The angel smiles at me, his midnight gaze gleaming in the bare fluorescent bulb flickering overhead. Even in the lighting fitting a low budget 80’s horror movie, the angel is as handsome as the devil. Lucky bastard.
“There’s always hope. Now enough of this sappy shit. By the look of you, I know you didn’t just come to show off your new mate.”
Fallen or not, Damien’s senses were sharper than ever.
“Is it that obvious?”
“There’s always some kind of darkness settled over your head, like a brewing storm. Today it’s more fierce, despite your new er- situation.”
“It’s Elise. She was murdered, and I know who did it.”
“What?”
“Last night when I left the bar, the Tacoma back drove by and shot at Sophie, thinking she was Elise.”
“Holy shit, so that’s what happened. Heard gunshots, but by the time we got outside, it was like nothing had happened. How did you know it was Trigger?”
Trigger. So that was the name of the bastard who ran the Tacoma pack. The werewolf gang was relatively new to the area, and while they were a giant nuisance, they tended to keep out of angel business. But it wasn’t always like that, not after they tried to rough up Damien and take out the only angel establishment in the state.
The guy could certainly hold his own. He knew more about those dogs than anyone, and if anyone outside of their pack knew anything about Revolver, it would be him.
“You know rabid dogs have their own unique stench to them. Sophie says Elise asked for 25,000 dollars right before she died. We searched her apartment today, found a phone number with a name. Revolver.”
Damien stiffens, and his expression grows grim. He knows the name. “Tell me who he is.”
“You need to stay out of that guy’s hair, Gid. I get they tried to hurt your mate. But you’ll be outnumbered if you try to take them on, and I can’t get rolled up in that mess. It will compromise the bar, and you know some of the guardians will get themselves thrown in out of a sense of duty, probably lose their wings because of it.”
“Shifters aren’t human, we can harm them to protect a human.”
“A ward,” he corrected. “You can harm another creature, shifter, human, or otherwise, to protect a true ward in the eyes of the archangel, and your Sophie won’t be on the books.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” I release a guttural snarl and shoot to my feet, fists balled at my sides. Papers fly off the desk, pulled in by the gravity of my fury. Damien makes no move to his feet. In fact, he doesn’t so much as flinch at my outburst.
“It is bullshit but that’s how it is.”
“Sophie called Revolver.”
“She what?“
“She called the number Elise had written on a piece of paper in her apartment and pretended to be her sister. He gloated about putting a bullet in her head, as retribution for not paying him the 25,000 dollars. For meth and heroin no doubt, Elise wasn’t interested in much else except for books, and this Trigger doesn’t strike me of having his own bookmobile.”
“Why would she do something so stupid?”
“She was actually very clever. Said she faked her own death to collect on the insurance money as a means to pay her debt. She set up a meeting at The Half Moon tonight.”
“If you let her walk into that bar, she won’t be walking back out.”
My inner protector bellows at the idea of it. I shake my head, muscles clenching all over. Damn, I miss shifting.
“Lucifer himself couldn’t tempt or trick me into sending Sophie in there. I’ll be going into her place.”
“They’ll tear you apart. There won’t be anything left of you.”
“I don’t expect you or any of the other angels to come with me, that’s not the kind of help I’m asking for. Tell me what you know of Revolver, and if you think he might rope his pack leader in on this.”
Damien rakes a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I don’t think so, Trigger is a fucking asshole but he keeps himself more reigned in than his brothers it seems. Trigger runs The Half-Moon, the shifter bar on the outskirts of town but Revolver owns it. He uses the place as a means to launder the money they get from their drug ring. I doubt Trigger would care much about a human girl. But Revolver might be expecting you if any of their boys saw you with Elise.”
“They know about me. They told Elise to keep me away if she wanted to do business with them.”
Damien’s jaw drops. “No shit… I’m sorry, Gid.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. Be angry with me, help me in any way you can because I have no fucking idea how I’m going to take on these assholes by myself.”
“Have you thought about not going?”
“That isn’t an option. They’ll keep hunting Sophie. Besides, I have to avenge Elise.”
“You don’t have to avenge anyone. They might leave you alone if you give them their money.”
“Are you kidding me? You know what kind of cash flow I’m working with. You’re on the fallen’s stipend just like me, and I don’t own a—”
Damien ducks underneath his desk to where he keeps the safe. There’s a click, the rustle of paper, and then he slams a giant bundle of cash down on the table, severing my argument short.
“25,000 dollars. I’d say it’s a loan, but I don’t think you’ll pay it back.”
“Holy shit, haven’t you ever heard of a bank?”
“Pft, human establishments that nickel and dime you in exchange for what? A safe place to store cash. I have a safe here.”
“Well, I can’t take that. I don’t intend to let them walk away, not after what they did to Elise. Not what they could do to Sophie should they find her.”
“Christ, Gideon. You’re going to get yourself killed, then what will happen to your precious mate?”
I pause and frown. I don’t like to think about that. No, dying isn’t an option. “You keep the shifters off our back. How?”
Damien looks at me, thinking. With his form still hunched he heaves another sigh, the one he always reserves for me when he wants me to know I’m getting on his nerves. But he doesn’t argue. He knows that he can’t talk me out of this.
Diving back under the desk he reaches for something in the safe and emerges a moment later, slapping an antique revolver down on the table with a wooden box of what I assume to be full of ammunition, by the rattle of its contents. The gun itself looks like something straight out of a vampire movie, with a narrow barrel covered in intricate filigree carvings and an ivory and mother-of-pearl handle. Stamped into the handle is flourished Latin lettering reading Deus Dente.
I flick my attention from the gun to Damien, arching a brow. “God’s Teeth?”
“Needless to say, packs a nasty bite.”
“You’re telling me you fend off the entire pack of dogs with a single gun?”
“No, I have a few other tricks up my sleeve but this is the easiest one for you to wield. Besides, it’s not an ordinary gun, shoots silver bullets. Just mind you don’t go picking fights with any tiger or bear shifters or anything like that. This will only work on our friends over at The Half-Moon. Also, vampires, if you’re unlikely enough to run into one.”
I pick up the gun, testing the weight of it in my hand. The flickering fluorescents in the ivory and mother of pearl handle give the firearm an eerie feel like it’s traveled through time for this moment.
“This might work,” I muse, turning the gun over to examine the barrel.
“You would be an idiot not to give them the money instead, Gideon. But take both.”
I look up from God’s Teeth, frowning. “I can’t take that money from you.”
“You can and you will. Use the money, you might walk away with your life. If they try anything…” He gestures to the gun in my hand. “Use plan B.”
I give Damien a reassuring smile. “Thanks, Dame.” I make my way to the door in one stride and turn to glace at him before leaving. He’s looking at me in a way tha
t makes me think that he’s considering if this might be the last he sees of me.
“But the gun is plan A, the money is plan B.”
Chapter 18
Sophie
In the car, all is quiet. It’s not a pleasant silence that hangs between Gideon and me in the cab of my Honda Civic. It’s the same sort of quiet before the storm that’s always described in books, that eerie sensation that creeps down your neck and seeps into your very being until your every nerve knows about the chaos that will surely break.
And all there is to do is wait for it.
I don’t know where The Half-Moon is located, but as the minutes roll by and the cityscape melts away in the rear-view mirror, I know we have a bit of a drive ahead of us. I try to pull it up on Google, but all I can find is a single yelp review commenting on how their food isn’t for anyone with so much as half a taste bud. Out of curiosity, I click on the name of the reviewer and find that his critique on the motorcycle bar was his last, from five months ago. My stomach churns. Probably just a coincidence, I tell myself.
I peer over at Gideon behind the wheel, who insisted on driving, again. My angel looks absolutely sinful, cast in the red light that bathes the cab, illuminated by the yelp app still open on my iPhone.
I clench my hand tight around my screen and the shadows of my fingers dance over his lightly tanned skin. I’m not sure what guardian angels are supposed to look like. The patrons at The Guardian were all beautiful — the women lithe, longed-leg vixens, and the men burley and strong-jawed like my Gideon. But there were no wings, no halos. I suppose that makes sense, seeing as they are shifters. None of them would be in their true form unless their wards were in peril.
I swallow hard, gaping at my own guardian like Jesus himself is driving my Honda Civic. Even though every single angel in that room contained unearthly beauty, he still stood out. Maybe it’s that bottomless darkness in his eyes, that tick in his jaw that betrays his nerves, and how he’s always watching me like everything else in his life has withered and I’m the last living hope.
He’s my dark angel, and I am his ward, even though no Heavens declared it. Our love is unsanctified, sinful, forbidden, but it is far from wrong.
And I’m terrified to lose it, so soon after finding it.
“What’s the plan?” I ask, finally breaking the silence. “Did your friend help figure out a strategy for taking out Revolver?”
Gideon’s jaw clenched, but his eyes never once strayed to meet mine for even a moment. I’m coming to learn that he goes as stiff as a board when he’s frightened, not that he would ever admit it.
“There’s no plan. I go in, I kill Revolver and I leave. If anyone stands in my way I’ll kill them too.”
“That can’t be the plan. Where do I fit in?”
For the first time since we entered the car, he flicked his attention to me just briefly, enough for me to see the pain etched deep in lines at the corner of his eyes. “You don’t. You’ll stay in the car and wait for me to come back out.”
He reaches behind him, arching his shoulders against the seat to pull out something pinned between his back and his belt. I see the flash of a gun. He’s packing, forward and back. My eyes boggle and I open my mouth to ask about the firearm stuffed in his pants but my argument is forgotten when he drops a large wad of cash in my lap.
“What the hell?” I pick up the bundled stack of money, regarding it with more shock than the gun. It makes sense for someone who was born to protect, on their way to meet a bunch of trashy drug-dealing werewolves to be carrying. But Gideon is poor, it doesn’t take a genius to draw that conclusion, especially when he’d said as much last night.
“Is this what Damien gave you? This is thousands of dollars.”
“He wanted me to pay off the wolves and be done with it,” he growls with a touch of irritation, like Damien’s perfectly reasonable solution was absolute madness. It’s difficult to argue with him. He wants to avenge Elise, even more than me. I can feel it; his hatred, stewing overhead like a storm cloud.
“Would you not go through with this, if I asked you not to?”
I’m surprised to see so much emotion in the expression he makes, even from his side profile. Until this moment his handsome physiognomy hasn’t betrayed much in the way of his thoughts. I’ve seen that light slip through on occasion, when a smile breaks or when he’s inside me. But ecstasy and joy are far from what I see in his eyes now.
Rage, black and hungry and so obviously bridled, for his hands are shaking as they clamp tight on the steering, holding in words more deadly than many weapons. But his fury is so potent, it seeps through the mask he’s worn with care since the first time we met and it strangles the air.
“Why, Sophie?” Lips curl over bared teeth like I’ve suggested the impossible. “Why would you bar me from my revenge?” His voice is choked, pained.
“I…” I wonder if he’d drop this whole thing if I asked it of him. But then what would he do? Despise me forever? Did Gideon and I have a forever? If I let him go to The Half-Moon, we might not even have a tomorrow. Yesterday morning, which felt like an eternity ago, I would have let this man walk into a bar full of angry shifters and avenge my sister to the best of his ability regardless if he survived or not.
I would have said that it was the least he could have done for Elise.
But now, everything’s changed. His life is more important than serving justice to my sister’s murderer.
He’s more important than anything.
“But if I asked you to?” My voice is small, waifish even in the face of this dark angel, not because I’m afraid; I’m enraptured. “Would you come with me? To Portland?”
The anger and frustration on the angel’s face melt away to bewilderment. His fists clench and unclench around the steering wheel, his Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “You want me to come to Oregon with you?”
“Do you feel you still belong in Seattle?”
“I never felt like I belonged here. But I can’t just drive away from this Sophie. I’m a shifter, there’s instincts buried deep in my being that will make me take the lives of those wolves, I must seek retribution for what they have taken from me. It’s an instinct that feels as necessary as breathing. I have to act on it.”
I don’t argue with him. How could I? I want to see my sister’s killer brought to justice, and a smaller sliver of me, buried in a dark part of myself, will only be satisfied if he pays in blood. I want to see Gideon’s giant hands wrapped around Revolver’s throat, squeezing until all the color is gone.
But my new-found — I swallow, heating at the thought — mate will be outnumbered. What are the chances of him walking out of that bar, his blood lust sated, unscathed, and ready to drive off into the sunset with me in pursuit of a happily ever after? I’m convinced there isn’t such a thing. Elise died chasing other people’s happily ever after’s because she felt the same, how could they exist for us when so many horrible things had already happened?
I sag in my seat, turning my attention to the darkness outside.
“What will you do?” I whisper after several moments of intense silence pass. “You think you’ll kill them all with a revolver?” I choke out the last word like it’s a punch line to a bad joke.
Gideon only seethes in silence, his jaw clenched, and his narrowed gaze affixed to the road. His silence is all the answer I need.
“You’ll die. You’ll die, and I’ll be alone again. I’ve been alone for twenty-five years, and I’ll be damned if I lose it all as soon as I’ve had a taste of…” My voice trails off.
The angel’s lips twitch and his eyes flick to me in a side-eyed look, as if transfixed on the words that have come out of my mouth. “Of what?”
Gulping, I gasp under the weight of his dark gaze; It’s intoxicating. “This dark and wondrous magic,” I repeat his first description of this strange bond we formed the moment we barreled into each other’s lives.
“So you are telling me not to go.”
“This was your idea. I didn’t ask you to call that number and pose as your sister. You pointed the gun. All I’m doing is pulling the trigger.”
“I drove up here from Portland because I had an instinct seated deep in my belly to come. I thought it was to bring justice to Elise’s killer, though I wasn’t sure how. It was a crazy gut reaction. It was reckless. It wasn’t like me at all. I loved my sister, but she made her own bed. She deserves so much less than what happened to her, and Revolver deserves so much more. But if putting that right means I might lose you—” Tears gather on my lashes as I try to blink them away. “I know now that gut instinct that drove me here wasn’t out of a desire for revenge. It was out of my desire for you, a deep longing that could only have been the product of a strange and wondrous magic indeed.”
Gideon’s attention slides back to the road, his dark brows pinched tightly together in a troubled scowl. In the next moment, he jerks sharply on the wheel, guiding the car down a side road that couldn’t have been the route to the Bar, by the sudden detour.
I slap my hands against the door and the side of his headrest to brace myself. “What the—? Where are we going?”
“Home,” he swallows.
I swivel my gaze to the dark world outside. It’s started to rain, and with the torrent of a downpour on the windows and the cloak of night blurring by, It’s hard to say where we’re going. My gut tells me it isn’t to the bar or to Gideon’s tiny studio. As if reading my mind, my angel bites his lip, tipping his head slightly to divide his attention half on the road, half on me.
“We’re going to Portland, Sophie.”
Chapter 19
Sophie
Astonished by this news, I sit in stunned silence for a few moments before speaking again. “What about Revolver?”
The angel tenses at the name. “Fuck him. Your happiness is more important. You are more important. If the Tacoma pack kills me, which they probably would even with the silver bullets Dame gave me, I’ll die and go straight to the Pit. The pain of robbing myself of a life with you would be more excruciating than any torture they have lined up for me downstairs.”
Claimed by my Dark Angel: A Forbidden Paranormal Romance (Saints to Sinners Book 1) Page 12
