“Can you hear me?” she asked.
His gaze fastened on her face with painful intensity. His cracked lips parted. His face was a mask of dirt and blood.
Her heart tripped. So much blood. The split in his scalp gaped like another mouth, red and open.
She scrambled on her hands and knees for her purse, lying in the weeds and litter.
“What are you doing?” Gideon demanded.
“He’s hurt. We need to apply pressure,” she explained, rummaging inside. “To stop the bleeding.”
“Unless his skul is fractured,” Gideon said. “Come on.
We don’t have time for first aid.”
“What about. ” Her gaze darted to the other figure on the ground. Their attacker.
For answer, Gideon turned the man over with his foot.
The one who had been possessed sprawled motionless, staring with empty eyes at the darkening sky.
She felt sick inside. The lost souls who had attacked them were victims, too.
Demons did not usual y hunt humankind. Heaven and Hel were bound by the same restrictions. The children of air and fire could not take human life or violate humans’ free wil without pissing off the Most High. But the demons, lacking bodies of their own, sometimes risked the wrath of Heaven by borrowing mortal bodies.
And now one of those mortals was dead. Kil ed. She and Gideon had kil ed him.
Gideon stooped briefly, tracing the taw on the fal en man’s brow: the hilted sword, the four quarters of the wind, the sign of the children of air.
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
“Right.” She col ected her legs and her wits. Sliding an arm behind Justin’s back, she propped him to a sitting position.
He stared at her, his eyes dark and dazed.
“Justin? Can you stand up?”
He nodded. Or maybe he was simply having trouble holding his head upright.
“He can’t come with us,” Gideon objected.
Lara slung her purse over her shoulder and wrapped her arms around Justin’s waist. “I’m not leaving him.”
Not again.
Gideon shifted, irresolute. “You don’t even know if it’s safe to move him.”
“I know it’s dangerous for him to stay.”
The demons might not hunt humans, but they preyed in gleeful retribution on the Fal en children of air. Human or not, shielded or not, Justin had made himself a target simply by coming to her rescue.
She thrust her shoulder under his armpit, braced her legs, and pushed them both to their feet. He lurched against her to save himself from fal ing. Tucked under his arm, she was acutely conscious of his height. His weight. His warm, animal scent. His body was lean, but big boned and packed with muscle.
“Get his other side,” she ordered.
Gideon moved automatical y to obey. Under the Rule governing their community, they were vowed to obedience.
Scire, servare, obtemperare. “To know, to save, to obey.”
She winced. So far she was failing at al three. But at least Gideon was prepared to fol ow her lead for now.
They shuffled toward the car parked at the other end of the lot. Justin hung between them, his bloody head lol ing against his chest, his feet dragging. Dead weight.
Lara’s palms sweat. She shifted her grip.
Not dead, she thought fiercely. Not dead yet.
The last daylight faded from the sky. Shadows col ected on the ground, tripping them up. As they reached the car, Justin stumbled. Lara struggled to keep them both upright.
“Careful.” Gideon unlocked the car and opened the rear passenger door.
Justin’s muscles trembled. She could feel his effort to cooperate as they loaded him awkwardly into the backseat, as they folded and stuffed his long body into the car. By the time he col apsed beside her, they were both damp and panting. Her heart pounded with worry and exertion. She clasped her arms around him to keep him on the seat. He groaned and tried to raise his head.
The driver’s side door slammed as Gideon got in. “You owe me another shirt.”
They both were streaked with blood. She grabbed a wad of paper napkins left over from their lunch in Maryland and attempted to staunch Justin’s wound. “We owe him our lives. He wouldn’t be hurt if he hadn’t helped us.”
Gideon met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Where to?” he asked, making it clear that whatever happened next was her choice. Her responsibility.
Her fault.
She swal owed her resentment and her doubts. “The hospital.”
The engine rumbled to life.
Justin muttered against her shoulder, his speech deep and slurred.
She stroked his tawny hair, streaked with sweat and blood.
“What did you say?”
His breathing rasped. “No. hospital.”
“Sorry, pal,” she said. “You need a doctor. Stitches.”
A CAT scan.
“No.”
She gentled her voice. “If you can’t afford it—”
“No doctor,” he repeated, raising his head. “No.
police.”
“He probably has a warrant out for his arrest,” Gideon said.
“But he needs help,” Lara said.
“So we take him back to his ship.”
“It’s not his ship.” What had Justin said? Now that the boat was delivered, he was a free man.
His eyes had drifted shut again. His head bobbed on her shoulder. An unfamiliar tenderness wrung her heart. Al that life, al that vitality, bleeding out of him.
“He’s alone,” she said. “Just like we were before we were found.”
“He’s not like us. You said so yourself.”
For al their training and power, the nephilim were stil human, with human weaknesses. Human imperfections.
She licked dry lips. “What if I was wrong?”
Gideon spared a glance from the road, his straight brows twitching together. “Do you feel something?”
“No,” she admitted.
Her power had been exhausted by the skirmish with the demons. She had only a normal physical awareness of Justin’s presence.
Okay, not exactly normal. The whiff of demon stil clung to them. Justin’s blood was on her hands. His warm, hard weight squashed her against the car door. But the powerful charge she’d experienced in the bar had faded to a faint static along her skin, as if she’d never been driven from her bed to seek him. As if.
Her breath caught.
As if her compulsion was satisfied now that he was found.
Now that he was with her.
“Maybe we’re meant to bring him with us,” she said.
Gideon’s shoulders stiffened. “To Rockhaven.”
Recklessness seized her. Why not? “Yes.”
“We can’t bring an outsider into the community. He’s a threat.”
“Hardly a threat now,” she pointed out. “He can’t even hold his head up.”
Their voices rol ed like a fretful tide, rushing, retreating, never stil. Justin tried to focus on the words, but pain sank red talons into his skul, gripping his brain.
Just a bump on the head. He’d survived worse.
Floating in a cold green sea, limbs leaden, lost.
He shook his head to clear it.
Bad idea.
Agony seared his temples, speared his neck. His gorge rose as his stomach lurched in protest. He gritted his teeth, swal owing beer and bile, fighting not to vomit in the back of the moving car.
“Easy.” Her voice, clear and soothing, as she petted him.
Grateful y, he inhaled her scent, absorbed her touch, letting himself fal into the comfort of her body against his, sweaty, soft, female.