and safer place. That had gotten more and more complicated as she’d grown, of course — it wasn’t as if the military was a perfect organization, or anything, she wasn’t dumb or brainwashed enough to think that — but she’d at least had to try. And her training had been valuable. She’d learned so much. And she’d spent so much time fighting overseas, ostensibly to keep her people safe… and then gotten home to find out her people were also in danger from themselves. Even she wasn’t immune to it — Billy’s presence in her life proved that. The problem was that enemies weren’t always so easy to detect, she supposed. They came in disguise, sometimes, wormed their way in behind your guard, and by the time you realized you should be fighting them off, it was already too late.

  Had it always been like this? Had the world always been so goddamn complicated? She could teach all the self-defense in the world — she could turn every woman on the planet into an MMA fighter, for all the good it would do. She knew strong, tough, capable women who still got the shit beaten out of them by their husbands and boyfriends, by people they loved. Women who in a fair fight would demolish the men who terrorized them. What could she do there? What good were her skills there? It was enough to make a person lose hope.

  She switched her phone off, her heart heavy in her chest. It was getting near dawn — she could hear the sounds of the early risers in her apartment block beginning to get ready for their days. Some people worked seven days a week around here. She ought to be grateful for her day off, she supposed, trying to recalibrate her negative frame of mind. Gratitude for what was good, not resentment for what was bad. At least she had the day to sleep. She’d feel better after a good long sleep, she always did. So, she drifted off, finally, as the sun crept over the horizon.

  Maybe it was thinking about the sun that did it, but as she slept, strange dreams began to creep around in her subconscious. She found herself in the darkness — but not the dark of night. This was a complete darkness, an absence of light, or even the memory or hope of light… a space that had never been illuminated and never would. Something frightening in that, in being so far from anything she knew, anything familiar. The complete, empty nothing of it — she floated suspended in the darkness, free to move her arms and legs, but certain in the knowledge that there was nothing to find or touch, no ground to stand on, no point of reference to orient herself by. She was
completely alone, and completely lost.

  It seemed to stretch on forever, this nothingness. Some part of her felt mostly awake, still. Unusually for Anna, she was vaguely aware that this was a dream — aware enough, at least, to think about what a strange dream it was. Usually, her dreams were about combat. She’d managed to avoid any strong trauma symptoms after her time overseas — and she counted her blessings for that, because a lot of the men and women she’d served with hadn’t been so lucky. But she still had dreams sometimes that sent her heart racing. This definitely wasn’t one of those. And just when she was beginning to panic about how long it had gone on, this indeterminate stretch of darkness, she heard a voice.

  It was a beautiful voice, she knew that much. Soft, gentle and light, it seemed to brush against her mind like a feather, or a warm breeze on a summer’s day… something about it made her happy, made her completely trust whoever it was that was speaking to her. She strained to hear more of it, smiling in the darkness, infinitely comforted by the sound of that voice. The funny thing was, she didn’t understand a single word that it was saying. Some strange and ancient language, dancing through her mind. But somehow, she understood enough to know that it was telling her that she was safe. She was safe here and would be cared for. Nothing bad would happen to her as long as she was in the care of that voice’s owner.

  More voices joined it, just as gentle and soft, though gently differing from the original voice. She listened to them speak, enchanted — it was like listening to a choir singing, even though they were only speaking. To hear music from these voices might be too much for her to handle — somehow, she knew it would be a song of such exquisite beauty that she would never be the same again. The kind of song that lured men onto the rocks, that lured forest walkers off the path and into the wilds… and happily too. There was an incredible power in these voices. She wished she knew what they were saying, what they were talking about. Because although they weren’t speaking to her, she had the overwhelming feeling that they were talking about her. Once or twice, she could have sworn she even heard her name amidst the lilting language they were speaking. She’d heard quite a few different languages in her time as a soldier, but this wasn’t like any of those. Something ancient about this one — something almost magical.

  What a strange dream I’m having, she thought blankly — then gasped as her vision was suddenly filled with light. A dozen glowing figures were standing around her, humanoid in shape, their arms extended — as she turned gently, not afraid but inquisitive about the presence of these creatures, she realized they were standing in a circle around her. They were reaching toward one another as they continued to speak in that beautiful language, and she realized these were the bodies that belonged to the disembodied voices she’d been hearing. They’d come to see her. A smile broke out across her face as she looked at them. Whatever they were talking about, she trusted them to make the right decision. Trusted them completely. And as she thought that, she saw them all seem to come to some kind of group decision — and they moved toward her, opening a space in the circle as they did. In that space, outlined against the infinite darkness that surrounded her and the tall, glowing figures that were now moving in close to her, she saw a rectangular shape begin to form. It didn’t glow the same way these figures did — it shone strangely, like light through water, and at their unspoken urging, she found herself drifting toward the shape. As she got closer, she realized it was a door.

  Confused, she turned back to the figures — but they kept urging her toward the door, their great long arms outstretched, their beautiful language dancing in her ears. Well, whatever this strange door was, her hosts felt that it was the right place for her to go. And she knew, deep in her heart, that they wanted what was best for her. She may not understand, but she would follow good advice when she heard it — even if she didn’t speak the language it was spoken in.

  So, Anna took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  Chapter 5

  Pressure. The first thing that hit her, as she came out of the deepest sleep she’d ever experienced, was pressure. Disoriented and completely confused, she thrashed about, not comprehending what was happening to her. Were her blankets somehow strangling her, pressing down on every inch of her body? How could that be? She opened her eyes and felt only cold, saw only darkness — and then panic began to grip her fully. The pressure wasn’t blankets. The pressure was water. Cold, black water, pressing in on every side of her. She stared around wildly, trying to get her bearings, but the darkness was as complete as any she’d experienced.

  And she was running out of air.

  Some element of her training kicked in then, brought her calm and focus when she needed it most. She was underwater, somehow. How she’d gotten there — and why — was a question that could be dealt with later. For now, she needed to survive. She needed to get to the surface of the water, and ideally to dry land. Every part of her mind narrowed down to that one, singular goal. She forced herself to float still for a moment in the water until her sense of balance indicated which way was up — there was no sense in swimming if she was just going to wind up deeper in the water. Then she started swimming, feeling the burning in her lungs intensify with the need to take a breath. Keep calm, she told herself. Keep your heart rate slow. There was a lot of stored oxygen in a human body. She had time. She had all the time in the world.

  And if she didn’t… well, she’d face that problem when she came to it.

  There was a strange shimmer in the water around her as she scanned around her. It felt like a little more light was dawning, just a tiny bit — not enough to see clearly, of course, but enough that she was beginning to get a sense of where she was. The light was increasing, slowly, as she swam — as good a sign as any that she was headed in the right direction. But what was that shimmer? Was there something wrong with her eyes?

  Just as she felt that her lungs were about to explode, so intense was the burning pain that had been building since she’d opened her eyes, Anna felt, rather than saw, a shifting in the water. It was for all the world as though something huge had moved in the water beneath her, shifting the water upwards — and despite her focus on holding her breath, she couldn’t help but open her mouth and scream as something huge rocketed up from beneath her, collecting her body and bearing it upwards, upwards, the dull glow of light from what must have been the surface getting brighter and brighter, that odd shimmer in her vision still there, still dancing in the corners of her eyes.

  She’d read about compression sickness — ‘the bends’, divers called it — she knew it could kill you, she’d been deliberately pacing herself in her swim toward the surface as a result. But whatever was bearing her up toward the surface didn’t seem to care much about that. And as her head finally broke the surface of the water and she took a huge, gasping breath of air, she realized how close she’d been to drowning. She gasped and spluttered, thrashing in the water. Whatever it had been that had brought her to the surface was gone now — there was no sign of a solid surface below her feet. Nor was there any sign of land anywhere around her, she realized grimly, scanning the choppy surface of the water. She could only barely see — there was more light up here than there had been underwater, but barely. Anna squinted up into the sky, narrowing her eyes to try to make out some sign of where she was, but saw only starlight, and a full moon gleaming, partially obscured by cloud. That was the light she’d seen, the source of the glow that had brought her up to the surface. Blinking her eyes, she tried to see if the moonlight was also the source of the odd shimmering effect, she’d noticed under the water — but that seemed to have disappeared now. Strange — but certainly not high on her list of priorities right then.

  How the hell had she gotten underwater? She searched back through her recent memories, disoriented and fighting panic. The last thing she remembered was her bedroom — then that peculiar dream, suspended in inky darkness as tall, slender glowing figures spoke to her and about her in an odd, lilting language
she’d never heard before. Then she’d opened her eyes to find herself submerged in freezing water — and the air felt even colder, she realized, feeling her whole body starting to shiver in an attempt to keep her warm. Hypothermia was deadly, she knew, and gritting her teeth, she started swimming. There were no landmarks in sight. For all she knew, she could be in the middle of the open ocean. She might be swimming further from land right now. But if she didn’t start moving her body, she was going to freeze to death before she got a chance to find solid ground. And whatever else Anna may have been, at the core of her being, she was a survivor. Anna Clarke was not going to drown or freeze in the middle of some random body of water she’d been dumped in — not today. Or tonight, as the case may have been.

  Memory loss, that had to be it, she thought as she swam. Something had happened to her in the time between falling asleep around dawn and waking up underwater. She was still wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing in bed — even her pink fluffy bed socks seemed to still be on her feet, she could tell by how waterlogged they felt. She was grateful for them. They were wool, which meant they’d keep in warmth even when they were wet. And she could use all the warmth she could get at the moment.

  So, something had happened. Had Billy come back for her? Hit her in the head somehow, knocked her out, then dragged her to a lake to drown her? She wouldn’t put it past him to make an attempt on her life — though she’d never admit to feeling any fear of him, that had been a big part of the motivation behind getting a proper, serious restraining order against him. She’d hoped that bringing a baseball bat to her house would be enough evidence to get him chucked in jail again. Perhaps he’d knocked her out then thrown her in a lake — but she’d woken up when she’d reached the bottom. That made sense… but something about the theory troubled her. This body of water had been incredibly deep — without the aid of the unseen force that had born her upwards (some kind of sea creature?) she’d certainly have drowned. How could her body have gotten so far underwater without either breathing in water and drowning, or waking her up?