“Stop, make it stop.” I swatted at the glow, as if they were flames.
“Lizzy, calm down.” Luke’s tone was deadly calm. “Concentrate.”
The pain was only growing worse. It flared to life in my head, and I thought I heard screaming somewhere in the distance. But it was all inside me.
My nails ripped into the skin on my forearms. Maybe if I released the glow, it wouldn’t hurt as bad. My blood mingled with the white light, without relief. The pain was only getting worse.
I took another step back, but it was one too many. The edge of Spearfish Canyon was closer than I’d realized and muddy from the recent rains. My foot slipped in the soft ground, sending me tumbling backwards and into the raging river.
Shouts from the edge of the bank followed me as I broke above the surface of the water and gasped for breath. The water stung my cheeks like icy fingers and pulled my body back under. I tumbled and twisted, ramming my shoulder against rocks and fighting for another breath.
Another sudden surge of water pushed me deep. The darkness of the night made it impossible to know which way was up. I could only kick and pray that I was headed in the right direction. If I didn’t fill my lungs soon, I was afraid they’d burst inside of me.
Part of me wanted to laugh at the irony. Just a few months ago, my family and friends had tried to burn me to death. I would’ve given anything in that moment to jump into a cool, flowing river. But now, that water I’d so desperately craved was suffocating me. Killing me.
And it was my own fault.
My head broke above the surface. My lungs drew in a sweet breath of fresh air that instantly cooled the fire in my lungs. But any relief was short-lived. Dropping down a small waterfall, the raging water submerged my limp body once again.
The only thing I could manage was to raise one hand above the water. If I could grab something, anything, then maybe I’d have a chance. A tree, a branch, a rock. Something to anchor myself with that would give me a chance to climb out. It was my only hope.
My fingers closed around something small and strong. Afraid that it was a tree branch, I waited for it to snap under my weight. But it held tight. With all the strength I had, I threw out my second hand and grabbed further up, getting a strong hold.
To my surprise, a hand closed around my upper arm and pulled. I gasped in relief and realized Gabe must’ve caught up with me. Either that, or my father. They’d saved me just in time. I wanted to collapse in their arms, but I still had to get out of this strong current.
The arms around me gave a great big tug and practically threw me onto the shore. I laid there in a sopping wet mound, breathing in the precious nighttime air. Water spilled from my lungs, coughed up from the deepest recesses of my chest.
I was alive. I’d made it. I never wanted to see water again.
Rolling over, I looked up at my rescuer. The moonlight shone down on us, bathing us both in silver light. To my surprise, it wasn’t Gabe or my father. A beautiful woman stood in front of me, her pale hair long and wavy. She was short and slim, with dark eyes that twinkled.
“It’s...” I swallowed the last bit of water in my mouth. “It’s you...”
It was the woman from my dreams. The one calling me into the woods every night. I couldn’t believe it. Either, I’d hit my head especially hard in the canyon or...
She was real.
The trees behind me rustled with the noise of two men scrambling through the forest. A moment later, Gabe and Luke sprung into view. Their eyes flashed with panic. They pulled to a halt on the soft riverbank, panting from the sprint. Their gaze went from me and then straight to the pale-haired stranger, letting me know that I wasn’t just dreaming her up again. She really was here.
“It can’t be.” Luke stepped forward. His face betrayed a million emotions at once, including relief, then shock, then disbelief. “You’re dead.”
Surely he wasn’t talking to my rescuer. She was alive, as plain as day. Her chest moved up and down with the assured breath of a living, breathing human. Demons might be able to make shells to live in, but they could never inhabit a dead body. It just didn’t happen.
“She saved me,” I coughed. “Pulled me from the water.”
Luke’s face crumpled, as if he were about to cry. My eyes swept from him to my rescuer, and then back again.
“It’s you.” His voice broke and he shook his head.
I didn’t understand why he was acting so strange.
“It’s my wife.” He took a step closer. “My Elizabeth.”
Chapter Seven
A deafening silence fell over the woods. Not even a bird chirped or fluttered its wings. My eyes flew back and forth between my long lost father and the woman he had just called Elizabeth.
It couldn’t be true. If this woman standing before him was his wife, then I’d found my mother. A woman whom I’d been told was dead. A woman whose grave I used to visit as a child with a bouquet of yellow dandelions in my hand.