Angel Unleashed

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  She looked down.

  Ten feet separated the Knight and his Maker. They both held flashing silver blades. She had to hurry up and get her wings. There was no way she’d leave the wings here. No way she’d be separated from them again.

  And Rhys...her glorious Knight, sans the shining armor of a former age, had changed. He was Rhys, and yet not Rhys, taller, leaner, incredibly sculpted and lethal. An aura of light hugged his outline. His sharp silver blade shone with a supernatural sheen. She had only seen this kind of transformation once before, and had been as awed as she was right then. Rhys de Troyes, always handsome, always dangerous, looked every bit like an angel. Her soul pined for him, fluttering the way her wings did.

  Those wings were pulsing in time with her escalating heart rate. Avery whispered assurances to them as she thought hard about what to do. Rhys could take care of himself. He had grudges to work out. Her wings were helpless and trapped.

  Must hurry...

  As the silver blades glinted on the cavern floor, an idea came to her. Avery drew out her knife. The iron cages had been conceived of the same darkness she had escaped from so long ago, and were Mordred’s handiwork, no doubt. The knife in her hand had once been his property.

  Her scars and wounds picked up the pulse as she inserted the tip of her blade into the lock and raised her face to the carved rock ceiling. “Let this work!” she shouted, putting all of her energy into the plea. “Open this damn cage!”

  Using both hands, she twisted the blade clockwise. The mechanism turned as the blade snapped in two. The lock’s sealed magic had been unraveled by whatever kind of spell the iron contraption recognized in Mordred’s old blade.

  The gate swung open. Bars gaped. Uncertain of what do next, or how to reattach the wings after so much time had gone by, Avery stuck out a hand to touch the snowy-white feathers as the clang of two swords meeting reached her from the below.

  * * *

  Rhys parried, holding off a thrust that would have made him a brochette. But fighting was absurd, really, when both he and his Maker knew no sword in the world could terminate a Blood Knight’s charmed life. There was only one way to do that.

  Rhys’s off switch was unknown to him, that knowledge placed in the possession of some other creature that could have resided anywhere on the planet. What were the chances that special soul was in the room with them here? Maybe it would have been present if Mordred had expected Rhys instead of Avery. Lack of foresight had proved to be another of the Maker’s mistakes.

  The same kind of eternally unending life span couldn’t be said in regard to a vampire’s existence, in spite of how old and talented the one fighting Rhys was. Vampires could be killed. He had killed plenty of them.

  The creature Rhys had called his Maker wasn’t fighting with all his considerable might, aware of those discrepancies. So what was the point of all the playacting? Was this meeting of swords merely a ritual to make them both feel better about the way things had turned out?

  Letting this black-haired beast escape wasn’t in the cards, but if Mordred were to be killed, too many answers would die with him. After surviving...thriving, actually...for centuries—maybe even a few centuries prior to the creation of the Blood Knights—Mordred’s story had to be a good one. How had those three become three of the first vampires? What came before that event? Which one of them had started the whole vampire thing rolling?

  Rhys pondered that maddening puzzle, as well as the way to accomplish a takedown without dusting this strong vampire. Problem was, he couldn’t concentrate fully when Avery was suspended from a cage above him in a long-awaited reunion with her wings. He shared her hopes. His heart rate continued to interact with hers, matching hers beat for beat the way it had ever since their bodies had joined together so blissfully.

  Her shout had come to him above the slicing arc of Mordred’s sword. “Let this work! Open this damn cage!” Avery had pleaded just moments ago.

  She had found her wings in this damp, murky cave, and only one thing kept him from her.

  Rhys again crossed blades with the creature that didn’t deserve the mercy Rhys had wanted to show him.

  His Maker stepped back suddenly, lowered his sword and gave Rhys a small, quick nod. When he looked up, Mordred wore a smug smile. “I can’t destroy that which I’ve created, Knight, and that fact has been my deepest nightmare and the bane of my overextended existence. I made you too well, it seems.”

  He turned his back, waited a beat and added, “Neither will you kill me, I suppose, since I hold the key to your past, and I have now given your friend the very thing she has dearly sought. Wouldn’t you agree I should get some kind of credit for that?”

  Rhys’s heart boomed in his chest. His arms flexed and tightened with the need to run this wise, wily creature through. Nevertheless, he couldn’t do that when the freak’s back was turned. There was a possibility he wouldn’t have dealt that death blow anyway, not without knowing why he and his brothers hadn’t turned out the same way these Makers had.

  Conflicted, he watched Mordred disappear into a tunnel. Then Rhys looked up at Avery, who was smiling down at him with the loveliest smile he had ever seen. It was an expression of victory, like a ray of sunlight in a dark place. It was like a sign from the heavens Avery had fallen from that they were on the right track in whatever would happen now.

  The cavern was empty. The market’s multitude of hovering Shades hadn’t joined in the fight. They had quickly deserted their posts after the first sword had been drawn. This unexpected disappearance was another puzzle in a long line of them. Rhys had roots to dig up and past transgressions to investigate. Avery’s mission had been accomplished, but he had an eerie premonition that everything wasn’t so perfect and that more rough times lay ahead.

  “Need help?” he called to Avery, expecting her to wave off the offer.

  “Yes. They’re sick, weak, white,” she said. “We have to get them out.”

  “We carry them along the street and hope people don’t stare?”

  His remark hadn’t been serious, but Avery took it that way.

  “I’ve seen stranger things. It’s likely you have, too,” she said.

  “You’re right about that,” Rhys noted, searching for the mechanism hoisting the cages.

  But something nagged at him again, interfering with his image of Avery uniting with her wings. His sigils hadn’t lost their fire. His hold on his blade tightened.

  “Trouble,” he said, scanning the cavern for the location of the darkness the marks on his back were warning him about.

  Avery stilled. The chains quieted. Rhys heard a whisper and looked questioningly at Avery, whose gaze slid to the cage next to where she still clung.

  What was in those two other cages? What other hellish atrocities had this black market, hosted by his Maker, dug up?

  “Avery,” he said, and that was all she needed to understand what he was asking her to do.

  With one more glance at her wings, she planted her feet on the bottom bars of the cage and rocked until the cage began to swing sideways—enough so that she could see into the cage next to hers.

  When the momentum stopped, she looked down at Rhys with an expression of horror that stripped away some of the joy of her long-awaited reunion with her wings. From the look alone, Rhys was sickened with dread.

  * * *

  Avery quelled the sudden chill of seeing what was in that cage with a warning to Rhys, who was looking for a way to join her. She shook her head, hoping that would make him take heed of the expression on her face.

  A gaunt creature with long stringy hair the color of Mordred’s velvet robes lay curled up on the cage floor, clad in tattered strips of cloth. Pale, bare legs contrasted with the cold iron of the bars. Burn marks lashed this creature’s skin in huge welts that were proof of Otherness. Like other beings of supe
rnatural origins, this creature couldn’t stand the touch of any kind of metal.

  The half-starved creature was sick and very out of place in the darkness of the cavern. An almost nonexistent glimmer of light emanated from it that Avery recognized.

  “Fae,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. You will soon be free.”

  The upturned face was all bone and stretched skin. Ice-pale eyes peered at Avery from beneath faded red lashes. Avery saw recognition in those eyes. This creature, whose species dwelled in the Earth’s green spaces, knew what an angel was.

  Mordred had outdone himself with this elite selection of treasures. Angel wings. Fae. And from the sound of the rising growl on the other side of her, a wolf. Not just any wolf, but a large one, rare and black as the night.

  Rhys was already lowering the cages one at a time. First to reach the ground, Avery urged him to hurry. But the rattle of the cages and the clank of chains brought shudders that rocked her. Those shudders also ran through the Fae creature. The wolf howled.

  Intuition needled her insistently, along with an extraordinary sense of kinship with these Others that wasn’t to be explained.

  “Get them out,” she said to Rhys. “Get them out first.”

  Rhys freed the wolf. But Avery wondered what that wolf was going to do in the city and how it would find its way to a place better suited to it.

  When she looked up, Rhys had the Fae creature in his arms. She couldn’t tell if that creature was male or female, but that was often the way with elementals.

  “Go,” she said. “Hurry. I’ll be all right.”

  Rhys didn’t move. She hadn’t actually expected him to follow any directive that didn’t involve her safety. The Guardian was guarding her. How she loved him for that.

  She had always loved him.

  “Will your wolf detective help them? Can he help?” she asked.

  “He will.”

  “I’ll follow. Please, Rhys. Help them.”

  He understood this, with or without her suggestion. When he turned from her, Avery’s heart sank. She now counted on seeing him, being near to him. Each step he took toward the tunnels hurt her in ways she’d never dreamed she would feel again.

  She withheld a shout that would have given form to that hurt. Then she reached out a hand and issued another directive to her almost lifeless wings. One feather at a time, they began to spread—as much as they could within the confines of the cage. With a big intake of breath, Avery climbed back inside the cage and slipped to her knees. She tore off her jacket. Bare from the waist up, she rolled onto her back, on top of the outstretched feathers, and prayed for a miracle.

  “Come to me now,” she said softly but adamantly, and felt the first piercing sting of wing bones burrowing into her shoulder blades, seeking to reconnect with her spine.

  Chapter 24

  More monsters had not appeared. And there were too damn many tunnels.

  Rhys strode swiftly through the rock maze of alleyways, following the distant scent of fresher air. The bundle he held didn’t speak or move. Whatever this creature was, it was as light as one of Avery’s feathers. Fae, Avery had said. In all his time on Earth, he had never seen one of them.

  Red hair spilled over his arms. Bloodred. It was odd how that made him think of Griffin, one of his Blood Knight brethren, whose hair was a similar hue.

  Now that he thought of it, the black wolf following him, whose growl reverberated in the space, had fur the color of another Knight’s hair. Mason, who, with his black armor and shield, had once been known as the Obsidian Knight.

  Shaking off those thoughts, Rhys reached a doorway to the street and found it standing open. Another strange detail. He expected vampires to be waiting. At the very least, the disappearing Shades. But the street was clear of monsters, unless some of the mortals passing the shadows where he stood met the standards for that category.

  He had to get to Avery, but she had put the safety of others ahead of herself and had tasked him with seeing that through. He had to remember how strong she was, and that she had managed without him for centuries. She probably didn’t need his help now, but that didn’t matter. Avery was both the game and the endgame, for as long as she stayed.

  Which might not be long now.

  Tightening his hold on the Fae creature in his arms, he whispered, “Soon,” and took off like a streak of lightning, leaving the shadows, needing to find a safe place where this little Fae creature could heal and thrive.

  After that, Rhys promised himself, he and Avery had some unfinished business to tend to that didn’t include making love like two creatures possessed.

  Well, he quickly amended...maybe they could get the mad, passionate love thing out of the way first and get to that other business afterward. He was all for that, because how else were two immortals going to say goodbye? With a handshake. A big hug?

  Goodbye...

  The word made his heart tank.

  * * *

  The sensation of her wings reattaching was similar to being impaled by spikes. In a good way. Because it was nothing compared to the horror of having them sliced off.

  As she lay on the floor of the cage, waiting for the process to be completed and hoping it actually could, the sound of the rush of blood in her ears and the tearing noises of her wings working their way into her skin left her tight-lipped and breathless.

  She gripped the horrid iron bars for support. The pain of that touch added to her determination to see that this deadly game had a satisfactory culmination. Rhys had let his Maker go, and that was unacceptable. Imagining the damage that sucker had done since using his knife on her left her feeling twice as ill.

  Still, the fact that Rhys had cared more about what happened to her than his own moment of revenge meant a lot. It spoke volumes about the fact that Rhys was starting to sense they had more than a brief connection and that something much more substantial and important lay behind their insatiable attraction to each other.

  Insatiable. Yes...

  They hadn’t spoken more than a few hundred words to each other since they’d met, yet somehow their blood bond made it seem like they had been lovers for years. Maybe they could have had more time together if she hadn’t held a grudge against everything that had come out of Broceliande. She regretted now that all those years had been wasted.

  Pain and all, she wanted Rhys with her. Wings or no wings, she desired Rhys more than she ever had. But was that enough to change things? Change the ending of this story?

  “You must take me to the Grail,” she said aloud.

  She would have to take the Grail back to the Creator of the Heavens, where it would remain safe forever.

  The hurt didn’t stop when the wings stilled. Tentatively, Avery sat up and rolled her neck. The wings fluttered weakly, unable to tap the blood flow they needed without time to adjust.

  “Time to go.”

  She used the bars to get to her feet, having forgotten how heavy the wings were after being without them for so long. She picked up her jacket, though it was of no use at the moment and couldn’t accommodate her new shape.

  “Half naked it is, then,” she muttered.

  Rhys had reached the street. She sensed it. His thoughts were for her. The heat of his rapt attention was a welcome temperature change from the icy cold of the hellish cavern they had invaded tonight. Rhys would be waiting. She had to reach him.

  “On my way to you,” she whispered, afraid to speak her mind in that way when leaving him eventually would be hard. She wasn’t sure she could leave him when her mission, in spite of how long it had taken, depended on her leaving the world that had become Rhys’s playground. He was tethered here, without his own means of escape, forever.

  She wobbled as she exited the cage and staggered forward, balancing the weight on her back. The whole black m
arket carried with it a particularly foul stench, and yet parts of the scene didn’t make sense. Where were the monsters? Why had they so easily been bested? Why had Rhys let the red-robed ringmaster go?

  “We’ll have to clean that up,” she said to the wings. “Tighten those loose ends. It’s what we do. What we have always done, even if it’s too late to stem the tide of Broceliande’s madness.”

  Rhys had been part of that madness. He and his Blood Knight brethren had proved that some mistakes can turn out well.

  “Avery.”

  Rhys was calling. He was showing his respect by using the most current name she had chosen for herself, when having her real name would allow him extra power over her...a power he didn’t need and never would, because she was fully onboard and bending to his will, to his call, by picking up speed.

  * * *

  There was havoc on the streets, Rhys discovered as he turned the corner that led to the penthouse. Sirens blared in the distance. People were stopping to look for the cause, alerted to the added pressure in the night that Rhys felt in his bones.

  He had to be careful about being seen. The Fae creature in his grasp didn’t look anything like a human being. He/she was moving, lifting an androgynous head, encouraged by the streetlights and the damp air after the close, airless cavern.

  There was no way, with a clear conscience, he could set this delicate creature down in London. The city itself would eat this Fae alive, if the Shades and vamps didn’t get there first.

  The black wolf’s presence pinged his nerves. Like another shadow, it tagged along behind him, a creature also out of its element. Avery’s struggle to run was another constant pressure that sparked his nerve endings, as if her struggle were his.

  Hell, he had become a magnet for the displaced. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.