He looked like he’d bathed in blood. His beautiful face was covered in the stuff; it stuck thick and disgusting to the curls of his hair that swept across his eyes. Those eyes of his, that looked so innocent even as they hid the true extent of how wretched Lir had become.
“Grace,” he murmured, so softly. When he pushed me against the tiled wall I didn’t protest, even when his skin moulded to mine to smother it in blood once more. But it was his touches, his kisses, his proclamations of love that contaminated me, not what was left of Josh. Everything about him was poisoning me, seeping into the darkest, most distant corners of my very being until all I could think about was him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, mouth hot and desperate on his as I begged Lir to get closer, closer, closer.
And so I got my fevered experience in the shower with Lir, after all. I just never imagined it would involve the blood of a man who loved me lying between us on our skin, and a fear of what would become of my soul hanging heavy in the air.
Later – much later – we finally emerged from the shower in a puff of steam and exhausted, shuddering breaths. No red remained on me or on Lir, not in his tawny hair or on his starved cheekbones or god-like body.
God-like.
How could it have only occurred to me now that every fibre of his being had aspired to belong in the tales he believed to be true? I’d been blind and stupid from the beginning.
As we crawled into bed and lay, silent, in the dark, my brain slowly came off its sick chemical high and crashed back down to earth. My eyes found the door. Though it was closed I knew exactly what was on the other side of it in the opposite room.
“What did you do with his heart?” I croaked out before I could stop myself. “Did you –”
“It’s in the fridge. I –”
I ran to the bathroom and barely reached the toilet in time to throw up the contents of my empty stomach until I was gagging on nothing. This is it, I thought, when no air could reach my lungs. This was how I die. Hyperventilating into a toilet and suffocating on bile.
My vision intermittently went white then black so I dug my fingernails into my thighs and forced myself to concentrate on my breathing. I just needed to make it to tomorrow. That was it. Come tomorrow I’d –
Well, I didn’t know. But I had to do something. If I didn’t have it in me to turn Lir into the police then I had to find some other way to stop him. For it was clear he wouldn’t stop, otherwise. Gone unchecked he’d keep sacrificing people until he was caught in his own net and taken down for it. He'd be locked away from the sun and the rain and, most importantly, the sea. The light that burned so strongly within him – however perverse it had become – would be lost. Lir would become a shell of himself, and me with him.
There had to be another way.
When I returned to bed Lir pulled me into his arms, chin resting on top of my head as his long, nimble fingers trailed across my skin. It was supposed to be soothing: it felt like spiders were crawling across me.
“I have to keep it fresh for tomorrow,” he murmured into my hair. “His heart, I mean. I probably should have done it tonight.”
I really didn't want to ask. “Done what? Wasn't killing him enough?”
A small rustle as he shook his head. “I need to take it to the sea. Only through the waves can I return home. Why do you think I always went to the coast?”
“To swim and stuff,” I said, because I had believed that. I tried to imagine Lir attacking a person one moment only to abandon them to go swimming. Actually, it was pretty easy to imagine. He was unhinged enough to do it.
He let out a soft laugh. “Well, I did do those things. I have to keep fit, after all. But it made a good cover story all the same. Nobody ever suspected what I was doing. Except you, but you never said a word.”
And there it was. The truth handed to me from the proverbial mouth of the devil. That Josh's death was my fault hurt all the worse for knowing I might have prevented it had I only had the courage to face up to the person I let crawl into bed with me every night.
“The Volvo,” I whispered, because it was the only thing I hadn't asked Lir about at this point. “Did you steal it the night we slept together?”
Through the dark he nodded. “Public transport is terrible at getting to the really isolated parts of the coast. I needed a car and…it was there.”
So simple. So emotionless. He never thought about how taking the car would impact me or my parents. The worry we felt. The impending trauma of knowing a creature like Lir was using it to scope out his victims.
“Don't think about things like that right now,” Lir said, cuddling closer to me. “In the morning we'll go to Westport Beach and then...then you'll see, Grace. You'll see what I did this for.”
“And what if it isn’t enough?”
A pause. A shuffle in the dark, Lir turning me around to face him. “What do you mean?” he asked, voice slow and uncertain.
“I mean what if Josh’s death isn’t enough? Who’s to say it will be? And if it isn’t…what then? Will you kill your aunt? Your uncle? Me?”
Lir looked at me as if I’d personally shot him. “I would never sacrifice you. Or them. Grace, what will I do if it doesn’t work? It has to. What else can I do, otherwise? Unless –”
Oh, no. I didn’t like the new sheen in his eyes. Lir took my hands in his and squeezed them tightly. “What if you came with me, Grace?” he said, so fevered and excited I could do nothing but gawk at him. “I’ve never tried going through with someone who was willing before! Maybe my mum and dad could only go home because they were together. A couple. Soulmates. So will you, Grace? Will you come home with me tomorrow?”
The reality of his request was an incessant buzz in my brain, indistinct and unreal. Lir meant for us to die whether he was aware of it or not. I knew that, deep down, he truly had no idea of what walking into the sea meant. His own reality had become too warped to see things clearly. And how could I blame him? After everything Lir had been through at such a young age it should have come to absolutely no surprise to me that his brain was fractured and wrong.
He needed help; he was beyond help.
If this was the only way I could save him…
“Yes,” I said, turning so that Lir could not see the tears I spilled as I condemned myself to die.
This way I would never have to face up to everyone knowing what Lir had done. I would never have to leave him, and he would never hurt another living thing in his twisted attempt to return to a home that never existed.
Chapter Thirty-One
Lir drove us to Westport Beach just as the sun was beginning to rise…in my parents’ Volvo. He’d been hiding it in a privately-rented garage fifteen minutes from his uncle’s house whenever he wasn’t using it.
Although he’d cleaned the upholstery the air within the vehicle still smelled of damp and dust and the vague, sweet smell of rot; as we drove through the dawn all I could picture were dead bodies hiding in the shadows of the back seat. It didn’t matter that Lir assured me he never used the car to move them – he’d left the man on Islay where he killed him, on the beach, and he’d left Cian where he drowned him, in the pool, and what was left of Josh remained back in the cottage, where Lir slaughtered him – but none of that mattered to me.
Regardless of where I looked all I could see was red.
Lir was busy concentrating on the road. Though the sun was peeking up over the horizon the sky above us was grey and unsettled, and every so often a spatter of rain hit the windscreen and he had to put on the wipers and peer through the grey morning to see where he was going.
I used his temporary distraction to surreptitiously pull out my phone from my pocket. I hadn’t touched it since I listened to Josh’s voicemail. My one and only keepsake of his voice, forever telling me he was coming to get me. To save me.
My phone had very low battery which didn’t surprise me in the slightest. What did surprise me were the number of missed calls, messages and voicemails
I’d received. I’d never been so popular before.
All it took was finding myself a perfect, doting, criminally insane, serial killer boyfriend.
There were messages from Max and other students from the marine and freshwater biology lab, as well as my PhD supervisor and the head of Lir’s degree group. They’d all evidently seen the news. David had called me, too, and left a dozen messages begging me to reply. Then there were the deluge of attempts from my parents to get in touch with me…and Louisa.
Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, over and over again.
Josh called me, she wrote in one of her messages. He said he was going to get you, that Lir was…Gracie, he won’t pick up the phone. What’s going on? Please tell me he’s safe. Please tell me you’re safe. Oh my god, oh my god. Please pick up the phone.
A knot formed in my throat, constricting my breathing as I forced back the tears my body wanted me to shed. I could see that my dad called the police barely ten minutes ago. They were probably on the way to the cottage right now, and when they found what Lir had left behind…
“I can’t wait for you to meet my parents,” Lir said, cutting through my invisible agony with his excitement. I put my phone back in my pocket just as he pointed through the windshield. “The beach is up here. Just think, Grace: in a few minutes everything will change for us. We’ll both become part of a world that leaves this one completely in the dust. It’s going to be…well, amazing doesn’t seem quite right, does it?”
“Extraordinary,” I suggested, surprised at how lovely my voice sounded. I knew I had a smile plastered to my face though I wasn’t sure how I was managing to keep it there. “Breathtaking. Life-altering.”
He slid a hand through mine and completed the drive one-handed. “You’re so much better at describing things than I am. Maybe you’re meant to be a poet instead of a scientist? You’ll have all the time in the world to weave words once we start our new lives.”
I didn’t reply, merely squeezing Lir’s hand before he pulled into the empty car park and slowed to a stop.
When we got out of the car I was immediately struck by a strong, sharp gust of wind full of salt and sand. I winced away from it, my back against the cool metal of the car, when Lir came in front of me to protect me from the worst of the blasts.
“I know you’re scared,” he said, reaching out for my hand to bring it to his lips. He kissed my knuckles ever so gently, his gaze never leaving mine. Everything about him was so soft. So affectionate. So tender.
It broke my heart.
“I love you,” Lir said, and he pulled me along the beach.
For some reason I’d expected Westport Beach to be the one from my nightmare. It was stupid of me to believe that, of course: why would a real beach I’d never visited before be mimicked by my subconscious when I was asleep? Yet though the curve of the beautiful shore was different, and the shelves of rock jutting into the ferociously powerful waves hadn’t been present in my dream, they seemed familiar.
And then I worked it out.
“Your drawing,” I gasped, pointing at a part of the beach some ways off from us. “That’s the bit from your drawing.”
Lir beamed at me as he walked towards the shore, more insistent and impatient than ever. “I can’t believe you noticed,” he said. “It’s the place where the water gets deepest quickest – where the current can help pull you out faster. Seems like the most efficient way to travel.”
My stomach lurched. “I…guess so,” I forced out, dread coiling inside me as we finally reached the waves. Lir let go of my hand to throw off his shoes, lightly jumping from foot to foot as if the adrenaline within him wouldn’t let him stand still. He was literally shaking with excitement.
“This is going to work, Grace,” he said after he’d pulled off his shoes, certain. “I can feel it in my bones.” When he looked at me expectantly I realised I, too, was supposed to take off my shoes. I didn’t want to. I really, truly didn’t want to.
Under Lir’s gaze I had no choice.
“My parents put rocks in their pockets and stuff when they went into the sea,” he told me, taking my hand once more to walk along the shoreline in search of promising-looking stones. “Maybe if I’d done that when I first tried to reach them I’d have got there. Well…it doesn’t matter any more. But we should replicate what they did as much as possible, right?”
I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a rock when Lir found a pile of ‘good’ ones, so I let him fill my pockets for me. “…how old were they, Lir?” I asked, when both my pockets were full and heavy and Lir patted them down with a satisfied smile.
His eyes grew bright at the question once he worked out the answer, and he kissed me enthusiastically. “They were our age!” he gushed. “Twenty-four and twenty-five. Well, I’m twenty-five in two days, but I’m sure two days won’t make a difference. Do you think age matters? I think it must. Why hadn’t I seen that before? You’re such a genius, Grace!”
“God, I really love you,” I bit out, hating the words even more because they were true. Lir was just so…happy. I’d never seen him as content as this. He truly thought he was going home, and me with him. He thought we were going to have a glorious life together in the realm of gods and heroes, where his parents had been patiently waiting for him for twenty years.
He had done abhorrent, reprehensible things to get to where we were now, standing on a windy beach at dawn, about to die, and still I loved him.
I needed to end things.
When we set foot in the sea I shivered. The water was cold – bitingly so – but it didn’t seem to affect Lir at all. He took the first step forward, and the second, and the third. It was only when I could barely reach out a hand to touch his back with my fingertips that I began to follow.
Every drag of my legs through the turbulent water was a challenge. My bones were steel; my muscles lead. The rocks in my pockets pushed the soles of my feet much farther into the sand that I had expected, and I held a hand to my mouth to keep in a scream.
Against the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves I doubted it would have been heard, anyway.
“Don't look back, Grace,” Lir called out when we were up to our waists in water. It felt like in no time at all we’d be consumed entirely. I had minutes left to live. Seconds.
I concentrated on the curve of Lir’s shoulder blades as he picked his way confidently through the sea. “What do you mean don’t look back?” I shouted at him.
“Well,” he began, pausing for a moment when a larger-than-average wave bowled right over our heads. I sucked in a lungful of air before it hit, expecting it to be my final breath as I staggered beneath the sheer force of the water, begging myself not to fall. But it wasn’t my final breath; the wave abated and we were back to wading through the sea at waist-level after a few horrible, drawn-out moments.
“When Orpheus went down to the underworld to save Eurydice,” Lir continued when he could speak once more, “he was ordered to never look back to see if she was following him out. If he did then she would be stuck in the underworld forever. But he doubted himself, and he looked back, and there was Eurydice following his every footstep. By looking back he condemned her forever. So I won’t look back at you, and you don't look back at the shore. It's the only way we can both stay together, going forever forwards. We'll get there. We will.”
All I wanted to do was look back.
By the time the water reached my neck I began trying to swim even though my body was dull and heavy and desperately wanted to sink. Since Lir was several inches taller than me he could still walk through the waves, and though he didn’t look back he must have heard me struggling and worked out what I was doing.
“Don’t fight it!” he shouted. I could hardly hear him even though he was barely a metre away. “Just a little further and we’ll get there. Just a little more. You can do it, Grace.”
When the water was too deep for even Lir to walk another wave buffeted us. This time it knocked me under the surface for a few secon
ds. I cried and screamed for all the good it would do, but all my mouth emitted were bubbles. No matter how I fought against the current I couldn’t reach the air above my head. So I unzipped my jacket with clumsy, trembling fingers and wrenched it off me, feeling myself lighten immediately until I finally, finally broke through to the blessed, salty air above the waves.
“Stop fighting!” Lir yelled at me again, treading water as he resolutely did not look at me. So I launched myself at him, wrapping my legs around his waist for purchase as I tried to pull off his jacket. He struggled under my grip, much stronger than I was, but still I held on as I battled with his zipper.
“We – are – not – dying!” I gasped into his ear, pulling at his clothes and swatting off his hands whenever Lir tried to buck me off. “This is madness! We’re going back!”
“We can’t,” Lir replied through gritted teeth. “This will work. You’re just afraid.”
His eyes were closed so he could avoid looking at me. I wondered if he knew he would see the truth in my eyes – immutable and completely at odds with his own beliefs – and was afraid.
Afraid to be wrong. Afraid for all his evils to have been for naught.
I fished through his pockets for a rock, and when my fist closed around one I tried to throw it away. Lir grabbed my wrist to stop me. “Of course I’m afraid,” I got out, spitting salt water from my mouth all the while. It was so hard to stay afloat. “We’re going to die, Lir. I don’t want to die. I don’t –”
“Neither do I!”
“Then don’t do this!”
“We have to!”
With a tremendous amount of effort Lir wrenched me from him, turning with his eyes closed to try and push me beneath the water. I scratched at his arms the first time he ducked me down. I pushed at his chest and kicked his stomach the second time, swallowing mouthfuls of deadly, terrifying sea all the while. The salt stung my eyes but I didn’t dare close them. If I did I was lost. If I stopped fighting I was lost.
The Boy from the Sea Page 21