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Skye could barely take in what she was seeing. Alan Noble, standing over her father and Hunter, pointing a spear-gun at them. It was like a nightmare, but the salt water stinging her eyes, the salt she could taste on her lips, was real.
She screamed as the spear left the weapon and embedded itself into its target. She couldn’t see who the spear hit, but there was no good answer. This couldn’t happen. She heard a splash as Ethan hit the water and saw him swimming to help. She threw off Morgan’s restraining arm, and went in after him.
She didn’t hesitate to pull water into her lungs. Light rippled out from her, making clear the crimson tide flowing out from the two still figures, and Hunter’s clan surging up from below to surround the boat. She reached Hunter and her father ahead of Ethan, but he was close behind.
Hunter held her father in his arms. Her father’s head rested on Hunter’s shoulder and his body hung limply, his arms and legs trailing. A harpoon shaft stuck out from his back. Everything stopped. All sound ended, and nothing moved. Then Hunter turned his head and looked at her with such sorrow that she felt something break in her chest.
Dad.
But Ethan was there now, and as he tried to help lift her father from Hunter, Hunter cried out. And then they both saw that the spear that pierced her father pierced Hunter too. It had passed right through her father’s body and through Hunter’s shoulder. And now she saw that fragments of dust swirled in her father’s blood, as Hunter’s mingled with it.
The clamour closed in on her again, and her head rang with sounds of violence and fear. Behind her, the Nemaro were furiously pulling Alan’s boat into the sea, along with him.
“What should we do?” Ethan asked her, horrified but calm. “If we separate them, Hunter could bleed out.”
“Separate us,” Hunter said, his teeth gritted with pain, “and take Daniel’s body into the IRB. The water may heal me.”
So, in a dreamlike state of utter horror, Skye helped Ethan to pull the spear out of Hunter, through her father’s body. Tears streamed down her face as if her heart and soul were emptying.
“I’ll take Daniel,” Ethan said softly, and put Daniel’s body into a rescue hold. He towed him back to the IRB, where Morgan leaned over the side to help, her face wet with tears.
Skye put her arms around Hunter, and they floated together, not moving, not speaking, watching Daniel’s body moving slowly away while the dust of Hunter’s Nemaro blood trickled into a widening pool around them, dissipating her father’s blood that was already drifting into the tide.
Then, from behind her in the now-empty water, a hateful voice spoke. “I’ll take that, my dear.”
