Lien-hua kicked with all her might but only managed to gouge the shackle into her Achilles tendon and send a searing clutch of pain rocketing up her leg. The grate didn’t budge, the chain didn’t break.
It wasn’t going to break. There was no way it would.
You’re going to die. Right here. Right now. At the hands of the same man who killed Chu-hua.
Hope fleeting.
Fleeting.
Maybe she didn’t want to live. Maybe it was better if she died.
Freedom or pain?
Pain.
Death.
The two flowers. Lien-hua, the lotus. Chu-hua, the chrysanthemum. Both snipped from the stem by the same man.
Yesterday Lien-hua had told Tessa that she’d seen too much corruption to believe in purity, in enlightenment. And it was true.
We can’t rise above who we are.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” she whispered to the ghostly memory of her sister as the water rose above her chest. “I was afraid, afraid of the water.”
Bruised petals.
The arrangement will never be the same.
No, we can’t rise above ourselves.
But what had Tessa asked her? What had she said?
Can someone else lift us? In that moment the question brought its own answer and from deep inside her bruised heart, Lien-hua prayed, cried out to the God she wasn’t sure was there. Begged him to lift her from her past, from herself, from the stinging regrets she’d been carrying since June 17, 1999, when she found her twin sister floating facedown in the family’s swimming pool.
“All right. That’s it,” yelled Riker. “I want to play with my raven now.” And then he dared to quote Poe, “‘Only this, and nothing more.’”
“I’m coming. Just a minute!”
Soap. Plunger. Towel.
Yes, yes. It was the only thing Tessa could think of. She grabbed the plunger and turned on the faucet.
I made it halfway up the tower; saw Melice four meters below me. I gauged how far out I’d need to jump and, relying on my good leg, turned on the tiny lip of a ledge so that I was facing him.
And leapt.
Creighton Melice felt the impact, the pressure of a sudden weight crush him to the ground.
As he connected with the deck, he knew it was Bowers. Somehow it was Bowers. The force knocked Creighton’s gun away, and it went sliding across the deck and landed out of reach in one of the recessed view ports to the Seven Deadly Seas exhibit.
Creighton rolled free.
He rolled free. He was quick. He ran for the food prep area, and I rose awkwardly, painfully to my feet. My left leg throbbed with nearly unbearable pain, and the floor was slick, making it even harder to stand. With the gunshot wound, I wouldn’t be able to chase him down. I glanced toward the shark acclimation pool. The water was up to Lien-hua’s chin.
Air. I needed to get her air.
The scuba tanks were by the wall.
I started toward them as Melice stepped out of the food prep area wielding one of the long, slender skinning knives.
I would need to get past him to save Lien-hua’s life.
Lien-hua took a long sip of air. It would only be a matter of seconds now.
Seconds before she joined her sister.
She stretched for the surface one more time.
But found it out of reach.
Tessa finished getting ready, jammed the soaking wet towel into her satchel, and swung it at the lightbulb. Shattered it. Then she backed into the corner. Riker threw the door open and blocked the doorway. “This stalling is gonna cost you,” he said. She didn’t reply. She saw him step forward and reach for his belt buckle. “It’s time to come back to the nest, my little Raven.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“I’m ready,” she said. “Come and get me.”