“Ha! I made you bleed, you worm.”
Hawkyn glared at his opponent as he dabbed the back of his hand against his mouth and came away with blood. Yup, Cipher had given him a split lip, all right, and he cursed as Razr, their sparring coach, ticked off a point for Ciph.
Cursing again, Hawkyn launched at his blond Unfallen angel buddy, landing a heel-first kick in the guy’s gut. As an Unfallen, an angel who had been kicked out of Heaven but hadn’t completed his fall, Cipher didn’t have the powers of either a True Fallen angel or a Heavenly angel, but somehow, he still managed to be a powerful force.
The bastard.
“Point to Hawk,” Razr called out. “It’s a tie match. Take a break, you two. We’ll start round three in fifteen minutes.” Razr shot Hawkyn one of his signature I’m-a-dick smiles. “Maybe you can finally pull your head out of your ass and win a match.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hawkyn muttered. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
Cipher reached for his bottle of water on the nearby bench as Razr headed toward another pair of sparring opponents who, like Hawkyn and Cipher, were clad in black sweatpants and white tees that showed every drop of blood and sweat.
“Don’t tell me you finally got laid?”
“Hardly. You know the law.” Hawkyn hadn’t felt the erotic touch of a female in hundreds of years, and even then, sex had been more of a momentary escape from a shitty existence than something meaningful or even nice.
But that had been back before he’d been ripped from the human world and thrust into the angelic one, the one in which Memitim had to swear an oath to celibacy. Supposedly, abstinence made warriors more dangerous. The demon Hawkyn had killed just yesterday would probably agree.
Son of a bitch, he was horny. If he didn’t earn his wings soon to free himself from the idiotic rules Memitim had to follow—including celibacy—he was going to explode. Sometimes he thought that the Memitim who had never had sex had it better, because once you knew what you were missing...
“So what kept you up?” Cipher poured water on his head and shook it off, his blond hair, longer and two shades darker than Hawkyn’s, flinging a rain of droplets like a dog after a bath.
“The newest Star Trek series. Have you seen it?” It was a lie, but he wasn’t ready to share the truth with Cipher. The guy was his best friend, but Cipher didn’t fully understand Memitim business and didn’t seem to want to learn it. What he did know he seemed to have absorbed via osmosis or some shit.
“Star Trek?” Cipher scoffed. “A new Star Wars series would be worth losing a sparring match over, but Trek? No way.”
Hawkyn laughed. “Did I tell you I was Nimoy’s Memitim guardian back in the sixties? And you know my brother Reynaud. He was Shatner’s. Linsef was Nichelle Nichols’.”
“What? You’re kidding. The actors were Primori? They needed to be protected? From what? The Gorn?” Cipher laughed. Hard. He always thought his jokes were funny.
The Gorn were no laughing matter. Lizard warriors. Hardcore.
“Dude, Star Trek played a role in history,” Hawk shot back. “The vital people involved, starting at the top with Gene Roddenberry, were all watched over.”
“Hey, boys. What’s going on?” Suzanne, Hawk’s younger sister—by a few centuries—stopped near the bench, her wavy brown hair pulled back in a headband, her arms full of yellow squash from the nearby garden. All Memitim who lived here had jobs in order to keep the place running, and Suzanne had been assigned as cook. Hell, she’d begged to take shifts in the kitchen.
Hawkyn gestured to Cipher. “This fool is trying to convince me that Star Wars is better than Star Trek.”
“It is,” Cipher said. “And not just better. More popular. I’ll bet Han Solo is more recognized around the world than Spock is.”
Blasphemy. Hawkyn threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re delusional. Even if you’re right, and you’re not, Star Trek definitely had a much bigger impact on human society than Star Wars. An interracial kiss seen around the world. Communicators inspired cell phone design. Medical equipment got a boost from Star Trek’s diagnostic beds and scanners.”
Cipher rolled his eyes. “It’s called technology. Humanity would have come up with that stuff eventually.”
“Yeah?” Hawk wiped sweat off his brow. “I haven’t seen NASA name a space shuttle after the Millennium Falcon.”
“Okay, guys.” Suzanne attempted to wave her hands in a time-out gesture but nearly lost her load of veggies. “Knock it off. I have a question for you, Hawk.”
“Whatcha got?”
She juggled with her squash as she turned over her right arm to expose the single, circular Primori mark, a heraldi, on the inside of her wrist.
“Declan’s mark keeps alerting me to danger,” she said, “but when I flash to him, there’s nothing happening. I’ve waited for hours for the alert to shut off, I’ve searched all over his immediate vicinity for any kind of threat, from human snipers to demon assassins, and there’s been nothing. I’ve heard that sometimes our very first heraldis can be glitchy. Do you think that’s what’s happening?”
“My first one was glitchy too,” Hawk said. “My sponsor said it can take our bodies a while to adjust to being in tune with another person.” His had taken a couple of years, which was why a Memitim’s first Primori was often their only Primori for the first five years.
“Do they ever fail to notify us when our Primori is in trouble?”
“Yup.” He caught a squash that escaped her arms. “Our sister Nephritt lost her very first Primori when his heraldi didn’t alert her that he was in danger.”
Suzanne’s brown doe eyes shot wide. “That’s terrifying. Maybe I should check on Declan more often.”
“I get the feeling you check on him enough,” Hawkyn said as he placed the gourd on the top of her squash pile.
She blushed, which told him he’d hit the mark. He’d seen the way she looked at the human she was assigned to watch over. It was as if she had been trapped in the Inner Sanctum’s 5th Ring’s scorch pit for a week and he was carrying a glass of water. And a thousand-foot ladder.
“He’s my first,” she said with a stubborn sniff, her nose in the air. “And I’m going to make sure I do my job right.”
“That’s the problem,” he said, hoping he didn’t come off as too lecture-happy. Suzanne would tune out faster than a griminion could reap a soul. “You’re not doing your job right. We aren’t supposed to interact with our Primori or the people around them. We’re supposed to watch from a distance or from the invisibility of the shrowd. But you’ve been hanging out at the restaurant where he works and chatting up his friends and co-workers.”
“Declan doesn’t work at Top,” she shot back, getting prickly. “He works for the restaurant owner’s brother at McKay-Taggart, and their families and employees are kind of intertwined, so he’s there a lot. And I just happen to like the food. Plus, there are a surprising number of Primori associated with both Top and McKay-Taggart, so I’m doing my brothers and sisters a favor by keeping an eye on their charges. And I’ve gotten some great contacts that could help me take my cooking show to a whole new level.” She spun on her tennis shoe-clad foot and started toward the main dormitory building, which housed Sheoul-gra’s largest of several kitchens. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she called out as she walked, “I have to start on dinner before I get too annoyed.”
No, no one wanted her to cook while she was annoyed. Her moods infused the food she prepared, so a happy Suzanne was a recipe for happy diners. Not to mention the fact that her food was extra delicious when she was enjoying herself, which was almost always. She took her job as a cook as seriously as she took her job as a guardian, although she certainly didn’t look at that squash the way she did the human she was watching over.
“I worry about her,” he said to Cipher after she was out of earshot. “She’s not ready to have a Primori. Hell, she’s not suited for this shit at all.”
Cipher snorted. “Dude, I’ve sparred with her. She’s an awesome fighter. She moves like a damned snake. She’s way faster than I am.”
Cipher must be really impressed, because he never admitted that anyone was better in any way than he was. And he was usually right. He was a tough bastard whose fighting skills made him one of the most sought-after trainers in Sheoul-gra. The challenge was getting him away from his computer. The guy’s cyber-skills were on par with his fighting skills.
“It’s not her fighting ability that concerns me,” Hawkyn sighed. “It’s her innocence. She’s so naïve.”
“She’s had decades of exposure to underworld shit and demons, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, but it’s humans I worry about.” He watched Suz disappear into the building.
“Humans?” Cipher barked out a laugh. “Humans are freaking harmless.”
He glanced over at his buddy. Cipher was a little naïve, too. “She didn’t grow up like most Memitim. She had a good life.”
Cipher’s voice was flat. “Oh, the horror.”
“You don’t get it.” Hawk swiped his water bottle from the bench. “Memitim infants are intentionally put into shitty situations. Bad parents, war zones, poverty... It’s to challenge us as we grow up.”
“Sounds like it could turn you into a bunch of psychos,” Cipher mused as he went for his own water. “Explains a lot, actually.”
No argument there. A lot of Hawk’s brothers and sisters had serious issues, and Suzanne could often be found trying to fix them. Usually with food.
“Yeah, well, Suz somehow ended up with a near perfect life. Loving family, popular in school, lots of friends. Chipped nails were the worst things that ever happened to her. She didn’t really date, didn’t get into a lot of trouble. She lived in fucking Pleasantville. Then she went straight from an idyllic human life to the Memitim training center in Hawaii, which is pretty much a spa.”
Hawkyn had been assigned to the facility in Belgium, a cold-ass castle with strict rules. Yes, he could have lived on his own after his fifty years of mandatory fledgling training was complete, but he’d chosen to stay...until Sheoul-gra unexpectedly opened up to Memitim a couple of years ago.
Well, it had always been open to Memitim who wanted to serve Azagoth, but Sheoul-gra had been a dark, grim, horrible place where few wanted to be until Azagoth’s mate, Lilliana, came along. Now it was teeming with life and activity and a thriving community of Memitim, Unfallen angels, and even a few Fallen angels.
“So she hasn’t seen what humans are capable of,” Cipher mused.
“Exactly. She hasn’t been hurt. And I see her getting too attached to her Primori.”
“You’re her sponsor. Can’t you talk to the Memitim embassy and get her reassigned?”
Hawkyn barked out a laugh. “I don’t know why I even tried. Got the standard ‘Primori are assigned to specific Memitim for a reason’ bullshit.”
“I heard you can ask for one reassignment per century.” Cipher drained his water bottle in half a dozen swallows and tossed it to the ground for one of the new trainees to pick up. There were few trash bins in training areas for a reason, and as far as Hawk could tell, that reason was to make trainees hate life. “You ever try to get one of your Primori reassigned?”
“Nope. Never.” Hawkyn had been assigned a lot of brutal scumbags in his hundreds of years of service, and he’d managed just fine.
“Razr’s coming back.” Cipher jerked his head in the other fallen angel’s direction. “Better get your head on straight or I’m gonna kick your ass again.”
Hawk snorted. “I was just warming up. Prepare for a beating.” And then after he knocked Cipher around, he was going to pay his least favorite Primori a visit and fantasize about doing the same to him.
Someday, he swore silently. Someday.
* * * *
The best thing about grocery shopping at midnight was that the stores were relatively quiet. As someone sensitive to life-force energy, Aurora Mercer liked that. But sometimes the lack of activity wasn’t a good thing.
Like now, as she walked her groceries out to her car. Fog common to Portland, Oregon in the fall had rolled in, obscuring everything farther than about forty feet out. She’d parked her dark blue Mercedes close to the building and under a light, but as she opened the rear door she was unnerved to see a black van pull next to her, blocking her faint view of the store—and blocking employee views of her.
The van’s windows were blacked out.
She laughed nervously. It was probably nothing. Serial killers didn’t drive anything so obvious, right?
Right?
Still, she picked up her pace, not caring that she was all but throwing her groceries in the back seat and food was spilling everywhere. She could salvage the cherries on the floor when she got home, and raspberry juice stains on cream leather wouldn’t look that bad.
Not as bad as blood.
She finished and slammed the door closed. But shit...the cart corral was several stalls away. Her heart started racing at the thought of getting that far from her car and the light. Screw it, she could leave the cart here. She hated when people did that, but avoiding death was as good an excuse as any to be lazy.
Hastily she pushed the cart in front of her car, secured it over a concrete tire block—
“Fog’s bad, isn’t it?”
She spun around with a startled yelp. An attractive man, maybe six-four with a Celtic cross tattoo on his neck, stood between her and her driver side door. How had he gotten there so fast?
Stay calm.
Easier said than done, but she’d give it a shot. “Excuse me,” she said firmly. “I’m in a hurry.”
He didn’t budge. “I’m sure you are.”
As casually as she could, she reached into her purse for her keys and the attached canister of pepper spray, but as she fished around she realized she’d left them on her back seat. Her heart skipped a beat and then pounded so fast and hard she could feel it in her ears.
Deep breaths. You don’t have your pepper spray, but you aren’t weaponless.
The man smiled as if he knew she’d come up empty of pepper spray and was happy about it. “Problem? Something I can help you with?”
“No. Thank you.” She dredged up a smile of her own and prayed it looked genuine and not like she was scared out of her mind. “If you’ll step aside, I’ll just go—”
She broke off as, out of the corner of her eye, she detected movement. Another man-shaped shadow stepped out of the fog behind the van, and her throat constricted with terror.
Jesus, there’s two of them.
Never before had she used her abilities in an emergency. She’d always wondered if she even could use them. What if she froze in the face of danger? But now, as adrenaline careened through her body, she drew on the ancient magic, and with a single word, “maleseum,” she struck out with her most powerful weapon, one her people usually reserved for only non-humans, like demons.
An intense, almost overwhelming pulse of ecstasy rocked her from inside out, triggered by the activation of magic. It was a curse—or gift—of her species, one that required them to either release their energy through sex or magic, but either way, the result was pleasure, even, apparently, during life or death situations.
Through the haze of the morgasm, as many of her friends called it, a bar of searing light blasted from her palm, striking the newcomer like a sledgehammer. He flew backward into a light pole and crumpled to the asphalt with a sickening thud. But in the time it took to neutralize the second man, the first moved on her. Pain shattered her face as his fist cracked against her jaw. The parking lot spun as she wheeled around and then hit the ground hard.
Despite the pain and the screaming inside her own head she heard him mutter something like “Thank you for that” as he looped some sort of rope or cord around her neck. She gasped for air, clawing at her throat, aware that he was dragging her toward his vehicle.
Terror fueled her fight as she kicked wildly, but her attacker was strong and she couldn’t stop him from throwing her through the side door of his van. She landed hard on a metal floor, and before she could even process the fact that her vision was dimming, she felt a blow that put her into complete oblivion.
Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she would have been home right now if she hadn’t spent that extra ten minutes debating between Cheerios and Frosted Flakes.