Paradise Island (22 page)

It was then that she saw the cave entrance. It was just like the rough painting she'd seen in the cave. It filled her with the same intense sickening dread that had overcome her then. Her hand went to her sword and she withdrew it, holding the hilt with both hands straight out in front of her.

There was no mistaking the dark power that lived in the blackness of the cave. It secreted from the shadows, exuding a dank, staleness that tainted the air and clung to her clothes.

There was a noise behind her, the sound of footsteps crunching through the loose gravel. She went into her attack stance, feet apart, knees bent, sword positioned to kill, saw nothing but huge grey boulders blotting the skyline. Her eyes darted, looking for motion, anything that would steer her to the source of the footsteps. She could only hope to take whoever was coming in surprise and make sure her first thrust was a lethal one.

The footsteps came closer. Whoever was moving, was doing it carefully. She kept her ground, fighting the instinct to run and hide.

Her tongue flicked out to wet dry lips, but it came away scratchy and dry. A trickle of perspiration ran down the side of her face, but still she did not move, dared not move. Whoever was coming was only now behind a large boulder that she stood the other side of.

A footstep crunched towards her. She held the tip of her sword high to slice through the heart that would soon not beat. She pressed her palm onto the end of the hilt, so that she may drive her sword in harder. The footsteps were now only very close. Close enough to begin her hastily laid plan. She moved soundless and fast, thrust — and then screamed knowing it was too late to stop slaying the last person she would ever want to kill.

Her sword was deflected and glanced off the face of the boulder with a sharp metallic clink. The force of the hit reverberated up her arm, numbing her hand. It fell harmlessly to the ground as she stared horrified into Gregory's equally shocked face.

“I am glad that you are as good a swordsman as I,” Estelle said, her voice shaking.

“As am I,” Gregory added dryly. “I do need to ask, however, how it is that you are here at all?”

Estelle drew her sword from the ground. “As do I.”

Gregory shook his head. “You shouldn't be here.”

A quick red hot stab of anger flared, inflaming her words. “I have every right to be here. It is my father who has been caught up in this … this thing. It is my life that has been irrevocably changed and it is you — especially you — that should have known all that. To leave me asleep and steal away after we … ” Estelle swallowed the hard lump that rose in her throat.

Gregory took a step towards her and she raised the tip of her sword to pin his chest. The end slit the material of his shirt. Surprised, he looked from the tip to her eyes. “Estelle, you have been through too much in your life. I came here to protect you.”

“Haven't you realized that I don't need protecting,” Estelle said, not bothering to hide the heat that swathed her voice.

“Then I was wrong. Forgive me.” He spoke in low tones that sent a heated chord straight to her heart. His face was stricken, his pain obvious.

She swallowed hard, shaking her head, wishing she could, but absorbed the pain, the suffering that immersed her, drew her down into a cavern that screamed revenge and it was all she could do but flow with it. She shook her head, trying to clear the iron clad bleakness from her mind, but it would not shift, slowly invading every corner of her mind.

“I cannot,” she whispered.

The air around her ankles grew cold, exuding from the emptiness of the cave. A seeping chill immersed into her feet and quickly clawed up her legs. Despite the perspiration that prickled her skin, her body was permeated with a desolate cold. Her hurt, her pain was forgotten, replaced by an all-consuming rage, a desire to main, hurt, destroy, murder. Nonsensically, there was a sense of curiosity that tainted the baser emotions.

Beyond her control, she pressed the tip harder into Gregory's chest, felt the tip break his skin, watched as the small red spot on his shirt spread into a spreading circle, was mesmerized by it.

“Estelle, what are you doing?”

The rage became an all-consuming, and she devoured. She looked into his eyes, hated him, detested him for doing what he did to her, making her feel what she did, was disgusted in herself for allowing herself to be in any way transformed by him, to believe that there could be any good in men, was repulsed that she had thought that she was in love with him. In this moment, this very instant, she wanted to destroy him for making her feel anything at all. It was as if all the warmth the world could provide was gone, left by an infinite void of dank bleakness.

It enveloped her, consumed her, made her anguish self-righteous, evolved until she was a vessel of savage fury, until everything she had ever seen, heard and felt she hated. And it was this hatred that she was going to take out on Gregory. The man who had taken her first attempts of trust, made her love fall in love with him and then had taken that all away with a turn of his back. And she embraced the malevolence until it fed off itself in a churning cycle of scorn and hate.

“Doing what I should have done the first moment I saw you,” she said between clenched teeth and swung her sword in an arch through the air, aiming at his throat.

Gregory blocked her thrust and lunged backwards. She stepped forwards, sword sweeping across from her waist. He retreated, narrowly missing the tip of her sword that would have slashed his stomach. She reacted quickly, lunged once, twice, swinging her sword in a right and left arch, hoping to cut him anywhere she could. The potent anger was making her wild, her thrusts frenzied. She was out for blood and she wanted to see it come from him.

Gregory stumbled, not able to break her attack, his back hit the boulder and he was blocked, only able to fend her off. She sensed victory. She raised her sword, hand level with her head, wrist cocked for the fatal blow. She took the hilt with both hands and slashed downwards, her only savage desire to split his skull in two.

Gregory dropped his sword, grabbed her hands between his. She fought with all her strength to bring the sword down on his head. The sinews stood out at the base of his neck with his effort. His mouth opened in a grimace that contorted his face.

“Estelle, stop,” he ground out.

She couldn't reply. The words stolen as she concentrated on the blood she thirsted to see. She pushed harder, palms digging into the hilt of the sword. Her mind lusted for death, his death. She let the dark passion engulf her mind, swathing any urge to stop. She sank deeper into the depravity of it, started to enjoy it.

“I will not stop until you are nothing but blood and bone beneath my feet,” she said. She pushed harder, the tip of the sword dipped towards his face and she laughed. It was a maniacal sound and one the drove her more fully down her path.

“Estelle, this is not you,” Gregory said.

The murkiness in her mind enveloped his words until she heard nothing more than ‘kill me.' The words repeated over and over in her mind, until they screamed with an otherworldly shriek that filled every inch below her skin and filled every pore of her body. She winced with the all-consuming noise in her head, squeezing her eyes shut, fending off the wailing by putting her hands over her ears.

Kill me, Kill me, Kill. Him.

The words scarred her brain, bled into everything that was her. Pulled her into a void that contained nothing but the want to kill, the want to main. A huge black wave of despair crashed around her, drowned her with the might of its force, drained her of the ability of thought, of her own desires. She was sinking against her will. She fought to regain control of her mind, but still she was buried beneath an ever building wall of pitch blackness.

Estelle cracked her eyes open, just so they were the smallest of slits. “Gregory, help me. It's inside. Can't … get it … out … ” she whispered. She crumbled with the assault.

Kill. Him.

“No,” she screamed but she didn't know if it was in her head, or if she actually said the words. She was buried alive, suffocating.

“Estelle, tell me what's happening to you.” Gregory held onto her shoulders, feeling her muscles bunch and tighten beneath his touch.

She wrenched her head from side to side, struggling with some internal creature. He felt so inadequate, not knowing what to do, how to help her. All he could do was stand and watch her writhe in agony while he was helpless at her side.

Then she stilled. She slowly straightened, uncurling from the agony that had racked her moments before. She stood, statue like, sword raised to engage. Her face was slack, features bland. The only emotion were the dim clouds that permeated her eyes, bleeding the bright spark that he was so used to seeing.

She was a shell, an empty vessel, showing nothing of the passionate woman he had seen since the first moment he had laid eyes on her. Gone was her vibrancy, her fiery temper, her headstrong willingness to throw herself into anything she wanted to with every inch of her soul. Here, before him, was just a dull version of the larger than life woman.

Chillingly, he recognized the others he had seen just like this.

Most recently Elias Stonebridge and the rest of Jack Cutlass's crew.

He wanted to shake her back to him, to wake her to life. He wanted the animated version of Estelle in his arms. Staring at her, wanting her arguing for all she was worth, laughing, smiling, loving him, was an agonizing torture. His hands clenched and unclenched, hanging uselessly at his sides. If he could do something with them, pull whatever it was that had her in its grip, out from her, he would, no matter the cost, no matter the pain. But all he was able to was stare inadequately, unbelieving, at her.

“Estelle!” His voice was a croak that fell from parched lips.

He stepped towards her, fell back. She was the same as her father. A lifeless vessel, a receptacle for the evil spirit that had taken so many others.

“Estelle, come back to me,” he said.

“She cannot,” a dry voice said behind him.

Gregory turned to see the old woman behind him. There was a mixture of pity and remorse on her wizened face. “You are full of magic. Turn her back!” he demanded.

The old woman dropped her gaze, brushed past him and strode brazenly to the entrance of the cave.

“Stop!” Gregory called. He stepped towards her, held his hand out to stop her, but she ignored him. There was something about her directness, her purposefulness that pulled him back, wordless.

The old woman opened her arms as if embracing the cave and yelled. “I have given so that I may receive. Give me back which was once mine in exchange for another.” Her crackled voice echoed in the dim of the cave.

The air sparked and crackled. The hair on his arms rose with the invisible energy that snapped like a living entity around him. The old woman shook, like a thousand lightning bolts were piecing her body. She rose on her toes, head thrown back, mouth opening in a silent death-scream. Her arms jerked bonelessly out at her sides, her hands flopping like stringless puppet limbs. Her hair fell from its bun and tumbled in stringy, dry, grey strands.

There was a hum, like a thousand bees all at once. It started off softly, as though he wasn't quite sure if it were there or not then erupted into an earsplitting cacophony that had him cuffing his ears to block out the noise.

Leaves scattered across the ground, kicked by invisible fingers of the wind that soon whipped into a blast of freezing air. It tore at his clothes, making him squint with the particles of dirt that slammed into his face.

With streaming eyes he watched as a tunnel of blackened wind erupted around the old woman, contorting her body, encasing her in an icy tornado. Estelle stood blank and frozen despite the agony of the noise and the wind seeing and feeling nothing. Her hair was blowing in writhing snake-like fiery strands. Her beauty was ethereal, china skin, high cheekbones and rosebud lips that were frozen into blankness. She held the sword out in front of her and stood as solidly as granite. It seemed to him as though she were every inch a sentinel to the gates of hell.

As abruptly as it started the noise and the wind abated, leaving his skin stinging and heated with the battering he had just endured. His ears rang with silence that screamed. He blinked dust particles from his eyes and spat foul tasting dirt from his mouth.

The old woman slowly turned to face him and what he saw made his mind numb. “This can't be real,” he murmured. His voice was soft, disbelieving.

A small smile tipped the ends of her lips. “Believe it,” she said.

Gone was the dry, rasping voice of the aged. She spoke with the full tones of the young. The woman who now stood before him was stripped of her age. She was in the full beauty of youth, tall and proud, the full figure of a woman in her prime that the rags she still wore could not hide. Her hair was no longer grey, but lush shining ebony that fell down her back in burnished strands. Her skin was smooth, no longer hollowed with withered muscle. The old woman had disappeared.

“What magic is this?” Gregory demanded.

“The strongest kind,” she replied. “One deed for another. Now irreversible.”

“But how … ” Gregory said. “You helped us.” He stared wordlessly, meaning loosing purchase, until overriding reason held. It was all a trick. They had been targets in a well thought out plan.

“And you helped me. A due debt has been paid.” She walked past him, shooting him a sideways glance.

He reached out and grabbed her upper arm, holding her. She held his gaze. “You did this to Estelle,” he said, his anger barely contained.

The woman hesitated, glanced at Estelle for a second before returning to him. “It had to be done. It was the only way I could get back what was taken from me. Payment due, payment made.”

Gregory's hand tightened on her arm. “Do you mean to tell me that this was your plan all along? You traded your youth for, what, destroying another? She is an innocent.”