Page 99
THIRTY-SIX
“Never trust a beautiful sea, there’s always a monster swimming in its depths.”
— SHERIFF CHRISTIAN VALEN
Death came for me again and I prevailed.
Warmth, soft clean sheets, and the smell of food reaches me through my hazy stupor. I stir in place then open my eyes carefully. I am no longer submerged in water but laid beneath soft sheets with a fire blazing before me. Slowly, I pull the covers up, finding myself naked beneath. Mortification settles in and frantically I begin to search the room for clues of my whereabouts.
“Christian?” There are three doors in this room. “Misty?” There is no answer. I wrap the sheet around me and make my way out of the bed. A heavy creak on the floor makes me yelp.
“If you’re wondering why you’re naked, you would have gotten sick if I left your clothes on. And Misty is fast asleep in the living room,” Christian says evenly.
He walks toward the bed from a door with steam trailing after him. My muscles relax and I take in the tall glass windows around us overlooking a deep, dark night. The lack of light tells me it’s still somewhere in the deep hours of the night, which further calms my heart.
“Where are we?” I ask, my eyes trailing to the towel wrapped around his waist. His golden-brown skin glistens with soft water droplets, highlighting toned muscles and a deep muscular cut that disappears below the towel. Tattoos litter his chest, but there’s one that sticks out, tattooed above his heart—a small bird. Tiny and round. My breath hitches.
“We’re in my home,” he replies.
I never savored the dark timbre of his voice, until now. It was deep and velvety, like the feeling of crushed roses. Dark in the way that is protecting, safe.
“Who are you Christian Valen?” I ask, meeting his gaze. The resounding tension that hums between us tells me that I know him. Maybe from a previous life. A past love?
He’s standing before me in a towel held only by a loose fist. “What do you mean? I am Sheriff Christian Valen, protector of all things Devil’s Bay. Including lost wanderers.” He chuckles but the amusement doesn’t meet his eyes.
I soften a fraction. My initial impression of him had been wrong. In fact, all of my initial impressions had been wrong. I guess this is what happens when you lose your memories, you lose any ability to detect a person’s character. And when you’re aching with desire for a man who’s treading carefully, your senses are haywire.
“Be serious for once Christian,” I implore.
His eyes darken. “I’m glad you’re here with me. It has been a journey.”
“We’ve barely been on a journey; we’re just getting started.”
His chest rises and falls, a quick inhale as he decides to settle on the edge of the bed. He reaches for my hand and pulls it to him. “We need to get out of here and the sooner the better. It doesn’t mean we can’t search for answers and shed light onto those dark corners of your mind. So below as above. We can tie our loose ends here and get back home.”
“So below as above?”
“It loosely means that whatever happens here also can happen above.” He regards me with soft yearning wrapped around his tongue.
That’s why Kieran had taken that body from the chamber. Stage the body he said, it will show in the above. Was that another way to get around his crimes? I sneak another perusal at Christian’s chest, water droplets still racing beneath his towel. I follow their trail and I can make out a few other tattoos below the curve of the towel and my heart rate climbs again.
Take a risk, you might not have another chance.
“So, what is this, ‘below’? Is this Hell?” The questions would answer my initial thoughts on this place.
“Not necessarily, Lazarus concluded it was a sort of Purgatory in between Heaven and Hell. Only he named it the Limina.”
“Limina? That’s the best he could come up with?”
Christian lets out a thunderous laugh. “We still need you to be around him for a little longer. Remember that relic he pulled from the floorboards? I believe it’s our only way out. Once we have access to that we can leave.”
“What about everyone else?” I’m more curious about the nature of this place. How did so many of us land here?
“There are only seven people from the above world. The rest—” He sighs. “The rest are dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because when I regained my memories a few months ago—I think that’s how long I’ve been down here—I remember being present for all of their funerals or at least heard of their deaths. Collective memories have a weird way of showing up down here. That reminds me, I’ll have to take you back to the lake. I think you were on a good hunch.”
