“Just do it, woman,” she growled, pressing the pillow closer to her shoulder as she backed as far away from the window as the room would allow. Her heels nudged the duvet on the floor. She flicked them a look, and then glared at the window. Swallowed. “Just suck it up and do it.”
She sprinted at the window.
And hit the brakes a few feet from her target.
What the hell was she thinking?
Her feet tangled beneath her. Arms pinwheeling, the pillow a useless projectile now heading for the floor, she let out a strangled eep.
Idiot. Idi—
Her right foot snagged her left ankle and she slammed into the floor, shoulder first, sans pillow.
Something cracked, splintered. Pain blasted through her shoulder, up into her neck, down her arm.
“Fuck!” she cried, grabbing at the sudden inferno in her shoulder, even as her momentum continued to carry her in an awkward slide across the hardwood. “Oh fuck, that hurts!”
And then the very air around her displaced, and she was in strong arms, being lifted from the floor, Nathanial’s hard, warm chest pressed to her side, his lips pressed to her temple as he murmured in that language she couldn’t understand.
Warmth flooded her. Flowed through her shoulder. The pain intensified, as if fighting for its survival, and then—nothing.
No pain. No numbness.
Nothing.
Nathanial’s low murmuring stopped. His lips caressed her temple for a heartbeat longer, and then her feet were returned to the floor.
“Wh-what…” She gaped up at him, cupping a shoulder she swore was broken a second ago. “How…”
He studied her, expression unreadable. Except for a twitch in his jaw, as a muscle there tightened. “How does it feel?”
She frowned at the calm control in his voice. Or maybe she trembled? The way he looked at her, the way her body strained toward him…
Swallowing, she rolled her shoulder, keeping her palm on the joint. It moved beneath her hand with fluid ease. No pain sheared through her at the action. None. “It’s…it’s okay.”
The words left her on a husky breath.
He stood motionless, regarding her.
Behind him, the air shimmered. His wings. There, but not there.
She frowned, returning her stare to his face. “Did you know what I was doing? That I was trying to…” Heat filled her cheeks.
“No. But when I felt your shoulder break, I suspected.”
“You felt it break? In your own shoulder, you mean?”
He inclined his head in a single nod.
“Okay, that’s…kind of daunting. Have you always been able to feel what I feel?”
A faint frown tugged at his eyebrows. If she hadn’t been staring at him so hard, she would have missed it. “No. This is a new development.”
“How new?”
“Since you kissed me of your own free will.”
Oh boy.
His eyes dropped to her lips, and then he turned and walked to the door.
“Nathanial?”
He paused, his shoulders tensing.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She chewed on her lip.
“There’s no barrier now, Billie,” he said over his shoulder.
Her heart thumped up into her throat. “The doors and windows…”
“Will open,” he finished, before walking through the door. Out of the room. Out of her sight.
Frowning, she turned from the empty doorway. The curtains still hung parted on the window she’d selected to make her dramatic escape. The night beyond sat waiting, a lighter hue smudging on the eastern horizon.
Rubbing at a shoulder that should have been a screaming world of self-inflicted agony but instead felt like it had just experienced the best massage of its existence, she crossed to the window.
Touched her fingertips on the glass.
And then turned away.
A soft laugh burst from her and, walking to the bed, she flopped onto it face-first.
He trusted her, Nathanial trusted her.
She would do the same for him.
After all, what kind of angel couldn’t a person trust?
And let’s be serious, there is that kiss to think about…
So yep, she was staying put. Insanity at its highest, but the only course of action that made any real sense.
“God help me,” she mumbled into the duvet.
* * * *
Erah either didn’t hear him or chose not to respond.
Most likely the latter.
Pacing the living room, Nathanial raked his hands through his hair.
The situation was escalating rapidly, and it seemed he was now operating blind. There was no way he could risk tapping into Gilbert’s threads again, not after the way the man’s unhinged, depraved lust for Billie had affected him. And the only option he had on his own to track Gilbert’s location was via the wisps of his existence.
With that process denied him, and his brother angel silent to him…
“Fuck.”
The curse fell from him, barely a breath but louder than a shout in his soul. It wasn’t that angels were forbidden to use profanity. They weren’t. There was little considered to be the conception of man that was forbidden to angels. Why would beings of divine creation be tempered by anything so lowly? But the ability to do so was deeply hobbled in their creation.
Think it, yes. Any and every word and term considered a vulgar expletive was available to his thoughts. But to utter it…well, that required stupendous levels of emotional force.
“Stupendous levels of emotion” almost came close to summing up his current state.
He was, to put it more accurately, a fucking wreck.
Anyone at Guarded Souls would help him, but the selling of a soul was angel work, as was cleaning up its mess.
Closing his eyes, he rubbed at his shoulder. A dull ache throbbed in the joint, like his arm had been ripped from its socket and rudely shoved back in a lifetime ago.
Billie’s pain.
Pain was a new experience for him, at least pain of this type. Human pain. Yes, other angels could wound him, kill him, but a human could not. The fact he could feel Billie’s pain as it happened…
So many unanswered questions.
The pain, the silence from Erah, the unknown orchestrator behind Gilbert’s perverse elevation, the unexpected absorption of Gilbert lust, the kiss…
“Fuck,” he ground out.
Once again, the word tore at him, like a whip dipped in acid.
It didn’t, however, lessen the memory of Billie’s lips on his, the honest and willing hunger in her kiss as she sought out his tongue, demanded it with her own.
Dropping into the nearest armchair, he closed his eyes.
An eternity.
That’s how long he’d known his existence wasn’t as simple as it should be. An angel’s purpose was not complex; do what you were created for.
An eternity of doing just that, and then, eons ago…
A soft sigh left him.
He’d first become aware of the force of life that would one day be Billie Sheridan 300 years ago. The faintest ripple in an endless ocean, a schism in the light of future existence, drew him. He investigated, despite it being suggested by his fellow angels that to do so would anger God.
The ripple grew stronger as time passed. The light grew brighter. Until he could feel it in his very core.
He had no clue what it was, who it was, this light. But he couldn’t ignore it. There was something to it, something…profound. Or was it more that it somehow made him want something beyond his simple purpose?
An angel should never crave anything more than that which they already possessed and knew. That was the Word and the Way. But that light…it streamed into him, in tiny filaments that became a wave. Flowed into him. Filled him.
He tried to deny it. Tried to ignore it.
Turned his energies to the battle
s for which God had created him. With renewed vigor, he fought the malevolence sent by the darkest of them all. Rendered more than one invulnerable foe nonexistent in battle. Tore apart evil, hunted down darkness.
And the whole time, the intriguing light flowed into him. Challenged him.
Why was this light, this force, there? Why did he feel it, why had it come to him, when he was forbidden to acknowledge it?
What was it? Who was it?
And why did it make him question himself? Begin to question his purpose?
No answers, none, only more warnings from his fellow angels to stay away from it, to reject it, shun it.
No reason was given why, just the warning. This is not for your concern, brother. Over and over. This is not for your concern. Turn away, brother. Deny it.
And he tried. He truly did.
It was not his purpose, not his reason for being.
He tried to forget it.
God knows, he tried.
Until 300 years later, when the light became the promise of existence, one whispered to the deepest corners of his boundless soul: Wilhelmina Sheridan.
When he realized it was a human soul—not yet even born—that drew him, he swore to refute its allure.
Swore to uphold his true purpose.
And once more, he tried.
Poured every molecule of his being into denying what drew him.
Tried. For twenty-three years.
Until Erah found him in agony over his internal battle, and in an act of weakness, Nathanial told him everything.
Erah had regarded him with silent contemplation, studied him, wings tucked, expression indecipherable. And then, lips curling a little, he cupped his hand behind Nathanial’s head and whispered in his ear—
“Fuck me, Feathers.”
The deep voice, laced with laughter, jolted Nathanial to his feet.
Wings snapping wide, fist balling, he stared—stunned—at the man standing before him.
Mirth twinkled in James Hastin’s black eyes as he raked a look over Nathanial. “You look like shite. What’ve you been doin’?”
The breath burst from Nathanial in a rush. Shaking his head, he relaxed his fists and scrubbed at his face. “How the hell did you know where I am?”
No one knew where they were. Not even Billie.
James grinned. “Djinn, mate. Remember? I think about something I want, and bam—it’s either with me, or I’m with it. Well, sort of.”
Nathanial frowned at the djinn. Or rather, his image. James appeared as if he was there in the living room, but he wasn’t. “I hate how you do that.”
“So you’ve said. I can’t help being awesome. Can I assume you’ve tucked the wings away?”
“You can.” Rolling his shoulders, Nathanial winced at the sharp stab of pain sinking into the right one. “What are you doing here?”
Who knew where James really was? Likely back at the Guarded Souls offices in LA, but then again, it was James. He could be in Greenland.
The djinn let out a low grunt. “We got a problem. And by ‘we,’ I mean you.”
Yeah. Add it to the list. “And that is?”
“The corpse of a cop has just been found in LA.”
“So?”
“Outside the home of one Wilhelmina Sheridan.”
All the heat left the room. Someone, a cop, had died near Billie’s home.
Rhames? Surely not. Nathanial had instructed him to leave.
Hadn’t he?
James narrowed his eyes. “If I’m not mistaken, that was the woman you asked Kade to mimic in a call to someone named Adelaide Williams, yes? Wilhelmina Sheridan? Although you called her Billie.”
“How?” The single word scratched at Nathanial’s dry throat.
“How what?”
“How did the cop die?”
James swiped at his mouth. The distaste etching his face made Nathanial’s gut clench. James rarely looked anything but bemused. “Burnt to death. The residue energy emanating from the corpse says he was set alight while still alive. He was a big bastard, too, before his death.”
Detective Rhames.
It was Nathanial’s turn to rub at his mouth. He’d felt Rhames’s soul. It had been pure and strong. The detective had been a good man. True and honest, someone who loved his wife and children unconditionally. Who went to work every day with the sole purpose of making the world a better place for them, and for society. And now he was dead.
But why?
He frowned at James. “Why does anyone at Guarded Souls know about this? Humans are killed all the time. What flagged the agency?”
“It wasn’t a natural fire, Feathers.”
Nathanial’s throat tightened.
James—rarely serious, even when facing down all manner of threat—studied Nathanial with a steady look. “It pinged Nim’s internal radar. Kade and Christen got there as soon as they could but it was too late to save him.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing natural about this one, and we figured, given the location of the attack, the proximity to this Sheridan woman, you’d want to know.”
They’d figured right.
Clawing at the back of his neck, Nathanial closed his eyes and searched for Rhames’s existence in the ethereal plane.
Nothing.
No, wait…
He concentrated harder, searching.
There. A weak cry. An echo. Faint and wretched and tortured.
Bile churned in the back of Nathanial’s throat. The detective hadn’t just been burnt alive, his soul had almost been incinerated from existence.
Impossible.
“You’re tapping into the plane?”
Opening his eyes, he sighed at James, who still studied him with that out-of-character solemn look. “Yeah.”
Of all those on the payroll at Guarded Souls Security and Protection, Nathanial was the only angel, the only one able to slip into the ethereal plane of existence to determine the living status of a human. It came in handy often. Those who engaged the services of the agency didn’t know the nonhuman state of the team, but as unaware as they were, they always appreciated their supernatural abilities.
“Is the cop who you think he is?” James asked. “The reason for the dire light in your eyes?”
“He is.”
An image of Rhames smiling at him flared in Nathanial’s mind. His chest ached. He’d left the cop with a gossamer line of influence still threaded through his will, enough for Nathanial to get away from Billie’s place, and to ensure the authorities didn’t notice she was gone. He’d also ensured that influence had left Rhames in a happy place, not a confrontational one.
You left him vulnerable. He wouldn’t have been prepared for any kind of assault.
Guilt snaked into Nathanial’s gut, coiling around the unease already there.
The death of an innocent human was now on his hands. Was this part of the unspoken reason he’d been instructed to forget Billie Sheridan existed eons ago?
*
“That sucks,” James said. Regret replaced the serious frown on his face. Another new expression Nathanial had never seen on the djinn before. “Wilhelmina Sheridan has something to do with what’s going on, yes? What’s that mean for you?”
Nathanial cupped the back of his head in both hands, stare locked on the floor.
Should he tell James? Fill him in on Gilbert? The sale of a human’s soul wasn’t the normal situation Guarded Souls dealt with, regardless of the agency’s name, but then, nor was it normal fallen angel territory. Fallen angels were meant to exist amongst humans but not concern themselves with such trivial matters, under implied threat of punishment.
Nothing trivial about this, though, is there? Even ignoring who Gilbert sold his soul for.
Damn it, he needed to speak to Erah. Whatever Gilbert had become, he didn’t want to risk the lives of his friends, and the melting pot of nonhumans who worked at Guarded Souls were now just that—friends.
“Nath?”
He lifted his head
at James’s soft voice. The djinn rarely called him anything but Feathers, and sometimes—when he was in a particularly irritating mood—Flappy. The only time Nath was uttered by James, or anyone on the Guarded Souls team, for that matter, was when things were truly worrying. Which meant he’d heard it a grand total of twice.
“Do you want our help?” James’s image shimmered. Not a lot, but just enough for Nathanial to remember he wasn’t actually there. “I can round everyone up. Get them all there within—”
Nathanial shook his head. “This is angel business. There won’t be anything you can do.”
“So you think it’s another fallen that’s responsible?”
“It seems so. Or at least, they are involved in some way.”
Surprise flittered across James’s face. Uncertainty did the same in his green eyes. “I thought we knew all the fallen?”
Nathanial had started a database of all the fallen angels residing amongst man when he was cast out. He’d shared that list with Guarded Souls during his second month on the team. As a show of goodwill, and as a contingency in case anything happened to him.
Letting out a ragged sigh, he raked a hand through his hair. “I thought we did as well. But this situation, this soul transaction…” He shook his head again. “This one is…different.”
“If you find yourself up the proverbial creek, wish for a paddle and I’ll deliver.”
A low chuckle bubbled up Nathanial’s throat. “Genie jokes? You must be worried about me, Jimmy. I’m touched.”
James flashed a wicked grin. “In the head, Feather.” His image shimmered again, and for a split second he appeared to flick someone else a quick look. Another member of the Guarded Souls team? Where exactly was he? “Touched in the head.”
Nathan laughed again. “If you were here right now, I’d kick your ass.”
“You’d try. I’ve got a massive set of clippers, though. Those wings of yours…” He wriggled his eyebrows, bent himself into a deep bow, and disappeared.
Revealing the angel lounging in the armchair opposite Nathanial.
“Hello, brother.” Ice-blue eyes locked on him, iridescent with the full force of divine creation and grace. “You’ve been trying to contact me, yes?”
* * * *
Burning the cop alive had fed him. Somehow.
Destiny's Knight: A Fallen Angel Protector Paranormal Romantic Suspense Book (Guarded Souls 1) Page 8
