by Larissa Ione
He was familiar with the concept since parts of Heaven and Sheoul operated with similar time anomalies, but he generally avoided those places. They always made him feel like he’d missed out on something, as if he’d wasted his life, and if there was one thing he’d learned in his centuries of existence, it was that every minute was precious, even for immortals. After all, immunity to natural aging didn’t mean one couldn’t be killed, and no matter what, everything changed. He didn’t want to miss the changes.
“Okay, so.” Rallying with squared shoulders and head held high, she headed to the kitchen, her long hair brushing against the swell of her fine ass with every step. He could watch that all day. “What’s this bond thing Reina was talking about?”
“Ah. That.” Yeah, this could get a little sticky. Repressing a groan, he scrubbed his hand over his face, partly because damn, he was tired too, and partly to buy a little time to figure out how to explain this without freaking Jedda out too much. Finally, he dropped his hands and got on with it. “The human custodians of the Gems of Enoch went through a ritual that bonded them to the gems. Then Darlah, Ebel, and I bonded ourselves to the humans.”
Halting mid-step, she looked back over her shoulder at him. “You had sex with them? Isn’t sex between angels and humans forbidden?”
“Ah...yeah. I mean, no. We didn’t have sex with them.” Well, Ebel had fallen in love with his human, but to this day Razr didn’t know how intimate they’d been. “We exchanged blood. But obviously, there are a lot of ways to bond to someone.”
“Can we break it?”
Razr flinched, stung. Which didn’t make sense. Hers was a reasonable question. Who in their right mind would want to be tethered to someone else for life? For centuries. For all eternity, even. The idea should bother him, too.
But for some reason, he couldn’t dredge up an ounce of give-a-shit. He’d been intensely attracted to Jedda before the sex, and afterward, nothing had felt different. He’d known almost from the beginning that he couldn’t harm her to get his gem back, and that had nothing to do with any mystical bond. She’d been unique. Special. Decent. She’d proved as much when she’d gotten him away from Shrike and helped him recover.
She hadn’t needed to do that. Truly, it hadn’t been the smartest of decisions. Had he been, say, Ebel, he’d have slaughtered her without a second thought the moment he knew that doing so would release the gem.
“Razr?” Jedda turned fully around. “Can we break the bond?”
“Not while both of us are alive.”
Grief swirled in her remarkable eyes, sending another spear of hurt right through him. “Well, that sucks,” she muttered, and his hurt abruptly veered to anger.
“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “Once I tell my superiors that the two remaining Gems of Enoch are unrecoverable without destroying you and your sister and that I refuse to kill you or give up your locations, I’ll probably be executed. Problem solved. The bond will be broken.”
Her eyes flared in horror, making him regret his show of temper. Nabebe had taught him how easy it was to needlessly cause pain with words, a lesson he seemed to have forgotten in the years since the human’s death.
“Oh, gods.” Jedda closed the distance between them and laid a comforting hand on his forearm. “Are you serious? They’ll kill you?”
“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “I don’t even know if I’ll tell them.”
“What do you mean?” There was a desperation in her voice that called to every one of his possessive instincts, demanding that he assuage her fears, but he couldn’t. All he could do was reach out and cup her cheek, telling her with a touch that, while this situation was a shit sandwich, at least they were eating it together.
And wasn’t that all kinds of romantic? Cupid, he was not.
“I mean that I can lie indefinitely about searching for the gems,” he replied. “No one has to know about you and your sister.” Azagoth and Hades knew the truth about Jedda, but they wouldn’t squeal. And Jim Bob knew that the Ice Diamond was in storage with the dhampires, but seeing how he wasn’t exactly being upfront about who he was or what he was doing visiting Azagoth in secret, Razr doubted he was much of a threat.
“So you’d just live the way you’ve been living? With your wings bound and subjected to torture for the rest of your life? That’s bullshit. Isn’t there another way?”
He shrugged, unable to come up with any other way that made sense. “I could come clean, but that would put you at risk. Even if they don’t execute me, they could take my ring and give it to another who will hunt you and your sister down.” Damn, he was screwed. “No, I think it’s best to never tell them. As I’m concerned, the gems are lost and will never be found.”
She opened her mouth, probably to argue, but just then, the phone rang. “Hold on,” she said in a stern voice that reminded him of one of his old battle coaches. “We’re not done talking about this.”
While she answered the phone, he considered their next move. They had to get Shrike out of the picture, both for Jedda’s safety and to make sure the fallen angel’s interest in the Gems of Enoch came to a permanent and, with any luck, a painful end.
Maybe if they––
He doubled over in sudden agony so intense he looked for blood and a spear wound to the gut. Clenching his teeth, he checked the back of his hand and sure enough, his Azdai glyph was lit up like a neon fucking sign as days’ worth of pain-free time caught up with him.
“Razr?”
He heard Jedda drop the phone, and then she was there beside him, her arm around his waist as she helped steady him against the back of the couch.
“Need...to get...to Azagoth,” he gritted out. “Hurry.” The nearest Harrowgate was close, barely a block away, but it was going to feel like miles.
Jedda guided him to the door, effortlessly bearing his considerable weight on her diminutive frame as he leaned on her through spasms of pain. Even through the searing agony, he had to admire her strength and determination. He’d always been attracted to athletic, fighter-type females like Darlah, but he was rapidly learning that one didn’t have to be big and brawny to be a warrior.
Keeping him braced against her side, one arm wrapped around him, she reached for the door with her other hand and tugged on the knob. “Oh, shit.” She tugged again, this time more forcefully, but it wouldn’t open.
“Is it...locked?” He felt like a jackass for asking, but sometimes the obvious got missed.
Fortunately, she didn’t take offense, simply shook her head. “It doesn’t feel stuck, either. More like––” She broke off with a curse. “Stay here.”
As if he could do anything else. His bones felt like they were melting and taking his muscles with them. As she gently pulled away, he sagged against the wall.
She hurried to the window and let out a string of angry words in what he assumed was Elvish. He also assumed they were creative obscenities. “We’re trapped.”
A groan rattled his chest. “Trapped?”
“Shrike’s minions. At least a dozen. They must have been watching for my return. I think they’ve trapped us with wards.”
Every breath was labored now, as if he was breathing whips of fire. “Can you...get us to...ah, Rivendell?”
“It’s Filneshara.” Diamond dust filled the air, shredding his already compromised lungs, and he knew they were in real trouble. “The travel stones to my realm only work from faeways.” Her voice was pitched with alarm, and he couldn’t blame her.
But now wasn’t the time to panic. As he told his Memitim students, stay active. No matter how much shit you’re in, do something, anything, to stay focused.
“My pocket,” he rasped. “In my pocket.”
Quickly, she fumbled around in his jacket and pulled out the cat-o’-nines. Which she promptly dropped on the floor with a hiss. “You can’t be serious. I can’t, Razr. I can’t. Please don’t make me do it.”
He inhaled, riding a relatively mild wave of pain as he straightene
d. “You have to. If we can’t leave, you have to.”
Her face contorted in misery. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He hooked a finger under her chin, lifting her gaze to his, hating that this was hurting her. His pain didn’t matter. It was hers that was tearing him apart right now. “I’m used to it. And I heal fast. You’ve seen it.”
“I’ve also seen you pass out. And I saw how you looked just before you did.” She turned away, her breaths coming in panicked wheezes. “I can’t.”
His skin was starting to blister, and inside his body, a firestorm of agony ripped through him as his bones began to fracture with audible cracks. “You can do it lightly,” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice level so she wouldn’t know how much this was making him want to scream.
Except that he was silent in his pain. He always had been. Keep it inside, his father used to say after a harsh training session. Which was all of them. One of the hazards of being born to two high-ranking, militant battle angels who expected their offspring to go down as legends, he supposed.
They’d been pretty disappointed in him, given the whole fuck up an elite team and lose all their magic gemstones thing. They hadn’t even visited him in prison. Not once.
Jedda shook her head. Her entire body trembled and dammit, he couldn’t make her do this.
“Okay,” he croaked. “Get one of Shrike’s guys in here.” Something inside him popped, and he stumbled, catching himself on the fireplace mantel. “Hurry.”
“I’m not letting some psycho stranger hurt you!”
He coughed, spewing blood. She cursed, came around him, and stripped off his shirt. She tossed it to the floor and started on his pants, which he would have enjoyed if he wasn’t in agony and she wasn’t about to torture him.
Something else inside him snapped––a rib, he thought, as he dropped to his knees. Shit, he was in so much pain right now that the cat in Jedda’s hand would feel more like a loving stroke than a vicious rake.
She hesitated, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from screaming at her to get on with it. “Go...ahead. Do it, Jed. You can do it.”
The straps came down on his back so lightly he would have laughed if he’d had the breath to do it. It hurt, but what hurt more was the cry that tore from her at the sound of the leather striking his flesh. He was so preoccupied by the misery he’d caused her that he almost didn’t notice that all his other pain unrelated to the cat-o’-nine was gone now that the punishment was being executed.
He sagged in relief. “Again, Jedda. Five more.” His voice was as shredded as his back was going to be.
“No,” she whispered, her agony thickening the air, but a moment later she slapped the cat across his back. The blow was gentle, which somehow made it even worse. She was trying so hard not to hurt him.
“Again.”
“I hate you for this,” she cried out as she brought the straps down.
He hated himself, too. But it would never happen again. Once they took down Shrike, he’d take his sorry ass back to Sheoul-gra and let her have a normal life. One where she didn’t have to hurt him or see him hurt.
One where he didn’t have to watch her be hurt.
“Again, Jedda. Harder. The more painful it is, the more time I get between sessions.” Usually. Sometimes the intervals were utterly random, as far as he could tell.
“No. I––”
“Do it!” he shouted. He needed her to be harsh. Make it hurt. Give him more time. And if he had to piss her off to get it, he would. “Dammit, Jedda, fucking hit me!”
She did, a little harder. But barely. Then again. Her cry of pain tore through him, reaching all the way to his soul, and when she struck again, for the first time in his life, he screamed. Screamed not for himself and his shredded back. He screamed for her, for hurting her so deeply.
“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, hitting the floor in front of him to gather him in her arms. He clutched her close as the tink of tiny diamond tears hitting the floor played like background music.
“No, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me, Jedda. Please.”
When she didn’t say anything, he knew, and the dull ache that compressed in his chest became the most horrific torture he’d ever endured.
She didn’t forgive him. But maybe that was for the best. It would make leaving her so much easier.
Chapter Thirteen
Razr wouldn’t let Jedda tend to his wounds. She’d watched him suffer, bleed, and withdraw into himself as she held him in her arms, unable to give him the one comfort he’d asked for.
Her forgiveness.
It wasn’t that she didn’t forgive him for making her hurt him. There was nothing to forgive. She’d done what she had to do, even as she hated him for it. Hated herself for it.
Because ultimately, it was her fault he was going through this torment in the first place.
Jedda couldn’t let this go on. She couldn’t let Razr live the rest of his life like this.
She had to give up his gem.
The moment they were done with Shrike––assuming they survived the meeting––she’d scour the human and demon realms for a gemstone more powerful than the Enoch gem, and if she couldn’t find one, maybe Azagoth would be willing to do what needed to be done to her.
She’d die, but Razr would no longer live a life of suffering. Suffering that she was directly responsible for. If she hadn’t stolen his gem, he wouldn’t be in this mess.
Rain pelted the window she’d been staring out of for hours, her gaze fixed on Shrike’s minions. The soaking-wet demons lurked on the sidewalk, their beady eyes as dead as she felt on the inside. On the outside, she looked the way she felt: exhausted and bruised, a result, she thought, of Shrike’s Lothar curse. The last time she’d checked herself in the mirror, she’d been shocked at how gaunt she looked, and even now when she glanced down at her arms, her breath caught at the purple bruises spreading under skin that had grown dull and grayish.
She and Razr were quite the pair, weren’t they?
Footsteps pounded in the hallway, and her stomach turned over even as her heart fluttered. She was an emotional disaster, something she’d never been. Probably because she’d never had strong feelings about any male, let alone one who needed things she couldn’t give him. Because one thing was certain: she could never, ever, hurt Razr again. Nor could she watch it. Or even know it was happening.
She’d always thought she was strong, but the events of the day had proven that she was nothing of the sort.
“Jedda?”
She couldn’t even look at him. Her shame had tied her in knots she wasn’t sure would ever be untangled. “What?”
“I think we can kill Shrike.”
Shame took a backseat to surprise, and she finally glanced up. Razr looked like hell, his expression bleak, his eyes haunted. Gods, she’d hurt him so badly, hadn’t she? “What do you mean? How?”
“My powers are bound, but the Enoch gem’s aren’t. Through the bond we share, I can access it.”
Her heart gave an excited thump. Her world might be shit right now, but this was good news. Shrike had cursed her to growing misery, and although she hadn’t told Razr, she could feel the crushing pressure of it even now. The moment they’d come back to the earthly realm from the elven one, she’d experienced a painful squeezing sensation, one that made her skin feel like shrink-wrap. She could only imagine how much worse it would get over the course of the next couple weeks.
“What kind of power are we talking about?”
“A concussive blast that will blow apart any demon it touches, including fallen angels.” He gestured toward the door. “We’ll tell his buddies out there that we have what he wants and we’re ready to go.”
“They’ll want proof.”
“We have the crystal horn. That’ll get us inside the castle.”
As far as suicidal propositions went, this was a good one. “And afterward? Assuming we survive?”<
br />
“Then you come back here and resume your life. I’ll return to Sheoul-gra and pretend to keep looking for the Gems of Enoch. No one has to know I found them. You and your sister will be safe.”
It was how it had to be and she knew it. At least, it was how it had to be until she found a replacement gem or died trying.
But she couldn’t let it end like this. She moved to him, and when he tried to step back, she persisted. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I... I think I love you.” His eyes flared wide, but she didn’t regret her words. “Thank you for finding me. I’m so glad it was you.”
Razr’s gaze was tortured, but etched in his expression was something else. Something she wished she hadn’t seen.
Love. He loved her too.
Very slowly, he reached out and cupped her cheek, his thumb smoothing away the teardrop rolling down her face and the tiny gem that formed behind it. She moaned as he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with so much tenderness and passion her knees nearly buckled. Heat spread through her veins, followed by a chill that sat on her skin like frost.
This was it. Good-bye.
When he pulled away, it was clear he knew it too.
Chapter Fourteen
The journey to Shrike’s place, mostly via Harrowgate with a little walking, was silent. Shrike’s goons weren’t the talkative type, for which Razr was enormously grateful. And Jedda...she just seemed broken.
Because of him. Because he’d made her hurt him and because there was no point in trying to earn her forgiveness or make her feel better. The angrier she was at him, the better.
But it sucked. More than having his wings bound by gold rope. More than being flogged on a regular basis. More than being kicked out of Heaven in disgrace.
On top of it all, he was going to lose her. She would eventually move on to a new male, maybe some hot fucking Legolas from Pandora. Or whatever.
Fuck.
He kept an eye on her as they approached the ballroom where Shrike was playing a game of darts. The dart board was unique, though: a demon’s crucified body, with no discernible point system. Well, Razr would spot Shrike points for creativity, as well as a handicap for his mental disorder.
