There were other agencies working on Radu’s case. But since Su had been the last agent to see him before his disappearance, she had to prove that she had not been negligent in her protection.
Between the scanty historical records of his life, Radu’s interviews, and polite but thorough interrogations of Anthony O’Neill and Glenath Tempesta, she had a solid theory on where Radu might be hiding.
Today was one final interview, and it was the one she had delayed as long as she could. Today, she would speak with Umar Mernissi.
She was as ready as she could be. Last night, she’d played her bass until the strings burnt her fingers. She’d masturbated herself to limp pleasure this morning. Best of all, she had not spoken to her mother. Silently she blessed Williams for running interference.
Dabbing a cool napkin against her overheated neck, Su double-checked her agenda.
1. Extract as much information on the CCC’s activities as possible, especially pertaining to the weeks leading up to Radu’s disappearance.
2. Keep Umar on his toes. She had discreetly questioned his coworkers and had gotten the low-down on how he treated women.
3. Learn if Umar was complicit in Radu’s crimes against Glenath and Lance Soleil.
Nothing to it. She rubbed her temples.
A commanding knock resonated through her office.
“Come in.” Su straightened her spine and smoothed her hair.
Umar Mernissi swept into her crowded office. He wore well-tailored white desert robes in clean white silk. Su wondered how he kept that shining expanse of white so clean. If she wore that much white, it would be covered in mocha stains by ten in the morning.
“Ms. Tanaka.”
At his deep-voiced greeting, Su merely smiled and gestured to a chair.
“Mr. Mernissi. Please be seated.” Su sat and let herself enjoy the sexual excitement that pattered down her spine.
Umar looked surprised at her cheerful tone. Obviously, he was used to women responding more violently to his extensive charms.
“I dislike doing business with women. In my country, women stay where they belong.”
Su could barely keep from grinning from ear to ear. It was on.
“First, Mr. Mernissi, I know full well that you are not a Wahhabi Saudi. You are from what is now Yemen, and during your lifetime, you had not one, but two queens who had the Friday khutba declared in their names. You are a quiet fundraiser for refugee and women’s rights not only in Yemen, but also in other Central Islamic countries. I understand you play the intolerant card in order to keep people off center. Now. Shall we cut the bullshit and get down to business?”
Umar’s eyebrows rose nearly to his beautiful black hair. “You are not what I expected.”
“I never am, Mr. Mernissi.” Su turned on her digital recorder. “Would you please tell me what you know about Radu Tepes’s activities before Halloween last year?”
CHAPTER 25
Hyde Park was over three hundred and fifty acres of carefully cultivated English countryside in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. Any given day, it would be filled with tourists, picnickers, and people rowing on the Serpentine Lake. Bright chatter, birdsong, and the music of everyday industry would bend the air, and the smells of humans, exhaust, and British food would excite the most jaded nose.
Lance Soleil narrowed his eyes. This was no ordinary day.
The grass swaths, the trees, the memorials, and sidewalks were bright and scrupulously clean, unlittered with the normal detritus of wandering humans.
The entire metropolis was deserted.
A discordant clash of metal against metal caught his attention before the scent of crushed mountain rosemary and gun oil told him where to look.
On the other side of the river, Valerie had camped under a tree. Handguns, knives, and her machete hung from the branches like deadly Christmas ornaments. She had stripped off her bloodstained T-shirt and pants. Naked except for her panties, she defied the chilly London drizzle.
Lance couldn’t stop looking. Only the swelling of her breasts and the fullness of her hips showed any softening of her sharp edges. The mound of their child tilted her pelvis, but he saw no lessening in her grace and deadly purpose.
Sweet God above, he wanted to drop to his knees. He had to worship the contradiction of her pregnant body and her dangerous abilities.
She tipped her chin at him, silently inviting him over.
“You can get us out of here, right?” Valerie said in way of greeting.
“Yes.” What was she talking about?
She tossed him a holstered pistol. “We need to close this gate. It’s replicating.”
Two sets of viper eyes opened in the branches above their head. One hissed and fluttered its tongue at them in a callous snake taunt. The smaller, second one, cracked its enormous tail like a whip, barely avoiding Valerie’s bare belly.
Valerie gave Lance the grin of a fighter who loved to win. “For old times’ sake, shall we destroy a Shadow Creature?”
By all creation, he loved this woman.
Spinning on her bare heel, she buried the sword in the smaller snake’s belly. Lance drew his obsidian blade and closed in on the first serpent. It blinked its nictitating membranes at him, dismissing him as a nonthreat. Whatever these things were, they lacked any concept of cooperative action. It didn’t even turn to assist the snake Valerie was currently mauling.
These snakes were really dumb.
A single slice of his sword cut open the snake’s eye. A shout behind him made him nearly turn to help Valerie, but he knew his vampire. She would ask for help if she needed it.
His serpent flailed and threw its head up and hissed in anger. It unwound from the tree. He pierced its head, right behind its damaged eye. Writhing and hissing, it dropped to the park’s grass. Lance spared a quick moment of thanks, glad this dimension did not include innocent bystanders. His serpent was wounded, but still fast and dangerous. Its spurting, acidic blood could have done critical damage to a human.
The serpent wound itself back into an attack coil. Lance stabbed, puncturing the other eye. Blood poured down its triangular-shaped head, blinding the supernatural being. It flung about, trying to clear off its eyes. Lance spread his wings, propping himself up with his feather tips, and threw his sword like a javelin. Air cracked behind the weapon’s flight. It punctured clean through the snake’s neck. The serpent flailed, splattering purple blood over the park until it finally dropped to the ground, dead.
The portal snake’s blood contained serious acid, enough that the park grew a light haze of smoke. The air stunk of blood, acid, and gunpowder. Lance turned and saw that Valerie had completely gutted her snake. She reached into the steaming carcass and pulled out its heart. She held the organ, staring at it for a moment. Then she squeezed it, crushing it completely. The acidic blood didn’t eat at her flesh as it would have before. His lover had been profoundly changed, and in ways he could not have predicted.
Valerie looked up at Lance, her face and body entirely covered in purple blood as though she had bathed in the creature’s innards. She jerked her chin at his dead snake.
“Destroy the heart.”
Lance shook his head. “It won’t rise again.”
She strode toward him, the darkness of violence raging in her eyes. Lance saluted her with his sword, his blood-clothed, avenging goddess of war and fertility. If she were in bloodlust, he would stop her.
Her stomach quivered under her thick purple coating. Valerie closed her eyes as though listening to something he could not hear and shook herself.
“I need to bathe.”
The sliced remains of the snakes crumbled like all dead paranormal citizens. The flesh deflated until the skeleton pressed against the desiccating skin. The skin split and fell to ash as the bones collapsed, leaving a pile of white ash.
A splash caught his attention. Clean and wet, Valerie waded out of the Serpentine.
Their gazes met as she pulled a pi
le of dry clothes from a pack. In a nerve-wracking reverse striptease, she wiggled her way into the multitude of layers of nineteenth-century men’s clothing. Fascinated, Lance watched her transform herself into the proper British gentleman of the Empire. Even her posture changed from comfortable sensuality to rigid self-awareness.
As a woman, Valerie’s magnetism aroused Lance. As a man, she turned into the very picture of the bad boy who could fuck all night long.
By the brews of Fermentation, Lance would desire her, this complicated vampire for all eternity. For an angel, eternity was not literary hyperbole.
Her gender-bending face sneered and she turned her back to him.
“That’s it. Let’s stop with the passive-aggressive crap,” he snapped, his arousal straining his patience.
She crowded him, bumping him with her chest like an angry, territorial bear.
“I changed my life. You learned everything about me and you ditched me. Everything I knew, all that I had been? Knowing you washed that away. You left me stranded, alone.” She gestured to her concealed stomach. “You act like I’m tainted now that I’ve got the kid. So I don’t have to answer to you about who I am now. You don’t have that right. Sperm donor.”
Lance winced. How could he explain that he was afraid of marring her, changing her in a way that would damage their child?
Someday, Lance would explain the reasons for his delay, the danger Lucifer had revealed. Not now, though. Valerie was correct. She had taken a chance on him and he had hurt her.
“What would it take to forgive me?” he asked.
Valerie rocked back on her heels. Anger narrowed her lips and flared her nostrils. Her aura flared hot orange with the fury. She wrapped her hand around the handle of one of the guns hanging from the tree.
As surely as if her mind were a movie screen, he saw what her darkest heart desired.
She wanted to fire the pistol at him, point-blank into his heart. She wanted to wrap her battle-hardened hands around his left wing and break the humerus bone between her ruthless hands.
Finally, intent on her revenge, she would bury her fangs into his shoulder above his broken wing. He would scream. The baby would protest. She would drain him until he was forced to defend himself.
She wanted to immolate all three of them—child, mother, and father—in a blaze of forgetfulness. Valerie didn’t want to remember the love he had awakened in her.
Her gaze softened and the vision in his mind’s eye faded. “I will not lose what I have gained at such cost,” she said, refuting what he had seen. “You are not Lucifer, to tempt me with pointless, futile actions. You genuinely want to know what I need.”
She dipped her nose into the crook of his neck and inhaled. Lance’s cock lurched even higher. The oxygen dilated her pupils, revealing her deliberate intoxication.
“Feed me,” she answered quietly. “By our child’s eyes, I still hunger for you.”
Lanced pulled out the blessed Gerber blade he had carried as a human. He opened his shirt, letting the edges flap on either side of his torso. Valerie’s gaze dropped down his stomach to his crotch. Lifting the knife, he sliced a deep line over his right nipple.
Valerie inhaled again and sat on a nearby bench. She touched her tongue to the center of her upper lip. Her fangs grew, slowly and deliberately. She was not in bloodlust. This was something else, something that could change worlds.
“You still smell the same,” she murmured, so low he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear it.
“Take what you need from me.” He gestured to the ribbons of blood pouring down his chest. “Drain me, live from me. If you are not with me, I cannot be my true self.” Lance straddled her lap and smeared the angel blood over his chest.
She licked up the dripping fluid. Her fangs descended fully. Smooth as glass, her teeth penetrated his nipple.
She drank.
Lance held her head to his breast. As she filled with him, he laid his hand on her stomach. Through his palm, he heard the baby’s calm, strong heartbeat. His daughter was strong and proud, the best and the worst of angels and vampires.
Divine laughter swirled around them, as lifting as the musical chime of bells.
Valerie drank until her broken heart was soothed. In his blood, she felt his regret and pain at her sorrow. Silently, he told her of his joy at finding her and the passion he carried for her.
Peaceful for the first time since she saw him lift to the heavens, she laid her cheek on his still-cobbled abs and closed her eyes.
“I missed you,” Lance murmured as he stroked her hair. “And I absolutely must fuck you now.”
Startled, Valerie choked. His erection pressed against her belly, but she assumed it was a symbolic manifestation of, well, something angelic.
“You can do that?”
“I’d like to see what our new capabilities are.”
He obviously wasn’t referring to her ability to enjoy sunlight. His wings fluttered rich clove-scented air against her as he ground against her body.
“How exactly do you propose such experiments?” she challenged.
Lance merely gave her a heavy-lidded smile. A tendril of cold wrapped itself around her ankle, under her boot and sock. She shuddered.
“What are you doing?”
“Experimenting.” He grinned at her, his human smile reminding her of their lovemaking.
The tendril yanked slightly and then slowly, slowly glided up her calf. It paused at her knee, drawing little circles.
In retaliation for the tease, she slicked her hands through his blood-smeared chest and feathered a caress over his hard nipples. Two could play this game.
A second tendril wrapped around her other leg.
The tendrils warmed slightly and the caressing grew bolder.
She felt herself being gathered up and floated off of the ground. Warmth enveloped her and she lay back, surrendering.
“Oh. That’s very … nice,” she breathed.
The forest gathered its breath, and then Valerie was yanked off the wet lawn, her hair streaming toward the ground. She was wrapped in warmth. It caressed her thighs, plucked at her nipples, and slid inside of her mouth, thick and sweet. She sucked and licked at the thickness in her mouth as her angel caressed and sucked at her breasts with an invisible mouth. Something hot and wide pressed against her belly and she arched against it, rubbing and licking. She wrapped her hands against the heavy air.
She felt safe and secure in the air as she floated, her mouth and vagina filled with the heat, her breasts tight and swollen and tender in the suction. She screamed around the presence in her mouth when Lance thrust between her legs.
He pulled out of her mouth slightly to let her breathe, and continued to thrust. She wrapped her legs around him, and began to climb the mountain of her orgasm. Something cool and slick rubbed against her clitoris and the top of the mountain came to meet her.
All night they rolled together, visible and invisible, the worldly and the unworldly, until Valerie’s body was bruised and deliciously raw.
Like her heart.
CHAPTER 26
The fairy tales of Dante and Milton have firmly rooted Lucifer as a creature of pride; charismatic, persuasive, convincing those around him with pure, flawless rhetoric to actively continue rebelling against God; the most unnatural act of all.
They were half right.
Lucifer truly was persuasive. His sin was not simply pride but that of despair. Despair, the father of sin, led Lucifer and his fellows to disavow their knowledge of their Divine nature.
What would lead beings made from pure love into the churning pit of despair?
The belief that their parent adored them no more.
—Fallen Angels: A Literature Review by Josephine O’Neill
John sat back in his chair, studying Maxwell over their chessboard. In the few days he had been in this hollow London, he had learned a great deal.
A chess game tells you everything you needed to know about someone—their very
soul spelled out in letters of fire in front of you if you just bothered to look.
Maxwell was both adventurous and precise, a dangerous combination. He annotated every move with a cramped, neat script, but played with verve and style, attacking from the flanks at every chance. Somehow, he managed to sit tall and easy in his uncomfortable horsehair-stuffed chair. He smiled at everything, even when he lost the second game. It would have been unnerving to anyone else.
Anyone except John. He was tuned in to Fallen Angels. As a Guide, he had the ability to see beneath their surface and discern what their true needs were. Therefore, John saw his opponent’s stress in the tiny tremble in his eyebrows and in the constant licking of his lips.
The angels here were playing a very deep game with Mina Harker as their linchpin. He tapped his chin, waiting for the Second Fallen to move.
“You know what we will do with your angel when he finally arrives?” Maxwell taunted John.
“Do tell.” John leaned his torso to the side, placed an elbow on the arm of his chair, and stroked his chin, the very picture of an engaged listener.
“We will strip him of his Ascension and pull him back into Headquarters with us. All your suffering will be for naught.”
“I see.” John pursed his lips. He did see. Maxwell needed to know if John would save him and his team, too. It all depended on what happened next. “Your move,” he prompted Maxwell.
With a flourish, the older man moved a pawn. The action told John everything he needed to know.
“You are careless with your queen,” John told Maxwell. “You endanger her at every turn.”
“Yet you are so eager to claim her,” Maxwell said.
“I’m French,” John replied. “If I see a woman neglected, I rescue her.” His long fingers caressed Maxwell’s queen as she was whisked from the board.
Maxwell moved his king to what he saw as safety behind his pawns. “My king still eludes you.”
John pushed his bishop diagonally three boxes toward Maxwell’s troops. “Yet your king is on shaky ground. Check.”
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