| |
––––––––
The giant wave reared as high as the forest-clad hills that cradled the bay. Nearly as high as the Bannimor hills that were clogged with cars and villagers on foot still trying to get out of the path of the oncoming destruction. Spume rose above the wave, almost as high again as the wave itself, reaching for the village and pelting Skye, Morgan and Hunter like storm-driven rain. Jarrod had vanished, probably somewhere behind the coming onslaught, even though surely it wouldn’t hurt him, Skye thought.
Morgan thrust forward towards higher ground, her face twisting in terror and grief, but the water surging ahead of the wave hampered her and she stumbled and fell. Instinctively, Skye followed her, thrashing through the water. There was no escape, but terror made her try. The ring on Morgan’s finger, and the piece of Hunter’s soul in Skye, and hers in him, meant that she and Morgan didn’t need to breathe underwater. But they were still human. The wave would smash them to pieces against the buildings or the trees behind the village. Unless... Skye felt the ripple of Hunter’s power inside her chest and forced herself to look back. Hunter stood alone, his back to them, facing the wave, its thunderous roar like a thousand aeroplane engines bearing down on them.
With his injured shoulder, he could only raise one arm, and it shook with effort. The towering, seething wall seemed to slow, but not enough. The force of the wind pushing ahead of it knocked her backwards, and she fell against Morgan, who had stumbled again and was tossing in the surge, unable to find her feet.
Skye grabbed Morgan’s arm and helped her to rise, screaming, “Hunter!”
He spun towards her, and as their eyes met, she saw that he too realised there was only one way she and Morgan could survive this now. She threw her arms around Morgan, who in her panic fought Skye to get away. But Skye clung on to her and felt Morgan go limp in her arms. Skye squeezed her eyes shut tight against the horror. Hunter’s long arms closed around them both, turning their backs to the wave, and they crouched together at the foot of death.
“Water, go around us.” Skye heard his words in her head as the cursed wave engulfed them in darkness.
*
Skye didn't feel the impact. The noise was deafening. She pressed her head low over Morgan, who was curled up, shaking violently in her arms. Hunter bowed over them both, his arms holding Skye close against him, his forehead pressing against her shoulder. Skye opened her eyes in a squint at first, and then wider. She lifted her head and saw a waterfall of darkness passing over them, close on every side but not touching them beyond droplets falling on them. When she looked up, she could see the water flowing overhead; a river of black water seething with bubbles and fragments of seaweed. The sea came up to Skye’s thighs, surging around her legs, but her feet were immovable, planted like rock on the road. Hunter’s power had made a cocoon-like hollow containing just the three of them. But what of the village?
Suddenly a figure loomed beside Hunter, reaching for him in the surging liquid wall that enclosed them. Hunter’s head jolted up when Jarrod’s hand touched his arm. She felt Hunter shift and turned her head as he did, to see more figures just visible beyond Jarrod and on either side of Hunter, like shadows behind a dark window that streamed with water. Jarrod’s hand rested on Hunter’s right shoulder, Aaron’s hand on his left. The Nemaro rested hands on the shoulders of those on either side of them, forming a line that vanished along the thundering wave. Hunter’s clan had come to stand with him. To watch the destruction?
But Skye heard Jarrod’s words to Hunter in her head, too. “Let us help.”
Hunter straightened, his eyes wide with disbelief. But only for an instant. Then he looked up, speaking into the heart of the wave that surged over them. “Water, stop.”
His voice rang with authority and she felt it shimmer out from him, along the line of his clan, sparking and firing his power that nestled inside each of them, where it sustained the stolen lives he had released into each one. Stirring, filling them, rising within them and rippling out through the vast body of water still pouring over them.
Skye felt the wave shudder, felt its monumental force hesitate, like an earthquake distracted from its mindless intent. Then it seethed slowly on. “Water stop,” Hunter commanded a second time. He moved forward with it, keeping within the wall of water, his clan moving with him, nearer to the village. Skye gripped Hunter’s shirt, shaking Morgan to attention and dragging her upright. She and Morgan stumbled together through the thigh-deep water with the eerie bubble of protection arching above them.
“Water, stop,” Hunter commanded again, keeping pace with the wave. The Nemaro, hands on each other’s shoulders, strode with him. Skye heard their voices joined with his, voices laden with a power like that which had called her own desires up in her, but this time like voices on a storm, calling to the water to return to its rest. The wall of water slowed, as Hunter and his clan moved forwards, their murmurs rippling through the energy of the wave, calling it, summoning it, distracting it from its curse-drawn purpose. The wave faltered, rearing over them, and stopped. Ahead Skye could see light; the edge of the wall of water. She looked around. The Nemaro could go no further, or they would step beyond their boundary.
Seeing daylight beyond the wall of water, Morgan tore free of Skye’s grip and burst out of the wave. Skye could see her shape through the watery wall, collapsed on the ground. She looked back at Hunter, but his eyes were focused on the wave in concentration. After a second’s hesitation, Skye plunged out through the wall of water after Morgan.
