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cheekbone, missing the more disabling strike against his nose. Nevertheless, he reeled back,
momentarily releasing her. Meg rolled away, landing on the floor with a force that nearly
knocked the breath from her lungs. She leapt up as Matt rose to stand on the sagging mattress.
His eyes met hers. Hazel eyes. Caleb s eyes. The struggle contorting his face was obvious.
 Run, Meg, came the strangled command.
She did, without looking back. Down the back stairs and out of the house into the frigid
night. Without a phone, without her keys, without anything but her fear. Heart pounding, she
raced down the rickety steps to the beach. The road was too open, too obvious. It wasn t until
too late that she realized her error. The beach was desolate. There was no one to chance by and
help her there.
And Matt was coming.
Breath steaming, she pounded through the cold sand in her bare feet, her blood singing in
her ears, the sound of her pulse and the surf drowning out the noise of Matt s pursuit. She didn t
dare turn her head to look back for fear of losing her footing. Her side hurt, her breath bloomed
in huge clouds, freezing in her nostrils. And then it happened. She turned her ankle, heard it
snap, and flew to the ground. He was on her before she could regain her breath.
 Matt! No!
He was dragging her by the arm and the back of her pants. She heard them rip and
almost got away, but the grip on her wrist was too strong. Bumping over the uneven terrain, her
broken ankle jarring across the sand, he hauled her down to the water s edge.
 You were always afraid of the sea, weren t you, Meg? Matt taunted, pulling her out
into the water. The surf broke over her, salt water running into her nose, her mouth. She turned
her head, gasping for air. He pushed her back down, under the surging water, then lifted her up
again.
 Afraid of drowning. Afraid of me drowning. You made your fear my own. And guess
what? That s how I died. Sinking into the blackness, with Caleb in my boat, watching.
Meg tossed the sodden hair from her eyes. A sickle moon shone in the sky above his
head.  I saw your body, she cried.  A photo of it. You weren t in the water when you finally
died. You were on the land! If you had waited before you fled the darkness, you might have
lived.
He howled then, with an inner rage that she knew had always been his, and shoved both
of her shoulders under the dark, debris-laden tide. The sound of the water in her ears was a
deadening silence, despite its movement, deep and singing. She struggled against his weight,
DARK TIDES Celia Ashley 103
against the force of the water, against the urge to open her mouth and let the ocean in, to let it
take her away from the nightmare of knowing what Matt had done and that Caleb would soon be
no more. With a final effort, before her lungs burst, she dug her hands down in an effort to push
upward, and found beneath her fingers the shape of something long and solid slowly being
released from its bed in the sand by the pull of the receding tide.
Caleb, forgive me.
DARK TIDES Celia Ashley 104
Chapter Twenty-Three
Carefully, Meg fitted the pair of crutches beneath her arms, curling her fingers around the
crosspieces. Although on them for more than a week, she was still not used to walking
encumbered by extensions to her limbs.
 All set? asked the doctor, arching his eyebrows over the rim of his glasses.
 Yes, Dr. Stevens. Thank you for your help with these, she added, indicating the
crutches by swinging the right one away from her body several inches.
 Lucky it was your left foot. At least you can still drive. Sometime today or tomorrow, I
want you to get over to the drugstore and get this prescription filled. Natal vitamins are very
important.
Meg thanked him again and left the office, hobbling down the short flight of stairs, then
across the parking lot to her car. Easing behind the steering wheel, she set the crutches in the
passenger seat, then sat for a moment staring down the street to the place where the sailors cross
stood stark against the sky.
She had horrifying nightmares that she didn t expect to go away anytime soon. Sleeping
pills might have helped that, but pregnant women couldn t take sleeping pills.
Pregnant. She was pregnant.
Despite all her years of dread and dismissal, she smiled. She was pregnant.
Backing from the parking space, Meg headed out of town in the direction of the hospital.
The hospital where she would one day, God willing, give birth to her child. Today, however, she
had another reason for going there.
The nurses on the third floor hurried to help her, but she waved them away. Maybe she
really was getting the hang of the crutches thing, after all, because she was managing them as
well as her purse and a bouquet of flowers. Slowly, she made her way down the hallway to
Room 316, but as she neared she heard the sound of a familiar voice and stopped.
 Don t tell me about strange. I ve seen strange. This isn t anything we re going to talk
about outside this room, either, understand?
Hobbling forward again, Meg stood in the doorway. Dan Stauffer turned at the sound of
her shuffling halt.
 Meg.
 Dan, she said. She realized that this was the way they always greeted each other. She
smiled, then glared meaningfully at him. He had told her about the apparition he thought he had
seen, not once, but twice, at her house. It seemed he had been wanting to confess it to her that
day in town, and she hadn t let him. A manifestation of darkness, he had called it. And he had
been right.
However, the patient in the bed didn t need to be hearing any of that. He was nearly
recovered from his head wound, his memory fully restored with the exception of roughly two
weeks before his  accident . She prayed that those two weeks never returned to him.
Dan came forward to take the flowers and her purse, then in an unusual show of decency,
went to seek out a nurse for a vase. Meg crutched her way into the room, hoisting herself up
onto the patient s bed.
 Hi, she said.
DARK TIDES Celia Ashley 105
 Hi, said Caleb.
 How s your ankle & .
 How s your head & . they both said at the same time, and laughed. Meg let him answer
first.
 Better. I ll be getting out of here tomorrow or the next day, I m told. I still can t
believe the way this whole thing happened. I m sorry we argued, he said.
Ah, yes, argued. That was the story and she was sticking to it. They had argued over
something she was claiming not to recall, she had gone out on the beach in a huff, falling and
breaking her ankle. When he came out looking for her, he had tripped over her prone body and
struck his head on a jagged rock in the surf. A weak prevarication, but so far no one had
questioned it. Except Dan, whom she had called to help her save Caleb. It had been a risky [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]