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She can’t afford this. Doesn’t have time for it. Her chances of reviving Fin wither each second she delays. Already, she’s missed a thirty-count of compressions. She’s the only one in the world who can bring him back. And instead oftrying, she’s facing a monster.
The knowledge is barbed wire in her blood, a million scratching insects inside her skull. She has to end this, now, or by her inactivity face the consequences.
Lucy steps forward. She unsheathes the antiquekukritaped to the boom. Lucian backs up a touch. His expression hardens.
Grimacing, her insides shifting like a drum filled with broken parts, Lucy climbs on to the side deck and from there to the coachroof. Herkukriis more lethal than his boathook, but its reach is far shorter. With the mast and boom between them, Lucian will keep her at range all day if she lets him.
She lunges with the knife. Lucian deflects it easily. Beforeshe can recover, he reverses his grip on the boathook and strikes the side of her head. The blow isn’t hard enough to drop her, but it fills her ears with white noise.
Lucy swings wildly, missing Lucian by a yard and severing the boom brake with her blade. She swings again, slicing through more of the yacht’s lines. In return, she receives a jab above her left breast just hard enough to puncture skin. He’s toying with her, she realizes, his intention not to wound but to delay.
She rolls over the boom and charges. Lucian thrusts out with the boathook, harder this time, a genuine attempt to cause injury. She bats away the shaft and, before he can readjust, she’s on him, her shoulder slamming his chest, the flat of her blade bouncing off his arm. It’s not the result she intended but he staggers back, unbalanced, grabbing the mast for support.
Lucy swings again, a backhand tennis move, puts all her energy into it. The blade shears the air, scything towards Lucian’s face. He jerks away his head just in time. Before her blade has even completed its arc, she sees him drawing back the boathook, his intention to bury the spike in her gut. Thekukrislams into the mast with a hollow clang. The shock of the impact explodes up Lucy’s arm. The weapon skitters across the coachroof, coming to a rest on the forward hatch.
‘Oh, youbitch!’ Lucian screams, staggering back.
She gasps for breath, tries to work out what just happened.
There’s a bloody streak on the mast. When she looks at Lucian’s hand, she sees dark blood welling from the stumps of two fingers.
Furious, he thrusts out his boathook. She sidesteps,grabs it in both hands, shoves back. Lucian catches his foot on a deck moulding and body-slams the hatch. Blood, bright and shocking, flicks across the deck.
He reaches out, snags thekukriin his good hand and climbs to his feet, putting the mast between them. Nowshe’sthe one with the inferior weapon.
‘Boy’s cold and dead,’ Lucian says. ‘You should have trusted me. All this effort – and now you loseeveryone.’
She advances, shaking his words from her head, moving around the mast. He’s on the starboard side now, backing towards the stern. No longer is there any barrier between him and Fin. A few more steps and he’ll reach the cockpit.
She jabs with the boathook. Just a feint, but Lucian falls for it, swinging with thekukrito fend her off. Before he recovers, she thrusts out a second time. The steel tip sinks into his cheek, rips loose. Lucian screams again. Blood spills down his shirt. He drops his weapon, raising his good hand to his face just as she cracks him with the boathook, connecting above his ear. He goes down hard, spitting and choking. Lucy leans over him and delivers two vertical punches, breaking his nose.
Lucian’s face is a wreck. A blood bubble swells and bursts on his lips. Livid, he grabs a tangle of her hair. Dragging her close, he bares his teeth. Lucy slaps him away but he’s too strong. Those teeth graze her cheek, snapping like a turtle’s. She reaches past him for thekukri, first with her right hand and then with her left. All she can find is a loose line hanging from the unfettered boom.
Lucian reels her in until they’re cheek to cheek. She feels his blood pulsing over her, instinctively turns her head. It’s a mistake.
Monstrous pain, suddenly, in her left ear. Lucian rears back, spits out a chunk of it. She feels her own blood running, a warm flood. Before he can bite her a second time, she loops the severed line around his neck. Lucian releases her hair and scratches at her face. He spits a mouthful of blood into her eyes. Lucy grimaces, half blinded. She loops the rope twice more around his neck, staggers off him.
In her head: Billie, lying dead on Penleith Beach. Daniel, sitting broken inside the prison hall. Fin, cold and unresponsive in the cockpit.
Her boy. Her beautiful boy.
Screaming with agony, summoning every shred of aggression she has left, Lucy leans into the boom. She straightens her legs, pushes with her hands, drives out the boom from the deck.
Lucian is dragged backwards, bloodied hands scrabbling at the line around his throat. His heels scissor against the coachroof but he can’t stop his momentum. His calves bump over the grab rail.
Without a brake to inhibit it, the boom bows out across the water. Lucian hangs from it by his neck, his feet kicking and splashing.
His face darkens. His attempts to free himself grow more frenzied. He smears blood from his severed fingers across the rope above his head. His feet dance with more vigour. He spasms and he twitches. And then he stills.
Lucy half steps, half falls into the cockpit. She pulls one of the rocket flares from the vertical board where she fastened it. Knocking off the retainer cap, she fishes out the firing cord and fires into the sky. Then she drops down beside her star-gazing, card-sorting little bookworm; her weaver of words, her teller of fine tales, her storyteller extraordinaire.
Lucy reaches out, touches him.
Fin is colder than the ocean, his eyes fixed on something she can’t see.
Katharsis, she thinks. Purification through tragedy.
She struggles to take a breath. Her strength has evaporated, along with the last remnants of her hope. Lucy bends over her son regardless. She puts her hands on his chest and pumps.