Archangel Chronicles 7 - Shot In the Dark

by LaBarthe L. J.

“It’s been over now for a few years, yeah? Yet we’re still paying for it. The planet’s still paying for it, and for the shit that went down with the theft of the Holy Grail before we got it back.”

  “Language. And yes. But the planet is recovering; she spoke of this to me. It is the weather that is changing, and I am worried that some sort of momentous event may occur.”

  “Like the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Ice Age?”

  “Perhaps.” Michael shrugged. “It is merely a feeling I have.”

  Gabriel sighed. “Great. Something else to worry about.”

  Michael smiled at that. “Da bao, you say I worry too much, but you worry too. Perhaps we should ask Raziel about the weather patterns. We might not understand everything he tells us, but his explanation will be potent enough to satisfy us both.”

  Gabriel chuckled at that and set down his beer. He pulled Michael into his arms and kissed his forehead. “Raziel will give us a lecture, y’know.”

  “I do. But it would be nice, I think. I do appreciate his lectures on these subjects. His wisdom is astounding, and I do not wish for him to feel as if we do not enjoy hearing about what he learns and discovers.”

  “Okay. We’ll call him in the morning.”

  Michael reached up one hand to cup Gabriel’s cheek. “As you say.”

  Gabriel turned his head to kiss Michael’s palm. “You’re affectionate tonight.”

  “Perhaps it is that I merely enjoy being close to you like this.”

  Gabriel kissed Michael’s fingers. “You should totally feel free to enjoy it as often as possible, heart of my life.”

  Michael kissed him then, soft and sweet, a gentle press of lips against lips, reaching his other hand up to curl around the back of Gabriel’s neck. Gabriel hummed into the kiss as he slowly deepened it, savoring the sensation of Michael in his arms, kissing him and being kissed. He wrapped his own arms around Michael and held him close, breathed him in and felt his strong, muscular body so warm and pliant against his own.

  Yes, times like these really were Gabriel’s favorites. Nothing could compare to the joy he felt right then.

  THE MORNING sunlight streamed through the windows into the large bedroom. Gabriel ran a hand slowly down Michael’s back, smiling as he traced each line of muscle and the edges of Michael’s wing joints. The black lines of Michael’s tattoos stood out stark against his dark-gold skin, and Gabriel’s smile grew as he ran his fingers around the Hebrew let ering.

  “What are you doing, da bao?” Michael’s voice was fond.

  “Touching you.”

  “Ah, I see.” Michael shifted, rolling onto his side and facing Gabriel.

  “How are you this morning?”

  “I’m good.” Gabriel had not stopped his caresses, now running his hand down Michael’s side. “And yourself?”

  “I am well.” Michael moved close and kissed Gabriel, a kiss that was both languid and passionate. Gabriel slipped his arm around Michael and pulled him closer, tangling their legs together as the kiss deepened.

  Michael was always affectionate in the mornings, and Gabriel felt the warmth of the sun shining through the window on his toes. He smiled into the kiss as Michael pushed him onto his back, covering Gabriel’s body with his own. Pressed together tip to toe, Gabriel purred as he slid his hands up to tease at Michael’s wing joints. He knew that Michael was unable to resist those teasing touches, and he was rewarded by a sharp nip to his lower lip as Michael wriggled on top of him.

  “Gabriel,” Michael growled, his voice low and husky. He broke the kiss and ducked his head, nuzzling Gabriel’s neck. Gabriel intensified his attentions to Michael’s wing joints and began to rock into Michael’s body, feeling his lover’s hard cock pressing against his own and enjoying the sensation of their cocks sliding together.

  “Gabriel,” Michael said again, a note of desperate need in his voice.

  “Yes, love?”

  “I want you.”

  “Then have me.”

  That was all the encouragement Michael seemed to need. He sat up, his hard cock jutting out proudly, and as Gabriel watched him with lust- hazy eyes, Michael reached behind himself and used his power to slick Gabriel’s cock. Then he rose up on his knees, taking Gabriel’s cock in hand, and slowly lowered himself down onto it, letting out a loud gasping groan at the penetration. Gabriel echoed the groan as he felt tight muscles surrounding him, felt Michael’s hands on his stomach, Michael’s thighs against his hips.

  “C’mere,” Gabriel growled, sitting up and bending his knees. He put one arm around Michael’s shoulders and pulled him in for a hungry, artless kiss as he wrapped his other hand around Michael’s cock and began to stroke, teasing the head of it with his thumb.

  “Mm, Gabriel, more.” Michael’s mental voice was rough with desire, and Gabriel let out a ragged, throaty sound, breaking the kiss and lowering his head so he could mouth at Michael’s neck. He rocked up harder into Michael’s body, delighting in the way Michael moved with him, touched him. It never failed to make Gabriel’s love and passion surge when Michael was like this, because it was all for him and only him.

  “Michael, my love,” Gabriel moaned in Michael’s mind. He was right on the edge, feeling his orgasm curling low in his belly, teetering on the brink. As Michael clenched around his cock, Gabriel arched and cried out wordlessly as he came, pleasure crashing over him in a wave. A moment later, he felt slick warmth on his hand and Michael leaning bonelessly into him, and knew that his beloved had come as well.

  “I love you,” Michael said in a soft voice.

  “Love you too, solnyshko,” Gabriel said.

  Michael touched his cheek with gentle fingers. “We should bathe before we seek out Raziel and Uriel.”

  “Mm, yeah.” Gabriel really wasn’t prepared to move just yet. “Soon.”

  Michael smiled. “As you say.”

  Gabriel wrapped his arms around Michael again and held him close, breathing him in. He felt himself soften and slip from Michael’s body and he sighed. “Okay, okay. Let’s go shower, then we can get dressed and go find Raz and Uri.”

  Michael chuckled. “Da bao, the day is young. I am certain there will be time later for us to be intimate once again.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” Gabriel said. He gave Michael a quick kiss and let him go. “Hop off me, then, and let’s go.”

  THEY FOUND Raziel and Uriel in the village of Buranovo, nearly two hundred miles south of the Russian city of Perm. Raziel and Uriel were hard at work with several young Russian men and women, helping to repair the walls and roof of the local church.

  “You know, you could’ve called us to come help too,” Gabriel said.

  Raziel shrugged, pushing his dark shoulder-length hair back from his face. “Didn’t occur to me, to be honest. We were on our way home from visiting Lyudmila and Piotr in Armenia when we heard the prayers of the Father here, so we stopped and offered to help.”

  “And we’ve been at it all day,” Uriel said, walking over to join them.

  “I don’t mind, though. It’s good, honest work, and Razzy looks hot.”

  “Good thing no one here speaks English,” Gabriel said drily. “You know what the laws are here about homosexuality.”

  Uriel said something that didn’t bear repeating and rolled his eyes.

  “Those laws should have been repealed decades ago.”

  “I agree,” Michael interrupted smoothly, cutting off what Gabriel was sure was going to be one of Uriel’s diatribes about the idiocy of humans or, as he preferred to call them, carbon apes. “But we are here now, so we will help and perhaps, Raziel, you could explain something to Gabriel and I while we work?”

  “Okay. What did you want to know?” Raziel asked, tossing Gabriel a hammer and Michael an adze.

  Gabriel caught the hammer easily. “I ain’t going to say we’l understand everything in your explanation, ’cause you’re Doctor Science brain is totally light-years smarter than all of us. But basical
ly, we’ve been noticing that the weather patterns on the planet are changing. Mishka’s worried we’re heading for some sort of weather-related catastrophe, like another ice age or something, and I ain’t got a clue, so here we are. Asking you.”

  Raziel grinned. “And lucky for you, as Doctor Science of Heaven, Earth, and pretty much everywhere else, I can totally explain what’s going on.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Michael said. “Where shall we begin to work while you talk?”

  “We’re working on cutting the boards for the roof so those guys can cure them,” Uriel said. “Over there.” He pointed toward the large yard and vegetable garden behind the old church, where an elderly man in the black habit of an Orthodox priest was tending to carrots and radishes.

  The four of them walked toward a large tree that was being sawed and chopped into boards and got down to work. As wood chips flew, Raziel, pitching his voice to be heard above the work they were doing, explained what it was that Gabriel and Michael wanted to know.

  “The planet has been under a lot of strain this century,” Raziel began. “Subsequently, as you know, there have been some shifts in the tectonic plates that form the crust of the planet. These are very normal and natural, but they do cause changes in weather due to the land sitting on those plates moving in response. Therefore, as condensation gets colder when it goes up, the mountains are shifting and growing in response to the movement of the plates, the winters we have now are longer and colder.

  Summers are hotter and drier in flat lands far from the equator, and in the tropical latitudes, there is more rain because of those clouds that release water vapor by virtue of being close to the tops of the mountains.

  “Then, too, the tides are affected by the surface of the moon, and Semjaza’s breaking of the constellation of Aquila a few years ago affected the moon a little, causing tidal shifts. Everything is connected, gentlemen.

  But even though the planet is going through these changes that are both so minute that we cannot feel them and so vast that they affect the shape and height of the land masses, there is no grave danger in sight.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Gabriel said. “And amazingly, I understood everything you said.”

  “I’ve been making him practice explaining things to people who aren’t brainiacs,” Uriel said.

  Raziel rolled his eyes. “You have not.”

  “Okay, you explain shit to me, and I’m not a brainiac. I’m all brawn, baby.”

  Raziel waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Aren’t you, though.”

  Gabriel burst out laughing, even as Michael blushed. “Raziel,”

  Michael scolded, “it is not seemly to discuss such things in public.”

  “You know, I would’ve thought you’d have gotten over that hang-up of yours by now,” Raziel said. “Love is love, Mike. It manifests in a myriad of ways, and teasing and jocular humor are only two of them.

  There isn’t anything unseemly or inappropriate about it. Uriel and I love each other, but hearts and flowers and poetry would be totally ridiculous ways for us to express it; neither of us are that sort of individual.”

  “Damn right,” Uriel growled.

  “You, Michael, are more that sort of romantic,” Raziel said. “So it makes sense to you to express it that way, and to Gabe too, seeing as he’s a big old softie hiding behind his armor and muscle. But you can’t deny that the two of you tease each other a lot too. About different things to be sure, but there’s still plenty of teasing. Love has to be happy, Michael. If it’s always serious or sorrowful, then it isn’t love. It’s heartbreak.”

  Gabriel stared at Raziel in surprise. “That’s amazingly astute of you, Raz.”

  Raziel shrugged. “Uri and I have been together for some millennia now. I’ve had the leisure to figure out why we fit so well together. It was a simple thing to determine how other relationships differ from ours and are just as healthy and loving.”

  “Remi and Ish,” Uriel said then. “They tease each other all the time.

  But you’d never see them scold one another, not like you scold everyone, Michael. And look at your Venatores; they’re all about the teasing and the pranks and having some unspoken eternal competition to see who can make you blush the longest the most often.”

  Gabriel burst out laughing. “They do, don’t they?”

  Michael sighed. “Wonderful. I had an inkling they were conspiring to that end. I did not want that suspicion confirmed. Perhaps I should do something to shock them all.”

  Raziel nodded, his expression solemn, although his eyes sparkled with mirth. “Get drunk and dance shirtless on a table.”

  “Oh holy fucking yes,” Gabriel said. “Fuck, that’d be hot.”

  “Gabriel, please,” Michael said. His face was as red as a stop light.

  After a moment, though, he said, “Perhaps I will do that at the next party held at the house.”

  Raziel and Uriel high-fived each other, and Gabriel gazed at Michael, licking his lips. “That will be so fucking hot, I’ll have to drag you somewhere and have my sexy way with you.”

  Michael was still blushing and the smile he gave Gabriel was shy.

  “As you wish, da bao.”

  Gabriel leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then he returned his attention to the log. “Let’s get chopping.”

  They worked the rest of the morning, pausing only to have a drink of water. They stopped for lunch, a simple repast prepared by two of the babushkas and the priest, comprised of borscht, olives, potato bread, carrot, radish and pickled onion salad, and gherkins, with glasses of vodka and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice. After lunch, they returned to work as the priest thanked them all profusely for helping so much and patching up the roof, for rain was forecast and he had been very worried that his church would be flooded.

  As Gabriel was squaring off a log, he heard the sound of Michael’s cell phone beeping, indicating he’d gotten a text. Michael paused in his work to pull his cell out of his jeans pocket and look. As Gabriel watched, he saw Michael’s expression rapidly change from curious to anxious, and he set down his adze and moved to Michael’s side.

  “What is it?”

  “There has been a dreadful avalanche,” Michael said. He held the cell phone out to Gabriel, and Gabriel read the text over his lover’s shoulder.

  It was about a small town named Yaak—or The Yaak—the newspaper report in the message on the phone screen used both in its description. Yaak was in northern Montana, within a sprawling forest called the Kootenai, along the Yaak River and surrounded by mountains and hills and streams. It was a beautiful spot, Gabriel thought, as he looked at the photographs accompanying the news report. But the avalanche was bad news and could cause a lot of damage, injury, and possible death. He frowned, mulling over their options.

  “We could do a flyover on the way back to your place in Oregon,” he suggested to Michael. “Or you could send this info to one of the packs and have them go take care of it—after all, they’re supposed to be looking after the world as much as we are.”

  Michael frowned as well. He pursed his lips and Gabriel could almost see the cogs and gears turning in his mind. Finally, he nodded and began to prepare a message on his phone to send out, saying, “You are right. I must let them do what they were trained for. I cannot coddle them forever, and they are trained for these sorts of missions. I will send Angelique’s pack and ask her to have Declan and Liam join them as extra hands to help. Perhaps their talents will be useful in other areas.”

  Gabriel slipped his arm around Michael’s shoulders and used his power to encourage the locals around them to look elsewhere and pay them no mind. “I’m so proud of you right now, Mishka,” he said in a low voice. Michael gave him a wan smile after he hit Send on the phone. “I confess that I feel very anxious, like a parent does on their child’s first day of school.”

  “I know that feeling,” Gabriel said. “But they’ll be fine. They’re damn well trained and t
hey’re sensible, good kids. How’re they going to get there, though? I mean, it’s a long drive to Montana from Oregon.”

  Michael smiled a tiny smile. “Angelique is a pilot. She will take one of the Black Hawk helicopters I own. It should only take them a few hours to get there with supplies.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I see. Well, that’s good. And you must be worried.

  You didn’t even scold me for saying ‘damn.’”

  “I fear I did not wish to upset you.”

  “That went by me a little too fast.”

  “What Raziel said about scolding,” Michael said sheepishly.

  Gabriel blinked. Then the penny dropped and he sighed, pulled Michael close and kissed his temple. “Solnyshko, I love the scolds. I think it’s adorable. So don’t stop.”

  Michael looked amused. “You are very strange sometimes, Gabriel.”

  “Aye, but ain’t we all?”

  “As you say.” A beat, then, “I love you.”

  Gabriel kissed his cheek. “I love you too.”

  BAXTER WOKE up feeling refreshed. He stifled a yawn as he blinked and shifted in the bed. It took him only a moment to realize that Liam was in bed with him, although Liam was sitting up and leaning against the headboard, reading a book that was the size of a magazine. Baxter yawned again and slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Whatcha reading?”

  Liam looked at him and smiled, and Baxter felt himself warm right down to the tips of his toes. “How do you feel?”

  “Good. Much better. You and Raph are miracle workers.”

  “Raph is, yeah. I didn’t do much.”

  “Yes, you did. So what are you reading?”

  Liam grinned. “An old manual for Baby.”

  Baxter groaned. “Of course it is. I guess it’s better than you reading skin mags.”

  “What would I do with a skin mag when I’ve got you?” Liam set the car manual aside and turned to face Baxter. He smiled again and Baxter smiled back, more than happy to lose himself in Liam’s green-hazel eyes.

  “What time is it?” Baxter asked.

  “Around eleven in the morning.”