CHAPTER TEN
DEACON
No one asked Lux to become our live-in chef, but she seems to have taken on the role regardless, even offering to help paint the back room on the weekend. She wanted to give me cash from work, pay for her board, but I wouldn’t have it. She almost feels like family, which is precisely why I can’t let my dick rule my head.
I look to Razor. “Where’s Bo?”
Razor lifts his shoulders, stuffing toast into his face. Oddly, we’ve become fond of Vegemite over these last few months. It seems the trick is to be sparing with it, not suck it down by the spoonful. “Don’t know, bro. He took off late last night and hasn’t come home yet.”
It’s odd. We always tell each other where we’re going. “He didn’t say where he was headed?”
Another shrug. “Beats me. Midnight booty call with Mrs. McLoughlin for all I know.”
While I try to brain bleach that image out, I notice Lux is watching us.
I look out the windows, the clouds growing even greyer, but that ain’t going to stop us spending time together.
I stand. “Grab your board, Hollywood. We’re going out.”
*
Bo’s leaning against the railing when we return, a beer between his hands.
“Hey,” Lux waves.
“Hey,” he replies.
“I’ll meet you inside,” I tell her. “Don’t use all the hot water, you hear?”
She salutes. “Yes, Dad,” heading inside.
I place my board down and draw Bo into the corner of the verandah. “Where the fuck were you last night? Razor said you went out late.”
Bo shakes his head. “Fucking Razor, the dibber-dobber.”
“Where were you?” I press.
“Easy. It was for the greater good.”
I tighten. “What was for the greater good?”
He lowers his voice, watching the door. “Our friend, the peeping tom? He won’t be bothering us anymore.”
Shit. I come closer. “What the fuck did you do?”
Bo takes a deep breath before speaking. “I went over there to the motel and sorted him out, gave him a real working over. He knows nothing about us. He wanted her, wanted to take her, fuck her, whatever—sick fuck, but I laid down the law, let him know he was not fucking welcome.”
I prod him in the chest. “You should have talked to me first.”
Bo puts his hands up. “You always said we have to protect our own. Lux is part of that now. I wasn’t about to let that cocksucker, what? Snatch her, rape her? Who knows what he fucking wanted?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
Bo laughs, almost seems proud. “Not with a mouth full of blood. The guy might have looked like a Hell’s Angel, but he was a pussy like all the others. He fucking begged me, offered me cash not to break his jaw.”
“Did you?”
He shakes his head, holding up his hands. “I did it old school, pounding him like a bag of fucking meat until he was blubbering like a baby on the bathroom floor.”
There was a time before all this when Bo was the quietest of us, when he wouldn’t have dreamed of getting involved in an actual fight. Things have changed. They’ve changed because of me and my actions. I can’t say it’s been for the better.
I have to ask. “Is he…?”
Bo leaps back. “No. No. Jesus, I didn’t go that far.”
“He’s gone then?”
“Watched him go myself. We got lucky.”
I grab him by the shirt, can’t place where this sudden burst of anger is coming from. “Lucky? Fuck. You put us all at risk.”
“I was only trying to protect us, protect her.”
I let him go. “Did you leave any evidence?”
He tilts his head. “You taught me better than that, bro.”
I clap him on the shoulder. “Okay. It’s done. Let’s just forget about it.”
“What’s done?”
Fucking Sergeant Bill fucking Wilson walks around the corner of the house, stopping below us with his hands behind his back. He’s out of uniform, but that doesn’t mean he’s not on the job.
“Nothing, officer,” says Bo. “We were just having a quiet family chat.”
The sergeant looks down at his feet before looking up. “Say, you boys haven’t seen an individual around,” he points to his neck, “tattoo of a crown of thorns here, real lowlife looking?”.
I cut a glance to Bo. “Can’t say we have. Why’s that?”
If the sergeant did overhear us, he’s not letting on. “I got word someone matching that description was seen in the area, some fucking criminal.”
“Who?” I ask.
The sergeant smiles weakly. “Nasty rapist scum, missed parole back in the big city.”
I exchange another look with Bo. “And you thought because, what, we have tattoos we might know them?”
The sergeant’s a pretty shit cop if he didn’t notice the stranger in town, his fucking stolen car at the motel. Then again, between the pub and his desk, the sergeant doesn’t seem to get out much. Drifters and dirt-bags come and go from Finke all the time. Maybe our friend really did go unnoticed.
The sergeant continues to smile up at us. “As they say, like attracts like.”
“As we said,” Bo spits down, “we ain’t seem him”.
“Who said it was a him?”
The sergeant gives a small salute. “See you around, boys.”
We watch him walk off just as Lux pokes her head through the front door. “Everything alright?”
“Sure is,” I reply, but I can’t help the sickening foreboding that has set up shop deep inside my gut. Maybe we did get lucky. The stranger wasn’t here to hunt us, but he was here to do harm. Better for us if he’s as far away as possible. All kinds of horrors lurk in the shadows around here. Sometimes they need to be flushed out. Perhaps Bo should have taken him out, one less rapist clogging up the world.
I need a distraction. “Say,” I call to Lux before she disappears inside, “how do you feel about a midnight dip?”
*
It’s a cloudless night, the moon casting a silvery staircase over the swell. I ease on the throttle and bring us around into the bay.
Lux blows into her hands.
I cut the throttle and drop anchor, watch as it disappears down into the black. “You nervous?”
“Nervous, cold—same thing, isn’t it?”
I nod to the sky. “Just remember, the darkest nights produce the brightest stars”.
She laughs into her hands. “My god. Where did you pick that one up from?”
“It’s working, isn’t it? I bet you’re wet already,” I look over the side of the boat, “or at least you will be soon enough. You ready?”
Her eyes are pearly saucers in the moonlight. She looks ethereal, beautiful. “Let’s do this.”
I check through the gear—the tanks, the regulators. It’s good to go. I help her get everything into position before spitting into my mask and moving the saliva around. I sling it over my head, hold up my thumb. She nods, sitting on the edge of the inflatable.
I sit next to her, back to the water, reach over and switch her light on. I turn on my own and place the regulator in my mouth. She does the same.
I nod. One. Two. Three.
We both fall back into the water, diving into the icy depths of the ocean.
Most people are terrified of the water at night, but I’ve always found it oddly calming. There’s something about the silence and darkness that makes it comforting—the rest of the world shut out and only an alien landscape left free of worldly worries.
I sweep the light around, a school of whiting swirling ahead.
I look back. Lux glides smoothly behind me, flashlight beam scanning left and right. I point into the distance. She gives a thumbs-up in acknowledgement.
The nursery lies a short distance out from the point. It doesn’t take us long to spot the first shark. As expected, it’s a great white, maybe four or five feet, a juvenile. Still, Lux freezes.
I swim back and take her free hand, direct my torch back to the shark. It circles above, its underside pale and smooth, the beady eyes of a master predator unmoving. It’s beautiful here in its natural habitat.
I feel the water shift behind us, turning to find a much larger white, twelve feet or more, coasting by. It pays us no attention, the light averting it more than anything else.
I see Lux watching it with eyes wide and alert. I squeeze her hand and she squeezes back, only the intermittent psssht of our regulators audible.
The two sharks swim past the lights. Hand in hand, I direct us to a small opening in the rocks running under the point. It’s narrow. I push Lux ahead of me, hands on her ass as I guide her to the surface.
We break through at the same time.
Lux lets the regulator fall from her mouth, staring up at the domed ceiling of the sea cave in wonder. Treading water, she breathes heavily, words rushed. “You never told me about this.”
I start leading us to the edge. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I take off my mask and tank, heaving it up onto a platform of rock. I pull myself up and reach down, taking Lux’s gear before pulling her from the water to stand beside me.
She looks up where, thirty feet above, a small opening in the roof of the cave sends a muted column of light beaming into the pool we emerged from, casting it in mercurial light.
I place my hands on my hips, more than warm enough in this wetsuit now the initial shock has passed. “You’re shaking.” I reach out and pull her against me, feel the way her heart pounds against my chest even through the thick neoprene.
She doesn’t protest. “I’ve seen sharks in the wild before, during the day, but never like that.”
“Sharks hunt at night, but they’re one of the most misunderstood creatures in the world. You respect them, they respect you.”
“Until you become their next meal,” she finishes.
I smile, look down into those rain-blue eyes and I know this is my future, my life. When I look at Lux my past is forgiven and forgotten. I can be the man I want to be.
We stare, holding each other’s gaze.
We don’t move a muscle, savoring the moment.
The whisper of the ocean plays out around us, a deep and driving desire suddenly overwhelming me until I have no choice but to take action, to make her mine.
I take her by the back of the neck and pull her into it. It’s a kiss that tastes of sweat and seawater and sex, a delicate mingling of mutual desire. She abandons herself to it, pressing her tongue against my own and letting it play there wet and warm. When we finally break, she pants, one trembling breath after another as I push an errant tendril of hair from her face.
It’s happening and you are powerless to stop it. Why would you? You deserve to be happy just as much as anyone else, more perhaps.
My head’s talking, but my body is already across the line, my cock painfully hard, its fleshy head thinking only about pressing itself between her lips and running deep, fucking her full.
As I touch her, I know this is what I have been longing for since the very start, since the first time I breathed life back into her and we became one, connected for all time. In this moment I don’t ever want anyone else—something I never thought I’d say, not after…
“Hello,” I say, as if we were meeting for the very first time.
“Hello,” she replies, hand running between us.