The water closed around Rhea-Anne. Her hair fanned out behind her like the water-weeds tickling her leg. For a moment nothing moved. All seemed suspended in silence.
Lucas gripped her arm again and dragged her down.
She tried to swim with him, but he pulled with such force, her kicking feet only got more tangled in the weeds. Her throat tightened and her head ached. She opened her eyes, hoping the moon might lead her to the surface and to air. But instead of the blackness of a swamp in the dead of night, though, she saw a preternatural glow emanating from the body beside her. She tapped his arm with her free hand. He ignored her, dragging her deeper into the silt at the bottom of the bog.
She struggled against his grasp. All her will couldn’t keep the panic from rising in her chest. She scratched at his grip on her arm. He didn’t even flinch. She punched his side and thrashed her legs. The weeds twisted around her toes and slashed her skin open. He turned, the green light glowing from his eyes blinded her. She screamed. Water filled her lungs and she passed out.
***
“Rhea-Anne Baker XIII, it is time to repay your debt.” The words, thick and deep, seemed to bypass her ears, shake her mind and pierce the ground beneath her.
“I’m here.” She didn’t say the words with her mouth, but heard them reverberate through the air, slowly fanning out like ripples in a pond.
“Open your eyes,” the voice said.
Rhea-Anne obeyed. A crowd of glowing bodies stood over her, their green eyes sending beams of light down into her body. She couldn’t see their bodies clearly; they seemed to merge within the thick brown fog. Each had a mass of thin, wavy hair that floated in the air around its head, disappearing into blackness beyond the ethereal glow.
She gasped, the thickness of the water caught in her throat. Struggling to rise, she saw they had tied her to the earth with water-weeds.
One of the beings cocked its head to the side and pierced her mind with the lights from its eyes. “You said you knew what you were doing. Why do you fight your chosen fate?”
“Lucas!” Rhea-Anne heard her thoughts burst from her brain, “I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me get some air! Please. I need to breathe.”
“You are breathing,” he said.
Rhea-Anne looked into the glow. She tried a breath. The thick, sludgy water entered her lungs and she exhaled the same brown liquid. Her chest rose and fell.
“How?”
“Never mind that now,” said the voice that had waked her. “We have wasted enough time already.” The being pulled an object out of its hair.
The green light glinted off the tip of a long silver spike.
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