Not because he needed her to find the merfolk, if they still survived. Not because he was using her for sex.
He liked her, her loyalty, her tenacity, her determination to do the right thing whatever the cost. She gave him purpose and direction. In a world where everything was fluid, she was a beacon, clear and true.
None of which mattered compared to her safety. He couldn’t let his craving for her company jeopardize her life.
Better for them both, perhaps, if he left her now. It wasn’t like he had anything to offer her beyond this moment.
Besides sex.
“We don’t have a choice,” he said.
“There’s always a choice.”
He shot her another glance. Lara Rho would never go with the flow. She was a fighter. He wished he didn’t admire that about her.
“Okay. Give it to me.”
She met his gaze, her eyes vulnerable, and his heart tumbled at the look in her eyes. Not so certain after all. “The demons seem to respond to the connection between us.”
“Yeah, so?” he asked, seeing where this was going, not liking her direction at all.
“So.” She took a deep breath, released it slowly. “All we have to do to lose them is not have sex again.”
*
The room stank of demon. Demon and sex.
Jude Zayin stood on the landing outside the open door of Room 230, his face impassive, his neck muscles tight.
Corner room, second floor, hard to access. He’d bet Miller had chosen it for that reason.
Slippery son of a bitch.
Automatically, Zayin scanned the room for unpleasant surprises.
Nothing. No threats. And no quarry.
He stepped inside.
“We can clean the room for you,” said the maid—dark, wide-hipped, hard-eyed—who had shown him upstairs.
“Five minutes.”
“I won’t be here that long.”
“But you paid for the room.”
So he could search it. Two beds, one barely disturbed.
The other . . . He laid his hand on the cold sheets. The other bed had been well used.
Simon would not be pleased.
“You here alone?” the maid asked.
He glanced at her, registering the invitation in her posture and her eyes. Did she expect him to pay for more than the room? “I prefer it,” he said.
She shrugged. “Takes all kinds. Let me know if you change your mind.”
He shut her out of the room, taking note of the rune, a taw, scratched in the paint above the door. Lara’s work, he guessed. He found another written in the dirt of the window.
The wards had not been tampered with. But the demons had gained entrance anyway.
The tension in his neck spread to his shoulders.
Demons and angels were forbidden from directly interfering in earthly affairs or violating human freewill. But that wouldn’t stop the Hell spawn if the perceived payoff outweighed the risk of Heaven’s wrath. The demons were expending an unusual amount of energy on this hunt.
Which meant they already had a stake in the game.
Or a player.
He moved swiftly through the room. The demon taint was strongest in the bathroom. He touched a finger to the faucet. Still hot.
His cell phone played two quick measures of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Simon’s ring tone. It amused Zayin to associate Handel’s lush music with the ascetic headmaster.
He picked up the call. “Zayin.”
Simon didn’t waste time on preliminaries. “Have you found them?”
“I found the nest. The birds have flown.”
“How long ago?”
“The clerk said they checked out before seven. Say, four hours.”
“So you failed to catch them.”
He’d been slowed by the disabled motor fleet and the burned bridge. But he would not make excuses to Simon.
“I’ll find them,” he said instead.
“You must. Before he hurts her.”
Zayin surveyed the rumpled bed, the discarded condom wrappers, and resisted the urge to snort. “I doubt she’s suffering. He may even believe he is protecting her.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he believes.” The obscenity from the usually calm and collected headmaster made Zayin narrow his eyes. “As long as she’s with him, she’s in danger,”
Simon continued. “Is Miller still wearing the heth?”
“Whatever good that does.” The failure of his charm rankled. “Obviously it hasn’t stopped him.”
“But it might still bind. Enough to save her.”
Zayin wasn’t normally slow on the uptake, but he didn’t understand why Simon was fixating on the damn heth.
Once Miller escaped the grounds, the charm’s usefulness was through. “The heth’s power is to contain, not to control.
It won’t affect Miller’s behavior at all.”
“Not his behavior,” Simon said.
Silence.
Zayin’s gut clenched as he worked that one out. He tightened his grip on the phone. “You think he’s possessed.”
“It was always a possibility. He was exposed when they were attacked.”
“He’s got strong shields.”
“Which could mask the presence of another elemental.”
“Then why wouldn’t the demon take him over before they reached Rockhaven? It could have overpowered them on the road.”
“Maybe its plan was to reach Rockhaven.”
Chilling thought.
“Besides, Miller was injured,” Simon continued.
“Maybe Miller’s unconsciousness slowed it down. And then you laid the heth on them both, and the demon was trapped inside its host.”
Anger licked Zayin. “When were you planning to tell me?”
“I thought you knew. But you insisted on questioning him yourself. I saw no point in sharing suspicions that might influence your interrogation.”
“And in the meantime you had a demon captive in your basement to study.”
Simon’s silence answered him. Knowledge was power, and Simon kept as much power to himself as he could.
“You secretive prick,” Zayin said in disgust.
“Perhaps we could leave your wounded feelings aside for the moment and focus on the danger to Lara,” Simon suggested.
“She wouldn’t be in danger if you’d been honest with her,”
Zayin said. “With any of us.”
“I warned her Miller couldn’t be trusted. I told her to stay away from him. I forbid her to have anything to do with him.”
“Which explains why she ran off with him the first chance she got.”
“She did not run off,” Simon said. “I believe he coerced her.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you believe.” Zayin turned the headmaster’s words back on him with savage satisfaction.
“Miller was enough of a problem when we didn’t know what he was. But you had to play God, devising your little tests, not letting anyone in on your plans. Now he’s a double threat.”
“So you eliminate two birds with one stone,” Simon said.
“Miller and the demon. Just bring Lara back safely.”
Miriam had said Simon was waiting for Lara to heal.
To grow up.
Too late, Zayin thought.
He had never taken much interest in the girl himself.
Despite her young age at her Fall, her powers had never seemed particularly impressive. He found both the headmaster’s desire and his self-denial vaguely pathetic.
Zayin had no real desire to feed Simon’s obsession. But if he returned Lara to Rockhaven, Simon would owe him.
An indebted Simon suited Zayin’s own needs very well.
So he would find the two by whatever means necessary, dispose of Miller, and fetch the girl home.
Unless the demon killed her first.
Pitiful, that’
s what she was .
Lara sat upright in the bouncing passenger seat, fuming.
Churning. But really, was it too much to hope for some kind of reaction from a man you’d recently had sex with when you told him you couldn’t have sex anymore?
Iestyn could have offered her a little reassurance. Maybe even an argument.
Instead, she got . . . Nothing.
She clenched her hands together in her lap. Maybe he didn’t care. No sex, no problem. No magic. “You came.”
The lovemaking that had rocked her world had barely caused a ripple in his.
She cast a resentful glance at his sunlit profile. He drove with one muscled forearm propped on the steering wheel, the wind ruffling his gold-tipped hair. Only a slight squint between his eyebrows betrayed that this was anything other than a vacation to him. As if the future didn’t exist.
As if last night had never happened.
Miles rolled by. Trucks roared past. They rattled on in silence, the distance between them growing as the sun climbed the sky.
He reached behind his seat, rummaging with one hand until he turned up a battered ball cap. He tossed the hat into her lap. “Put that on. You don’t want to burn.”
His casual thoughtfulness left her yearning and confused.
She fingered the winged P of the Philadelphia Flyers on the front of the cap. There was a certain irony in the logo she wasn’t in a mood to appreciate. “What about you?”
“I’m used to the sun. You’re not.”
She adjusted the visor, shading her eyes so he wouldn’t see the vulnerability in them. “Nice of you to make allowances for my lack of experience.”
She wasn’t referring only to sun exposure. Maybe if she were more practiced, more skilled, better in bed, Iestyn would actually care whether or not they ever had sex again.
Or maybe, she thought drearily, she wouldn’t care so much.
Either way, the bite in her voice only made him grin. He returned his attention to the road.
He was so attuned to her physically. So capable of supplying what she needed in the present moment. So absolutely clueless that she was in danger of falling in love with him.
Frustrated, she stared at the passing landscape, low bridges and highway signs, long green medians and endless guard rails. Hamden. Hartford. Worcester.
If she weren’t such a coward, she would confront him with her feelings. But that could place them both in an untenable position. More was at stake here than her bruised heart and pathetic pride. She had found him. She had helped him find himself, his true nature, and now she was bringing him home. He needed her. She truly believed that.
She blinked fiercely. She had to believe it, or everything she’d risked up to this moment was for nothing.
But she wasn’t like him. He lived in the moment, carefree, confident, so sure of himself, while she planned and she worried and she . . .
Slept.
*
She was sleeping. Good.
Iestyn figured Lara deserved a rest. She wasn’t the type to take things easy. Even riding beside him in the passenger seat, she was revved. He could practically hear her mind turning over, her body coiled tight as an overwound spring.
She needed to learn to relax.
The tangle of traffic smoothed out after Boston. New Hampshire passed in a blur of lottery billboards and liquor warehouses set against a background of pines. In the sunlit fields, flocks of birds gathered and rose as if it were already fall.
As they approached the Maine border, the road curved in a gentle sweeping turn to the right. The thick green girders of a bridge arched against the blue sky and over a broad river. The scent of the tidal inlet rose and smacked him.
The smell of the sea.
His throat clenched. His soul soared. Against the basin of rock, the water shone, deep blue-green and impossibly clear.
Lara whimpered in her sleep. He glanced over. The shadow of the bridge flickered across her face.
Nightmares, he thought. No surprise, after the past twenty-four hours.
He wondered if last night had stirred some old, bad memories to life. The thought twisted his gut. He’d been as gentle as he knew how to be. But despite her unfeigned physical response, she’d been quick to dismiss the possibility of a replay.
Because of demons, she said.
Or did she regret making love with him?
His jaw set. He couldn’t send her back. He couldn’t take her back. The girl was demon bait. Not safe with him, but definitely unsafe alone.
Another soft, distressed sound escaped her throat. Without thinking, he lifted a hand from the steering wheel and laid it on her knee. His kind only touched to fight or to mate, acts of passion. But Lara woke something deeper inside him, an urge to comfort, a need to protect. To possess.
Her eyes opened suddenly, brilliant gray.
Their gazes locked. A look burned between them, bright and clear as the sky arching overhead, powerful as the river rushing over the rocks below. Under the brim of her ball cap, her face flushed.
He looked away, unaccountably shaken, to focus on the road.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep,” she said huskily.
She needed a little rest after yesterday. After last night.
Flashback to her smooth bare legs, her bra-less breasts, her voice saying, “I thought if I slept with you, we could both get some rest.”
He cleared his throat. “It’s the adrenaline.”
Her winged brows rose. “I thought adrenaline made you alert. Survival instinct. Fight or flight.”
High in the sky, a black speck circled, joined by another and another. Crows, he thought. Or gulls, black against the sun.
“In the short term, yeah.” He slid his hand from her knee, gripping the steering wheel, following the narrowing, winding road away from the Interstate. “But sooner or later, your body crashes. You can’t live tensed up al the time.”
“Unless being aware of the danger is what keeps you alive.”
His attention sharpened. He glanced over at her again.
“Are you picking up on something? Some demon thing?”
She moved her shoulders restively. “No. Not exactly.”
The back of his neck prickled. “No? Or not exactly?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. It’s just a . . . feeling. Not very useful,” she added apologetically.
She didn’t give herself enough credit. He wanted to chase the frustration from her face, the shadows from her eyes. “A hollow feeling?”
“Not really. More like a—”
He rolled over her. “Because you’re probably just hungry.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Hungry.”
The edge in her voice made him grin. She’d be okay now.
“We’ve been on the road over five hours,” he pointed out.
“We need to refuel.”
The coastal road was strung with small, bright settlements like lobster buoys in the water. On the outskirts of the next town, he spotted a sign. Sherman’s Clam Shack. Home of the 24 hour bkfst. He pulled into the narrow parking lot that wrapped around the side, out of sight behind an eighteen-wheeler.
A line of crows perched along the low-pitched roof. He tugged on the door, making the bell inside jangle. One of the birds launched noisily into the air.
Lara shivered as she slid past him. What had she said?
“If I go back now, I’ll be cleaning birdcages the rest of my life . . .”
The smell of grilled onions and fried clams, maple syrup and strong coffee, met them at the door. The walls were paneled, the counters faded yellow linoleum, the floor worn past recognition. A small TV flickered beside the pie case, its volume turned low enough to blend with the hiss of the fryer.
Three men hunched at the counter, an older guy with grizzled brown hair under a red bandanna, a stocky guy with weary eyes in a weathered face, a younger one, muscled, confident, with tattoos poking fr
om beneath his flannel shirt.
All three turned their heads as Lara walked in.
Appreciative. Assessing.
Iestyn put a hand at the small of her back, sending a clear signal. Mine.
The young guy continued to stare until Stocky gave him a nudge.
Iestyn steered Lara to a booth between an elderly couple and a family—father, mother, toddler, kid—occupying a table of dirty plates and wadded-up napkins.
Iestyn sat Lara with her back to the counter, slid in where he could watch the door. Lara craned to look over her shoulder.
“Babe,” he said mildly. “Take a menu.”
“I want to see his tattoo.”
He shot a glance behind her at the young guy, who was back to watching Lara with narrowed, intense eyes.
“I’m sure he’d be happy to show you all his tattoos. But then he might want to inspect yours.”
“I don’t have any . . . Oh.” She flushed and twisted back around.
Too late.
Young Guy started forward and was blocked by Stocky.
Shit. No time to retreat. No room to react. Iestyn got to his feet as the grizzled man in the bandanna approached their table, uncomfortably aware of the kids in the next booth, the mother dipping her napkin in her water glass to wipe the toddler’s hands and mouth.
“Haven’t seen you in here before,” Bandanna Man said.
And you never will again, Iestyn thought.
“Just passing through,” he said easily.
“What do you want?”
Lara opened her mouth.
“Short stack, two eggs over easy, and coffee,” Iestyn said quickly before she could speak. “Milk, no sugar.”
“What?”
He sighed. “We’re not looking for trouble. Just breakfast.”
He could see the waitress, a wide woman with a shock of peachy curls, waiting with her pad by the coffeepots, as obviously deadened to disputes as she was to peeling linoleum or the crumbs the kid in the next booth was grinding into the floor.
Bandanna Man shifted his weight, clearly illat ease.
“You’re not looking for . . .”
“No trouble,” Iestyn repeated. “We just came in for something to eat.”
Forgotten Sea Page 15
