Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4) (24 page)
Read Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4) Online
Authors: Megan Tayte
I was in a bedroom. I was on a bed. Not my bedroom, not my
bed. My sister’s. The only room in Hollythwaite my mother hadn’t transformed.
No time for nostalgia; I closed my eyes and –
‘No! You can’t go back!’
I couldn’t focus with Luke shaking me.
‘Look at me, Scarlett. Stay with me.’
His voice was cracking. I opened my eyes and saw his –
red-rimmed and frantic.
‘Listen to me,’
he said, gripping my shoulders hard. ‘You
have to stay here, out of the way. So the paramedics can help your mum. So we
can help you.’
‘I can’t leave her alone.’
‘She’s not alone – Gabriel will stay with her.’
‘I can’t trust him!’
‘Then trust
me
, Scarlett. I’m telling you, Gabriel
will keep your mother safe. And right now, I need to make
you
safe. Do
you understand?’
I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand anything, but it
was Luke and I trusted him. I nodded and he sagged with relief.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now sit still and take deep breaths. I’m
going to check your back. Okay?’
Without waiting for an answer he crawled around me on the
bed and began tugging at my top. I scanned the room for my sister; she was
kneeling on the window seat, wrestling with the latch.
Behind me, Luke said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Scarlett,
but your t-shirt’s stuck... the blood...’
‘I don’t care,’ I told him. ‘Yank it off.’
‘Okay. One. Two. Three.’
He yanked. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t swear, but he did.
‘Sienna!’ he said sharply. ‘Get over here.’
She wheeled around and strode my way.
‘Leave it,’ I told Luke, trying to pull my top down.
I heard fabric rip and felt a wash of cold air on my skin
and my t-shirt pooled in my lap. It had been white, but it was red now, I saw. With
my blood. As were my jeans, but not with my blood. With hers.
‘Deep breaths, Scarlett,’ said Luke and then, to Sienna, now
standing behind me, ‘Can you heal it?’
‘Partially. She’ll have a big scar.’
‘Do it now. Quickly.’
‘No!’ I slithered off the bed and turned on them. ‘I don’t want
her hands on me.’
‘Scarlett, it’s not the time for –’
‘I don’t want her hands on me!’
I lurched across the room and collapsed on the window seat.
Behind me, Luke and Sienna talked in low voices.
‘I don’t care – just go,
now
,’ I heard Luke hiss.
Opening the window all the way, I leaned my head out. The
air was cool and sickly-sweet with the scent of the rosebushes below. My mother
had planted those bushes. She loved roses. Red ones, to match her hair. To
match the blood matting her hair.
The seat creaked – Luke, sitting beside me.
‘Sienna’s gone to get help,’ he said. ‘She’ll be back soon,
and the bleeding will stop – the pain will stop.’
A gleaming-white angel statue beneath the window was
reflecting flashing lights. Several lights.
‘Come away now. Come and lie on the bed. Scarlett!’
He grabbed my arms as I leaned further out of the window and
craned my neck to see. The gates of Hollythwaite were wide open, and between
them was parked not one vehicle but three – an ambulance, and two police cars.
‘The police?’ I sank back onto the seat and stared at Luke. ‘Why
are the police here?’
‘Gabe called them,’ he said. ‘He had to, or the paramedics
would’ve questioned it. Don’t worry, though; he promised to keep us out of it.’
‘Why?’
‘So we’re not stuck here answering impossible questions all
night, like how we got here and how you got a massive slash across your back.’
‘No, why did Gabe call them? She hit her head. The bedside
table – I saw the blood on it.’
Luke was silent, and the look on his face – I didn’t
understand it.
‘She fell,’ I said. ‘She hit her head.’
‘Yes.’ He swallowed, then added gently: ‘But, Scarlett, you
must’ve seen...’
What had I seen? My mother, prone on the floor. Her limbs
splayed out like a starfish. Her skin waxy and white. Her eyes closed, no
flicker of movement. Her hair clumped and sticky. Her neck red and –
Oh God.
I had seen. I had seen but I hadn’t
seen
.
Her throat. The angry marks, the ugly bruises forming.
‘I thought it was an accident,’ I whispered. ‘I thought she
just fell.’
Luke tried to hold me but I twisted away and staggered
across the room.
Because now I saw. A shadow looming over Mum. Her fighting
ferociously, clawing at him. His hand tightening, crushing. Her eyes fixed on
her memory wall – desperate and then... dimming.
I made it to the bathroom before the volcano erupted and I
vomited over and over and over again, and then I passed out on tiles as solid
as the wall standing between me and my mother.
I was in a bedroom. I was on a bed. Not my bedroom, not my
bed. My sister’s. But it wasn’t my sister leaning over me.
‘Jude?’ I croaked. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Healing you,’ he said. ‘Lie still.’
His hands on my shoulders were hot and heavy, holding me
down on the bed. I squinted through the blur of light and saw Sienna silhouetted
at the window, her back to us.
‘Where’s Luke?’
‘Here,’ he called, ‘I’m here,’ and I turned my head on the
pillow. He was braced in the doorframe, keeping his distance from me. ‘Jude
told me to stay back,’ he said apologetically. ‘How do you feel?’
I said the first word that came into my head: ‘Black.’
‘What?’
‘That’s the best I can do,’ said Jude suddenly, releasing me.
I sat up and looked down. Someone had covered me in an old
shirt – Sienna’s. As I put it on my back ached horribly. That was good. The
pain focused me.
Grabbing the bedpost for support, I swung my legs over the
side of the bed and stood. I wavered there, testing my legs. Testing my
strength.
‘She needs to rest,’ Jude was telling Luke. ‘She’s gone way
too far today, and only time someplace safe can heal that.’
‘The island?’ said Luke. ‘Will Evangeline have her there?’
‘Definitely. We’ll take care of her.’
‘No,’ I said,
‘you won’t.’
‘Scarlett...’ they began in almost perfect unison, but I cut
them off:
‘Don’t Scarlett me. I don’t need you to make decisions for
me. I don’t need to be wrapped up in cotton wool – shut up on that island,
tucked up in bed, taken care of. That’s not who I am. Not any more. I don’t
need protection. What I need is –’
‘Blood,’ said a hard voice behind me. ‘What you need is blood.’
Sienna. Her first words to me this day.
I turned around slowly and looked at her – not past her, not
over her: I looked at her. Her dress was bloody, her mascara was a mess, but
she was standing tall – head up, shoulders back, chest out, take no prisoners.
‘Someone hurt our mother, Scarlett,’ she said, eyes fixed on
me. ‘Someone
meant
to hurt her.’
‘Who?’ I demanded. ‘Who did this?’
Her face twisted. ‘I don’t know. But I
will
know. We
will find him, Gabe and Daniel and me. We will hunt him down.’
‘Sienna...’ said Jude in a warning tone, but I spoke over
him:
‘And then what?’
My sister’s hands fisted at her sides. ‘And then I will
make
him pay
,’ she snarled.
Jude started protesting again, but she spat at him, ‘Back
off! This is nothing to do with
you
.’ Then, leaving him reeling, she
stalked across the room to me. She stopped right in front of me so that I had
to tilt my head to keep eye contact. I’d forgotten how tall she was in heels.
Just like Mum.
‘Blood must have blood,’ she told me, ‘and I will make that
bastard bleed.’ She searched my eyes, and then leaned in and finished in a
whisper: ‘The question is: will you make him bleed with me, Scarlett?’
I heard Jude say, ‘What was that?’
I heard Luke say, ‘What’s going on?’
I said nothing; I just stared at my sister. There was
something flickering in her eyes. Something dark and dangerous and compelling.
‘You couldn’t save her,’ she said. ‘But you can avenge her. Perhaps
you’ll decide you’re one of us after all. Perhaps blood is thicker than water.’
‘No!’ Jude burst in between us, squaring off with Sienna and
forcing me back. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?! I know you’re hurting,
but this – don’t you dare corrupt Scarlett into one of
you
!’
It was as if Jude had handed Sienna a permission slip on
which was written ‘Hit me with it’. The torrent of fury that came his way for
daring to challenge her was engulfing. Jude stood firm, but I staggered back –
into Luke. Quickly, he guided me out of the fallout zone, over to the window,
and pressed me down onto the seat. He stood in front of me, blocking the ugly
scene beyond from my eyes if not my ears, and said urgently:
‘Listen to me, Scarlett. You’re angry, I know, and you have
every reason to be. But Sienna – the Fallen – that’s not the answer. That’s not
who you are. You’re not one of them. You’re
not
. Let them find who did
this. Let them deal with it, if that’s the way it’s going to be. But you... you
keep out of it.’
I couldn’t bear the fear in his voice. But neither could I
bear the rage clawing at my insides and the voracious need for vengeance.
Leaning out of the window, I took a final look at the lodge.
The police cars were in position, but the ambulance was gone. My mother was
gone.
Forever?
The sun had set. Darkness was closing in. The air was
deathly still – and silent.
I turned back. Jude was standing by the bed. Alone. In front
of me stood Luke. Alone. And there I sat. Alone. All of us at our own
precipice. Teetering on the edge.
Luke dropped to his knees and slid his arms around me. His
hands brushed the scar on my back, sending a flare of pain through me.
‘Scarlett,’ he said, ‘please. I love you. Stay with me. Stay
you
.’
I’d chosen him before. I’d chosen him over the life of a
loyal Cerulean. I’d chosen him though being with him meant not quite being with
him. I’d chosen him because I loved him, because it had been right to choose
him.
Now, he was asking me to choose him all over again – him and
all he represented. But whether that was the right choice to make now, I didn’t
know.
I leaned into Luke and I pressed my lips to his forehead and
I whispered, ‘I love you.’ Because that was all I could say. Because that was
all I did know for certain at that moment.
That and the fact that if my mother’s enemy –
my
enemy – were in this house right now, I would leap on him and I would put my
hands on his chest and I would suck the breath right out of him and I would
kill him, I would kill him, I would kill him.
I would kill him.
And what did that make me?
***
‘Arrrrrrrgh!’ I hear you yell. ‘You can’t leave the story
here!’
Sorry. Sorry! But right now there can’t be a neat ending
for Scarlett Blake, stuck as she is between the devil and the deep blue sea. There’s
a long way to go yet before she can sleep easy at night. A long way… and the
road ahead is tortuous.
If you’ve followed The Ceruleans from
Death
Wish
, through
Forget
Me Not
and
Wild
Blue Yonder
and
Devil
and the Deep
, then thank you. Thank you for taking a trip into this
little world I’ve created. Thank you for believing in my characters. Thank you
for caring what happens next. Speaking of which…
I can promise you this: the finale of the series, Darkly,
Deeply, Beautifully, will answer all your questions, and plenty you didn’t
think to ask. It’s the most dramatic, the most emotional, the most revelatory book
– everything I’ve been dying to tell you, but held back.
By way of a glimpse into Book 5, I will leave you for now
with the song that echoed in my head as I wrote:
Muse’s ‘Madness’
.
With my very best wishes,
Megan
