Virginia Kantra - Forgotten Sea

Axton’s hand was cool like his eyes, his grip firm. Nothing to prove , Justin thought.

Until the man’s grip inexplicably tightened. His dark blond eyebrows rose. “What is this?” he asked Lara.

Justin’s head buzzed. As if his skul had been invaded by a rush of wind, a swarm of bees.

Lara cleared her throat. “He. I. This is the one I was sent to seek.”

Sent?

Justin pul ed his hand free. He needed to sit down.

Axton glanced at the woman standing under the light of the chandelier. “Miriam?”

The handsome black woman came forward and took Justin’s arm. The Boyfriend had already moved away toward the long curving staircase.

Distancing himself, Justin thought. Smart move. The ritzy entrance hal had al the tension of a bar before a fight broke out.

“Let me help you to a chair,” the woman said.

He leaned on her, grateful for the support. But he wasn’t about to leave Lara’s side. Not until he’d figured out what the hel was going on.

“What is he?” Axton asked.

Justin frowned in concentration. Or maybe he’d asked,

“How is he?” The buzzing in his skul drowned out everything else.

The woman — Miriam — continued to hold his arm, like a doctor taking his pulse.

Like a guard with a recalcitrant prisoner.

The pounding in his head intensified. His wound throbbed in time with his heart. He focused on Lara, warm and solid and real beside him, on her pink polished toes, on the clean, sweet scent of her hair. He breathed in, out, the rhythm of his breath like the sigh of the surf or the beat of the tide. In , fil ing his lungs, swirling in his head. Out .

The room stopped reeling.

A crease appeared between Miriam’s brows. “He is not of air.”

Heir of what? he thought, confused.

“He needs our help,” Lara said.

Axton’s cool blue gaze rested on her without expression.

“His needs are not our concern.”

“I should examine him,” Miriam said. What was she, a doctor? “He has something. An energy. I felt it.”

Amusement bubbled inside him. Some energy. He could barely stand.

Axton said something that sounded like “ she ,” and Miriam shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said.

“He’s a threat,” a different voice announced. “Let me get rid of him.”

Lara’s slim body tensed. Trouble. Justin raised his head, squinting into the shadows.

The speaker prowled from the foot of the stairs, wearing black and a sneer. Big hard dude, like those stone gods on Easter Island, large nose, strong chin, maybe six four, two hundred forty pounds, easy. Which meant he could kick Justin’s ass even before the bump on his head.

“Some welcoming committee you got here, honey,” he muttered.

Lara squeezed his hand. Reassurance? Or warning?

“Justin was hurt protecting me,” she said.

“A ruse,” Stone Face said. “To get you to trust him.”

Justin had heard enough. “Okay, I’m out of here.”

As soon as he found his balance. His strength. A cab.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lara said. “We’re hours from Norfolk.”

“You should have left him there,” Stone Face said.

“He needed a doctor.”

Axton arched dark blond eyebrows. “There are no emergency rooms in Virginia?”

“He didn’t want. ” Lara’s voice shook slightly. “He was my responsibility. I had to make a decision—”

“When you go into the field, I expect you to be guided by your training and your partner. Not indulge in misplaced compassion.”

She winced.

Pain hammered Justin’s skul. “So dump me back where she found me, asshole, and we’l cal it even.”

“Please,” Lara said. To which one of them? “He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. We were attacked.”

“You are trained in self-defense. Was it your preparation that was lacking? Or your skil?”

“There’s nothing wrong with their training,” Stone Face said.

“Gideon?” Axton’s gaze pinned the Boyfriend like a bug.

“You were Guardian on this mission.”

The younger man flushed to the roots of his blond hair.

“We were outnumbered. There were four of them. Five.”

“Which?” asked Stone Face.

“So many?” Miriam said at the same time.

“Four and a lookout,” Lara said.

“Which compels me to inquire what you did to attract their attention,” Axton said.

The quick exchange made Justin dizzy. They’d been jumped in an al ey. Had they been set up? Had he?

He was in over his head, the undercurrents in the room sucking his strength. He felt the wal s closing in, the room whirling around him.

“Justin?” Lara’s voice, sharp and worried. “Justin.”

I’m okay , he wanted to tel her.

Except his brain was on fire and his mouth wouldn’t form the words.

His eyes rol ed back in his head, and the floor tilted up to receive him.

Miriam Kioni stripped off her latex gloves and dropped them on the procedure tray. “He’l have a scar, of course,” she said to Simon, standing with Lara at the side of Justin’s bed. Jude Zayin, the dark-browed master of the Guardians, watched silently from his post at the infirmary room door.

“But the edges of the wound aligned nicely.”

The hot, bright medical lamp switched off.

In the sudden dimness, Lara blinked down at the shaved patch above Justin’s ear. Twenty-two stitches marched antlike across his scalp, disappearing into the gold stubble of his hair.

Something fluttered in her chest like wings. One of his eyes had swol en shut. His tanned skin had the waxy sheen of a melted candle.

She curled her nails into her palms. “Should he stil be unconscious?”

“It was easier to suture his wound while he was sleeping,”

Miriam said with the calm authority of her hundred years.

The nephilim were not immortal. But the wisest and most powerful of them could enjoy the span of several human lifetimes. Miriam had been master of the Seekers and the school’s physician longer than Lara had been alive.

Lara would have to be an idiot to chal enge her.

She moistened her lips. Apparently she was an idiot.

“But. His skul fracture. ”

“A simple concussion,” Simon said.

Water hissed in the sink. “Probably not the first one either,”

Miriam said.

Lara’s throat worked. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t see it on the imaging equipment, but I found an old scar from a previous injury. Maybe he played footbal in high school.”

“Or got beaten up,” Zayin said.

Miriam scrubbed her hands at the sink. “Either way, it would make him more susceptible to another concussion.”

“But he’l be al right?” Lara asked.

“The CAT scan didn’t reveal any internal bleeding or elevated pressure in the brain,” Miriam said. “He should be fine with a little rest.”

“He can rest someplace else,” Zayin said. “I don’t want him here.”

Miriam turned from the sink. “He needs at least fortyeight hours to recover.”

“I don’t give a damn what he needs,” Zayin growled.

“He’s a risk.”

Lara gripped the metal guard rail on the side of Justin’s bed. “He’s a target.”

They al turned to look at her with varying degrees of surprise and impatience.

She swal owed hard and stood her ground, her heart beating like a rabbit’s. “The demons wil know he helped me. Us,” she explained. “We can’t abandon him.”

“Maybe that’s what they’re counting on,” Zayin said.

Simon pursed his lips. “You think he’s one of them.”

“I know he’s not one of us,” Zayin said flatly. “I can’t read him. I don’t like it.”