“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 al three stil within the compound. Which left.
“Lara,” he said.
Miriam inhaled sharply, a sound of distress. “Does Simon know?”
Zayin stood to pul his pants over his hips. “He wil soon.”
He glanced at Miriam over his shoulder. “He wants her, you know.”
She exhaled on a sigh. “I know.” She sat, the sheet fal ing 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 stil don’t know what in creation he is.”
“He’s with her?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then you’l find them.”
“I’l kil him.”
They both knew what was at stake. The nephilim no longer possessed their ful angelic powers. Hunted by their ancient Adversary, they banded together for survival.
Every student learned that the gates, the wal s, 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 Fal en 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 al.
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 real y.” 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. Literal y.”
“It wasn’t me. Not only me. You got us through the barrier.”
Thunder cracked and rol ed. He could feel the swirling energy of the approaching storm cel. 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 al I care about.”
“How do you know?”
His mind blanked. How did he know?
Memory slammed into his skul 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 swal owed 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 al right?” she asked anxiously.
His head throbbed.
Was he al right?
He swal owed, 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 hil s. The air was thick and stil.
Against the low backdrop of clouds, a pitched roof loomed, swal owing the road ahead. A bridge, with a wide barn mouth and rough hewn wal s.
“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. Especial y 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 pul over while it passes?”
She shook her head. “It’s not real y 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 eyebal s, struggling to see through the darkness and the. smoke?
He smel ed 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 col apsed.
But it was already too late.
The fire leaped with the force of an explosion, reaching for the timbers in the wal s, the wooden rail along the sides, the hood of the car. A blazing curtain swept down, sealing the exit.
“Back,” Justin yel ed.
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 ight scraped and shattered along the wal 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 skul 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, bil owed to engulf the car. Lara flung open her door.
He grabbed her arm. “What the fuck are you doing?”