Forgotten Sea (11 page)

He felt his lips pull back in a snarl and adjusted his expression. Not his problem, he recited silently. Not his responsibility. She was a grown woman. Barely. She could make her own choices. And she’d chosen him. He just wished he didn’t feel so damn good about that.

She pointed to a circular sweep of brick and concrete, where skinny trees in black pots were placed at intervals like sentinels around a castle wall. “Don’t we want to go that way?”

“Nope.” He steered her down a gravel path off the main drive. “Big house in the country, probably has a security system. What we want is . . .”

The smell of mulch and gasoline. A low roof-line against the trees.

“There,” he said in satisfaction.

 An open-sided shed sheltering tools and a wheelbarrow, a riding mower, and a rusting ragtop Jeep. He leaned in the open side, searching for keys. In the glove box, under the floor mat, over the visor . . .

The keys jangled as they fell onto the driver’s seat.

He held them up to Lara. “Magic.”

Her eyes widened before she caught herself. “Guesswork.” And then, “How did you know they were there? That any of this was here?”

He shrugged. “Owners usually like to hire somebody else to do their dirty work. This is probably the caretaker’s Jeep.”

“And we’re just going to take it?”

He slanted her a look. “Unless you want to drive the lawn mower.”

The engine chugged to life. He checked the gas. Half a tank. Good enough.

Lara’s teeth chattered as she climbed in beside him. “Are you okay to drive?”

He had the mother of all headaches, his magic choker burned like a son of a bitch, and if he didn’t lie down soon, he was going to fall down.

“I’m good,” he said, trying to sound confident and cheerful instead of insane. “You?”

Her eyes were bruised with exhaustion, her pretty lips blue with cold. She squared her slim shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“You’re amazing,” he said honestly.

She smiled and ducked her head.

The Jeep bumped onto the road, picking up speed as they hit the asphalt. He fiddled with the controls, swearing as a blast of cold air shot from the dashboard.

“Heater’s broken,” Lara observed.

Figured.

The long dark road was going nowhere. At the next intersection, he turned right, relieved when a gas station appeared and then a route sign. The Jeep leaned around a ramp and rattled onto a highway. Rolling hills and country estates were broken up and swallowed by train tracks and subdivisions, strip mal s, and overpasses sprayed with graffiti.

The white mile markers flashed by. Lara huddled in her seat, hugging her arms. At this speed, the Jeep’s rag top and open sides didn’t offer much protection.

“Pull that tarp over you,” he ordered. “It’ll cut the wind some.”

She twisted around in her seat to drag the tarp from the back. The heavy canvas released the sharp scent of bark, which mingled with the lingering smells of smoke and river mud. Lara wrinkled her nose as she adjusted the tarp around her. Mulch trickled from her shoulders to the floor.

She plucked a fold from her knee. “There’s enough here for us both.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get cold.”

She looked at him sideways. “Is that a guy thing?”

“A selkie thing. Warm blood,” he explained.

Webbed feet. No pelt.

His smile faded.

“At least it stopped raining,” she offered.

“We didn’t need it anymore,” he answered absently. “All it takes is one good downdraft to cut off the moisture flow.”

Lara left off fussing with the tarp. “Weather control? Is that a selkie thing, too?”

His skull pounded. His head split like a tearing curtain, revealing . . .

Mist. Gray stone walls with the damp running down,
and a
fountain playing in the center.

“Weather working is the simplest gift and the most
 
common,” the castle warden lectured in his deep, burred
voice. “The first to come and often the easiest to master.”

The boys sprawled on the bench and on the courtyard
grass, watching the clouds, bored with a lesson they’d
heard too many times before.

“It is the water you cannot see that creates the rain and
clouds,” Griff droned on, “that cools and warms the earth
and sustains all life. This is the water you must know and
control if you want to work the weather.”

The fog swirled. White lights pierced the gloom.

Yellow lights, coming toward them.

A blare of sound. A horn.

The wheel jerked in his hands as Lara grabbed it and the Jeep shuddered and straightened. The oncoming truck roared by in the opposite lane.

Shit.
His hands shook. He eased his foot from the accelerator, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Pull over,” Lara ordered.

“What happened?”

“You blacked out.”

“No, I . . .” He inhaled, willing his hands and his stomach to settle. “Maybe.”

“What else could it be?”

The Jeep’s tires rumbled onto the shoulder and coasted to a stop. He clicked on the blinking hazard lights:
warning,
warning, warning
.

“Flashback. I thought I remembered . . .” But the vision was gone, lost in the mists of his brain. “It’s nothing. One too many knocks on the head.”

“Miriam said you’d had a concussion before.”

“From the shipwreck.” He struggled to pull himself together. “At least, that’s what the freighter captain thought.”

 “So maybe the second injury shook things up.” Her voice soothed, talking him down. Her hand touched his knee, giving comfort. “Maybe that’s the reason you’re starting to remember.”

“Could be.” He blew out his breath and faced the truth.

Every spark of memory, every jolt of power, had followed some contact with her. The touch in the bar. The kiss on the cellar stairs. The embrace on the riverbank. Maybe she had been sent to find him. Maybe she was meant to save him.

He recalled the oncoming semi. 

And maybe his returning memories would get them both killed.

“Iestyn?” Her fingers tightened. “What is it?”

“It’s you,” he said. “You . . . affect me.”

“You think I’m helping you to remember?”

He met her eyes. “Not only that.”

Whether he wanted it or not, whether he left her or not, he was tangled up in her, snared by the way she made him feel. When they touched and when they didn’t. When she moved. When she breathed.

Christ.

He put his head down on the steering wheel, feeling like he’d slammed into the semi after all. After a moment’s silence, she got out of the Jeep. Good. He listened to the sound of her footsteps as she rounded the hood. He needed a moment. He needed . . .

She nudged his shoulder through the opening on the driver’s side. “Move over. I’m driving.”

“Pushy, aren’t you.”

“I never have been before. It’s you.” He raised his head to look at her. Her clear eyes were dark, uncertain. A smile trembled on her mouth. “Apparently you affect me, too.”

She took his breath away. “Lara.” He stopped, unsure what came next.

“Over,” she said.

He dragged his sorry ass into the passenger seat and watched her fumble with the seat, the mirror, the ignition. Careful, controlled, the kind of woman he usually had nothing to do with. When everything was adjusted to her satisfaction, she pulled back onto the freeway. 

And almost immediately put on her turn signal.

“What are you doing?” he asked as they rumbled into the exit lane.

“Finding a place to spend the night.”

“You’re wasting our lead. We could be miles away by morning.”

“You need to rest and I’m freezing. We need a hotel.”

He wanted to argue with her. But the truth was, they both needed sleep. If Axton’s crew caught up with them, they were in no shape either to fight or to run.

“Not a hotel. A motel. The cheapest, sleaziest motel you can find.”

“Don’t we have money?”

“I have my pay from my last job. But we need someplace that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions.”

She turned off the exit ramp into a warren of suburban sprawl, dirty brick and broken concrete and signs with the letters falling off. OIL CHG. WCME. SRVED HOT.

Eventually she found what he was looking for, a long, two-story building with peeling brown paint and sagging white railings and broken glass glittering in the parking lot. She pulled up under the blinking sign, heart of jersey motel. The pink light of the neon heart flickered over her face. 

Iestyn grinned. “Very romantic.”

She didn’t smile. “I’ll check us in.”

 “I’ll do it.”

She engaged the emergency brake. “You can’t go up to the desk like that. You look like you’ve been in a bar fight.”

“Which means I’ll fit right in with their regular clientele. You don’t.”

“I’m just as scruffy as you are.”

“You still don’t look like the kind of girl who rents rooms by the hour. You’ve never been in a place like this.”

She winced. “You have no idea what kind of girl I am or where I’ve been.”

He sure as hell didn’t know what he’d just said to hurt her. To piss her off. 

He was no good at relationships that lasted longer than a night or two. He didn’t do touchy-feely. He didn’t hold hands. But he reached for hers, covering her fingers on the steering wheel. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t touch me.”

No good at relationships at all.

So he let her go, keeping his eyes on her face. “All I meant was that you’re too beautiful for some bored night clerk to forget.” For him to ever forget. “We can’t afford to attract attention.”

“I know.” She let go of the wheel, folding her hands together tightly in her lap. “Sorry for overreacting.”

“Not overreacting. You’ve had a rough night.”

She flashed him a grateful glance. “Something like that.”

Woman calmed. Crisis averted. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over, that there was something more.

He did a quick scan of the dark parking lot: empty cars, broken bottles, weeds pushing through pavement. Damn. He couldn’t even tell  her to lock the car doors.

“Anybody comes up to the Jeep while I’m in the office, you lay on the horn.”

She arched her eyebrows. “I thought we didn’t want to attract attention.”

Her flicker of spirit reassured him.

“Just do it,” he said and went to get them a room.

Not a nice room, he thought after they were inside.

He secured the double locks on the door and stood with his hands in his pockets, trying to see it through her eyes: the mirrored wall , the nasty carpet, the broken lamp shade. The ancient TV was bolted to the dresser. The three porn channels were free, the desk clerk had informed him with a smirk as he handed over the key.

Lara’s arms were folded across her body, like she didn’t want to touch anything. Probably afraid of catching an STD from the bedspread. Or maybe she was just cold.

Iestyn cleared his throat. “Not exactly what you’re used to.”

“You either.”

“I’ve slept in some pretty rough places.”

“It’s better than the storm cellar.”

“But not as clean.”

She smiled at that, but her back remained rigid. He could feel her discomfort from across the room.

“You can shower first,” he offered, trying not to remember how great she looked in a towel, slim bare legs, pale bare arms, her dark hair damp on her shoulders.

She nodded, but she did not move, her attention apparently riveted by the two double beds that took up most of the floor space.

Reluctant suspicion took hold in his mind. She was, what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? She couldn’t possibly be . . .

“You ever stay in a room with a man before?”

She met his gaze, her eyebrows lifting. “Are you asking if I’m a virgin?”

Damn it, he was embarrassed. “Yes.”

“No.”

He leaned one shoulder against the door frame. The boyfriend, he thought. The one with the ponytail. “So angels have sex?”

“The nephilim have human bodies,” she said with dignity. “We use them in the usual human way.”

“To have sex.”

“And to eat and to sleep. All normal bodily functions. Sex is not that big a deal with us.”

He grinned, feeling better about the boyfriend. “It is if you do it right.”

“I meant, human sex is not a true union. We do not mingle spirits.”

“Just bodies.”

Her brow puckered in annoyance, but he noticed her rigid posture had relaxed. “Why are you making such an issue of this?”

Wasn’t it obvious?

“Because I want to have sex with you,” he said.

Lucy drifted up the circular stair of the prince’s tower. Chinks in the thick walls admitted narrow bands of moonlight, striping the stone.

She shivered in a sharp wind from the sea. She had waited too long to make this climb. Confessing the difficulty she was having coping to Conn felt uncomfortably like another failure. But the longer she kept her feelings to herself, the more the distance between them grew.

She had lost their child.

She would not lose his love.

Blinking, she emerged into the prince’s study at the top of the stairs. Windows pierced the round room, north, south, east, west. The children of the sea did not make or mine, farm or spin. Caer Subai was furnished with the salvage of centuries, plucked from human shipwrecks and restored after the demons’ attack seven years ago: amphorae from Greece and ivory from Africa, Viking gold and Italian silk. 

As she entered, Conn looked up from his desk, walnut and iron, rescued from a Spanish galleon off the coast of Cornwall.

“Lucy.” His posture relaxed, but a faint wariness remained in his eyes. She had not sought him here for months.

Time to change that, she thought. But she was at a loss how to begin.

A map spread across the surface of his desk, glowing like the night sky with pricks of multicolored light.

“What are you doing?” she asked, wandering closer.

He straightened. “Looking for your lost boy.”

Her brows pulled together. Her heart quickened in her chest. “What?”

“You know how the map works. Each light represents an elemental’s energy. Not the angels, of course. The children of air are forbidden from interfering in earthly affairs. But here we are.” He tapped the bright blue cluster off the coast of Scotland, waved a hand at the smattering of stars across the seas. 

“The children of earth here and here.” He traced his finger along the glowing green ridges of the mountains. She walked around the desk to see. As she drew closer, his faint, familiar musk teased her senses.

“Demons here,” Conn continued, with another poke at the map. Red pulsed along the fault lines, spattered across the continents like blood.

“But see here.” He leaned forward over the desk again, making her very aware of the heat of his body, the strength of his arms. “These spots of blue inland? Here, on the Mid-Atlantic coast, and here. These could be your lost . . .”

Children.

“The ones who were lost,” he said stiffly.

Tears choked her throat, swam in her eyes. “You listened.”

He looked down his long nose at her with a hint of his habitual arrogance. “Of course.”

She swayed toward him, more moved by his act of faith than she could say. “Conn . . .”

He moved away from her to stand in front of the window, hands clasped behind his back. “I thought I would leave in the morning,” he said, staring out at the moonlit sea.

“Leave,” Lucy repeated blankly.

He nodded. “It will be an opportunity to see Morgan and your brother Dylan as well. I have not conferred with either of them in weeks. They are wardens. Perhaps they picked up on this sending, too. If you are right, if there is a chance that Iestyn and the others are alive . . .” He broke off, his voice raw.

He cared.

Emotion flooded her heart. Not just for the survival of their kind. He cared for the children he had gathered and protected and finally sent away.

How had she been blind to it until now?

But he had always been good at hiding his feelings. He had learned over centuries of rule to never reveal emotion. Never admit weakness. And she had been too wrapped up in her own feelings to understand.

“I could come with you,” she said.

Conn’s head raised. His shoulders were rigid against the moonlit glass. “Your power would be . . . a great assistance. But are you well enough for such a trip?”

His concern touched her. He was putting her feelings before what needed to be done.

“I’m fine. I’m healed.” Physically, at least.

He turned to face her. “We do not need to see your brothers, if you do not wish it.”

“Why wouldn’t I . . . Oh.” Seeing her brothers meant seeing their families. Their children. Caleb’s wife Margred was pregnant again.

Lucy straightened her shoulders. “I want to go with you.” She held out her empty hands to him. “I don’t want you to be so far away.”

Conn met her gaze. His silver eyes had the sheen of the sea beyond their windows, glazed by the moon. “I am never far from you, Lucy. You are always in my heart.”

She stumbled toward him and he took her hands and pulled her into his arms.