Her brow lowered over her wary eyes. “But you’re not sorry. Said you weren’t sorry at Caleb’s grave. Said you’d do it again.”
Shit. “I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. Sorry I’ve added to your pain.” Her head cocked to the side, she waited for him to finish. There was only one more thing for him to say, to gain his way back into her heart. If only he could lie. “To save you from a greater pain, I would do it again.”
A wealth of emotions shifted across her face and in the depths of her eyes. None of it good. Resigned to her continued mistrust, he released his hold on the minds in the substation. A patrol car pulled up and two officers exited the car. They speared them with a cursory glance and kept moving into the building. Sophie pulled her hand free. Chay bit back a curse as her hand slipped away. Their moment had ended.
She glanced at her mother seated in the car. “I should go. Get my mother home. She needs to rest.”
“Of course.” He walked her the short distance to her car.
Sophie paused at the passenger side, then she spun, went to her tiptoes before he had a chance to lean down, and brushed a quick kiss to his cheek. He couldn’t stop his arms from snaking around her waist, couldn’t stop himself from giving into the temptation. Instead of tensing, she melted into his side. God, the feel of her body pressed into his, it swept through him like a wildfire in his grace.
“When you fell, did your actions save Metatron?” she whispered, then she was gone, ripped from his embrace, and scooted inside the car.
He stood there, shocked by her question, while her mother chatted about a spa day as they reversed out of the parking spot and merged into traffic.
Also, he was shocked by a truth he couldn’t deny. He and the rest of the UnHallowed had accomplished nothing when they followed Metatron. Nothing except damning them all. What a blade to the throat.
Yet, if he hadn’t fallen, he wouldn’t have Scarla, and he wouldn’t have given his heart to Sophie. Yeah, he had regrets, but those two females weren’t included.
Scarla’s bruised face seared his brain. He’d failed her, just as he failed Sophie. Both times with both women. He wasn’t there when they needed him. He failed as a father and whatever he had with Sophie. Well, that possibility was dead, he acknowledged as the taillights of her car faded in the distance. Fury turned his vision red and beneath his feet the ground split down to the pipes feeding into the police station. A geyser erupted from a ruptured water main. The earth rumbled in protest. Florida wasn’t known to have earthquakes…until tonight.
The vengeance he would’ve wrought on Ozzy, denied. What a bitter pill to swallow on that missed retribution.
He wouldn’t miss another.
Chapter Sixteen
Perched on the base of a radio tower on top of an eighty-story building, Kushiél surveyed the city lying at his feet, unimpressed and utterly numb. Not an unusual state for him, and not exclusive. Tonight, he hunted alone, his preference. Most UnHallowed desired a solitary existence. Too many egos. Too many hair-trigger tempers. Too many of them in one spot could be fatal. Thousands of millennia wasted blaming each other, hating each other, splitting into factions, loyalties tested, betrayed.
Scarla changed everything. At least for seven of them, her presence buffered their sharp edges and gave them purpose. Their love for one tiny infant muted the hate they harbored for all humans. Now, Gideon was married to a former captain in the Celestial Army that had sacrificed her grace to save him and close the portal to Hell. Bane and Amaya had shacked up at the farm, and poor Chay had a hook in his mouth and instead of fighting to be free, he was trying to reel his own ass in.
Stupid.
Weak.
The blame lay squarely on Scarla. Not that Kush didn’t love the Halfling. He adored her. The only human he ever would.
Human. The word soured his mouth. “Damn you, Braile.” He’d giveth and he’d taketh away. The UnHallowed had regained part of their grace they’d forfeited in the Fall, while Scarla lost everything that made her an UnHallowed. Wasn’t fair—a human word that meant abso-fucking-nothing—and she wasn’t adjusting to her new reality. Completely understandable and predictable. The scales of justice—another useless human word— must be balanced regardless of who was affected.
He couldn’t do anything to help her. Comfort wasn’t his thing. How did one comfort a human with their fragile systems and sensibilities? But he could avenge her. The one who hurt her would pay with blood and bone.
And there was the dead human now, entering a twenty-four-hour gym. The wind whipped Kush’s mohawk from side to side, freeing strands from the queue restraining it. Shadows curled around the tower, mimicking the seething darkness curling inside him, regardless of the new injection of grace. He turned his head to the stars with a shit-eating grin, a parody of what he truly felt, which was off. Deeply, irrevocably off. Off-kilter, off his rocker, off the reservation.
The shadows reached for him as if recognizing his new imbalance and wanted to fix it. With a thought, his wings appeared, opened to their full width. Skeletal with a fine translucent webbing covering the black appendages, they carried him into the sky.
The wind streamed over the exposed skin of his face and wings. It buffeted him in a cold embrace he welcomed, brief though it was. He angled his wings, taking him to a silent landing in front of the building.
“Holy Mother of God.” The fervent whisper came from the alley to his right.
Kush’s crimson gaze landed on the hapless fool unfortunate enough to bed down in this particular alley and froze him to the cardboard bed he reclined in. He knew exactly how he appeared. A winged, six foot six, mohawked, tattooed monster. It wasn’t always that way, yet he reveled in his appearance. It served its purpose—to inflict terror in all who saw him.
He’d never been a pretty boy, even as an archangel. Tahariél received the lion’s share of beauty when they’d all been created. Atonement wasn’t supposed to be pretty.
A snarl ripped from Kush’s throat, directed at himself, not the cowering human. He shoved thoughts of his brethren aside and refocused.
One look and all the man’s sins lay bare for Kush’s perusal. His life was a series of petty thievery, adultery, and abandonment of his two children. So much so, he’d stolen their identities, stolen their futures, made their lives harder instead of easier.
Warmth suffused Kush, the heady sensation spread to each of his limbs, a sensation he hadn’t enjoyed since he fell. Righteous fury ignited within him, returned on the heels of Braile’s gift. Kush’s palm itched for his empyreal blade to render judgment on the human, to make him atone.
He took one step toward the man, prepared to deliver the punishment the human deserved, and halted. Only the promise of a greater prize saved him. He released the mental hold he’d placed on the human’s body. Not caring what he removed, Kush wiped the fragile brain clean of the encounter and relished in the ability. No more hiding in the shadows, afraid of the sun, afraid to be seen, fearful of humans and their recording devices. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram. Fuck, so many ways to be outed. Unity was the only way they managed it all. Together, they’d been stronger. Now…he was here, by himself, prepared to make one human atone for the temerity of touching one of their own.
“Take your temporary reprieve and leave my sight,” he muttered, then ghosted through the brick and mortar of the structure. Darkness shrouded half of the gym, the cardio section with treadmills, StairMasters, elliptical machines and more he didn’t recognize.
His prey sat on a weight bench. The wig she wore in the cage was gone, leaving close-cropped hair. Transgendered or not, there was nothing feminine about Androgina. Yes, she seemed to have the most visible parts associated with femininity, except the muscle mass was three times what any female would have. He’d seen female bodybuilders and appreciated the determination and sculpted magnificence of their form. Some taking their bodies to the extreme limits their physiology could achieve, and still, he found it beautiful.
Androgina was a bastardized version of the female form. Done, he suspected, not to correct an accident of birth that made her a man, but for other selfish purposes.
One hundred-pound barbells on each side of her feet and an open duffel bag rested beside her on the bench. Kush watched his prey retrieve a black leather case. Unzipped, it contained a needle, syringe, and a small vial. She attached the needle to the syringe. An alcohol swab to the top of the vial, she stood, yanked down the side of her sweats, exposing a good bit of ass, and used the same swab to clean a section of flesh. She drew the clear liquid from the vial and then repeated the process with another vial labeled, testosterone. The needle went deep, followed by a slight wince.
Kush’s gaze flicked to the label on the first vial. anadrol. He didn’t know what it was until he skimmed his prey’s mind. Anabolic steroid. Used to build muscles. Side effects included rage. Kush and rage were intimate friends.
What to call a transgendered man who secretly injected testosterone and Anadrol so he could climb into the ring and fight women? A corpse.
You’d call him a corpse.
His prey tossed the syringe back into the leather case and hiked up her sweats. She grabbed the barbells and started curling, veins popped beneath the skin stretched over her biceps, biceps that rivaled Kush’s. Scarla lost her battle to this cheating scum. Kush ignored the voice that questioned the logic of his reasoning and let the shadows pour, like water from a duck’s back, from his body.
“What the!” The barbells fell from her hands with a loud clank. One rolled to a stop at Kush’s booted feet. She dropped into a defensive posture until Kush stepped completely free of the shadows and the darkened half of the shop. Kush grinned at the horror draping her features. She backed up, plastered herself to the mirrored wall, quaking. “P-please.”
“Please?” With a flick of his hand, Kush scattered the equipment out of his way. “When you beat Scarla, that word never left her lips. I have yet to do anything to you and you plead.”
“Sc-Scarla? I-I don’t know a Scarla.” She edged toward the emergency exit at the end of the mirrored wall. The squat stand loaded with weights sailed across the room. It smashed into the wall, blocking the exit.
She screamed, “What! What do you want!”
“Scarla Weston. In the ring she is Divinity,” Kush growled.
Awareness widened her eyes. “It was a fair fight,” she squeaked.
“A fair fight?” Kush pinned her to the wall with a thought and delved into her mind and into all her secrets. Kush saw him as the man he was born. A lanky kid named Clint, desperate for recognition, in his late teens he chose bodybuilding and mixed martial arts because he was tired of being bullied. Once he bulked up, he got into cage fighting late in his twenties to prove his manhood. Won a few fights, but he lost more, the last one badly. Days after the loss, on a drunken binge, he had the misfortune of running into a cement barrier.
The car stopped. Clint didn’t.
He sailed through the window, cartwheeled in the air, and landed—crotch first—straddling a light pole, pulverizing his nuts and cock.
He recovered, though his baby making abilities did not. Undeterred, he saw opportunity where another would’ve crawled into a hole and never returned. He finished the job fate started in Thailand. He left the U.S. as a man. Eighteen months later, Clint landed in America as a female and returned to the ring full of testosterone and Anadrol.
He beat every female opponent he faced. Five women. Three he sent to the hospital with broken bones. Two with concussions bad enough to require an extended stay in the ICU. He-she preyed on the females for his personal glory. Glory he couldn’t find any other way.
Kush’s wings flared over his shoulders and his empyreal sword flashed into his palm. His prey screamed and struggled against Kush’s mental hold. A pointless endeavor. “Sit.” He pointed to the weight bench where the needles and vials remained. “Straddle it.”
Like a puppet, his prey obeyed. He—Kush refused to address the POS as a female when he preyed on females for the money and glory he couldn’t attain before his accident. Clint swung his leg over the bench and sat at the end. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks and plopped onto the black vinyl. “P-P-Pl.”
“Silence,” Kush ordered and rested on the hilt of his sword. He ignored the blubbering and pushed past the thick fear in his prey’s mind. Disregard anything said in the throes of passion also applied to anything said when fear spurred the confession. Neither could be trusted. The former he had no authority on. The latter…
“You have one chance to tell the truth.” His prey’s mouth fell open. Kush snapped it closed without touching him. Then, he held up a single finger. “You have one chance to atone.” Equal parts of Kush revolted and applauded at this momentary reprieve from judgment. “The truth will save your soul.” But not your life.
Clint licked his lips, his pupils wide as his eyes shifted between Kush and the exit. “W-what do you want to know that will stop you from killing me?”
“The truth,” Kush demanded, each word infused with his power.
Clint went lax, face and body. He continued to breath, to blink, the rest of him was completely relaxed.
“Speak your truth,” Kush ordered.
Voice monotone, as if reading from a cookbook, he confessed, “She was the best. Beating her wasn’t enough. I wanted to prove I was better. Get me out of the underground circuit. Get me into an arena, on TV, making real money. Her death would make me a legend.”
The rage was swift and undiluted any desire for atonement. In a blink, the sword was scant inches away from a prominent Adam’s apple, bobbing in a pale throat. What stopped Kush?
The six UnHallowed striding from the shadows at his back. Sam, Daghony, Bane, Chay, Gideon, and Gadreel. They came for the same reason Kush took the journey to the other side of the city. Their collective fury fed into his, ratcheting it up several notches. He didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. And he would not share this moment. It was his alone. A cleansing, unnecessary breath kept him from training his sword on his brothers but didn’t derail his intent.
This kill was his.
The new grace flowing under his skin sizzled in protest. It wanted justice, a proper atoning. Not vengeance.
Well, vengeance was all it would receive this night. He gritted back a curse as the tip of the blade trembled. The slightest movement, a nudge, a centimeter forward, and the empyreal steal would burn skin and slide unfettered, hot knife meet cool butter, into Clint’s flesh.
“You present yourself as a female. The surgeries removed your cock and gave you breasts. Yet instead of estrogen, you take drugs. Testosterone and steroids. Male enhancement hormones. And you fight women.”
Sammiél moved in on Kush’s right. “You were born a man, had surgery to become a woman, take hormones to become a man again, so you can fight women,” he growled, twin flames danced in his eyes, a precursor to the Archangel of Death appearing.
Body still lax, Clint managed a sob. “No-No. Not true.” Tears ran freely down Clint’s face, dripped onto his shirt.
Lies! “You saw an opportunity for gain and took it, disregarding who you would injure, maim.” The grace inside Kush sizzled as he forced the word into Clint’s brain.
Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth, traveled down his chin, and continued in a long strip of spit to his shirt. “You’re gonna kill me no matter what I say.”
Am I? A fine tremor in Kush’s hand had his empyreal sword wavering. He shall atone. The words banged against Kush's temple, familiar, yet foreign, even though they came from within. The words he hadn’t heard or uttered in millennia. Now, they tried to repurpose his intentions.
“There are hard ways to die and easy. Pick which way you will go,” Kush gritted between clenched teeth, hoping no one noticed the fine tremble racing up his arm. Sweat popped on his brow and his stomach rolled as if he’d eaten a ten-course meal laced with shit. He wanted this dishonorable bastard to die. Had to die. He wou
ld not be allowed to live with what he did to Scarla. What he would do to the next female. And the next. You hit a woman once, you’d hit one again…and again…and again. Until you were stopped, hard.
Fuck this. He had his confession and he had his answer. The man was a coward that preyed on the only thing he could. The edge of Kush’s blade glowed blue as he swung it back. Still pinned by the power of his mind, his prey wouldn’t move until he wanted him to.
Someone seized his arm, halting the killing blow. Kush jerked around and faced Chay. His eyes were fully red, his hold unbreakable.
Chay’s lips peeled back in a feral snarl. “His life belongs to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chay grabbed Kush’s arm, keeping him from delivering the fatal blow. Kush yanked away, but Chay held fast, not even straining. Kush’s brows popped, surprised at Chay’s unexpected strength. Chay savored the moment his brethren realized he was no longer the weakest UnHallowed.
He shoved Kush away—all the way to the opposite side of the room—then blocked out the chitter chatter to focus on the POS in front of him. Out of the dark, Gadreel body checked him. “He’s yours after the fucker fights me. You can have whatever’s left.”
Chay skidded three feet, stopped, reversed direction, and slammed into Gadreel before he laid a hand on the POS. He wasn’t surprised, well, actually he was surprised he didn’t have to climb over everyone to get a piece of the human. He understood. While everyone had their thumbs up their asses, Gadreel reached Scarla first. His secret life as a cage fighter was as much a secret as Scarla’s cage fighting. His need for vengeance made sense…on any other day but today.
Because today, vengeance belonged to Chayyliél. “I said he’s mine!”
Only One I'll Have (UnHallowed Series Book 4) Page 12
