“Do not forget who you are speaking to,” Pan said, sending a wash of power through the room. His faerie magic rolled over us, simultaneously hot and crushing, as if being pressed between two lightning bolts hammered out flat. It crawled up my spine and through my veins like a swarm of radioactive bees, and just when I thought I might scream, he let go.
Quinn looked ill; Eli like he might commit a major sin. I tried not to wince as I unclenched my jaw from where it had locked together. Pan’s eyes darted over each of us and he smiled. “You know I like you, Zyan. Perhaps we can help each other out.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“You contact me if you find anything, and I’ll owe you a favor. If I find something first, well, then you owe me a favor.” He grinned wickedly and spun his staff.
Great. Exactly what I needed, to be in this twisted egotist’s debt again. Last time that happened he’d made me fight for him in the gladiatorial arena in the realm of Faerie. But we needed to find the missing supes, and there weren’t a lot of other options. “It’s a deal,” I said.
“Most excellent.” His green eyes lit up. “I really must be going now, but I do hope we’ll be in touch soon.”
“How do we reach you?” Eli asked.
Pan turned to him. “Take this.”
He pulled a medallion from within his tunic and handed it to Eli. Tarnished silver, with a greenish tone that glowed slightly as if it had a pixie trapped inside. Maybe it did.
“I have a feeling I’ll see you all very soon,” Pan said with a grin. And with that he vanished in a shower of green sparks.
“What a prick,” I said.
“All faeries are pricks.” Quinn’s hands were on her hips, her golden witch eyes blazing.
“Why do you keep dating them, then?” I asked with a smirk.
“You’re hardly one to talk about dating assholes,” she scoffed.
“Touché.”
“Alright, let’s set up watch stations to keep an eye out for Ambriel,” Eli said, interrupting our squabble.
We split up and went to find our separate outposts. I really wasn’t looking forward to sitting around all day watching for an angel that probably wasn’t going to show up. How boring was that? I sighed and focused on finding a room with a good view of the outside and a decent bed.
Hours passed. It was worse than the stakeout Eli and I had done a couple months ago outside Arianna Vega’s apartment. I didn’t even have a stuck-up angel to talk to this time. No, just me and my thoughts. And what do you think about when you’re visiting the country you were born in over two hundred years ago? All the reasons you left and why you haven’t come back more than a handful of times since then. Reasons like getting your heart ripped out by your first love, your subsequent eternal damnation, and all the death and destruction you wrought when you were a young immortal and couldn’t control yourself. And then your thoughts drift to the fact that suppressing those powers for over a century has not made the problem any better, and perhaps has even made it worse, pent up like an angry beast. And how Lucifer tried to demon bond you, and you are now part demon, even if only an infinitesimal part of you. And how that sure as fuck doesn’t make the whole situation any better at all. Oh, and how you kinda want to eat your partner’s soul and THAT’S just the cherry on top of the whole messy sundae that is your life.
So yeah, by the time night fell I’d worked myself into a mood as black as the inky curtain of sky surrounding us. I was about to do something really destructive when I heard a noise in the hall outside. Quinn tiptoed in, looking back over her shoulder. We had the lights off, so I could only see her by moonlight.
“What are you hiding from?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Eli. I don’t want him to get onto me for leaving my post. But I’m bored.” She sat down on the bed. “Plus, I wanted to see if you really had found the best bed. If so, I’m bunking with you.” She smiled.
“I did, of course.” I flashed her a smile in return. “Now all I need is some not-totally-molded blankets and I’ll be set.”
Quinn’s smile turned into a frown as she looked down, and promptly sneezed. “Yuck.” She got up and crossed to a wooden chair closer to me, where I perched in the window sill watching the grounds below.
“Maybe you can clean it with a spell,” I suggested.
“Maybe you can clean it with a spell,” she countered. “Don’t think you’re off the hook on your magic practice because you saved us at Mt. Rainier.”
“I know, I’ve been practicing.”
“Not enough. Your magic only works really well when you’re super angry or your life is in danger. Those are the absolute worst times to try to perform magic if you’re not disciplined.”
“I can’t help it, it’s not like I really try to use magic in those cases, it just kind of happens.” I shrugged.
“Exactly!” She stabbed a finger in my direction. “Plus, we still aren’t sure of the affect your demon mark has on the use of your powers. It did some unexpected things at Mt. Rainier, when it healed you.”
“That was a good thing.”
“Yes, but we don’t know if it will always work in your favor.”
“Let’s change the subject, okay?” I groaned. “Man, what a downer. This is how you cure boredom, huh, by harassing me?”
Quinn crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. So what’s up with you and Eli? There’s been a lot of tension lately.”
“Oh, much better topic,” I said, rolling my eyes.
She waited.
“I don’t know what’s up.” I sighed. “Things were going really great after we kicked Lucifer’s ass and I got made a Special Agent, and for a month after that or so, but lately things got weird again. No clue.”
“Maybe he’s threatened by your new title. Like the HR favors you.”
“Nah, I don’t think that’s it. He doesn’t have confidence issues.”
“Is it your mark? He’s worried about it?”
“Maybe. He always does have a funny way of expressing sentiment.” I was quiet for a moment. “I think maybe this should be the last case I work with him.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s been more than two months since we banished Alexander back to Hell. I made a vow to kill him when he walked back into my life and I found out he turned Anna into a vamp. But working with Eli has distracted me. I need to get back on the trail, find that asshole, and end him.”
Quinn bit her lip. “I can understand that. But then you’ll join back up with Eli, right?”
“I don’t know. Not if things keep going the way they are. I like the HR, but…” I trailed off, my voice casual, but saying the words made my stomach tighten unpleasantly.
“Maybe Eli’s jealous of you and Donovan. I noticed you guys finally did the deed.” She made an unladylike gesture as she said it which made me laugh.
“How exactly did you notice?”
“Oh, you two were glowing like the sun this morning. So incredibly obvious. Honestly, I’m disappointed it took you so long to get to business.”
“Not my fault. Donovan was trying to prove a point about our relationship not being purely physical this time around.”
“Well, he’s more than proven it.”
“Yeah. But what you said about Eli being jealous, totally not the case.” I made a snorting sound. “Let’s talk about your love life, hmm? We’re best friends and I can’t keep track of all the guys you’re dating. How many broken hearts did you leave back in Seattle?”
“Only three,” she said. “I’m losing my touch.”
“Never,” I said with a grin.
She grinned back, and I realized with a discordant pang of hurt and happiness that Quinn was the sister I never had. Anna had been too young when I turned Anam Gatai. That relationship had been stolen from me, along with my soul and the rest of my human life. I had some good memories from the early years, faint and golden, but that was all that remained. The Anna and Kaitlyn we were back then w
ere dead forever.
“What is it?” Quinn asked, her smile faltering.
I opened my mouth to try to explain, but out of the window, a sparkle in the woods to the south of the manor house caught my eye. I shot up and trotted for the door.
“Where are you going?” Quinn called, following after me.
“I saw something!”
When I hit the stairwell heading to the first floor, I ran into Eli. His pale face shone ghost-like in the shadows of the house.
“You saw it, too?” It was rhetorical, I could tell by the look on his face that he had.
“Yeah. Were you going to get me, or just go alone?”
“Um, what exactly were you doing?”
His mouth tightened. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
We crept outside. I realized Quinn wasn’t following us but I didn’t have time to go back and see why. We moved silently across the overgrown lawn and into the trees beyond. I could feel another supernatural presence, more than one, actually. Either it was the missing supes or we had company of another sort. I simultaneously hoped for the former so I could get the hell out of Ireland, and the latter so I could get into a fight. My energy really needed a release or I was going to lose it.
The moon lit a clearing up ahead, from which the tug of the other supes emanated. Eli and I slowed even further, moving as one with the night. We stopped right on the edge of the clearing and looked around. I didn’t see a thing. Unless it was invisible, whatever had been here had split. Eli let out a frustrated groan. He rose from his crouch and strode into the meadow. I followed on his heels. When he reached the center, he bent down and picked something up, which he held in the moonlight. Another angel feather.
“They were here. So close.” His voice held anguish.
“But why didn’t they come back up to the house?” I mused aloud. I turned to look back at it. As we’d all agreed, it was totally dark within. We hadn’t turned on any lights. “Maybe they set some sort of alert spell.”
“Maybe.” Eli stared up at the sky, squeezing the feather so tight in his palm I could smell a tang of blood on the air.
I reached out and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
After a moment he nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. We walked back through the forest. The night held a crystal crispness, and my mouth let out little clouds into the air. Being late winter, it surprised me it wasn’t snowing. Overhead, tree branches cast silhouettes against the moon, and stars burned holes in the silky stretch of sky.
We had just reached the open space leading to the house when my head whipped to the east. All the blood in my body turned to ice, and my heart panicked in my chest, a scared animal. There, beyond the house, the moon frosted a set of rolling hills in the distance. And it was there I felt the tug of a presence I hadn’t felt since the very beginning of my life.
Olga, my maker.
As I stared at the glowing lunar tapestry, she blinked into sight. Red hair whipping in the wind like the flags of a ship, pale limbs that matched the long white dress she wore. Her gray eyes sparked in the night for just a moment, a flash of silver. And then she was gone.
I shuddered and my knees buckled.
“Zy?” Eli jumped forward and caught me before I fell.
“I—I’m fine,” I stammered.
“You are not fine.” Eli’s eyes were turbulent as he hooked me in his gaze. “I’ve never seen a look on your face like that before.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “Come on, you’re scaring me.”
“She’s here.” It came out choked, strangled.
He opened his mouth to ask who I meant, but my meaning dawned on him. He shut it again.
“And she knows I’m here,” I whispered. My blood thrilled in my veins as the words came out.
“She can’t hurt you, can she?”
I drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”
After a moment he said, “I’m sorry we had to come here. To Ireland.” He was still holding me up, and his arms tightened around me as he said it.
“It’s not your fault.” I kept quiet for a moment, focusing on inhaling and exhaling, trying to calm the adrenaline shooting through my body. “You aren’t responsible for my baggage. I mean, most people don’t have a whole country they have to avoid. Most people don’t have the kind of past I have. Haven’t done the things I’ve done.”
I shuddered. All I could see were her eyes, those granite eyes. She really knew me, Olga. Eli didn’t. Not even Quinn and Riley did. They only thought they knew me.
“You may have done horrible things in your past,” Eli started. I made a sound in my throat. “Have done. You have done horrible things.”
We stood face to face now, his violet eyes linked to my espresso ones. He still had his arms hooked under mine, holding me against him.
“And those things will always be a part of you. You can’t get rid of them,” he continued. “But the thing is, you regret those things with every particle of your being. You’ve spent decades upon decades trying to counteract them. You require souls to survive, but now you only take the bad ones. And despite your devil-may-care attitude, you do care about this realm. You try to protect it.”
His words should have soothed me. But I didn’t deserve his kindness. He couldn’t understand, and he never would. A lash of anger and sorrow, of loneliness, snapped through me. My face twisted. “Yeah, I’m such a martyr. I eat all the gross souls of rapists and murderers and despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, what with me sitting up in my bar fixing cocktails and sometimes going out on a bounty when I feel like it, I’m just a regular savior.”
“Zy—”
“It’s a battle, Eli. Every. Single. Day. Every day I want to drain the souls of dozens of innocent people passing by. I miss it. The taste of them. The power. This whole fucking planet is a revolving buffet line passing right under the nose of a junkie on the edge of her next relapse.”
His face tightened, his lips pressed into the thinnest of lines. “Why are you so determined to be the bad guy?”
“I kind of am the bad guy!” I was shouting now. “It’s why you hired me to begin with. It’s why Lucifer wants me.” I raised my right arm. My partial demon mark glowed faintly with the strength of my anger. Had it gotten bigger? I shook off the thought and plowed on. “You’ve pointed it out yourself. You don’t really trust me either. This last month—”
Eli threw his hands in the air. “There’s no winning with you! You argued with me the other day that your demon mark was fine, now you’re using it as evidence of your inherent evil.”
“I’m just trying to say that you think you know me, but you don’t.” My voice had returned to normal volume, but had taken on an edge of frost like the wind nipping around us.
“Fine.” The tendons and veins in Eli’s neck looked about ready to pop. “Might as well just run along and find your maker then, if you’re so big and bad.”
I tensed, fighting the urge to punch him, at the same time that the song of his soul swelled around me, sweet and pure. “I want—”
“What? What do you want, Zy?” He stared me down hard.
I want to kiss you. I want to taste you. I want your soul. “I want to get out of this goddamn manor. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I stalked back toward the house, which loomed heavily in the darkness, its presence settled into the earth. It belonged here, and it knew it. I did not.
So agitated was my state of mind that I practically ran into Quinn as I stepped through the back door. And next to Quinn stood someone else. Someone I didn’t recognize. A young teenaged someone, a werecreature or shifter from the smell of him.
“Who the fuck are you?” I blurted out.
“I’m Scorch. Who the fuck are you?” the boy snapped back.
I stopped, hands on my hips, and stared him down. My stare was a rather impressive one, at least most people thought so. It became instantly apparent, however, that this kid was not one of them. He glower
ed back at me, a look fitting for his age, which I guessed to be fourteen or fifteen. His large, almond-shaped eyes held proper pubescent defiance. Their color was fairly astounding; pale gold irises with a thin rim of red around the perimeter. Cinnamon skin, black hair worked into a Mohawk. A nose ring completed the look, along with several bronze loops in his ears.
Quinn decided to interject before I could get good and worked up. “Scorch has been staying here in the manor house.”
“Kicked out by your parents, eh?” I asked.
“I didn’t get kicked out, I left,” Scorch said, his eyes and nostrils flaring. For a moment I thought I smelled something burning.
“Zyan, take it easy,” Eli muttered from behind me.
Quinn said, “Scorch has some info for us. He’s not the only one that’s been here.”
“We already know that,” I growled.
Quinn shot the kid an encouraging look, pointedly ignoring my comment.
Scorch glared up at me from beneath bushy eyebrows, his arms jammed across his chest. “I got here a few nights ago. A couple times I picked up the scent of a horse shifter, and angel, too. Fresh scents, been here recent. And somethin’ else.”
Eli said, “What do angels smell like?” at the same time I asked, “Something else like what?”
Scorch looked back and forth between us and opted to answer Eli’s question first. Though I could have answered it myself since Eli’s soul always made my mouth water. “Angels smell like… sunshine, but like, magnified or somethin’. A clean smell. And sometimes there’s a scent like herbs, too.”
Eli pursed his lips as he digested this. Clearly it seemed weird to him.
Scorch flicked his gaze to me next. “The other scent… not exactly sure. It smelled kind of like…you do. Like burnt wood or peat moss or some kind of earthy, spicy incense.”
“Yeah, it’s been a regular goddamned supernatural party, complete with another Anam Gatai. My maker.”
“What?!” Quinn squealed.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I growled. “Now that that lovely exchange is out of the way, we need to be getting out of here. Nice seeing ya, kid.”
Whiskey and Angelfire Page 5
