by Misty Dietz
She may be physically frozen at only twenty-five years old—her age when she’d died—but she was much too set in her ways to change now. So yes, she would continue to push Maddox to control his ability. And some day, she would celebrate when those tormented shadows no longer darkened his eyes.
Katherine watched Maddox’s tall, athletic form vanish into the storage locker to retrieve the chains, wishing she was anywhere but here right now. Guardian leader Alexios was going to be cross about how damaged these humans were before she got them exorcised, but right now it was proving difficult to give a damn. Being a Purifier—a healer Guardian—had its inherent reward, but most of the time, it just sucked.
She turned from the Devil’s Trap to identify her next target in the nightclub’s dim blue and white interior. Instead of another human ravaged by evil spirits, her gaze landed on a white tank top plastered to her distant-relative-turned-best-friend. Jade Matson’s honey brown arms made the sign of the cross in front of every possessed soul as she swaggered toward Katherine, every bit the voluptuous jazz singer whether she was up on stage with a mic in her hand or not.
“I leave you alone for a couple hours to get some shut-eye, and the whole place goes to pot. How’d you manage that?” Jade’s smile flashed brighter than all the chandeliers in the club.
Katherine rubbed her temple. “This isn’t amusing.”
Jade pulled a rosary out of her pocket and flashed it at a foaming-at-the-mouth, possessed man running full throttle toward her. He dropped dramatically, then convulsed. “Oh, come on, I can’t think of a better way to start a Saturday!”
“You morning people are so annoying. Then again, so are mornings. And people.” Katherine grabbed the seizing man’s arms, while Jade pocketed the rosary and then scooped up his legs. Katherine blinked water out of her eyes, yelling over her shoulder, “The first person to shut off these wretched sprinklers gets a five-hundred-dollar bonus!”
As they lugged the writhing man into the Devil’s Trap, Katherine felt Jade’s gaze, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk.
“Kat.”
Katherine frowned. It was that tone. Whenever Jade used it, Katherine had never enjoyed a single conversation. “Not now, Jade, for glory’s sake!”
“Lady K!”
Katherine looked toward the second floor balcony, receiving a series of hand signals from Stark. She nodded at him, then glanced back at Jade. “The crew rounded up the last of the possessed from the upper balconies and pool terraces. Stark indicates there’s five, maybe six more to go on this level.”
“Okay, we can handle that, but first, I gotta tell you something…” Jade trailed off, and the expression on her face made Katherine’s skin prickle.
“What did you do?”
Jade’s eyes were steady on hers. “Don’t freak out.”
Katherine’s pulse jolted, but she kept her features composed. “You should know by now hysterics aren’t my thing.”
Jade nodded once, then frowned. It wasn’t reassuring.
“Ari’s on his way,” she blurted.
Weightlessness rushed through Katherine. She sank toward the plush white leather of the nearest bench. Jade reached out to aid her, but Katherine smacked her hands away.
“You called him?” A free agent, Ari Grimmson wasn’t part of the Unholy Inc network of Guardian nightclubs.
But he was her Achilles Heel.
Or maybe her Achilles Hell.
Jade crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I did, but he was already planning to come after his assignment with the Dalai Lama.”
Katherine pressed her hand to her stomach. “How dare you—after everything I’ve told you?”
“Kat, you guys love each other and belong together. You’ve both been pig-headed for the last three years. Ari’s your soul mate; he was bound to feel your growing weakness. You had to know he’d show up here one of these days.”
To be sure. But she hadn’t planned on it being today. She shook her head repeatedly. “No. He’s only a potential soul mate. I have a choice in this. Besides he’s the one who left.” Even when she’d begged him—pleaded with him—to stay. She’d never known she was capable of such soul-stripping humiliation. Katherine’s whole body started to shake. She needed to hide. In a cave maybe, fetal position and all that. Fetal. Oh God, don’t use that word. She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt coated with sawdust. Speak slowly, don’t stutter. “I swear you’re fired if you don’t call him back and tell him to stay away from me. From this whole island.”
A drizzle of water from the emergency sprinkler slid down the side of Jade’s face, her blonde buzz cut as perfect as ever. “Fire me then. I don’t care, but you need his help. You can’t do all these exorcisms alone anymore.”
You can’t. YoucantYoucantYoucant. Heat fired through Katherine’s chest. You can’t save this baby was what they’d told her as she lay in the ER, bleeding and crying for the life dying in her womb.
For the joy ebbing from Ari’s eyes.
She pushed up from the bench, her legs steady again. Konani moved past her, wrangling a possessed man into the Devil’s Trap with a sterling silver crucifix and frequent streams of holy water from a spray bottle. She shook her wet, black bangs out of her eyes. “Can somebody please turn the sprinklers off? They’re diluting the holy water!”
Katherine was now juiced enough from Jade’s you can’t comment to shut them off with a thought. Konani hollered a quick thanks, maneuvered her target into the Devil’s Trap, then raced to the pool cabanas for her next mark. Katherine scanned the club, the DJ lights rolling red, purple, and blue across the copper dance poles and white leather furniture. Stark, Maddox, and Konani’s brother, Kaikoa, were tag-teaming the last of the possessions. But even with everything going on, Katherine couldn’t prevent Ari, that loathsome Viking—tall, muscular, and bronze all over—from entering her thoughts.
Just the mention of him made her dizzy. He would eat that up, arrogant, booming-laugh swashbuckler that he was. And she would go to hell before ever admitting she had a swooning bone in her body.
An unnatural wind suddenly galed through the club, undulating the diaphanous bolts of gauze that separated the dance floor from the outside pool terrace. The ground rumbled and shook, clinking the chandelier crystals again and raining chunks of wet plaster from the ceiling. Goosebumps broke out across Katherine’s arms as she dropped into a crouch.
This was no earthquake. A manifestation of these elements meant the Archangel Michael was here. Great. Deep power filled the space behind her so tangibly it seemed all the molecules in the room had compressed into their most volatile state.
Katherine tried to swallow back her fear before she turned around. I apologize for the Hell comment, Michael, but you should know by now that sarcasm is my native tongue.
“And you should know by now that sarcasm is indicative of passive aggression, which illuminates a flawed moral compass.”
She stood and turned around slowly, noting with alarm that the Archangel had frozen everyone in the club but her.
Oh, Lord, how could she forget how overwhelming he was? But then, the leader of Heaven’s army probably should be, right? Midnight hair, fathomless dark blue eyes, dressed in black from broad shoulders to boot-clad feet, Michael had followed God’s orders to bring the Guardians into existence from piss-poor examples of humanity more than two millennia ago. In return for their second chance at redemption, Guardians protected humanity from rogue demons who escaped Hell.
To those who refused the offer, Michael gave a front row seat on the train to Hell where they’d pay for the rotten things they did while alive. Guardian leader Alexios—a valiant and honorable Spartan warrior from 520 BC—was the sole exception to the you-have-to-be-an-asshole-to-qualify selection process, though no one knew exactly why. It was Alexios who established Unholy Inc—a network of bars and clubs owned by Guardians, some of which housed ancient holy relics of great interest to demons.
Beginning with Ari Grimmson in 847 AD,
Archangel Michael structured the Purifier class of Guardians to exorcise possessed humans. A class of Guardians Katherine happened to belong to.
Yay.
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t want your Guardians to be morally flawed, maybe the Big Boss should have chosen humans who’d lived exemplary lives instead of picking those of us who were bitches and bastards while we were alive,” Katherine said, crossing her fingers that the archangel wouldn’t smite her with some of the power vibrating in the room.
Then again, maybe being smote might be better than having to face Ari in her current gutless condition.
Michael’s dark eyes flashed with something that could have been humor. Which had to be a trick of light because the Archangel had been nothing but somber in the hundred and forty plus years since he’d given her the option between Hell and this purgatory. If I only knew then what I know now…
Michael raised an eyebrow.
“Oh quit, you know I’m joking. Well, not about the bitches and bastards part, but that bit about purgatory…” she paused, wondering how tolerant he was feeling today. “Kind of.”
“Most humans who have endeavored to live a good and peaceful life do not have the requisite constitution to physically battle demons. That job is best reserved for those who were a hair’s breadth away from the pits of Hell themselves. Those who know how to fight dirty when the situation demands it.”
Nice.
It was fabulous to have confirmation that she would have become one of the black-eyed fiends if not for the final decision she’d made as a human being. A single act of selflessness—an exclamation point at the end of her cold, egocentric existence. Katherine still didn’t understand why she’d done what she’d done in those last few minutes of her life. Sure, that woman’s husband had been an abusive monster, and Katherine had been a women’s rights suffragette in those days, but hers had been self-interested activism. When she’d run away at fifteen, she received boarding from a friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She’d been spoon-fed women’s right ideology by the very leaders who’d made history.
But she’d only wanted a place to feel safe. Safe. So she listened to their speeches and attended their meetings. She never felt their passion. Their unrelenting drive for equality. She knew life wasn’t fair and never would be. Protecting the vulnerable had been remarkably out of character for her. So…in that one final moment…why had she taken the knife stab meant for that deranged man’s wife?
“You chose well at the time it mattered most. In twenty first century colloquial language, you made lemonade from lemons. There is honor in that,” Michael said.
“Jury’s still out on that. Lemonade sucks unless life also hands you tequila and salt.”
She wanted to get a rise out of him, but Michael’s expression remained inscrutable. “You hide your broken emotions behind bravado, Guardian. You will fail in your duties if you do not find a way to surmount your grief, despair, and loneliness. Failure is unacceptable, for the battle will soon arrive at your door.”
Grief, despair, loneliness. Her heart pounded harder in her chest, but she forced her mind to go blank so the archangel wouldn’t see how close to home his words hit. “Such apocalyptic commentary, but you don’t scare me, Michael. If the End Times were near, you’d be polishing your weapons and powwowing with Gabriel and Raphael, and the rest of the Archangel God-squad instead of popping in at my lowly club. So spare me the lofty prose. This is obviously about Ari, and I’ll have you know, I still don’t—” she was going to say want him, but Michael would pounce on that lie faster than a babysitter’s boyfriend lit out the back door when the parents’ car pulled up, “I still haven’t changed my mind. I refuse to bond with him.”
Michael’s eyebrows pulled down fractionally, and she felt a flare of triumph at getting his expression to change, even if it was infinitesimal. She put a hand on her hip. “So you might as well undo this kumbaya thing between him and me. Or at least move on to my next soul mate. Everyone has more than one, right? Because the Big Boss Upstairs seems to place a lot of weight on free will. So if we only had one person we could be happy with for the rest of our lives, well that sucks!” Michael remained silent as a stone. She took one step forward to snap her fingers in his face, but thought better of it. Staying alive trumped self-expression. “Well? Angels have to be honest, right? Tell me. Please.”
Michael’s gaze considered her for a moment. She tried not to squirm at its directness, as though he was trying to peel back her deepest layers.
Finally, “There is no one person who is your only hope, as there is no limit on human happiness.”
She frowned. “I knew it! This soul mate thing is just some shitty Guardian propaganda.”
“Enough.” Michael’s form glimmered and the floor rumbled beneath her feet. “You disappoint me, Guardian. I shall be sorry should I have to relieve you of your duties.”
She threw up her hands. “I’m bound to fail since I’m not rejuvenating after the exorcisms. I’m doing everything I always have, but it’s not working any more.”
“You have not tried everything because you have never truly opened your heart to possibility with the Viking.” The archangel vanished as quickly as he’d come, unfreezing everyone in his wake.
“Oh really? What do you call making a baby with him?” she yelled at the ceiling as the renewed pealing screams of the possessed corralled in the Devil’s Trap coincided with the pounding in her frontal lobe.
An open heart is not a prerequisite for a biological event, came Michael’s reply.
Katherine cursed. “Always have to have the last word, don’t you?”
No.
She rolled her eyes and pressed her palms against her temples. And then Jade was in her face, her big brown eyes all concerned. Katherine held up a hand to halt her before she could start her hey-girl-let’s-hug-this-out spiel. “It’s a beautiful day to leave me alone, Jade. By calling Ari against my wishes, you’ve inspired my inner serial killer. Truly.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Jade retorted. “You need to simmer down and wait to start de-devilling these people until Ari gets here. But in the mean time, can you at least shut them up? Cripes, they’re a noisy bunch.”
Katherine would’ve tried silencing the screamers, but since it annoyed Jade, she decided against it. It would expend too much energy anyway. She glanced up at Konani, wishing she had the time and energy to take their yearly trip to the Polynesian tattoo artist in Hilo. It had been their November tradition since Katherine took down the sex trafficking ring that had enslaved fifteen-year-old Konani and her eleven-year-old brother Kaikoa. Hard to believe that was ten years ago. Harder still to believe that her Guardianship hadn’t been immediately revoked when she hunted down their gutless pimp and fed him to the pua’a boars in the forest near Mauna Loa.
That had to have been against Guardian rules.
Maybe Michael didn’t know.
Yeah right. The Archangel was probably waiting to drop some massive judgment on her when she least expected it. Probably another ‘biological event’ that would rip her heart out. But if and when he did, it would still be worth the satisfaction she’d felt.
Her gaze lingered on Konani’s first tattoo—a scrolling wrist cuff that replaced the barcode her pimp had crudely drawn to mark her as his property. The replacement tattoo was a work of art, and for Konani, a symbol of mastery over the trauma of her past.
Katherine rubbed her temples where a mini-drumbeat pounded. “Nani, would you mind making me one of your chia energy drinks?”
The mixologist’s long, dark hair slid across her shoulders with a nod. “Don’t do as many exorcisms as last time, alright? These spooks aren’t going anywhere, you know.”
“She shouldn’t be attempting any exorcisms right now,” Jade told Konani before grabbing a water bottle from the bar fridge and turning back to Katherine. “I’m not kidding, Kat. You think you’re invincible, but Guardians can die, too.”
“I’m well aware of that, thank
you.” Too aware, in fact. If Leviathan made a play for the holy relic Katherine protected—the Chains of St. Peter, which had been strangely glowing for the last two weeks—Katherine wasn’t sure she’d be able to stave off the archdemon. “Look at these wailing cretins. I’d let them destroy each other if it weren’t for the demons inside them that piss me off more.” Another scream distracted her thoughts of a diminishing human race. “Maddox! Get that knave’s mouth off the woman in blue!” To see their humanity vanish never ceased to unsettle her. Healing them brought her a measure of peace, a redemption of sorts, but of course that was selfish in and of itself, so there was a nice dose of guilt thrown into the mix. Wasn’t that awesome?
Katherine took the energy concoction from Konani, but was only able to drink a few swallows. She set the glass on the nearest table, her stomach churning as she wiped the perspiration from her hands on her ruined pant legs. Was she actually dying, or was it nerves because that damn Viking was on his way?
The last time he’d checked in, trying to do his soul mate duty, she’d coldly sent him away, just as she’d done six or eight times in the three years since her miscarriage. But the last time, he’d been furious at her rejection. She’d hardly ever seen him angry. It simply wasn’t his nature. But he clearly hadn’t moved past his negative feelings because he hadn’t returned since.
And really, there was no reason for her to feel guilty about that. He only showed up when it was convenient for him.
She could feel the staff’s eyes bore holes in her. “Everyone had better carry on with their day before I go on a pink slip binge. Having to replace all of you at the same time would seriously displease me.”
“You’re always displeased,” Stark muttered from across the dance floor, but with her supercharged Guardian hearing, his words registered loud and clear.
“That’s no aloha spirit, boss,” Kaikoa added.
