by Misty Dietz
What? His heart stopped with the sudden absence of her essence.
His gaze flew to her face. Jessie? Her beautiful eyes. Her vibrancy gone, now empty, staring beyond into the endless night.
The earth trembled beneath him, rolling outward beneath his thighs as a great crescendo of anguish exploded through his being. His whole body shook as he threw his head back and roared. The pain, the pain.
Vast. Dark. Cold.
Absolute.
He gathered her broken form to his heart. His throat, chest, neck—all brittle, filled with a thousand razor blades. He kissed her lips, pushing all his life energy at her. He sliced his throat and let his blood pour down to mingle with hers.
He rocked her in his arms and cried as all the grass died and the leaves withered and fell from the trees. Headstones heaved from the ground and the branches moaned and sighed and snapped though the wind had stopped. The ground shook, gravel from the road like dice in a cup, translating his dangerous rush of emotion.
“Alexios!” He bellowed at the universe. Where was their leader? Please, brother, come. I so desperately need you.
Nate breathed in her scent, the coils of her hair silky against his face, her grandparents’ weeping echoing his own.
A large white owl swooped over him, its throaty hoot and soft whoosh of wings making him shiver for lost dreams. For so many other wonders he’d never share with her.
The owl hooted softly once more and landed on the heaving ground in front of Nate. The ground instantly calmed as the owl morphed in a flash of white into a tall man with long dark hair, a black goatee, and slashing eyebrows over enigmatic brown eyes. Nate’s heart kick-started in his chest, and he hurried to his feet with Jessie in his arms. The figure in front of him crackled with power. Nate reached out to discover if his energy was light or dark, but this energy was different from anything he’d ever encountered before. He gathered Jessie’s inert form closer to his body. Maybe he should fight to the death himself. He had a strong feeling he wouldn’t last long in battle with one such as this. “If you are here for a fight, be warned, I have nothing more to lose.”
“I come in peace, Guardian. You need not fear me. I am Archangel Raphael. Alexios heard your plea, sent word to Michael, and so, I am here in your time of need.”
Raphael’s bass voice held notes of timelessness that reverberated with sacrifice and…something else. Something more human perhaps.
Nate’s throat worked as he went down on one knee. He’d heard stories of this one. The healer archangel. Of course, Nate had known Alexios had been trained by the soldier Archangel Michael, but he’d had no idea that Alexios was so important to the archangels that they’d heed his calls for aid. “Healer. Please, I beseech you to aid my compar.”
Raphael’s dark eyes bored into Nate’s, probing for what, he had no idea. But he had no more walls. Jessie had brought them all down with her love. She’d shown him what it meant when love was freely given. It was the most beautiful gift of all.
“You would take an imperfect human as your mate?”
“She is more pure than I could ever hope to be.”
Raphael was silent for a time. “She cannot be as you. She was good in her lifetime.”
Unlike the Guardians. “All the more reason to bring her back. The world needs her goodness.”
“You would bring her back to fight horrors when even now she is enjoying all the gifts of the Afterlife as befits one of her character?”
Nate opened his mouth, then closed it. Hell yes, bring her back! he wanted to shout. He wanted to be selfish. He wanted to think she’d fight to come back, that fighting evil at his side was worth giving up the…whatever good stuff happened after you died.
But…the archangel’s question sucked.
Nate’s heart broke all over again. He turned away from the healer’s stare and then squeezed Jessie, pressing his lips to her cold ones. She deserved more than anything he could give her. He wouldn’t bring her back to feel more pain.
Are you sure about that? You will be forever alone without her. It was a dark voice crawling through his mind and firing up his anger. I can bring her back. I can, and…I will.
A command. Nate glanced quickly around him, but the echoing voice wasn’t coming from anything with physical form. He turned back to Raphael. The archangel hadn’t moved.
The dark seductive voice was evil. And Nate had no doubt that somehow, evil could raise her up.
Yes. Look at her lying still and cold in your arms.
Something shifted in the grass beside him. Let go the Veil, and I shall summon her back to full, vigorous life.
Nate’s arms flexed. Jessie’s lips were purple, her skin going waxy and pale in the moonlight. It’s wrong. Nate ground his teeth against the terrible push and pull of his conscience as he lifted the Veil from her chest. It glowed in his hands. It failed me, what use is it to any of us?
Raphael’s burning brown eyes held knowledge that Nate couldn’t begin to fathom. “Know thy true path, Guardian.”
“I love her.” I need her. I can’t…function without her.
“You can and you will. Do not debase her memory by becoming that which she gave her life to defeat.”
Horrific screams pealed in his head, shrieking at him to destroy the angel in front of him. His skin began to crawl as though bugs had come to angry life beneath his flesh. He swung this way and that, his raging senses flaring out to drop seventy-foot trees. They crashed around the cemetery as the Christ on Calvary statue burst into flame, and he began running toward Jessie’s grandparents, her body flopping lifeless in his arms. He crumpled to the ground in front of the burning Christ. What am I doing? His mind flooded with images. Jessie’s beautiful eyes at the moment of her orgasm. Her dancing on the bar. His aimlessness before she came into his life.
This one calls himself a healer, but he chooses to let her decay while you live on in pain. I can change all that. Choose her. There is no decision.
Raging electric guitars blared a dissonance. Get out of my head!
Raphael appeared at his side and raised his hand to the statue, diffusing the flames in an instant.
Nate turned to snarl at him. “Why won’t you help her, damn you?”
“It is not my choice to make, Guardian. What will you do?”
A hand on his arm. He shifted Jessie to one arm, launched to his feet, and struck out violently. Who dared get near his—
Dear God. Jessie’s grandfather. The one she loved the most lay bleeding on the grass from a contusion to the forehead.
By his hand.
What have I done?
The darkness shrouding his mind dropped away like shattered glass. He dropped to his knees beside Walter. He held Jessie tightly against his chest, using his other hand to pick up the old war veteran. Walter’s eyelids cracked open.
“Forgive me. I—”
“The path to Hell is paved with good intentions, young man.”
Nate nodded and…
Surrendered.
He pressed the Veil to Walter’s forehead, healing it instantly. Then he stood, kissed Jessie one last time, and walked woodenly to lay his beloved in the archangel’s arms.
His fists clenched, red seeped into his vision, and his breath came hot and hard as his lips opened and his gaze fastened on the archangel. “I don’t ever want to see your fucking face again.”
Then he turned and ran as fast as he could until his emotions couldn’t keep up with his legs.
And he faded into black.
Chapter 37
Nate walked down another dirty alley that reeked of alcohol, human waste, and lost hope. He felt strangely at home here where the old buildings whispered of sadness. Where no one smiled. He’d been battling demons since night had fallen. Daybreak was an hour away. How he longed for the merciful emptiness of sleep, but it didn’t find him much these days. His legs were ever leaden, his eyes scratchy as though scoured by sixty-grit sandpaper. His heart, pock-marked, empty, as though mined d
ry by a legion of relentless gold-rushers.
All the color had gone from his world the day Jessie died. All the joy and all the hope.
All the love.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until the pressure whited out the vision of Jessie smiling at him. She’s gone.
Gone.
The only thing that gave him any sort of comfort was The Scourge. He’d found the mangy, flea-ridden scrapper last week being fed by hobos under a bridge. He’d taken the dog to the vet, then brought him home where they’d both curled up on the bed covered with a mountain of Jessie’s clothes and laid there unmoving for hours.
He needed to fight. To kill demons. Do something to not lose his grip on sanity.
Maybe he’d go to Scotland and hunt down Lachlan, the cowardly sod.
He turned the corner into another alley that dead-ended in maggot-filled dumpsters. The demon he’d been tracking for the last hour had finally run out of hiding places. Nate’s heart rate sped up, his blood firing through his veins. He could feel it here in one of the shadows cast by the back entrance doorways. Its energy felt different, but by now he’d learned that all bets were off since the rip in the Seam. One demon at a time, Nate, his captivating Jessie had told him, a guileless smile on her face. In the weeks since her passing, he’d continued to struggle with his choice.
He knew it was right, but how he’d managed to make the choice, he still didn’t know.
The pain of her loss didn’t fade. It never would. He could still feel her. Her breath on his face as he woke in the morning. Like she’d been lying next to him, her hair a messy corkscrew halo around her head.
That he had to stay here, go on without her…
He rubbed his chest, appalled at his inability to draw breath. Horrified at his lack of strength. His continuing pain that was emasculating him.
Enough.
Enough.
Energy was throbbing in that doorway. There, by the pawn shop. There was so much energy concentrated there the demon must have managed to consume a soul on the way here. It angered him. How had he missed that? This demon was uncommonly strong. But it was going down. Now. He spread his arms out, palms forward. “Game over, demon. Come out and meet your fate.”
Light burst from the doorway, and in the soft golden rays a feminine form stepped out. His body responded immediately. Respiration galloped. Temples, palms, underarms began to sweat.
His mind wheeled. That voluptuous shape.
He knew it.
Intimately.
His hungry eyes tracked up mega-curves encased in soft cotton, denim, and leather. His heart sledgehammered his ribcage.
Her lips curved and, sweet heaven, how could it be her smile?
How? He’d laid her cold body in the arms of the healer archangel. “J-Jessie?” The word rasped from his throat.
She smiled, then stretched languidly, her exquisite breasts pressing against her black cotton tee until the nubs of her nipples made his mouth dry. “Oh, that feels gooood,” she murmured.
Her voice. My God.
His body started shaking, and he stumbled as he took a step towards her. She shook her light brown coily hair, head thrown back, eyes closed. Just as she’d done while she was riding his body, driving them hard toward release. One foot in front of the other. He was terrified he was dreaming. One touch, and he’d know if this was a trick. “Jessie.”
Her eyes snapped open as though remembering she wasn’t alone. As her gaze fell on him, it went soft with something that poets had tried to capture with words since the beginning of time.
“Nate.” She stepped toward him. Her chest was now whole, her sinuous hips immortalized in black denim. Her wings…
Wings.
Fuck. Wings!
Iridescent. The opalescent white feathers contrasting with the black leather of her jacket. So beautiful it hurt the eyes. Every step closer to her, his heart beat harder, faster. Her energy was off the charts. She’d become something powerful.
With wings.
When their feet were a foot apart, he raised his hand to pass it in front of her chest, feeling her aura. Warm.
Home.
She was smiling into his eyes. Waiting…
Want to touch you, he sent into the pathway they’d used.
Please do, she answered.
Was it her? Or a fancy demon trick?
The hell with it. Nate grabbed her, wrapping his arms tightly around her, rocking her side to side, unable to make himself hold still. He said her name over and over until she was laughing and crying at the same time. Then he leaned back, took her face in his hands and fiercely slanted his lips across her warm, open mouth. His soul and senses came back to life as her fingers threaded through his hair, pulling, yanking, reminding him how good…how good…
How good they were together.
His heavy breath slid across her cheeks, her neck, ears, eyes as he used his mouth to reassure himself that she was here. In his arms. Living. Breathing. Whole.
His.
He picked her up, careful of her wings, and supported her as she wrapped her legs around him. He called upon moss to grow on the brick façade of the building, and then he pressed her up against the softness. He nuzzled her neck. “How?” he whispered.
Her hands rubbed the stubble on his cheeks. “Your struggle against your darkness impressed Raphael.”
“No way.” He drew her finger in his mouth and sucked. The rush of heat between her legs against his belly made him forget his barrage of questions. It was a while before either could speak again.
He stroked her feathers, and she moaned. He quickly looked at her, doing it again. She quivered, rubbing her body against him seductively. Touching her feathers turned her on. Good. To. Know. They were even softer than her velvety skin. My angel indeed. “Tell me about this.”
“Ooo, then don’t touch them because I can’t concentrate when you do.”
A chuckle rumbled out of his chest.
“Why don’t you put me down—”
“My hands aren’t leaving your body for days, Jessie.” He kissed those plump lips just because he could. Because he’d missed them for three weeks and because he thought he’d have to go without them forever. And he kissed them because…
“I love you, Jessie.”
Her hands bracketed his face. “I love you too, Nate. You resisted the temptation to be selfish. You overcame your past and proved love conquers all.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for long moments. Moments that completed a deep weaving that had begun in her apartment complex. It felt like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was. They now had…
However long they had.
“Tell me how this came to be because I’m starting to get narked that I had to go without you for weeks. Had I known you’d be coming back I wouldn’t hav—”
When she pressed a hand to his mouth, he licked it. Which led to licking and sucking other fragrant and delicious parts of her frame. She laughed, jiggling her luscious rack until he was ready to rip those skin tight jeans off her body and take her like an animal in this seedy alley.
I wouldn’t even care.
He took his mouth off her neck and looked at her, eyebrow raised. “Don’t tempt me, woman. So… angels. Finish this story because we have other things to do.”
She wiggled out of his arms. He grabbed her hand and followed her as she led him down the alley toward the street. The sun had completely cleared the tops of the buildings, and people began to filter into the still-healing city on their morning commute. Once Asmodeus returned to Hell, his force field had broken. It was amazing how much had been accomplished, rebuilding the metro in three short weeks, but reminders of the devastation wrought by evil lay everywhere. Lots filled with rubble sat next to buildings with brand new windows. Skyways which had once let people stroll overhead were now open wounds between buildings. Shiny new fire hydrants squatted on cracked sidewalks. Old and new stitched together like the quilt of humanity.
She chose a bench beside the fountain. He would have pulled her into his lap, but she sat beside him, swiveling to face him. “It took Raphael longer to heal me than he’d anticipated because Asmodeus was much stronger than any of the archangels realized. That was how Raphael finally understood the desperate battle you waged within yourself to turn me over to him instead of allowing Mammon to reanimate me.”
“Wait, Mammon?”
“One of the other archdemons released on Halloween. He’s in Tampa, plotting for Alexios’s relic at ETHER. When you sent Asmodeus back to Hell, Mammon felt his brother’s exit from this realm—as it’s probably safe to assume the other three archdemons did as well—and saw an opportunity to try to get the Veil from afar.”
Nate shook his head. Even after everything he’d experienced as a Guardian, this seemed far-fetched.
Jessie took his hand. “If you’d have given in to Mammon, I would have become a demon. But then you knew that, right?”
Did he? If he peered deep into his heart, he supposed he did. But really, would he have cared? After the aching emptiness he’d felt without her these several weeks, he wondered if he would take her any way he could. Demon or not. If he had the chance to do it over again, he couldn’t be sure he’d have made the same choice.
“Nate?”
She was all that was pure and good, and he was…still struggling.
It was the way of the Guardian. But here she sat in front of him, so that was more than he could ever hope for. So he’d battle the inherent darkness inside him all the way through—for an eternity—if it meant she was at peace, happy, and safe. “I knew. But now you’re here and you won’t…” His throat closed up. Damn, she turned him into a baby. Leave again?
“Not a chance, my love. Raphael gave me the choice to stay in Paradise or return here to fight by your side until the End Times.” Her smile faded. “It’s not going to be an easy battle, Nate. Raphael was pleased that I chose to return because together our power against the dark forces are much stronger.”
