by Alisa Woods
Elyon’s humor faded. He flicked a finger, and Oriel drifted closer until he was only a half dozen feet from the angel. He could feel Elyon’s dark power pulsing the air.
“If you’re lying to me, your end will not be brief,” the angel mused.
“The Truth is that I’m in love with her,” Oriel said. “The whole reason I Fell was because of her. I want her in my bed. And I’d like to live to enjoy it.”
Even Elyon had to see the Truth in that. “And you would bring down their wards… how?”
Oriel tried not to let the victory show on his face. “All the Guardians have access to the incantations to bring down the wards. Any immortal who possesses them could raise and lower that magic shield, and that’s all the protection they have, save a few Protector Class angelings. Now that I’ve Fallen, they’ll have changed the incantations. But the scientists are present during the process. I’ll simply have her record it and give it to me—then any of your angelings could bring them down.”
“And why would she do this?” A shadow of doubt crossed Elyon’s face.
“Because she loves me, too.” It was a probably a lie, but Oriel wished for it to be Truth with a passion, and that was probably enough to convince Elyon.
He burst out with laughter. “Love.” He gestured to Oriel suspended in the air, but he was talking to Terah. “They cannot help but believe in it.”
She shrugged. “They’re stupid, but what can you do?” She flicked an appraising look up and down Oriel’s body. “I hope this human of yours likes threesomes, hot stuff. Because I fought for you, and I haven’t gotten my blade’s worth, yet.”
“Of course.” But even Oriel could hear the lie in his words.
“Ah, shit.” Terah shook her head and turned back to Elyon. “Guess he really does love her. But, trust me, he’s a fan of the sexy-sex now, thanks to me. He’ll spring her loose just so he can have a chance to bang her. I’m going with Truth on all of it.”
Elyon gave her a slow nod. “Make it happen. But be quick about it. My fellow dark angels have agreed to contribute to our efforts, and I’m sending Micah to choose the best among their angelings. When he returns, I want those wards down… or we’ll be taking the fight to the streets. We need to break their resolve in this.”
She tipped her head. “You got it, boss.”
“But first,” Elyon said, “your plaything must become one of us.”
Before Oriel could react, the magical force which held him ripped away his leather armor. He hung naked above the smirking angel, who then traced a finger through the air. The burning ripped through Oriel’s mind as it seared his flesh. He grimaced as he watched the magical tattoo inscribe upon his chest. The pain was not as bad as the inky blackness that sunk into his soul. Terah was right—this wasn’t even sex, but if he’d been fresh off his Fall, this would have wrecked him. But now, it was just one more coating of darkness on the carved out shadow of his soul.
Terah watched with a bored expression as he writhed in the air.
Then Elyon’s magic released him and dumped him to the platform.
She strode up to him. “Come on, lover boy. Let’s get to work.”
Elyon was already returning to his throne and his eagerly awaiting angelings.
Terah knelt to put a hand on Oriel’s naked shoulder and twisted him away.
The machine was clanging away, but everyone was waiting on her.
Lizza called it out. “Three… two… one…”
Charlotte pressed the button on the screen, and an indescribably small instant later, Oriel’s blade appeared in the SeXI MRI, back from the over-dimension.
A whoop went up that could be heard over the banging of the machine, which was already winding down, anyway—they killed it fast so the wards could go back up.
Lizza let out a sigh of relief. The blade appeared intact. They’d spent the last twenty-four hours mapping out the beacon extensively. This was the big test to see if it would bring back the object it was attached to. They’d reconfigured the machine to reach into the over-dimension, fix the measurements there, which should shove the object back into the reality here.
If only getting Oriel back from the shadow realm were as simple.
“Outstanding,” Charlotte said, coming up to her side. Tomaz was removing the blade from the machine. Tajael was on the phone, making sure all was well outside the wards, and inside as well. Richard and Jimmy were already swiping through the results on the monitor.
“Yeah.” Somehow, her victory rang hollow without Oriel here to share it. But she knew it was key to moving forward. “We’ll at least have this to show Daxon when he comes. The day after tomorrow, right?”
“Sometimes he comes early,” Charlotte said. “Or not at all. But we can’t show Daxon the sword because…”
“Oh. Right.” She forgot the boss-man didn’t know about the immortal realm. She’d only known about angels and shadow angelings and all of that for a week, and already, it had completely changed her. Inside and out. “We want to replicate this with living matter, anyway.” To Tomaz, who was reverently holding the blade far longer than he needed to, she said, “Can we queue up some potted grass to send out and bring back?”
He looked up from the short sword. “Sure. But you know we have to reconfigure in between.”
She frowned. That meant the grass would spend time in the over-dimension before they could bring it back. The blade was inanimate so it could stay there indefinitely without harm. She wasn’t so sure about the grass, but it was a good test. “That’s all right. We need something to show Daxon with your fancy camera.”
He nodded and regretfully returned Oriel’s blade to its black box.
Lizza turned to Charlotte. “If we’ve got a video showing a living matter transport and retrieval, do you think Daxon will spring for a second machine? It would make things a lot less risky, especially when we start transporting living things that might need an oxygen atmosphere to breathe.”
“Lab mice? So soon?” But it wasn’t like Charlotte was disapproving.
Actually, she was thinking Lab Scientist, but sure. They could start with mice. Or even something simpler. “You think we should send a Petri of single-celled organisms first?”
“Would make it easier to check for cellular and DNA damage, right?” She was giving Lizza a skeptical look as if Lizza was testing her.
And it was obvious, so yeah, she should have thought of it. And not jumped the gun too fast. “Right. The grass will get us plant cellular damage if there is any. I’ll see if we can get some tissue cultures overnighted to us. We can start once we run through the battery of grass pots.” Her voice was flat, though. More delays. But she had to keep her eyes on the prize and not get distracted by thoughts of Oriel.
Charlotte beamed. “I knew you were the right person for this.” She bumped shoulders with Lizza. “They’ll need room for both our names on that Nobel Prize.”
Liza smiled as best she could, but it didn’t last.
Charlotte frowned, but before she spoke, Tajael stepped up.
“All’s clear.” He lifted his chin toward the black box with Oriel’s angel blade. “Did we get it back in one piece?”
Lizza nodded. “If he ever wants it back, it’ll be waiting here for him.”
Tajael and Charlotte exchanged painful looks. The kind you have when you’re unsure if the person in front of you is okay or slightly deranged by grief. She’d seen that look before, too—lots of times.
She pulled in a breath. “Okay, I’m going to take a quick break.” She ducked her head and went for the door before they could respond. To Tomaz, she said on the way out, “I’ll be back in time for those runs.”
He nodded absently, already elbows deep in the machine.
She retreated from the lab, her pace quickening as she went, taking her into a dead-run by the time she reached the break room. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, then didn’t try holding back the tears. Her head thumped the door as she leaned
back, letting them fall, and wondering why, suddenly, it all seemed overwhelming… maybe because none of it would have been possible without Oriel and his blessing. Maybe because he was off being tortured somewhere, maybe even dead—no, she refused to go there—while they were celebrating. That he might be truly gone by the time she got through all this. It was a tightness in her chest that she carried around with her 24/7.
Maybe she just missed him.
She pulled in another deep breath, stood straight, and wiped away the tears. She refused to mourn a man who wasn’t dead—at least, not as far as she knew. She’d spent too much of her life in mourning. Oriel had given her a new lease on life, and she wouldn’t let the ups or downs of that slow her… not until she’d paid him back. Or at least tried to.
She snagged one of the community mugs and popped a pod in the Keurig. While she waited, her phone buzzed in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw it was just email. She debated even checking, but it was her official The Point email address. She never got email at this address. It was her super-secret stealth research office email, which she gave to precisely no one and which was for internal use only. But everyone in the lab would just come find her or call her, not email.
Maybe it was Daxon.
She swiped it open, then quickly scanned, her frown growing as she went.
Then she started again at the top.
From:[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Need to meet
Lizza,
I love you, darling. I’ve found a way we can be together. Leave the Guards behind. Bring Mr. Charley. Meet me at Only the Bean at 5. I miss you.
Oriel
I love you? Darling? But then… Mr. Charley? How would anyone else know who that was?
A million questions were slamming through her brain, but just one clear thought buzzed the rest of them and laid them out flat. Oriel was alive! Not only that, he was contacting her. Or maybe not. Emails could be faked. And if they knew about Mr. Charley… her heart sank. Maybe they tortured that out of him and then killed him. Please, no.
This wasn’t proof of anything.
She stared and stared at her phone, frozen in place. Finally, her mind unlocked, and she replied.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Need to meet
Oriel,
Got your message. Need more proof.
I miss you, too!
Lizza
She waited. And waited. And sipped scalding hot coffee and waited some more. Finally, a response came… but it was just a bounce-back.
Email undeliverable.
By now, her hand was shaking. What should she do? It was nearly the end of the day. A quick glance at the time said she had just over an hour. Only the Bean, a quirky coffee shop on the way to her apartment, was super close, but still.
No matter what, she couldn’t just sneak off. Even if she could make it past the angeling brigade that guarded the office and the building at large, she would be risking the entire project. And she couldn’t do that. Oriel wouldn’t ask her to do that—would he? She knew he wasn’t a fan of the whole idea—the breaching of the barrier between the realms—but he was also the guy who sacrificed himself to make sure she could carry on. Who convinced her to continue her work even when he was uncertain. For certain, he would never have her jeopardize herself or the project… not unless it was necessary.
But was this Oriel? She couldn’t be sure.
She pocketed her phone, snagged her mug of coffee, and hauled it back to the lab. Everyone was gearing up for another run. Charlotte and Tajael were having an argument/discussion about whether it was too soon to drop the wards again.
When Charlotte saw her, she said, “Tell the overprotective angeling of light that we just need this one run for Daxon, then we can take a break for the night.”
“We need the run,” she said to Tajael. “Also, I got an email from Oriel.”
Everything in the lab came to a screeching halt.
Charlotte just blinked.
Tajael frowned. “An email? Oriel doesn’t… how could you get an email from the shadow realm?”
She lifted her shoulders in an elaborate shrug and pulled out her phone to show them. “Maybe shadow angels have hotmail?” It was a joke. Her voice cracked as she said it.
Tajael’s expression just got more disbelieving as he scanned the email. “This… Lizza.” He looked up, sympathy written on his face. “You have to know this isn’t real.”
She scowled and took the phone back. “Well, it’s certainly real. The question is whether it’s from Oriel.” She bit her lip and refreshed her email. Still, just the bounce-back message that said her email to him was undeliverable. Tajael was right—everything about it screamed fake.
Tajael and Charlotte exchanged concerned and pitying looks. Lizza had seen those kinds of looks before, too. The kind that said they were worried she wasn’t right in the head. Driven by grief into crazy acts. But she was entirely in charge of her faculties—she just hadn’t sorted out the best course of action.
“Oriel would not put you in danger like this.” Tajael seemed very certain about that.
And it was hard to argue. “No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed, re-reading Oriel’s email for the tenth time. Bring Mr. Charley. She kept stumbling over that part. “Unless I was already in danger…” She looked up and met their skeptical expressions with a confidence of her own. “And this is code for something else.”
“Code for what?” Tajael asked, but he seemed less certain now.
“I don’t know.” She pressed her lips together, trying to puzzle it out. “I love you, darling… he never called me darling. He didn’t say—” She stumbled over her words because she did love him. “We hadn’t gotten to I love you’s yet, okay? This is him saying, Be suspicious.”
Tajael was nodding for her to go on.
“For the record,” Charlotte said gently, “I do think he loved you.”
“Well, he’ll just have to come back and tell me himself,” Lizza blurted out, mostly to fight back the tears. She shook her phone at them to get back on point. “It’s like everything that follows from there should be suspect. How we can be together. That I should leave the Guards behind. He knows that’s dangerous.”
“Right,” Tajael said, certainty back in his voice. “He’s warning you it’s a trap.”
“But then there’s this part about Mr. Charley.” She narrowed her eyes, reading it again.
“Who’s Mr. Charley?” Charlotte asked.
“Exactly,” Lizza said. “Oriel’s the only one who knows. And I can’t see some shadow angeling torturing that out of him. It’s just too obscure.”
Charlotte’s expression turned grim. The techs were all listening carefully with slightly horrified faces.
Lizza swallowed. “I can’t know what this is really about. But by mentioning Mr. Charley, it’s like he’s saying, This part is real.” She grimaced. “He truly wants me to meet him at the coffee shop. And I believe he does miss me.” She missed him so much, it was like a hole in her heart.
Tajael was shaking his head. “It’s a trap, Lizza.”
“Yes… but maybe not a trap for me.”
Tajael lifted his eyebrows, but she could tell Charlotte was coming around. “So you ignore the part about leaving your Guard behind,” Charlotte said. “You come with the full complement.”
Lizza nodded. “We don’t have much time to set it up. But this could be Oriel’s chance to get out of whatever mess he’s in. I’m sure that’s not why he’s doing it—even in shadow, I’m sure he’s doing this because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. That it helps me, all of us, the experiment, humanity… something. So, we come prepared, every angeling you’ve got, only hidden, and we help him in whatever way we can.”
Tajael was scrubbing his face. “For the record, I’m against this.”
Lizza scowled at him. This was he
r chance to rescue Oriel! She would not let Tajael stand in her way. To his credit, he seemed to get that right away.
He held up his hands in surrender. “But if you believe this is truly a message from Oriel, then you’re right. The angeling I know would never endanger you unless it was to protect you from something even greater.”
Lizza gave a sharp nod and checked the time. “We’ve only got an hour.”
“I’m on it.” Tajael pulled out his phone and hurried out the door of the lab.
Charlotte reached out and squeezed her hand. “Be careful, Lizza.”
“Right.” She took a deep breath and turned to include the three techs, who were staring at her with concerned looks. “In the meantime, the science must go on. Daxon’s going to be here soon, and we need stuff to show him. Keep going without me.”
Then she strode to the door to follow after Tajael.
Oriel was masquerading as human in a coffee shop, wings stowed, wearing just jeans and a t-shirt. Terah, the woman he’d relentlessly fucked for the last two days, was sitting across from him at a small circular table with three chairs, also dressed to blend in with the humans of Seattle. She sipped her coffee, made a face, then put it down. They were waiting for Lizza to show up so he could recruit her to spy for the shadow realm—Elyon’s Regiment, specifically.
It was surreal.
And a ruse all the way down.
His heart hammered with the myriad ways this could go wrong, but an excitement also electrified him. He would see Lizza soon. Maybe. Most likely, Tajael would keep her from coming. Or whoever her Guardian was now. Envy surged up and made him grip his coffee cup harder. The liquid quavered. But he tamed it with the knowledge that Lizza’s safety was paramount over any feelings he had about the matter. He relaxed his hand and set down the cup, looking to the door for the thousandth time in the last twenty minutes. If nothing else, the endless fucking had helped him achieve a level of control of his Sins he hadn’t previously imagined possible. He could feel Lust but temper it—control it to serve his purposes. Likewise with Wrath, and now, apparently, Envy. Those were the worst among the Sins, and he’d never struggled with Gluttony or Sloth or any of the others. Apparently, being in shadow meant being an expert in managing Sin. Which had a twisted logic to it.
