Chapter Five
Dommiel
The boy zigzagged one way, then another, winding us away from Valentino’s party and into the darkened shadows that once was a thriving city. Whatever humans still lived here, they shut themselves into quiet corners. A candle burned low behind a curtained window or two as we trailed our little informer, vanishing around yet another corner. I thought we’d been had by the boy when we rounded the building.
“Where is he?” asked Anya.
He stepped from a shadow and pointed toward a bridge. The Bridge of Sighs as I recall, which leads into a prison facility.
“Wait there,” he said before scampering back the way we’d come.
“There’s no one there.” Anya gazed across the bridge.
“No,” I agreed. “But it’s probably being watched from a farther, safer distance.”
I glanced up the street. Six cloaked figures strode in our direction, the mist curling around their billowing capes. High demons on the prowl with malicious intent. They moved as if they had a specific destination. But they’d derail plans in a heartbeat to pluck a pretty angel apart.
“Well, it’s worth a try.” Anya started toward the bridge.
Instinct gripped me hard. I stepped in front of her, covered her mouth with my hand, and pushed her back into a niche against the wall.
“Tighten your wings,” I commanded in a low whisper.
She did, making it easier to flatten them against the alcove wall behind her. I pressed my body hard against hers, minimizing our presence.
“Don’t make a sound.” I emphasized with force. “Not a whimper.”
Her violet-blue eyes widened, but she only nodded. I covered as much of her as I could, pressing my chest to hers, then cast illusion to hide her wings with a snapping summons of my power. She didn’t see the demons coming, and I had to hide her wings quickly. The shock of my dark touch, my invisible armor wrapping her in a hard grip, had her lips parting in a silent gasp. Our breath mingled in the frosty air as the gang of demons drew closer. They’d sense us and see us. I counted on my instincts being right. That they’d bypass a pair of lovers in the shadows. But if they’d seen her wings, they’d stop for a bit of sport with her.
Like I’d fucking let that happen.
“Play along,” I commanded again, hearing the grating dominance in my voice and expecting her to push me off.
Combing my hand into her hair, I reveled in the feel of the silky strands sliding over my skin before I gripped that black silk in a fist and leaned forward. A force not my own pulling me closer. Her eyes remained wide, her body stiff. But not as stiff as mine. Hell, I’d had a hard-on from the first moment she arched a defiant brow at me.
The need to get my mouth on hers drove me like a bullet train. I needed to know what she tasted like. Needed to feel the slide of my tongue past those full pink lips. Needed to get inside of her. But she wasn’t ready for me. Not yet. She was hard to read, my angel. But we could play pretend lovers for a minute.
Gripping her hip with my mechanical hand, I pressed harder against her body. My cock, like an iron rod, pushed against her pelvis. She flinched in my arms and stiffened but didn’t pull away. No. She softened, for fuck’s sake. And that was my undoing. I tilted my mouth toward her neck, breathing her in.
I sensed the sinister air surrounding the demons drawing closer, but I refused to give in to the urge to turn and draw a blade. The menace rolling off of them claimed they were not a group to overpower or escape quickly. If worse came to worse, I’d just sift us away. But something told me they were on the move. Better prey in mind. As long as they thought us harmless lovers, we were safe.
So I focused on Anya. Her grip on the lapels of my leather jacket tightened while her body melted against me. Pure, fucking heaven.
I grazed my lips against her soft throat, featherlight. Her desire—an innocent, fragile thing—flared hot when she let out a little moan. Christ. I was going to lose my mind.
I sensed the demons passing behind us. That danger drifted away but another kind took its place. Uncontainable lust had me in its iron grip. Unable to taste just a little, I flicked my tongue over the lobe of her ear. She flinched again, exhaling a breathy moan before she clamped her mouth shut.
Curling my hand into the collar of her leather jacket, I pulled it aside so I could taste her where her neck met shoulder. The soft patch of exposed pale skin lured me like a dying man in the desert to the coolest drink of water.
Fuck, the things I wanted to do to her. Dirty, dark, delicious things.
Her innocence was a beacon, a red flag waving in the breeze, and my bull wanted to charge. Right fucking now.
Feeling my control slipping, I scraped my teeth gently up the side of her neck, my beast jerking on the leash I was strangling him with.
I eased my lips off her skin, a new addiction that would surely cripple me, because that wasn’t nearly enough. A slight sound of protest escaped her lips. I lifted my gaze to hers.
“Not a whimper,” I said.
The urge to bind her and force every possible sound of pleasure from those luscious lips pushed me like a primal compulsion. A vibrating need I never saw coming threatened to choke the air from my lungs.
Her eyes—dilated with lust—trailed down to my mouth.
“Dommiel. Your teeth.” Her panting breath curled out in white puffs. “And your eye.”
That’s when I realized my beast had come to the surface. The monster I kept at bay so as not to frighten mere mortals. And sweet angels. He wanted to play. He wanted more.
Flicking my tongue over one canine, I backed up, removing my body from the achingly sweet alignment against hers. It would take a few minutes to simmer my blood, for my canines to recede. I turned away, facing the direction those night prowlers had gone, heaving in a deep breath of cold night air. I needed a dip in the Arctic to get my brain and my dick off the gut-punching pleasure one little taste of her had given me.
Rather than curse me for a fiend, she spoke quietly, a quiver in her voice.
“Did you know those demons?”
I scoffed. “No. But I know their kind.” I turned to face her, knowing my fangs and blood-red eye still showed the beast within. “I am their kind.”
“No, you’re not.”
Her immediate protest caught me off guard. She had no idea the depraved, monstrous things I’d done over the centuries. And she’d forgotten my original betrayal, my choice to walk in the dark. Of course, I’d never have taken that step if I hadn’t been betrayed by one who should’ve been loyal to me above all others. Seems I was destined to be betrayed and to be the betrayer all my life. A lonely dark path I’d cut out for myself. But it kept those unwanted emotions at bay, the ones this angel seemed to cling to like a shield. Faith. Hope. Loyalty. All just a mirage. She’d discover that for herself one of these days.
She’d edged out of the alcove. My cast of illusion had dropped, revealing the dark silhouette of her beautiful heavenly wings. The sight twisted a knot in my stomach. The fact that I’d wanted her in those few seconds more than anything I’d wanted in my life cut me off at the knees. The forbidden fruit. The untouchable innocent. Whatever reason I felt an unnerving desire to bury myself inside her, it didn’t matter. Her kind was not for me. She was not for me.
To demonstrate that, I sifted close to her in a blink, baring my fangs. She gasped and took a quick step backward, her hand gripping the hilt of a dagger at one hip.
“Yes, baby. I am their kind. And the sooner you realize that, the safer you’ll be.”
Her pillowy pink lips stood ajar, rasping short breaths in and out. She didn’t argue against me this time, her eyes darting from my mouth to my good eye, obviously taking in the demon that I was.
Good. She needed to be on guard. And keep her distance.
Then her gaze flicked over my shoulder.
“Dommiel.” She nodded behind me.
There, atop the bridge, was a cloaked figure watching us. No menacing aura. Or heavenly one. A human.
“I believe we’ve found the Twelfth Night.”
“Or they found us,” she added.
I started forward with Anya behind me. Scanning the area, I saw no one on the other side. Just this lone figure.
“That’s far enough, demon,” said a feminine voice beneath the hood.
Anya stepped up to my side. “We’ve come to see Marko.”
“Lots of people want to see Marko,” the woman said, her voice husky. “Some want information. Some want his head.”
“We seek information,” said Anya.
I held up a hand and recited the code from Father Anthony. “Now watch me become what I can become.”
The shadowy woman stepped forward and removed her hood. A scar ran from her right cheekbone to her chin. A thin blade had done the damage. It did little to mar her porcelain beauty, but it had certainly hardened her eyes. She assessed us with her sharp gaze, the silence stretching, until finally she stepped off the bridge, striding away from the heart of the city.
“Follow me.”
She slipped through the shadows so fast and on such silent feet that I’d have thought she’d sifted away if I didn’t sense her in the dark a few feet ahead of us. The Twelvers learned best how to move about secretly. They had to if they wanted to survive.
We crossed a deserted piazza, the wind ghosting through the open pavilion, wafting up salty air from a nearby wharf. As our leader veered down a steady descent, I realized she was taking us to that same wharf. She finally stopped and untethered the rope, tossing it inside a small motorized boat.
“Get in,” she commanded.
“Where to?” asked Anya at my side.
She pointed into the darkness. “Through that channel and across the water to San Giorgio Maggiore.”
“I’d rather fly.” Anya stepped back, opening her wings. “I’ll follow you.”
Before I could even protest, though I didn’t know why I should, she beat her wings once and lifted off. Our escort didn’t bat an eye.
“If you’re coming, let’s go.” Her gaze was on the street behind us, watching for intruders.
I hopped down in the front as she’d taken the seat near the motor and hand control to steer the boat. The boat slid away soundlessly from the dock as she wove through the narrow canals without any light for guidance. Or supernatural senses, for that matter. She was more than adept at moving efficiently in the dark.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
We wound around a final building, water lapping more fiercely as we moved out onto open water toward San Giorgio Maggiore.
I thought she wouldn’t answer, then finally, a quiet reply. “Zoe.”
Salty spray misted my face as we crossed the rocky channel. Of course they’d choose the small, unpopulated island away from the mayhem in the city. Perfect hiding place. In the distance, the little island was nothing more than a black blob in the gray-slate night, not a sign of a soul living. Not many demons would bother to venture across the water just to find out if there were some easy pickings of humans to make slaves or their playthings. Not when it was too easy to look elsewhere.
“How did you two end up together?”
I glanced back at Zoe, her dark eyes ahead, flitting only once to the shadow winging above us.
My gaze drifted up. I’d tried not to seek her there. Couldn’t help it.
“Not by choice.”
The sight of her soaring and beating those ethereal wings, even as a black silhouette against the charcoal smudge of night, was something beautiful to behold. I imagined what she would look like under a sunny sky with the reflection of bright rays casting a sheen across her sapphire wings, the wind gusting her black hair, sunlight glowing on her pearl-white skin.
What the fuck was wrong with me? How had I grown sentimental after just one kiss? Shaking it off, I stared ahead into the darkness. Best keep my head out of the heavens. There lay danger. Pain, misery, and an endless stream of unquenchable yearning. I had a job to do, and coin to collect. I needed to bear that in mind the next time my thoughts strayed to the black-haired beauty who reeked of innocence and sensuality. Fatal combo for a demon like me.