I found the answer was simple. “To give us time to get away from the people who will do anything to kill you,” I said, taking Hector’s wrist in my hand, and tugging him towards me. “We need to go, now. Before our chance for escape is taken from us.”
I knew, in the deepest parts of my heart, that the moment my father worked out Verena’s betrayal, he would kill her. My only tie to my mother, the woman I first believed I couldn’t trust, who had proved me wrong twice now, would face punishment for helping us.
And all I wanted to do was claw my way through the curtain of lightning and ask her why. Was she doing it from guilt, to cleanse herself of the same sins our choices to help the Hunters had marked us with?
Hector shot Romy a strange look, a single brow raised. She didn’t seem to notice as she was too focused on clapping a soft palm against Kai’s face, trying to encourage him to wake up.
Kai’s skin had paled… turning almost blue. Even his lips had turned a horrid pallor, as if the colour had all but bled out of him. I didn’t have it in me to tell her that Kai was beyond waking up now.
My single purpose had to be getting Hector away from my father.
“There must be a way to get off this beach,” I said, eyes already scanning the endless wall of cliff for any signs of freedom. “If not, we make one.”
If I had to use my hands and dig a hole through it, I would.
Hector snapped out of his strange trance, and fixed his eyes on a part of the cliff I’d looked over. “I think there’s a path… over there.”
“Hurry,” Romy snapped, panic overcoming her. “Kai isn’t breathing. Shit.”
Romy got back to pressing down on Kai’s chest, and breathing air into his useless lungs.
Kai hadn’t been breathing since we were deposited on this beach.
“We need to move!” I shouted, reaching to help Kai off the floor as yet more lightning cracked into the sodden sands. “Now.”
Romy didn’t resist. She rocked back on her haunches, tears blending with the droplets of rain that began to fall.
Hector was beside me. Over Kai’s body our eyes locked, wordless and yet the connection spoke of a million different things.
“On the count of three,” Hector growled, forging his arms beneath Kai’s body.
I nodded, following his lead without question.
We fought against the sinking sands, muscles burning and lungs aching. Once we reached the chalk-stone face, I found out that Hector was right. Carved into the side of the cliff was a zigzagging path that led all the way up to the top. There was enough room for only one person to go at a time, the man-made steps worn from weather and time. It was a dangerous route, but the only one we had.
Romy didn’t refuse me as I took the brunt of Kai’s dead weight. Hector let go too, only after securing Kai. He helped wrap Kai’s stiffened arms around the back of my neck, hands steady and firm with his focus. I leaned forwards and found my centre with his added weight. “After you both.” My body shivered; even the thought of the climb was making me panic. “I’ll follow up the rear. Don’t stop for anything.”
In another world, another time when danger didn’t lurk behind us, I imagined Hector coming out with a sarcastic response to my comment. His voice played in my head, filling the void with possibilities. ‘You always follow up the rear’ or ‘Sticking to what you do best I see.’
When in reality, Hector was silent and ghost-pale, a shell of the person I’d first met. This wasn’t the life he deserved, and yet it had been handed to him on a gold plate, served in the arms of a demon.
I would do anything to ensure a future in which Hector never had that look in his ethereal eyes again.
In a line, Romy leading the way, Hector following and me at the back carrying all twelve-stone of dead weight, we forged our way up the path. By the fifth step I couldn’t determine what was ocean water on my body, and what was sweat.
There was no point wasting energy worrying about tipping back and falling. I had to focus. So I laid my eyes on the back of Hector’s head, and forged on.
We’d made it over halfway up, and every bone in my knees screamed for a break. But I couldn’t stop, not when Romy whipped her head around and screamed. “They are following!”
I looked back in time to see a smudge of dark figures beginning to climb up the pathway. Two were left on the beach, my father standing over a woman on her knees, head bowed. Even from my distance I could see that her hair was tangled in his meaty hand. My own scalp ached for Verena.
Across the gaping distance, our eyes met.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, wondering if the winds she called upon for aid could carry my message to her.
Verena held my line of sight, then dropped it.
My stomach flipped as I looked down at those following us, and then back up to Hector and Romy whose pace had picked up. There was still so far to go, and the Hunters were gaining.
