Chapter Eleven
Dommiel
Once again, I found myself sitting in the dark, smoking brimstone, and staring at the sleeping angel. I flicked a tip of ash into the skull tray—the last remains of a demon who gave me up to the prince Damas. A phantom sting made my eye twitch at the memory of that prick.
The physical pain was nothing. It was the imprint of being branded a traitor by one of my kind, by a prince, forcing me to exist on the fringes that put the ice in my veins. Losing New Orleans didn’t pain me. Not even losing my lackeys. Losing power did. Losing my place in this malevolent world, reminding me that no one gave a good goddamn for anyone except themselves.
Dominate. Kill. Conquer. That’s all anyone understood anymore. The demons. The angels. Even the humans, quickly learning how this game was played. It’s what I loved about this new world order, this constant truth that kept me company in the soulless dark where everything was nice and cold.
And now if something hadn’t gotten my blood hot…someone.
Slouching forward, I braced elbows on knees, taking a long drag. You’d think I’d be bored by now of watching her. But I so fucking wasn’t. I could watch her forever, while the world burned and faded away into nothing but shadows.
I couldn’t quite place what was off about her until last night. She had the combat skill of an angel warrior but the soft heart of a caregiver. The way Maximus spoke to her in Berlin, he knew her. Knew her well. Not a lover, for she’d said so and she couldn’t lie if she wanted to. I grunted a laugh at that, inhaling deep of the brimstone, letting it light up my senses, the buzz settling my nerves. For the woman had certainly unsettled them.
So, if not a lover, then perhaps a mentor. But she was no longer working for the angel legion. Or that asshole. She’d been allied with Uriel and his hunters. Even as their allies, she wasn’t a part of them. She was set apart. Alone. Like me.
Her brow puckered in sleep, haloed in the gold firelight, tossing long shadows across her face. She made a low sound, like someone scared. She flinched. Someone in her nightmare had just hurt her.
I stubbed out the cigarette, noting the new burn flaring in my chest. Bright and hot. Anger. She fought restless sleep back on San Maggiore as well. Something plagued her. Whoever had given her this nightmare haunted her still. I wanted to reach into her mind and rip him from her dreams.
She jerked more violently. A soft and sleepy “no” passed her lips. A plea as she begged her attacker not to do whatever he was going to do. My canines were long and sharp in an instant, wanting to erase the bastard from her dreams. Before I thought too long about the sudden, violent urge, I sat on the bed where she curled on her side and gave her shoulder a gentle shake.
With a sudden jerk, she launched up into a sitting position and grabbed hold of my bare arms at the biceps to push me away, taking me for her enemy.
“Hey, hey.”
Gripping her wrists before she went for a dagger—since I’d resheathed the one she’d dropped in our tumble last night—I gave her a minute to realize she wasn’t in that nightmare fighting whoever that fucker was.
“Just a dream, baby. You’re safe.”
Blinking those blue-violet eyes, pupils dilated, she fell back to the pillow, staring where I had a hold of her wrists. I let her go. Reluctantly. The urge to pin her down and fuck her into the mattress hadn’t left me since she stood in my bathroom and took a long appreciative look of my naked body. If she had any idea what kind of effect that had on me, she would never had allowed herself that little peek.
I knew that look all too well. The one where raw desire guided your every move. And to see it on her beautiful, innocent face had branded me with an equal measure of need. Now that I knew what stormed inside her, I’d not let go till I’d tasted every honey-sweet inch of her body.
But her reaction to coming for the first time—how is that even fucking possible?—had me biding my time. She needed to get used to the idea before I buried my dick inside her. A true innocent. A novelty I never thought to experience.
Too late for her to escape now. That one moment where she froze and gazed her fill had sealed her doom. She was mine. She just didn’t know it yet.
Blinking those otherworldly eyes, resting them on the low flicker of a flame, her expression eased as she came back to the present, leaving the nightmare behind. With a heavy sigh and an unconscious lift of her right wing, she met my gaze.
“You shouldn’t have given me your essence.”
A thread of fear trembled in her voice. That was interesting. Quirking a brow at her, I watched the anxiety tighten her expression.
“It was to help you sleep. Nothing more.”
“It doesn’t matter. Demon essence can be dangerous.”
With a scoff, I assured her. “Yeah. I know. But I only gave you the compulsion to sleep.”
I placed a hand on her hip and squeezed lightly to get her attention. It worked.
“What was that nightmare about?”
Closing her eyes on a sigh, she whispered, “It was nothing.”
“Right.” I stood and fetched a bottle of water from the fridge, twisting the cap off and handing it over to her. “I thought you said you didn’t lie.”
She took the water and sat up, gulping it down before answering.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Uh-huh.” Taking my seat in the chair, I studied her carefully. “That nightmare was a memory. Not just a dream.”
A sharp look. I’d nailed the target.
“Who was he?”
Her eyes widened. “Who was who?”
I chuckled, leaning back and widening my stance, hands at ease on my thighs.
“The fucker hurting you in your dreams.”
Her gaze wandered over my bare chest. If I’d been a fucking peacock, I would’ve spread my feathers wider and preened for that look of admiration.
Without saying a word, she took another sip. She wasn’t going to answer me. My sweet, little non-liar. Fine. I had lots more questions that needed answering.
“Why’d you leave Maximus’s army?”
Planting her bare feet on the floor, for I’d taken the liberty of removing her shoes when she fell asleep, she stared down, seemingly surprised to find herself without shoes. Another furtive glance.
Yeah, baby. I’d taken them off. And sliding my hands over her slender ankle and arch of each foot was entirely too erotic an event for a man like me who was used to whips and ropes and keening moans to get off. Touching an angel’s fucking feet shouldn’t have gotten me so hard. But it did.
It had nothing to do with her being an angel, but with her being Anya. Clear and steady and true. No games. No hidden agendas. No cryptic words to sift through and figure her out. Just…Anya.
She wasn’t eager to answer me. Now, I really wanted to know.
“Did someone push you out? Take your position of power? Piss you off?”
That clear gaze sidled to me before she rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t anything like that.”
“Tell me what it was like, then.”
A heavy sigh. Her focus back on the fire.
“It happened in Belfast.”
She paused. Perhaps remembering.
“Go on.”
She nodded, clearing her throat, eyes still on the dying fire.
“Maximus had intel of a dangerous horde growing in numbers on the north end.” She twined her fingers casually in her lap. “It was a routine battle plan. We had reconnaissance confirm that a vast horde had indeed full control of a large part of the city. That had been our mission for the weeks since the gates of heaven and hell had opened. To target the largest hordes first.”
She inhaled a deep, shuddering breath before she went on.
“The battle spilled off the street into a church. The angels could cross onto sacred ground, though the demons could not, of course.” She leveled a pointed look at me. “But their gunfire could.”
“And? So they destroyed a church?” I shrugged a shoulder.
“There were women and children—families—taking refuge in the church.”
Ah. My angel’s soft heart was showing again. Such a sensitive soul.
“Go on.” I shifted forward, listening intently.
“I cried out for the angel soldiers to leave. They were making the humans a target, putting their lives in danger.”
“But they didn’t listen.”
“No.” Her fey eyes snapped with blue fury. “They ignored me and continued the fire fight, using the cathedral as a battle fort in which to engage the demons crowding into the churchyard. The archers shot streams of continuous ether-fire arrows out the open doors while the demons rained bullets. I couldn’t get the people to safety.” She swallowed hard. “There was a little girl, a red ribbon in her hair, staring at me from beneath an overturned pew, her eyes so wide with fear. One second I was looking at her, the next, the pew went up in an explosion, the child torn to pieces.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, apparently trying to erase the image. Though I’d never given a good goddamn about humans, besides the drakuls they could pay me for services rendered, that was a sad piece of shit who killed innocents. Or ignored their existence, and their deaths, to win a victory.
“So you had enough of battle and left the legion.”
“Not battle.” She scoffed, defiance in her eyes. “The legion. Maximus’s army who sought to destroy the enemy with no regard to the humans they killed along the way. After the battle, I’d raged about the incident at the cathedral to the general, but he waved me off, saying it was a simple consequence of war. Nothing he could do about it. Nor would he have changed tactics. The cathedral offered cover and gave us the upper hand.”
“So you won that fight.”
“Yes.” She jolted to a stand abruptly. “We won, Dommiel. But at what cost? Every man, woman, and child died in that church. A place they thought was a sanctuary away from the blood and death.” Facing the fire, she closed her eyes again, whispering, despair in every word, “That poor little girl.”
I had the strangest urge to pull her into my arms, to soothe the pain she felt. The intensity of her emotions, her compassion, sparked something inside of me, flashing with violence like lightning in a storm. Refusing to give in to the compulsion, I braced my hands on my knees, keeping my seat and my mouth shut.
She went on finally. “That’s when I realized that I wasn’t fighting for the right cause.”
“You were fighting with your own kind. That wasn’t enough?”
“No.” She snapped her fierce gaze to me. “It isn’t enough. We don’t kill innocents in order to gain victory. But apparently Maximus and his army did.” She shrugged. “So I left.”
“And you found Uriel.”
A single nod. “Everyone knew Uriel was the only archangel who’d been interfering in the human world, helping them for centuries. Long before the Great War had ever begun. I’d run into his hunters a time or two before.”
Puzzled, for she’d have to have spent time on earth for that to happen, I asked, “How had you run into them?”
“Before I was a soldier, I was a guardian.”
“A guardian.”
Of course. The way she’d defended those street urchins in Venice, the way her heart went out to the dead girl in that Belfast church, it all made sense now.
“You were a guardian of children.”
She faced me, the tips of her blue wings rimmed in gold.
“A guardian of orphaned and neglected children,” she clarified.
I stood, unable to hold back a rough laugh. As if she could get any more enticing. This skilled warrior with a guardian’s heart bled inwardly for the innocent and lost. I was no-fucking-where near innocent. The opposite. But I was eternally lost. For the first time in centuries, I had the impulse to reach out and grab hold, see if she didn’t anchor me in her slender arms. See if she wouldn’t offer me some of that balm of compassion she spread to the orphaned children of the world.
The need to touch overrode my own will. Lifting my hand to cup her cheek, I slid the pad of my thumb across her closed mouth. Such a sweet mouth. Not the mouth of an angel warrior or a guardian.
“You’re a rare breed, Anya.”
She wrapped her fingers gently around my wrist. Not to stop me, but it did anyway. I dropped my hand.
“What do you mean?” she asked in a low whisper.
“You actually give a damn.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “There are others who care. Uriel and his hunters.”
I sat again and stretched out a leg, the toe of my boot tipping up. “Strange lot.”
Tilting her head at an angle, she said in a soft voice, “And you care.”
I chuckled. “No, baby. I care about me,” I confirmed, tapping my chest with my metal hand.
“But you made a blood vow to Genevieve, an enemy of demonkind.”
“Yeah. She’s good at convincing a guy to go her way.”
Anya smiled, the kind of knowing smile that struck fear in me. “I believe there’s more to it than that.”
“You love her.”
She was wrong. And yet, Genevieve had awoken an idea, a thought that lay dormant for so long. The kind that was dangerous to a demon like me, a raw scraping idea akin to hope. And this angel was fanning the flame, while I tried to douse the light with my own cloak of cynicism and doubt.
“I owe her a debt. Nothing more.” I inserted heavy gravity into my words, so she’d know I spoke the truth.
Her mouth straightened into a tight line. I wanted to soften it with my own, take away that grim expression she wore. Her gaze flicked to the shelf behind me before she took a seat on the edge of the bed and began putting on her boots.
“What’s the story behind the chalice?”
Not even glancing, I smiled. “That was the chalice King Henry VIII drank from at his coronation feast at Westminster Hall shortly after he married Catherine of Aragon.”
A crease pinched the middle of her brow. “Why would you collect something like this?”
A shrug. “It was a symbol of a great king before he fell. Rather an ironic piece of history, that day, as it was the beginning of the end for him.”
“But he ruled long. From what I know of human history, he was a prosperous king.”
I scoffed. “Perhaps. But at what price?”
Her brow arched at the very question she’d tossed at me a few minutes ago. “He was a traitor. Pure and simple.”
Her frown deepened, but she glanced again at the shelf above my head. “And what about the Roman dagger? Just a random pretty blade you wanted?”
The lilt of her question said she didn’t believe it was random at all. Smart, my angel.
“That dagger belonged to Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus. He also went by the name Marcus Junius Brutus. Ever heard of him?”
She seemed to be scanning her recollection of Roman history, finally landing on the most important part of both those names. “Brutus? The one who betrayed Caesar?”
“The very one.” I lifted my chin as if to nod behind me. “That is the very dagger he used to kill the man he loved like a father.”
Her pretty eyes pooled, glassy with emotion. “You seem to have an affinity for objects of betrayal.”
Standing, I took the black long-sleeved thermal shirt from off my desk and pulled it on. With a hiss as the shirt brushed over my half-healed wound, I strapped on my shoulder harness.
“I like to remember that every man, great and small, eventually falls prey to his own vices. Greed for lust, power, fortune.” I shoved my Glock, fully loaded with ether ammo into the holster and pulled on my leather jacket. “No man is good for long, angel. They all fall.”
She’d laced her boots and stood with me, but her rabbit-quick heartbeat pulsed in the air, drawing my predatory senses.
“Dommiel. I don’t believe—”
An earth-quaking blast shook the building, the ceiling vibrating and shaking down dust. Before I could even register who or what had attacked us, I had Anya pinned to the ground beneath me, cradling her head with my arms. Her wide-eyed gaze locked on mine the second before another blast shook the building once more and shattered the window, knocking us into dusty darkness.