Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (66 page)

There was no sign of life.

The silence on the ‘Cornwallis’ thickened. Georgina fancied it stiffened her limbs and clung to her body in a dragging mass. Across the silence came the sound of a distant torturous scream then before their horrified gaze a man materialized by the wheelhouse of the ‘Astrid’, first his upper body then the lower. His arms flailed desperately at the cloying material covering his face and body. Then another appeared, the ocherous stuff flapping in strips off his back as he repeatedly punched his head against the base of the mast.

A third man crawled out of the deck hatch, reeled drunkenly once or twice from boom to hand rail then pitched headlong into the glassy water.

Abruptly the appalled silence on the ‘Cornwallis’ was broken. Amid a flurry of orders and scurrying personnel, the cruiser closed on the yacht, which sat as still in the water as if painted there. Georgina clung to Case, her eyes wide and staring. She hadn't let herself think about what they might have to deal with when the yacht re-materialized. A dinghy was lowered from the stern of the ‘Cornwallis’ to search for the man in the water and the two flying boats which had been ordered to rendezvous with them at this point, circled until signaled clearance to land. With careful maneuvering the ‘Cornwallis’ was brought alongside the yacht and a couple of sailors leapt to the deck with mooring lines to lash the vessels together.

Where were Fran and Gould? Suddenly a naked apparition leapt from the cabin of the yacht and launched itself at one of the sailors. Shouts from above alerted him and he turned in time to grapple with the man whose face was partially distorted by the alien film and whose one visible eye was wild and staring.

‘Gould!’ Georgina cried out, then sagged bonelessly through Case's embrace. Catching her before her head hit the deck, he lifted her into his arms, and dropping down to sit cross-legged, rocked her unconscious body while the tears poured unheeded down his face.

Torr gripped the railing of the ‘Cornwallis’ until his fingers almost melded with the steel. His need to hold Gina as Case was holding her was raking with claws of steel through his gut but he knew if he once touched her, he'd not let her go again until he'd made her his own, until their bodies had made the connection their minds had made all those months ago. It wasn't time for that yet. Would it ever be? Much hinged on Fran and Gould. Insanity and physical disfigurement appeared to be certain outcomes for those aboard the ‘Astrid’. What would that do to Gina's overblown sense of responsibility?

In that moment Fran materialized, staggering from the cabin, her hands over her face and her long golden-blonde hair a mess of what appeared to be filthy, melted plastic. Her screams were piercing and terror-filled. In seconds he'd negotiated the rail of the ‘Cornwallis’ and dropped to the deck of the ‘Astrid’. The sea was so still it was unnatural but there was no time to wonder at that or at his uncharacteristic sangfroid at its proximity.

Going straight to Fran, who was now reeling across the tiny deck of the yacht like a drunken spinning top, he caught her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. Twisting and fighting against him, he could feel her terror escalating to frenzy point.

‘Frannie! It's all right! Frannie! Stop screaming. It's all right!’

‘Call her names. She hates it. She'll listen to you if you call her names.’

The words were as clear in his head as if Gina had spoken at his elbow. Glancing quickly up at the ‘Cornwallis’, he caught a glint from her eyes as she leant against Case's shoulder.

Fran twisted in his arms to claw at his face and for a moment he almost lost his grip on her as the mess of her hair caught against his shirt and parted from her head, leaving her scalp a bald, raw, meaty mess.

Fucking Myrmidons! Before he could regain his focus and restrain her arms she'd raked her nails down his right cheek.

‘Fucking scrawny kiwi bitch!’ he yelled, easily remembering names that had been teasingly funny in another time, a time that seemed almost as long ago as Atlantis. ‘Stand still on those skinny kiwi pins and shut that infernal kiwi beak before I shove a worm in it!’

Still she fought him as if her mind was so crazed that no sense of what he said could penetrate it.

‘Frannie!’ he yelled again. ‘You're going to be all right now. Don't you recognize me? I'm that arrogant, fat-headed British jerk you fell in love with in Peru! The same bastard who walked out on you in Auckland last August. Fran, it's Torr. For chrissakes stop screaming!’

A medic slipped a chloroformed mask over her face and she slowly sagged in his arms. With a heavy heart he acknowledged there had been no awareness in her of who he was, no light of sanity at all.

It was nearly midnight when they returned to the inn.

Outside their rooms Case asked, ‘Can you manage, George? You look absolutely bushed.’

Georgina tried to smile at him and knew the effort was ludicrously wan. There didn't seem to be another thread of animation left in her.

‘I am,’ she admitted, ‘but I don't think I'll sleep. My eyes feel as if they're held open by springs.’

‘Yeah, that's how they look. A bit like giraffe's eyes.’

‘Thanks.’

Case grinned unrepentantly.

‘You're welcome. How about you get into bed, tap on the wall when you're ready and I'll come in with a cuppa and see if I can bore you to sleep? Actually it might be a good time to ring home. They should be having breakfast about now. I'll slip down to the lounge and borrow the phone. We can fix it up with Mrs. Graham tomorrow. Your Mum and Merryn will be desperate to hear how things really are. They've probably only been told the yacht's been found and that Fran and Gould are alive.’

Georgina felt the silly weak tears fill her eyes again. She'd been wiping at them uselessly ever since she'd roused for a second time in Case's arms.

‘Sounds good,’ she said huskily. ‘Better write Mrs. Graham a note in case she comes looking for the phone in the middle of the night and thinks it's been stolen.’

‘Don't worry, little sister. Get into bed and I'll be there.’

Torr just leaned against the wall watching her from beneath frowning brows. She didn't dare look in his direction. Fragile was the word that probably best described them all at this moment and nothing could be gained by teasing weak defenses. She longed for nothing more than to be held in his arms, crushed against his chest and to have him never let her go. All of that was promised in the virescent smolder of his eyes but if he touched her now she'd shatter and doubted she'd ever find all the pieces to put herself together again.

Like Humpty Dumpty.

She needed to get away before she dissolved into weak, hysterical giggles but it was impossible to end such a day with a banal ‘goodnight’.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Thanks for all your support today. The outcome might have been very different without you.’

‘No need for thanks. We were meant to work together.’

‘I know we need to talk—but—’

A slow smile chased the weariness from the craggy lines of his face. ‘—but you're afraid you won't be able to resist me,’ he finished for her.

A dull heat throbbed in her cheeks.

‘I wasn't going to put it quite like that,’ she countered, with a futile attempt at hauteur.

The smile became a grin wide enough to cut a swathe through her heart then vanished as he said huskily, ‘Tonight I could probably manage just to hold you, and it would be a comfort to us both. But waking with you in my arms in the morning would be—a different matter. Will you invite me in?’

Instinctively and instantly Georgina shook her head, whispered ‘goodnight’ and hurried through the door. Dropping down on the edge of the comfortable sprung mattress on the old-fashioned four-poster bed, she hugged herself and rocked for a moment with her eyes shut. Ever since she was a child she'd rocked herself when she needed comfort.

Torr had offered her comfort. Why had she turned her back on that which she wanted more than anything else she could think of at the moment? To be held in Torr's arms, to touch the smile lines radiating from his eyes, to trace the dark, hooked brows and lose her fingers in the crisp black curls of his hair. To hold him—

The thoughts faltered to be replaced by the image of him leaning against the wall in the hallway, watching her from eyes so strangely reminiscent of Taur's—and yet not. Taur's eyes had been green too, a clear, vibrant emerald that flashed green fire when he was angry. Torr's flashed green fire when he laughed. Today when dealing with the skepticism of Commander Abernathy and some of his staff she'd seen the occasional flash of gold fire as if his eyes were not true green. More hazel maybe.

She had to remember Torr Montgomery wasn't Taur of Nyalda and that she knew far less of him than she did of Taur. The whole of her body throbbed in recognition and need of Taur of Nyalda when she looked at Torr Montgomery. That didn't mean she loved him the same way Gynevra had loved Taur. She'd only spent a few hours in his company over a total of three days. How could she judge? Torr wasn't the same personality as Taur reincarnated just as she wasn't the same personality as Gynevra. He was his own man. What if he proved not to be as much of a man as Taur? Cadal Isidor II of Nyalda had stridden through life with the powerful and sure-footed directness of the bull that symbolized the royal house of Nyalda and the fire and passion of the Dragon Blood that had flowed in all their veins.

He wouldn't have allowed her to walk away from him as Torr just had. Did she wish he hadn't? Slowly she rose and gathered her things to go along to the bathroom. Her thoughts and feelings confused her. The hidden, ancient memory in her of Gynevra was disappointed he'd not wrapped an arm round her and shouldered his way into her room. Twentieth century Georgina would have been deeply disturbed if he had. Would she always compare them? Could she ever separate them in her mind and still love the one as she'd once loved the other? Did she even have the right? With a shudder she dropped back to the bed and dragged her hands down her face.

If Gould had lost his mind along with half his face, how could she leave him?

Harmony met them at the military hospital at Fort Lauderdale next afternoon as agreed and the four of them began a program of intense energy therapy on Gould and Fran. The man who'd jumped overboard had been found but had died before reaching hospital. Without exception those rescued from the ‘Astrid’ were severely mentally disturbed and had to be restrained and sedated. All had burns of varying severity to face, arms and legs from the strange plastic material that had melted into all areas of exposed skin. Those parts of the body covered by clothing were much less affected as the cloth had absorbed the stuff. With the consistency of dried egg white but the thickness of the plastic in ice cream containers, it was an alien material for which no one could account.

The yacht had been towed into a quarantine berth at Fort Lauderdale Navy Base and forensic experts called in. Within twenty-four hours the unknown substance, which had coated every exposed surface of the vessel and hung from it like tattered rags had dissolved into the atmosphere and completely disappeared, leaving scientists baffled and disappointed with nothing to test. To the relief of the hospital staff, and the small band of healers, it dissolved from their victim's bodies too, relieving them of the need to remove it. The raw, burnt flesh however became instantly septic.

Looking back on this time in America Georgina would always be deeply grateful for Harmony Whistler, for so her name had proved to be. She insisted they move into her home, a two-bedroomed beach house only minutes north of Fort Lauderdale. By dint of borrowing from friends, some of whom she admitted were gemstone dealers, they'd been able to fill both Fran and Gould's rooms with large chunks of rose quartz and even a few pieces of the much scarcer flame agate Georgina had ‘known’ would be beneficial. But what Georgina would never forget was how the small woman had put her own life on hold and placed herself, her healing abilities and her local knowledge entirely at their disposal.

That very first afternoon they'd begun working as healing teams, Georgina with Case, Harmony with Torr and they'd alternated between Gould and Fran. Both were heavily sedated and inclined to be fractious and disturbed when the drugs began to wear off. Fran's burns were over her head, the back of her neck, and on her hands and arms. She'd been wearing long trousers and the doctors thought she must have covered her face with her hands.

Though completely naked, Gould had only been burned all down one side of his head and face, as if he'd been asleep on his side under a cover that had protected his body. His burns were deeper than Fran's and it seemed he'd had his mouth open and inhaled the terrible substance. For the first three days his condition had been critical.

The scientists, loath to accept any theory of dematerialization, suggested the crew had been engaged in manufacturing some sort of substance aboard the yacht even though evidence of equipment or elements for such a project hadn't been found.

By the sixth day the medical staff had begun to notice a huge discrepancy in the rate of improvement in their seven patients. Fran and Gould's burns were clean, rapidly healing and they needed less and less sedative to keep them settled. Family members of the other five victims had started arriving from Europe and Britain and it was one of these, a diminutive, bird-like English woman who'd asked if her son could also receive the benefit of crystal and energy healing. Gradually, they'd begun to work on all the victims.