That had been in a pool. Salt water was infinitely more buoyant. Floating was much easier—but without arms or legs? She would have no control. If anything disrupted her balance, she could do nothing to right herself. But what were the alternatives? She couldn’t simply sit here and wait for the water to close over her head.
The water undulated around her thighs. It was just a little like sitting in a tub as it filled with water, she thought. Except she couldn’t step out of this tub, and she couldn’t stop it from filling. That was the most frustrating blow of all, and she knew that Ciaran had said it to taunt her. If she could just stand up, drowning wouldn’t even be an issue because the water wouldn’t be deep enough then. If she could just stand up. The water moved higher, tickling her fingers and lapping at her waist. Annabel breathed deeply trying to calm her panic.
Ciaran returned.
“How do you like my surprise, Annabel?”
She glared at him, and he laughed.
“I’ve decided to be generous, to satisfy your curiosity; after all you have just a few more minutes left anyway. As you can imagine, this area, with its hidden rocks has taken a toll on ships over the years. The sea floor is littered with wreckage. Of course, Cayden and my father know this, but I’ve taken the liberty of rearranging a few things and adding some hazards of my own. First I’ll get their boat, and then I’ll get them.”
“You could not have accomplished so much in so little time!” she exclaimed disbelievingly.
Ciaran smiled at her. “You assume that bringing them here was a spur of the moment decision. You just happened to provide the catalyst. And you’ll also be the perfect distraction. They’ll be so concerned about getting to you, they’ll be careless.”
The water washed around her breasts now and she realized with sudden horror that the salt water’s very buoyancy was going to play against her. It would cause her to lose her precarious perch on the rock that much sooner.
She turned her face away from him. “Go play your games, Ciaran, and leave me alone.”
“Gladly. I will sit and watch you drown. Arms bound and legs useless to save you.” He leaned over the gunwale and smiled at her. “Shall I give you a jump start, so to speak?”
Before she quite realized what he was doing, he revved the engines on the boat and pushed the throttle forward. The wake created by the boat buffeted her. Annabel scrabbled with her fingers trying to find something to grab onto, but there was nothing, and with no gripping strength in her lower legs, she could not maintain her perch on the rock. She felt the water close over her head and for just an instant blind panic filled her brain.
Calm. She had to calm down and get control of what parts of her body she could control. Instinctively, she stretched herself out so she could float. There was just one problem, she was face down in the water. She arched her back and forced her face up out of the water much as someone doing the butterfly raises their head for air. As she gasped in a deep breath, she heard the sound of a racing boat engine and realized Cayden and Carrick must be near.
It’s a trap! She screamed in her head. She had no sooner thought the words than she heard a horrendous scraping noise and the abrupt cessation of the boat engine. A couple of splashes followed and then to Annabel’s horror, she heard an explosion.
She desperately wanted to see what was happening, but she had a much more immediate problem. With her hands behind her back, she couldn’t control her position in the water, much less stabilize it, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to get her face up to get a breath.
Relax! The thought came to her and she realized it was from Catriona. Remember summer camp.
A sudden vision came to her of sitting with a group of other girls while everyone demonstrated weird things they could do. There was one girl who could contort her fingers and thumbs into odd positions. She used it sometimes to say she’d jammed a finger so she could get out of basketball games. There was another girl who could bend backwards and grab her ankles from behind, and then there was the thing Poppy could do with her shoulders. It had grossed everyone out.
But she had done that just holding her hands behind her, not with her hands tied and she’d been a kid!
Try it!
Annabel relaxed and allowed herself to sink some as she began to roll her shoulders. The rope bit into her wrists, but the water also provided some lubrication and she realized she could twist her hands inside the rope. Slowly, she began to relax even more as the confidence grew within her that she could still do this. She contorted her upper body and twisted, feeling the pop in her shoulders, first her right and then her left. She rolled her shoulders again, opened her eyes and found herself staring at her tied wrists. She brought the knot to her teeth and began working on it as she slowly moved her body to help her tread water.
As she looked around her, she saw the boat Ciaran had used bobbing in the water more than a hundred yards away. Closer by floated the wreckage of Carrick’s ski boat. Her frantic eyes saw no humans anywhere. She tried to calm herself. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. They could have shifted to seals. They could be under the water. She got her hands free and slowly began to swim toward Ciaran’s boat.
She was more than halfway there when he slammed into her, knocking her sideways. Annabel grunted with pain, but he didn’t return. He was being pursued, but as far as she could tell, by only one other seal—one with a gold chain. She breathed in relief. Cayden was alive! But where was Carrick? Despite the pain in her ribs, she stopped and turned back toward the wreckage of the ski boat.
What if he was hurt? Annabel turned around and swam back toward the wreckage. He had helped her. All she could think about was the respect she had seen in his intelligent eyes that night when she had talked to him. She could not let anything happen to Carrick. She had lost her own father and had been helpless to save him, but she could help now. As she reached the wreckage, Annabel took a deep breath and dove down into the water beneath.
It was darker than in the coves around Barton Point, but in the light filtering down, she saw Carrick floating beneath the surface. His hair had come loose from its normal ponytail and swirled around his head. He was tangled in what appeared to be a discarded fishing net, so wrapped up in it that she had to believe Ciaran had done it deliberately before his father could transform. He opened his dark eyes as she approached, and she saw the resignation there. He was out of air and so tangled he didn’t dare transform. Annabel reached for the knife she saw in his hand and began to cut.
Her lungs burned as she worked. Their eyes met and he shook his head at her, jerking his chin up toward the surface to indicate she should leave him. Annabel looked away from him and continued to cut. The longest she had ever held her breath was four minutes, but she had seen Cayden do it for six. With no watch, she had no idea how long it had been. She only knew that she had to free Carrick, for Cayden and for Catriona.
Spots danced in front of her eyes as she cut the last bonds holding him. He had already gone limp. With the last of her strength, Annabel shoved him upward to the surface. She moved to follow him, but could not. As her consciousness faded, she looked down to see that her feet, her unfeeling, crippled feet had become entangled in net while she worked, without her even knowing because she had no sensation there.
The knife fell from her fingers, drifting slowly to the bottom, and she smiled.
****
Carrick gasped for air, sucking powerful lungs full of the precious oxygen as soon as he broke the surface. He turned to find Annabel and thank her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Had he lost track of time? Had she already swum away? He saw Cayden and Ciaran locked in a fight, seal against seal on top of a rock still jutting from the water. The other boat still bobbed on the waves, empty.
A feeling of dread came back over him as he sucked in air and dove down again. She was there, not far from where he had been, her feet entangled in the mesh. Frantically he swam, down to the bottom where he saw the faint glint of his knife. After pic
king it up, he cut through the strands that ensnared her. Knowing this was no time for gentleness, he grabbed hold of her hair and pulled her to the surface. As soon as he had her on top of the water, he pinched her nose, tilted back her head and blew a couple of breaths into her mouth.
Swimming strongly now, he pulled her pale, limp body behind him until he reached their old ski boat. He shoved her over the side and into the bottom of the boat and then hauled himself in after her. From a distance, he still heard the sounds of Ciaran and Cayden as they growled and screamed, their bodies slamming into one another, but he couldn’t take time to see what was happening. He got down on his hands and knees next to Annabel and continued to work on her. She still had a pulse, but was not breathing. He tried another breath and suddenly, her body jerked. Carrick rolled her to her side, holding her as she began to vomit and cough water from her lungs.
“Annabel!” he called to her. “Don’t you dare die on me, girl!”
She continued to cough, and then he heard her suck in a deep breath of air. As he watched, she began to shiver. He checked the storage locker in the small cabin and came back with a couple of thick blankets.
“I have to get your shirt off Annabel!” he said firmly. “Do you understand? Then I’ll wrap you in these blankets.”
He propped her up and peeled the soaked t-shirt from her. With infinitely gentle hands, he swaddled her in the blankets and carried her below deck to lay her on the narrow berth there.
“I must go help Cayden. Will you be all right?”
She nodded without speaking, her lips still blue and her body trembling with cold and shock.
“We’ll be back.”
As soon as he got back above deck, he stripped his clothes off and dove into the water, transforming into seal shape as he flew through the water to help. Both Cayden and Ciaran were bloody and beginning to tire. Bursting from the water, he clamped his jaws on Ciaran’s throat. Closing his eyes, he drew deeply upon his powers as the Silkie Lord and forced Ciaran and himself both to change back to human form. Cayden, seeing what was happening, transformed as well.
Carrick pressed his hand against Ciaran’s forehead and mumbled words in the ancient tongue. His younger son’s eyes went vacant and he slumped into Carrick’s arms.
“What did you do to him?” Cayden asked, awe in his voice.
Carrick’s gaze was sad. “A spell very similar to one I gave you seven years ago for Annabel’s father, except that Ciaran will not awake until I remove it.” He looked over at his elder son. “Are you all right?”
Cayden nodded, but his gaze searched the water frantically. “Bell!”
Carrick touched his shoulder. “She’s on the ski boat. We need to get her back to the house, maybe to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Cayden’s deep voice was sharp.
Carrick looked at his son, feeling a stunned kind of confusion. “She nearly died trying to save me. She had to have been under the water cutting me free for more than five minutes.”
“I had started to pass out. When I got to the surface, I looked for her, realized she wasn’t with me and went back down. Her feet had become tangled in the same net in which Ciaran trapped me. I cut her loose and then had to resuscitate her.”
Cayden stared at his father and swallowed thickly. “Thanks, Dad.”
Carrick smiled. “Go to her, Cayden. I’ll take care of bringing Ciaran over to the boat. Then we need to get back to the house and call your mother and Taylor.”
Chapter 17
Cayden barely paused to dry off and find some pants before he was kneeling next to the berth where Annabel lay. She still looked so pale and still. He stroked the wet curls from her face.
“Bell!” he said softly. “Please be all right!”
Above him he heard thumps and felt the boat shift as Carrick shoved Ciaran over the gunwale, quickly following, and then the sounds of preparation before the engines fired to life.
Cayden stayed below, stroking Bell’s face and staring at her wan cheeks. How many times, he wondered, would she have to prove herself before someone sat up and took notice of her? She had saved him. Now she had saved his father, and both times she put her life on the line to do it. Just how in debt did the Silkie need to be to this one frail, damaged human before they said thank you?
He stroked his fingers along her jaw and gently brushed them over her lips. The skin there still had a faint bluish tint to it. He didn’t know whether it was from the cold or the lack of oxygen. Either way, he knew that the shock to her system, fragile as it was, could be more than she could take. She needed a hospital, he thought. After tucking the covers around her, Cayden went up the short flight of steps to check on his father.
Above, Carrick pushed the vintage ski boat for all it was worth. Cayden glanced at his brother and saw his father had tied him up.
“I thought you said your spell would keep him knocked out.”
Carrick glanced over his shoulder. “It will. Just don’t want to take any chances.”
”Thanks, Dad,” Cayden said. “She would’ve died without you.”
Carrick took a deep breath. “I would have died without her. As soon as I talk to your mother, I’m calling a meeting of the council. Ciaran has to be dealt with, but there’s another matter as well.”
Cayden waited, saying nothing.
“I’ll help you with whatever we must do to clear the way for you and Bell to be together.”
Cayden swallowed and nodded. His father had always been willing to admit when he was wrong.
When they reached the house, Cayden carried her inside and back to the bedroom, quickly slipping her underneath the covers and pulling them up around her shoulders.
“Cay?” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re all right? Your dad?”
“We’re both fine, Bell,” he reassured her. “You nearly drowned. I want you to go to the hospital so they can check you out.”
“No, please!”
“Honey,” he said quietly, “I won’t risk it. I can’t lose you…not again.”
In the end, Carrick called 911, nearly as concerned as his son that Annabel was not bouncing back like she should. While Cayden sat with her, waiting for the ambulance, Carrick used her cell phone to call Taylor. He and Catriona were already on their way by car. Taylor was driving so Cat was the one who actually answered the phone.
“Cat,” Carrick said softly.
“Oh Carrick!” she breathed. “I was so concerned! The images that kept hitting me! Are Cayden and Bell all right?”
“Cayden is fine. I have an ambulance coming to take Bell to the hospital.”
“What happened?”
He swallowed and said hoarsely, “She nearly died saving my life.”
There was a long pause on the other end. “Ciaran?” Catriona asked.
“I have him locked in a sleep spell. Can you send out a message for the Council? I want them to convene as soon as possible, and Cat?”
“Yes?”
“Request the meeting take place aboard the Skerry. It will concern Annabel and I don’t think she will be in any shape to travel anywhere.”
“Oh Carrick! How bad is she?”
“She nearly drowned. I had to resuscitate her.”
****
Annabel heard the sirens. She forced her eyes open and met Cayden’s dark, worried gaze. She tried to smile reassuringly, but she was so tired. She only vaguely remembered what had happened after she had cut Carrick loose. The rest of the events after that were just flashes that popped into her head out of order. She did remember opening her eyes and seeing Carrick’s worried gaze. The memory warmed her.
As the paramedics checked her, she began to tremble again from nervousness. Her gaze sought Cayden’s and held it. They moved her to the stretcher and the younger of the two paramedics looked at Carrick. “Are you her father?”
Carrick smiled. “I’m hoping to be. Would you mind if my son and I both ride along with you? We arrived by boat and don’t have a
car here.”
“Not a problem, sir. You can ride up front and your son, I’m guessing, wants to stay with her in back.”
Carrick laughed. “Smart man.”
Annabel’s gaze was confused as she looked at Carrick. As if he sensed her stare, he turned and gently touched her cheek. “Hang in there, Bell, we’ll get you well again.”
She smiled weakly, and to her embarrassment tears rolled from the corners of her eyes. She turned her head and stared at Cayden, her eyes locking on his velvet brown gaze. She saw scratches and bruises on him that were already beginning to heal. She tried to reach out to touch them, but her arms felt so heavy and she ached all over not only from the physical strain she had undergone but also from the stress.
“Lie still, darling,” Cayden admonished her. “You’re exhausted.”
“You’re hurt,” she whispered.
“Just scratches,” he reassured her. “They’ll be gone before you know it.”
The next several hours were a blur of light and activity to Annabel. It reminded her too much of seven years ago. She hated hospitals. They were forever associated in her mind with pain. When they would have kept Cayden away from her, she became so upset that the emergency room physician relented. As they hooked her up to a heart monitor, Cayden stood in the corner of the room where she could see him. Her eyes never left his as they attached an I.V. drip.
“Why do I need all this?” she asked hoarsely.
The doctor looked at her, his sandy hair falling over his forehead. “Precautions against some of the common complications with near drownings. We’ll monitor you for any arrhythmia, get fluids into you, because believe it or not, dehydration is sometimes a problem, and in a few minutes we’ll get you on some respiratory therapy and oxygen.”
“Can’t I just go home?” Annabel asked miserably.
The Silkie's Call Page 18