Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1)

by Megan Tayte

  The Ceruleans: Book I

  Death Wish

  By Megan Tayte

  Copyright 2015 Megan Tayte

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means (other than for purposes of review), without the express permission of the author given in writing. The right of Megan Tayte to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  To contact the author, visit www.megantayte.com.

  For Ally.

  DEATH WISH

  ‘Who so loves believes the impossible.’ – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  PART 1: UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS

  1: INGLORIOUS

  Waves everywhere, swirling, surging, seething – a raging melange of foam and salt and inky water biting at me, pulling at me, thrusting upon me a solitary invitation:

  Death.

  As I fought to remain on the flimsy polystyrene surfboard that seemed more bucking bronco than wave rider, I thought: That’s how easy it is – you just let go. Just release the grip on this world that in recent months had seemed so much an effort, and sink into the blue, beneath the waves, where chaos and fury turned to quiet and calm. Like she did.

  Was drowning as they claim? I wondered. The easiest way to die – peaceful? How would it feel to give up all the dragging myself through the day, all the struggle to evade the aching void inside? A relief?

  Another wave rose me up and slammed me down with breathtaking power. Its force stirred me. You could say a lot of things about Scarlett Blake – she’s a loner, she’s a wallflower, she’s a menace in the kitchen – but no way was ‘she’s a quitter’ on the list of character flaws.

  ‘Screw you!’ I shouted through the spray.

  Funny, sounded like someone shouted back. But who else would be out in this tumultuous sea at six a.m. on a summer’s morning? Solitude was the entire point of hauling myself out of bed in the still-dark and picking my way down the cliff path to the beach just in time to see the horizon light up with the first burnt-orange glow of the rising sun. No one to see me make a damn fool of myself on my first surfing attempt.

  ‘Trying… yourself killed?’

  Definitely a voice. Male. Angry.

  Scanning the surroundings for the source proved difficult while lying stomach-to-board. On an upward surge I got a glimpse of the Devonshire cliffs that fringed the cove, all dark, jutting rocks topped by bushes of gorse, and then a flash of the beach. On a downward plummet there was nothing but eye-burning, throat-choking seawater.

  ‘Forward… next wave!’

  The voice was closer now. There was an edge to it beyond the anger. Something raw.

  My eyes picked out a black form between the waves. Someone on a surfboard, paddling it expertly seaward. I took one hand off the board to push sticky tendrils of hair from my eyes. Rookie mistake. Turned out holding on one-handed was impossible. The board shot upwards, out of my feeble grip, and then it was just me and Old Man Sea.

  Kicking frantically, I tried to keep my head above the surface, but the waves were burying me, one after the other, only a second or two to come up for air before the next one hit. Far away now were thoughts of letting go – I was fighting furiously for life. Never in my seventeen years had I been so desperate. But my legs were tingling with effort, and I knew it was just a matter of time.

  When the final wave broke me all I could think was, Sienna. With her name on my lips I inhaled a lungful of water and I sank…

  … for all of a second before something grabbed the back of my t-shirt and hauled me upward. Coughing and spluttering, I emerged from the blue and was pulled roughly onto a board, my leg shoved over so that I straddled it. I had the fleeting thought that this board was much sleeker and more substantial looking than the one I’d just lost before my rescuer settled pretty much on top of me and started paddling toward the shore.

  With him in command, we crested waves and glided down the other side with apparent ease, though I seemed unable to match the rhythm of our motion and kept taking in great gulps of brine. Over the sound of the waves and the wind and the splash of powerful arms cutting into the water to propel us along, I picked out low, irate grumblings.

  ‘… idiot tourists… total waste of… all we need… another bloody drama…’

  Finally, we reached the shallow waters and he slid off the board and pulled me off to walk to the beach. But my legs didn’t seem willing to respond to basic instructions like ‘walk’ or even ‘stand’ and breathing between wrenching gasps had become a challenge, so he threw an arm around me and half-carried, half-walked me, dragging his board with his spare hand.

  Ten steps up the beach he let me down onto the sand.

  ‘Head down,’ he commanded. ‘Between your legs. Cough it out.’

  I did as I was told. Liquid spilled out of me with each retching cough, and the cool air I gulped in burned my throat. I fought the panic, I fought the pain, focusing instead on the shells and stones strewn around. Finally, breathing won out.

  ‘You okay?’

  I was reluctant to look up. For starters, I knew I must look a mess – long hair plastered to my head rat-tail style, face flushed and salt-burned, eyes teary and bloodshot. And then there was the fact that this guy, whoever he was, had just saved my life, and was evidently pretty mad about having had to do so.

  ‘Hey, you okay?’

  I lifted my head slowly. Took in broad thighs clad in black neoprene; hands reaching out, palms raised; a wide, muscular chest; a striking face – rugged, square jaw, full lips, ruddy cheeks, Grecian nose bearing a thin scar across the bridge, thick black lashes framing eyes… oh, his eyes.

  I opened my mouth, tried to speak, but I was paralysed by his gaze. All at once I was home in the cottage, tucked up beneath the blue patchwork quilt of my childhood; I was watching my grandmother remove vanilla-scented fairy cakes from her powder-blue Aga; I was running through a meadow of sky-blue forget-me-nots with my sister – free, exhilarated, happy. The memories took my breath away. I felt the familiar burn in my tear ducts.

  His eyebrows pulled together and he placed a hand on my trembling knee.

  ‘Are. You. Okay?’ he said with exaggerated care, as if he were speaking to an elderly lady having a turn at a bus stop.

  I blinked, cleared my throat and managed a husky, ‘Yes. Th-thank you.’

  Concern melted into exasperation.

  ‘What’s the deal,’ he demanded, ‘out there on your own, clearly no idea what you’re doing, children’s play surfboard… you got a death wish or something?’

  I cringed. I’d known the board was short, but I’d thought it was me-sized – at five foot three, what use was some enormous board?

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You would’ve been sorry if I hadn’t seen you.’

  ‘I just wanted to get a feel for it. I didn’t realise it was so rough out there.’

  ‘Rough? That’s not rough. Not even optimum surfing weather. Piece of cake for someone who actually knows how to surf…’

  He paused when he saw a tear escape my eye and roll traitorously down my cheek. Furrowed his brow, combed his fingers roughly through dark hair that was drying fast in the breeze.

  ‘Listen, I didn’t mean to…’

  I brushed the tear away furiously. Enough with the vulnerability.

  ‘Right, well, thank you…’

  ‘Luke. My name’s Luke.’ The stress lines in his face smoothed out and his lips curved. Like this, smiling and relaxed, his scrutiny was a touch less unsettling. ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Thank you, L
uke, for your, um, help, but I’m sure you’ve better things to do, so I’ll just be...’

  Before he could protest, I launched myself to my feet. He instinctively rose with me, and my water-fogged mind registered belatedly that my rescuer was a giant of a guy – my head was at the level of his chest. As I looked up to take in his stature I staggered slightly and he reached out to right me, but I stepped backwards. I didn’t need his kindness.

  He looked awkward, unsure of himself, as he towered over me. ‘Hey, will you be okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’ll just head home.’

  ‘You live close?’

  I pointed vaguely west. ‘Yes, not far.’

  ‘Up there?’ He looked puzzled, and then interest sparked in his eyes. ‘You mean the Blake place?’

  Busted. Of course being vague was pointless. My grandparents’ ramshackle cottage on the western cliff was the only building up there.

  I made a noncommittal mnnnhnnn noise, but Luke was not to be deterred.

  ‘But that place has been empty since…’

  He was looking at me now with such scrutiny that I took a further step back. I saw the cogs turning in his mind as he took in the classic green Blake eyes and then compared her – short, spiky red hair, eternally crimson lips, tall and impossibly slender – with me – petite and curvy, hair more blond than auburn reaching to the base of my spine and a pallor worthy of a vampire. His eyes widened.

  ‘Scarlett? Scarlett Blake!’

  There was shock in his tone, and then sympathy.

  I said nothing; I only nodded.

  He smiled tentatively, as if not sure how to react, and said, ‘I’m Luke Cavendish. Mike and Elsie’s grandson. Our grandparents were friends.’

  Cavendish. The name stirred something deep inside, an echo of a memory.

  ‘I used to see you when you were young, when you came to stay with your grandparents for the summer holidays. I think we played together once or twice on the beach… you and me, and my sister, and your sister…’

  A flash, and there it was. Just a fleeting moment, a scene playing across my mind. Sienna here, in this cove, leaping confidently from rock to rock, digging deep into rock pools with a neon-green net, finding a crab here, a shrimp there, flinging them around recklessly, laugh singing on the breeze. Me picking my way anxiously along in her wake, returning displaced crustaceans to their home pools, imploring Sienna to respect the creatures. A younger girl scrambling along behind, eager to impress Sienna, holding up a starfish for approval. And a boy, a boy a year or two older than Sienna and me, a boy with unruly hair and pink cheeks and the bluest of eyes shouting from the beach, ‘Caroline, come back! Caroline, careful now!’

  Luke looked pained and his hands fluttered at his sides uselessly.

  As I stared into his eyes, I thought how much nicer it would be to drown in this kind of blue, in a gaze that contained depth and warmth and compassion and soul.

  ‘Idiot! I didn’t think. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened to your –’

  But I wouldn’t let him finish. ‘Well, Luke, it was nice to meet you. Um, again.’

  I plastered a smile on my face and started edging backwards up the beach to where I’d left my towel and trainers. I shoved my blue-tinged feet into the battered old Adidas, heedless of the abrasive sand encrusted on them, and wrapped the thick old towel around my sodden t-shirt and swimsuit. ‘Better be off.’

  He nodded, his face serious. ‘Okay, Scarlett. Take care, eh?’

  ‘Will do!’ I replied breezily. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t go out there again.’

  I gestured to the sea, which from the shore, I now realised, looked more tame than tempestuous, and then spun around on my heel and squelched along the beach to the western side of the cove, where an age-old path cut into the rocks led me up the cliff. At the top I risked a glance down. The boy was standing right where I left him, watching me, head tilted to one side, hands resting loosely at his sides. I raised my hand in an awkward half-wave, and then hurried along the narrow, overgrown path to the cottage – to a warm bath, a mug of hot coffee and another day of wondering and aching.

  And plotting. For as kind and honourable as Luke Cavendish was; as much as I now owed him my life; as much as in another life I might have felt the pull to be friends, to let someone in – I had lied to him.

  I would go back out onto the ocean. I would once again sit astride a surfboard on surging, rollicking, crashing waves. Not by choice – I was deeply frightened of the sea; always had been – but out of heart-crushing need. To answer the question that had echoed in every beat of my heart for the past two months – since I had walked into the headmistress’s office of my private boarding school and been confronted by the sight of Mother, collapsed in a chair and sobbing into a handful of tissues, and Father, standing before the fireplace, white-faced and rigid, and my headmistress frozen at her desk with the most sickening look of pity on her face:

  Why, why, why, why?

  2: ONCE

  Tiny shells, the size of my pinkie nail.

  The tinkling of chimes dancing in the breeze.

  A laugh, loud and long, that says, ‘Look at me. Look at me.’

  Poppies peppered through wild grasses.

  Flour dust billowing from a yellow apron.

  The warm, smooth permanence of pink rocks beneath bare feet.

  Two chocolate-smeared faces peeking out from beneath a tablecloth.

  A marshmallow puff cloud below which gulls dart and dive.

  Fingers intertwined with wool in a game of cat’s cradle.

  The tang of lavender and seaweed on the breeze.

  A grazed knee, a drop of blood meandering down, a gentle touch, a hand pushing firmly away, a voice dismissing – ‘No, Scarlett. It’s nothing; doesn’t even hurt.’

  3: REASON IN MADNESS

  I woke from the dream as I always did: groggy and tired. Blearily, I reached out for the alarm clock, but my hand met a mug, stone cold, on the coffee table. A nap, then. I pulled myself upright, groaning with the effort. The hands on the grandfather clock were at twelve and ten; a good three hours had elapsed since I first sat down. Clearly, near-death experiences weren’t conducive to wakefulness.

  Wiping out wasn’t a new experience. For months now I’d been increasingly more exhausted. Some days were better than others. Some days just swinging a leg out of bed in the morning was an effort. I hid it well. Concealer on the dark shadows, drops to refresh gritty, sore eyes, long blond hair left loose to hide behind, a deliberate spring in my step when around others. I refused to give in to the near-constant desire to slump, but pushed and pushed until I hit the wall, when I’d no choice but to crash until some form of balance was restored.

  Waking was always disorientating, because the dreams were so vivid that the line between fantasy and reality was foggy. For a few minutes, usually, images remained on the periphery of my consciousness. When the dreams began, last year, they were of that place only – that serene, beautiful landscape where butterflies bobbed and grass tickled and the ocean was a velvet blanket that rippled peacefully. But since April, since that blackest of days, she was there too – memories of the times I loved her most and the times I would have done anything to change her.

  Enough. The kitchen beckoned.

  I made my way across the living room, dodging oversized chintzy armchairs and carved wooden end tables, trailing my hand along the polished walnut of my grandfather’s writing desk, and pushed open the white-painted door that led into what was once my grandmother’s domain. I fancied I could still smell the cinnamon of her baking; still hear her high voice chastise, ‘Now Scarlett, Sienna, you wait till those flapjacks cool, you hear me? I see you ogling them. Scoot! Out of my kitchen.’

  Precious little had changed in this room – in this house, in fact – since I was a child. And though it had been three years since Nanna’s peaceful passing, three years one month since Grandad went to sleep and never woke up, it felt like they were here, in the ho
use, just a room away – like any moment Nanna would come and press her soft, lined cheek to mine and Grandad would stride in, shaking the morning’s paper and booming that the government had gone to hell in a handbasket. All at once I was grateful to Mother for preserving the house this way. I’d once thought it macabre, Miss Haversham-like, but now I was grateful for the comforting familiarity of the place.

  I had always been happier here than in the cavernous, echoing rooms of Hollythwaite, our family home in Hampshire. There, my parents had slept in a separate wing to me, too far to hear when I cried out from a nightmare. There, the dinner table was long enough that when my parents had a row they could eat separately. There, the hallways were silent but for the squeak of polished footwear on polished floors. But this house, this house invited kicking off shoes and turning music up loud and eating hot buttered toast standing up without a plate to catch the crumbs. This was home – was home for Sienna too; I knew that’s why she had come here this year, why this was her destination when she slipped out of her boarding school and ran away into the night. This is where we came to find ourselves when we were lost.

  My stomach gurgled, and I opened the archaic fridge and surveyed the contents. It didn’t take long – my choices were jam on bread, or bread on jam. The tiny garage at which I’d stopped yesterday to fuel up and get provisions was woefully understocked. In fact, along with the toilet roll, milk and coffee, I’d pretty much bought its entire product range. ‘Just the essentials here, love,’ the man behind the counter had announced cheerily. Quite why he deemed ancient-looking cans of oxtail soup essential was beyond me.

  Using Nanna’s bread knife, I carved a doorstep from the loaf and smeared on a generous dollop of jam, picking out the biggest lumps of strawberry, then sat at the old pine table to eat. The morning’s brush with death swam into my mind and a hot, squirming sensation crawled in my belly. That guy must have thought I was a right plank. He was right. Had I really thought it would be that easy – roll up here on a Monday, then paddle out the following morning on a surfboard and discover the truth of why she did it, just like that?