Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

wanted to go home. To Nick. To her mother.
     
    Hot tears leaked from her eyes. Regina wiped her face on her shoulder. It was so quiet. So dark. She could feel her heart beating in the darkness, hear each wheezing breath. The silence was a weight like the rock, pressing down on her.
     
    Slowly, she began to inch backward, pushing herself with fingers and toes, hissing and gasping when the rocks scraped her hands, when she bumped her head.
     
    When the tunnel widened again, she curled into a ball with her back against the wall, listening to the soft lap of the water. Gradually, her sweat dried. Her breathing evened. She no longer worried Jericho would come back for her. She worried he would not.
     
    Not a good thought.
     
    Let him come. She’d kick his ass. Bastard.
     
    Of course, she hadn’t done so well in their first round. He’d practically killed her. She swallowed against the pain of her abused throat.
     
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    Why hadn’t he killed her?
     
    Maybe he was coming back after all. She’d seen a news story about a guy who kept a woman locked in his basement. For years.
     
    Regina shivered, wrapping her arms around her knees to hold in her body heat. The air was cold and moist. The floor was cold and damp. Her butt was numb.
     
    She heard a slither and a soft plop as something slid into the water.
    A rock? A rat? A snake? What kind of animals lived down here in the dark, in that water? Things without eyes. White, slimy, hungry things.
    Maybe Jericho was still there in the dark, watching her. Waiting for her.
     
    She shook herself. She ought to get up. Get moving. In a minute.
     
    She was so tired, her muscles cramped and aching.
     
    How long had she been down here? Hours? It felt like hours. The quiet stretched on forever, like the dark.
     
    Was Nick awake by now? He would be worried when he awoke and she was gone. And her mother . . . Please, dear God, get me out of here, and I’ll never fight with my mother again.
     
    How long had she been down here? She wished she wore a watch. A luminous dial would be really nice right now. But kitchen workers didn’t wear watches. She strained her eyes against the darkness. Nothing to tell her whether it was day or night, no hint of light or anything else. Only her body warned her time was passing. She was thirsty and cold and she needed to pee. Her limbs were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
     
    Okay, she really had to get up. Nobody was coming to get her out of this one. Not Alain, not her mother, not Caleb, not . . .
     
    She didn’t want to think about Dylan. Dylan was gone, like her father, like Nick’s father, like every other man in her life. “You knew all along I would not stay.”
     
    Her anger was good. It warmed her, a hard little lump smoldering like a coal in the pit of her stomach. So she didn’t have a knight in
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    shining armor riding to her rescue. She still had a life waiting for her somewhere in the sunlight. She had a son.
     
    She climbed to her feet.
     
    There was a way in. There had to be a way out.
     
    *
     
    “Holy Christ,” Caleb breathed.
     
    The unconscious man’s exposed palm was orange, raw and swollen; the fingers blistered dirty white; the skin puffing, sloughing off. And black in the center like a brand was the oozing sign of the cross.
     
    “Yes,” Dylan agreed simply. “If he was possessed, he is not now.”
     
    “You can’t know that.”
     
    “Demons would not inflict such a mark.”
     
    “You think he did this to himself?”
     
    Dylan shrugged. “It would protect him. No demon would willingly stay for long in a host branded by the cross.”
     
    Caleb sighed. “I hate this woo-woo shit. Okay, say a demon possessed Jones. You’re sure about that?”
     
    Dylan nodded. “The fire spoor is all over him.”
     
    “I’ll take your word for it. Jones gets burned, we don’t know how.
    Demon . . . jumps?”
     
    “Probably not at once,” Dylan said. “The mark would gradually grow more and more unbearable. But it would take time for the demon to relinquish its host.”
     
    “Or to find a new one?” Caleb asked. His voice was steady. His hand holding the flashlight was not.
     
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    Dylan watched the trembling beam of the flashlight and felt a rare sympathy for his human brother.
     
    Caleb had experience with possession. The demon Tan had tried to take him over. Caleb had been willing to die, had died, had drowned himself, rather than submit to the demon’s control. Dylan had