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 yel ed 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 wal 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 smel. 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 Hel. Hard arms seized her around the waist.
Her heart stopped.
Justin. She smel ed 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 col apse 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.
9
Th e y r a n. H e at s c orc h ed J u s t i n ’ s fac e, s i n g ed 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 wal. 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, al 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 bil owed 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 col apsed 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 skul, 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.
“Wel.” He grinned to hide the churning of his gut.
“That’s one way to make sure they can’t fol ow us.”
A laugh escaped her, a smal, 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 ful ness 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 pul 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 rol ed 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 col ar.