The guy looked older than Mireva but only by a couple of years. He was tall and lanky like Brynna but with jet-black hair chopped and gel-styled into irregular spikes. A diamond crucifix sparkled in his left ear, blatant contrast to the kohl and black mascara enhancing his eyes; the black coloring that was painted across his lips made his skin look like china. Despite the heat, a leather biker’s jacket was draped over his bony shoulders. Beneath that was a tank top of torn black netting tucked into skintight black denims. Heavy black boots and fingerless gloves completed the picture. His handsome face was ageless and intense, the alabaster-smooth brow broken by nothing, not even a single drop of sweat. His eyes met Brynna’s without flinching. Of course, he wouldn’t. He—
Redmond—damn, she’d forgotten about him—shouldered his way past her. “What are you two doing in this hallway?” he demanded. “Do you live here?”
“Mireva does,” Brynna put in. “I know her uncle.”
Redmond turned his glare to the young man. “And what about you?”
“T-This is Gavino,” Mireva stammered. “He walked me home from the bus—”
“Mireva!” A sharp voice cut her off and an instant later Abrienda hurried into view from the stairs. The older woman’s gaze flicked from her daughter to the young man in the hallway, then darkened. “Get upstairs. Now.”
“But Gavino says he can help me work on my science project,” Mireva protested.
“Yeah,” Gavino offered. His eyes met Brynna’s and he smirked. “I hear she’s working on the tree of life. I got that whole life thing down, dude.”
Before Mireva could say anything else, Abrienda turned her daughter away from the others and steered her toward the stairs. Gavino looked disappointed and reached out like he was going to take the girl’s hand, but Brynna slipped between them. “You don’t need his kind of help,” she said.
“My kind,” Gavino sneered at her as the two women disappeared from view. “You should know.”
“What?” Redmond looked from Brynna to Gavino. “You two have met before?”
“Oh, we’re old friends.” Gavino grinned again. His incisors looked vaguely sharp, like infantile vampire teeth. Nice trick, Brynna thought.
“You are?” Redmond looked at Brynna. “I thought—”
“So it’s Gavino,” Brynna cut in. “That’s what you’re going by these days.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Gavino, then back at Redmond. “Gavino exaggerates. We’ve met before, but we’ve never been friends. And we never will be.”
“So, like, you want to have lunch?” Gavino asked gleefully. “I know this restaurant—”
“Keep getting smart with me,” Brynna warned. “Give me an excuse to pull your lungs out through your mouth.”
“Hey,” Redmond said, alarmed. “Hold on, Brynna.”
“Touchy, touchy,” Gavino said, but he was already edging past her, trying to get to the door. “But hey, I think I’ll just mosey along.”
“You do that,” Brynna told him. “It’s safer that way.” Her gaze bored into Gavino’s and she stepped closer to him, crowding him against the wall. “You know what I mean.”
“You don’t want to start no public display,” Gavino reminded her. He glanced toward the stairs, but there was no fast way out in that direction. “People might find out certain things.”
“What things?” Redmond demanded.
Brynna stepped forward again, this time nearly pinning Gavino against the wall. She could feel Redmond’s confused stare but she had to rein in Mr. Motor-Mouth right now. Besides, being threatened really pissed her off. “I warned you already,” she hissed into Gavino’s face. “Push me again and see how much I care.”
Gavino mock-grimaced and raised his hands. “Hey, lady—no worries. I’m so outta here.”
“Hell wouldn’t be far enough,” she snapped.
Gavino gave her a caustic-looking grin. “Aw, what kind of thing is that to say? I ain’t going that far.”
Brynna glared at him. “You might consider it.” Still, she backed up a couple of inches and Gavino slid around her with the quickness of a snake.
“Later.” He looked at Redmond, then touched a finger mockingly to his forehead. “Have a nice day, Detective Redmond.”
Redmond growled and started to follow him, but Brynna snagged his sleeve and held him back. In another moment the dark young man was gone, leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of matches. Brynna barely noticed it, but she saw Redmond sniff the air distastefully before dismissing the scent and turning to her. “What the hell was that all about? I distinctly remember you telling me you weren’t from around here. And how did he know my name?”
“It’s a big world, Detective. I’ve been to a lot of it.” She could think of no way to explain the name thing, so she purposely ignored it.
“Is that how you learned all these languages?”
Brynna had to snicker at that. “No. Call it a … natural ability.”
“So what’s his story?”
“Gavino is …” She hesitated. How much should she tell him? He already knew a lot. The question wasn’t Did he believe? It was Should he believe? “He’s like me,” she finally said. “Sort of.”
Redmond stared at her. “You mean he speaks a lot of languages?”
“Yes. But in other ways too.”
“What other ways?”
Brynna shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it. Strong, maybe. I don’t know.”
Redmond frowned and she could tell he was trying to understand. She wanted to help him with it, but she didn’t know how. His expression changed, like he’d made a sudden decision. “Maybe I ought to go talk to this guy.”
“Not a good idea,” Brynna said.
“And why is that?”
“For all the reasons I just said,” Brynna told him. “You really don’t want to mess with him.”
“Look,” Redmond said. “I’m a cop, okay? That means—”
“I know what that means,” Brynna retorted. “I’ve been learning a lot from you.”
“Then you should know that no one is exempt from my curiosity.”
Brynna couldn’t help chuckling. “Curiosity,” she repeated. “Now there’s a trait that gets a lot of species in trouble.”
Despite everything she’d said, Redmond still pulled away and darted outside. She let him go, but only because she knew it was too late. “Hey,” she heard him exclaim. “Where the hell did he go?” She watched through the open door as he squinted first one way down the street, then the other. “Son of a bitch!”
“I’m going in,” Brynna said. “Do you want something to drink before you head home? I have water.”
“I don’t believe it,” Redmond said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “No one can move that fast.”
“He can, and he does,” Brynna said. She made sure the door didn’t quite close and had gone a dozen feet down the hall before she heard him finally come after her.
“So you know him,” the detective said as he followed her into her apartment. He leaned against the wall behind the small table.
“Not really.”
“Come on, Brynna. You two were talking like old friends out there.”
She had to laugh at that. “Never friends, in Hell or on Earth,” she said wryly.
“But you do know him,” Redmond pushed.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“So try. And while you’re at it, start with why you stopped me from going after him until you knew he’d be gone.”
Brynna pressed her lips together and went into the tiny kitchen. Cocinero’s grandmother, a wrinkled old woman who mumbled to herself constantly, had stopped by after church the day before and brought Brynna a box of things: a couple of towels, cheap sheets and a pillow, a mismatched, well-used handful of dishes. That made Brynna able to throw out the Styrofoam fast-food cup she’d been reusing. She pulled a couple of scratched plastic glasses from a cabinet and filled them with water from the faucet, stalling and trying to think of a
way to answer.
“It was for your own good,” she said finally. “You don’t want to tangle with him.” The expression on Redmond’s face made it clear her answer wasn’t enough, so eventually she added, “He could—and would—kill you without even trying.”
Redmond’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Sorry, but I think you’re overestimating him.”
Man, she sure didn’t have the patience for this. “I’m not, and you shouldn’t, either. If you see him again, stay out of his way and just let me know.”
“Brynna, I’m the cop here. What on earth would make you think I’d be afraid of that guy? He’s just a punk Goth kid trying to hook up with someone way too young for him. At best he’s an annoyance; at worst he’s a perv. Neither one scares me.”
“And neither one applies to him,” Brynna retorted.
“Then what does?” Redmond asked angrily. “I’m getting a little tired of this verbal dance. If there’s something fucked-up about him, would you just spit it out and be done with it?”
“Fine.” Brynna slammed the plastic tumbler on the table in front of Redmond. “First of all, Gavino isn’t his real name. Secondly, he’s like me, okay? But not in a good way, and for that, you ought to just run in the other direction.”
Redmond stared. “And so I’ll ask you again—like you in what way?”
“Like me,” she repeated stubbornly. “Come on—think back over the last week. Don’t act like you haven’t seen stuff that you never imagined could happen.”
Redmond’s mouth stretched into a thin line. “Overseeing a couple of questionable psychic visions and watching you dig two bullets out of yourself might walk the edge of believability, but there’s only so much I can accept, Brynna. I mean, I have my limits.”
“That’s just it,” she told him pointedly. “Your limits exist only because that’s what you’ve been taught to accept. But the world you believe in—it’s not the real one. In the real world, the world I’m from and where all this”—she swept her arms in an all-encompassing gesture—“was created, there are no limits. Absolutely none at all.”
“Brynna,” he said. He was standing very, very still. “What are you talking about? Religion?”
“I’m not what you think I am, Detective Redmond. You’ve listened to me talk about demons and witch doctors, but you don’t believe. Modern man has moved beyond the days of spells and shadows, and because you found electricity and airplanes and computers, you think the Dark Ages are gone. But all the technology in the world won’t explain or protect you from what’s really out there, from the things that existed eons before God blinked this very planet into actuality.”
After her first few words, Redmond had lowered himself onto the wobbly chair a few feet away. Now he got up again and strode over to stand in front of her. His face was set, as if he’d made up his mind that he’d simply had enough of all this crap. She frowned and backstepped, but he was crowding her the way she had crowded Gavino, inching forward until the wall was at her back and she was trapped in the narrow kitchen area—well, as much as she could ever be trapped by a human man. “Don’t you think this mystery-woman act is getting a little old?” he asked harshly.
“Old is a relative thing,” Brynna said. Separated by the distance of a seat in a car or a table in a restaurant was one thing, but here he was way too close to her for his own good, and she could see the effects on him already. All the not-so-subtle body language was there—his pupils had dilated slightly and his nostrils had widened, she could feel the increase in the air temperature around his skin, and he doubtlessly had no idea he was breathing faster. She wasn’t immune, either—for thousands of years she had existed solely for just such opportunities, the predator leaping at the prey. Her practice-trained response had been instantaneous, instinctive, desired. Conditioning like that just didn’t disappear in a few weeks.
“Knock it off, Brynna.” Redmond’s voice had dropped an octave and he blinked, trying to figure out what was going on. “He’s nothing more than a slimy local drug dealer. I—”
She kissed him.
Brynna had thought she was going to teach Redmond a lesson, give him the old I-told-you-so example about screwing around with something that should have been off limits. But here, away from Lucifer and Hell and the power that she had once wielded over mortals and fellow demons alike, she was definitely unprepared for the sudden and unexpected response she felt from this human female body.
There was heat—lots of it—but it wasn’t her generating it. And yet it was, and it was Redmond, and it was them, together. Her hands reached for him at the same time his arms went around her back and pulled her tightly against his chest. Brynna felt hungry and empty and wanting, desperate to feel his touch and tongue and nearness, to be with him skin to skin, to fold herself over him—
“Stop!”
Brynna came back to herself—where she was and what she was about to do—right before the two of them could fall onto the cheaply made twin bed.
“Why?” Redmond murmured against her neck.
His lips felt so good, so right, but no—it was everything but. She must not do this.
She disentangled herself from his embrace and pushed him away, ignoring his look of confusion. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” He took a step toward her but Brynna danced out of his reach. “We’re two consenting adults. We’re not tied to anyone else.” He tilted his head. His face was flushed, the skin on his cheeks almost glowing. “At least I’m not.”
Her mouth was still tingling, still carrying the taste of him through her nerve endings, still shooting need everywhere in her senses. “But I am, in ways you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“So you’re married.”
This made her laugh outright. “In a word, no. But I’m … spoken for, I guess is how you would say it.”
“By whom?” When she hesitated, he spread his hands. “Come on, Brynna. You kissed me. At least give me a reason why you won’t follow through.”
“Because I’m not human.”
There, it was finally out.
Redmond’s mouth worked, but for a long time it was obvious he just couldn’t figure out what to say to her. “Brynna—”
She held up her hand, then edged back around to stand in front of the living room window. “No, don’t find a hundred reasons to disregard what I just said. You’ve seen enough to where you ought to realize it’s true. And,” she added, “fuck the whole idea of there being some kind of ‘limit’ to what you can believe. I already told you my thoughts about that.”
“Brynna—”
“If you say my name like that one more time, I’m going to smack you,” she said irritably.
“Like … what?”
“Like I’m some kind of crazy person with whom you have to be really patient and really careful about saying just the right thing.” Brynna scowled as Redmond just kept staring at her. “This kind of thing was actually quite common back in the day, you know.”
“‘This kind of thing,’” he repeated. “‘Back in the day.’” Redmond blinked, then rubbed his eyes as though he just couldn’t believe what was happening. “All right. If you’re not human, then what are you? An alien?”
“I’m … Highborn,” Brynna said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“You know,” Brynna said. She lifted her chin and shot a gaze vaguely skyward. Yeah, they were inside, but she was willing to bet Redmond caught her gist. “Highborn. As in I used to be …” He was watching her expectantly. “An angel,” she finished at last. It actually hurt to say the words, but she made herself say them again. “I used to be an angel.”
“But you’re not anymore. Now you’re human.”
“No,” she said softly. “I’m not human, not at all. Now I’m fallen.”
Redmond was silent for a long moment. “Fallen.” He tilted his head and pointed toward the floor. “As in … down there
.”
Brynna couldn’t stop a dry smile from slipping over her mouth. “Well, it’s not exactly where you think it is, but yes. If that’s how you have to classify it, I’m from down there.”
“Hell. And you’re a fallen angel.”
She was on a roll, so Brynna decided to just throw it all out at once. “Technically I’m a demon. That’s what fallen angels are.”
“Right.”
“Think about it,” she insisted. The heat between them had cooled considerably. Brynna felt it was safe enough, so she went over and gathered herself into a sitting position on the floor in front of him. “How else would I be able to speak any language known to man, to heal from injuries that would kill a normal human, to know some of the things I do?” She spread her hands out, as if the truth were some kind of physical thing that she could offer him. “Finding that Korean girl, knowing Gavino for what he is—that’s all part of it. That’s what I am.”
Redmond tried to clear his throat, but his voice was still hoarse when he spoke. “You talk like this is an everyday thing,” he said. “Like—”
“The world around you is a lot more complex than you realize,” Brynna told him. “People aren’t necessarily what you think they are. People like Gavino.”
“Who’s like you. A fallen angel.”
“A demon,” she corrected. There was a string hanging from the bottom hem of her skirt, and Brynna picked at it so she wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. “We lost the right a long time ago to be called angels of any kind. Gavino is a Searcher, a demon who’s here to find and destroy nephilim.”
“Wait—there’s angels, and demons, and now nephilim? What’s a nephilim?”
Highborn Page 13
