“Lucky me, I have one foot in either place. Special little snowflake and all that. What makes you think we have more to discuss?”
“BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T left yet.” Michael extended his hand.
Presumptuous ass. He had a point, though. Chaos was exploding here, and the damage was already done. Seeing the destruction made Ronnie’s heart hurt. She settled her palm against Michael’s.
She was supposed to push him away—tell him have a nice immortality and leave. When she took his hand so he could phase them, images skated through her mind. Meeting him in a temple in Israel, millennia ago. Sparring with him in heaven just a few months back, as he tried to coax her memories to the surface. Talking until the early hours of the morning.
She swallowed the longing that came with memories from two lives. “Fine. Let’s talk.”
In a blink, sand and sun replaced their surroundings. The crash of waves carried the scent of the sea and calmed her. Did he bring me here on purpose? No. He shouldn’t remember a random comment she made at a random point about loving the beach. It had to be a coincidence, and wasn’t at all because he was considerate, or that he was failing as hard at forgetting her as she was him. He looked incredible, and the strength in his grip. It wasn’t fair that seeing him made her miss their past even more.
He got them here quickly, which meant he was more powerful than she remembered. Then again, these days everyone was. They’d have to start measuring ability on a scale of how many buildings an agent could destroy with a wave of their hand, rather than whether or not they could make a spark of lightning flow over their skin without breaking a sweat.
She spared him an appraising glance. Almost a head taller than her five-foot five-inches. Dark hair, pale eyes, and fashion sense three decades old. It didn’t matter that his clothing was out of date. Seeing him in the faded jeans and grungy plaid shirt did dangerously tantalizing things to her.
He let go of her and disappointment rushed in. This was ridiculous. He was sexy, but so were lots of beings. Like the two currently pissed off at her for being inconsiderate—
“Ever heard of collateral damage?” The irritation in his question made it easier for her to cut off her gawking.
“Funny you should mention that. I found you on U-View, and that’s some fairly serious damage. Do you know what kind of PR nightmare this is?”
“What?” He stared at her, eyes wide for a second, before giving a disgusted snort. “I mean the people. You know—human beings, not a company image? Buildings were destroyed. Lives put at risk.”
If she wanted this kind of shit, she’d have stayed at the office. He was supposed to be relieved to see her. Be more than irritated with her. “It would have been worse if you’d continued to stand there hiding behind your invisible bubbles of nothingness.”
“Things didn’t start exploding until you arrived.”
There was no way he was turning this on her. “Including your opponents. And yeah, things blew up, but no one died. Were you going to stand there forever, hoping neither of them got the drop on you? Vine was free when I showed up.”
“They’d get tired before me.”
“You were expending more energy than they were. None of us are limitless.” She clenched her hands until her nails dug into her palms. When he was being a self-righteous prick, it was simpler remembering how just another guy he was.
“You’d know.”
He meant what she did to Gabe, draining of him of his power reserves to the point it took him months to recover. “He literally stabbed me in the back. I did what I had to do.” Her own words echoed in her head. She was saying that too often, and the sentiment tasted sour.
“So did I.” He turned away. “Thank you for your help. Am I keep you from PR damage control, or do you have time to have an actual conversation?”
She didn’t want this. It was good to see him, despite the argument. She missed him enough it clawed at her throat. More than was reasonable. Putting a name to the pit behind her ribs made the desire to spend time with him stronger. “I’d like to talk. Please?”
He looked at her, brows raised in expectation.
“I’m sorry there was so much destruction.” Not that she saw a way to avoid it, but it hurt to see things wrecked. “I wish there was another way.”
“What do you know about what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She hated admitting that, more because it meant she didn’t have next steps than because she was worried Michael would judge her. He didn’t work that way. “Or close enough. Humans are kidnapping agents. Gabe might be involved. Agents are hunting people. There are explosions that could only be ours. More than one, as if Ariel wasn’t enough. My best guess is this is going to get worse before it gets better.”
“It will, unless I can keep it from happening.”
“Alone?” That wasn’t what she meant to say. Not that she had any sort of plan, but she was pretty sure somewhere in her head that letting him walk away should be the end result.
“Less red tape this way. Fewer”—he dragged his gaze over her—“distractions.”
So she wasn’t the only one this meeting was impacting. Heat flooded her under his gaze. She didn’t know if that made her feel smug or not. She never meant to be a distraction—not before, and not now. Memories teased her—his hands roaming her body in the shower, the way she molded against him when he held her. On second thought, that kind of distraction sounded nice. “We can help each other.” Was she offering to keep him around, or to get more information from him? She didn’t know.
“You’re part of the machine.” His disdain squashed her pleasant fantasies.
“I have to do something.” The argument felt weaker aloud than when she used it to convince herself. This was why Irdu and Izzy were mad at her too. How much denial was she in about what she was doing? No. She made the decisions she needed to with the information she had. “Ubiquity has resources, information—”
“Corruption. Bureaucracy.” He might as well have plucked the words from the top of her thoughts.
An ache spread in her chest. Familiarity mixed with frustration and longing. It was a bitter cocktail. “God. You’re infuriating. How did I forget that? I missed you.”
“I—” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “I miss you too. I struggle to keep my distance, even though it was my idea.”
“Come back and work with us?” This wasn’t fair of her. If she was miserable dealing with all the second-guessing and corporate politics, he’d hate it more. Michael preferred straight-forward. At least part of her more or less grew up in the system.
“Why don’t you quit? Do this on your own.”
That wasn’t an option. “There are thousands of agents of heaven and hell, because there need to be that many. There are also four originals for a reason. We’re not made to be independent entities.”
“And Gabriel shot that notion to pieces. The rules have changed over the millennia.”
“The rules have changed over the last six months.” She couldn’t keep the frustration and pleading from her voice. “And you put up a good front, but you’re not following any rules.”
“Personal growth, for ourselves and humanity?” He made it sound so straightforward. “I’m certain I’ve got that covered.”
Had he always been so stubborn? She didn’t know. The realization hit her hard. As Metatron, she was head-over-heels for Michael. Together, the two of them could do no wrong. As Uriel, Metatron flooded her with emotions from the past. Uriel spent so much time questioning who felt what, that Michael left before they had a chance to rediscover each other. “It’s not that simple.”
“It never is. If I go back to Ubiquity—which I tried once if you remember—I won’t have the freedom to pursue what really needs to be done.”
“So you’re going to keep doing this acting on your own thing, even though it’s too much for even you to handle solo, and not share whatever it is you know?” Something nudged the back of her mind. A though
t from earlier that flitted away before she could grasp it. It solidified and dropped in a heavy pit in her gut. No. “What did you think I was going to do with Vine? You were surprised I sent him to hell. You couldn’t have done that, so what was your plan?” It wasn’t true. He wouldn’t have. He wasn’t... “I might have a gap a few thousand years gap in my knowledge, but we don’t kill our own.”
He clenched his jaw. “Times have changed.”
“Not like that. We don’t kill our own.” She was repeating herself, but it was better than giving into the urge to sink into the sand. There were too many implications when it came to killing angels and demons. A sharp stab, invisible but vivid, spread through her gut as if she’d been run through. An old wound from when Gabriel stabbed her three-thousand years ago, intent on destroying her.
She stepped back. “Are you really taking agent lives? Izzy said that wasn’t possible.” Dread pooled around an ancient wound that wasn’t there. “You’ve figured out how.”
“You said it yourself—I can’t send demons back to hell. If they’ve taken a cherub for the purpose of gaining power and skirting the system, they’ve lost their chance at reform.” His face was an impassive mask, and his voice never wavered.
Up until now, she assumed Ariel had been stripped of her rank and name but existed in some form in heaven. Metatron survived an attempt on her life; Ronnie thought it worked that way for everyone. “You don’t know they can’t change. Did you figure out how to do it before or after Ariel?” If Gabe knew how to kill, Ronnie wouldn’t be here.
Michael dropped his gaze.
“Oh God. You... She’s...” It hit her harder than she expected. True, Ariel tried to take a part of Ronnie, but they were friends before that. Ronnie remembered that bond. Missed that connection. Dreaded trusting anyone else enough to try again.
Michael was killing immortal beings, and thought it was all right. Banishing them to non-existence. Bile and tears rose in her throat. She needed to process, but not in front of him. She blinked from his sight without another word.
Chapter Fourteen
Ronnie’s thoughts were a muddled mess. Are you free? As she clicked Send on the text to Irdu, she remembered they weren’t quite on speaking terms.
This was a good time to fix that. She needed to stop burning bridges and start rebuilding foundations.
Working.
His single word reply wasn’t surprising, but it still hurt. She was about to pocket her phone when it buzzed in her hand again. He’d sent a follow up.
Maybe after work. I saw the video. I’m glad you’re safe.
A sad smile slipped out without her permission. What was she supposed to say to that? Thanks.
In that case, Ronnie wasn’t going back to the office. She should—it was her job, and she tried to be responsible—but the revelations of the day spilled inside. She thought she’d put most of this behind her, but apparently she’d tucked it away instead of coping.
She took herself to the middle of a crowded casino in Las Vegas. The highs and lows, good and bad, and all the lights and noise flowed over and through her—an external source of chaos to lose herself in.
Michael had always been a pillar of everything good. It was one of the things that drew her to him. He had empathy, and understanding, and he cared. When he was with Metatron, he listened. When he met Uriel, even before he knew who she was, he went out of his way to make sure she was all right.
Now he was snuffing out something that was meant to be eternal. Like someone had tried to do to her. Was she supposed to be okay with that? In a single revelation, he’d fallen from his pedestal, and summoned her most painful memories.
This sucked. Once upon a time, a bad day would mean sneaking away for some alone time with Irdu at work, and then going dancing with Ariel. The names ached in every inch of her.
She needed to be somewhere like the clubs she and Ari used to frequent, surrounding herself in the emotions of the people. Someplace she could be herself but vanish in the crowds. And not home, since she’d come up with a string of excuses about why she never moved out of Michael’s vacated condo—the place she was only supposed to be until she got back on her feet.
When she was exhausted and it felt like no one believed she deserved her position, she liked to curl up in the master bed, and lose herself in the traces of his presence. Wow, she was a child. Tomorrow seemed like a good time to get her shit together and move out. Today, she was clearing her head.
It was barely nine a.m. in Nevada. The casino shops weren’t open, but the floors were packed. This was a temporary place to collect her thoughts, but Ronnie didn’t want to stay. She pulled up a Ubiquity app on her phone. It was one of their most popular. It had global lists of events. For instance, if someone wanted to know where all the soccer games, gun shows, or flea markets currently took place, they could find them here. The app missed smaller venues, but like everything about Ubiquity, the standard user’s needs came second. The purpose of this was to help track cherubs, sensory addicts, and these days, rogue agents who felt they were above the rules.
Ronnie might worry they had a several-gig file on her, if she didn’t trust Irdu to have her back. He was so good to her.
And if she couldn’t see him, she wanted a fantasy convention. A big one. Where she could dress as an impish demon and keep her wings out, and no one would think for a moment they were real. Bingo. There was one going on in the UK right now. She wasn’t going looking like this, though.
The shops wouldn’t open until ten, but she was enjoying the rush. The not being in her own head. She meandered through the rows of machines, lingering on the clatter of digital noises and the sparkle of lights. It was better than watching dimming and spiking auras. Non-threatening. No expectations.
Waves of joy swept past her, tasting like fruit, and mingled with the bitter of disappointment and gloom. She tried to shrug off the negative. To rid her mouth of the flavor. She quickened her pace and moved toward the pit and the small group of people watching a roulette wheel.
“Hey, angel.” One of the guys gestured to her. He had no idea how appropriate the nickname was. “Come be my good luck charm.”
She supposed she could tweak the air currents, make sure he won, but she wasn’t interested in fixing the odds. The way he raked his gaze over her though, lingering on her hips and chest... She liked some emotions more than others. Grief, ambivalence... they weighed her down. Lust was one of her favorites, and it spilled from him like decadence in sweet cream.
“I’d love to.” She stepped up next to him at the table and let his desire wash over her, rich, dense, and flowing across her skin with seductive grace.
“Red or black?”
She furrowed her brow. “I’m fond of both. Evens?”
“Playing it safe. We can start there.” He placed his bet, and the dealer spun the wheel. He won. Only his money back, but it was enough of a confidence boost to raise his mood. He wrapped an arm around Ronnie’s hips and tugged her closer. “Nice suit. You been up all night or skipping work?”
“Either. Both. Place a bet on the middle dozen.” She didn’t want to talk about what brought her here, even in the vaguest terms.
He won again, doubling his money, and continued to take her advice, shifting his chips with each spin of the wheel. Each time his stack grew, so did the desire he radiated. She liked that feeling. The way it caressed her cheeks. Danced along her spine. Flowed along her fingertips and every inch of her body. The minutes crept up on ten. She’d tell him farewell soon, and they’d both be happier with their mornings.
“I’m on a hot streak.” He traced a thumb over the back of her hand. “I can’t fucking lose.” Because she did a decent job of calculating the odds. It wouldn’t hold up, but she wasn’t going to tell him and spoil the mood. “What’s your favorite number, angel?”
“Four.” The answer slipped out before she could consider why he asked.
He gave the dealer his bet and thanked him.
“
Don’t...” She let pleading leak into her voice.
“No more bets,” the dealer called.
“Don’t look so stressed.” The player squeezed her hand. “You’re my good luck charm.”
Because she was pushing someone’s limits for a contact high. She hadn’t done anything special, but he was about to lose everything on the table. The wheel seemed to turn in slow motion. She watched the ball bounce and clatter and click over four. Before the spinning stopped, her companion’s mood plummeted toward depression. The fresh cloud settled around Ronnie, bringing back a reminder of what she wanted to escape.
She vanished before he could turn to her, and reappeared in her office at Ubiquity. Her mood plummeted too low to have an interest in the convention. Might as well work after all. Here the gnawing of pending disaster always sat in her gut. She expected it. Maybe that was fatalistic, but she struggled to shake it off.
She sank into her chair. Everything she tried to push aside rushed back. Michael was destroying angels and demons. Erasing them from existence. And Ariel had been one of them. She knew Ari had been too far gone to save. Cassiel was the same; Ronnie didn’t question that. Even for the flash of a second Cassiel’s already crumbling essence remained in Ronnie’s head, she’d felt the instability.
If she used logic to process the situation, she knew where Michael was coming from. He represented His Will and wouldn’t act outside of that. But her past—both that she’d been on Gabe’s hit list twice, and the loss of Ariel, made the revelation ache.
She logged into her computer and scanned her email. A message from Irdu caught her attention.
The list you asked for.
That was vague. There was a document attached, with a list of addresses across the country and corresponding times. After he’d found the victims she asked for, she’d asked him to get funeral locations for all the people impacted by the different disasters of the last few days. There wasn’t a good record of who died in Boston, but the explosion and then the tornado... Ronnie didn’t know why, but she needed to see those people were laid to rest. Whatever awaited them in the next life, she needed to know they had closure in this one.
Soul Betrayer Page 12
