Forgotten Sea (3 page)

“Give us a minute,” she said.

Gideon’s face set, cold and rigid as marble. “Five minutes,” he acceded. “I’ll wait for you outside.” Where he could guard the entrance and scan for danger.

She nodded.

With another glare at Justin, he left.

“Are you okay?” Justin asked.

“Fine,” she said firmly, whether it was true or not. Why had she felt the pull of his presence if she wasn’t meant to find him?

“Listen, it’s none of my business,” he said. “But if this guy is giving you a hard time . . .”

His willingness to look out for a stranger shamed her. Especially since she was about to abandon him to his fate.

“Nothing like that. We work together,” she explained.

He looked unconvinced.

“What about you?” she asked.

He frowned. “What about me?”

Who are you?

What are you?

“Will you be all right?” she asked.

“I think my ego will survive being ditched for another guy.” The glint in his eye almost wrung a smile from her.

She bit her lip. Their enemies would be circling, drawn by that unexpected snap of energy. She already had to account for one mistake. She couldn’t afford another. Besides, he was not one of them. He would be safe. He had to be.

“Right. Well,” She slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder. At least now she didn’t have to drug his beer. “Take care of yourself.”

As she slid out of the booth, he stepped back, lean and bronzed and just beyond her reach. “You, too.”

She walked away, reluctance dogging her steps and dragging at her heart.

* * *

Justin watched his plans for the evening walk out the door with more regret than he had a right to. Her tight butt in that slim skirt attracted more than a few glances. Her fall of dark brown hair swung between her shoulders. The woman sure knew how to move.

He shook his head. He’d known she was slumming when she came on to him that afternoon. Presumably she was going back where she belonged, with Mr. Tall, Blond, and Uptight.

He hadn’t lost anything more than half an hour of his time.

So why was there this ache in the center of his chest, this sense of missed opportunity?

He took a long, cold pull at his bottle, his gaze drifting over the bar. He’d been in worse watering holes over the past seven years, before he got his bearings and some control over his life. Worse situations, in Puerto Parangua and Montevideo, in Newark and Miami. He drank more beer.

He fit in with the surly locals and tattooed sea rats better than pretty Lara Rho and her upscale boyfriend ever could.

But he didn’t belong here. He belonged . . . The beer tasted suddenly flat in his mouth. He didn’t know where he belonged. He set down his bottle. He didn’t want to drink alone tonight. And he didn’t want to drink with the company the Galaxy had to offer.

Careful not to flash his roll, he dropped a couple of bills on the table and walked out.

Nobody followed.

Outside, the sky was stained with sunset and a chemical haze, orange, purple, gray. The day’s heat lingered, radiating from the crumbling asphalt, sparking off the broken glass. He headed instinctively for the water, free as a bird thanks to the coworker boyfriend with the ponytail, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his evening.

Or maybe his life.

Beyond the jumbled rooftops at the end of the street, he could see the flat shimmer of the sea. He passed a homeless guy huddled in a doorway, clutching a bottle, watching the street with flat, dead eyes. Something wrong there. He kept his arms loose and at his sides as the pawn shops and tattoo parlors gave way to warehouses and razed lots.

His neck crawled. Alley ahead. Empty. Good.

He lengthened his stride, taking note of blank windows and deserted doorways. Good place to get jumped, he thought, and angled to avoid the dirty white van blocking a side street.

He heard a thump. A grunt.

Not his problem, he reminded himself. None of his business.

A woman’s cry, sharp with anger and alarm.

Shit.

He circled the van, shot a quick look down the street.

Four of them, Justin counted. Two on Lara, one big guy keeping the boyfriend occupied—
Tie him
up
while they took her down, good strategy
—one on the ground. Even odds, almost. Unless they were armed, in which case things were going to get messy.

Justin didn’t know what he’d stumbled into. Robbery? Rape? Drug deal gone wrong?

But nobody was waving a blade around. Yet. Or a gun.

He left his own knife in the sheath on his leg.

The big guy stopped dancing and bulled under the boyfriend’s guard, catching him hard around the ribs, wrapping him in his arms. Goldilocks swallowed by the bear.

One of the thugs lunged at Lara. She grabbed his arm, using his weight against him, but the second one jumped in, grabbing her long hair, snapping back her head.

Justin surged forward, quick, controlled, two short jabs to the kidneys that should have dropped him. He jerked, releasing Lara, but he didn’t go down.

Justin checked, caught by a sense, a smell, fetid and somehow familiar. Like burning garbage.

Slowly, the thug turned, eyes flat in his dead face.

Fuck.

Justin hit him, palm of the heel up the nose,
crunch
, blood spraying everywhere. The smelly bastard stayed on his feet, pummeled Justin’s ribs, one, two, hard. Justin blocked the third blow, slammed the side of his foot on the bastard’s instep. Their legs tangled. They fell. Pain burst in Justin’s elbow, radiating up his arm. They scrambled, fighting for position. Stinky clawed at Justin’s face, gouging for his eyes. Justin slammed both forearms down to break his hold, bucked him up and over. Grabbing hair, he rapped the guy’s skull on the ground, hard enough to stun.

The thug, blood streaming from his broken nose, looked up into his eyes and smiled.

It creeped him out. Enough he didn’t follow through, and paid for it when the guy curled up. Head butt. The alley exploded in pain and stars. They rolled again, Justin on the bottom. He heard grunts, thumps, around them.
Lara?

Stinky reared over him, bloody, smiling. Justin chopped up, striking his throat with the edge of his hand, crushing the windpipe. The guy gurgled, blank eyes bulging in his bloody mask of a face.

Drop, asshole.

He dropped.

Breathing hard, Justin shoved his body aside and staggered to his knees.

His gaze swept the scene for Lara, found her by the wall, bending over her attacker’s motionless body. Safe. The air around them wavered like heat rising from a jet engine.

Justin blinked. The shimmer didn’t go away.
Shit.
He must have hit his head harder than he thought.

He glanced over at the boyfriend, crawling out from under the big guy. Another one down. Okay. He breathed again, this time in relief, and bent down to press his fingers to the pulse under Stinky’s jaw. Still beating. Good.

A hot breeze skittered down the alley, swirling dust, raising another whiff from the man on the ground. Justin coughed.

Shuddered.

Rolling the thug to his side so he wouldn’t drown in the blood from his windpipe, Justin rose shakily to his feet.

Lara leaned over her attacker, wiping his face. Not wiping, Justin amended. She had this little bottle in her hand and was making some kind of sign on his forehead. Her lips moved. Like she was giving him last rites or something.

The hair rose on the back of Justin’s neck. Shaking his head, he walked over. “You okay?”

She moistened her lips. “Yes, I . . .” Her eyes widened.

“Watch out!”

A scrape behind him.

He turned, too late.

The blow clipped the side of his skull and dropped him like a stone.

* * *

Horrified, Lara watched the bottle crack against Justin’s head. He collapsed in the grit of the alley. The homeless man stepped over the body, a demon staring out of his eyes.

He licked his lips. “You’re next, bitch.”

She was spent. Done. Drained of strength and magic.

“Go to hell,” she said and flung her vial of holy water at its head.

The demon shrieked. A splash of holy water wouldn’t stop the children of fire. But it slowed this one down.

Gideon rushed over and flung himself on the thing’s back. The possessed man staggered, clawing at Gideon’s hands around his throat.

Lara crawled to Justin, her arms and legs shaking, a silly little prayer whistling under her breath.
Oh no, oh please,
oh God . . .

The demon crashed to its knees in the alley, Gideon still clinging grimly to its neck.

She tilted Justin’s head to open his airway, pressed her ear to his lips. A faint, warm vibration stirred her hair. Relief leapt inside her.

Gideon lumbered to his feet. “Is he alive?”

“Yes.” She laid her hand along his jaw, reaching out with all her senses. Her power flickered. Sputtered. “Justin? 
Justin.
”

Blearily, he opened his eyes. She peered anxiously at his pupils. In the shadow of the warehouse, she couldn’t tell  if they were the same size or not.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

His gaze fastened on her face with painful intensity. His cracked lips parted. His face was a mask of dirt and blood.

Her heart tripped. So much blood. The split in his scalp gaped like another mouth, red and open.

She scrambled on her hands and knees for her purse, lying in the weeds and litter.

“What are you doing?” Gideon demanded.

“He’s hurt. We need to apply pressure,” she explained, rummaging inside. “To stop the bleeding.”

“Unless his skull is fractured,” Gideon said. “Come on. We don’t have time for first aid.”

“What about . . .” Her gaze darted to the other figure on the ground. Their attacker. For answer, Gideon turned the man over with his foot. The one who had been possessed sprawled motionless, staring with empty eyes at the darkening sky. She felt sick inside. The lost souls who had attacked them were victims, too.

Demons did not usually hunt humankind. Heaven and Hell were bound by the same restrictions. The children of air and fire could not take human life or violate humans’ free wild without pissing off the Most High. But the demons, lacking bodies of their own, sometimes risked the wrath of Heaven by borrowing mortal bodies.

And now one of those mortals was dead. Killed. She and Gideon had killed him.

Gideon stooped briefly, tracing the
taw
on the fallen man’s brow: the hilted sword, the four quarters of the wind, the sign of the children of air.

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

“Right.” She collected her legs and her wits. Sliding an arm behind Justin’s back, she propped him to a sitting position.

He stared at her, his eyes dark and dazed.

“Justin? Can you stand up?”

He nodded. Or maybe he was simply having trouble holding his head upright.

“He can’t come with us,” Gideon objected.

Lara slung her purse over her shoulder and wrapped her arms around Justin’s waist. “I’m not leaving him.”

Not again.

Gideon shifted, irresolute. “You don’t even know if it’s safe to move him.”

“I know it’s dangerous for him to stay.”

The demons might not hunt humans, but they preyed in gleeful retribution on the Fallen children of air. Human or not, shielded or not, Justin had made himself a target simply by coming to her rescue.

She thrust her shoulder under his armpit, braced her legs, and pushed them both to their feet. He lurched against her to save himself from falling. Tucked under his arm, she was acutely conscious of his height. His weight. His warm, animal scent. His body was lean, but big boned and packed with muscle.

“Get his other side,” she ordered.

Gideon moved automatically to obey. Under the Rule governing their community, they were vowed to obedience.

Scire, servare, obtemperare.
“To know, to save, to obey.”

She winced. So far she was failing at all three. But at least Gideon was prepared to follow her lead for now.

They shuffled toward the car parked at the other end of the lot. Justin hung between them, his bloody head lolling against his chest, his feet dragging. Dead weight.

Lara’s palms sweat. She shifted her grip.

Not dead
, she thought fiercely.
Not dead yet.

The last daylight faded from the sky. Shadows collected on the ground, tripping them up. As they reached the car, Justin stumbled. Lara struggled to keep them both upright.

“Careful.” Gideon unlocked the car and opened the rear passenger door.

Justin’s muscles trembled. She could feel his effort to cooperate as they loaded him awkwardly into the backseat, as they folded and stuffed his long body into the car. By the time he collapsed beside her, they were both damp and panting. Her heart pounded with worry and exertion. She clasped her arms around him to keep him on the seat. He groaned and tried to raise his head.

The driver’s side door slammed as Gideon got in. “You owe me another shirt.”

They both were streaked with blood. She grabbed a wad of paper napkins left over from their lunch in Maryland and attempted to staunch Justin’s wound. “We owe him our lives. He wouldn’t be hurt if he hadn’t helped us.”

Gideon met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Where to?” he asked, making it clear that whatever happened next was her choice. Her responsibility.

Her fault.

She swallowed her resentment and her doubts. “The hospital.”

The engine rumbled to life.

Justin muttered against her shoulder, his speech deep and slurred.

She stroked his tawny hair, streaked with sweat and blood. “What did you say?”

His breathing rasped. “No . . . hospital.”

“Sorry, pal,” she said. “You need a doctor. Stitches.”

A CAT scan.

“No.”

She gentled her voice. “If you can’t afford it—”

“No doctor,” he repeated, raising his head. “No . . .police.”