by G. A. Rael
"Jordan, look out!" he cried, tackling her to the ground as the sound of a thousand moths drowned out all but the metal clash of blades. Even that ceased once the angels noticed the approaching swarm. Darren realized he had been far off in his estimate as no less than ten-thousand dark gray moths fluttered overhead, swooping and oscillating as one giant cloud.
To Darren's amazement, the shadow began to close in on itself, shrinking and writhing and bending until the moths took on a definable shape.
It was human, or something close.
The moths merged and flattened themselves into stone white flesh with distinct features until a tall man was left hovering over the garden. His gray gossamer wings had an elegant shape only to end in tatters, as if something no less than the size of a bear had torn at them with fangs and claws. The man himself was ethereal with high cheekbones, eyes so blue they were almost white and hair the color of spun gold that flowed well past his shoulders. He was clothed in a long gray cloak and trousers of a thin, wispy material Darren had never seen before. The vet had a bad feeling that the clothes, like their wearer, were made of moths rather than any earthly textile.
Like Raphael, there was something familiar about this new monster, but before Darren could venture a guess as to what it was, the creature took a dive to join the fray. Raguel's blade came down hard on him before it was even possible to tell whose side the thing was on, but the statuesque creature exploded into a legion of moths on impact. He materialized again behind Raguel, this time in an instant, and seized on the angel's momentary shock to pin his arms behind his back. Raphael swooped down, reaching for the blade. “Samael,” he cried as the two of them held the struggling archangel in temporary immobilization. "Now!"
Samael, who had just driven his blade into the skull of Raguel's last reinforcement, looked up and stared in bewilderment for a moment at his newfound allies. He shook out of it quicker than Darren would have been able to and his wings flapped and he dug his feet into the earth to propel himself into the sky.
"No," Raguel growled as Samael raised his blade overhead. It was a cry of indignation more than a plea for mercy. "Don't do this, brother. You'll rue the day you turned your back on Heaven. I'll make sure of it."
"My duty ain't to Heaven or to you, brother," Samael said in a snarl that turned the protruding black veins around his eyes into a malevolent mask.
"You take orders from a whore now, is that it?" Raguel asked, his voice dripping with mockery.
Samael’s glowing eyes narrowed sharply. "My loyalty is to them, the souls we were created to protect. You talk a big game about law and order, Rag, but at the end of the day, you and Luce are one and the same. You've both forgotten that we were given power to serve humans, not lord it over them. Not to take joy in ripping their souls apart. You lost sight of your true purpose so long ago that you actually like it and the rest of us have just sat back and let it happen. Jordan might've been the one to open my eyes to how fucked up it's all become, but the system has been broken for a long time."
"And killing a fellow archangel isn't 'fucked up?'" Raguel demanded.
"Oh, it is." The sadness in Samael’s voice was unmistakable. "It's just the lesser of two evils, and for a long time now, I've been livin' with the greater."
"You'll regret this," Raguel repeated, raging against his captors with renewed fury.
"Maybe," said Samael. "But I'm a man of my word and when I said the next time you called my girl a whore would be the last time, I meant it."
Samael plunged the blade directly into Raguel's heart and turned the hilt sharply, cutting the organ out of his chest before Darren could even think to shield Jordan's eyes. When he glanced down at her, she was watching with eyes wide and her hands pressed against her mouth in horror. She let out a strangled cry when Raguel choked up a fountain of blood before his entire body went limp in the moth creature's arms.
Darren cried out in alarm when something seared his palms like he had rested them on a hot stove, but the moment Jordan slipped from his grasp, the burning stopped. He started to take off after her but hesitated when he saw Samael’s blade fall to the ground as he hovered over Raguel's body. His wings drooped suddenly and he fell to his knees. Darren noticed that the angel's eyes had ceased to glow.
The sky was already painted with the early notes of dawn and the bodies of the fallen angels were beginning to smoke. Jordan ran to meet Samael and Darren's concerns for her safety evaporated as the massive angel collapsed in her arms. Samael began to sob and clung to her with such childlike desperation that the seed of envy within Darren's chest was unable to thrive. Pity choked it out like a weed.
Raphael rose into the sky as the moth creature began to fade in the morning light. Darren looked between them and decided to focus on the allegedly deceased archangel. "Hey!" he bellowed. "Who the fuck are you and what do you want with Jordan?"
The angel hovered in one spot, watching Darren with silent and unreadable intent. For a moment, Darren wished he had called out to him in a more respectful manner. "And I mean that in the most reverent way, your uh, majesty."
The angel's shoulders shook with mild laughter. "You did well tonight, Darren. You're a natural protector, but I wonder, can you handle sharing?" he mused, looking pointedly at the scene up ahead. Jordan was stroking Samael’s hair soothingly as he shrouded them both with his wings. They had already turned the color of ash.
When Darren looked back to ask Raphael to clarify his cryptic question, the angel had vanished along with his motorcycle. Darren looked around for any sign of the other creature only to spot a shadowy figure retreating into the labyrinth.
"Dammit," Darren muttered as he took off. Speed had always been his Achilles' heel, even before his death, but he had no doubt that he could rip the damn thing's wings off if he could just get close enough.
He caught a glimpse of gray in the midst of a sea of green and dove through the hedges, tackling whoever was on the other side. Darren pinned down the creature's flailing arms before its sharp claws could tear his skin and it snarled at him in rage. It wasn't the unnaturally white skin, the long, pointed ears, the glowing white rings in its eyes, or even the sharklike teeth bared at Darren that took him by surprise. It was the familiar scent.
“Chase?”
The creature roared and threw Darren off, taking advantage of his surprise. It wasted no time springing to its feet and taking off ever deeper into the labyrinth. Darren lunged and grasped at the monster as it broke into a pile of moths and disappeared.
Darren stood in the middle of the labyrinth, panting and struggling to accept what he had just seen. Everything he had just seen. With a limp shuffle that had more to do with his dismay than stiffness, he made his way back out into the garden to find that the bodies of the dead angels, Raguel's included, had already disintegrated. Only piles of ash and steel indicated that they had ever been there in the first place.
Samael was already on his feet, but Jordan still had her arms wrapped around him. As Darren took note of the intimacy between them when they thought no one else was around, Raphael's passing comment began to make more sense. Competing with Chase was one thing, even if he was some kind of ethereal spirit. Being pitted against a salt-of-the-earth angel who had the face of a model, the body of a god and just so happened to have fallen from Heaven for none other than Jordan herself wasn't competition, it was slaughter.
Darren had been right about one thing, at least. This was by far the worst engagement party he had ever been to.
Chapter 13
Jordan
"Thank you so much for letting Sam stay the night," Jordan said, lingering on Darren's doorstep. "Mrs. Herrin wasn't happy about me bringing home a cat, never mind an angel."
"I doubt she'll be any happier if she ever figures out your cat is a demon," said Darren.
Jordan gave a rueful nod. "I promise, this is just until I can figure out what's going on with Chase. You're sure you haven't seen him?"
He seemed to hesitate for
a moment, but Jordan told herself it was just her exhausted mind playing tricks on her. "No, but I'll tell you if I do."
"Thanks." Jordan looked past Darren into the apartment where Samael was asleep on the couch. His wings were retracted and he looked human enough, but that didn't mean he was capable of acting it.
Darren must have sensed her anxiety, or at least noticed her staring. He cleared his throat and said, "You can stay the night if you're that worried about him."
"No, that's okay," Jordan said quickly, her face growing warm. "I need to find Chase. And Hermes."
"I don't like the idea of you out there alone," said Darren, looking her over. "In fact, I wish you'd let me take you to the hospital."
"I'm just going to Chase’s house. If he's not there, I'm going straight home," she promised, deciding that she had made the right decision not to tell Darren about her encounter with the werewolf that had inadvertently freed her from the bank vault. He was overprotective enough as it was. "Anyway, Samael healed me. I don't even have a scratch after the accident. I just wish I could say the same for my car."
“The angels could still come back now that the ward is broken,” he warned.
“Sam says they’ll be regrouping for a while. They weren’t counting on losing him,” she said, feeling another wave of guilt. “And the ward’s not broken. He told me there was a solar storm tonight that made it glitch for just an instant. It was long enough to break in, since the club was at the edge of the ward’s perimeter.”
“Opportunistic little bastards, aren’t they?” he muttered.
“It was foolish of me to think the angels wouldn’t be watching our every move,” Jordan answered. “Even more foolish to trust that Hermes knew what he was doing.”
Darren frowned. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Jordan. The Moonstone, Raguel… there’s no way you could’ve seen any of that coming.”
“I haven’t seen any of this coming, but that doesn’t make it any less my fault,” she said, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut when she saw the concern on his face. “Hermes protects me when it’s convenient for him, but he doesn’t care what happens to anyone else around me. Tonight was a wakeup call of what I should’ve known from the very beginning.”
“What are you going to do now?” Darren asked thoughtfully.
Jordan shook her head. “I don’t know. Part of me hopes he stays gone,” she admitted, hugging herself. She wasn’t sure how many times she could recover from the disappointment she kept subjecting herself to. “Either way, I’m not going to make the mistake of relying on him again.”
Darren didn't look convinced, but Jordan was relieved when his exasperated sigh signaled that he had decided to drop the matter. "Just promise me you'll get some sleep. The fallout from all of this is gonna be hell to deal with tomorrow." He cringed almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. "I'm still not used to that being more than a figure of speech.
Jordan smiled, taking a step off the welcome mat. "You get used to it, whether you want to or not."
Darren watched her for a moment. "I still haven't forgotten that answer you owe me, but I think the question I want to ask has changed."
"Darren, I —”
He held a hand up. "Don't worry about it. It was unfair to put you on the spot like that. As for Samael, I'm no angel expert, but I think he'll be fine after a little time has passed. No offense, but you're probably the last person he wants to be around right now."
"Why?" Jordan asked, surprised at her own defensiveness.
Darren gave her a look. "Angel or not, he's still a man. This is probably the only time in his life he's ever been vulnerable, and no man wants to look weak around a woman he's sworn to protect."
"You say that like you know."
He shrugged "I might not know Samael, but I've been in his position. Trust me, the best thing you can do for him is to give him space. I'll call you if anything happens."
Jordan nodded reluctantly. Darren was right. She knew he was, but that didn't stop her from wanting to pull Samael into her arms and be there for him. She had to remind herself that he couldn't possibly need her that way.
"Thanks," she said quietly. "For everything. Goodnight, Darren."
"Goodnight, Jordan," he said, hesitating before he closed the door. "Do me a favor?"
"Anything."
"When you find Hermes, kick him in the balls. Hard."
A slow smile spread across Jordan's face. "Now that I can do."
Chapter 14
Jordan
"And then the man from the Air Force had the gall to say there was no reason to suspect a UFO," Cindy said, her hands waving in a flurry of excitement even though it was the third time she had recounted the story. Jordan stirred her iced coffee absently while Tina listened, soaking in every detail like it was the first time.
"Did Colton ask him if we should be worried about another one hitting?" Tina asked eagerly. "First Sawyer's Mill, now this? Cold Creek is becoming a magnet for celestial activity."
Jordan snorted and tried to pass it off as a cough.
“Please,” Cindy said with an exasperated sigh. "Besides, you know how these government types are. You'd sooner get a million dollars out of one than a straight answer."
"That's true," Tina said with a sigh. "I'm just so glad everyone was inside when it happened. Although for the life of me, I can't remember why."
"We're all a little shaken up," Cindy agreed. "I'm just thankful no one got hurt."
"No humans," Jordan muttered under her breath. When she looked up to find both women staring at her, she realized her remark hadn't been as quiet as she intended.
"What's that, dear?" asked Cindy.
"Nothing," she said quickly, taking another sip of coffee.
"She's probably tired of talking about all this," said Tina.
"Of course," Cindy murmured, giving Jordan's hand a squeeze. "I'm sorry, dear. This must be just awful for you. I mean, your big night was ruined. When is the do-over?"
"Do-over?"
Cindy and Tina looked at each other.
"You are having another engagement party, aren't you?" Tina asked.
"No. Why would we do that?” We barely survived the first one.
"The party was kind of ruined when a meteor landed on it, dear," Cindy said carefully.
"Besides," Tina snorted, "It's not like Chase can't afford it now that he's a partner at Sherman Hayes."
"Trust me, there's nothing either of us wants less than to relive that night," said Jordan.
"But the wedding is still on, isn't it?" Tina pressed. Cindy must have pinched her under the table because she muttered “ow" and started rubbing her thigh.
Jordan looked down at the table, struggling to formulate an answer. "I don't know," she said finally. "We haven't talked about it since he told me he's thinking about taking the partnership."
"Weddings don't just randomly expire," said Cindy. "If you're unsure it's even happening, there has to be a reason."
"There isn't," Jordan said quickly. "I mean, we're still together, I just don't know how all this is going to work with him being in New York so much of the time."
And his refusal to talk about anything that had happened the night of the party, including his bizarre behavior at the bank.
"Wouldn't you be going with him?" asked Tina.
Jordan hesitated. "I can't do that."
"Why not? New York is exciting and it's not like you have anything better to do here!"
Cindy gave Tina a dirty look and the woman shrugged innocently. "What? Of course we'd miss her, but come on, it's New York."
"Cold Creek has its own charms," Cindy muttered, clearly offended by the implication.
"Yeah, an abandoned factory and man-eating bears."
Jordan cringed. The bank's security footage had mysteriously been erased along with any evidence of her and Chase’s presence, or the wolf’s, for that matter. With no surviving witnesses—none who were willing to come forward, in
any case—a rogue bear was the only explanation the local police had been able to piece together. Of course, some had already started speculating that toxins from the factory had created a mutant bear. Jordan wasn't sure that theory was much less believable than the truth.
"Those poor people," Cindy murmured. "And their families. When I saw the look on Angie Earlman's face at the funeral I just about cried."
"I can't even imagine losing your husband after the kids are all grown up and you think you're ready to retire and finally do all the things you've talked about doing one day," Tina mused, taking another sip of her coffee. "Say, didn't Max date her eldest daughter sometime back?"
"Yeah, but you know how Pete was," said Cindy. "I won't speak ill of the dead, but let's just say it didn't end well."
Tina gave a knowing laugh. "Guess I can see why Max didn't make it to the funeral."
"No, he's been away on some training exercise for the Guard."
"Well, I wish he'd hurry back. The new guy down at the post office keeps giving me Cathy Sullivan's mail and God only knows what she got of mine."
Jordan raked her hands through her hair, only partially listening as the pair talked. Her gaze was fixed on the blue building that housed Darren's clinic and his apartment, wondering if Samael was still there. He had officially been staying at Chase’s place for a little less than two weeks, but the angel preferred to spend most of his time at either Jordan's apartment or Darren's.
After all, she had plenty of room now that Hermes had been MIA for twelve days.
"Speaking of absences, where is that friend of yours?” Tina asked hopefully. “Henry, isn’t it?” The mention of his assumed name jolted Jordan out of her thoughts.
"Oh, um, I don't know. I mean, I do know," she corrected herself. "He went back to the city, but I don't know for how long."
"Oh," Tina said in an unmistakably disappointed tone. "Sometimes I forget he doesn't really live here."
