Immortal Sea (29 page)

She was young, clear eyed, smooth skinned, and eager. But he did not want her. He did not want any woman but Elizabeth.

The realization made him almost as uneasy as that sly tickle on the back of his neck, in the pit of his stomach. For the first time ever in his existence, he was uncomfortable in his own body. Not because he needed sex or the sea, but because he wanted her. Elizabeth. He worried about her.

How did humans bear it? This edge of impatience, this itch of anxiety, this awareness of another like the slide of water over his skin.

She wanted time alone, she’d said. To think.

The lingering bite of whiskey could not dispel the bitterness in his mouth.

She needed to pick up her daughter, service her car, resume her life.

And Morgan, moved by her pale face and huge dark eyes, aware he had pushed the bounds of her acceptance enough for one day, had acquiesced like a besotted fool.

A mistake, he thought now. Like any warrior, Elizabeth would use the respite to count her losses and regroup. He should have stayed with her.

He should be with her. Now.

The thought cleaved his skull, sharp as an axe or instinct.

He stood.

“Can I add that to your tab?” the hovering bar girl asked.

He nodded, thanked her, and left, driven by an urgency he could not explain and did not question.

The parking lot stank of gravel and gasoline, the moist loam of the neglected gardens, the pervasive tang of the sea. And under it all, an acrid taint like ash.

His nostrils flared. Like demon.

His lips pulled back from his teeth. The premonition of danger flooded back, stronger than before.
Elizabeth.

Before he reached the end of the drive, he broke into a run.

Red flames shot to the ceiling. The burning towel fell to the floor. Liz’s heart hammered against her ribs. She dropped to her knees, fumbling in the under-the-sink cabinet. Dish detergent, garbage bags, cleaning bucket . . . fire extinguisher.

Thank God.
She grabbed it.

She’d never used one before, had no idea if it had expired. Could expire. She stumbled to her feet, yanked the big round pin, and aimed the nozzle at the fire.

Nothing.

Sweat broke out on her face and under her arms. Her pulse raced.
Do not panic.
She was a doctor, trained to respond calmly in crisis. She squeezed, pressed, prayed. A burst of chemical foam shot out, smothering the stove. Flames and foam collided in an oily, stinking mess. She coughed. Sprayed. The fire subsided with a sullen hiss and a flicker of orange. She sprayed until the canister sputtered and died, until the stove and surrounding floor were coated with greasy, caustic foam. Her hands trembled. Her legs shook.

She shuddered and lowered the extinguisher.

The fire erupted in a geyser of flame.

Holy shit. Smoke boiled, swirling with all the colors of a bruise, yellow, black, purple.

Get out
, she thought.

Get help.

Nothing she could save was worth her life. Zack and Em needed her. She couldn’t afford to die.

Tigger yowled, a long, unearthly cry of feline despair. She couldn’t leave the kitten behind either.

She threw down the canister and reached under the table, cutting her palm on the broken mug. Tigger backed away.

“Damn it, cat.”

She scooped him up, ignoring the dig of kitten claws and teeth, and dashed for the back door. Smoke coiled and slithered around the ceilings, flowed down the walls. Her sweaty palms twisted the doorknob. It stuck. With the kitten dangling in the crook of her elbow, she yanked, tugged, rattled the door in the frame.

It didn’t budge.

The cat’s cries pierced her eardrums. Coughing, she abandoned the door and stumbled toward the dining room. Her eyes stung with smoke. A chair loomed in her path. Pain cracked across her shins. She shoved it aside, lurched forward on her knees, still cradling the protesting Tigger against her stomach.

A curtain of fire sprang up like a wall, blocking her escape. Heat blasted her, nearly singeing her hair. She cried out in terror. Which way? Forward or back? The door?
Stuck.
Or the fire?

The back door burst open. The fire howled and flung itself at the draft.

A cold, wet blast of air struck back.

Relief swept over her. He filled the doorway, black as a thundercloud, bringing the storm in with him. Rain drove into the room, slashing, silver. The air trembled with fog and fury as energies collided.

Trembling, she stared as power flashed around him.

“Gau!” he shouted. “I cast you out!”

The fire roared, curled, retreated. In the door to the dining room, the curtain of flame tore like a veil, disappeared in a shower of diamond drops.

A gust scattered the choking fumes.

The fire on the stove muttered, spat, and died.

Tigger cowered, mute, in her arms.

Morgan stood in the dissipating smoke like a soldier on a battlefield. Liz could feel the energy pumping through his blood and pouring off his skin. His gold-rimmed eyes blazed.

Striding across the kitchen floor, he hauled her to her feet and yanked her against his iron body. “Are you all right?”

“I . . .” Her lungs weren’t working properly. Neither was her brain. “Fine,” she managed before his mouth crushed hers.

His kiss was fierce and needy. Hot. His mouth claimed and conquered hers. She clung to him with one arm, her short nails digging into his muscled shoulder, battered by a storm of sensation, a tempest of relief and desire and need. She couldn’t get her breath or her balance. He swept away her control.

She gave herself up to his kiss, grateful simply to touch, taste, be.

The kitten squirmed and clawed between them.

“Ouch.”

With one hand, he plucked the kitten from between them and dropped it on the ground. He gripped her hips to pull her more firmly against him and then stopped, his mouth compressing in apparent displeasure.

Her heartbeat thundered. Her head hazed with lust. “What?”

He took her arm and turned it over, exposing the long, thin lines of red cat scratches against her pale skin, her bleeding palm. “You are hurt.”

“It’s nothing. Thank God you showed up.” She pulled her arm back. “Why did you show up?”

“You needed me,” he said, so simply her heart stuttered.

He didn’t mean it the way it sounded, she told herself.

“I did,” she said. “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life, but . . .”

The kitten edged closer to the door, quivering. Morgan snapped a word Liz didn’t recognize and Tigger ran back under the table.

Liz regarded the open door, her mind working now, turning, churning. “How did you get in?”

He raised his brows. “In the usual way.”

“The door was locked. Not locked,” she corrected herself. “Jammed.”

“No. Gau used your fears to hold you captive.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was an illusion,” Morgan explained. “Like the fire at the other door. Demons are masters of such deception.”

Fire. Demons. In her house.

She drew an unsteady breath. “I think,” she said carefully, “I need to sit down.”

Before her knees gave out.

He righted the overturned chair with one hand. She sat, the cat scratches throbbing on her arm. The broken tea mug rolled at her feet. Piles of chemical foam dripped from the stove. Rain puddled on the floor. The kitchen curtains were limp, damp, and dirty, and wet paper napkins had been blown around the room. The storm had been no illusion. But there were remarkably few signs of fire: a blackened towel, a scorched kettle, a smudge of soot on the wall. A breeze blew through the open door, clean and smelling of salt.

She shivered. “You’re saying this wasn’t a regular fire.”

“It was a fire,” Morgan said. “Fire is the demons’ element.”

“I was making tea. It’s an old house. Maybe a gas leak . . .” He met her eyes, and her voice died. Okay, she didn’t believe the gas leak theory either.

She picked up Tigger, stroking his vibrating little body for comfort.

“The flames provided the medium,” Morgan said. “But Gau should not have been able to manifest so completely.”

She felt ignorant. Helpless. “Who is Gau?”

His eyes, black and gold and guarded, met hers. “An old acquaintance.”

“A demon.”

“Yes.”

“An enemy?”

“He has made himself so.”

Fear sharpened her voice. “You know, you could stop with the ominous, cryptic statements. We’re talking about my life here. My children’s safety. I need to know what’s going on.”

He inclined his head. “You are right. I am not used to confiding in another.” His smile showed the edge of his teeth. “I hunt alone.”

She looked at his teeth and his eyes and was suddenly reminded of something she would prefer to forget.
He was not human.

Inside her something quivered and froze like a rabbit spying a hawk, a flutter of purely animal panic. For a moment the impossibility of what he was overcame even the improbability of what he was saying.

She bit down on her lip—
This was Morgan
, she told herself firmly—and the fear passed. “Well, you’re not alone now. You’ve got Zack to think about.” And me, she thought. And Em. “If we’re in danger, I need to know.”

Morgan hesitated. Debating what to tell her? Or deciding what to leave out? “I am the leader of the finfolk. If I ally with Hell, if my people side with the children of fire against the selkie and humankind, Gau has offered me rulership over the sea.”

“So he’s angry because you said no.”

He went still, that quality beyond stillness that reminded her again he was something more or other than human. “You sound very certain of my answer.”

“No one who knows you could think you are a traitor.”

His gaze rested on her, dark and unreadable. “Not everyone shares your confidence in my loyalties.”

“You gave my daughter a kitten. You told me about our son.”
You made love to me as if I mattered to you.
“You saved my house and probably my life. That earns you a certain amount of trust.”

“You give me too much credit. You were in danger because of me. I could hardly do otherwise.”

He would see it that way, she thought. Whatever Morgan was, whatever he had done, he had his own spare, warrior’s code.

She frowned. “I still don’t understand why Gau attacked me. Does he want revenge?”

“He wants my support.”

“Killing me won’t accomplish that.”

“Threatening you might. He sees you as a weakness to be exploited.”

She held her breath. “And how do you see us?”

“I have no weaknesses.”

She struggled to hide her disappointment. “Then we have no value as hostages.”

“Elizabeth.”

She looked up and met his gaze. The look in his eyes was as warm, as fierce, as intimate as a kiss. Her blood began to pound.

“Your
value
is something Gau cannot begin to comprehend. He will not touch you again.” Morgan’s words had the weight of a vow, quiet and intense. “I will not leave you unprotected.”

For a moment, she let herself be reassured, as if he would save her, as if he could love her, as if he would be there for her through all the Bad Things that life threw at you, like adolescence and illness and demons and death.

Except he was leaving.

Absently, she stroked the kitten in her lap. She had always known he would leave.

The only question was, how many pieces of her heart would he take with him?

Zack stood just inside the doors of the community center gym. Testing the waters, haha.

The odor of sweat competed with the smell of fresh coffee and stale popcorn drifting from the lobby. Moviegoers eddied and swirled around him. He recognized some of them from the store, summer people dressed from the L.L. Bean catalogue or the outlet in Freeport, islanders in faded jeans and ball caps. Kids squirmed on laps or ran around the wooden floor. Family groups settled into the rows of folding chairs that straggled from foul line to foul line.