by Debra Dunbar
Temporary wasn’t that bad. All I had to do was really suck at the job and they’d jump to relieve me. I was more worried about these fallen ones — what the fuck was that about? “And what exactly am I expected to do with these lost causes that I’m permanently assigned to?”
Gregory shrugged. “Whatever you like. If you feel they are worthy of reform, then you can attempt it. If you wish to do otherwise, that is your choice. Punishment is sometimes a great deterrent to others who may be wavering on the edge of a bad decision. How you handle these individuals is up to you.”
I shot him a quick glance, wondering about his transgressions and whether he considered himself wavering on the edge of a bad decision. I hoped not. I wanted to meet Gregory halfway. I couldn’t deny what I was, but I was willing to compromise a bit to make this thing with him work. I hoped he would do the same. Chips and coffee were all well and good, but I needed a bit more sin from him to feel like we were truly the lovers I wanted us to be.
“How do I know who these fallen are? Which are considered mine, and which are still under the Ruling Council’s wings?”
Gabriel sniffed, tilting his head to look down at me. “Where vibration level is a consideration, other factors will also apply. You’ll need to consult with us and we’ll come to a collective agreement.”
What a bunch of bullshit. I now had the responsibility for these fallen dudes, and temporary assignment of humans who had poor credit? With seven–billion humans on the planet, they expected me to check everyone’s FICO score and vet each one individually? Yeah. Right.
“Sure. No problem.” I wanted to get past this Tyrone Cochran thing so I could go home and go about my business. I had statuary to spray paint, and water towers to toilet paper.
“I feel that this individual’s death doesn’t warrant any kind of censure,” Raphael spoke up, his violet eyes meeting mine for a brief second. “All in favor?”
Once again I wished Uriel was here. With her gone, Raphi was the only one I could really count on to vote on my side. Even Gregory sometimes opposed me.
This time my angel raised his hand in support, along with Raphael, New Guy, and Sleazy. Only Gabriel remained opposed. Asshole. I swear I’d find some way to stick it to him eventually. That guy was a total pain in the ass.
The rest of the meeting was boring, as usual. When I could see the faint orange of the sunrise outside the conference–room windows, the angels adjourned, and Gregory took me home. This time I refused coffee and yawned in his arms.
“Sleep with me?” I wanted nothing more than to feel him next to me while I slept through the morning.
“I don’t sleep.” His voice conveyed amusement, and his hands caressed my back. I leaned against him, feeling the rough cotton of his polo shirt against my face.
“I don’t care. I just want you near me while I do.”
His breath hitched, and I felt the heat of his energy against me. My spirit–self reached outward and connected in a thin band of connection.
“I may need to leave. I can’t remain away from Aaru for long.”
“I understand.” And I did. As selfish as I was, we both had burdens to carry — him more so than I. Someday, maybe, we could have the luxury of uninterrupted time together, but this was not it.
“Then I’ll join you in your bed for as long as I can.”
He bent down and kissed my forehead, rubbing a lock of hair between his fingers in a caress I’d grown to love. But it was his words that stirred me. I knew joining me in my bed probably wouldn’t include physical intercourse, but it was an emotional intimacy that meant everything to me. My angel, curled up against me while I dreamed. The only thing better would be to actually wake up in his arms.
–8–
He was gone when I woke. I went through the motions of my morning routine, helping Nyalla make pancakes while Harper fried bacon. In spite of yesterday’s breakthrough, Harper had again retreated into simmering anger. Her knuckles were white as she scooted the bites of pancake around the syrup on her plate, and she was tense as she sat on her chair. She looked like she’d start stabbing pillows at the slightest provocation.
She nearly did when my doorbell rang.
I got up, waving at the girls to remain seated. Candy was coming over to deliver some comps on potential real–estate investments. My friends usually walked right on in, but Harper had taken to locking the doors. All of them. Even during the day. I swore lightly under my breath as I threw the three dead bolts Nyalla had installed after the ghoul incident and flung open the door. Instead of Candy, an angel stood on my doorstep.
“Yeah?” This was getting tiresome. If this guy had a pregnant woman hiding in the bushes, I was going to remove his wings one feather at a time. With my teeth.
He shifted from foot to foot, eyes darting as if he were trying to see past me and didn’t want me to notice. A prickle of something electric slid up my spine, and I closed the door against my body, leaning casually against the jam. I could hear Nyalla talking cheerfully in the background and tried to send her a mental message. I had no idea what extrasensory perception Gregory had gifted her with, but I was hoping hard it was telepathy.
She kept talking. I heard Harper respond.
“I ain’t got all day. Tell me what the fuck you want, or fly on back to Aaru.”
His eyes met mine, and I was reminded of why I hate angels. Well, all of them except for one. Cold. Condemning. Judgmental. They bore into me, sweeping from my head to toes and back up, clearly finding me lacking. His upper lip curled, and I felt a wave of power against me. It was cold and electric, like lightning in an ice storm.
“You’ve got something I need to collect.”
Could the guy be any more fucking vague?
I’d either been spending too much time with elves and angels, or my intuition was kicking in, because I had a bad feeling I knew exactly what he was here to collect. He was a Hunter. Had one truly just wandered down my lane and happened to sense Harper? I doubted it, but I didn’t want to think too closely about the alternative right at this moment.
My instincts immediately urged me to summon my Iblis sword, but Gregory had warned me the price I’d pay for killing an angel. I’d gotten away with it once in self–defense, but I doubted I could claim that this time. I’d need to find some other, less lethal, way of disabling this guy.
“Well, shit! Of course I do. Come right on in, buddy!”
I flung the door wide open, ushering him in with a dramatic flourish. He hesitated, his eyes confused for a brief second. Then he walked in, scanning the room. I heard the sounds of dishes clanking in the kitchen, water running, young women chatting. The angel took a few steps forward, leaving his back open to me. Yep, that’s what he thought of me. Iblis or not, I clearly wasn’t even enough of a threat to warrant a defensive side stance. Idiot.
His eyes tracked Nyalla as she appeared from the kitchen at the far end of the room. She pivoted, calling something over her shoulder to Harper, and then turned to walk out one of the huge sets of French doors that lined the rear of my home. Her gaze passed right over the angel without any change of expression. I would have thought he had some glamor in place to shield himself from her eyes, except she didn’t even acknowledge my presence. Enemy angel at the door. Stay in the kitchen. Stay in the kitchen, I silently chanted to Harper as I eyed the golf club Nyalla had placed beside the closet door.
Clearly Harper had the gift of telepathy, even if Nyalla did not. She walked out of the kitchen and promptly launched a carving knife at the angel.
The woman either had previous experience in a circus, or all that practice stabbing pillows had produced some amazing skills. The knife flipped through the air and sank hilt–deep into the angel’s chest. I was as shocked as he was at this turn of events, but I had a faster recovery time — no doubt because I didn’t have a knife sticking from between my ribs. Taking my cue from Harper, I hit the angel across the back of his head with the nine iron.
When Wyatt had shot Greg
ory, he’d barely reacted, but this guy was no ancient. He did a lovely face–plant onto the floor, landing with a satisfying thump. One of the things I learned early, as an imp growing up in Hel, was that if you wanted something to stay down, you needed to go far beyond what would normally suffice in terms of force. So I jumped forward and began whaling away at the angel with my golf club, which was starting to form an acute angle halfway down the shaft.
“Run!” If Harper didn’t get her butt in gear, she was going to find herself in big trouble. I had no illusions that this angel was going to be subdued for any more than a few moments by human sporting equipment and a carving knife. He’d be up and running once the shock wore off, and if he got his hands on Harper, he’d teleport her away before I had a chance to intervene.
My assault on the angel didn’t break the pregnant woman from her determined stance, but my one word did. She bolted for the rear of the house, holding several more items of sharp cutlery in her hand.
She’d barely gotten to the rear door before my prostrate angel recovered, rolling over to snatch the golf club and hurl it across the room. It just missed one of my windows — one of the windows newly replaced from The Ghoul Incident. But instead of dashing, or teleporting, after Harper as I expected, my uninvited guest turned on me.
“You dare to strike me?”
I dared so much that I did it again, this time with an umbrella from the stand next to the front door. It went the way of the nine iron. Then the angel hit me. Angels aren’t much for using their corporeal forms in fighting, so instead of striking me with a fist, he blasted me with that damned white stuff that burned its way through flesh like a hot knife through butter. It tore through my chest, turning my heart into a smoking hole of nothingness. I’d gotten particularly good at surviving as a corpse, but not so good at the dead animation thing. I tried to give the angel my most menacing, Iblis–like glare, but I’m sure the effect was ruined by my body’s downward crumple.
Snap out of it. I didn’t have much time before he was off after Hunter. No time to lie around on the floor, staring at the ceiling and trying in vain to move my limbs. I shook off the numbness and recreated my entire body with a noisy explosion that I hoped would slow the angel. Then I called my sword to hand. I didn’t care what the other angels did to me; he’d attacked me with intent to kill. And I had a bad feeling about what he intended to do to Harper — and her unborn child — if he got his hands on her.
I suck at sword fighting, but I didn’t have time to be creative, and this was the artifact’s preferred form. So there I was, leaping to my feet and racing across my maple floor, stark naked, chasing an angel while awkwardly holding a two–foot sword. Normally I’d have no chance in catching an angel, but I’d gained a significant amount of speed when I got my wings. By the time he’d passed the stables and headed into the open field, I was within striking distance. Good thing, too, as I saw Hunter ahead, running much slower with her awkward rolling gait.
As usual, I had no time. Swinging a sword at an opponent while running full speed doesn’t allow for much accuracy, but the blade still sliced through his shirt and scored the flesh under it in a neat, diagonal line. The golf club assault had surprised but not hurt him. This had far more impact. The angel arched his spine, throwing his head backward and shrieking as the cut bled iridescent fluid down his back. He’d slowed abruptly with the strike, but my forward momentum wouldn’t allow me to do the same. I slammed into his back, tackling him from behind. We rolled along the grass and rocks for several yards. When we finally stopped, I was underneath him, my sword arm pinned against my chest by his weight.
“They’ll dust you for this,” he hissed, keeping his full weight against my arm while trying to free his hands from under my shoulders. I launched my weight upward, tangling his legs in mine.
“Not if they never find your body.” With a twist of my hips I shifted him slightly to the side — enough to free one of his hands, but not enough to free my sword arm.
I bucked as he tried to get his hand around my neck, and he sacrificed the attempt to brace himself with it, still using the force of his weight to pin my sword arm against me. That stupid slippery angel stuff was coating my raw energy, rendering me incapable of anything but a physical attack. Not that I seemed to be capable of a physical attack with him crushing the breath out of me. I continued to jerk and kick, hoping to dislodge him.
There was a flash off to my side, and the angel flew off me, launched several yards through the air by a flying pair of horse’s hooves. Diablo. Who promptly disappeared like he always did. Not that I didn’t appreciate his intervention. A blur raced past me, and a two–headed dog launched himself at the angel that had just dropped with a bounce to the ground. I scrambled to my feet, using the sword to pull myself upright. As much as I wanted to see Boomer take this angel apart, I didn’t want him blamed. And, more importantly, I didn’t want him to be hurt.
“Get back,” I ordered. Boomer complied with a leap, but not before the angel recovered enough to launch a stream of white. What should have sliced my hellhound in half, burned along one side, removing flesh down to the bone from his head to hip.
Fucker had hurt my dog. No one hurts my dog. With a scream, I ran toward the angel, swinging my sword. He managed to leap to his feet before I reached him. Although my wild swings kept him dodging and ducking, they didn’t seem to land any hits. We danced — me forward and the angel backward until his ass hit the wall of my barn. I swung, and he ducked, but that particular sword strike hadn’t been meant for him; it had been aimed at a rope to his side.
The blade ripped through the nylon as if it was air, and with a whoosh, a sparkling net scooped the angel and hoisted him up. I smiled, thinking of how lucky I was to have a good relationship with a sorcerer for once, and grateful that I’d been paranoid enough after my banishment to install some special security measures around my earthly home.
I held still, sword at the ready and eyes on the bagged angel, just in case. These nets were meant to hold demons, and I wasn’t sure how effective they’d be against an angel. I heard Boomer whine in the background and desperately wanted to go and repair his wounds, but he would have to wait.
The moving bulges in the net stilled, although it still swayed.
“You’ll die for this,” my captive said.
“Probably.” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “You won’t be around for my execution, though. Which is of great comfort to me.”
The bag jerked. “Do you know who I am?”
“The guy who assaulted me? The guy who intended to drag off a guest in my home to her death?”
I heard an exasperated snort. “You assaulted me! And I would not have killed the human female. She is not to blame for her situation.”
Okay. Maybe I overreacted a bit. “And the baby she carries?”
“Nephilim are condemned to death. Article one nine two three eight, section forty–five, subsection twenty, item two ninety three.”
Nope. Didn’t overreact at all. I thought about arguing that the baby wasn’t to blame for his or her situation either, that the only one to punish for this whole mess was a randy angel who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Or keep from manifesting one at all. I knew there was little chance of winning that argument, so I spun around and headed for my dog.
Boomer was sprawled across the blood–red grass, his head in Nyalla’s lap. The girl made soothing noises, stroking the parts of his face that hadn’t been removed by the angel’s blast. My fury returned, fanned even hotter when I saw Nyalla’s tear–stained face.
“Will he … is he?”
“I’ll fix him,” I reassured her. “I’ve done it a million times before. He’s a tough hellhound. He’s survived worse.”
“Can you heal him instead?”
I had no idea how she’d learned the difference. Healing was an angel–skill — one I’d recently acquired. I wasn’t completely proficient at it, but it was more thorough and less painful than my dem
on repair abilities. There was one thing holding me back, though.
“I’m not kissing my dog.”
Nyalla raised big blue pleading eyes to mine.
“Seriously. You know what he eats, and dogs don’t floss, brush, or rinse with an ADA approved mouthwash. I saw him with a human limb last night. That thing had to have been rotting for at least two months. No way I’m putting my lips anywhere near his mouth.”
The girl’s eyes grew moist. A tear welled and rolled down her cheek to hover at the edge of her lip.
“Oh for fuck sake!” I grumbled as I stomped over to Boomer.
I was a demon. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had all sorts of nasty shit in my mouth before. Kissing Boomer probably wouldn’t be any worse than that time I gave Grexil head. Blech.
It was worse than blowing a plague demon. Way worse. After I’d finished, Boomer jumped to his feet, tail wagging, while I was retching and spitting on the blood–soaked grass. It was worth it to see Nyalla’s joy as she hugged the hellhound.
“What are you going to do with him?” Nyalla waved a hand toward the barn.
Glancing again at the bagged angel swinging around like an oversized piñata, I shrugged. “Leave him there? It’s probably safer than cutting him down and trying to duct tape him in my basement.”
The girl nodded. “I guess if anyone asks, you can just say you’re disciplining a member of your household.”
It was so nice to be living with a human who truly understood demons.
“Any idea where Harper may have gone?” For all I knew, the woman could be halfway to Idaho. It would solve a lot of problems if she kept on running and never came back, but I’d vowed to protect her and the baby. I might be just as likely as humans to default on my loans, but I couldn’t renege on a vow.
“She was headed toward the Calloway’s farm.” Nyalla pointed toward the fence line where our neighbors lived, just out of sight. “How do you think the angel found out about her and tracked her here?”
