Forgotten Sea (9 page)

“I should have said, you can’t come with me willingly. You can’t help me without getting into trouble.”

“So?”

He grinned, suddenly cheerful despite his splitting head.

“So I’ll have to kidnap you.”

* * *

Lara’s breath huffed out. “Be serious.”

“I’m dead serious,” Justin said, and despite his smile, she almost believed him. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Tell Axton I forced you. He can’t blame you then.”

Memory uncoiled inside her, dark and insidious as smoke.

No, Simon would not blame her if she were forced.

She shuddered, her hands closing convulsively on her clothes. “What if he calls the police?”

“You really think your buddy Axton wants the cops on his turf?”

“Probably not,” she admitted. Rockhaven was its own community under the Rule, school and glassworks forming an isolated enclave in the rolling countryside. Simon would not seek help or accept interference from their neighbors.

“But if he thinks I’ve been abducted . . .”

“You’ll be home before he has time to file a report.”

“He’ll still have questions.”

“So tell  him the truth. I broke into your room. I had a knife.” Justin’s lips curved upward, teasing, daring. “You couldn’t resist me.”

She stuck out her chin, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness under the towel. “I’m not a victim.”

She would not be a victim ever again.

“You think you should struggle?” He cocked his head, as if considering. “Right now, you could probably take me. But if you want it to look good, we could knock over the lamp or something. Rumple the sheets.”

She flushed. Her awareness of him lay on her like a second skin, twitching with his very pulse, his every breath.

She was exquisitely conscious of the effort it cost him simply to sit upright and smile. The echoes of his pain throbbed in her temples, the bite of the heth gnawed at her own throat. She could feel the sweat at the small of his back, the faint tremor in his legs of drugs or exhaustion. He must be half dead with pain and fatigue.

And yet he felt more alive to her than anyone she had ever known.

 “We want them to think I was coerced,” she said coolly. “Not seduced.”

“Too bad.” Another glint from those golden eyes. “I was prepared to be convincing.”

Her pulse fluttered. He was weakened and desperate.

How could he flirt with her now? “You convinced me to drive. That will have to be enough for you.”

For me.

He grinned, undiscouraged and approving. “That puts me in my place.”

It took all her will not to smile back.

“I have to get dressed,” she said and escaped into the tiny bathroom with her clothes.

He stood when she came out. He filled her room, as tall as Simon and leanly muscled. “Where’s your car?”

His size, his sudden shift, took her aback. “I don’t own a car. But I know the code to the garage.”

“Keys?”

“Hanging up inside.”

“Convenient.”

“It’s meant to be.”

There were no thieves among the nephilim. Their vehicles, gray sedans and blue school vans, were held in common.

He nodded once. “Ready, then?”

Be serious
, she’d said. But this Justin, with his quick, hard questions and cool, hard eyes, filled her with doubt.

A chill chased up her arms. Simon had accused her of endangering the community, of lacking self-knowledge and obedience. What made her think she knew better than the headmaster? Than Zayin?

Justin watched her. Waiting. The black bead gleamed against the burned skin of his throat.

“I’m not sure I can even get you through the gates,” she blurted out.

His gaze remained steady on hers. “I guess we’ll  find out.”

Her chest hollowed. She poised on the edge of a decision, about to jump.

When she Fell, the moment of choice had passed without effort or reflection. Her act of disobedience had been sheer reflex, a burst of compassion, an impulse born of love.

Why that child, unloved even by the mother who gave her birth? Why that moment, when the girl was almost free of her short, miserable existence? Of all the children Lara had watched and guided over the centuries, what made this one’s pain so intolerable, her life so precious?

Lara didn’t know.

The choice then—her immortality or the child’s soul—had been no choice at all. But by stopping the girl from taking her own life, Lara had doomed herself to Fall.

She was not that pure anymore. That fearless. She knew now that she could make mistakes. She had learned, in her soul and her fragile flesh, that she could hurt and be hurt.

She had paid for her disobedience by becoming human.

What would the price of disobedience be this time?

And what, she wondered, would it cost her to obey?

She looked at Justin, his lean, stubbled face, his long, amber eyes. The bandage on his head. The lines of pain around his mouth.

“You don’t belong here. You’re not like the rest of them
.
”

She was. Oh, she was. Something other, something more than human. Or maybe something less.

Caged.

She had the right to embrace the security of her own bars. But she could not make that choice for him. There were worse sins than disobedience.

She took a breath. Released it slowly. “I’ll take you as far as Newark. There are things you need to know.” Even if telling him violated the precepts of safety and the rule of silence.

“But you have to promise to listen.”

Clouds scudded across the pin pricked sky. The trees rippled and sighed. Lara gathered moonlight in her palms, bending the rising air around them, murmuring a quick glamour under her breath. Any student glancing out the dormitory windows would only see two shadows gliding over the lawn.

Beside her, Justin stalked as silent as the night, dimmed to black and silver by the uncertain light.

“Here,” she whispered.

The garage loomed out of the landscape, built two levels down into the side of a hill roofed with trees and sod. She tapped the door code into the keypad.

The double doors hummed. Light slanted across the drive.

“Kill the lights,” Justin snapped.

“They’re automatic.”

He grabbed her elbow. She felt the jolt of his touch before he dragged her under the opening door. Releasing  her arm, he mashed his palm on the controls. The mechanism checked.
Clunked.
The doors lowered slowly.

Heart pounding, Lara scanned the pegboard hung with keys. A row of six blue school vans occupied the numbered spaces closest to the doors. The other cars—a fleet of gray Ford Taurus sedans—were parked in the row behind and on the lower level.

“Give me the keys to a van,” Justin said.

“What? No.” Didn’t he see the Rockhaven logo painted on the sides? “They’re too identifiable. We’ll take a Taurus.”

“You can drive whatever you want. But give me the keys.”

She was still reeling from the effects of his touch.

Automatically, she obeyed his tone of command.

He glanced from the numbered key in his hand to the row of painted parking spaces. “Thanks.”

She watched, mystified, as he climbed into the number three van. The engine roared to life. The van backed across the cement lane and stopped. Justin got out, slamming the driver’s side door, and stooped by the front tire. His arm jerked. She heard a pop, a hiss, before he straightened, still holding his dive knife.

“Get us a car,” he said.

Her brain sparked back to life. “What are you doing?”

He moved to the next tire. “Making sure nobody comes after us.”

Slash. Pop. Hiss.

She winced. “But—”

“Park by the doors. I need to block the other lane.”

She ran for a car at the end of a row, close to the ramp that led to the lower level. Through the windshield, she watched Justin make quick work of the remaining tires before raising the van’s hood. Metal banged metal.

Oh,
skies
.

Her mouth dried. Simon would be furious.

She rolled down her window. “You didn’t say anything about destroying school property.”

“You got a better idea?”

“No, but—”

He raised his head and looked at her, his face hard.

Determined. Dangerous. “If I block the exit with a couple of these vans, I won’t have to touch the other vehicles. Now move the car.”

She released the brake, feeling vaguely betrayed, as if she’d befriended a stray that turned into a tiger. She maneuvered her car into the narrow space by the garage doors. In her rearview mirror, she saw Justin help himself to another key from the pegboard.

He drove the second van into place behind her, across the lane.
Slash, slash
on the tires.
Bang, bang
under the hood.

She gritted her teeth.

The passenger door opened and he slid in beside her, hot and male and overwhelming. The heth gleamed in the hollow of his throat. “Let’s roll .”

Setting her jaw, she shifted gear.

* * *

Pain sank its talons into his skull. His eyeballs ached. His throat throbbed.

Justin glanced at Lara’s rigid profile. She was pissed, but she hadn’t panicked on him. Or bailed.

The red haze over his vision faded. He was pushing her, he knew. Playing the connection that sparked between them. Trusting her innate decency and compassion to overcome her loyalty to Axton.

She deserved better than that arrogant, ruthless prick and his stone-faced henchman. Too bad he didn’t have anything better to offer.

Justin released his breath. At least they were free. He was free. For now. The hot kernel of anger inside him eased.

She drove without headlights, knuckles white on the wheel, leaning forward to peer at the dark, winding road.

He could feel the moisture in the air, the rising wind of a gathering storm.

Something flickered through the trees. A fence. The black gleam of metal pickets following the dip of the ground, the curve of the road. Ahead of them, a small , square gatehouse rose out of the gloom.

Lara braked before they reached the metal barrier.

Justin tensed. “Guards?”

She shook her head, the shadows sliding over her face. “Not at night. The exit gate is automatic.”

“Then why are we stopping?”

She turned to him, eyes wide in the dark. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? Once we’re outside the gates, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

She was worried about him, which was both convenient and oddly unsettling. Or maybe she was still fretting over Axton’s probable reaction to his escape. Not to mention eight slashed tires and two busted timing belts. “I like my chances out there better than in here.”

“You don’t even know where you’re going.”

The bead at his throat pulsed in time with his heart. They’d been down this road before. “You’re wasting your breath.”
And my time.

She blinked once. “Probably,” she agreed coolly.

What did that mean?

 “Rockhaven is warded,” she continued. “The wards will not stop us. But Zayin’s binding might. Crossing the barrier will probably trigger the heth.”

“Trigger?”

She drew a finger across her throat.

He swallowed reflexively, feeling the raw skin pull at his neck. “I thought you fixed that.”

“I couldn’t remove it. I don’t think the heth will kill you, but you’ll need to stay in contact with me as we go through the gate.”

“You want to hold hands?”

That earned him a glance, brief and unsmiling. “I’m driving. You’ll have to hold on to my leg. I think . . . I hope that will be enough.”

Enough to get them clear? Enough that the damn cord or hex or whatever it was wouldn’t strangle him? He didn’t ask. He could either trust her or they could turn back.

“Best damn offer I’ve had all day,” he said and laid his hand on her thigh.

She sucked in her breath. So did he. Even through the denim of her jeans, he got some crazy contact high from touching her. Not like the jolt in the bar this time—more a low-level hum, like the vibration of a ship’s motor through the soles of his feet or the tug of the wind in the lines.

Her eyes widened. Her lips parted—
pink, soft, moist,
mine
—before she pressed them together.

“Here we go.” She lifted her foot from the brake.

Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was those tall iron pickets clustered like spears on either side of the road. But as they approached, Justin could feel the barrier rushing up on them, closing in on him, tightening his throat. The gate quivered and retracted. Lara’s leg flexed under his hand. She stomped on the gas and the wheels spun, spitting up gravel. The car lurched forward. The cord around his neck burned like a whiplash.

“Hold on,” she shouted.

Energy seared his palm and charged his arm. Inside him, something swelled and surged. The engine roared. The car shook like a jet plane, and with a pop, a rush, a snap like the crack of a whip, they were free, speeding through the gate and into the night.

* * *

Zayin raised his head from Miriam’s smooth, scented shoulder, uneasy even in the act of coitus.

“Jude?” His lover raised her hand to his cheek, her inner muscles clenching around him as if to prevent his withdrawal. “What is it?”

He did not answer her. He was hot and hard, deep inside her, poised on the brink of completion, in the grip of her wet heat. His blood pounded in his head, in his loins, drowning the faint warning tingle of his brain. He thrust once, twice, plunging like a runner at the end of his race, hard, fast, now.

Now.

She cried out, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He shuddered and flew, free of earth and the limitations of his human body.

For long seconds he lay on her while his heartbeat slowed.

His respiration evened. Rolling off her, he reached for his pants.

“What is it?” she asked again from behind him. “A flyer?”

He shook his head. He had tagged three of the nephilim as primed to take off in the next few months or years. A quick mental check placed all three still within the compound. Which left . . .

“Lara,” he said.

Miriam inhaled sharply, a sound of distress. “Does Simon know?”

Zayin stood to pull his pants over his hips. “He will soon.”

He glanced at Miriam over his shoulder. “He wants her, you know.”

She exhaled on a sigh. “I know.” She sat, the sheet falling from her breasts. “She was so wounded when she came to us. So young. He was waiting for her to heal. And to grow up.”

“He’s a fool,” Zayin said.

“But not a predator,” Miriam answered quietly.

Their eyes met. Held.

Zayin was the first to look away. “It’s the boy who concerns me. We still don’t know what in creation he is.”

“He’s with her?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Then you’ll find them.”

“I’ll kill him.”

They both knew what was at stake. The nephilim no longer possessed their full angelic powers. Hunted by their ancient Adversary, they banded together for survival.

Every student learned that the gates, the walls, the wards were there for their protection, forged to keep the demons at bay. Their continued existence depended on the strength of the community. Even those who chafed under the discipline of the Rule acknowledged the value of its precepts. 
Scire, servare, obtemperare.
 

How could the Fallen regain even the shadow of their former perfection except through the pursuit of knowledge, the preservation of their kind, and the practice of obedience?

Yet every now and then—once or twice a year and then  not again for three years or five—Zayin would wake in the night to a feeling like a feather drawn across his neck.

Flyer.

He couldn’t save them all.

But he always went after them.

* * *

Ozone charged the air. Moisture spangled the windshield, gleaming like fish scales against the dark night.

Justin lowered his window to feel the damp air against his face, his heart pumping with relief and adrenaline.

“You did it.”

“Not really.” Lara flipped on the headlights.

He glanced across the seat, caught by her tone. In the blue glow of the dashboard, her face appeared tense and unhappy.

“You got us out. You saved my neck back there. Literally.”

“It wasn’t me. Not only me. You got us through the barrier.”

Thunder cracked and rolled. He could feel the swirling energy of the approaching storm cell.
That moment when
the engine roared, when something inside him surged,
powerful and fluid, to meet her need.

He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You have power.”

He had nothing.

Better for both of them to remember that. To believe it.

As soon as they reached the coast, he’d be gone, and she’d be going back to . . .

Axton.

The thought stuck in his gut.

“If you say so.”

“Don’t you care?”

He hunched his shoulders to relieve the knot forming between his shoulder blades. “That crap matters to you, not to me.”

She gripped the steering wheel tighter to negotiate the unlit, narrow road. Or maybe she was imagining her hands around his neck. “Aren’t you even curious to know what you can do? Where you come from?”

“I can’t go back,” he said. “That’s all I care about.”

“How do you know?”

His mind blanked. How
did
he know?

Memory slammed into his skull like an iron spike, riveting his brain.

He stood on the deck of the thirty-foot boat, his knuckles
white on the rail, his heart threatening to pound through
his bony ribs. The earth groaned. The water trembled. 
The wolfhound tied to the mast behind him shivered
and
barked.

“Go,” Conn commanded. In the cold dawn light, the
prince’s face was brutally, brilliantly clear, his eyes the
color of rain. “Do not come back until I summon you.”

Justin’s throat burned with swallowed tears. He tasted salt. The air shook as the ground rumbled again. Or was that the sky?

“Justin?”
Lara.
Her voice was a lifeline in the storm. He grabbed it, struggling to focus on her face.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

His head throbbed. Was he all right? He swallowed, dragging himself back to the present. “Fine.”

“You remembered something.”

“It’s gone now.”

Everything gone, lost, vanished beneath the waves
. . .

Lightning struck over the hills. The air was thick and still. Against the low backdrop of clouds, a pitched roof  loomed, swallowing the road ahead. A bridge, with a wide barn mouth and rough hewn walls.

“I could help you remember,” she said. “I’m not as experienced as Zayin, but I’ve had training.”

Justin eased back in his seat. “Is Zayin the big bastard in black?”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

That dark voice, sliding like a knife into his dreams, slowly prying him apart . . .

Justin set his jaw. “No, thanks.”

“You promised to listen,” she reminded him.

“I don’t make promises.” Not anymore. Especially not to women. But they heard what they wanted to anyway.

The car rattled onto the bridge, the sound amplified by the wooden sides. Lightning flickered like a strobe light through the timbers. Thunder boomed. The hair rose on the back of Justin’s neck.

Lara moistened her lips. “That was close.”

He eyed her white, strained face. “You want to pull over while it passes?”

She shook her head. “It’s not really raining yet. We should put as much distance as—”