by H G Lynch
*****
Ember was dreaming. Or maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe it was simply a colorful delusion designed by her dying brain to distract her. It didn’t really matter which it was, because she wasn’t really conscious. A deep, small part of her brain knew that, in reality, her body was slowly sinking further into the dark waters of the lake. But that wasn’t important either because it seemed like a distant notion, unrelated to where her mind was gliding.
Images floated behind her lids, snippets of memories mixed with figments of fiction. It was like watching a movie with all the important bits cut out of it, leaving behind just the random flickers in between for her to try and work out the story behind them. Whatever the story was, Lia was at the center of it. Her laughing face flashed through every memory.
But that wasn’t the thing that set off alarm bells in every corner of Ember’s mind, oh no. The thing that was causing level nine alarms to sing off in her head was the flashing images of a pale form swimming past a smashed car windscreen. A pale form with green hair and familiar, mocking hazel eyes and a blue mouth sneering at her through the glass.
It meant something, she knew it meant something, she knew it was important, but she couldn’t grasp its meaning…the images were getting more erratic, blurring, fading, mixing with one another…she couldn’t think straight…couldn’t make sense of the memories her brain was showing her…it was all melting away into darkness…dripping and melting…colors draining…thoughts slowing…dissolving…it was all floating away from her…it was…gone.
*****
** Reid **
Reid had a very bad feeling, a dark, churning feeling deep in his gut. It was the kind of feeling he usually got right before something nasty happened. He’d gotten it when Owen had kidnapped Ember, he’d gotten it when Haunting Harry had invaded the school, he’d gotten it when after Ember had her first terrible nightmare back in Scotland. And now he had it again and he couldn’t focus on whatever it was that Brandon and Ricky were saying, talking about ways to disarm the siren in the lake. So it wasn’t as much as a surprise as it should have been when Hiro suddenly appeared in the corner of the room, dripping wet and wild-eyed. Everyone jumped out of their seats at his appearance, and Brandon gave a yell of outrage – the Kitsune was forbidden from entering the meeting den because it was for vampires and part-vampires only, though Sherry was excluded from that rule for obvious reasons.
Hiro ignored Brandon’s yelling and his creepy amber eyes focused on Reid with scary laser accuracy. Reid was already on his feet and moving for the staircase, his heart tripping over beats in its haste to double its pace. Hiro’s voice betrayed just how shaken he was, panic written in every word, in every line of his expression. “The lake, Reid. I got Sherry out, but I-I couldn’t find Ember. I tried, I swear I did, but I can’t hold my breath for long enough…” That was all Reid needed to hear. Ricky snapped to attention at the mention of Sherry’s name, but Hiro snapped something at him before he could say a word. Reid was half-way up the stairs before logic told him that running wouldn’t be nearly fast enough. Luckily, he reached the top of the stairs just as the thought finished writing itself out on his brain, and Hiro was already there. The Kitsune boy grabbed Reid’s wrist before he even had to ask, and they were suddenly at Onyx Lake, arriving in a flurry of orange leaves and dying wind.
Reid caught a glimpse of Sherry lying on the grass by the side of the lake, but he didn’t hang about to see if she was okay. Hiro wouldn’t have left her there if she wasn’t at least alive. Terrified, Reid was already running, icy hands crushing his lungs, squeezing his heart until he thought it might pop. He wasn’t sure that would kill him, but if Ember was gone, he would wish it did.
He reached the edge of the lake and didn’t hesitate a single second before diving in, heedless of the wards – he knew they wouldn’t hurt him. They probably weren’t even working, if Hiro had gotten in to save Sherry. They only had to be at half-power for Ember and Sherry to have slipped through because Ember and Sherry both had enough mixed blood to confuse the wardings enough to not kill them when they hit the water.
Icy cold water folded over him, from head to toe, and he surrendered his ability to breath for his ability to not. His muscles groaned at the sudden, brutal change in temperature, cold enough to stun even his vampire body. If it was cold to him, it must have been damn near arctic to Ember, and she was just floating somewhere in these dark, tainted depths. How long had she been in the water? How long had she been without air? Too long, he was sure. The lake was far deeper than it should have been, seeming to go on endlessly, getting darker and colder with every stroke. He’d never thought, before Ember, that he’d ever have to use his swimming skills to actually save someone, but this was the third time he’d had to pull her from the grasp of liquid death. The first time had been when she’d dived into a river to retrieve a puzzle piece, the second time had been just weeks ago when they’d come to this lake for an insane dip. And this time, he hadn’t been on the scene already to get her out quickly. By now, she had to have been under for ten minutes at least…ten minutes in this chilling temperature…
He pushed his burning arms and legs to take him down faster, saw a glint of something glimmering below him, felt his heart lurch as he swam toward it. Something inside him cracked when he saw it wasn’t Ember, but Ricky’s car. The windscreen was a shattered mess, the front of the car was a twisted wreck, and one of the passenger windows, the one in the front, had been completely smashed. Ember wasn’t inside. She must have climbed out. But the car’s front bumper had to be touching the lake bed, even though he couldn’t see anything but wavering blackness, so Ember had to be near here somewhere.
The thought spurred him on and he forced himself away from the tangle wreckage of the car, spreading his arms in front of him to feel for anything that could be Ember. The air in his lungs tried to pull him back up toward the surface, so he blew it all out and immediately felt himself sinking instead. His toes touched marshy, unstable ground and his eyes burned with the salt in the water and the dirt he was kicking up with every sinking step. His feet slid in the muddy silt, his numbing fingers brushed light, hydrophilic plants and he grabbed at them every time they tickled his wrists and palms in the hopes it was Ember’s hair.
There was something hot and tight glowing in his chest, a feeling of dread curdling in his stomach, but he kept searching blindly for his firefly. She had to be here somewhere! A vain, thin hope that she’d somehow swam to the surface and pulled herself out already crossed his mind, but it collapsed when his fingers finally came across something soft and pliable and icy cold – Ember’s arm. With a silent gasp of horror and relief, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and turned around, kicking desperately upward to get out of this hellish water. He’d read somewhere that the sixth circle of hell was cold. If it was also full of water, he believed it.
It felt like an eternity he swam with Ember’s limp body trailing behind him, before the black waters finally gave way to grey and then cobalt and then pale blue-silver as the surface came into view, coloring the water above him with the dying daylight. Then, at last, he breached the surface. Air hit him like a slap in the face and he shivered automatically, taking a gasping breath that he didn’t need. His eyes were blurry and stinging, his muscles cramping, but he hauled Ember to the shore and Hiro was waiting to grab her other arm and help him pull her out. Throwing himself onto the lake bank, Reid rolled Ember over and pressed his fingers to her neck for a pulse, barely daring to hope she was still alive. Vicious claws raked at his heart inside his chest, tearing him apart. For a terrifyingly long, horrendous moment he thought she had no pulse. But then he felt it, faint and unhealthily slow, just the lightest of beats against his cold fingertips. It was all he needed.
He turned her over carefully, gently, and folded his hands over her back and pressed down once, twice, three times, four, five, six. He had to get her to breathe, dammit! Hiro was hovering by her head, kneeling with his hands on he
r temples. His mouth was moving, forming incomprehensible words so fast that even Reid couldn’t make them out. They may have been in another language, possibly Japanese or just some secret Kitsune language. A yellow glow was passing from the Kitsune boy’s fingers into Ember’s temples, lighting up her skin like there was a candle burning inside her skull. Still, her lips were a dark shade of blue, edged with indigo. Her skin was so pale he could see all the dark veins running through her, on her jaw and her wrists and her throat.
Some way away, Sherry was sprawled on the grass but Ricky was with her now, holding her head up as he pressed his wrist to her mouth, feeding her blood. Brandon and Perry were running through the trees behind him, Cris was a shadow chasing them. Overhead, the clouds were so dark they were almost black and there was a fierce wind he hadn’t noticed before. He only noticed it now because Ember’s tangled hair fluttered onto her face, dancing over her closed eyes and catching in her lashes.
He kept pressing on her back, trying to force her lungs to expel the water, but he could hear her heart pumping laboriously in her chest, each beat painfully slow like her heart was encased in sludge. Eventually, Hiro sat back, his face twisted with a kind of vulnerable agony that Reid hadn’t imagined the Kitsune boy capable of. His odd amber eyes stayed on Ember face, suspiciously bright. At some point, he’d taken one of Ember’s hands and now held it in both of his against his chest, whispering something over and over into her fingers, rocking back and forth just slightly. Reid didn’t realize he was crying until Ricky put a hand on his shaking shoulder. He’d thought the salt in his mouth and the water on his face was from the lake. Now he noticed his shoulders were shaking and his hands were trembling, but he had to keep going. She wasn’t dead. Her heart was still beating…or so he thought…he paused for a moment, listening hard, but there was no beating now. Her heart had stopped. She…she was dead. Ember was actually dead.
It didn’t make sense to him for a long, long time and he paused, confused, listening because he was sure it was still there and he just couldn’t hear it. But there was no heartbeat. He stared dumbly at the girl on the grass in front of him before a little voice in his head told him he needed to do something else. Then he rolled her over and began pumping her chest mindlessly, madly, desperately. He sucked at CPR, but her heart would start again, it would. The word dead didn’t mean anything to him. Technically, he was dead, but here he was! Then again, he did have a heartbeat – but he didn’t need that heartbeat. He just needed a heart. If Ember was dead, he didn’t want a heart. It was an aching, breaking lump of lead behind his ribs, sending poisonous acid through his tired body with every beat.
“Reid,” Ricky said his name with a kind of broken exhaustion, “Reid, she’s gone.”
It was a lie. Ricky was lying. She wasn’t gone. She couldn’t be. Ricky touched his arm gently, a gesture meant to soothe, but Reid snapped at him, whacking his hand away.
“She’s not gone! Just…just…she’s not gone!” he snarled. With everything inside him crumbling, Reid slammed his fist into Ember’s chest, hard enough to crack a rib. She didn’t flinch, but her heart turned over one slow, slow beat and he gasped with hope. He did it again, and again, each time forcing her heart to beat once more. Then he blew into her mouth, filling her drowned lungs with air, and her heart stuttered, once, twice, and then gave up. He blew into her mouth again and slammed the side of his fist into her sternum once more, and at last, at last, her heart spluttered and choked and stumbled before settling into an uneven pattern of rapid beating like an insane drummer playing on crack.
Reid gasped in relief, just as Ember’s body spasmed and she violently coughed up water. Brackish lake water spewed from her mouth and Reid swiftly rolled her onto her side so she wouldn’t choke on it. With his hand on her arm, he could feel her muscles jerking over one another, trying to create friction, trying to create heat. She jolted again as another round of coughing wracked her fragile body, more water bursting from behind her blue lips. He waited until he thought she’d coughed up all the water, and then scooped her limp body into his arms and turned to Hiro, who was sitting on the slick grass with his hair in his eyes and avoiding looking at anyone. Reid suspected from the younger boy’s bowed head that he was crying. Ricky was holding Sherry, who appeared to be awake now and extremely distraught, her voice high and fast but Reid couldn’t make out the words. Ricky was nodding, stroking her wet hair back soothingly. Brandon was lingering by the trees, looking pale, and Perry was right behind him. Cris was staring in obvious horror, tears unashamedly rolling down his cheeks. Everyone appeared to be stunned, in shock, and totally stricken with the terror of what could have just happened.
Looking at the unconscious girl in his arms, Reid felt a pressure behind his ribs that he thought could kill him, it was so strong and so painful. This was at least the fourth time she’d nearly died, but this was the first and only time her heart had actually stopped. He’d been this close to losing her. He still might, if he didn’t get her warmed up soon. Her lips were still blue, her skin was deathly pale, veins patterned the fragile skin of her eyelids, and every beat of her heart was another weak triumph over death.
“Hiro,” Reid’s voice came out as a rough whisper and the wealth of agony in it hurt his own ears. “Hiro get Sherry and take us back to the school. Now. Please.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have been the first time he’d ever said please to the fox-boy.
Slowly, Hiro looked up and Reid saw his cat’s eyes were ringed in red. His caramel skin was a sickly yellow, and he was shaking badly with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. His amber eyes were glazed, his lips parted, like he wasn’t seeing Reid but something horrifying inside his own head.
Reid wanted to put a hand on his shoulder to comfort the boy, but he couldn’t with Ember in his arms. Instead, he said softly, “Hiro, she’s going to be okay. But you need to take us back to the school, right now.” Distantly, he wondered how it felt to Hiro, nearly losing Ember. Was it a physical pain or just an emotional one? For him, there was no distinction between the two. But Hiro was bound to Ember by that weird Kitsune link. Was it possible that her death could kill him too?
Seemingly shaking himself out of it, Hiro jumped to his feet and motioned to Ricky to carry Sherry over. They came slowly, Sherry tripping over her own feet several times before Ricky finally just picked her up. As soon as they were near enough, Hiro snatched Ricky’s wrist and Reid’s arm, and for a moment nothing happened. The Kitsune boy closed his eyes and his face contorted with pain as he tried to force his magic to take him where he wanted to go. Slowly, the wind started to swirl around them, leaves appearing from thin air to whirl in their personal tornado, and then something sparked. Everything in Reid’s vision went white all of a sudden, and then the world spun, and when he blinked, they were in Ember and Sherry’s room back at the dorms.
Reid just barely managed to lay Ember down on the bed before he collapsed, still clutching her cold fingers in his.
*****
** Ember **
Ember woke up in her bed with light spilling over her from the bedside lamp. She couldn’t remember much. Clips of memories played through her head in slow motion; Laughing in the passenger seat while Sherry drove, Onyx Lake glittering through the trees, the windshield cracking on impact with the ice over the water, the water rising over the windows, glass shattering as she kicked out the passenger window, then sinking, sinking, sinking into darkness. Flickers of some mostly-forgotten dream replayed behind her lids, but one image struck her, crystal clear; Lia’s laughing face swimming past the cracked windshield.
A little voice whispered in her head, Lia’s the siren. She tried to kill you.
Gasping, Ember jerked upright, her eyes flying wide and then slamming shut at the sting of the pale brightness of the daylight coming through the window. Her head thumped and her mouth tasted like grit and her lungs were rattling and burning with every breath and it felt like someone had sandpapered her throat while she slept, but
apart from that she was okay. Thirsty, though. God, she was thirsty. She leaned over to dig out her bottle of coke from under the bed, squeezing her eyes shut against the dizziness threatening to make her puke, but her spine refused to hold her in the twisted position she was trying to achieve and she nearly fell out of the bed. Thankfully, an arm wrapped around her waist from behind and pulled her back onto the mattress. The movement was so fast that it knocked her breathless and she blinked at the stars dancing in front of her eyes.
Slowly, the stars cleared and she realized there was someone looking back at her with terrified blue eyes. For a moment, she didn’t know who this boy was or why he was in her room, and then more memories hit her, of being pressed against his chest as he carried her, his voice blurry in her ears. Her thoughts were sluggish and confusing, but she did manage to wonder if she had some brain damage from being oxygen deprived for too long. She hoped not.
“Reid,” she croaked, then put her fingers to her throat as the words scorched a path up it to her tongue like acid. She really needed a drink. Scowling at him, she whispered, “Want my coke.” Her vision blurred for a second, and she blinked to clear it. When she could see clearly again, she saw there were tears in Reid’s eyes and they were ringed in red. He’d been crying for some time, then. Her brow creased as she frowned. This wasn’t her first near-death experience. She couldn’t imagine why he’d be so upset this time. Shouldn’t he have been getting used to it by now?