“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 tal 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 kil 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 alllright?
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—”
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.
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