Dark Waters (19 page)

“Hello, Rachel,” Kyle Stillwater said.

The words shot through her, and she would’ve fallen if he hadn’t caught her under the arms and turned her to face him. She was weak with a surge of unwanted desire, limp in his hands, and the water lifted her feet from the bottom. Her legs drifted apart on their own, and she could hardly breathe.

She looked up at him, silhouetted against the starry sky overhead. She didn’t want him rationally, but the primal need swelling in her with every second could not be controlled much longer. He was right there; all she had to do was guide him where she wanted him to be.…

She could not see his face, but his voice purred with confidence. “We never did finish what we started the other night, did we? Is that what you’re here to do?”

Yes
, she wanted to scream.
Yes, take me, fuck me, end this awful sense of hovering and send me over the edge!
She had to grit her teeth against the words.

“Just say it,” he murmured. “Say what you want.” She could feel him hard and ready, bobbing in the water. He lifted her slightly and eased her forward, ready to claim his prize.

And then Ethan’s voice rang out from shore. “Rachel, don’t! It’s a
trap
!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

B
ETTY WHIRLED TOWARD
Ethan. “Shut the fuck up!” she snarled, and began lobbing fist-sized rocks from the streambed. He tried to elude them in the darkness, but one hit him solidly in the temple and he fell, dazed.

By the time he shook off the stars, Betty stood over him with a stick she’d evidently snatched from the ground. It was a yard long, and the end above his head was jaggedly sharp. “You’ve just outlived your usefulness,” she hissed, and drove the crude spear at Ethan’s head.

He rolled aside, and it struck the concrete base of the little observation deck. Acting on instinct, he kicked her feet out from under her, and she fell hard on her back. He rolled on his own back beside her and drove his elbow hard into her sternum. She gasped in pain.

Then he straddled her, pinned her arms with his knees, and held her by the hair. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. “Who the fuck are you?”

She glared up at him, her eyes jet-black in the darkness.

AT ETHAN’S WARNING
, Rachel found the strength to wrench herself away from Stillwater. “No!” she managed to cry, before he claimed her and everything was lost. She fell into the water with a clumsy, loud splash.

Instantly she was disoriented, and when she tried to kick her way back toward the surface she encountered only more water. The dark currents changed chaotically, tumbling her until all sense of direction was useless.

Then watery hands began clutching roughly at her. They were similar to the ones formed by her lake spirits, but these were knobby, sharp-nailed, and groping. They touched her everywhere with no regard for gentleness, and she writhed uselessly to escape them.

The depleted air in her lungs burned, and she fought the urge to let it out, knowing that only dank Wingra water awaited her. She clenched her teeth against the bubbles, but they escaped, and that desire to take the next breath grew too powerful.
I’m going to drown!
she thought helplessly.

A new hand, solid and powerful, closed around her throat. Suddenly she was yanked from the water and found herself staring into Kyle Stillwater’s face. But it wasn’t the desperately handsome visage she’d seen before: This was a sharp-featured, black-eyed demon glaring at her with utter contempt.

She clutched at his forearm and kicked madly at the water. She still needed to breathe, but his iron fingers held her windpipe shut so tightly she could get only the slightest bit of air. He pulled her close against him, and she again felt his erection touch her.

“I’m going to take you so hard you won’t survive it,” he hissed. “I’ve locked your spirits away from you, and when I’m done with you, I’ll use your heart to trap them forever. Any heart will hold them, but only yours will
torment
them. How does that sound? I’m going to love you to
death
.”

Fury surged through her at the threat. “With what?” she croaked, and used both hands to bend his erection like a dry twig.

He screamed and released her. This time she hit the water swimming and headed back toward the inlet and the spring. With each stroke she expected the vile clawed hands to grab her and pull her down, but they didn’t. When the water was shallow enough, she stood up and splashed through it, ignoring the pain in her bare feet. She looked back over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Stillwater.

She heard Ethan’s voice demanding, “Who the fuck are you?” and then Betty’s cold laugh. She climbed over the rail, soaking wet and shivering from the wind, and saw Ethan astride Betty.

“Wh-what happened?” she asked, rubbing her pebbled arms with her hands.

Ethan didn’t look away from the woman he held. “
She
killed Garrett Bloom, not Kyle Stillwater.”

“What?” Rachel gasped. She knelt by the open satchel and pulled out the plastic bag. The smell and weight confirmed what Ethan said: This was a human heart, Garrett Bloom’s heart.
Any heart will hold them
, Stillwater had said.

Betty began to cry. “He’s gone.…”

“Are they in here?” Rachel demanded. “Are my spirits inside this?”

Through her tears she snarled, “Of course. I sucked them in like minnows in a vacuum cleaner. They were so weak they couldn’t even fight back, thanks to you.”

Rachel’s blush of shame was hidden by the darkness. “Let her go, Ethan. This is all we need.”

“Yes, it is,” Kyle Stillwater said from inches away.

Rachel jumped and backed into the rail, which was cold against her bare buttocks. Stillwater stood naked before her, feet wide, hands balled into fists. Water trickled from his sculpted body. He was no longer erect but still radiated danger. “Now give me the heart.”

Rachel was trapped against the rail, and the wind grew more violent. The memory of his fingers at her throat made her tremble even more. “No,” she said.

Behind Stillwater, Ethan rose like a dark, avenging shadow. “Let her alone and back away, pretty boy.”

Stillwater did not look around. To Rachel he said, “I will snap him in half and then take my revenge on you. His death will at least be quick. Now
give me the heart
.”

In a small voice Betty said, “Artemak?”

Stillwater looked as if he’d heard a ghost. He turned away from Rachel as if she didn’t exist and looked down at Betty. “I am Artemak. Who are you?”

“Teculor,” Betty said, her voice trembling. She got to her feet, smoothing down her sundress. “I am Teculor. Look at what they’ve done to me.”

Stillwater looked Betty over intently. He seemed to have forgotten Rachel and Ethan. “Teculor,” he breathed in wonder.

“They have made me into a woman,” Betty said hatefully. “A woman! My body is weak, and prone to disgusting things, and I can do nothing to stop it.”

“Teculor, my brother,” Stillwater said. His own voice shook now. “What is going on here?”

“I saw you the day you emerged at the park. I knew your presence meant that the sanctimonious netherworlders who imprisoned you had been weakened enough for you to escape. So I made a sacrifice. It was so simple, Artemak. They flowed into the heart just as easily as they once flowed out. I could hear their screams.” She nodded at Rachel. “Then tonight I used their avatar to summon you, to present you with this gift.”

“I’m here, my brother. I locked our jailers into their lake at the first opportunity, but it took me some time to wrest full control of this form from the consciousness that inhabited it.”

“I know. I had the same trouble with this one at first.” They both giggled, siblings sharing an inside joke.

Ethan slipped around the two and stood beside Rachel, one hand across her shoulders. He took the heart from her and held it out of sight behind his back. Then he slowly eased them both down the railing, trying to get in a position to make a run for it. Rachel slid her bare feet along the concrete.

Betty suddenly turned serious. “You must help me, Artemak. I have lived in this form for years now, and I can bear it no longer.”

“Anything, my brother,” Stillwater said.

Betty’s voice was so small that Rachel barely heard it. “Free me from this prison. Being a mere spirit is better than this soft, pliable flesh.”

Stillwater sounded genuinely regretful. “I cannot. It would take all my power, and I will not allow myself to be that weak again. You must endure this until its normal span of time reaches its end.”

“You must try!” Betty shrieked, simultaneously petulant and desperate. “You are my brother!”

Rachel and Ethan were almost in the clear. Ethan gave her the barest nod toward the trail. Rachel squeezed his hand in acknowledgment.

Stillwater took another step back from Betty. “I thank you for your help, my brother. Together we have defeated those who judged themselves superior to us. Now I will destroy them utterly. It will not be as poetic as I had planned, but it will be just as permanent.”

Simultaneously Betty screamed, “No!” and Stillwater flung himself at Rachel and Ethan. Instinctively Ethan pushed Rachel aside and braced for the impact, but Stillwater was supernaturally nimble. He snatched the plastic bag from Ethan’s hand and leaped over the rail. He landed in the shallow spring pool and kept going down into the water until he disappeared.

Rachel did not even pause to think. She jumped up, put one bare foot on the rail, and leaped in after him. Ethan was an instant behind her.

By the time Betty got to the rail, three people had vanished into a pool barely six inches deep. The surface rippled to show their passage, but otherwise there was no sign of them. Betty heaved herself onto the rail and jumped but landed with a painful thud in the shallow water. She sat there helplessly, knowing where they’d gone but unable to follow. Only willpower opened the channel between the worlds, and her will was imprisoned with her masculine spirit, both impotent inside her female form.

“No!” she screamed again, and slapped the water like an angry child. It shimmered in the moonlight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

R
ACHEL AND ETHAN
burst from the water one after the other. They found themselves standing waist-deep off the shore of Lake Wingra, but it was no Wingra that Ethan had ever seen before. Just ahead was the same spring-fed channel, but it was narrower and its contours different from what they had been mere moments before. He squinted into the unexpected sunlight and wiped water from his eyes.

Ethan looked around at the virgin forest, untouched shore, and nonexistent city skyline. The sunlight was blinding in its purity. He looked down at his soaked clothes, then at Rachel standing nearby.

A family of ducks passed before them. The ducklings regarded them with something like disdain. In the distance, a drum began to beat.

Ethan wiped water from his eyes again. “What the hell?”

He looked at Rachel. Water ran in rivulets down her body, and the sun glistened from her curves. He’d seen her naked but never like this, in bright light that made her breathtaking. He was momentarily speechless.

Then a shadow passed over them, and for a moment Ethan thought it was a small airplane flying too low. Then he realized it was an enormous black bird, with wings nearly twenty feet across, sailing in silence toward the far side of the lake.

He turned back to Rachel. “Okay, that’s not right.”

She ignored him, squinting against the glare as she scanned the shore. Suddenly she pointed and cried, “There!”

Kyle Stillwater strode toward shore, down the spring stream’s channel. The tree that stood over the water source in their own world was a mere sapling here, barely ten feet high. All the trees, in fact, were smaller, and there were a lot fewer of them. The forested Arboretum hill was bare of grass on top. There was no trace of the little observation deck.

Ethan was used to acting before he had all the information; as a soldier, he had learned to trust his instincts in a crisis. “I’ll get him,” he muttered, and swam hard for shore.

In moments his hands felt the bottom, and he rose to his feet. He tossed his waterlogged shirt aside and sloshed through the knee-deep water until he reached the bank. He ran from the water and saw Stillwater halfway up the slope through the trees. “Stop!” he bellowed.

Stillwater looked back at him in surprise.

Ethan froze. The man’s face was no longer human but pointed and black-eyed like some devil. Stillwater’s voice was high and shrill when he cackled triumphantly. He shook the plastic bag with Garrett Bloom’s heart. “Too late!” Then he resumed his climb.

“Like hell,” Ethan muttered to himself, and followed. His wet jeans made movement difficult, but he used the trees to pull himself along so that he quickly closed the gap between him and whatever Stillwater had become.

WHEN ETHAN TOOK
off after Stillwater, Rachel swam at an oblique angle toward a different part of the shore, intending to approach from a different direction. She doubted she could physically overpower Stillwater, but she might be able to surprise him at a crucial moment.

She reached a spot on the shore about thirty yards from the mouth of the channel. She slipped through the weeds, trying not to think about what might be under the water. As she was about to step onto dry land, a movement to one side caught her eye.

A man stood down on the shore, staring out at the water. He was tall and slender, and wore only a long loincloth made of some sort of animal skin. His profile was the most noble thing she’d ever seen. And his hair was long, snow-white, and braided down his back.

He turned and looked at her. At the instant their eyes met, she saw something familiar—a kindness and compassion that resonated within her. “Hello,” he said.

She recalled that she’d had no difficulty speaking with the old woman before either. “Er … hello.” She swallowed hard. “You’re, ah … one of them, aren’t you?”

“One of who?”

Wait
, she thought,
he can’t be. This is Lake Wingra, where the evil ones go
. But his smile was so warm, so without guile, that she said, “You don’t belong in this lake, do you?”

He looked intently at her, and suddenly she remembered she was stark-naked in broad daylight. She felt the blush creep up her neck and face.

He laughed. “Oh, I see. You’re not supposed to be here, are you? In your world, I’m already …”

“A spirit?”

He shrugged modestly. “If I’m good enough. But there
is
something familiar about you. Sometimes, as we get closer to joining the spirit world, we get a sense of both the future and the past. That could explain it.”

“So why are you here?”

He nodded toward the lake. “My father is here. He was a man of singular vision and drive, and he accomplished a great deal. Except he never had the first bit of compassion for anyone else. So his spirit is here. You understand about that?”

“Some.” She nodded toward the hill. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m kind of in the middle of something. In the future … will you remember this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you do … say hello.”

He nodded.

She headed up the hill, hunched low to stay out of sight and trying not to wince at the sharp-edged grass and briars that nicked her bare skin. This slope was steeper but also shorter, and she made good time. But the contradictions ran through her head. If the man became one of her spirits in the future, then wasn’t he also trapped inside the heart? And if she was here, and had now spoken to him, would that change anything in the future?

Sarah Connor, where are you when I need you?
she thought.

She reached the top of the hill and peeked around the trunk of a large tree. She saw a circular clearing. In the center stood a flat, simple stone altar almost identical to the one shown in the old illustration Betty McNally had given her. Rusty trails at the corners showed where sacrificial blood had run down to the ground. Three sharp, long knives rested in notches cut along the edge; the blades reflected the sun.

Stillwater emerged from the trees at the same moment. His whole being was distorted now, drawn tight and wiry over bones that seemed extra-knobby at the joints. His knees also now pointed backward, the way satyrs looked in old drawings. Whatever disguise he’d used in her world, he couldn’t hide his true form here. She couldn’t believe he’d ever been human.

Fear knotted her stomach. What could she possibly do? She was helpless in every sense, huddled naked behind a tree in a strange place and an unknown time. And yet she couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

Stillwater was halfway across the clearing when Ethan tackled him from behind. The impact knocked them both down, and they struggled for dominance. Stillwater was hampered as he tried to hang on to the plastic bag.

Rachel saw her chance. She dashed forward, staying low to keep the altar between her and the men for as long as possible. Then she snatched the bag from Stillwater’s hand.

He turned toward her and screamed. It was a cold, inhuman sound that sent shivers up her spine. He got his knobby feet against Ethan and kicked. Ethan flew through the air and landed on his back a few yards away, the impact knocking the wind from him.

Rachel lost crucial moments making sure Ethan was okay. By the time she turned her attention back to Stillwater, he was nearly on top of her. She tried to run, but his long fingers had grabbed a handful of her hair, jerking her to a halt.

“First my brother presents me with a gift,” he hissed, “and now you do as well. Your death will only add to the agony of your spirits before they meet their own destruction.”

He dragged her effortlessly to the altar. She fought, but his skin was now thick and leathery, immune to her assault. He slammed her head down hard against the stone, and she saw stars for a moment. He twisted one arm behind her and forced her to stay bent over the altar, her cheek pressed against the layers of dried blood left over from previous ceremonies.

“Let me go!” she snarled, kicking uselessly. She yelled in pain as he wrenched her arm even more. She expected to feel him move behind her, to take advantage of her helplessness the way cruel men always did with women at their mercy. Rage and adrenaline rose in her.

“I lived in that lake for centuries,” he hissed. With his free hand he slammed the bag containing the heart onto the stone. “I was once a man, with a man’s desires and dreams. Now look at me!”

He shook the heart from the bag. It rolled perilously close to Rachel’s face, and she scrunched her eyes shut. But it didn’t touch her.

“They kept me there, until a moment of weakness let me jump into that stupid boy,” he continued, breathing heavily. “And my brother. I thought he was truly dead, but they cast him into the body of a
woman
!”

“You bastard,” Rachel hissed. She felt his deformed foot beside her own. “I’d say your brother was the lucky one.”

Before Stillwater could answer, she slammed her heel down with all her strength on his instep. He howled, and his grip on her lessened enough for her to wrench free, although she left some hair in his hand. She turned, put her back to the altar, and kicked him again, hard, in the groin. When he doubled over, she brought her knee up into his face.

He staggered back, and she grabbed for the nearest of the three knives. It was just out of reach, but before she could lunge across the stone, a crack of thunder split the air, and she felt something warm splash on her back.

Birds shrieked and fled from the trees. She turned and gasped in surprise.

A hole marked the center of his chest, blood just starting to ooze from it. Behind him, Ethan stood with Rachel’s gun, the barrel still smoking.

Stillwater made a sound like broken glass in a blender. She assumed it was a scream.

“Grab the heart!” Ethan cried. “Go back to the lake and try to get them home!”

Rachel grabbed the bag, rolled the heart inside with just her fingertips, and headed back down the hill through the woods. She prayed that whatever passage brought them here was still open.

STILLWATER TURNED AND
hissed at Ethan. His tongue lolled out, longer than a man’s and forked. He raised his hands and charged.

Ethan fired again.

The new hole appeared an inch beside the first. Stillwater looked down at the wounds, then back up in confusion. Blood coughed from his mouth.

“It’s over,” Ethan said. His heart thundered with adrenaline, but his aim was rock-steady.

“Do you know … what my existence … has been like?” Stillwater croaked.

“No, but I’m pretty sure you deserved it,” Ethan said.

As he rushed at Ethan, Stillwater again screamed, a nails-on-chalkboard sound that made Ethan wince. But his next shot found its mark, right between the creature’s eyes. Stillwater fell dead at Ethan’s feet.

Ethan closed his eyes and sighed. His own heart felt like it might split in two on its own. He lowered the gun to his side.

When he looked back at Stillwater, instead of the white-haired creature, a young man with black hair and a Native American complexion lay at his feet. Ethan knelt and rolled him over. His face was fully human, and blank with the peacefulness of death.

A new voice said, “That was unfortunate.”

Ethan jumped to his feet. An old woman stood a few paces away, watching them sadly.

“You speak English,” Ethan said.

“I speak what I speak. You understand it; that’s what matters.”

“I didn’t have any choice, you know.”

The woman’s expression did not change. “There’s always a choice. But this did what was needed. The spirit inside him is gone. It had no time to prepare a way to return to its former home.”

Ethan wiped at the blood streaking his sweaty chest. “My name’s Ethan, by the way. Rachel told me about you.”

“Are you her human lover?”

“Er … yes.”

The woman looked him up and down. “She has chosen well.”

“Thanks, I guess.…”

“Don’t thank me. Your path will be difficult—more so than hers. You will have to share her with her spirits.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” She nodded toward the trees behind him.

He turned. Two dozen men and a few women had emerged from the forest. They were all beautiful specimens, lean and handsome and well formed. Some wore loincloths, some full coverings, and two were nude. All sported long, straight white hair.

He met their eyes. In them he saw strength and resolve but also compassion. They were warriors who fought the battles they chose, not soldiers who merely took orders. He understood that.

“So you’re the spirits,” he said.

One of them stepped forward. “In time, we will be. We have a lot in common with you.”

“I’ll say.”

The man smiled. “I don’t mean merely the woman. You, like us, wish to make things better. You are willing to do what is necessary to protect the weak. Or,” he added with meaning, “avenge them.”

“
You fucking traitor,
” he’d been called when he reported a fellow soldier for the rape and murder of a little girl. “
Keep looking over your shoulder,
” they’d warned. Even his commanding officer had said, “
This is a war, son. People get a little carried away.
”

“You did the right thing,” one of the young women said.

“So you can read my mind?” Ethan said.

The first one who’d spoken laughed. “No. At least not with any detail. We have not achieved the enlightenment that awaits us, and believe me, it’s tempting to ask what the future is like. But we can’t.”

“And you,” the old woman said to Ethan, “can’t stay any longer. But you need to know what to do to release them safely back in your time.”

RACHEL CLIMBED THE
hill to the little observation deck over the spring and leaned on the rail. She was exhausted, yet there was no sign of Ethan emerging in her wake. The return dive into the pool had been a reflex, and it had occurred to her in mid-motion that if she was wrong, she was about to go headfirst into six inches of water over a bed of hard, smooth rocks. But no sooner had the thought flashed through her mind than she emerged back into her world, still clutching the plastic bag with its grisly cargo.