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.
Through the crackling heat, the rush of wind and beating fire, he heard her gasp. “Hurry. Can’t hold . . . them long.”
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!”
*
*
*
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.
10 6
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
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.
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.
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.
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.
10 8
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
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.
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
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.
