Updrift (28 page)

Her heart lurched as Gabe’s awareness seeped back to the present from far away, his eyes blank. He shimmered around the edges as only someone dying or grief-stricken did, and her whole body keened with a terrible, foreboding ache.

Gabe’s gaze was vacant, his emotions disconnected.
She’s gone
.
She came out here alone to practice swimming. I followed her but I was too late
. He shared the image of the bull shark sinking its teeth into Kate, which caused both Michael and Carmen to flinch.

Oh, no. No
, they thought. Carmen clasped her son’s arm and placed her forehead on his shoulder. She silently encouraged Michael to do the same, to help share his grief and keep him whole.

She was only vaguely aware of the other sirens who straggled into their periphery, drawn, she knew, by the intensity of their sadness. Those closest to their family formed a circle around them, as they would have in a sending, and Carmen was grateful for the energy and support they offered.

We will not let him release himself
, they promised.
We will help him heal
.

* * * *

It was the kindest way, Peter rationalized again as he watched Kate sleep in their suite at the palace. Exhausted from her long swim, the emotional manipulations she’d endured, and her pregnancy, she was resting without his influence while he sat in a chair near the bed, reflecting on how well he’d maneuvered everyone that evening.

His plan was the best he could make it. Killing Gabriel was the only alternative, which would have left Kate free for Peter to court, but also would have necessitated Michael and Carmen’s demise. They would have tried, perhaps successfully, to investigate their son’s death, and their abilities and resources made that option too risky. Killing Gabe would have been difficult at best anyway; he was quick, strong and intelligent, perhaps as talented as he himself had been at his age.

No, if everyone thought Kate was dead, he was free of scrutiny from his community. This way, he could more easily achieve the fantasy enslaving him, one of a home and family full of love and genuine intimacy he did not have to question.

Perversely, he was glad she was pregnant; sooner than otherwise, he would have the family life he craved, delivered to him whole, anchoring Kate at his side. Kate, he believed, would disregard any inconsistencies she felt with him and blame it on her pregnancy, or the fact they were in hiding. And she would certainly put aside any of her own concerns for the good of her son or daughter.

Their
son or daughter, he corrected himself. He reached again with his senses to confirm the single heartbeat he’d identified during their swim here.

He was amazed his scheme had worked so well, despite his meticulous preparations so it would. Before the test to project himself as Gabe to Carmen and Michael, he’d considered a variety of options for staging Kate’s death, including drowning or even just disappearing, but with a drowning, a family of talented sirens would know to save her, or at least find her body; and a disappearance would involve the same talented crew searching for her.

The impending death of his housekeeper’s aged mother, Maureen, inspired him. He took personal interest in her decline, his solicitousness seen as an honor. “Your family has been with us for so long,” he explained when they protested he was far too busy to concern himself. “It’s the least I can do.” Maureen was over three hundred years old. Her eyesight and hearing were poor.

He visited to support his plan for abduction, of course, not to comfort the dying woman or her family. He questioned her and her caregivers closely during each visit, using all of his knowledge and skills to gauge precisely how much time Maureen had left. He knew he had a window of several days, give or take, where he could personally achieve her death. When he pinpointed an exact timeframe, he set a later date for Maureen’s public ceremony. No one questioned him.

He prepared a cave by Griffins Bay.

Extricating Kate from the guesthouse was no trouble since he’d been honing his performance so feverishly during the previous month. Gabe, already asleep, was easily influenced; and Kate, being human, was a piece of cake. He called her semi-aware from her bed and met her as her husband in the kitchen. He folded her in his arms.

“How’d you get in here so fast?” she inquired sleepily.

He ignored her question. “There’s been trouble in the community,” he whispered. “Some humans, a large group, have found one of us, and they’re launching a search. We have to go into hiding.”

She’d scanned his face and then nodded trustingly. “Now? What about my parents?”

“There’s no time to contact them, darling. John will take care of your mother and Everett.” And just like that, he’d led her away. A lie to one person was easier to support than lies to many, he reasoned.

He escorted her to a hotel and told her to wait, saying he’d be back for her in a couple of hours.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Shaddox. The whole island is shielded, but we’ll be staying at the palace just to be safe.”

Kate was incredulous. “At Peter’s?”

He instantly saw Gabe’s warnings against him in her tone, and his jealousy flared. “This is a challenging time for our community, Kate,” he responded too harshly. “The Loughlins are offering their protection.” He’d left abruptly then, unwilling to defend himself to her.

He’d had only two hours to prepare Maureen. He brought her from the cave to the coast near the Blake house and began to effect the most complicated projection he’d ever executed. For Maureen, he told her she was surrounded by love and family, her time had come, and the community was present to help her let go. She smiled with gratitude. She was ready, she told him. Peter’s intuition flowed into the old woman, sensing acutely her hold on life and his ability to time her release.

Near the end, he brought her to the surface and in her delirium, had her call to Gabe. In what he hoped was an effective projection, he fashioned her image and voice to match Kate’s. He dragged Maureen down with him when Gabe hit the water.

At the moment of her release, he himself holding the final threads of inner vitality tying Maureen to her life, he became the bull shark and set her free. His apparent bite coincided with Maureen’s dissolution perfectly.

He didn’t need extraordinary intuition to feel Gabe’s response. His performance had worked. He swam away to collect his new wife.

Now, his dilemma was over what to do next, how long to keep Kate hidden, or how to change her appearance so she he could take her out in public without jeopardizing his claim. How to appear to her as Gabriel Blake, and to his mother and the court as himself. Also, Kate could never again be in the company of anyone who had known her well, certainly none of the Blakes. Even if he changed her appearance, her emotional signature was too distinctive.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to tell her she could never see her family again. He smiled bitterly at the irony of his new predicament; his own emotional deprivation had been strong enough for him to risk everything, including his life and hers, to have her. And yet, his first act in taking her was to deprive her of all the people who loved her. He hoped, fervently, she would love him and the baby, and that this would be enough.

He stood and went to her sleeping form. A thrill of accomplishment ran through him. A wife. A baby. A family. He lay down next to her, carefully so as not to wake her, and stared hungrily at her profile. He rested a hand on her stomach and watched her breathe and sleep.

Welcome home, darling
.

And yet so deep had the mistake taken hold in my temper that I could not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and possibility of my escape from this place.
From “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe

A scruffy dog bounded up the stairs to Michael and Carmen on their back porch. It sat beside Michael’s chair and yelped once for attention.

“Well look who we have here,” he remarked, patting his head.

Carmen rose to scratch the mutt behind its ears. “Whoever he is, he’s too well cared for to be a stray.” The dog placed a paw on her arm, which allowed her to reach for the identity tag. “Soley, property of Gabriel Blake, and there’s a phone number.” Michael detached the tube attached to Soley’s collar and opened it. “It’s a letter.”

Mom and Dad,

I think Kate’s alive. I can’t explain or give you any details but I’ve gone to try and find her. I’m sending Soley to you to care for until I—we—get back. I love you both. Please do not follow me.

Gabe

Carmen’s eyes instantly filled with tears, her sadness penetrating both of them, pricking them with a thousand needles. She regarded her husband, sharing her belief Gabe was suffering and in denial. “Should we ignore his request for privacy?”

Michael equivocated. “Let’s give him a little more time, honey.” She knew if she argued the issue, he would relent.

She did not though, and they both gazed at the sea, raw pain flaring within both of their hearts, holding them in agonized silence. Three months had passed since Kate’s death, and her grief—their grief—was still tender, too easily brought to the surface. If one of them spiraled into it, the other soon followed.

After a while, Carmen rose from the table, her entire body throbbing with the sharp ache of her misery. She advanced toward the stairs, needing an escape from herself.
I’ll be in the water
, she thought, and Michael inclined his head. She descended to the dock, anticipating the small freedom she would have from her pain as her wilder, faster siren form twisted, swam, and dove, her only company other sea creatures who did not grieve and would not hurt her.

* * * *

Gabe knew his disappearance worried people, although he called from time to time to let his parents know he was still among the living. Those first two weeks had been the strangest in his life; he could barely remember them and certainly could not place the events of that time in proper order. He continued then as he did now to replay Kate’s death in his mind, horrified by it again and again but unable to shut the images off. He was searching for something, his concentration dedicated to the task like a continuous-loop software program, where the review would only stop when the information it sought was found. He knew this was draining him but he did nothing to divert himself.

He could not believe she was gone. He couldn’t think of an alternative but he felt with certainty it could not be so. He examined the sequence of events that morning again and again, and then examined them harder, seeking some small illumination, anything to resolve the feeling of incompletion he carried.

He’d accompanied Carmen and Michael to see John and Cara, all of them a walking, breathing morass of anguish and despair. That exchange had been every bit as terrible for him as watching the shark devour his wife. John felt them coming and met them at the door, tense and already shocked from what he sensed in their approaching broadcast. Cara’s intuitive reach was slower but also engaged, because their bereavement was so profound. She stood behind her husband, bracing a hand against his back in an unconscious attempt to stay the bad news she felt was coming.

Gabe wished she’d kept her hands to herself, because he knew she felt too much through this contact. John had grasped Gabe’s forearm, his face fierce and terrifying as he saw what Gabe had seen, his own response intense enough to send every nuance of horror related to Kate’s demise into the ether. He was sure Cara had seen everything too; because she withdrew her hand as if she’d been scalded. It was too late, however. She fell to the ground and retched. The sirens all stood motionless with closed eyes, unwilling to absorb her terrible feelings, but unable by their natures to withdraw. Gabe felt her horror most keenly, dropping to his knees as well, heaving convulsively with her.

Later, John had found him, swimming in an aimless pattern around the place he’d last seen her. This was when Gabe first had the suspicion Kate was still alive, and John unwittingly introduced the idea. Having lost his first wife, John knew exactly what the death of a spouse felt like. He communicated nothing specific along these lines; he simply stayed by Gabe to provide his company, and, if necessary, protect him from dissolution. As a matter of course, Gabe evaluated his cousin’s experience as only a siren could, and he saw a crucial, fundamental difference between them.

And the more he reflected, the more convinced he became John’s loss was not the same as his own. When Alice died, John had felt, as he once explained, as though one of his own organs had been extracted. Gabe could still literally locate the excision, the hole Alice’s death left.

He did not have this out-and-out disappearance of part of him. He felt the pain of separation from Kate—if she was out there somewhere, she was certainly far away—and he felt the horrifying loss accompanying the belief he’d never see her again. But he did not feel her actual death.

Maybe that’s a gift, Gabe
, John thought.
I wish I’d felt as you do, and I could have somehow escaped the overwhelming burden of Alice’s leaving
.

My observation is not a coping mechanism
, Gabe insisted, growing more and more certain. John unsuccessfully withheld his disbelief.

Gabe then committed all of his concentration to reviewing the attack of the bull shark, and also to the events leading up to it. He started with his last memories first, and methodically worked his way backward. As he had after the event, he retreated completely into himself, feeling within him a dense center of gravity, which kept his thoughts and feelings on an ever-inward pull, like a black hole attracting light. It was the only way he could stand to remember.

Gabe
, John called in alarm, dimly breaking through his thoughts. He slowly resurfaced to meet John’s questioning stare.

You were cloaking
, John told him, surprise coloring his expression.