Dark Angel: A Gothic Fairy Tale
(Work-in-Progress)

© TJ Bennett

[Excerpt]

Sand. Wet and gritty beneath my cheek, between my fingers. My lungs seizing.

I need air.

I sucked in a ragged breath, then coughed and choked as water arose from my belly and I became violently ill. The taste of salt and bile lingered on my tongue. A horrible, jagged pain lanced my side, and I gasped. The cold surf rushed in, swirling around me, trying to drag me back into its depths.

I needed to move. I could not remain here, at the water’s edge, where the sea had deposited me and now tried to suck me into its yawning mouth. I coughed, the pain ripping through me, but I made my limbs move despite the lethargy commanding me to lie down and die. Despair was a sin, so I pushed on.

I hurt. But I welcomed it because it meant I lived. Nothing else mattered. I forced my arms to move, then my legs, pushing forward like a turtle toward higher ground, beating back the dark haze of oblivion so I might live a few minutes longer.

Finally, I could go no further. If my life depended on it, and it very well might, I could not fight the feeling of a great weight pressing down upon me. A gray mist, cold and thick and wet, hung over the ocean and rolled up onto the beach. Tendrils of it floated over me, caressing my hands, my legs, my face. I felt the touch of coldness in my heart, and gray began to cloud my vision.

Another wave crashed over me, causing me to sputter awake. I heard shouts in the distance and turned my head. The salt water stung my eyes and blurred my vision. The gray of twilight was becoming the darker black of night. My head pounded ruthlessly, bringing on an almost overwhelming nausea. I fought it back, blinking hard, and heard a sound beyond the crash of the waves: the rush of wind over my head, and then a shadow passed over me.

I tried to follow the shadow with my eyes. The mist parted, and for a moment, I thought I saw something just beyond the edge of the shoreline: a sleek, powerful beast, its fur black as midnight, its pale gaze fixed on me, its big body swaying as it stalked closer. Fear possessed me, made me dim-witted with terror. On the periphery of my vision, I saw bobbing lights, far away shapes coming down the beach toward me from the direction of the structure high on a hill—the one I had seen before.

Mobilized by the sight, I stretched my hand toward the lights.

“Help,” I cried weakly. “Help me, please. I am here . . .”

My vision wavered again, and a dark form loomed over me. I tried to scream, certain the beast was about to lunge for me, but my lungs would not draw breath. I turned to face it, but the creature was gone. Instead, a man was there, reaching for me, his large hands clasping mine and pulling me just beyond the water line and up onto the beach.

“I have you,” he shouted.

Though the pain in my side stabbed at me once more, the waves no longer touched me, and the mist had disappeared. He hung over me, using his body to shelter me from the biting wind.

He was dressed entirely in black. Intense eyes beneath a slash of dark brows stared down at me from a lean, striking face—a face hewn out of wilderness and shadows, more frightening than beautiful, and yet somehow both.

I closed my eyes.

It did not matter who he was. I was safe.

“How in hell are you here?” The deep voice above me sounded utterly perplexed. “How the devil did you accomplish it?”

I coughed out more water and said the only thing that came to mind. “Pray do not—swear at me, sir.” A spasm of pain seized me, and I flinched.

“Well,” said the bemused voice. “You’ve spirit, at least. Good. You will need it.”

My tenacious grip on consciousness loosened, and I fought to retain it. I looked up at him with a sense of urgency pushing me on. “A wild animal . . . I think—it might attack . . .”

His unblinking gaze reminded me of the creature’s fixed stare. “There was no animal when I arrived. You must have imagined it in your distress.”

“But—”

He leaned back on his heels, and I heard him snapping out orders, giving sharp commands for my comfort to the others who had finally arrived. I felt myself lifted and cried out, my side screaming in agony. I squeezed my eyes shut as strong arms cradled me.

 “I must move you. Be brave.” A gentle swaying motion told me the owner of the voice carried me.

A shiver tore through me, the cold wind biting into the wet layers of my clothing.

I turned my head, encountering warm skin against my cheek. He shifted me in his arms, tucking my head beneath his chin, and I felt the stiff stubble of his beard scratch my forehead. The spicy scent of wood smoke and pine clung to him, as if he spent most of his time out of doors. Instinctively, I pressed my face into the opening of his shirt and felt comforted by the sturdy rhythm of the heartbeat beneath, by the seductive scent of an underlying musk permeating his skin. It drew me, that scent, and I rubbed my nose against him in response. I felt rather than heard the low vibration emanating from his chest, a sound of luxury and approval somewhere between a growl and a purr.

I did not question my immodest action, did not feign a diffidence I could not feel. He offered warmth and protection, life and hope. I would cling to him like a barnacle to a hull if he would only make the terrible pain go away, banish the lingering horror of what I had endured beneath the water’s depths as the sea had tried to murder me.

A memory of the bandaged crewman suddenly struck me, of bodies tumbling past mine in the water, of hands reaching out, capturing mine, dragging me to the surface. I knew I must speak. I struggled to lift my head and battle back the darkness long enough to ask him.

“The . . . others?” My throat was raw with the seawater I had swallowed. I forced my head up. “Did you . . . save the others?”

He paused in mid-stride, then resumed walking. I heard the great weariness in his voice when he spoke again.

“There are no others.”

He gazed down at me, a dark angel pronouncing their fate. Shock flared through me, and despite the shimmering torchlight, I received only a hazy impression of the hard angles of his face, the exotic shape of his eyes, the blackness of his hair before the vision wavered and I plummeted into quiet, blessed oblivion.

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