by Larissa Ione
As Declan watched, the streams of blood pouring out of Suzanne’s wounds slowed and flesh began to knit together. As a former medic, he couldn’t help but be fascinated. If only humans could do that.
He reconsidered his wish. Humans could screw up anything.
“She’s going to be okay, right?” He looked up at Hawkyn, who nodded, but worry lingered in his expression.
“If she survives, it’s because of you,” Hawkyn said, his voice rough with emotion. “You know that, right?”
If she survives? Declan wasn’t much for praying, but that was before he found out that Heaven was real, and he sent up a silent “Please let her be okay” to anyone who was listening.
Unable to think about Suzanne dying, he looked over to the spot where he’d last seen the tech-savvy Unfallen angel who’d disappeared in a poof of evil. “What happened to Cipher?”
“Fallen angels.” Hawkyn’s body sagged, his head hanging from hunched shoulders. “They took him to Sheoul.”
Oh, shit. He remembered what Suzanne had said about that. It was bad. Really, really bad.
Journey limped over, his right thigh a mass of mangled flesh that didn’t seem to bother him all that much. Must be nice. Dec had seen humans keel over from a paper cut.
“I called Idess. She’ll get the ER staff prepped for Suzanne’s arrival.” Journey tapped Declan’s shoulder. “Yo, D. What’s up with your wings? I thought you were a measly human.”
“Excuse me?” Declan blinked, so focused on Cipher and Suzanne that he only heard half of what Journey said. The crazy half. “Wings?”
“You flew. I saw some sort of wing-things flapping like a hummingbird on your back.”
Hawkyn nodded. “I saw it too.”
“I totally missed it,” Maddox said, cradling his clearly broken arm. “Can you do it again?”
“I don’t even know how I did it the first time.”
“Your tattoo,” Suzanne rasped. Her eyes were closed, her face pale, but she was smiling. “It’s like it came to life. Right out of a comic book.”
“Okay, guys.” Sexy said as she wiped her bloody hand on her jeans. “Let’s get Suz to the hospital.”
The hospital that was also right out of a comic book.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Suzanne woke up in a hospital bed with Declan and Hawkyn at her side. And they weren’t trying to kill each other.
“You’re awake,” Hawk said, ever the observant one. “How do you feel?”
“Actually, I feel great.” She sat up and checked herself out, surprised to see that she wasn’t even wearing any bandages.
She was, however, wearing a pale pink hospital gown dotted with tiny gray kittens. It was adorable. She wanted pajama shorts made out of the print. But she couldn’t imagine that demons were thrilled to have to wear this cuteness. Whoever ordered these things had a warped sense of humor.
But then, there were chains on the ceiling and shelves of hideous things in jars, demon skulls, and wicked tools she hoped weren’t actively used in this medical facility, so warped appeared to be the natural order here.
Beneath the gown, red marks scored her skin, and her entire torso was a mass of healing scars, but aside from a little tenderness, she felt like she could run a marathon. “How long have I been in the hospital?”
Declan looked at his watch. “We’re just coming up on the twenty-four-hour mark.” He reached over and took her hand, and she swore her scars started healing faster at his touch. Her pulse was definitely beating faster. “You don’t seem surprised to have woken up in a demon hospital.”
“I heard you all talking when Sexy was healing me,” she said, amused that Declan was casually discussing an underworld hospital as if he’d been doing it for years. He was adapting well. Now she just had to hope that he could keep his memory. No, she wasn’t going to hope.
She was going to make certain. She’d fight every archangel in Heaven if she had to. She’d hide him in this hospital where Heavenly angels couldn’t enter. Hawkyn should consider himself lucky that when he was promoted from out of the regular Memitim ranks that he hadn’t lost his ability to access Underworld General.
Over the last few years since Idess had mated one of the brothers who ran the place, more than a few Memitim had sought medical treatment here, and a couple of her siblings had even consulted with the head doctor, Eidolon, on business related to their Primoris. And Sheoul-gra’s resident healer, Darien, had even interned here.
Until he got fired for incompetence or something. He never said. But lack of competence was a safe bet.
She was lucky her siblings had brought her here instead of to him. “How did I heal so quickly? My wounds were nearly fatal.”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Hawk said, taking a break from tossing a cotton ball into the air, “but our mother saved you.”
“What?” She sat up straighter, and Declan’s grip on her hand remained, more of a comfort than she could ever tell him. “How? She’s not allowed to make contact with us except in Heaven.”
“That’s one of the rules I got changed,” Hawkyn said, which was a shocker on its own. He’d sworn to make changes at the very top of the Memitim food chain in order to make all their lives better, and he’d lived up to his promise. “But it doesn’t matter. She can’t enter the hospital, so she wasn’t even here. She gave me her blood. She’s vivificus, remember?”
Declan frowned over at Hawk. “Vivificus?”
“Angels who give life,” Hawkyn explained. “They’re rare, and only a handful of our brothers and sisters inherited her gift.”
“And even those who did got a diluted form of it,” Suzanne said. Still, she envied those. Apparently Idess had been born with the ability to restore life, but Suzanne assumed she’d lost it when she gave up her Memitim status because, although she worked at Underworld General, she didn’t do so in a medical capacity.
“Oh.” Hawkyn held up his phone, and she forced herself to not make fun of him for the picture of Aurora as his background. She’d read in some magazine that teasing males about their tender moments ruined them for future tender moments. Or something. “Lilliana sends her love.”
“How did she know I was here?”
“Apparently, nothing is secret in this place.” Hawkyn lowered his voice as if someone was listening. Probably the skulls on the shelves. “Idess must have told Lore, who told his brothers, who told their mates, who told...fuck, I don’t know. I swear, everyone here is related to the Horsemen, and I guess Lilliana is staying with War...or Ares...whatever his name is.”
“So she hasn’t gone back to Father yet?” He must be growing grumpier by the day.
“Nope.” Hawkyn put away his phone. “He must have done something really, really bad.”
Well, Azagoth was the Grim Reaper, so the doorway to “really, really bad” was wide open. But if he’d cheated on her… She sucked in a harsh breath. “Flail,” she hissed. “That skank has been nosing around—”
A low, dangerous growl rattled in Hawkyn’s chest, and damn if the temperature didn’t drop. She’d never seen—or felt—Hawkyn do that before. It was straight out of Azagoth’s hat of tricks. The ones that made you pray you weren’t the target of his anger.
“She’s gone,” he growled in a voice that promised a lot of pain if he ever caught up with her. “She’s the reason Cipher got taken.”
“What are you talking about?” She jerked in surprise so hard the bed moved. “Cipher got taken? Taken where?” The moment she asked that last question, she knew the answer. Hell. Cipher had been taken to Hell. “Never mind,” she croaked, leaning into Declan’s powerful shoulder for support. She loved Cipher like another brother, and if she’d ever met an Unfallen who deserved to get his wings back, it was him. “What did you say about Flail? It was her fault? How do you know?”
Hawkyn’s emerald eyes were as cold as the room. “I went to tell Father what happened to you. He’s happy you’re okay and he said he misses your ‘dailies
,’ whatever that is.”
She smiled despite the heartbreak over Cipher. During her human life, she’d made sure she either saw or talked to her father every day until she “went missing,” and since moving to Sheoul-gra, she’d done the same thing with Azagoth. At first he’d seemed annoyed. And then tolerant. And then amused. Recently she thought he might have actually been looking forward to her brief visits or even just the hellos in passing.
“Anyway,” Hawkyn said, bringing them back on topic. “While I was there, Razr said Flail took off. Packed all her shit and cleared out her room. Cleared out Cipher’s too. She got his laptop. That’s when I realized that she knew about the Siecher demons, and she knew where Ciph was going to be.”
That bitch. “And you think she sent her fallen angel buddies to grab him.”
“I’d bet my life on it.” Hawkyn looked over at Declan. “Cipher was an Unfallen angel, which means he’s not fully evil because he hasn’t entered Hell yet. Fallen angels like Flail like to drag Unfallens to Hell and bring them over to their side.”
“I know.” Declan shifted just enough to press a tender kiss on top of Suzanne’s head, and her heart gave a happy little thump. She knew he hadn’t gotten much affection as a kid, so for him to show it as an adult, and to show it so openly, was remarkable. “There’s an Unfallen in the Demonica comics named Reaver. I’ve been rooting for him to get his wings back.”
Suzanne exchanged glances with Hawkyn. “Should we tell him, or make him wait until the comic comes out?”
Declan pulled away to hold up his hands. “No spoilers.”
He was going to get spoiled on everything eventually, so she let it go. Besides, she was worried about Cipher and sad that he was gone, and it felt wrong to tease Declan about the fate of another Unfallen.
“We’re going to get him back, right?” she practically begged her brother. “We’ll save Cipher.”
“Yeah, we will,” Hawkyn promised, but his expression was understandably troubled. They might be able to find Ciph, but he wouldn’t be the same. “Look, I need to tell you something, and now is as good a time as any.”
She stiffened, and Declan did as well. “Is it bad news?”
“I spoke to the Council about you.”
That wasn’t a no. “And?”
“And you’re in a lot of trouble. Most of the laws and rules you’ve broken wouldn’t have come to the attention of the Council if it weren’t for the house you blew up. It took fixers from Heaven’s Rectification Bureau to make it look like a gas leak, and that triggered an investigation. Now they know you were not only living with your Primori, but that you told him the truth.”
Oh, shit. She swallowed. “What else?”
“They don’t know you’ve been...intimate, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Yep, that was what she’d been asking. Mortified that her brother had figured it out and knowing there was no point in denying it, she awkwardly cleared her throat. “So what are they going to do to us?”
Hawkyn’s leather jacket creaked as he stood. Her brother could never sit still for bad news. “They wanted to strip you of your powers and your Ascension and then relegate you to the human realm forever.”
She waited to be torn apart by heartbreak. Or even mild sadness. But there was nothing. In fact, she was finding it hard to hold back a smile.
Until what he’d just said sunk in. “Wait. You said they wanted to do those things. They didn’t?”
“I talked them out of it.” He walked over to one of the creepy saw-looking instruments hanging on the wall, seeming pretty proud of himself, but her heart sank.
“You didn’t.” She swung her legs out of bed, prepared to shake some sense into her brother if she had to. “Hawkyn, I hate being a Memitim. I don’t want this. Go tell them that! Tell them about me and Declan. Tell them—”
“Sis, stop.” He swung around to her. “I know you’re miserable. I didn’t truly get that until today. But I couldn’t let you lose Memitim status and all your powers. I couldn’t stand to see you be vulnerable.” He paused, and she wanted to cry. “So I convinced them to let you serve in another way.”
She put crying on hold, but she held it in reserve.
“How?” she and Declan asked simultaneously.
“Suzanne will no longer protect Primori. Declan’s already been assigned to Journey.”
Startled, she turned her arm over, and sure enough, the heraldi was gone. Funny, but that bothered her far more than the possibility of losing her powers and her future wings. The heraldi was a connection to Declan, a physical monitor of his health and status. It was going to take some time to get used to not having it.
But she supposed if they were together, she’d know whether or not he was okay. Still, this was all so confusing.
“If I’m not guarding Primori, what will I do?”
“You’ll do your cooking show.”
He could have knocked her over with a feather, as her human mother used to say. “I’ll do my cooking show.” At his nod, she stared in disbelief. “Are you serious? How does that serve Memitim in any way?”
“It’s not serving Memitim. It’s serving Heaven.” He raked his hand through his hair and blew out a long breath. “This is big, Suzanne. And it can’t go beyond this room.” He shot Declan a meaningful look, and Dec gave a brief nod. “The Archangel Council has given the go ahead to start revealing the truth to humans. Right now it’s small-scale. People who can handle it, like Declan. But to prepare the rest of the population, they need friendly faces in place. And they think they can use your ability to infuse food with emotions to chill people out on a large scale or something. I’m not sure. The archangel I talked to wasn’t filling in a lot of blanks.”
Declan made a startled noise. “You talked to an archangel? Which one?”
“I was supposed to talk to Gabriel, but he canceled and sent Aramel instead.”
“Wow.” Suzanne was just glad it was her brother and not her who’d had to gab with an archangel. She’d have probably babbled like an idiot and gotten herself into more trouble. “Did he say when all humans will be fully aware?”
“It’s going to be a super slow process. I got the impression it’ll be a decade or so.”
In angel time, a decade was like a mere second, but a decade for humans could bring about leaps in technology and huge societal shifts. Revealing the existence of their world over a period of ten or more years was probably a smart way to do it.
“There’s just one problem with this plan of theirs,” she said, thinking of Cipher. “The network execs who wanted to see me about my show canceled because I couldn’t make it.”
He grinned. “You’re going to want to check your voicemail. The other deal fell through and they want to see you on Monday. You’ll have the weekend to put together your pitch.”
She wanted to scream with happiness. This was the best thing ever. But she couldn’t be happy until she knew for sure that Declan’s fate was not to be returned to a state of cluelessness. If she had to give up her cooking show to ensure he kept his memory, she would.
“What about Declan?” she demanded. “I mean, he knows the truth. They aren’t going to erase his memory, are they?”
“Fuck that,” Declan said. “They aren’t getting anywhere close to my head again.”
“They’re not,” Hawkyn assured him. “But there’s a catch.”
Oh, shit.
“They want you to work for a demonic activity response team. It’s called DART. It’s a unit that was formed after The Aegis broke apart.”
Declan looked utterly put out. “They broke apart?”
“Oh, hey, sorry. Spoiler alert. Anyway, they’ll be in touch soon. Oh, and you’ve been given immortality. I don’t know what your importance is in the universe, and I don’t know why you’re Primori, but damn, you’ve won the Heavenly lotto. Now,” Hawk said as he came to his feet, “I have to go tell our father about all of this. But something tells me he already knows. On the way out I
’ll let someone know you’re awake.”
“Hawkyn, wait.” She leaped out of bed, not caring that her bare ass was open for everyone behind her to see. Good thing the “everyone behind her” was only Declan. “Thank you.”
She threw herself into her brother’s arms, grateful to him for so many things. He’d been there for her almost since the very beginning, first as her mentor, but always as her brother.
“Yeah, man,” Declan said, extending his hand. “Thank you. For everything. You’re not as much of a dick as I thought.”
Hawkyn laughed. “Ditto.” The two males shook, and then he left, leaving her alone with Declan. Finally.
“Now what?” she said.
He took her hand and led her back to the bed, where he sat down next to her. There wasn’t much room, but that only made it better.
“It sounds like we don’t have any restrictions on our relationship.”
Her mouth went utterly, desperately dry. “Does that mean you want one? With me? For real? After everything that’s happened?”
He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “It’s because of everything that’s happened, Suzanne. I feel like I finally have a place in this world. All that shit with my family and the military and the tattoo... I’m cool with it. This feels like where I’m supposed to be. It’s going to sound corny, but it’s like I’m living in the comics I’ve loved my entire life. I mean, I basically just found out that The Avengers are real and they want me to join S.H.I.E.L.D. And the best part is that my girlfriend is a superhero.”
Shifting so she was facing him, she placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. There was so much strength in there, beating against her palm. “You are too, you know. We’ll get someone to work with you to understand your own powers. Jim Bob said the tattoo draws on what’s inside you, and now we know you can use the wings to fly, so what else is in there?”
The slightest glint of doubt sparked in his eyes. “Maybe nothing.”
“Oh, no,” she assured him as she slid her hand down his chest to his abs, where she drew circles on his rock-hard abs. “I have a feeling the well inside you is very deep.”
