Night Fires (26 page)

“Grant, please…”

He strolled casually towards me as he ran the edge of the knife up and down his fingers. The sight of his own blood seeping over the silver of the blade brought forward another sob. He was completely crazy, the evidence of it staring back at me through his manic grin.

“You were always so beautiful, so perfect,” he mumbled. I shook with terror when he slid the knife under my hair and dragged it upwards, each red curl that fell onto my lap exposing just how sharp the blade was. “I waited for that beauty to be mine, Ali. You know I did. I waited so long. You gave yourself to me.”

I shook my head, my defence finally kicking in. “I told you I would never leave Niall, Grant. I told you my family came before anything.”

My own argument answered all my questions and the blood in my veins congealed when it finally made sense. “Oh my God, it was you. You killed them.”

He rolled his eyes, frustrated with my stupidity. “I told you I would find a way for us to be together. If getting rid of your family would allow our love to flourish then they were a sacrifice that had to be made.”

“You killed them! You killed them!”

Fury gave me strength, and strength gave me courage. I flung myself at him, screaming as I pummelled my fists into his chest and his face, my fingers clawing at his neck as I tried to tear out his throat.

But I was no match for him. He had strength I could never have. Fighting me off, his fist in my face sent me careering backwards onto the bed. He was on me within seconds, straddling me to hold my bucking body down.

“Now, now, Ali. Calm down, baby. I know it hurts but now we can be together, just like we wanted.”

“I never wanted you!” I screamed. “I used you, Grant. It was just sex, nothing more. I could never love you. You’re a fool if you thought there was more.”

I tensed when anger contorted his face and he pressed the tip of the blade against the front of my throat. “I waited so long for you to come, Ali. So fucking long. I cleared the path for us. And when I finally found you, I found you with
him
. With that fucking
cunt
.”

“I love him,” I hissed, my rage overwhelming my fear of him. “And he loves me. You’re nothing to me, Grant. You never were.”

I knew it was stupid, goading him, but I couldn’t help it. Anger made me as crazy as him, fear made my mind numb, and shock blocked my brain from doing and saying the right thing.

I screamed in surprise when the veranda doors blew open and the wind took control. My room became a whirlwind, the air a monsoon as the rain drove into the room and soaked both me and Grant. Using it as a distraction when he spun his head around, I propelled the heels of my hands into his chest and managed to catch him off-guard.

He fell backwards and I crawled off the bed. He was blocking the doorway and the only way out was onto the veranda. The wind took my breath but it was the worst of the two evils facing me. The only thing left of my little cove was a tiny island of sand as the sea crashed angrily against the rocks below me.

“You fucking bitch!”

I squealed when my head was violently yanked backwards. His fists grabbed my hair and he pulled me back. The wind took him off his feet and brought us both to the floor. It was so strong I was struggling to breathe. This wasn’t any regular storm; this had been sent for a reason. Ferocious cracks of thunder and lightning brutally swirled as if the sea gods were furious and begging for blood. The vicious wind drowned out everything as I found myself not only battling Grant, but that also.

A pain tore into my side and took my breath. I cried out at the agony as I reared my elbows back and I felt them sink into Grant’s ribs.

“Stop fighting me!” he shouted over the deafening roar of the storm as he grappled with me.

“Let – me – go!” I screamed as I flung my head back and yelped at the pain that burst stars behind my eyes.

Then, as if by magic, Grant’s hold on me disappeared and I fell to the ground with the sudden loss.

I watched in morbid horror as Carter appeared from nowhere and charged at Grant. They stumbled onto the veranda as they grappled with each other, my eyes struggling to see in the dark as the driving rain obscured my vision.

The pain in my side was making me nauseous and I pressed my hand to the site. Fear struck me when I brought my hand away and the sky lit up with a bolt of lightning, displaying the red thickness of my own blood. Wrestling against the pain, I dragged myself across the room towards the two men still fighting on the balcony.

Carter cried out and everything seemed to slow around me when I saw the blade slide smoothly into the depths of his stomach. His eyes widened in shock as he stared down at the handle of the knife embedded in his flesh then turned slowly to look at me with defeat in his eyes.

I couldn’t reach him quick enough. The gaping wound in my side hindered any movement and the panic that surged through me brought everything around me into an angering delay.

“No!” I cried out when, out of nowhere, a deafening splintering rang out and the veranda tore away from the house with a single but thunderous surge of wind.

The look of sheer terror on Carter’s face would never again give me peace. My nightmares would only ever consist of the look of recognition in his beautiful steel grey eyes as he gave into the pull of death and offered himself to the grave of his deceased wife.

My heart tore from me when both Carter and Grant were propelled through the air as if they weighed nothing, the mouth of the enraged ocean swallowing them greedily and taking my lover from me with the revenge of a woman scorned.

Pure, undiluted agony ripped a cry from me as I crawled to the edge of the doors and wildly searched the water below. Only the crashing waves and the hurling wind answered my screams as I fought against the gale to beg for a single sight of Carter.

Grief devoured the pain and I ran through the house, shouting Carter’s name as I tumbled down the stone steps to the little beach. The storm, now having claimed its prize, eased into a forceful wind, the rain dying down to just spits of spray against my skin as I stumbled onto the sand.

Nothing was there to greet me. Carter wasn’t face down in the sand. Grant wasn’t emerging from the settling waves.

“Carter!” I screamed at the sea, my eyes scanning furiously to catch a glimpse of colour against the dead grey water. “CARTER! CARTER!”

The pain of grief is the most agonising torture one can ever experience. Not only does it incinerate your soul within your body, it physically takes your heart and crushes it right there in your chest. The blood that once flowed effortlessly through your veins solidifies and swells until you can feel every searing pulse of sludge stab at your crushed heart and you finally lose the ability to ever breathe again.

The wind died. The rain died. And I died right there with them as time passed and nothing but a tranquil horizon emerged from the storm that took the only reason for my heart to beat again.

I fell to my knees and I broke. The sea that had once comforted me, that had once promised me a peace I had only hoped for had betrayed me and chosen to do the bidding of the woman who had also deceived me. Elizabeth Andrews had finally come back for her husband. And she had won. She had taken back what belonged to her.

I sat staring at the sea for a very long time.

I gave in to her love. I gave my soul to the married couple that had been so in love that they couldn’t bear to be apart any longer.

And I lit a fire.

I
T’S FUNNY HOW
something that once terrified you can become the only thing you have left in the world. The very thing that took everything from you turns out to be the one thing that holds you up and gives you hope.

As I sat there, time passing by with no meaning or reason, the only thing that kept my heart beating was the fire that burned brightly amid the wreckage around me. I was part of that wreckage, my very essence shattered and dead inside me. Emotions, feelings, thoughts - there was nothing. I felt nothing. The ice that crackled along my wet skin couldn’t freeze me any more than the grief did. The sound of the waves now gently crashing against the shore couldn’t be heard for the screaming silence in my head.

I had once thought that life was cruel but I was wrong. So very wrong. It was death that was the cruellest. It had no boundaries, no favouritism in who it laid victim too. It didn’t empathise with those who had already lost everything to it. And it never would.

A light breeze whipped at my hair, lifting it around my face and leaving it clinging to the dry tracks of my tears before, quite suddenly, it dropped, my red curls falling to my shoulders as instantly as the dip of the wind.

The sea calmed, the surge of the tide laying still on the sand before me when it ebbed and drew back from where it pooled shallowly around me.

A ripple in the sea brought stillness to the air around me, the flames of the fire that had previously danced in the breeze burning brighter and higher as the heat licked at my skin.

I blinked, squinting to see as something appeared to emerge from the depths of the sea, the surface of the water moving fluidly the closer it became.

Incredulity took my sanity, and my breath, and the beat of my heart, as she slowly walked towards me. Her long brown hair fell in wet waves over her shoulders, the beauty of her face only lit by the shimmering glow of the moon. She watched me, her firm gaze fixed on me as I knelt rigid on the sand, my gaze unable to move away as my brain refused to function.

She carried him.

He lay long and lifeless in her arms as she bore the weight of her husband’s dead body, her embrace so loving that it hurt my eyes to see, her hold so fierce it fractured my mind to witness her ultimate commitment to the man she had never let go of.

She came to me.

She stood over me, regarding me as I watched with utter amazement.

And then she smiled. A tender smile that seemed to warm me from the depths of my frozen core. A trickle of heat shuddered through me as a softness wept from the tears that silently journeyed down her beautiful face.

She came to kneel before me.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t even sure
if
I was breathing. I knew the beat of my heart had stilled, my soul dropping to its knees before the vision in front of me.

Carefully she reached out and offered me her prize. Unable to move I just stared at her, gulping at the air around me as I struggled with my sanity.

Slowly, she nodded, leaning towards me. “Take him,” she whispered, the soft sound of her voice liberating the sob that had been clawing at my throat.

Carefully manoeuvring him, she moved him into my embrace. He was heavy, and the weakness in my body shook my already trembling arms as I pulled him to the warmth now flowing through my icy veins.

Her tears ran faster, but it was the tenderness in her gaze as she took one final look at her love that unlocked the wails of grief from me. Her fingers trailed over his white face before they lifted to my own. Her soft touch over my wet cheeks seared a heat through me that was so agonising, a silent scream of torture tore from my belly and out of my mouth.

And then, just as abruptly, all the pain melted away leaving me panting and gasping for air. The once gaping wound in my side no longer burned, the vice crushing my heart no longer squeezed torturously, and the searing heat in my lungs ceased to capture me in its horrendous hold.

“Love him, Alice. Love him for me. Love him for your baby. But most of all, love him for you. And never let go. Never.”

Every fibre of me shook with grief but if I couldn’t give her anything else, I gave her my oath. “I promise.”

She nodded and rose. And then she turned and walked back to her tomb, the vastness of the sea slowly welcoming her back into its greedy mouth.

However, before she returned to where her body awaited her, she turned back to me. Her hand lifted to her mouth, and kissing her fingers she then blew it towards me.

Carter jerked in my arms. A heaving gasp broke the silence before he rolled over and spewed water from his belly and his lungs, his whole body shuddering as he retched and retched, clearing the ocean from where it had so cruelly devoured him.

Reality snapped back. My sanity slipped into the realms of acceptance and I reached for the man who had taught me to live again, to love again. He came to me eagerly, his hands pulling at me as he embraced the pull of life and refilled his lungs, feasting on oxygen and my love as I cradled him back from the dead.

The sun broke over the edge of the sea and I looked up.

But she had gone.

As life poured into me and Carter, I lifted my own fingers to my mouth and kissed them. Reaching out, I blew my kiss into the ocean, giving the angel that had saved me a piece of my soul.

A slight breeze whispered around me and the flames of the fire died. As the embers burned away, the scorched ashes blew into the sea, taking with them Carter’s grasp on his wife’s soul.

And finally, we understood.

And we never lit a fire for Elizabeth again.