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Every one of her senses is re-lit.
Water fizzes in her ears. Cold Atlantic air pushes against her face. There are the two yachts: theCetusandHuntsman’s Daughter. No help on the horizon. No help from above.
Fin – her boy, her little storyteller – is in her arms, but his head is still submerged. When she kicks her legs and raises him up, his eyes are fixed and unresponsive. Dead, yes, but she won’t think about that yet.
One arm around her son, Lucy swims toHuntsman’s Daughter. From theCetus, she hears sounds of violence.
The pain from her broken ribs is extraordinary – deeper than before, more complex. When the inflating life jacket burst loose from the flotation belt and jerked her towards the surface, it felt like something catastrophic happened to her insides. Each new breath delivers a starburst of silver across her vision, a glittery firework that takes longer and longer to blink away.
At last, Lucy touchesHuntsman’s Daughter’s swim ladder and latches on. She lays Fin face-down in the water and positions her shoulder under his stomach. Then she grips the ladder in both hands, gets a foot on the bottom step and pulls herself up.
Another firework detonates behind her eyes. Another volley of spears pierces her side. She loses her grip, slips off the ladder, mashes her face against the bottom step. Blood, red and vivid, surges into the water. Her head sings like hammered iron.
Seawater stings her nose, her mouth. She feels shards of tooth on her tongue, spits them out, sees her boy starting to drift away. She hooks him, puts her shoulder under his waist and tries again.
This time, Lucy gets to the second step before her muscles give out. She strikes the ladder with her jaw, sinks beneath the sea, bursts free of it and spits blood and water and more broken tooth. She reels Fin back in. If she fails a third attempt, she knows she won’t have the energy for a fourth.
When the next swell hits, she launches herself up, screaming with effort. It feels like something is haemorrhaging inside her torso, a pain even worse than childbirth. She blinks away silver, forces herself higher, clings on as a wave rocks the boat.
Up, another step. Another.
Fin is heavier than he’s ever been, lungs full of water, clothes drenched from the sea. She flips him over, hears his head crack against a siding, watches him slither into the cockpit. Hanging from the ladder, pausing to get her breath, Lucy casts a look back at theCetus.
Jake is slumped against the blood-slicked coachroof, hands pressed to his chest. Bee, her ballast still balanced on the side deck, is swimming towards the stern. Lucian has disappeared.
Lucy hauls herself over the transom and tumbles into the cockpit. She rolls on to her side, drags herself up, crawls towards her son. Fin’s on his front, nose pressed to the deck. When she shoves down on his back with all her weight, seawater gushes from his mouth and nose.
Lucy flips him over, spits blood until her mouth is clear. One hand supporting Fin’s neck, she tilts back his head. Then, pinching his nostrils, she begins CPR. A rescue breath, a pause as his lungs deflate. Another breath, three more. No signs of life from her boy.
She puts the heel of her palm against his breastbone and begins compressions. Two pumps each second for a count of thirty. She follows them with two more blasts of breath. Fin’s mouth is cold against her lips. His chest inflates and sinks back.
Back to the pumping:one, two, three, four, five …
Before Fin was born, Lucy took an infant first-aid classin Redlecker. Over the years, because of his fragility, she’s taken regular refreshers. Only once has she had to think about reviving him – back when they were still renting. They’d called an ambulance, waited half an hour for it, Fin’s breaths growing weaker each minute.
… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
Breathe. Pause. Breathe.
No response from her son.
One, two, three, four …
A wave of dizziness hits. Lucy closes her eyes and sees Daniel, hears his voice:Like it or not, this rests with you now. You have to find Fin. Bring him home.
She’s failing. She’s failing Daniel, she’s failing Fin. Lucy hears an engine turn over, knows it belongs to theCetus. When she opens her eyes, she sees Lucian at the wheel.
This guy, he’s the Devil. Satan, Lucifer, whichever name you want to use.
Lucy can’t refute Daniel’s words.
And now that devil is escaping to wreak havoc another day.
On her way here, she’d prioritized Fin’s life over vengeance for Billie’s death. It seems, now, she won’t deliver either.
In the cockpit, Lucian engages the throttle. Lucy sees what’s about to happen. Even if Bee escapes the thrashing prop, her drag on the boat will pull her ballast into the water. That trio of metal gas tanks will pull her eighty metres to the sea floor. And yet Lucy can’t help her friend because she has to work on her boy.
It’s another betrayal. Another part of her humanity ripped away.