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"Come on," she whispered desperately. "We must move." They had to go deeper, where his light wouldn't be seen. The overwhelming warmth she felt from him was being poisoned by the artificial despair creeping more deeply into her mind. His enemies were too close.
Slowly, despite the weight of the wings, he began to turn, taking them over the edge. She pushed harder with her tail, wanting to fall clear enough that they wouldn't bounce off the sharp edges of the coral. Come on. They had to go deeper, deeper.
She was already deeper than she'd been before, and Goddess, but the water was cold. So cold. And dark. His light was the only light. As they tumbled together, with her wrapped in his wing and wrapped around him, she realized she could lose her sense of direction, go down when she meant to go up, and never find her way to the surface again. The reality of that brought another terrifying thought. When she was lost in the darkness, it wouldn't matter to anyone. No one.
But nothingness would mean no more pain or loneliness, she reminded herself. Ridicule, inadequacy. Staring from cruel eyes. Callous comments that made her angry but gave her anger nowhere to go because it was pointless. All of that would dissolve in the Abyss, like the tar pits where Ice Age creatures were destroyed. No more . . . anything.
Oh, God. She didn't want to die. The red lights were too close. They were going to catch up to them.
No! The wing tightened around her hips and Anna held the wounded angel's weight closer, felt him living against her. Think about him, Anna. How mighty and fine he must look up in the sky, his wings spread. Protecting. Existing.
How was she going to hide his light?
Praying the Dark Ones were following the light and not the essence of the man himself--Soul Finder magic--she sent out a small tendril of magic herself, so insignificant in comparison to what she held and what followed them that she hoped it would warrant no more notice than a floating cloud of foam to a shark. Many sharks.
Come to me. She issued the command in her mind urgently.
Like fireflies of the sea they came, puncturing the darkness. The fish of the Abyss were a variety of unusual shapes and sizes that blended well with their surreal world and lived without fear in the void. They approached from various directions, in small groups and then one blessedly large school.
Their glow reminded her that light came from within. She would fear no darkness. If they caught him, they would kill him . . . or worse. She would not permit that.
She summoned the fish so they moved with them, weaving in and out until the two of them were part of a school of many different, iridescent colors, but primarily white and silver. As they dropped, she and her precious burden blended, a part of their travels.
Stay with me. She held the simple, pure minds as she sensed the darkness getting closer, looking. Oh, Goddess, probing. She wouldn't let herself panic, for if she did, the fish would scatter. Focus on me. It does not seek you.
When the probing collective mind found her, touched her, the fear and despair were like being rammed face-first into the steel side of an unexpected shipwreck. The emotions were so strong that for a moment she was disoriented, terrified, thinking the monsters had appeared all around her.
These are not your emotions. They're using you, manipulating you.
She shoved out of them with a fierce burst of resistance. She had enough unnatural factors shaping her destiny, thank you very much. No one was taking a single decision from her that was within her power to make.
Fortunately a push of current, an even colder surge, took hold at that key moment, rolled them left when the fish would have startled away in that direction, a reaction to the disturbance in her mind. Steadying them, she held the compulsion magic with renewed vigor, joining her mind with the school's as well as focusing on blending her body, and the body of the angel to whom she clung, among their physical shapes.
Just a school of fish . . . seeking dinner from the water. Seeking . . .
Her knuckles made contact with the canyon wall. While many places were too steep for anything to get a purchase, some things grew and lived in the crevices beneath the crags. The soft, wavy touch of sea fans, the quick, startling stab of some type of blenny, seeing if she was food before the creature pulled back in again. Clinging to the trunk of a sea fan, she let it anchor her and her burden. Her meager magical abilities were exhausted, so the fish swam away. Her arm ached with holding him. The severed wing helped, snugged in as it was around them both, but she sensed its sentience was connected to its master and would eventually fail if she did not find them a resting place.
Practically, she knew she didn't stand a chance against an old, blind and wounded Dark One, let alone how many she sensed were after this angel. She would find and enter a tunnel, she told herself. She would go down deep enough to get him out of range of the senses of the evil creatures following them. If she could do that, perhaps they would decide he'd drifted with the current and was no longer in the area.
And then you'll both die because you'll get stuck or lost or there will be horrible things waiting for you . . .
Making herself move along the cliff face, she followed it by touch alone, trying not to let her panic be fueled by the fact that all light except that from the faint glow of the wings had disappeared.
Once, she had discovered a travel postcard floating in the water. It was the place the humans called the Grand Canyon. Aunt Jude had told Anna these underwater cliffs had also felt the touch of sun, thousands of years ago. The world was so old, old as the Lady Herself. Older than this filth that was trying to take what she had found.
Finding a crevice wide enough for the two of them, she discovered it led into a narrow tunnel. As she followed it, tugging on her burden, she tried not to think about her lack of options if she took them down a fissure with no exit, where she could be trapped by what pursued him.
There was no greater terror for a sea creature than to be immobilized. The lack of ability to move was a sure death, a waiting death--the worst kind. Which was why Anna had such admiration for Jude, who held on to her sanity for the hours she spent tangled in that net.
Holding on to that thought, she kept moving forward, trying to keep track of her orientation with one hand on the wall, though the cold fear in her vitals told her she wasn't sure if she was going up or down anymore. All she knew was that there was now rock on all sides, the occasional conical shape of a stalagmite or stalactite, a reminder of Aunt Jude's words regarding the land-based history of these caverns. Had she thought the open pit of the Abyss dark? This was true darkness, the kind that could tug one toward madness in no time. Once, she hit a wall. It made her yelp in startled fear and she almost went back. Then, thinking carefully, collecting herself enough to feel around, she reali
zed it was a turn in the tunnel and began to follow it in a new direction.
At one point, the rock became smooth, and pinpricks of light started to come through the glittering flecks of minerals embedded in the tunnel sides. While it provided illumination, it was too small to give more than meager comfort, so she imagined the water here as a Caribbean crystal blue touched by the sun.
Her muscles were burning. Her tail propelled her for swimming, so she was unused to straining her arms and shoulders this way. But stopping was not an option.
The minerals disappeared, taking the illusion of light with them as the tunnel turned once more. Despite that, she kept following, obeying the compulsion to outrun whatever might be behind them, knowing by instinct that was the priority above all other things.
There. It was gone. She drifted to a halt, using her tail as a wedge between the walls to hold them in place while she waited, probing. Yes, the artificial hopelessness was gone, bringing a keen sense of relief. They'd lost them.
But instead of bringing in a rush of comfort as she'd hoped, rational thought returned, bringing terror with it. She'd long ago lost track of the direction she was going, the turns she'd made. What had she been thinking? Had she been thinking at all when she made the decision to do this?
Even as panic rose in her breast, she recognized it as the most deadly enemy she'd faced yet. A creature could quickly seal its own death warrant by giving in to mindless flight instinct. But her energy to resist had been sapped by those evil things as well as the physical effort of moving the large angel. She was where she'd never been before . . . a place that had been part of the nightmares of her childhood. Despite herself, she returned to the idea that the Abyss seemed not only capable of swallowing their physical bodies, but even the memory of their existence. In such a desolate place, maybe even the Creator could forget them.
She choked back a sob. She wanted to turn back, take them back, but she didn't know which way was back. It didn't matter. She'd just swim, the faster the better. Anything was better than not moving.
