Immortal Sea (2 page)

COPENHAGEN, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

 

THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME,
THE TOUR BROCHURE had promised.
Culture, nightlife, adventure, and romance in Europe’s most swinging capital.

Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Ramsey tightened her grip on her purse strap. Getting accosted outside a dance club in Copenhagen might qualify as adventure.

But
romance
?

She looked at the men blocking her way back inside the club. Three of them—she counted—with pockmarked skin, bad hair, and crappy attitudes.

She bit her lip, betrayed by the travel company’s PR and her own expectations. Her cheeks were hot. Her head still pounded from the techno beat vibrating down the grimy steps.

The skinny guy in the middle called an invitation, thrusting his hips forward suggestively. The red neon sign over the club’s entrance illuminated the line of his underwear and a slice of hairy stomach.

Oh, no.

She glanced again at the club door, hoping for rescue. A couple of women maybe, or another American. If Allyson had only stuck by their buddy arrangement . . . But her roommate had ditched her earlier that evening for a Swedish graduate student, Gunnar or Gondor or whatever his name was. Sooner or later, Liz would have to make her way back to their hotel alone.

She looked around for a cab. Or a cop. Copenhagen was safe, everyone said, even at three in the morning. But she didn’t speak the language. She wasn’t in control of the situation. She hated that.

Plus it would totally suck if the first time ever she flouted her parents’ wishes, they turned out to be right after all.

Liz shifted her weight in her platform sandals. Better to walk away, she reasoned, than get into a wrestling match with the Grunge Triplets. She was only a block or two from the square. Plenty of taxis there.

She anchored her tiny purse under her arm and picked her way along the cracked, uneven sidewalk, scanning for a cab.

Mistake. She realized it almost at once. Because instead of abandoning her for more willing game inside, the three men followed. Skin prickled on her upper arms, exposed by her skimpy halter top. She needed a jacket.

She needed to get the hell away.

She heard them behind her, scuffling feet and whistles that required no translation. Her breathing hitched. She quickened her step, her gaze darting in search of a lit window, an open door, the lights and bustle of Nørrebrogade.

Nothing. Just the flat, black waters of a canal and a row of small, shuttered shops, their bright facades faded to gray by the night.

Nerves scraped under her skin. Had she turned the wrong way? Should she turn back? But they were right behind her, heavy footsteps, coming closer, coming faster, almost—

Her neck wrenched. Her head jerked back.

Pain and panic flared. Tears stung her eyes. The guy following her had grabbed her hair, yanking her to a halt.

She whirled in self-defense, striking out, striking back. Her clenched fist connected with something hard and moist. Her knuckles burned.

She’d hit the bald guy. The big one. Snatching back her hand, she watched, appalled, as blood bloomed in his mouth.

His companions laughed. Violence thickened the air.

Oh, God. Oh, shit. What had she done?

Slowly, her attacker dragged the back of his arm across his cut lip. He stared down at his wrist; up into her eyes. And smiled, his teeth stained with blood.

Fear tightened her chest. She sucked in her breath to scream. Before the sound escaped, movement flashed in her peripheral vision. Something big, something fast, flowing out of the darkness behind her.

She flinched from this new threat.

But the thing—
shadow
—
man
—brushed by her like a shark in the water, knocking her flat on her ass. She landed hard, jarring her wrists, scraping her palms.

Darkness swirled in the narrow street. Dazed, she heard a thud, a crunch, choked sounds of pain or surprise.
Fighting.
Her insides roiled with fear and relief. They were fighting. She grabbed her purse, fumbling for the whistle she carried on campus.

Two sets of footsteps pounded against the pavement, leaving her attacker splayed in the gutter on the other side of the street and one man standing in a puddle of moonlight.

Shadow Man. Her rescuer.

She blinked. From her position on the ground, he looked larger than life, tall and leanly muscled in a long black leather coat.

He turned, the coat flaring around his ankles, and her heart jumped into her throat. His face was angled, cold, and pale, his hair the color of moonlight.

Liz swallowed hard, her gaze sliding up that long, powerful body to his face. His features were too strong to be really handsome, his nose too broad, his jaw too sharp. His upper lip was narrow, the lower one full, curved, and compelling.

She shivered with fear and something else. Just because he was cleaner and better dressed than the punks who had followed her from the club didn’t make him any less dangerous.

She snuck a glance at her attacker lying motionless in the gutter.

Okay, more dangerous.

She couldn’t see her rescuer’s eyes, shadowed by the line of his brow. He stood a moment longer, watching her, waiting for . . . What? Thanks? Tears? Hysterics?

And then he turned away.

An unreasoning urgency gripped her, sharper than fear. “Wait.”

He paused. Her heart hammered. Did he even speak English?

She scrambled to her feet, wiping her palms on the thighs of her jeans. “I . . . Thank you for, uh, helping me.”

He ignored her, dropping on his haunches by the body in the gutter. She watched him pat down her attacker, searching for a pulse.

Or maybe his wallet.

She gripped her purse tighter. “Why did you?”

He glanced briefly over his shoulder. “It was hardly a fair fight. I do not usually interfere in the affairs of your kind.”

Liz’s eyes narrowed.
Her kind?

Okay. She forced herself to consider the situation from his point of view, the dark street, her scanty club wear. He didn’t know her. She could have been anyone. Anything. A hooker on the run from her pimp.

“You’re English,” she said.

“No.” He did not elaborate.

“But your accent . . .” Not English, not exactly. But he definitely wasn’t American.

He straightened and walked away.

“Wait
.
”

He turned, silhouetted by the moon, impatience in every hard line of his body.

She swallowed. “We can’t just leave.”

“I can.”

“But . . .” She hugged her elbows, torn between her instinct for self-preservation and her sense of what was right. “Shouldn’t we notify the police?”

“I have no desire to be detained by your police.”

Which made her wonder uneasily what, exactly, he was doing alone on this deserted street at night.

Unfair, she thought. She didn’t want to stick around either. Not that she expected the very polite Danes to lock her in some foreign cell for being stupid enough to walk alone at night. But what if they contacted the embassy? Or her parents?

Her gaze skittered to the body stretched out in the gutter. “What about him?”

“You wish him punished further?”

“No
.
”
The suggestion horrified her. “But he . . . Look, if he dies, you could be in trouble.”

His eyes widened slightly, as if she had surprised him. His pupils were large and very dark, banded with a pale rim of color. Not blue, Liz thought, despite that white blond hair.

And she had no business puzzling over his eye color when there was an unconscious man lying practically at her feet.

Steeling herself to approach him—to approach them both—she knelt in the street, grateful for the thin protection of her jeans. She was uncomfortably conscious of her rescuer standing over them. His heat. His height.

“He will not die,” he said quietly.

Awareness tightened the back of her neck. Nerves sharpened her voice. “How would you know?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

She overcame her distaste of the body before her, forcing herself to conduct a patient assessment.
Airway, breathing, circulation
. . .

“I’m going to be a doctor.” Not for another seven years or so, but merely saying the words gave her a measure of confidence, a portion of control.

She took a deep breath. A sour smell leaked upward from the gutter. Stale sweat maybe, or unwashed feet. Or Shaved Head Guy could have been popping nitrates. She’d seen plenty of little glass vials crushed on the sidewalk outside the club.

He sprawled on his back, in danger of swallowing his tongue. She felt gingerly for neck or spine injuries before tilting his head to clear his airway. He groaned, making her start.

Her rescuer’s voice dropped out of the darkness. “Unless your compassion extends to being here when he wakes, I suggest you leave now.”

She gulped. “Right. Good idea.” She rocked back on her heels and stood, her legs trembling slightly in reaction.

Above the jagged rooftops, the sky was heavy purple, pregnant with early dawn. There was nothing to tell her what to do or which way to go, only dirty windows, darkened doors, and stinking puddles. Shadows lay across the street like bars, collected in drifts between the buildings like garbage.

She glanced nervously at her companion, his face etched in black and white perfection by the moon. With his broad shoulders and long black coat, he looked dark and solid. She wanted to burrow under his coat.

She cleared her throat. “Would you mind walking me as far as Nørrebrogade?”

Those strange, pale eyes fixed on her face, the pupils widening like a chasm at her feet, reflecting nothing, revealing nothing. They pulled at her like gravity. She imagined herself sinking into his eyes, falling
down, down, down
.

“I will take you.” In that voice, his low, deep, mocking voice, the words sounded almost sexual. “Since you ask.”

Her cheeks flushed as she snatched herself back from the edge of . . .
what?

“Just to the main street,” she clarified.

He inclined his head in an oddly formal gesture. Foreign. “As far as you wish.”

Her heart bumped against her ribs. He had saved her, she reminded herself. She could trust him.

She was less sure if she should trust her own judgment. She got A’s in all her classes and—according to Allyson—a C minus in men.

This one stood like a bulwark in the moonlight, blocking the stench of the puddles, the reek from the alleys. His scent teased at her senses, fresh and wild as the sea.

She released her breath. “I’d appreciate it.”

His gaze skimmed her face again. “Would you, I wonder,” he murmured.

His words barely registered over the pounding in her ears. He was so close. If she stood on tiptoe, she thought dizzily, she could kiss him.

Not that she would. Not that she wanted to.

He turned and strode away. Her knees sagged with disappointment and relief. She felt his absence like a chill against the front of her body.

But at least he seemed to know where he was going. He moved as surely as a cat in the dark.

She hurried after him, envying both his confidence and his shoes. Her open-toed sandals were fine on the dance floor. Not so great on these uneven streets.

She stumbled on the curb, grabbing for his arm. The leather was smooth beneath her fingers, his muscles hard as iron.

At her touch, he froze.

Morgan looked down, arrested, at the woman clinging to his arm. Was she aware what she invited? His kind did not touch. Only to fight or to mate.

His blood rushed like water under ice. Perhaps tonight he would do both.

He had not come ashore to rut. He was not as abstemious as his prince, Conn, but he had standards. Unlike his sister Morwenna and others among the mer, he did not often waste his seed on humankind.

The woman’s throat moved as she swallowed. “Sorry,” she said and dropped his arm.

She was very young, he observed. Attractive, with healthy skin and glossy brown hair. Her face was a strong oval, her jaw slightly squared, her unfettered breasts high and pleasing. There was even a gleam that might be intelligence in those brown eyes.

It would be no great privation to indulge her and himself.

“Do not apologize.” Grasping her hand, he replaced it on his sleeve. Her nails were clean and unpolished, her fingers tapered.

He imagined those short nails pressing into his flesh, and the rush in his blood became a roar.
No privation at all.

He glanced around the narrow buildings fronting the street. He would not take her here, in this filthy human warren. But there were other places less noxious and nearby. Adjusting his stride to hers, he led her away, seeking green ways and open water.