Sacrificed to the Sea - Cari Silverwood Page 0,3
swallowed him, and he drifted lower beneath her feet. With her throat locked by grief, she wept some more.
What had she done?
He was different. He could have been hers. If only she knew what to do to bring him back.
She dived with him then and tried to breath the life back into him, but to no avail.
Again, she released him and turned away, and she swam for hours, for miles. She found herself in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go, no future, with nothing at all of worth to make her want to exist.
In the morning, still overcome, she returned to find his body, to do with it… well, she knew not what she intended but…
Something.
She could not find his corpse. This had been her hunting ground for the past half century, and she knew every cranny, every underwater cavern, yet she could not find his body.
Some predator had taken it.
Which only reinforced her uselessness.
Never before had remorse knifed into her and consumed her so mercilessly. It was as merciless as she had been to the humans she killed. That night, to consider her path from here on, she went to her coral reef and thought, while the moonlight silvered the waves.
She closed her eyes and spoke aloud to the moon and the sea. This vow she did not want to renege upon, not like the last time when she’d just begun and was a novice at killing.
“Never again will I take another human life. Never.” Raffaela bit her lip with her sharp teeth. She would let herself die. It was for the best.
How to die though? Merely letting herself weaken and expire from lack of food seemed awful. It should be quick yet not too quick. She deserved some pain.
For close to a month she dithered about, staying in her hunting area. Her time to walk upon the shore was coming. So was the Ravening but she dearly wished to walk on the land again. Could she hold off the hunger for long enough? She must choose a way to end herself. A shark would be repulsive. What else, though?
A peninsula lay beside her reef. She swam closer to the shore. There were hills here and among them she might find an unclimbable chasm. When her day of being human ended, she would surely dehydrate and die if she could not find the sea. That seemed fitting – to die near where Merrick had died, plus she would take her last breaths as a woman should, in the human world.
Except, when she swam to the beach, at the dead of night, there was a man sitting on the sand near the jetty where boats were moored. That alone would have meant little.
He saw her. He watched her swim by and followed every deviation of her course.
Something covered his face and eyes – a hunk of metal and glass such as the human divers wore. It made him resemble a monster. He saw her every move, even though the moon had not yet risen, and the night was as black as her sins.
Curious, she swam closer and into the shallows. She had no urge to kill. Yet.
She meant to die anyway, so what harm could this do, to speak to a man? He held no harpoon or weapon.
“Who are you?” She wrapped her arms about the anchor rope of a dinghy and stared across the sand. “Can you see me?”
He nodded. “I can see you.”
“Oh.”
This gave rise to a dilemma. She was curious about him, but the Ravening was also strengthening. He was new and different.
“I’ve been studying your kind. You’re a siren?”
The moon was rising at his back, lighting up the sand with subtle tones.
Those few words of his had ignited her interest to heights unknown for centuries. Who was he? She must know more. And when she saw the chain that led from his leg to a vehicle parked higher up the beach… her fate was sealed. She must know more. The centuries of monotony had worn on her – of death and hunger, of an ocean full of creatures that she could not talk to.
She hungered for words.
“Perhaps I am a siren. I don’t really know. But what are you?”
He dragged off the mask and his gaze wandered over her appreciatively, she thought, dwelling on her breasts. She knew how much men loved those.
“Just a man doing some research on your kind and you… A beautiful woman.”
Not siren – woman.
She smiled at him, tentatively,