She’d never seen him so annoyed. ‘I’m…I’m sorry. I just…’
‘You’re just…’ he muttered as he pulled himself onto the dive platform at the stern and then helped her out of the water. ‘Just like your brother. I thought you were better than that. He can’t dive, you know that? That’s why he wasn’t down there with us. He’s not allowed to.’
‘He what?’ Jason had said nothing about that. He’d just said he needed her.
‘He messed up his ears, didn’t equalise properly. When he found that bloody coin, he came shooting up and got the bends. It could have been so much worse. He was lucky and he knows it. He’s off for weeks until the doctor says he’s clear. He panicked. Said he saw something down there.’
‘Saw something? What kind of something?’
‘I don’t bloody know. A face. A skull. Something that wasn’t there.’
Ari felt the blood draining out of her body, the chill of the Atlantic rushing in to replace it. Her hand clamped reflexively on her find.
But Nico wasn’t finished. ‘I told him, I won’t dive with him again until he sorts himself out. And I won’t take you down either if you’re going to do the same stupid things.’ He paused, struggling with his irritation, calming his breath, and finally he looked at her again. ‘What is it? What did you find? Here.’
He pulled over a low plastic tub and filled it with sea water. Dutifully, she put the thing she’d pulled from the rocks into it as gently as she could. Keeping it in the water would preserve it until they knew what they were dealing with and decided what they had to do next.
Nico grabbed the tub and shoved it up onto the deck. The urge to tell him to be careful died in her throat. He was really annoyed with her, she knew that. But she was pretty sure it was more about his frustrations with Jason rather than her. What had her brother done on his last dive? What had he seen? If it had been hypoxia, he could have hallucinated anything and that was beyond dangerous underwater.
Or had he seen the same thing as her? Seen it and panicked instead of grabbing it.
Meekly, Ari followed Nico, stripping off her equipment as Jason joined them to help.
‘Thierry’s OK. It tried to bite him, but it’s just a graze really. Yana’s treating it and— What’s that? Did you find something? Ari?’ His eyes shone in sudden triumph.
Nico snorted and swore to himself.
A face stared back at them from the shallow water, bone-white beneath dirt and barnacles. No, not a face. A mask.
CHAPTERSIX
Rafael knew it was a dream. It had to be. He knew it of old. All his life, he had dreamed this dream and it was always the same. He was walking along the clifftops at night and the waves crashed against the cliffs, throwing spray so high into the air it was like looking at white towers reaching to the moon. The wind pulled at his hair, plastered it over his face, and when he pushed it back, a man stood ahead of him, broad-shouldered, staring out to sea, unaffected by the storm. A man very much like him, but not him. Not quite.
As Rafael approached him, the man turned and lifted a finger to his lips. His eyes were empty, hollow pools of darkness, and a cloak of storm clouds seemed to wrap itself around him. It wasn’t a man, more like the shape of one, a shadow. As Rafael watched, the skin seemed to fade until only a skeleton remained, still holding a single finger bone up in front of his grinning mouth.
Ankou, the Servant of Death, stood before him, bidding him to watch and be silent, the first of the dead, by drowning, murder or suicide, the herald of the lost souls, who shepherded them to safety. When Ankou commanded, no one could disobey. He came for all in the end.
A bell rang out across the water. A lone bell tolling an alarm. It echoed through the air, shivered over his skin and left him chilled to the core. He knew the sound like he knew his own heartbeat. He had heard it all his life.
Bells ringing. Danger coming.
Even as he watched, the figure of Ankou dissolved into shadows on the wind and dissipated, leaving him alone on the headland.
Without meaning to, Rafael walked towards the cliff edge, stood there, right on the precipice while the sea drove against the cliffs and the rocks below it. White foam filled the air and the black sea roared like a monster, a gaping mouth salivating to devour him.
A huge rocky islet jutted from the water at the foot of the point, cleft almost in two by the sea. It looked like two giant boulders, one balanced precariously on the other. Îlot d’Or, the locals of Sainte Sirène called it, the little island of gold. It wasn’t even grand enough to warrant a name on a map. In the gaping hole between the two halves, the waves surged forth, flung up into the air like white foam, booming against the inside of the caves riddling the point beneath him.
It was the sound of the gates of Ys. That was what the old people said. The distant echo across time of those doomed gates crashing open as the sea engulfed the city.
A woman stood on the rocky island beneath him, her long hair billowing around her as if she was deep beneath the sea instead of standing on bare rock in the midst of the storm. It was white-blonde, her hair, almost silver, the colour of the sea foam which whipped up around her in a frenzy. She reached out a hand, slim and elegant, beckoning him.
He always obeyed, whatever she asked of him. When she called him, he couldn’t say no. She commanded him, and he was her slave. He always had been. She was waiting for him.
Rafael took a halting step forward, but someone caught his hand from behind him, the touch warm and strong. Holding him back.
He turned, startled, to see her face, her mouth open as if she was saying a name. His name. As if she was calling him back. Her grip tightened on his hand, holding on to him for dear life. His life.
He woke in a tangle of white sheets with her name on his lips.
