Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4) (20 page)

Luke didn’t come home with me to the cottage. We made a
deal: I’d call him the moment Gabriel arrived (on the new mobile phone Luke had
bought me yesterday to replace my smoke-ruined one) and Luke would come
straight to the cottage. Whether he was at the cafe or his house, he could be
with me in no more than five minutes.

The night passed uneventfully but for a run of disturbing
dreams that indicated the cereal stamping session hadn’t exorcised all of my
demons. I surfaced around dawn and drifted back to sleep, but apparently a
lie-in was too much to hope for this morning.

Jude was first to touch base with me, his six-thirty call
pulling me from a bizarre dream in which I was a stickperson. I assured him I
was fine – and alone – and no, thank you, I didn’t need him to come and be with
me right now. Really. Yes,
really
.

Luke was next, calling so soon after Jude I wondered whether
the two had been in touch. I assured him I was fine – and alone – and no, thank
you, I didn’t need him to come and be with me right now. Really. Yes,
really
.

Next, text messages from Cara and Estelle. I sent back
identical replies:
I’m fine – and alone – and no, thank you, I don’t need
you to come and be with me right now. Really.

I itched to turn my phone off and get some peace, but I
didn’t dare – Luke would kill me. So I settled for moving away from it into the
bathroom.

When I’d showered for so long that the water ran cold, I
wasted another twenty minutes dithering over what to wear and then headed
downstairs in my oldest, most comfortable jeans and tee. Before even clicking
on the kettle, I found myself standing at the window, scanning the cottage
garden. It was habit, I suppose – Jude often appeared there. Come to think of
it, so had Michael when he’d visited. But the only sign of life was a lone
magpie rooting about in the lawn for a worm.

One for sorrow…

Quickly, I turned away and busied myself making coffee.

Come eight o’clock, I’d worked my way through three cups of
coffee, two slices of toast, a yoghurt, a banana and a box of raisins.

Come nine o’clock, I’d vacuumed the cottage from top to
bottom.

Come ten o’clock, I’d found a speck of fluff on the living
room carpet and vacuumed the cottage all over again.

Come eleven o’clock, I’d organised my emails, changed my
desktop wallpaper three times, watched various
Pitch Perfect
YouTube
videos, attempted the ‘Cups’ song and browsed Amazon until I was dizzy on book
covers.

Come twelve o’clock, I was out of distractions. I went
outside and slumped on a patio chair and stared down at the cove.

I longed to get my board and go down for a surf. I hadn’t
been out in a while, what with being ill and then at Hollythwaite and the
island. I’d missed it. Perhaps the water could achieve what cereal hadn’t quite.

No, I should wait here. Surely I should wait here. Get it
done.

But then, he hadn’t come yet. And who knew when ‘soon’ was
to Gabriel? There had been lengthy gaps between the occasions I’d seen him
before now. Maybe waiting here was daft. What was it Grannie had told me the
other night? ‘A watched pot never boils.’

Oh yes, and, ‘Just keep swimming.’

*

You know when you wait at a bus stop and it takes forever
for your bus to come, but the moment you give up waiting and start walking off
to the nearest taxi rank or subway station, the bus zooms right by you?

Come one o’clock, I was alone in the cove. The sea was
empty. The beach was empty.

Come two o’clock, I was no longer alone.

Though I was a distance away when I first saw him – standing
on the beach near where I’d left my towel and watching me with his hand
shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare – I knew it was him. Of course it
was him.

I took my time paddling back to the shore, wading out of the
surf, walking up the beach towards him. His timing was perfect, I realised. It
was after a surf that I felt most centred and calm. I wondered whether he knew
that. I wondered whether he’d watched me before; whether he’d picked this
moment, this place, to put me at ease.

I stopped a few steps in front of him and set my board down
on the sand.

‘Hello, Scarlett,’ he said.

Stretching up to my full height, I looked him right in the
eye as I replied: ‘Hello, Gabriel.’

He didn’t flinch. Either he already knew I’d worked out who
he was, or he didn’t care.

‘Can we sit and talk for a while?’

I didn’t answer, but I went over to my towel, laid out on
the sand, and sat on it. He found a spot nearby, close enough that I could
smell the spicy scent he wore but far enough away not to crowd me, and sat
cross-legged. That bothered me. He was trying very hard to appear
unthreatening.

From under the towel I retrieved the phone I’d concealed and
fired off a quick text.

‘Calling for backup?’ asked Gabriel.

‘Yes,’ I said.

My phone beeped with an answering text from Luke:
I left
the cafe and went up to the cottage to check on you! On the cliff path now. Be
with you in three.

I looked up. A distant figure on the cliff waved to me. I
waved back.

‘So,’ I said, turning to Gabriel, ‘you may as well tell me
right off: why are you here?’

‘To extend an invitation, Scarlett.’

That surprised me. ‘What?’

‘I want you to come and visit me. Where I live.’

‘I’m going nowhere with you!’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I rather thought you’d say that.’

I stared at him. ‘Why do you want me to?’

‘So we can get to know each other. So we can talk, at
length. So I can help you understand how we come to be in the positions we are
today – me, your mother, your sister, you. And so that we can work together to
help your sister.’

‘Help Sienna? There’s no helping Sienna!’

‘Because of the little show she put on for you in Newquay?
You know, your sister has quite a flair for the dramatic, and you and Jude were
victims of that.’

‘That was no show. She
killed
a man! With relish!
Right in front of us!’

‘Regrettable,’ said Gabriel. ‘And I certainly had words with
her afterwards for the staging – not that Sienna listened, of course. She’s a
very stubborn young woman. You too, I’m given to understand. You both get that
from me.’

‘Or our mother,’ I said acidly. ‘After all, she left you and
never looked back, didn’t she?’

A shadow passed across Gabriel’s face, and I felt a stab of
sadistic pleasure that I’d caused him pain.

‘I don’t know about that, Scarlett,’ he said. ‘After all,
the other night you produced a picture that suggests she has thought of me
since. But certainly Elizabeth was hurt enough back then to tell me to never
come near her or our daughters again. And I’ve respected her wishes for many
long years.’

I checked for Luke. He was on the beach now and walking
towards us.

When I turned back Gabriel was watching me soberly. In the
bright sunlight, his scars were all I could see.

‘I’m happy to meet Luke,’ he said, ‘and I’m glad you have
someone in your life who wants to defend you. But you know that you’re quite
safe in my company, don’t you?’

‘I know no such thing. How can anyone be safe around you,
given what you are?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘And what’s that, Scarlett?’

Leaning forward, I said the word with venom:
‘Murderer.’

I expected anger, or perhaps even pain. But Gabriel just
nodded seriously. ‘Yes, that’s one of the many things I am.’

Luke reached us. He took one look at my face and said to
Gabriel, ‘Don’t you even
think
about hurting her!’ Then, to me: ‘Come
here. Move away from him.’

Gabriel wasn’t remotely bothered by Luke’s agitation. ‘I
won’t hurt her, Luke. Either of you. Please, sit.’ He gestured to the space
beside me on the towel – the space nearest to him, offering Luke the chance to
put himself between us.

Luke glanced at me, and when I nodded he sat down, in the
process shunting me over, further away from Gabriel. He flung one arm back and
pressed it against me.

‘So,’ he said to Gabriel in a scathing tone I’d never heard
before, ‘Scarlett looks traumatised already. What have I missed?’

‘Me inviting Scarlett to come visit me,’ said Gabriel. ‘A
brief discussion of Sienna’s little demonstration in the alley in Newquay,
which I explained had disappointed me. A recognition of the fact that I hurt Scarlett’s
mother badly and have respected her wish to keep a distance until now. Oh, and
acceptance of the fact that I am, as Scarlett terms it, a murderer.’

Luke gaped at Gabriel, and I couldn’t blame him. He was so
cool, so matter-of-fact. So, apparently, forthright.

‘Murderer – you say it so casually, like it’s nothing at
all!’

‘No, Luke, you’ve got that wrong. Taking a life isn’t
casual, it’s deliberate. A serious responsibility that I don’t take lightly.
But I won’t lie to you. It’s without a shred of remorse that I commit the act.’

‘He’s insane,’ said Luke, turning to me quickly. ‘We should
go – right now.’

I shook my head. My eyes were locked on Gabriel’s. I knew it
was dangerous to believe a word he said, and yet when he said ‘I won’t lie to
you’, I believed him. I believed him completely.

‘Tell us the story,’ I said. ‘Tell us your side of what
Evangeline’s told me – of how you met Mum, what happened to make you what you
are, what made Mum leave.’

He stared at me, unblinking, unsmiling. Then he said, ‘I’ll
tell you. But it won’t be enough. There’s much more we need to talk about.
There’s much more you need to learn. Which is why you need to come to
my
world.’

At once Luke began arguing but Gabriel spoke over him:

‘I’ll tell you my story, Scarlett. Only don’t expect it to
match Evangeline’s. She’s far less allied to the truth than I am.’

‘That’s for me to decide,’ I snapped. I wasn’t about to
listen to him criticise Evangeline who, after all, had been more family to me
than he ever had.

Gabriel smirked. ‘Little tiger. So like your mother.’

‘Tell me about her,’ I commanded.

And he did.

May, 1994. In the sleepy village of Twycombe, Devon, a
girl met a boy.

The girl, Elizabeth, was seventeen, the only daughter of
a couple who’d lived alone on the west cliff all of her life.

The boy, Gabriel, was nineteen, a newcomer to the cove,
just passing through. A Cerulean.

The two fell in love. But they had only a little time in
the sweet flush of romance before their relationship was discovered.

Elizabeth’s father, Peter, was furious. He would not let
his daughter, human, be with a Cerulean. He knew the consequences of that.

Evangeline and John were similarly disturbed, and they
instructed Gabriel to leave the girl alone.

But the more their elders tried to pull them apart, the
more Gabriel and Elizabeth held on to each other.

Until Gabriel crossed a line.

He had always been a restless Cerulean. Spirited. Wilful.
Opinionated. But the tattoo on his arm read Serviam – I will serve – and he
did. He was obedient.

Then, one day, he snapped. The price for obedience was
too high. He could not serve. He would not serve. In a single incident, he shed
his innocence. He took a life and he restored a life – he committed murder and
he resurrected the dead.

When it was done, he returned to the island. He stood
before Evangeline and John, dripping blood from the wounds his sins had ripped
open. He was remorseless, blazing with vindication that he had done right.

He had done right. He tried to persuade Evangeline and
John of that. He failed.

Gabriel was Outcast. No longer a Cerulean. He was told to
leave the island, to leave Twycombe, and never come back.

He left the island. He went to Twycombe, to tell
Elizabeth he was leaving. Distraught, she begged him to take her with him. She
didn’t know all that he was, all that he’d done. She didn’t know how lonely a
life with him would be. Gabriel knew, but he couldn’t bear to lose her. He
loved her. So when he left the cove, he took with him the innocent young girl
who worshipped him blindly.

Peter and Alice were beside themselves at the
disappearance of their daughter. They searched all over for her. The Ceruleans searched
all over for her. But there was no trace. Gabriel made sure of that.

And then, the following year, Gabriel and Elizabeth
returned to the cottage on the cliff. Elizabeth begged for forgiveness and a
chance to be a family, and Peter and Alice took one look at the tiny baby girl
in Gabriel’s arms and melted.

Peter arranged for the young family to live in the
vicarage of St Mary’s: the perfect setting for Gabriel to work for redemption.
But Gabriel did not want redemption. He’d made his choice over how to use his
light the day he was Outcast, and no one would deter him. Not Peter and his
reverend friend, good men whom he respected greatly. Not Elizabeth, the girl he
loved who so badly needed him at her side. Not even Sienna, his baby daughter –
if anything, her existence drove him to take more lives.

The path Gabriel was forging demanded more distance from
his family. And lies. So many lies. Elizabeth knew that he was concealing a
darkness within – it was written all over his body in the cuts he would not
explain. And yet she stayed. She loved him. But one dark, wintry day, that was
no longer enough.

Blood on his hands.

She caught him in the bathroom, scrubbing it off. He
wasn’t bleeding. He hadn’t killed that day – he’d beaten a man. The blood
wasn’t Gabriel’s, and she saw that.

Elizabeth stood before him, his baby daughter on her hip
and his unborn child kicking in her womb, and she ordered him to tell her the
truth.

He loved her. He couldn’t tell her. It would break her.

She began packing. He didn’t stop her. He drove her to
the station. He watched her struggle onto the London train with nothing but a
pram and a suitcase. He let her go.

Gabriel left Twycombe the same day. He didn’t come back,
but made a new life for himself and the Ceruleans who eventually joined him and
dedicated themselves to his cause.

Respecting Elizabeth’s wishes, Gabriel kept his distance.
Until now.