But the way it had turned and looked at him. The way it had grinned. He hadnotimagined that.
‘Ari, did you see anyone else out here?’ he asked, carefully.
‘I didn’t see anything but an enormous black hole swallowing me.’ She tested her weight on her own feet again. This time, she stood, wobbly as a new-born deer. He held on to her just in case, as she sought out her shoes and tried to put them on her numb feet. Then she looked up. ‘Do you mean him? What is he even doing out there?’
She pointed along the path to the point, where a dark figure stood on an outcrop of rocks, surrounded by dense undergrowth, the old ruins of a Roman-era settlement, an oppidum. He’d played there as a boy too. It was nothing more than earthen banks and piles of stones now, horribly overgrown. A narrow path cut through it, leading out to the even more exposed far end of Castelmeur.
The figure moved too quickly, leaping down into the darkness between the lichen-covered stones and bushes, eluding them again.
‘Stay here,’ Rafael told her as he launched himself forward, pushing his way through the bushes and plunging into the narrow maze-like path. Twigs scratched at him, tugging at his clothes, and he had to raise both hands to force his way through.
He almost fell out the other side, where the path dipped precipitously. On the Pointe de Castelmeur, there was no shelter at all. The sea and the wind roared around him and he staggered as sheets of rain struck him like a series of physical blows. He bent forward, leaning into the storm, making himself continue. Because somehow he had to. It was like his recurring nightmare all over again, but this time he was awake. He had to know. He had to see if it was real.
The man in black stood at the far end of the point, right at the top of the cliff, his arms spread wide.
‘Who are you?’ Rafael yelled. ‘What do you want? Ankou?’
Ankou – because it had to be Ankou – tilted his head to one side, the long white hair of a fée creature whipping around his face so as to obscure his features. He pointed down, down to the sea, down to the wave-lashed rocky island below.
Rafael didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want this to be real.
‘Rafael?’ Ari gasped, struggling to his side. ‘What the hell—?’ Her voice fell silent, and her hand gripped his arm, her fingers like iron, but he had no doubt he was forgotten. Her voice, when she yelled at the figure, came out harsh against the wind. ‘Who are you? Where did you get that?’
A mask, he realised. The figure was wearing a mask. White like porcelain, like old bone. It shone in the rain and the light bounced off the gold and blue decorations painted on it. The mask she’d found. The mask she had plucked from the sea. But it was clean now, shining in the storm, rain trickling down over the surface.
The figure lifted one finger to his lips, not skeletal now, not death incarnate. Carefully, he removed the mask to reveal a man. Just a man.
The man whose face Rafael had been looking at on his laptop earlier today.
Not a stranger at all.
Ari pushed by him and it was his turn to grab her, to hold her back from the edge, from the phantom in solid form, from Ankou, the Servant of Death.
From the creature wearing the face of her dead fiancé.
‘Who are you?’ she screamed again, with every last breath of air in her lungs. She almost tore herself free of him and Rafael wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her against him. He had to protect her, to stop her from hurling herself to certain death in her rage. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Ankou spread his arms wide now, the mask dangling from his hand like a discarded plaything. He smiled, a wild, gleeful smile, dangerous and terrible. And then, gracefully, inexorably, he let himself fall backwards off the cliff, into the raging sea.
CHAPTERTEN
Ari staggered back to the gîte, sobbing for breath, her clothes soaked to the skin, her mind whirling. The storm dropped the moment they fled the headland, clawing their way back through the undergrowth and running along the path to the point where the lane turned in a huge loop and headed back towards civilisation.
It had been Simon. She couldn’t fail to recognise him. She knew him better than any other man in the world.
But it was also impossible. It was like a waking nightmare.
She silently thanked God Rafael was still with her. To be honest, he was probably the only thing keeping her upright, and certainly the only warm and solid thing in her world right now. She clung to him as she moved on numb legs and he wrapped his arms around her as if he couldn’t dream of letting her go.
Exhausted, cold and wet, they finally reached the welcome lights of the gîte and almost fell through the door.
‘Mon dieu,’ said Madalen. She was just coming out of the kitchen, a bottle of red wine in hand. ‘What happened to you?’
Ari didn’t know where she found her voice from. ‘There was a storm.’
Madalen frowned. ‘There was? Not here. You must have been really unlucky.’ She lifted the bottle towards them. ‘Wine?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Rafael. ‘And a towel perhaps?’
