Warrior Angel

by Heaton, Felicity

  The boss sipped her drink and pulled a thoughtful expression as her dark eyes narrowed on the liquid. Taylor started to lose what little patience she had left. People crowded them, pushing for room at the bar, and knocking against her. She was one shove away from snapping.

  Einar moved so he was shielding her.

  He placed one hand against the bar top, blocking access to her, and the boss formed the other wall. Damn, she appreciated the hell out of that, was thankful he could read her and had moved to help her without hesitation as her temperature started to lower again. She drew down a deep breath as she reined in her anger and blew it out, letting it all go. She had to keep a level head. Going nuclear on the patrons of the club for jostling her was as bad as bringing an angel into it.

  “I thought those demons would come and see what had happened to their mate.” The boss smiled and set her empty glass down on the dark bar top. Her look turned innocent. “I didn’t think it would be you heading back that way.”

  “What happened the night before?” Einar’s bass voice carried over the music.

  The boss frowned at him, her pretty face twisting in a look of disgust that mixed with resignation as she sighed. Taylor hid her smile. The boss couldn’t have made it more obvious that she didn’t like giving information on demons to an angel if she had tried.

  “I called in a favour and disposed of some garbage. Unfortunately, my favour was only good for one demon. Alexi is an extortionist. I couldn’t afford the price he placed on the others.” The boss gave Taylor a look that said ‘you know what I mean’.

  Taylor did.

  She had worked with him once and had learned her lesson.

  Alexi was a powerful demon, but he placed high prices on his services. His charge for all three demons had probably been the boss’s soul.

  The woman huffed. “So I sent the other demon after the remainder. You’re not the only one who wants to see these bastards dead. They’re bad for business.”

  “Bad for business? Why?” Taylor shot Einar a look that warned him to keep quiet this time.

  This was her territory. It was better that she did the talking.

  If Einar asked the questions, the boss would end up feeling as though she was under interrogation, and that would definitely get Taylor barred. It would also wreck their chance of getting the information she could feel the boss was close to giving them.

  “Competition,” the boss muttered but Taylor caught it.

  Her gaze flickered to the dancers. “They’re running a club?”

  The boss glanced at the dance floor and then looked back at Taylor. She moved closer, and her gaze swept the room again before she spoke. Did she fear whoever they were after? It wasn’t like the boss to be afraid. Demons worked for her because they knew she could handle anything in London, evil or good. There wasn’t a demon out there that was a match for the boss when she was in a foul mood.

  “It’s a club, but that’s not its purpose. That’s just a front to get bodies through the door. They make out that they’re like this place, somewhere humans can let go and do things with no regrets and no strings attached, but that isn’t what’s happening in there.” The boss cast her gaze over the people nearby again and leaned in close to Taylor. Her voice lowered until Taylor barely heard her over the music. “It’s Euphoria.”

  Taylor stepped back into the bar. She stared at the boss, her eyes wide as that word slowly sunk in.

  “Euphoria?” Einar said and Taylor covered his mouth with her hand, and quickly looked around to make sure that no one else had heard him.

  It couldn’t be.

  “You’re sure?” She looked at the boss and released Einar’s mouth.

  The woman nodded. “I sent a couple of my boys in to check it out, ones who couldn’t be traced to me.”

  “It would explain the body count.” Taylor pressed her fist to her mouth.

  This was bad.

  Very bad.

  Worse than she had imagined.

  “We’ll deal with it. Whereabouts is the club?” She wasn’t sure they could deal with it, but she had to do something.

  “Soho. I’ll give you the address but they won’t let you in.” The boss jerked her chin towards Einar. “They’ll spot him a mile away and shut down before you can get there. They keep watch.”

  Taylor frowned. There had to be a way into the club. She could go alone but something told her that Einar wouldn’t agree to that, not if he knew what sort of hellhole the club would be.

  Euphoria.

  In all her years, she had never thought that a demon would dare start such a place in her city.

  “You’re sure they’re dealing in it?” Because she wasn’t, or maybe she just wanted this all to turn out to be a hoax, a joke on the boss’s part.

  The woman nodded.

  There wasn’t a hint of doubt in her eyes.

  “Can you send a man there tonight? Someone who’ll check out. He’s got to be new here or the sort who’ll frequent a lot of clubs. Someone the demons won’t suspect.” Taylor could see the mischief surfacing in the boss’s eyes and shook her head, warning her not to even think about picking that damned bastard.

  The woman smiled and glanced at Einar. “I know just the man. No one would suspect him.”

  Taylor groaned at that, hoping she was wrong but aware that the way her luck was going, the man was going to be tall, dark and undead. It was just like the boss to choose the one man who could jeopardise whatever she had with Einar. She probably thought it was funny.

  Taylor didn’t.

  “Just send him in to confirm it and then we’ll send him back to lure the ringleaders out. We’ll deal with them tonight,” she bit out, her mood darkening at the thought of what was going to happen.

  Maybe there was a way she could minimise the fallout from the boss’s meddling?

  Maybe snowballs really wouldn’t melt in Hell.

  The boss winked and disappeared into the crowd. Taylor looked up at Einar, expecting his eyes to be on her.

  “A club like this?” He glanced at her and then looked over her head again.

  “No. This is civilised.” Taylor looked around, not missing that the demons nearby were still watching them. “We’ll talk about it en route.”

  “She is going to get that vampire, isn’t she?” The darkness in his voice as he said that gave his words more bite than the vampire in question.

  There was no fooling Einar. Which meant, there was also no point in lying to him.

  She nodded.

  She had been wondering how she was going to break it to him. At least one thing was out in the open. Now she just had to say the other. She couldn’t do it here. She didn’t want an audience.

  There was one thing she could say though.

  “I feel nothing for Villandry,” she said and his gaze flickered to her and then he looked beyond her again.

  “Good.” That word was harsh, barked from between clenched teeth.

  His expression softened as she stared up at him and then shifted, feelings crossing it she couldn’t decipher.

  His eyes darkened.

  What was he looking at?

  Was it the other vampires?

  When she turned and followed his gaze, her heart skipped a beat.

  He was watching the dancers.

  She had almost forgotten they were there. Her eyes fixed on the couples nearest the edge of the dance floor and desire beat through her veins in time with the music, a pounding hard rhythm that had her shifting on the spot and drove thoughts of dancing like that with Einar through her mind.

  She pictured them on the dance floor, her fingers wandering across his broad bare chest, teasing his pebbled nipples, fingernails raking over his stomach muscles and leaving red marks in their wake. She imagined the feel of his body against hers, as hot and hard as it had been last night, brushing her as he moved with her, his hands coursing over her arms and sides, caressing her hips and breasts.

  She wanted to feel that and she w
anted to do those things, in public, with him. The thought of it fired her up, sending tingles of desire rippling through her body.

  She turned again and stared into Einar’s dark eyes. His wide pupils engulfed his irises. She could sense his restraint as it mirrored hers, and his battle against his desire. He wanted it too.

  His gaze fell and met hers. Her heart beat harder, thumping against her chest, driven by anticipation.

  He reached out and swept his fingers along her jaw and then down her neck, his touch light and teasing. She shivered when he brushed them over her throat, clearing her long black hair from it, and frowned. She knew what he was looking for but he wouldn’t find them there. She would never have let Villandry mark her in such a prominent place.

  Einar’s thumb caressed the line of her jaw and then her cheek. Her eyelids slipped to half-mast when he lightly ran the pad of it over her lower lip and then she looked up at him through her lashes. Her lips parted and she breathed hard, wrestling for restraint that seemed impossible to obtain.

  She wanted him. Needed him. Ached for him. It pounded in her body, thrummed in her veins, compelling her to satisfy her deep hunger to kiss and touch him. The look in his eyes, the fascination as he watched his thumb tease her lip, said he felt the same.

  It was wrong of them but she didn’t care. She needed him.

  Her kind could think what they wanted about her.

  Because she could only think about him.

  CHAPTER 10

  “What is Euphoria?” Einar looked out over the dark city, his gaze scanning the adjacent rooftops of the elegant red brick and sandstone buildings and then the street below.

  Taylor stood beside him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, holding her leather jacket closed.

  The temperature had dropped, and not just in the city.

  It had fallen cold between them too.

  He didn’t mean for it to be that way, but he couldn’t help it. Whenever he thought about the fact Taylor had slept with that vampire, the same vampire they had been forced to travel across the city with, he bristled and wanted to kill something.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  He couldn’t blame her for something that had happened before they had even met.

  His foul mood was due to the vampire.

  Villandry had passed the entire taxi journey to Soho staring at Taylor, making lewd allusions to their past trysts, and pretending that he owned her.

  It was enough to make Einar want to kill him. He didn’t even care that it would have ruined their hunt for the demons and their chance to capture them. He would have killed him the moment they were in private, away from mortal eyes, if it hadn’t been for Taylor.

  While Villandry had paid constant attention to her, her attention had been firmly locked on him instead of the vampire. She had even gone as far as openly touching his hand at one point, and he had taken comfort from it, together with the sliver of control he had needed to stop him from twisting the damned vampire’s head off.

  As if she knew his thoughts, her hand brushed his, bringing him back to the rooftop and her. She stroked the backs of her fingers across his and he closed his eyes and tangled their hands together. He breathed deep, wanting to let his anger go so things between them would be fine again, but it was difficult.

  “He means nothing to me.”

  Those words were sweet reassurance. Honey to his heart.

  He shifted his gaze to meet hers. She smiled, stunning in the low light, her dark hair tied back into a neat ponytail now and exposing the full extent of her beauty.

  “Although... I don’t mind seeing you jealous.” Her smile grew a little wicked and teasing.

  Jealous wasn’t a strong enough word for how he felt.

  There should be another word for the possessive, murderous rage inside him.

  Something stronger.

  “Tell me,” he said and her eyes widened, her heartbeat picking up a note of fear.

  Einar smiled to reassure her that he wasn’t asking her to confess her feelings or anything of that sort. He wasn’t going to push her because he knew how difficult this was for her. It was difficult for both of them. Impossible. Yet he still wanted to give it his best shot and convince her that it would work out between them and that there was no reason for her to flip between wanting him and wanting to leave.

  No matter what she thought, he wasn’t going to hurt her.

  “Euphoria.” That single word brought relief to her eyes.

  She gazed into the distance, the chill breeze tousling strands of her ponytail, and sighed.

  She was beautiful with London as her backdrop, the dark city pricked with lights that shone like stars.

  “It used to be common.” She brushed her hair back, tucking the rogue threads behind her ears with her free hand. “Cloud Nine doesn’t supply drugs or anything other than alcohol and a place to free your inhibitions. Dealing in Euphoria is different to that. Humans think they’re getting drug-laced cocktails to help them unwind. What they’re getting is far worse.”

  She faced him, her blue eyes meeting his, sharp and serious.

  “It’s demon toxin.”

  Shock rippled through him. “But that would kill—”

  He saw in her eyes that she was telling the truth. Her reaction and that of the boss back at the club told him that there were demons who were against such a thing, and it had surprised him to hear it. He was beginning to realise that not all demons were out to harm humans, that what he had been taught as an angel was wrong. Or at least it was wrong in this era.

  There were demons who wanted to protect the mortals as fiercely as the angels did.

  Was it Taylor’s part-human blood that drove her to defend her city against those who sought to hurt it? Or was it her demon blood?

  “The theory goes that you give them only a drop, so they become compliant and dazed. It’s mixed with something else to make them a slave to the demon whose toxin they’ve imbibed.” Taylor shivered and released his hand. She wrapped her arms around herself again and stared into the night. “Euphoria isn’t about the thrill it gives the humans and the demons. It’s purely about the demons. The excitement of controlling someone like a slave, of making them do things, of being able to do as they please with a mortal. Drink from them, screw them, beat them. Anything goes.”

  “Including killing them?” The thought that it might had that uncontrollable rage boiling back to life in his veins and he clenched his fists and glared at the city, a hunger to hunt down every wretch who used Euphoria on a human beating inside him.

  “Death doesn’t normally come into it. The amount of toxin should be small enough that it can’t kill, so the human involved doesn’t become sick, but there’s always the risk of something going wrong. A trip on Euphoria should always end with the demon administering an antidote. The human wakes up feeling fine and on top of the world, unaware of the things they did. I’ve seen it in other cities, and every demon knows the rules of play.” Taylor frowned, a flicker of concern crossing her delicate features as she shook her head. “This isn’t Euphoria as most demons know it. Something else is happening at that club, and we need to find out what it is.”

  Her gaze shifted to him and gone was the worry. There was only confidence and determination. It shone in her blue eyes, luring him back under her spell, conjuring images of her fighting that stirred a different feeling in his blood—desire.

  “We will put an end to this, Taylor,” he growled and settled his hand on the sword sheathed at his waist.

  They would discover what was happening and he would deal with the demons responsible.

  He placed his free hand on her slender shoulder, her leather jacket cold beneath his fingers. She started to smile and then frowned again. Her eyes searched his, flicking between them, and her lips parted, and he sensed the struggle within her.

  “Einar.” She hesitated and dropped her gaze to his feet before slowly working it back up his body. “I... I’m... I have to tell you somet
hing... and, well, here goes nothing... I’m—”

  He tensed at the same time as she did. “I felt that too.”

  Something had shot through him, a sense that danger was approaching, like ice chasing down his spine beneath his armour. Taylor’s head snapped around and she gasped. He followed the direction of her gaze and saw why.

  Villandry was leaping from roof to roof across the city, heading towards them, and he wasn’t alone. Two black demons were in pursuit, barely visible in the night sky, their scaly dark wings beating the air.

  They were closing in on the vampire.

  And they were closing in fast.

  “It’s them,” she said, voicing his thoughts for him.

  Einar grabbed her, leaped onto the low wall surrounding the flat roof and kicked off. He beat his wings hard, shooting towards Villandry. As little as he liked the vampire, he couldn’t let the demons kill him. The male had helped him after all, luring his prey out into the open for him.

  The shadowy demons swooped on the vampire as he hit a long roof with a glass skylight running along the centre of it. Villandry ducked and strafed left, dodging the first demon, and hit the deck when the second lashed out at him. He rolled to his feet and kept sprinting towards the other end of the roof.

  Einar looked there.

  It was a dead end, unless the vampire intended to leap the more than one hundred foot gap between the building he was on and the next one.

  Einar twisted and swept lower, beat his wings harder as he raced to reach Villandry before it was too late.

  The dark-haired vampire skidded to a halt near the end of the roof, the pitched glass windows casting golden light over his left side, warming his pale skin and the black suit he wore. He breathed hard, staring across the distance to the next building.

  He wouldn’t make it.

  Could he teleport that far? The vampire had disappeared in Cloud Nine, revealing a power that had surprised Einar. He had never heard of vampires teleporting before and had immediately filed it with Heaven for their records of the species.

  Villandry’s shoulders relaxed, he straightened to his full height and slowly pivoted on his heel to face the two demons. Madness. The vampire possessed no weapons. He was no match for the demons when they were armed with talons on both their hands and their feet.