Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

ached. Her head felt like a lead balloon, heavy and hollow. It would be so easy to put her face back down and escape into sleep. She didn’t even have to close her eyes. So dark . . .
     
    Regina jerked back her head and swore. Time to get up. Get moving.
     
    She listened to the drip become a gurgle, the gurgle grow to a rush, and felt a faint, warming flicker of hope. The tide must have turned. Time to try the passage again.
     
    So cold. She forced her body to uncurl, her body trembling in protest. Painfully, she stood, biting her lip against the stabs of returning circulation. She could not see her feet. She couldn’t feel her toes. She shuffled forward, one hand on the wall.
     
    Splash.
     
    She froze, bewildered, her sluggish mind struggling with the message her feet were sending. She had already reached the water. She was standing in the current. The tide had turned.
     
    The water was rising.
     
    109
     

Nine
     
    THE TIDE WAS COMING IN. DYLAN STOOD ON the headland where the island fell down in a tumble of rocks and spray. Below him was a line of dark spruce and then the shore, black rock breaking white water, and then the ocean glimmering as far as the horizon, the white caps’ plumes running before the wind like the horses of Llyr.
     
    The wind drummed in Dylan’s ears. Doubt ate at his heart.
     
    He was not anyone’s choice to stand against the power of Hell. He should summon a warden, send for instructions, ask for advice.
     
    Assuming Conn would hear and answer.
     
    Assuming help would come in time.
     
    The wind snickered, snatching at Dylan’s clothes and hair. The waves raged like his heart.
     
    He didn’t need this. He didn’t want her. He had witnessed firsthand the wreck of his parents’ marriage, the tangled net of love and obsession and resentment that had dragged his mother from the sea. He would never give a woman that kind of power over him.
     
    That did not mean he could not use his own power to find Regina.
    To save her.
     
    He had always been adept at small magics. He could summon a wave, a woman, a breeze. For convenience, for amusement, for spite. But no significant outcome, no significant other, had ever depended on his skill before.
     
    “You try being responsible for somebody besides yourself sometime, and we’ll talk.”
     
    Indeed.
     
    The cross was in his hand. He spread his arms against the wind, annoyed to notice his hands trembling.
     
    110
     
    He gazed down on the sea, polished and pocked as a sheet of hammered silver. The waters of the ocean ran through him, his mother’s blood, his mother’s gift. The magic of the ocean was his birthright.
     
    He planted his feet on the rock. He stretched his arms, opened his mind, and invited the sea in.
     
    Power rose like fog from the surface of the water, moist, heavy. He felt it envelope him, stream over him and into him, pour down his throat like wine and pool in his loins like lust. His mind spun as the power surged, seeking an outlet. It filled him to overflowing; spilled from his throat on a cry: “Regina.”
     
    So he called her, by her name and by his knowledge of her, her flesh and her spirit, and by the power of the totem in his hand.
     
    Regina.
     
    The wind in the trees replied. A bird soaring over the waters replied.
    The quickening of his own heart answered him.
     
    Clenching his hand on the burning gold of the cross, Dylan plunged from the sunlit hill and into the shadow of the trees. He was already loosening his belt when he reached the shore.
     
    *
     
    Regina stumbled in the dark, at the limits of her strength, driven by terror and the rising water. The cold current dragged and hissed at her knees, soaked her jeans, weighted her sneakers. If she took off her shoes, she would cut her feet. If she didn’t take them off, she could drown.
     
    A whimper escaped her. She set her teeth. She couldn’t drown. She had to get home to Nick. Oh, Ma, I’m so sorry. Nick . . .
     
    She had to keep her head above water. She had to find the chamber’s highest point. If only she could see. She sloshed through icy water, patting and slapping the cave ceiling, her fingers like frozen sausages.
     
    111
    The ceiling rose away from the wall. She followed its slope, dazed with cold, disoriented in the dark, her fingers fumbling, sliding, touching .
    . . nothing.
     
    She bit back a scream. There was a— She groped. A hole overhead.
    She patted. A passage, a chimney in the rock, wider than her shoulders,