Michael listened with that detached horror that cops so often felt when yet another layer of evil was draped over all the others like sedimentary strata. They added up, a timetable of the misdeed, misfortune and meanness that made up humanoid life.
“All I know is that a man came. He wasn’t a gargoyle, but whatever he was, he wasn’t human either. He was dressed like human money, though. Very expensive suit. And he smelled nice, by human standards, which I happen to love. When you’re made of rock, you come to appreciate the scent of things other than rock. Like plants and things.” She seemed to be drifting off on a tangent, one created by personal misery. “Our men never smell nice unless it rains.” She looked up at him now, and her expression was one of quiet, resigned pleading. “That’s all I know, I promise.”
Michael believed her. And he was beginning to get a very good inkling of who’d had a hand in Rhiannon’s betrayal.
He schooled his building anger and focused on the female before him. He was worried about her, and about the other females in her horde.
“Why hasn’t the Gargoyle King brought an end to the disobedience of your horde’s men?”
The woman’s eyes got wide, and she took a deep breath as if she was now able to talk about something she truly wanted to. “Believe me, he’s trying. I listen, and I hear things. Rumor is that his search for us takes up much of his time, even though the other kings are facing problems they could use his help with. Rather than divide and weaken himself in order to aid them, he’s made us his priority.” She shook her head. “None of what the women of my horde are suffering can be deemed his fault.”
When she referred to the “other kings,” Michael knew she was speaking of the rulers of other supernatural factions. There were more than a dozen, that he knew of. It was a strange and terrible and beautiful world, Earth. She spoke with such fervor on the subject, Michael also had to wonder whether she knew the Gargoyle King personally.
“He sends out hunting parties led by the Montem Warriors. But thus far, they’ve failed to take any of our men alive for questioning so the rest of us can be rescued. The men kill themselves by melting into dust before they can be interrogated. As soon as word reaches us that someone’s been taken, the rest of us are moved.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I can’t remember. Time moves differently when there are no suns or moons to mark the passage of day and night. We began with a horde of nineteen hundred. There are now less than seven hundred of us remaining.”
Michael knew the question was overly simplistic. Things were never as easy as a knee-jerk reaction made them out to be. But he had to ask anyway. “You’re alone right now. Why don’t you escape?”
“They have my daughters,” she said. Her voice had instantly become hollow.
It was the sound of hopelessness.
“You don’t know what they do to females who are caught attempting escape. And what they do to their families as punishment.” She turned slightly away from him and the fabric over her shoulder morphed, becoming the stone she was constructed of. That stone, however, had massive grooves carved into it. There were four of them. Claw marks.
“It would be worse for my eldest daughter, Hazel. She is a lovely thing.” A glimmering tear escaped from the woman’s eye and cascaded partway down her cheek before it crystallized into quartz and stayed there. “Whoever this Fire Healer is, I admit… I hoped she would destroy the men, even if it meant she destroyed us all.”
A glimmer of something different passed over her features. The quartz tear cracked away, and fell to the ground to shatter. A small smile played across her lips. “She did get quite a few of them though, didn’t she?” She laughed then, and it sounded like diamonds tinkling against each other in a gem bag. “Only twelve of the thirty men that went out after her last time returned, and two of them had lost limbs.”
Michael took a deep breath and stepped back. His mind was spinning. He was going to have to track down the Gargoyle King at some point in the very near future. “I thank you for your time and help, Miss….”
“Allerea,” she said softly. “My name is Allerea.”
“Thank you for your help, Allirea. Please keep this conversation to yourself.”
“Trust me,” she said solidly, every ounce of her radiating tired and wise determination. “I will.”
Michael was about to bid her farewell and step into his own shadows to transport away, when he sensed another presence in the darkness behind Allerea. The gargoyle woman seemed to spot the change in him, because she went still, and her eyes grew wide. The amber within them began to crystallize and shift.
“What is –”
He shook his head briskly and placed his finger to his lips, signaling for her to remain quiet. She understood, going still as a statue, in a literal sense.
Michael waited another two seconds – and then his arm shot once more into the shadows, right over Allerea’s shoulder. She stifled a screech, making a grating squeaking sound instead, and Michael hauled the intruder out of the blackness.
It was a male this time, and at once, he began to fight Michael. He solidified much more quickly, going stone before the archangel could manage a firm grip around his throat. But Michael was an archangel, and now he was sporting the talents of both vampire and incubus as well. He shifted into vampire immediately, his fangs lengthening, his eyes glowing red.
In the next instant, the gargoyle male was hurled telekinetically down the alleyway to crash into its brick end, stone on stone. A loud cracking sound preceded a grunt of pain, but Michael gave the gargoyle no quarter. At once, he drew him out again, pulling him through the air and toward him down the alley like a ragdoll, only to brutally change directions half-way and hurl him a second time against the back wall.
This time the crack was followed by a splintering and crumbling sound.
Michael finished the job, however, concentrating on the molecules that made up the sluggish stone-blood that moved through the gargoyle’s veins. It was like cold magma until Michael’s power flowed over it, transforming it to liquid gold.
The gargoyle rippled and changed, and a heartbeat later, a 24 karat man-shaped monument dropped from the wall to hit the ground with a resounding clank. The soft metal statue dented and rolled to come to a stop a foot from where it had fallen.
Michael watched the unmoving, glimmering yellow sculpture, knowing that what he’d just done to it was the equivalent of turning flesh to stone. The gargoyle was dead. He’d never before turned living or moving tissue to gold. He’d never murdered anything or anyone in such a decidedly cold fashion.
His vision slowly evened out, shifting back from the stark colors of his vampire sight into the full-color spectrum of humanity. He felt his fangs recede, though they left behind a further burgeoning hunger. His eyes were hot in his head. He closed them for a moment, and took a very deep breath, hoping the air would reach down inside him through his lungs and clean away the cloying black that was ever threatening to take him over.
At last, he turned back to face Allerea. She was staring at him as if she he could go volatile at any moment. She didn’t want to make any wrong moves. She had no idea who or what he was, but had just learned first-hand that it was something inextricably linked to death.
“I’m sorry,” he told her frankly. But this time, he knew he was lying. He wasn’t sorry he’d killed the male gargoyle. The man had been an asshole; his ignorant, bigoted evil had radiated all around him like a stench. He’d caught loads of the same stench when he was fighting them in the studio.
The male had been sent to retrieve the female, and the way he’d been skulking lumberingly up behind her in the shadows told Michael he’d planned on having a little fun with her before bringing her back. The world was better off without him.
If Michael was sorry for anything at all, it was for scaring the woman.
And… for the fact that his own darkness was clearly growing stronger.
Allerea looked at hi
m in silence for a long, long while. He wondered what mental processes were going on behind those yellow crystal eyes. He wasn’t even going to try reading her mind. It would be next to impossible without using a vast amount of his power, and right now, he didn’t trust himself to use any of it at all.
Finally, she blinked. And then she nodded. “I know you are.”
She looked at the fallen gargoyle, a smooth gold remnant that would probably weigh more than several of the taxis out on the street put together. “But I know you’re not sorry about him,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “And you shouldn’t be.” She met his gaze. “And neither am I.”
She stepped back, shifted into stone, and melted into the wall behind her. Before she disappeared completely, he heard the rock whisper, “Your secret’s safe with me. Good luck with the Fire Healer.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Getting rid of the gold had been easy. He’d simply changed it into a different stone. When magic was involved, alchemy worked both ways.
As soon as he did, the stone crumbled to sand, leaving a dune in the alley.
Now Michael stood at the base of the Willis Tower and casually looked up. Chicago was a long way from New York, the way American Airlines flew. But not so far for someone who could travel through the shadows.
In all honesty, he’d expected someone to meet him the moment he’d come out of the shadows across the street. This was the edifice that housed the Fallen One’s secret abode, a sprawling, magical mansion in its own right, not unlike the one the Four Favored shared. He was in there somewhere, Samael. So, why hadn’t he tried to stop Michael by now? There wasn’t a person on Earth Samael hated more.
Michael was just deciding that he was going to have to actually go inside, like a fly wandering into a massive web, when he heard the sound of leather-soled shoes coming calmly toward him.
He turned to see Samael walking casually in his direction, his hands in the pockets of his expensive charcoal gray suit. The suit matched his eyes, which were filled with untold tempests.
“Michael,” Samael greeted as he stopped a few feet away.
“Sam,” Michael returned.
Sam regarded him a moment, and the cop in Michael did the same. As usual, Samael’s white-blond hair was perfect, every single strand in place and unaffected by the wind. His stature was tall and broad-shouldered, as ever very obviously strong. However, where there was normally a hard keen awareness in the depths of his gaze and the corners of his unreadable expression, tonight there were shadows across Sam’s features, and even dark circles under his eyes.
But that had to be Michael’s imagination. Such a thing couldn’t even be possible, not with Sam. The Fallen One, for all the fairness it represented in the universe, was one of the few archangels capable of healing himself if he was sick. And right now, because of the way he’d cursed Michael, he was the only archangel who could do it aside from the archesses.
Still, there they were. Those dark circles. Haunted shadows. I’m not imagining anything, Michael thought. This, right here, was the closest Samael would probably ever come to looking like shit.
“Are you sleeping okay?” he asked.
Sam sighed. “To be honest, not really.” He allowed his gaze to drift from Michael to the road beyond. It was late at night, and traffic was a light dusting of economy cars, buses on final rounds, and the yellow blur of taxis.
The answer threw Michael harder than it would have thrown him if Samael had actually picked him up and hurled him across the street. Since when, since when, did the Fallen One ever admit to something like that? Since when was he forthcoming about a weakness of any kind whatsoever?
“To what do I owe this pleasure, Michael?” Sam asked without looking at him.
Michael frowned for a moment, then straightened. Whatever was going on with Sam, it was probably none of his business, and if it was going to weaken Sam, then it could only work in Michael’s favor. “You informed the gargoyles about Rhiannon’s ability to heal.”
Sam blinked and finally met his gaze. “I’m sorry?”
Michael narrowed his gaze. “Your insomnia seems to have damaged your memory. You don’t recall very recently speaking directly with the male members of a rogue horde of gargoyles in order to feed the final archess to them?”
Sam’s brow arched.
“By filling them in on Rhiannon’s little gift?” Michael continued.
Sam cocked his head to one side and looked at him for some time. His expression was unscrupulous, but the clouds in his eyes began to move and gather, growing darker and deeper. “I believe New York may finally have gotten to you, Favored One. Or maybe it’s the scum you’ve decided to make your vampiric meals; wife beaters, bullies, and drug pushers. You are what you eat, after all. Because for the first time in eternity, I actually have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
He took a deep breath, pulled his hands out of his pockets, and pushed his sleeve up to check his very expensive gold watch. Then he slid his hands back into his pockets and said, “I’m a little surprised it took this long, in truth. Two thousand years, you’ve come to the rescue of humans, and what do they do? They procreate like cockroaches until there are seven billion more possible problems on the planet, and after all you’ve done for them, not a single one even knows who you really are.”
Michael remained silent. He knew what Sam was doing. He’d been on these rodeo grounds plenty of times before. But he had to admit, the Fallen One’s words held a weight all their own. They always did. There was always an ounce of truth to everything Samael said; that was what made it all the more compelling.
Sam stopped and pinned him with a gaze as gray as doom. “Since you’re so obviously tipping the bird’s nest, Michael, I’ll let you off with a warning this time. Be wary of where you drop your accusations. Some of us possess neither the time nor the patience to diffuse your archangel tantrums.”
“So, what is it that you’re dreaming about, Sam?” Michael asked, changing the subject. The question surprised even himself. Normally, he would have allowed Sam’s saber rattling to roll right over him. He’d developed a thick skin over the years.
However, something had clearly changed within him, because for some reason, at that very moment, all he wanted to do was push buttons.
“It would have to be a woman,” Michael reasoned. “To make you look this bad.”
It was odd to think that as Samael became more honest and patient, Michael was simultaneously becoming less so. It was as if they’d switched places when Sam had cursed him. Now the Fallen One was behaving like someone with an ounce of goodness in him – and Michael wasn’t.
“Like I said,” Sam repeated while he turned away to leave. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Is she an angel too?” Michael asked softly.
Sam had taken two steps down the sidewalk, but now he stopped, and the world seemed to freeze with him.
“What does she look like?”
Sam slowly turned.
“Or better yet, what powers does she have?” Michael moved toward him, all wariness gone, all sense of decorum having flown away right along with it. “Most importantly,” he asked, coming to stand toe to toe with his enemy. “Can she heal, Sam? Believe me, I’m not the only one who would be interested in knowing that.”
The attack came with mutual acceptance. Neither of them felt like sparring any longer. It was like they’d unconsciously whispered, “Fuck it,” and they went for each other’s throats.
Chicago moved on around them, oblivious to their struggle. Magic swathed the two lost angels, both dark and light, and shielded them from prying eyes as they shifted out of this world and into one unknown by human sight.
Michael gripped Sam’s throat and arm, and Sam did the same as they spun through the air, swirling right through an alley shadow and into the intricate passageways of the shadow world beyond. It was a dark labyrinth here, filled with the varying stygian shades that made up night. No one who could not
control these passages would ever find their way out of the shadows.
“You really are a waste of time and space, Michael,” Sam hissed as they exited a shadow portal and Sam slammed Michael’s back up against a brick wall with indelible force. Rubble trickled to the ground behind him. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and a ringing began in his ears, but he could still hear Sam loud and clear.
“I gave you everything you could possibly need to acquire your archess. I gave you the strength, the magic, the charm of both vampire and Nightmare!” Sam’s grip tightened around his windpipe with the fury of his words. “And still you fail. All is wasted on you, Favored One!”
Reluctantly and through a haze of building pain, Michael realized Sam was right. He had given him everything he needed to obtain Rhiannon – if he had decided not to play fair with his archess. As he raised a knee for a kick, and somehow managed to tip the scales enough to get him off the wall and send them both spinning once more into the corridors of shadow, he wondered why Sam would do such a thing.
Michael had thought himself transformed into a monster, and he’d assumed it was Sam’s intent to scare Rhiannon away from him. But, could he have been wrong? Could Sam have instead intended for Michael to win his archess right away and be done with this hunt once and for all?
If the latter was the case, then why?
“Where is she now, Michael?” Sam continued. Magic swirled madly around them, like fireflies with rocket jet packs that created fireballs and transformed into acid spells or shimmering charms or transfiguration effects. The rampant magic left their flesh singed or partly turned to gold or half-frozen, and it was slowly whittling away at Michael’s strength. He could tell it was having the same effect on Sam. But Sam could heal himself.
Michael could not.
Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) Page 17
