Forgotten Sea (10 page)

FLASH.
CRACK.

BOOM.

The air sizzled. The car lurched as Lara slammed on the brake. Justin squinted, half-blinded by the blaze searing the back of his eyeballs, struggling to see through the darkness and the . . .
smoke
?

He smelled it, curling down from the roof. Saw the first red tongues of flame crackle and curl, licking through the charred hole and along the beams.

The bridge was on fire.

“Drive,” he shouted. They had to get off the bridge before the flames caught hold. Before the roof collapsed.

But it was already too late.

The fire leaped with the force of an explosion, reaching for the timbers in the walls, the wooden rail along the sides, the hood of the car. A blazing curtain swept down, sealing the exit.

“Back,” Justin yelled.

Lara had already thrown the gear into reverse. The tires squealed and spun. The Taurus careened trunk first over the bridge, aiming for the black hole at the entrance. A tail-light scraped and shattered along the wall as Lara fought the wheel.

BOOM. Hiss.
The night went white, then black.

She screamed and stomped the brake again. The jolt smacked the back of his skull against the headrest.

Buggering hell.

Justin stared in disbelief as another gout of flame sprang up behind them.
Lightning never strikes twice, my ass.

Black heat, red flames, billowed to engulf the car. Lara flung open her door.

He grabbed her arm. “What the fuck are you doing?”

She ripped free of his grasp, her eyes shining in the flickering orange light. He lurched for her. Checked, swearing, and fumbled with his seat belt. She stumbled from the car, feeling her way along the hood. Smoke spewed from the hole in the roof. Sweat poured down his face as the flames roared with greed, reaching for her with hungry fingers.

He yelled in warning, in fury, in fear, as she stood in the middle of the narrow bridge, her slender body outlined by the inferno. She flung her arms and spread her fingers wide.

Was she out of her frigging mind?

Her hair streamed and swirled in an invisible updraft. He stared through the windshield, transfixed, as misty gusts shot from her fingers and tore at the smoke. Wind blew from her open mouth, forming a column, a funnel of clean air with her at its center, pushing out, pushing back, forcing the fire away from the car.

At the end of the bridge, a chink opened in the wall of flame, a doorway to the sweet dark night.

A way out.

His heart leaped and pounded in a primitive beat of survival.
Go, go, go
. . .

Through the crackling heat, the rush of wind and beating fire, he heard her gasp. “Hurry. Can’t hold . . . them long.”

Them?

That smell . It whispered along the edge of his memory like flame across paper, leaving a smoldering gap. He bared his teeth in response and crawled over the stick shift into the driver’s seat.

Smoke coiled and dropped from the ceiling, covering Lara in a heavy black blanket, scratchy, smothering. She flapped her hands, fighting the fire for air.

The shaft of clear air shrank. The fire was winning. The wind whipped, funneling the fire. Feeding it.

She coughed, her arms trembling over her head. “Go!”

Go.
Leave her?

Screw that
, he thought and got out of the car.

* * *

The fire was a beast, breathing, beating, hungry. It clawed at Lara’s throat, lapped at her strength, sucked at her air.

Her arms shook. Her legs felt weighted, her heart leaden.

She could hold off the fire. Barely. She could not extinguish it.

Somehow the demons had found them, tracked them, trapped them. And now she would pay for her pride and disobedience with her life. Justin would pay. Unless he seized the moment her magic had won for them and ran.

Go
, she thought.
Please go.

A figure burst out of the smoke, black against the flames, like a demon through the gates of Hell. Hard arms seized her around the waist.

Her heart stopped.

Justin.
She smelled his sweat, warm and healthy against the acrid scent of fear and burning. She felt his energy, strong and bracing, surge around her like a wave.

Her body sagged in recognition and relief.

Damn him. He should be gone, he had to get away. She struggled to free herself, but he was already moving, dragging her toward the exit.

She dug in her heels. “Take the car.”

“Shut up.”

Wood groaned and twisted. The bridge shook like a subway train. Even if she convinced him to get in the car and drive, the bridge might collapse anyway.

She sucked in her breath and felt his strength sweep into her. She threw everything she had, everything she was, ahead of them at the flames.

What must be . . .

Grabbing his forearm, she ran with him into the tunnel of fire.

They ran. Heat scorched Justin’s face, singed his hair, seared his lungs. A burning beam crashed behind them. The road pitched like the deck of a sinking ship, and Lara stumbled to her knees. Sparks swarmed them like a cloud of glowing insects, lighting, biting, burning. Her hair smoldered.

Justin hauled her up and into his arms, staggered with her to a hole in the wall. The supports swayed. A flaming chunk of debris dropped into the river, flowing fifteen feet below.

“I can walk,” Lara croaked.

“I can swim,” he said, and jumped with her over the side.

For one moment, he flew. Like a skiff in a storm, like a kite on the wind, he sailed through the air, through the clouds, where the currents tumbled and swirled like river water. He felt the rain, flashing like a school of bright fish above the earth. High. So high.

And free.

Lara shrieked and clutched his neck. He heard a crack of wood or lightning before the skies opened and the rain came down.

He held her tight, and the water closed over their heads. Water singing in his blood, rushing in his ears. They plunged down, down, into the shock of cold, the relief of wet, the welcome of the river. A thousand silver bubbles burst with them into the dark. Pain gone. Heat gone. Only water, all around.

Water was his element.

The realization burst in his brain. He was a child of the sea, a creature of the water, elemental, immortal.

Or he had been, once.

His mind churned. He floundered. He
remembered
.
A
broken castle on the cliffs. A man with eyes like rain, a girl
with hair like straw, a dog . . .
Sanctuary.

A profound sense of loss speared his chest. The river roared in his head. They had sent him away, he remembered. To save him, they said. And then . . . And then . . .

Against him, Lara struggled, and he realized abruptly she couldn’t breathe.

He kicked to the surface.

The night exploded around them as they broke into the air. The fire beat at his back. Rain pelted his head. Smoke billowed black against the flames, gray against the night sky. Lara coughed and clung to him, the one solid thing in his universe. He hauled her toward the bank, swimming strongly against the current.

River and sky blended together in the slashing, splashing rain. His feet touched bottom, silt and stone and weed. He waded toward the dark shore, water sloshing around his thighs.

Lara staggered hard against him. He lugged her with him up a bank slick with mud and grass. They collapsed together on the slope like a couple of shipwreck victims.

He turned his head.

She lay beside him, her dark hair plastered in rivulets against her skull , rain streaking her delicate, determined face.

Here. Real. Alive.

A smear of mud decorated her cheekbone. She watched him without moving, her gray eyes the color of smoke, reflecting the light of the fire. Behind them, another section of bridge crashed into the river.

“Well,” He grinned to hide the churning of his gut. “That’s one way to make sure they can’t follow us.”

A laugh escaped her, a small, surprised chuckle like a bird’s.

He inhaled sharply and cupped her face. The laughter faded from her lips and eyes, leaving only that faint, arousing surprise. With his thumb, he traced the angle of her cheek, the fullness of her lower lip. Her skin was cool from the river. Her mouth was warm. He rose on one elbow to kiss her—softly, but a real kiss this time, with tongue and intent. She tensed and then melted under him like sugar in the rain, sweet and wet and warm. Her kiss anchored him.

Calmed him. He shifted, hooking one leg over hers to pull her closer, moving his hand down to palm her slight breast, to feel her breath catch, her heart beat, her nipple push against his palm.

He needed this, needed her, solid and real against him, wet and open and under him.

Lara.

He rolled with her on the muddy bank, his body heavy, hot, on fire for hers. He nuzzled her throat, inhaling her scent, clean rain and wet woman. Her hand rested on the back of his neck, the brush of her little finger like a trickle of rain at the edge of his collar.

She murmured, acquiescence or protest. “Justin . . .”

He raised his head to look her in the eyes. He wanted to give her something. A piece of himself. “Iestyn,” he told her.

“My name is Iestyn.”

* * *

She didn’t think, didn’t want to think. No time to consider, no opportunity to be afraid. Only
this
, his mouth, his touch, his broad shoulders over her like wings. Only
now
, lying on a riverbank in the rain, free from the Rule and its consequences.

She was submerged in sensation, her senses brimming with him, his tang in her nostrils, his taste on her tongue. His leg was heavy over her thighs. His erection pressed hard and urgent against her hip.

This
. Here and now.

He said something—his name?—and she raised her hand to trace the shape of his lips in the dark. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to feel. To feel him.

He said it again, softening the J, swallowing the vowels.
Yess-ten
. “My name is Iestyn. I am . . . I was a child of the sea.”

She struggled to surface. “You . . . What?”

His calloused fingers feathered her hair. She couldn’t see his expression, only the outline of his head against a backdrop of flame, and the shape of his shoulders, shielding her from the rain. “I was an elemental. Like you.”

An elemental. Like . . .

She blinked. Not like her. Not really.

His lips were warm against her neck. She shivered and closed her eyes, her mind slowly returning to her body.

“Are you sure?”

He smiled against her throat, making the nerve endings there jump in delight. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d make up.”

She lay still, thinking hard. Thinking back. Had he been lying before, then? To her? To Simon?

She opened her eyes. “How long have you known?”

He shrugged, apparently unfazed by her questions. “I just remembered. When we went into the water.”

That moment. That one wild moment of terror and glory, when they’d plunged from the bridge and she’d felt like she was flying.

Not flying.
She willed her thoughts back to earth. She didn’t have that power anymore. But he . . .

If he were a water elemental, a child of the sea, that would explain everything: his unfamiliar energy, his impressive shields, his resistance to Miriam’s drugs and Zayin’s magic.

“So I was right,” she said slowly.

He kissed her collarbone. “Right about what?”

Her mind whirred. What if there was nothing wrong with her judgment, her discernment, after all ? What if . . .

A trickle of excitement slid down her spine. “I
was
Called to find you.”

He raised his head. “I don’t think so. I’m no angel.”

“But you defeated the demon in the alley. You saved my life on the bridge.”

“By jumping over the side.”

“It was more than that,” she insisted. “Something happens when we touch.”

 “Was happening.” His tone was wry. She felt him, warm and hard against her hip. “Until you got distracted.”

She ignored him, resisting the humor in his voice, the tug of temptation in her blood. She had to think. She’d always been taught that the children of the sea were neutral in Hell's war on Heaven and humankind.

Simon had dismissed the merfolk as untrustworthy, irrelevant to the nephilim’s struggle for survival.

But suppose that together, they could be more? The possibility quivered inside her. She could be more. What if her Seeking was in response to a greater purpose, a higher calling? Simon would have to acknowledge her value to him. She would be pardoned.

Vindicated.

“Don’t you see? This changes things. Now that we know what you are . . .”

“What I
was
,” Iestyn corrected harshly. “I’m nothing now.”

She frowned, reluctant to relinquish her brief fantasy of being welcomed back to Rockhaven, problem solved. Sins forgiven. “Don’t say that.”

“Lara, when we jumped . . .” He rolled off her and sat staring at the burning river. “Nothing happened.”

She struggled to sit up, recalling the shock of his touch, the burst of rain and power as they shot from her element into his. “How can you say that?”

“Because nothing happened to me.” Emptiness echoed in his voice. Her heart squeezed in instinctive sympathy. “The children of the sea are shape-shifters. But in the water, I did not Change.”

The fine hair along her arms rose. Shape-shifters.

Well.

She hugged her knees for warmth, regarding Iestyn’s profile in the sullen light of the fire—strong nose, firm lips, hair flattened to his head by rain and the river. Too beautiful to be merely mortal.

She’d known he was different. She hadn’t considered how different. “Change into what?” she asked cautiously.

“I am selkie. A man on the land, a seal in the water,” he explained. “But I need my sealskin to Change form.”

Her throat thickened. The nephilim could spirit cast into birds. But nothing in her training had prepared her for an elemental who turned into a seal. Or who, um, didn’t.

She swallowed. “Where is it? Your sealskin.”

“I don’t remember.” He turned his head to meet her gaze. In the orange light of the fire, his eyes were like the eagle’s, fierce and bright. “Without a pelt, I am trapped in human form. If I were finfolk . . . But I am not. Not elemental. Not immortal. I’ll grow old and die.”

She sucked in her breath. Some of the nephilim lived two or three hundred years—more than twice as long as humans. But eventually they, too, aged and died. “You mean, like me?”

He didn’t answer.

She rubbed her arms. Not quite like her, she realized.

She was Fallen. He was merely . . . lost.

She licked her lips. “I want to help you.”

“You’ve done enough already.”

The echo of Simon’s rebuke made her wince. “That’s cold.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” His warmth, his regret, sounded sincere. “You got me out of there. And at least now I’ve got my mind and a piece of my memory back.”

“I can do better. I want to help you go home.” The rightness of her decision settled in her stomach.

“I have no home.”

“Back where you belong,” she clarified. “With your own kind.”

He went very still, his head lifting, like a dog on the scent or a man hearing his favorite song come on the radio. And then he shook his head.

“Look, I appreciate the thought. But Sanctuary is gone. Destroyed. If any of my kind survived, I don’t know where they are. I don’t belong with them anyway.”

Her heart thrummed. “I’m a Seeker. I could help you find them.”

“Why?” he asked bluntly.

“You saved my life. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“For you to risk your life?” He shook his head.

“I’ll be safe with you.” She hoped.
And you will be
much
safer with me.

“You’ll be safe if you go back.”

But not trusted. Not valued. Disgraced. Dismissed.

Demoted.

“If I go back now, I’ll be cleaning birdcages the rest of my life.”

“Better me than bird shit?”

Amusement. She stuck out her chin, determined to convince him. “For the moment. Or would you rather hear I can’t live without you?”

“Don’t say that.” His voice was suddenly serious. “If we find them, I’ll be gone. Even if we don’t find them, I won’t stay.”

His earlier warning echoed in her head.
“Once I line up
another berth, another job, I’m gone.”

It was more than a sailor’s excuse this time, she thought. Simon warned that the children of the sea were changeable as the tides, fickle and unsteady.

She bit her lip. “I don’t need you to stay. I just need . . .” 
What?
“A chance to prove myself,” she said.

“To Axton?”

 “To Simon, yes.”
And to myself.
She shrugged and slid him a sideways glance. “Of course, if you insist that I go back to him . . .”

Iestyn made a sound very like a growl. “Fine. We better get moving, then.” He stood, looking down at her. “Unless you plan on waiting for the fire truck.”

It wasn’t an invitation. It was a dare.

She scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest.

She’d won. For now. She was leaving Rockhaven—not for a brief mission in the company of a Guardian, but truly
leaving
—for the first time in thirteen years. The thought was liberating. Terrifying.

She trudged after him, her shoes squelching and slipping in the mud and grass. At the top of the bank, he waited and offered his hand. 

She didn’t need his help to get up the slope. She must not depend on him. They were as different as . . . as air and water. But they were allies now. She would help him find his people. And maybe in the process she would find herself.

She grasped his lean, strong hand, a flutter in her chest like hope.

* * *

“Where are we going?” Lara asked.

Good question. Iestyn took her elbow to help her over the ditch at the side of the road. Right up there with
“What happened to your sealskin?” 
And
What the hell was I thinking bringing her along?

He glanced up the long, curving driveway flanked by stone columns—the kind of driveway that promised a big house at the end. No gate. But this close to Rockhaven, he was taking no chances. “You know who lives here?”

She shook her head.

 “Then that’s where we’re going,” he said.

He could tell  from the look on her face that she had more questions, but she kept them to herself. Maybe she realized he didn’t have any answers. Or maybe she was out of breath.

She pulled her arm free. “I’m okay.”

His jaw tightened. “You look beat.”

She was soaked and shivering, the angles of her face too sharp, her lips too pale. But for the past three miles, she’d put one foot in front of the other without complaint like the angel she was.

He’d heard sirens tearing up the night ten minutes ago. He should have left her on the riverbank to be rescued by some gung ho fireman. Some smitten volunteer who’d wrap her in blankets and take her back to Rockhaven. Back to that cold, controlling son-of-a-bitch Axton and a lifetime of cleaning out birdcages.