Forgotten Sea (4 page)

The high beam of their headlights scraped the drive, throwing into sharp relief the marble eagles at the gate and the precepts of the Rule inscribed in stone:
scire, servare, obtemperare.
“To know, to save, to obey.”

Rockhaven school, announced a discreet sign to the left of the entrance. est. 1749.

Lara’s heartbeat quickened.

The tires whispered to a stop in a pool of floodlight within range of the cameras: one mounted on the gate, two artfully hidden in the landscaping. The governors didn’t let respect for tradition interfere with the need for security.

Lara rolled down her window, careful not to disturb Justin’s head on her lap.

A red light blinked. The mechanized iron gate swung silently open. Gideon drove through.

She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding and settled back in her seat. Almost there. Almost home.

The first time she’d approached Rockhaven in the back of a car, she’d been a victim, a child, sick, sweaty, and scared half to death, with almost no memory of who she was or where she came from.

Her kind might live as humans, but they were not born as human infants. That status was reserved for the Most High.

Created as children of the air, the nephilim were sentenced to earth for overstepping the role dictated by Heaven. For intervening, always with the best of intentions, in human affairs. For violating humans’ free will . The most powerful in Heaven—with the most to lose, the most to forget—became the youngest on earth.

Lara was nine when she Fell .

She had always felt special—favored—because Simon Axton himself had found her. Not that she’d trusted him at the time, she recalled ruefully. Her short, brutal, bewildering experience on earth had taught her to be wary of strangers, particularly men.

But something in her had recognized and responded to the tall, terrifying headmaster. And she had fallen in love with the school at first sight. To her child’s eyes, the four-story fieldstone building, with its gabled roof and uncompromising lines, had the appearance of a fortress.

Rockhaven represented order. Permanence.

Safety.

The school became the only home she remembered.

The only family she knew.

Moonlight gleamed on the rows of dark windows. The sky overhead pulsed with stars. Cool night air flowed through the open window.

Lara inhaled in relief. Her responsibility was almost over. The consequences of her decision, good or bad, would be determined by the schoolmasters.

She smoothed the hair from Justin’s forehead, combing the matted strands with her fingers. His long body was crammed on the seat beside her, his neck and legs at awkward angles, one arm across his chest. Blood blackened the napkins stuck to his wound. She was afraid to disturb him, worried the bleeding would start again. Terrified that this time when she tried to rouse him, he wouldn’t regain consciousness.

Yellow light spilled from the west portico. Not everyone at the school was sleeping. Somebody was waiting up for them.

She clasped Justin’s unresponsive hand. All arriving nephilim were screened and welcomed by at least one of the governors. Often the rescued children needed medical attention. Most required a period of education and adjustment as they eased into their new bodies and community life.

She tightened her hold on Justin’s hand. His skin was warm. Feverish? He definitely needed a doctor. But he was not a child.

Lara swallowed against the constriction of her throat.

He wasn’t nephilim either.

She had overstepped—again—by bringing him here.

What would the consequences be this time?

* * *

Justin swayed as Lara and the Boyfriend supported him out of the car. Nothing wrong with his legs. It was his head that hurt. But the ground pitched under him like a ship’s deck in a squall. His stomach rolled like a rookie sailor’s. He needed to pee. Preferably without help.

Gritting his teeth, he dragged his feet up the shallow stone steps.

“One more,” Lara said. “You’re doing fine.”

He appreciated her concern. And the lie.

They maneuvered through a doorway with stained glass insets. He kept his head down, taking stock of his surroundings from beneath his lashes. Carved wood panel walls, old, dark, muted paintings, a curving staircase fit for a hotel. A chandelier, an explosion of light and color sparkling with crystals and candles, threw patterns on the hardwood floor.

The place didn’t look like a hospital, he noted with relief. But there was a vaguely institutional smell in the air, a patina of many bodies over time, a whiff of dust and floor polish.

“Where . . . are we?” he croaked.

“Home,” Lara said.

Justin tried to get his mush-for-brains to work. He had no home.
“The place where, when you have to go there,
they
have to take you in
,
” 
Rick liked to say.

So, okay, this was Lara’s home. Would they take him in because she brought him here? Did he want them to?

He looked at the two people waiting under the light, a man and a woman, both tall and arrestingly beautiful, not old, not young. The woman’s skin was the color of coffee, the man’s face austere and pale. Something about the guy, his cool blue eyes or his chiseled profile or his stick-up-the-butt attitude, reminded Justin of . . . somebody.

“Who’s he?” His speech slurred like a drunk’s. “Your father?”

Lara sucked in her breath.

“Simon Axton.” The tall blond man introduced himself, offering a lean, well-manicured hand. 
Or two.
Justin’s vision wavered. He was afraid if he let go of Lara, he’d fall.

He shifted his weight, stuck out his hand, gave them the name on his passport. “Justin Miller.”

Axton’s hand was cool like his eyes, his grip firm.
Nothing
to prove
, Justin thought. Until the man’s grip inexplicably tightened. His dark blond eyebrows rose. “What is this?” he asked Lara.

Justin’s head buzzed. As if his skull had been invaded by a rush of wind, a swarm of bees.

Lara cleared her throat. “He . . . I . . . This is the one I was sent to seek.”

Sent?

Justin pulled his hand free. He needed to sit down.

Axton glanced at the woman standing under the light of the chandelier. “Miriam?”

The handsome black woman came forward and took Justin’s arm. The Boyfriend had already moved away toward the long curving staircase. Distancing himself, Justin thought. Smart move. The ritzy entrance hall had all the tension of a bar before a fight broke out.

“Let me help you to a chair,” the woman said.

He leaned on her, grateful for the support. But he wasn’t about to leave Lara’s side. Not until he’d figured out what the hell was going on.

“What is he?” Axton asked.

Justin frowned in concentration. Or maybe he’d asked, 
“How is he?”
  The buzzing in his skull drowned out everything else.

The woman—Miriam—continued to hold his arm, like a doctor taking his pulse. Like a guard with a recalcitrant prisoner.

The pounding in his head intensified. His wound throbbed in time with his heart. He focused on Lara, warm and solid and real beside him, on her pink polished toes, on the clean, sweet scent of her hair. He breathed in, out, the rhythm of his breath like the sigh of the surf or the beat of the tide.
In
, filling his lungs, swirling in his head.
Out
.

The room stopped reeling.

A crease appeared between Miriam’s brows. “He is not of air.”

Heir of what?
he thought, confused.

“He needs our help,” Lara said.

Axton’s cool blue gaze rested on her without expression.

“His needs are not our concern.”

“I should examine him,” Miriam said.
What was she, a
doctor? 
“He has something. An energy. I felt it.”

Amusement bubbled inside him. Some energy. He could barely stand.

Axton said something that sounded like “
she
,” and Miriam shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said.

“He’s a threat,” a different voice announced. “Let me get rid of him.”

Lara’s slim body tensed.
Trouble.
Justin raised his head, squinting into the shadows.

The speaker prowled from the foot of the stairs, wearing black and a sneer. Big hard dude, like those stone gods on Easter Island, large nose, strong chin, maybe six four, two hundred forty pounds, easy. Which meant he could kick Justin’s ass even before the bump on his head.

“Some welcoming committee you got here, honey,” he muttered.

Lara squeezed his hand. Reassurance? Or warning?

“Justin was hurt protecting me,” she said.

“A ruse,” Stone Face said. “To get you to trust him.”

Justin had heard enough. “Okay, I’m out of here.”

As soon as he found his balance. His strength. A cab.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lara said. “We’re hours from Norfolk.”

 “You should have left him there,” Stone Face said.

“He needed a doctor.”

Axton arched dark blond eyebrows. “There are no emergency rooms in Virginia?”

“He didn’t want . . .” Lara’s voice shook slightly. “He was my responsibility. I had to make a decision—”

“When you go into the field, I expect you to be guided by your training and your partner. Not indulge in misplaced compassion.”

She winced.

Pain hammered Justin’s skull . “So dump me back where she found me, asshole, and we’ll  call it even.”

“Please,” Lara said. To which one of them? “He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. We were attacked.”

“You are trained in self-defense. Was it your preparation that was lacking? Or your skill?”

“There’s nothing wrong with their training,” Stone Face said.

“Gideon?” Axton’s gaze pinned the Boyfriend like a bug. “You were Guardian on this mission.”

The younger man flushed to the roots of his blond hair.

“We were outnumbered. There were four of them. Five.”

“Which?” asked Stone Face.

“So many?” Miriam said at the same time.

“Four and a lookout,” Lara said.

“Which compels me to inquire what you did to attract their attention,” Axton said.

The quick exchange made Justin dizzy. They’d been jumped in an alley. Had they been set up? Had he?

He was in over his head, the undercurrents in the room sucking his strength. He felt the walls closing in, the room whirling around him.

“Justin?” Lara’s voice, sharp and worried.
“Justin.”

I’m okay
, he wanted to tell  her.

Except his brain was on fire and his mouth wouldn’t form the words.

His eyes rolled back in his head, and the floor tilted up to receive him.

* * *

Miriam Kioni stripped off her latex gloves and dropped them on the procedure tray. “He’ll have a scar, of course,” she said to Simon, standing with Lara at the side of Justin’s bed. Jude Zayin, the dark-browed master of the Guardians, watched silently from his post at the infirmary room door. “But the edges of the wound aligned nicely.”

The hot, bright medical lamp switched off.

In the sudden dimness, Lara blinked down at the shaved patch above Justin’s ear. Twenty-two stitches marched antlike across his scalp, disappearing into the gold stubble of his hair.

Something fluttered in her chest like wings. One of his eyes had swollen shut. His tanned skin had the waxy sheen of a melted candle. She curled her nails into her palms. “Should he still be unconscious?”

“It was easier to suture his wound while he was sleeping,” Miriam said with the calm authority of her hundred years.

The nephilim were not immortal. But the wisest and most powerful of them could enjoy the span of several human lifetimes. Miriam had been master of the Seekers and the school’s physician longer than Lara had been alive. 

Lara would have to be an idiot to challenge her.

She moistened her lips. Apparently she was an idiot.

“But . . . His skull fracture . . .”

 “A simple concussion,” Simon said.

Water hissed in the sink. “Probably not the first one either,” Miriam said.

Lara’s throat worked. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t see it on the imaging equipment, but I found an old scar from a previous injury. Maybe he played football in high school.”

“Or got beaten up,” Zayin said.

Miriam scrubbed her hands at the sink. “Either way, it would make him more susceptible to another concussion.”

“But he’ll be all right?” Lara asked.

“The CAT scan didn’t reveal any internal bleeding or elevated pressure in the brain,” Miriam said. “He should be fine with a little rest.”

“He can rest someplace else,” Zayin said. “I don’t want him here.”

Miriam turned from the sink. “He needs at least forty-eight hours to recover.”

“I don’t give a damn what he needs,” Zayin growled. “He’s a risk.”

Lara gripped the metal guard rail on the side of Justin’s bed. “He’s a target.”

They all turned to look at her with varying degrees of surprise and impatience.

She swallowed hard and stood her ground, her heart beating like a rabbit’s. “The demons will know he helped me. Us,” she explained. “We can’t abandon him.”

“Maybe that’s what they’re counting on,” Zayin said.

Simon pursed his lips. “You think he’s one of them.”

“I know he’s not one of us,” Zayin said flatly. “I can’t read him. I don’t like it.”

“Miriam? You were in his head.”

“Only to control his pain and monitor autonomic function. I doubt I would have gotten that far if he weren’t unconscious already.” The doctor shrugged her slim shoulders. “An interesting case. His shields are very strong.”

“Yes. Interesting, as you say.” Simon’s perfect brow creased in thought. “Very well. He may stay as long as . . .required.”

Lara exhaled in relief. “
Thank
you.”

Zayin’s gaze met the headmaster’s, flat black colliding with blue. “As long as we take the necessary precautions.”

Simon inclined his head.

Justin’s hand, lean and brown, twitched against the white sheet. He stank of blood and Lidocaine and something else, a male, warm, animal scent, uniquely his. Lara had a sudden image of him standing golden, free, and fearless on the mast, and her heart squeezed in pity and regret.