In my bedroom, I strapped on my double shoulder holster, then slid my Glock 17-9 MM into place. Taking my Glock 19-Gen 5 with me onto the balcony, I settled into my cushioned chair and rested the gun on my lap.
Barely visible beneath the cloudy night sky, the black Thames rippled by, the only sound in the deafening silence of war-torn London. There were so many enemies out there, but for now, I was content to keep vigilance over the demoness lying comfortably on my sofa. To keep her safe, even if it was only for a while.
Chapter Seven
Bone
I had no intention of falling asleep. It wasn’t as if I needed a lot of rest, not like humans. Even so, the warmth of the room, the gentle flickering of the firelight, the softness of the blanket, and the tenderness of the man who’d tucked me in on his sofa had mesmerized me into a deep sleep. I came awake with a jolt. The room was in deeper darkness, though the fire still blazed happily.
Sitting up, I rubbed my bare feet together. My boots had been taken off and set beside the sofa. Xander must have done that after I’d drifted off. Looking around, I didn’t find him in the room or in the kitchen. His bedroom door stood ajar. Keeping the soft blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I padded across the smooth stone floor into his room, finding his bed empty and the bathroom light off. A chill pulled my attention to the left. A sliding-glass door opened onto a small balcony. The darker silhouette of Xander sitting in a chair and staring at the river struck me in the chest in a strange way.
He didn’t look up as I eased out and sat with my back against the wall, staring through the wrought iron railing at the Thames. He balanced a tumbler of Scotch on one knee and his Glock on the other.
“Dangerous combination, don’t you think?”
A pause as he slid his focus down to me, his supernatural eyes glittering in the dark. “No worries, darling. I can handle my liquor.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees beneath the blanket, the London night biting, as usual. “You aren’t too cold out here? You can keep vigil from inside just as easily.”
His heavy gaze finally moved back out over the water, which was nothing but a black expanse beneath the cloudy night sky.
“I like it out here. London at night.”
“It doesn’t sound like it used to.”
“Exactly. I find the silence comforting.”
“Because most of the people are dead?” I found this unsettling coming from him.
“No. Because no one is being killed at the moment.” He knocked back his glass, the ice cubes tinkling as he drained it and set it beside his chair. “At least no one in close vicinity.”
Ah. Now I got it. “You mean no one that you need to go and rescue.”
He nodded but remarked on something else. “It’s the kind of quiet that makes you think for a moment, for this moment, that everything is all right.” He sort of laughed. “I can pretend anyway.”
“If it causes you so much grief to help them, then why bother?”
His gaze swiveled back to me. “Because they need me.” Then, much lower, “And I need them.”
He needed them? “Why do you—”
“Tell me,” he interrupted quickly, “since you’ve lived so long in this world, what was your favorite era to live in?”
“My favorite era?”
“Yes. What time would you go back to if you could?”
Strange. I’d never thought about it. Definitely not ancient Rome or any time during the Dark Ages when I hid away, hopping from one village or forest to another, avoiding the witch hunters. Not that any of them could kill me. A burning or a hanging couldn’t kill a demoness. But I preferred to live in peace wherever I went, so when eyes shifted at me in that suspicious way, I’d just move on. So let’s see…
“Oh. I know.”
I could hear him smiling more than see it. “I’m riveted. Let’s hear it.”
“The Renaissance, most definitely.”
“Interesting. Why the Age of Enlightenment?”
I huffed. “Why not? It’s when humans woke up and pursued art, science, and philosophy with such eagerness and enthusiasm that it changed their world for the better.”
“So you enjoyed watching humanity progress from the darkness into the light.”
“Yes, I—” I could feel his eyes on me, that keen, observing look fixed in shadow. I clamped my mouth shut, feeling as if he’d just caught me in a confession. Perhaps he had.
“I find it fascinating that a demoness who professes to remain neutral should care so much about human progress.”
“I never said I didn’t care about humanity.”
“Maybe not. But your actions say that you do loud enough.”
He said it more with understanding than with accusation, which made it only bite that much harder. I could give no defense because there wasn’t any. He was right.
“What about you? You seem fascinated with that period, as well. Artemisia Gentileschi was a Renaissance artist, after all.”
“Indeed.” He shifted in his chair, angling his body more toward me. “It was the Italian artists of the Baroque period who first used the technique chiaroscuro. Have you heard of it?”
“No.” I enjoyed art, but I obviously wasn’t the aficionado Xander was.
“Chiaroscuro is the use of bold contrasts of light and dark.” He shifted forward, his elbows on his knees, his gun still held loosely in one hand. “The Renaissance artists discovered something that would pave the way for other artists.” His voice dropped to that husky, honeyed tone that made the hair on my arms stand on end. “They discovered that the coupling of black and white, light and dark, made the most beautiful images of all. And I tend to agree.”
Yes, that heavy gaze of his caressed me in the shadows. His words drew me to visions of his strong, fair arms wrapped around me, his broad, pale chest pressed to mine. He was all things light, and I was all things dark, and his whispered words conjured up what beautiful images we could make together. I had a feeling he was imagining the same, his attention fixed wholly on me. This simple discussion had led us down a path I wanted to move away from.
“So you’re not a fan of modern art, then?”
He shifted back in his chair, still watching me. “No, I am. Tell me, who is your favorite artist?”
That was easy. “Jackson Pollock.”
“Abstract. Nice. That suits you.”
“What do you mean? Why does that suit me?”
“Because I don’t think you’re a fan of the concrete. Abstract leaves the world open to your own interpretation.”
Again, I was a little offended. Probably because he hit too close to home. “Perhaps I simply understand better than you that the world is chaos and violence.”
“You believe all of Pollock’s art was about chaos and violence?”
Something told me he knew this artist as well as he seemed to know Gentileschi. Why was a demon hunter so proficient in the study of art? And why did that make him even more fascinating?
Ha. I knew exactly why. He wasn’t simply a killing machine or expeller of demons. There was depth to this hunter. Beneath the charming veneer was a deeper soul. And if that didn’t make me want to peel more layers back to see what else was there.
“Not all,” I admitted. He’d just angered me, because I knew he alluded to my stance in staying out of the war. Which was none of his damn business.
“I’ll bet I can guess your favorite Pollock painting.”
I laughed in my throat. “This should be interesting.” Pollock was quite prolific.
“I get three guesses.” The smile was back in his voice.
“Two.”
He chuckled and grew quiet for a moment. “Lavender Mist.”
I grinned. “Nope.”
“Hmm. Yeah, too soft for you, I think.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’ll bet your favorite is something with a little more bite.”
I shoved my foot out from under the blanket and nudged his
leg with a bit of force. “Watch it.”
“See what I mean?”
“You’re stalling, hunter. You’ll never guess it.”
Another deep chuckle. Then he settled in, staring at me in the dark. Even in the shadows, I could see those magnificent eyes gauging me, examining me closely. The only sound was the soft rippling of the Thames, a hypnotic lure. Almost as bewitching as the quiet man next to me.
When he finally spoke, it caught me off guard because I’d fallen into a lovely trance-like silence with him. And, also, because he spoke the title of my favorite Jackson Pollock painting.
“Shimmering Substance.”
I was actually speechless. How did he possibly guess? It’s not like I had original art dangling in my workshop like he had in his apartment. It was mind-boggling.
“How did you know?”
He stood over me. “Because it’s bold and aggressive. It’s fierce and absolutely breathtaking.” His pointed stare held so much meaning. It was as if I could hear him whisper, mind-to-mind, like you. But he simply held out his free hand, the other still holding his Glock. “Come. It’s time we go see Axel.”
I didn’t miss the way he held my hand a moment too long when he helped me up, or his intense stare following me as I went to put my socks and boots back on. I didn’t remark, either, at the fact that he’d taken the care to take them off in the first place, like a friend or lover would. A sensation akin to sinking in deep waters began to swallow me up the more I learned of this enigmatic hunter. The feeling didn’t sit well.
But still, I wanted to know more.
Chapter Eight
Xander
Once back in the main room, she glanced at my holstered weapons before marching toward the foyer, lingering on Klimt’s “Judith.” I wondered what she could be thinking. Probably that I was an idealistic fool, hoping we could all be a hero like the Jewish widow who risked her virtue and her life to save others. Perhaps I was. But I’d already followed the road of the self-serving, apathetic, overindulgent bastard. And that path had scarred me deeper than I’d ever admitted to anyone. Even to George, the one who saved me from it. All I could do now was make up for my past sins, atone in whatever way I could, and try to fill the black hole I’d punched into my own heart.
Once on the roof, the first thing I noticed was the crack of thunder and flash of lightning several blocks south. Not just a storm, but one created by the clash of heavenly and demonic powers. One way to spot the battles was to follow the thunderstorms. Thunderstorms without rain. The crash of opposing forces stirred a tempest wherever large numbers gathered. The second thing I saw was a stream of dragon fire pouring from a great beast winging above the rooftops.
“Circe.” The battle was far too close to the Twelvers’ headquarters.
“So much for a quiet night,” she murmured.
“Stay here. I’ll be back.”
Without a second to spare, I fell into the Void, sifting through the black, gray shapes zipping past me, before I landed on solid ground in the alley where I’d taken Bone. Ether fire and battle cries echoed from two blocks over. I took off sprinting behind the brick buildings, leaping debris, catching sight of white angel wings through the half-fallen ruin that was a corner bookstore before this all began.
Uriel. He stood on the roof of a caved-in Hummer, swinging his sword and disintegrating red priests that were coming at him over the hood into sparks and ash. Rook and Simian’s minions seemed to multiply. The more we killed, the more that appeared. A sudden thought hit me. Perhaps that’s why Rook needed another way to keep their slaves in line. Spawning their demon priests took energy, even for princes as powerful as they were.
I reached for both Glocks and sifted through the crumbling building, putting my back to the Hummer and swinging wide, aiming and shooting in millisecond intervals. Black blood and cinders sprayed the air with the repeated flash of green ether fire.
To my left, Circe screeched and blew flame at a band of black-winged angel soldiers who blocked the fire in a phalanx of their impenetrable shields from the ground. Then one familiar angel shot up from the center like a lightning bolt, aiming ether-laced arrows and firing on the beast’s head. He landed one too close to her eyes, so she winged up and away with a piercing roar. She soared high, but was surely just circling.
“Xander!” shouted Uriel.
He nodded down the side street where Cooper was with his Twelvers, engaging and firing on a second horde of red priests. They were being overrun.
While I charged forward, blasting as I went, the five priests looked at me, hissed, sifted closer, snatched five Twelvers, and then were gone.
“No!” It was Hannah, diving forward to an empty space where their fellow soldiers stood a second before.
Another onslaught of six priests appeared and attacked, swinging their razor-sharp blades. Two leaped toward me, but I fired and blasted their heads wide open with a whispered word of banishment to hell.
“Descendentes.”
A spray of ether fire from Cooper and Hannah finished off the others. But they didn’t have the power to expel them, so their victims screeched and hissed in pools of black blood, trying to claw their way to the Twelvers.
“Like goddamn zombies!” shouted Cooper, popping off another round at their heads.
Still, their limbs moved, seeking the humans. I chuckled as I sauntered over and chanted the word to send them all back to hell, in pieces and parts. With a sharp crack and imploding swirl of black smoke, they vanished, leaving nothing but charred dust in the air.
“I really want to learn that trick.”
“No, you don’t,” I assured him, feeling the distinct taint of black that always stuck to me when I expelled demons.
A chilling screech from above warned that Circe was back, diving down for blood. I ran to the intersection where I’d left Uriel, hearing the boots of Twelvers coming up behind me.
Maximus bellowed, “Nock!” His fierce face was upturned to the sky, black wings spread wide.
His line of well-trained warriors nocked their ether arrows in perfect unison, aiming high, their wings snapped wide. The red dragon sucked in a breath of air to rain fire down on her victims, her focus intent on the band of angel warriors.
“They’ll be killed,” muttered Cooper, now at my side.
I was thinking Cooper might be right when a sudden and huge blast of electric-green ether fire shot up like a rocket from the shadowy corner of the building. No. Not like a rocket. It was a rocket. Coming from a bazooka in the capable arms of…Bone.
Circe banked hard left but wasn’t quite quick enough. The rocket clipped the edge of her wing, sending her spiraling for several seconds before she recovered and beat hard off into the night. She faltered in the sky, the injured wing still working, but barely, as she flew in a jagged line off toward the north. North Yorkshire, of course.
“Bone is our ally now?”
That was from Uriel, having sidled up on my right.
“You know her?”
He looked at me in that cool way Uriel had of making you feel like a complete imbecile. That look had become much colder since his time in captivity a few months ago.
“Everyone knows Bone.” He glanced at my chest. “Are you fully healed?”
“I am.”
I watched as Maximus approached Bone, saying something that made her smile. She offered the weapon. He took it as another warrior stepped up to have a look.
“You need to get to Stygos. Soon.”
I glanced back at Uriel, his assessing gaze sweeping my eyes and face. Like all hunters, I’d become accustomed to the dark slickness left behind from the demons I’d cast into the netherworld. Uriel was right. I hadn’t expelled the buildup of residue in a while. If I didn’t attend to it, it could influence my behavior, darken and twist my thoughts.
“I will,” I assured him, then changed the subject. “I thought you were supposed to be resting and healing, as well.”
Uriel shrugged. His whit
e, golden-tipped wing—the one that had been injured and raw from some sort of brutality when he was in captivity—looked almost as good as the other, though the feathers were still not quite as plentiful on the arch. He refocused his attention on Bone and the others, seeking something. He always seemed to be puzzling things out, thinking three steps ahead or examining the distant past for how it could help the present. He was an enigma. Fiercely loyal but now shrouded in an icy veil of seeming indifference.
“She has never fought with us before.” The archangel who made me a hunter and gave me a chance at redemption eyed me carefully. “Is this your doing?”
“What? Me?” I wondered if it was before answering. “No. Besides, she isn’t fighting on our side. Not exactly.”
“She just fired an ether rocket launcher at Rook’s pet dragon. I’d say she’s definitely fighting on our side.”
He had a point. I watched her saunter toward us with Maximus and his band of twenty behind her—a smaller force than he usually had with him.
“She’s helping us figure something out.”
Uriel watched her approach along with me. His quiet, “I see” expression said as much as anything else. Uriel was stoic, cryptic, and more honorable than any man or woman, supernatural or human, I’d ever met. His captivity had changed him, but not in the most fundamental of ways. His blue-eyed gaze sparked as Bone approached, his jaw tightening. Though I’d never have called him approachable before, he’d always worn a mantle of open compassion. Now, he didn’t. He was harder, masking his emotions behind a facade of cool scrutiny. It was painful to see.
He had his own reasons to distrust anyone on the opposing side. And though Bone seemed to be leaning toward ours, she still declared herself neutral. Uriel’s watchfulness reminded me I should use more caution around the siren, but bloody hell if I could help myself.
Cooper and Hannah mumbled to each other to my right as Bone approached with an archangel general and band of warriors behind her. For some ridiculous reason, it looked natural. Of course, it would, she was an angel once. She—
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