The Guardian

by Elicia Hyder

  Inside, a nurse’s station faced two square cubicles with wide glass doors. Through the door on the right, I saw a woman lying on the bed. I’d seen her before in a similar state:

  Tied to a bed in Venice, Italy.

  Only now, her midsection was swollen.

  I stumbled back a step, Azrael’s “plan” suddenly crystal clear. I raked my hand through my hair. “What have you done?”

  “She was already dead, Warren.” Azrael walked around to the woman’s bedside. “But her child was not.”

  Suddenly sick, I turned my back to them. Fury was in front of me, concern clear on her face. “What’s happening?”

  I looked past her, unable to focus on anything. “This is the woman Cassiel and I failed to save in Venice. The last victim of Vito Saez. She was pregnant when he killed her.”

  “My god.” Fury covered her mouth and looked toward Azrael. “And you’re keeping her alive to what? Swap out the Morning Star and hope Adrianne won’t notice?”

  “That’s the idea,” Azrael said.

  When I turned back toward the bed, Azrael was leaning over the woman’s body. Part of me wanted to drag him away from her. “This is twisted, Az. Even for you.”

  “I thought it was pretty genius,” he argued. “They’re close to the same gestation. Both boys. Both part of our world.”

  “Part of our world?” Fury asked.

  “The child’s mother had the sight,” I said. “It’s what made her Saez’s target.”

  “And if this boy inherits the gift, he’ll be an asset to Iliana. And to Jett,” Azrael said to Fury.

  I took a step forward, but Dana grabbed onto the back of my shirt. “That’s close enough, Archangel. We’ve worked really hard to keep her alive. We don’t need you screwing up the plan.”

  “You’re both insane,” Fury said, shaking her head.

  Azrael’s head tilted. “Why? Save the child. Neutralize the situation.”

  “How do you even plan on making the swap?” she asked.

  “Nurse Dana.” I looked back at her standing in the doorway. “You were there to take Jett the day he was born if he was the Morning Star, weren’t you?”

  “What?” Fury’s face whipped toward my father. “Are you kidding me?”

  With an exasperated sigh, Azrael walked over and put his hands on Fury’s shoulders. “I’ve never made it a secret that I’ll go to any lengths to do what’s necessary. Now, this is in the past, Allison. Jett is safe. It’s over.”

  There was hard pounding on the door outside.

  “That will be John.” Azrael’s eyes flicked toward the door. “Go deal with him.”

  Fury was angry. Dangerously angry. But she took a few steps backward, then walked out.

  When she was gone, I leaned against the glass wall. “So how’s this supposed to work? You’ll bring Adrianne here when she goes into labor?”

  Azrael’s head bent, and his eyes locked with mine. “Don’t worry about the details, son. The less you know the better.”

  “And the Morning Star? Where will you keep him?” I asked.

  “We have facilities in place to take care of him until permanent arrangements can be made.” He looked me up and down. “Where’s your sword?”

  That’s right. I was the catalyst for the permanent arrangements.

  “It’s locked up in the armory.” Nausea churned in my stomach again. I touched my temples. “Who knows about this?”

  “No one else outside this building except for the medical flight crew who helped me bring her here from Italy. Though they don’t know the details. Also, Chimera.”

  “The new girl?” I was surprised. “You trust her that much?”

  “Yes, and you will too.”

  “The doctor also knows,” Dana said.

  I looked up at the ceiling. “That’s why you brought Rothwell back.”

  “Yes,” Azrael said.

  There was shouting down the hall, and something slammed against the floor. I was out of the room first with Azrael right behind me. When we stopped in front of the glass doors, John was lunging toward Fury on the other side.

  Before the doors could open and Azrael or I could step in, Fury’s hand shot forward, and she caught John’s Adam’s apple in the webbing between her thumb and index fingers.

  He gagged and fell back coughing.

  Fury snarled. “Don’t come at me, John McNamara. You won’t live to regret it.”

  Azrael and I just looked at each other. Azrael smiled.

  Looking around the room, I saw they had turned over a small bookcase, and a baby’s car seat sat on the conference table. Baby Jett was inside it, kicking his tiny feet and screaming.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” I asked.

  Panting and holding his throat, John looked at me. “Just who I wanted to see.” John coughed again. “Hello, Warren.”

  John was older than me with a shock of gray in his hair and scruffy beard. He was smaller, too, by at least twenty pounds. And shorter. Five-eleven, tops.

  But none of that was to say I wouldn’t have to use my superpowers if he got physical. John was a retired Navy Seal commander and (I’d heard) still fighting in the local MMA circuit around Raleigh.

  “Hi, John. Fury, are you all right?”

  Fury was unbuckling the baby. “I’m fine. We were just arguing.”

  “Looked like more than that to me,” I said.

  She lifted the baby out and held him against her chest. “John kicked over the bookcase. He didn’t touch me.”

  “Can’t say as much for her.” John was still holding his throat.

  Fury straightened Jett’s black T-shirt. “You shouldn’t have tried to get in my face.”

  “No. You shouldn’t have,” I said.

  John took a step toward me. “Think you need to protect her from me, Warren?”

  I shook my head. “She can do a good job of that all by herself. But she probably won’t kill you. I will.”

  John smirked. “OK.” He looked at Fury. “So is it him then? Is he Jett’s father?”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Fury said with a hard eyeroll.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No. He’s not the father!”

  “Then who is?”

  Fury bounced the crying baby and rubbed his back. “He doesn’t have a father, John!”

  Whatever John was expecting to hear, that clearly wasn’t it. “Come again?”

  “Jett doesn’t have a father.” She took a deep breath. “He’s an angel, not a human.”

  John looked a bit like a cartoon character who’d been smacked in the face with a frying pan. All that was missing were tiny birds circling his head.

  “She’s telling you the truth,” I said.

  His dangerous eyes darted toward me. “Stay out of it, Warren.”

  “How about if I get involved?” Azrael walked around me. “You’re a guest in the middle of my army. I suggest you not forget that.”

  John spat on the floor at Azrael’s feet.

  I lurched toward him.

  “Enough!” Fury yelled.

  Azrael threw his arm across my chest to hold me back.

  Fury walked over. “Can you take Jett and give us a minute?” She turned the baby around in her arms. His black T-shirt said SECURITY across the front in all white caps.

  “Please?” she said, holding him toward me.

  I didn’t want to move. My eyes flashed toward John again.

  Azrael pulled me back a step. “Take the baby and give them the room. You can watch from the lobby.” I didn’t budge. “Come on, Warren. She’ll kill him faster than either of us if she has to.”

  With a deep breath, I carefully took Jett from Fury’s hands, dangling him like a rag doll.

  “Good grief, Warren. Hold him like a football,” she said.

  I’d never really played football, but I tucked Jett into the crook of my arm and cradled him against my ribs. “You know me being this close isn’t healthy f
or him.”

  Too much exposure to me or any other angel would cause Jett—or any other baby—irreparable damage. Even with limited contact, he’d suffer from a migraine when taken from me. It was the primary reason I’d had to leave my family when Iliana was born.

  “It’s better than him listening to us fight,” she said. “It will only be a minute.”

  I took a step backward toward the lobby, keeping my eyes on John. “I’ll be out there listening to every word.”

  “I expect no less,” Fury said.

  Azrael followed me into the lobby. Through the walls, we listened intently to the conversation in the living room.

  It didn’t take long for John to swallow the idea that Jett was supernatural. He’d seen enough unexplainable things in his time with Fury to not be completely thrown off the dock by the revelation. Sloan had brought John back from the edge of death once, after all.

  But it was Fury lying to him he couldn’t seem to get past. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. He’d gone through her whole pregnancy and the first two months of Jett’s life believing he was a dad. And he wasn’t. That’d be hard for anyone to forgive. Including me.

  Finally, he shook his head, staring at the floor between them. “I can’t do this anymore. You don’t love me. You don’t respect me—”

  Fury started to object, but John held up a hand to stop her. “Allison, if you had a shred of respect for me, you’d have told me all this in the beginning.”

  Her face fell, but she didn’t argue.

  “I’ll keep Jett until you get back, but after that, you’re both on your own.”

  “John, I’m so—”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

  Az and I both cringed.

  John pointed at Fury. “You’ve got two weeks to get back, or I’m dumping Jett outside that gate.”

  I looked down at the baby in my arms. Black hair. Dark skin. One eye green and the other dark-chocolate, just like his mother’s.

  He reached toward my face, seemingly mesmerized. I was probably the only angel he’d seen since the day he was born. I bent to meet his fingers. “Don’t worry, little one. I’ll bring your mom back in no time.”

  The sliding doors opened, and John walked out carrying the car seat. He put it down on the table against the wall, then walked toward me with his arms outstretched.

  I wanted to say something, but what? I opted for silence instead as I handed him the baby.

  As John wrestled with the seat’s straps, Fury carried the diaper bag through the doors. “He’ll have a migraine soon after you leave. There’s baby Tylenol in the inside pocket.”

  “We’ll be fine,” John said, pushing her aside.

  She forced her way in front of him again and bent over the car seat. She kissed the top of the baby’s head. “I love you, Jett.”

  John moved her out of the way again and hooked the car seat’s handle over his arm. “Two weeks, Allison,” he said, grabbing the diaper bag. “You’ve got two weeks.”

  When John threw the door open, Fury walked over beside me. “You OK?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Yes.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders, and she let me. She leaned into me and shook her head against my chest. “I’m going to kill Flint when I get my hands on him.”

  Before the heavy front door closed, a hand pulled it back open. A figure darkened the doorway. I half expected it to be Flint.

  It wasn’t.

  This person was short with dark skin and wild hair… and an unearthly power that radiated off her.

  “Who is that?” Fury whispered.

  The door closed behind the woman.

  “Oh my god.” I took a step back. “She’s a Seramorta.”

  Chapter Seven

  Seramorta—half-angel and half-human beings—were rare. Nonexistent, I had mistakenly thought.

  I was one before I died and Azrael brought me back as an angel. Sloan and our friend Taiya had been too before their angelic parents had been destroyed. Now, all three of us were either one thing or the other. Angel or human. No longer both.

  As far as I knew, this woman was the only Seramorta left on Earth.

  She was young, at least younger than I was. With olive skin and wavy red-and-black hair—the right half of which was shaved. Her nose had a shiny diamond stud, and her chest was covered with a colorful tattoo. She was dressed all in black. Torn jean shorts and a shredded leather top.

  She waved, and the bangles around her wrist jingled. “Hi, I’m Chimera.”

  “Holy shit.” I fell back a step. “You’re an Angel of Knowledge.”

  Chimera cupped her hand around her mouth. “And I’m a human, but don’t tell anybody.”

  “Wow.” I looked at Fury. “Wow.”

  “I thought you’d be surprised,” Azrael said behind me.

  I turned, nodding my head emphatically. “You were right. I didn’t know there were any of us left.”

  Chimera laughed. “I’ve known about you for years.”

  “So I just found out.” I cut my eyes toward Fury.

  Perhaps sensing the potential of tension, Azrael gestured toward the living room. “This is a conversation that requires a chair.” He gestured toward the living area. “Shall we sit? There’s much to discuss.”

  Azrael and Chimera went first. Fury and I hung back in the lobby. “Did you know?” I asked her.

  “I’m just as surprised as you.”

  “Any idea who her parent is?”

  She shook her head. “I wish it were that easy.”

  “What do you think? Azrael wouldn’t bring her on if he didn’t trust her. And she has helped you a lot, right?”

  “She has, but don’t forget, Azrael’s getting sloppy.”

  The excitement I felt waned a bit.

  Azrael stuck his head out the door. “You coming?”

  We joined them in the living area. Azrael sat at the head of the conference table, and Fury and I sat across from Chimera.

  Fury leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs at the knee. “Where did you come from, and who is your angel sire?”

  I blinked. Fury’s bluntness might just come in handy. I looked at Chimera for her answer. She looked just as surprised as the rest of us. Nervously, she put her hands on the table. “Well, I’m originally from San Francisco, and my father is a demon named Torman.”

  “A demon,” Fury repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “And we can trust you?”

  “Well…” Chimera drummed her short black fingers on the tabletop. “Fury, your father was a demon. Sloan’s mother was a demon. And, technically, Azrael was a demon. So…can I trust you?”

  Point for Chimera.

  I looked over at my father. “You’re right. I like her.”

  He chuckled.

  Fury wasn’t laughing. “You’ve done work for me online for years. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

  Chimera started counting on her fingers. “First, you never asked. Second, you wouldn’t have trusted me if I had, and third, you didn’t tell me who you were either. It’s not like it was part of the job description.”

  “But, as I understand it, you sought her out and volunteered the information about Sloan, right?” I asked.

  “Thank you, Warren.”

  I was pretty sure that was the first time Fury had ever uttered those words to me.

  “You’re right, I did,” Chimera said. “But I didn’t set out to find Fury. I was looking for Azrael.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “At six years old, I became a ward of the state of California when my grandmother died. My mom was a total piece of shit, barely better than my demon father, so I didn’t have anybody else. Right away, my caseworker knew I was smart. Like, crazy-smart.”

  “She has a photographic memory, and they can’t even measure her IQ,” Azrael said.

  “Yeah, I basically became a human lab rat at SanTech Uni
versity until I was a teenager.”

  That was one of my greatest fears for Iliana.

  “My only link to the outside world was the web, and as Azrael already said, I’m smart, so it didn’t take long to figure out I could do things I shouldn’t.

  “I started small, getting into the university’s databases, changing people’s schedules around and screwing up their payroll. By the time I was fifteen, I’d cracked California’s system. I created myself a whole new identity, changed my age to eighteen, and erased every bit of information that anyone had ever stored on me. Once my fake credit cards showed up in the mail, I was gone.”

  “You were on your own when you were fifteen?” I asked, impressed.

  “Yep. And I moved abroad when I turned eighteen because getting a passport was a little bit harder.”

  “How old are you now?” Fury asked.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  I leaned on my elbow. “Is it true you hacked the Pentagon in 2009?”

  “Yes.” She pointed at me. “But on that one, I got caught.”

  I straightened. “They said they never found out who did it.”

  “That was the official statement, but they found me shockingly fast. I learned then the importance of living in a country that doesn’t extradite to the States.”

  We all laughed.

  “But instead of jail time, they hired me to fix their system, and I did.” She sat back and steepled her fingers. “But not before I did a little poking around, of course. That’s how I found Alfie Davies, Assistant Director of Intelligence to General Michael Barker.”

  “The Commandant of the Marine Corps?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Davies, the guy who worked for him, isn’t from around here. Wink, wink.”

  “He’s an angel?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it then. I had never met an angel before, but I’d also never seen a living person who didn’t have a soul before either. And I wanted to know more.”

  I knew exactly what that was like. It was what had made me seek out Sloan after seeing the video footage of her.

  “So I started digging to find out everything about Alfie Davies, and that’s how I found a guy named ‘Damon Claymore.’” Chimera actually used air quotes. “The digital paper trail between Davies and Claymore Worldwide Security was as long as the state of California.”